This Movie Changed Me

From abortion activist to bridge person. Questions to break out of intractable polarization. Wisdom beyond the news cycle. “What is it in your own position that gives you trouble? What is it in the position of the other that you are attracted to?”

The focus of our national fight over abortion may change, but this hasn’t changed for decades: we collapse this most intimate and complex of human dilemmas to two sides. We’ve been looking yet again for wisdom away from the turbulent news cycle and keep returning to this conversation Krista had with Frances Kissling. She is a “bridge person” in the abortion debate: a long-time pro-choice activist who has sought to come into relationship with her political opposites. Now she’s controversial on both sides, but speaks from a place that many of us would like to map out between the poles. She has experienced something more powerful, as she tells it, than defining common ground — and this has lessons for other issues in our common life and our struggles with people with whom we disagree the most.

Frances Kissling is president of the Center for Health, Ethics and Social Policy. She was the president of Catholics for Choice from 1982 until 2007.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Frances Kissling — What Is Good in the Position of the Other.” Find more at onbeing.org.

A morning of poetry with Marilyn Nelson from the third day of our On Being Gathering.

This year, we were thrilled to host our very first On Being Gathering — a four-day coming-together of the On Being community for reflection, conversation, and companionship — at the 1440 Multiversity in the redwoods of Scotts Valley, California. We greeted each day with verse from some of our most beloved poets — and now we’d like to share these delightful moments with all of you. Here is how Marilyn Nelson opened our Sunday morning.

Marilyn Nelson is professor emerita of English at the University of Connecticut and a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. She is the 2012 recipient of the Poetry Society of America’s Frost Medal for “distinguished lifetime achievement in poetry.” Her books include “The Fields of Praise: New and Selected Poems,” “Mrs. Nelson’s Class,” and “The Meeting House.”

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

“We are flying too low. We built this universe, this technology, these connections, this society, and all we can do with it is make junk? All we can do with it is put on stupid entertainments? I’m not buying it.”

Seth Godin is wise and infectiously curious about life, the internet, and everything. He was one of the first people to name the “connection economy.” And even as we’re seeing its dark side, he helps us hold on to the highest human potential the digital age still calls us to. His daily blog is indispensable reading for many of us. He’s a long-time mentor to Krista. This interview happened in 2012. Seth now has a new podcast, “Akimbo,” and a new book coming out, “This Is Marketing: You Can’t Be Seen Until You Learn to See.”

Seth Godin writes the wildly popular daily, Seth’s Blog. He’s the author of many best-selling books, online and in print, including “Purple Cow,” “The Dip,” and “Linchpin.” In 2018 he was inducted into the Marketing Hall of Fame.

“We are flying too low. We built this universe, this technology, these connections, this society, and all we can do with it is make junk? All we can do with it is put on stupid entertainments? I’m not buying it.”

Seth Godin is wise and infectiously curious about life, the internet, and everything. He was one of the first people to name the “connection economy.” And even as we’re seeing its dark side, he helps us hold on to the highest human potential the digital age still calls us to. His daily blog is indispensable reading for many of us. He’s a long-time mentor to Krista. This interview happened in 2012. Seth now has a new podcast, “Akimbo,” and a new book coming out, “This Is Marketing: You Can’t Be Seen Until You Learn to See.”

Seth Godin writes the wildly popular daily, Seth’s Blog. He’s the author of many best-selling books, online and in print, including “Purple Cow,” “The Dip,” and “Linchpin.” In 2018 he was inducted into the Marketing Hall of Fame.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Seth Godin — Life, the Internet, and Everything.” Find more at onbeing.org.

A morning of poetry with Naomi Shihab Nye from the second day of our On Being Gathering.

This year, we were thrilled to host our very first On Being Gathering — a four-day coming-together of the On Being community for reflection, conversation, and companionship — at the 1440 Multiversity in the redwoods of Scotts Valley, California. We greeted each day with verse from some of our most beloved poets — and now we’d like to share these delightful moments with all of you. Here is how Naomi Shihab Nye began our Saturday morning.

Naomi Shihab Nye is a visiting poet all over the world and a professor of creative writing at Texas State University. Her books include “19 Varieties of Gazelle,” “A Maze Me: Poems for Girls,” and “Transfer.” Her most recent book is “Voices in the Air: Poems for Listeners.”

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

“If you can’t talk about something, you can’t think about something. I’ve worked with students who could barely let themselves think, they were so scared of thinking the wrong thing.”

This conversation was inspired by Eula Biss’s stunning New York Times essay “White Debt,” which had this metaphor at its core: ”The state of white life is that we’re living in a house we believe we own but that we’ve never paid off.” She spoke with us in 2016 and we aired this last year, but we might just put this conversation out every year, as we’re all novices on this territory. Eula Biss had been thinking and writing about being white and raising white children in a multi-racial world for a long time. She helpfully opens up words and ideas like “complacence,” “guilt,” and something related to privilege called “opportunity hoarding.” To be in this uncomfortable conversation is to realize how these words alone, taken seriously, can shake us up in necessary ways — and how the limits of words make these conversations at once more messy and more urgent.

Eula Biss teaches writing at Northwestern University. Her books include “On Immunity: An Inoculation” and “Notes from No Man’s Land: American Essays.”

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

“If you can’t talk about something, you can’t think about something. I’ve worked with students who could barely let themselves think, they were so scared of thinking the wrong thing.”

This conversation was inspired by Eula Biss’s stunning New York Times essay “White Debt,” which had this metaphor at its core: ”The state of white life is that we’re living in a house we believe we own but that we’ve never paid off.” She spoke with us in 2016 and we aired this last year, but we might just put this conversation out every year, as we’re all novices on this territory. Eula Biss had been thinking and writing about being white and raising white children in a multi-racial world for a long time. She helpfully opens up words and ideas like “complacence,” “guilt,” and something related to privilege called “opportunity hoarding.” To be in this uncomfortable conversation is to realize how these words alone, taken seriously, can shake us up in necessary ways — and how the limits of words make these conversations at once more messy and more urgent.

Eula Biss teaches writing at Northwestern University. Her books include “On Immunity: An Inoculation” and “Notes from No Man’s Land: American Essays.”

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Eula Biss — Let’s Talk About Whiteness.” Find more at onbeing.org.

An evening of poetry with David Whyte from the first day of our On Being Gathering.

This year, we were thrilled to host our very first On Being Gathering — a four-day coming-together of the On Being community for reflection, conversation, and companionship — at the 1440 Multiversity in the redwoods of Scotts Valley, California. We greeted each day with verse from some of our most beloved poets — and now we’d like to share these delightful moments with all of you. Here is how David Whyte opened for us on Friday night.

David Whyte is a poet and an associate fellow at Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford. He is the author of “The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America” and “Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words.” His most recent book is “The Bell and The Blackbird.”

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

Two poet/contemplative/social creatives. To make sense in times of senselessness. Prayer is words and shape and art around desperation and delight and disappointment and desire. “Shame’s first language is the body.” Dignifying the desires we wish to name. “We erase our stories, we erase our existences.”

Pádraig Ó Tuama and Marilyn Nelson are beloved teachers to many. To bring them together at the On Being Gathering was a delight and a balm. Marilyn is a poet and professor and contemplative, an excavator of stories that would rather stay hidden yet lead us into new life. Pádraig is a poet and theologian and social healer at Corrymeela in Northern Ireland — “a soft place for hard conversations,” of hostility met in hospitality. They venture unexpectedly into the hospitable — and intriguingly universal — form of poetry that is prayer.

Pádraig Ó Tuama is the community leader of Corrymeela, Northern Ireland’s oldest peace and reconciliation organization. His books include a prayer book, “Daily Prayer with the Corrymeela Community,” a book of poetry, “Sorry For Your Troubles,” and a memoir, “In the Shelter: Finding a Home in the World.”

Marilyn Nelson is professor emerita of English at the University of Connecticut and a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. She is the 2012 recipient of the Poetry Society of America’s Frost Medal for “distinguished lifetime achievement in poetry.” Her books include “The Fields of Praise: New and Selected Poems,” “Mrs. Nelson’s Class,” and “The Meeting House.”