On Being with Krista Tippett

James Doty is a clinical professor of neurosurgery at Stanford University and founding director of the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education. He is the author of "Into the Magic Shop: A Neurosurgeon's Quest to Discover the Mysteries of the Brain and the Secrets of the Heart." This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "James Doty — The Magic Shop of the Brain." Find more at onbeing.org.

Jean Berko Gleason is a living legend in the field of psycholinguistics — how language emerges, and what it tells us about how we think and who we are. She has helped to illustrate the remarkable ordinary human capacity to begin to speak, and she’s continued to break new ground in exploring what this may teach us about adults as about the children we’re raising. We keep learning about the human gift, as she puts it, to be conscious of ourselves and to comment on that. For her, the exploration of language is a frontier every bit as important and thrilling as exploring outer space or the deep sea.

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Jean Berko Gleason is Professor Emerita of psychology at Boston University. This interview was edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Jean Berko Gleason — Unfolding Language, Unfolding Life.” Find more at onbeing.org.

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“Let death be what takes us,” Dr. BJ Miller has written, “not a lack of imagination.” As a palliative care physician, he brings a design sensibility to the matter of living until we die. And he’s largely redesigned his sense of own physical presence after an accident at college left him without both of his legs and part of one arm. He offers a transformative reframing on our imperfect bodies, the ways we move through the world, and all that we don’t control.

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B.J. Miller is executive director of the Zen Hospice Project, an Assistant Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and an attending specialist for the Symptom Management Service of the UCSF Helen Diller Comprehensive Cancer Center. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “B.J. Miller — Reframing Our Relationship to That We Don’t Control.” Find more at onbeing.org

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Now nearing 90, Brother David Steindl-Rast has lived through a world war, the end of an empire, and the fascist takeover of his country. He's given a TED talk, viewed over five million times, on the subject of gratitude — a practice increasingly interrogated by scientists and physicians as a key to human well-being. He was also an early pioneer, together with Thomas Merton, of dialogue between Christian and Buddhist monastics. In this conversation from our visit to the Gut Aich Priory monastery in St. Gilgen, Austria, he speaks of mysticism as the birthright of every human being, and of the anatomy and practice of gratitude as full-blooded, reality-based, and redeeming.

Brother David Steindl-Rast is a Benedictine monk, teacher, and author. He is the founder and senior advisor for A Network for Grateful Living. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Br. David Steindl-Rast — Anatomy of Gratitude." Find more at www.onbeing.org.

Stephen Batchelor’s secular Buddhism speaks to the mystery and vitality of spiritual life in every form. For him, secularism opens to doubt and questioning as a radical basis for spiritual life. Above all, he understands Buddhism without transcendent beliefs like karma or reincarnation to become something urgent to do, not to believe in.

Stephen Batchelor is a teacher and writer. His books include "Buddhism Without Beliefs," "Confession of a Buddhist Atheist," and "The Faith to Doubt." His newest book is "After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a Secular Age." This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Stephen Batchelor — The Limits of Belief, The Massiveness of the Questions." Find more at onbeing.org.

A prolific writer on sociology, history, economics, and politics, W.E.B. Du Bois was one of the most extraordinary minds of American and global history. His life traced an incredible arc; he was born three years after the end of the Civil War and died on the eve of the March on Washington. In 1903, he penned the famous line that “the problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color line.” Du Bois was a formative voice for many of the people who gave us the Civil Rights Movement and for all of us navigating the still-unfolding, unfinished business of civil rights now. We bring his life and ideas into relief through three conversations with people who were inspired by him.

Maya Angelou was a poet, educator, and activist. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Arts in 2000 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011. She is most well-known for her series of seven autobiographies, including I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

Elizabeth Alexander is a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and president of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Her books include Crave Radiance and her memoir, The Light of the World.

Arnold Rampersad is emeritus professor of English at Stanford University and author of The Art and Imagination of W.E.B. Du Bois. He was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2010.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.