On Being with Krista Tippett

If journalism is a primary way we tell the story of ourselves and our time, Michel Martin is a person helping us tell that story — and take part in it — more completely. Her daily NPR program “Tell Me More” was often labeled as “diversity” or “minority” programming. But in fact, she and her journalism are about a more generous and realistic sweep of who we are now — and how we’re creating our life...

The XIV Dalai Lama seems to many to embody happiness — happiness against the odds, a virtue that is acquired and practiced. Before a live audience in Atlanta, Georgia, Krista had a rare opportunity to mull over the meaning of happiness in contemporary life with him and three global spiritual leaders: a Muslim scholar, a chief rabbi, and a presiding bishop. An invigorating and unpredictable discuss...

His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet is the exiled spiritual leader of Tibet. He is the author of many books, including “Ethics for a New Millennium.” Jonathan Sacks is the former Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the British Commonwealth. He is the Ingeborg and Ira Rennert Global Distinguished Professor of Judaic Thought at New York University and the Kressel and Ephrat Famil...

After September 11, 2001, Richard Rodriguez traveled to the Middle East to explore his kinship, as a Roman Catholic, with the men who stepped onto airplanes and turned them into weapons of terror. What he learned illuminates some of the deepest paradox and promise of the world we inhabit. He is an especially intriguing conversation partner for right now — a life and mind straddling left and right,...

Richard Rodriguez is a journalist and essayist. He won a Peabody Award for his original commentary on The NewsHour and received the National Humanities Medal in 1993. His books include “Hunger Of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez,” “Brown: The Last Discovery Of America,” and “Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography.” This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On...

Imani Perry is a professor of African-American Studies at Princeton University. Her scholarly books include “Prophets of the Hood: Politics and Poetics in Hip Hop” and “More Beautiful and More Terrible: The Embrace and Transcendence of Racial Inequality in the United States.” This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Imani Perry — The Fabric of Ou...

Imani Perry is a scholar of law, culture, race — and hip hop. She acknowledges wise voices who say that we will never get to the promised land of racial equality. She writes, “That may very well be true, but it is also true that extraordinary things have happened and keep happening in our history. The question is, how do we prepare for and precipitate them?” We took her up on this emboldening ques...

Dan Barber is a celebrated young chef — but his passionate ethics and intellect have made him much more. He’s out to restore food to its rightful place vis-à-vis our bodies, our ecologies and our economies. And he would do this by resurrecting our natural insistence on flavor. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal dat...

Dan Barber is chef and co-owner of Blue Hill and Blue Hill at Stone Barns. He’s received James Beard Awards for best chef in 2006 and 2009, and was named one of the world’s most influential people by Time. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Dan Barber — Driven By Flavor.” Find more at onbeing.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. S...

Adele Diamond is a professor of developmental cognitive neuroscience at the University of British Columbia. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Adele Diamond — The Science of Attention.” Find more at onbeing.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for ad...

What Adele Diamond is learning about the brain challenges basic assumptions in modern education. Her work is scientifically illustrating the educational power of things like play, sports, music, memorization, and reflection. What nourishes the human spirit, the whole person, it turns out, also hones our minds. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our...

Anita Desai is an Indian novelist of Bengali descent. Her novels include “Clear Light of Day,” “The Village by the Sea,” and “Fasting, Feasting.” This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Anita Desai and Andrew Robinson — The Modern Resonance of Rabindranath Tagore.” Find more at onbeing.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswi...

He bestowed the title “Mahatma” on Gandhi. He debated the deepest nature of reality with Einstein. He was championed by Yeats and Pound to become the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. Rabindranath Tagore was a polymath — a writer and a painter, a philosopher and a musician, and a social innovator — but much of his poetry and prose is virtually untranslatable (or ina...

Andrew Robinson is a biographer and writer. He is the co-author of “The Myriad-Minded Man,” a biography of Rabindranath Tagore. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Anita Desai and Andrew Robinson — The Modern Resonance of Rabindranath Tagore.” Find more at onbeing.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for informa...

Yoga has infiltrated law schools and strip malls, churches and hospitals. This 5,000-year-old spiritual technology is converging with 21st-century medical science and with many religious and philosophical perspectives. Seane Corn takes us inside the practicalities and power of yoga. She describes how it helps her face the darkness in herself and the world, and how she’s come to see yoga as a form...

Seane Corn is the National Yoga Ambassador for YouthAIDS and cofounder of “Off the Mat, Into the World.” This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Seane Corn — Yoga, Meditation in Action.” Find more at onbeing.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advert...

Steven Waldman is the author of “Founding Faith: How Our Founding Fathers Forged a Radical New Approach to Religious Liberty.” He is the founder and former editor of Beliefnet and now heads Daily Bridge Media. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Steven Waldman and Philip Hamburger — The Long Experiment of American Democracy.” Find more at on...

For the Fourth of July, a refreshing reality check about the long road of American democracy. We remember forgotten but fascinating, useful history as we contemplate how we might help young democracies on their own tumultuous paths now. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Stuart Brown is founder and president of the National Institute for Play near Monterey, California. He is co-author of “Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul.” This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Stuart Brown — Play, Spirit, and Character.” Find more at onbeing.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz co...

Who knew that we learn empathy, trust, irony, and problem solving through play — something the dictionary defines as “pleasurable and apparently purposeless activity.” Dr. Stuart Brown suggests that the rough-and-tumble play of children actually prevents violent behavior, and that play can grow human talents and character across a lifetime. Play, as he studies it, is an indispensable part of being...

As the daughter of Johnny Cash, singer-songwriter Rosanne Cash describes her life as “circumscribed by music.” But, it’s through her love of language and quantum mechanics that she’s finding new sources of creativity and mathematical ways to think about the divine. The mother of five shares her perspectives on being present, Twitter as a “boot camp for songwriters,” and how she wrestles with love...

Rosanne Cash is a Grammy award-winning singer-songwriter and author of several books. Her latest album is “The River & the Thread.” This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Rosanne Cash — Time Traveler.” Find more at onbeing.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of pers...

Fairy tales don’t only belong to the domain of childhood. Their overt themes are threaded throughout hit TV series like “Game of Thrones” and “True Blood,” “Grimm” and “Once Upon a Time.” These stories survive, says Maria Tatar, by adapting across cultures and history. They are carriers of the plots we endlessly re-work in the narratives of our lives — helping us work through things like fear and...

Maria Tatar is the John L. Loeb Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University, where she also chairs the Program in Folklore and Mythology. Her books include “Enchanted Hunters: The Power of Stories in Childhood” and “The Annotated Brothers Grimm.” This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Maria Tatar — The Great Cauldron o...

Jaroslav Pelikan was professor of history at Yale University for four decades. He authored many books “Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine” and “Credo.” This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Jaroslav Pelikan — The Need for Creeds.” Find more at onbeing.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com...