Pico Iyer is one of our most eloquent explorers of what he calls the “inner world” — in himself and in the 21st century world at large. The journalist and novelist travels the globe from Ethiopia to North Korea and lives in Japan. But he also experiences a remote Benedictine hermitage as his second home, retreating there many times each year. In this intimate conversation, we explore the discoveries he’s making and his practice of “the art of stillness.”

Brain surgeon James Doty is on the cutting edge of our knowledge of the brain and the heart: how they talk to each other; what compassion means in the body and in action; and how we can reshape our lives and perhaps our species through the scientific and human understanding we are now gaining.

Tracy K. Smith has a deep interest in “the kind of silence that yields clarity” and “the way our voices sound when we dip below the decibel level of politics.” She’s a welcome voice on the little leaps of the imagination that can restore us. She’s spent the past year traversing our country, listening for all of this and drawing it forth as the U.S. Poet Laureate. Krista spoke with her at the invitation of New York’s B’nai Jeshurun synagogue, which has been in communal exploration on creating a just and redeemed social fabric.

“The sense of having walked from far inside yourself / out into the revelation, to have risked yourself / for something that seemed to stand both inside you / and far beyond you, that called you back”

David Whyte sent us out into the world at the end of the 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.

“People believe things that are mutually contradictory; I think we all do. I know I do.” — Erick Erickson

Earlier this year, the University of Montana invited On Being to attempt an outside the box civil conversation between two political pundits on contrasting ends of the U.S. political spectrum. It became a sold-out, public event in the spirit of Montana’s Senator Mike Mansfield, who famously modeled integrity, courage, and humility across the partisan aisle in the tumult of 1960s and 70s. Sally Kohn and Erick Erickson are both controversial, lightning-rod figures, yet neither of them fits neatly into a partisan mold. The reaction of the youngest people in the room is what compelled us to put this on the air. They said they had not witnessed or imagined a political conversation like this possible: one marked at once by bedrock difference — and good will, humor, and a willingness to bring our questions as well as our arguments, our humanity as well as our positions, into the room, if only for an evening.

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. Peacemaker and poet John Paul Lederach opened Monday with a series of haikus.

“If there isn’t the crack in the middle where there’s some people on both sides who absolutely refuse to see the other as evil, this is going to continue.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

The emerging science of implicit bias is one of the most promising fields for animating the human change that makes social change possible. The social psychologist Mahzarin Banaji is one of its primary architects. She understands the mind as a “difference-seeking machine” that helps us order and navigate the overwhelming complexity of reality. But this gift also creates blind spots and biases, as we fill in what we don’t know with the limits of what we do know. This is science that takes our grappling with difference out of the realm of guilt, and into the realm of transformative good.

Remembering “the Indiana Jones of wildlife conservation.” The wildness that we don’t feel during our everyday lives. “I was a fluent stutterer and that opened up a whole new avenue in my life.” Escape to places where language isn’t that important.

How to get to the heart of the human experience without speaking? This question drove Alan Rabinowitz, after a childhood with a severe stutter, to become a wildlife biologist and explorer — “the Indiana Jones of wildlife conservation.” He died this month at age 64. He was known for his work with big cats, his discovery of new animal species, and for documenting human cultures believed to be lost. Alan Rabinowitz took our understanding of the animal-human bond to new places, while also being wise about the wilderness of the human experience.

Alan Rabinowitz was the founder and chief science officer of Panthera, the global wild cat conservation organization. He was also a spokesman for the Stuttering Foundation and the author of several books, including Life in the Valley of Death, Beyond the Last Village, and An Indomitable Beast. He died of cancer on August 5, 2018.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

An exuberant experience of conversation and singing. There are nearly 5,000 spirituals in existence. Their organizing concept is not the melody of Europe, but the rhythm of Africa. They were composed by slaves, bards whose names we will never know, and yet gave rise to gospel, jazz, blues, and hip-hop. Joe Carter lived and breathed the universal appeal and hidden stories, meanings, and hope in what were originally called “sorrow songs.” This was one of our first weekly shows, and it’s still one of our most beloved.