This Movie Changed Me

Elizabeth Alexander is a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and the inaugural Frederick Iseman Professor of Poetry at Yale University. She’s the author of a new memoir, “The Light of the World.” She’s also the author of several books of essays and poetry including “Crave Radiance.” This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Elizabeth Alexander — Words That Shimmer.” Find more at onbeing.org.

Rami Nashashibi uses graffiti, calligraphy, and hip-hop in his work as a healing force on the South Side of Chicago. A Palestinian-American, he started his activism with at-risk urban Muslim families, especially youth, while he was still a college student. Now he’s the leader of a globally-emulated project converging religious virtues, the arts, and social action. And he is a fascinating face of a Muslim-American dream flourishing against the odds in post-9/11 America.

Rami Nashashibi is founder and executive director of the Inner-City Muslim Action Network (IMAN). He is a visiting assistant professor of Sociology of Religion and Muslim Studies at Chicago Theological Seminary. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Rami Nashashibi — A New Coming Together.” Find more at onbeing.org.

The Hubble Space Telescope, which turns 25 this year, has brought the beauty of the cosmos into our lives. Mario Livio works with discoveries it makes possible, studying things like dark energy, extrasolar planets, and white dwarf stars. He’s fascinated with the enduring mystery of mathematics, the language of science. He describes the cosmic puzzles that accompany our greatest scientific advances.

Mario Livio is a senior astrophysicist at the Hubble Space Telescope Science Institute. His books include: “Is God a Mathematician?” and “Brilliant Blunders: From Darwin to Einstein — Colossal Mistakes by Great Scientists That Changed Our Understanding of Life and the Universe.” This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Mario Livio — Mysteries of an Expanding Universe.” Find more at onbeing.org.

She became a national figure as the face of the “Nuns on the Bus.” Sr. Simone Campbell is a lawyer, lobbyist, poet, and Zen contemplative working on issues such as “mending the wealth gap,” “enacting a living wage,” and “crafting a faithful budget that benefits the 100%.” She is a helpful voice for longings so many of us share, across differences, about how to engage with the well-being of our neighbors in this complicated age.

Sr. Simone Campbell is the executive director of NETWORK. She is the author of “A Nun on the Bus: How All of Us Can Create Hope, Change, and Community.” This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Simone Campbell — How to Be Spiritually Bold.” Find more at onbeing.org.

The philosopher and Catholic social innovator Jean Vanier is a teacher of the wisdom of tenderness. The L’Arche movement, which he founded, centers around people with mental disabilities and is celebrating its 50th anniversary this month. We experience how Jean Vanier brings the most paradoxical religious teachings to life: that there’s power in humility, strength in weakness, and light in the darkness of human existence.

Jean Vanier is a philosopher and the founder of L’Arche. He lives full-time in the original community in Trosly-Breuil, France. He’s also the recipient of the 2015 Templeton Prize. His books include “Befriending the Stranger,” “The Story of L’Arche,” and “Signs of the Times.” This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Jean Vanier — The Wisdom of Tenderness.” Find more at onbeing.org.

It is a story of our time — the new landscape of living longer, and of dying more slowly too. Jane Gross has explored this as a daughter and as a journalist, and as creator of the New York Times’ “New Old Age” blog. She has grounded advice and practical wisdom about caring for our loved ones and ourselves on the far shore of aging.