This Movie Changed Me

The extraordinary wisdom of Congressman John Lewis. A rare look inside the civil rights leaders’ spiritual confrontation with themselves – and their intricate art of “love in action.” This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “John Lewis – Love In Action.” Find more at onbeing.org.

A wildly popular blogger, tech entrepreneur, and Silicon Valley influencer, Anil Dash has been an early activist for moral imagination in the digital sphere — an aspiration which has now become an urgent task. We explore the unprecedented power, the learning curves ahead, and how we can all contribute to the humane potential of technology in this moment.

Anil Dash is the CEO of Fog Creek Software. He also founded Makerbase, Activate, and the non-profit Expert Labs, a research initiative backed by the MacArthur Foundation and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which collaborated with the Obama White House and federal agencies. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Anil Dash — Tech’s Moral Reckoning.” Find more at onbeing.org.

She has called Brain Pickings, her invention and labor of love, a “human-powered discovery engine for interestingness.” What Maria Popova really delivers, to hundreds of thousands of people each day, is wisdom of the old-fashioned sort, presented in new-fashioned digital ways. She cross-pollinates — between philosophy and design, physics and poetry, the intellectual and the experiential. We explore her gleanings on what it means to lead a good life — intellectually, creatively, and spiritually.

Maria Popova is the creator and editor of brainpickings.org and is an MIT Futures of Entertainment Fellow. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Maria Popova — Cartographer of Meaning in a Digital Age.” Find more at onbeing.org.

Silence is an endangered species, says Gordon Hempton. He defines real quiet as presence — not an absence of sound, but an absence of noise. The Earth, as he knows it, is a “solar-powered jukebox.” Quiet is a “think tank of the soul.” We take in the world through his ears.

Gordon Hempton is founder and vice president of The One Square Inch of Silence Foundation, based in Joyce, Washington. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Gordon Hempton — Silence and the Presence of Everything.” Find more at onbeing.org.

Two legendary Buddhist teachers shine a light on the lofty ideal of loving your enemies and bring it down to Earth. How can that be realistic, and what do we have to do inside ourselves to make it more possible? In a conversation filled with laughter and friendship, Sharon Salzberg and Robert Thurman share much practical wisdom on how we relate to that which makes us feel embattled from without, and from within.

Sharon Salzberg is a meditation teacher and the cofounder of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts. She is the co-author of “Love Your Enemies.” Her other books include “Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation” and “Real Happiness at Work: Meditations for Accomplishment, Achievement, and Peace.” Robert Thurman is professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies at Columbia University. He’s also the president of the Tibet House U.S. He is the co-author of “Love Your Enemies.” His other books include “Infinite Life: Awakening to Bliss Within and Inner Revolution.” This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Sharon Salzberg and Robert Thurman — Embracing Our Enemies and Our Suffering.” Find more at onbeing.org.

Singing is able to touch and join human beings in ways few other arts can. Alice Parker is a wise and joyful thinker and writer on this truth, and has been a hero in the universe of choral music as a composer, conductor, and teacher for most of her 90 years. She began as a young woman, studying conducting with Robert Shaw at Juilliard, and collaborated with him on arrangements of folk songs, spirituals, and hymns that are still performed around the world today.