

On Being with Krista Tippett
On Being Studios
Wisdom to replenish and orient in a tender, tumultuous time to be alive.
Spiritual inquiry, science, social healing, and poetry.
Conversations to live by.
With a 20-year archive featuring luminaries like Mary Oliver, Thich Nhat Hanh, and Desmond Tutu, each episode brings a new discovery about the immensity of our lives. Hosted by Krista Tippett,
Learn more about the On Being Project’s work in the world at onbeing.org.
Spiritual inquiry, science, social healing, and poetry.
Conversations to live by.
With a 20-year archive featuring luminaries like Mary Oliver, Thich Nhat Hanh, and Desmond Tutu, each episode brings a new discovery about the immensity of our lives. Hosted by Krista Tippett,
Learn more about the On Being Project’s work in the world at onbeing.org.
Episodes
Mentioned books

34 snips
Jan 13, 2022 • 51min
Oliver Burkeman – Time Management for Mortals
Journalist Oliver Burkeman has made a delightful and important philosophical, spiritual, and practical investigation of all that is truly at stake in what we blithely refer to as “time management.” At this time of year, many of us are making plans and resolutions — treating time as part bully, part resource — something we could fit everything we want into if only we had the discipline. This conversation is offered up to release you from that illusion. He invites us into a new relationship with time, our technologies, and the power of limits — and thus with our mortality and with life itself.Oliver Burkeman is a journalist and author. His most recent book is Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. He’s also the author of The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking. He writes and publishes a twice monthly email newsletter called “The Imperfectionist.” You can find The Guardian column he wrote from 2006 to 2020 online. It’s titled, “This Column Will Change Your Life.” Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.___________ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

4 snips
Jan 13, 2022 • 1h 31min
[Unedited] Oliver Burkeman with Krista Tippett
Journalist Oliver Burkeman has made a delightful and important philosophical, spiritual, and practical investigation of all that is truly at stake in what we blithely refer to as “time management.” At this time of year, many of us are making plans and resolutions — treating time as part bully, part resource — something we could fit everything we want into if only we had the discipline. This conversation is offered up to release you from that illusion. He invites us into a new relationship with time, our technologies, and the power of limits — and thus with our mortality and with life itself.Oliver Burkeman is a journalist and author. His most recent book is Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. He’s also the author of The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking. He writes and publishes a twice monthly email newsletter called “The Imperfectionist.” You can find The Guardian column he wrote from 2006 to 2020 online. It’s titled, “This Column Will Change Your Life.” This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Oliver Burkeman – Time Management for Mortals." Find the transcript for that show at onbeing.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jan 6, 2022 • 51min
Remembering Desmond Tutu
The remarkable Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town and Nobel Laureate died in the closing days of 2021. He helped galvanize South Africa's improbably peaceful transition from apartheid to democracy. He was a leader in the religious drama that transfigured South African Christianity. And he continued to engage conflict well into his retirement, in his own country and in the global Anglican communion. Krista explored all of these things with him in this warm, soaring 2010 conversation — and how Desmond Tutu's understanding of God and humanity unfolded through the history he helped to shape.Desmond Tutu was an Anglican Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town, South Africa and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. He wrote numerous books for adults and children — including The Rainbow People of God, No Future Without Forgiveness, Made for Goodness and, together with his good friend the Dalai Lama, The Book of Joy.Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.This show originally aired in April, 2010. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jan 6, 2022 • 1h 15min
[Unedited] Desmond Tutu with Krista Tippett
The remarkable Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town and Nobel Laureate died in the closing days of 2021. He helped galvanize South Africa's improbably peaceful transition from apartheid to democracy. He was a leader in the religious drama that transfigured South African Christianity. And he continued to engage conflict well into his retirement, in his own country and in the global Anglican communion. Krista explored all of these things with him in this warm, soaring 2010 conversation — and how Desmond Tutu's understanding of God and humanity unfolded through the history he helped to shape.Desmond Tutu was an Anglican Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town, South Africa and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. He wrote numerous books for adults and children — including The Rainbow People of God, No Future Without Forgiveness, Made for Goodness and, together with his good friend the Dalai Lama, The Book of Joy.This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Remembering Desmond Tutu." Find the transcript for that show at onbeing.org.This show originally aired in April, 2010. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Dec 30, 2021 • 51min
Gordon Hempton — Silence and the Presence of Everything
Acoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton collects sounds from around the world. He’s recorded inside Sitka spruce logs in the Pacific Northwest, thunder in the Kalahari Desert, and dawn breaking across six continents. An attentive listener, he says silence is an endangered species on the verge of extinction. He defines real quiet as presence — not an absence of sound but an absence of noise. We take in the world through his ears.Gordon Hempton is the founder of the One Square Inch of Silence Foundation, which recently expanded to become Quiet Parks International with the mission to “save quiet for the benefit of all life.” His books include One Square Inch of Silence: One Man’s Quest to Preserve Quiet, co-authored with John Grossmann, and Earth Is A Solar Powered Jukebox: A Complete Guide to Listening, Recording, and Sound Designing with Nature. He’s also produced more than 60 albums of vanishing natural soundscapes. His latest release is a collection of soundscapes called Global Sunrise: The Musical Sounds of Dawn. His podcast is called Sound Escapes.Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.This show originally aired May 10, 2012. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Dec 30, 2021 • 1h 30min
[Unedited] Gordon Hempton with Krista Tippett
Acoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton collects sounds from around the world. He’s recorded inside Sitka spruce logs in the Pacific Northwest, thunder in the Kalahari Desert, and dawn breaking across six continents. An attentive listener, he says silence is an endangered species on the verge of extinction. He defines real quiet as presence — not an absence of sound but an absence of noise. We take in the world through his ears.Gordon Hempton is the founder of the One Square Inch of Silence Foundation, which recently expanded to become Quiet Parks International with the mission to “save quiet for the benefit of all life.” His books include One Square Inch of Silence: One Man’s Quest to Preserve Quiet, co-authored with John Grossmann, and Earth Is A Solar Powered Jukebox: A Complete Guide to Listening, Recording, and Sound Designing with Nature. He’s also produced more than 60 albums of vanishing natural soundscapes. His latest release is a collection of soundscapes called Global Sunrise: The Musical Sounds of Dawn. His podcast is called Sound Escapes.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 the transcript for that show at onbeing.org.This show originally aired May 10, 2012. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Dec 23, 2021 • 51min
Jeff Chu — A Life of Holy Curiosity (In Friendship with Rachel Held Evans)
Here we are in a religiously-infused season — and in a world in which more and more of us experience ourselves to be religious nomads, misfits, even refugees. This deep reality of our life together is often simplified in analyses of the decline of traditional religious identity, of the rise of the spiritual-but-not-religious. Yet there is abundantly, alongside all of that, a rising theological and liturgical searching, a passionate calling towards service that echoes the heart of the great traditions. This is nowhere more true than around the boundaries of Christianity. And no person has given more winsome voice to it than Rachel Held Evans, who died suddenly at the age of 37 in 2019. Now her dear friend, journalist and preacher Jeff Chu, has midwifed her unfinished last book, Wholehearted Faith, into the world. He’s Krista’s wonderful conversation partner this hour — articulating a spacious understanding of God and grief, searching and belonging, for this changed world Rachel did not live to see, but speaks to still.Jeff Chu describes himself as a “writer, reporter, pretend farmer, co-host, preacher, teacher.” He is co-curator of the Evolving Faith conference, alongside Sarah Bessey, who founded the gathering with Rachel Held Evans. He has written for an eclectic range of publications including Fast Company, Time Magazine and Modern Farmer, and is a teacher in residence at Crosspointe Church in Cary, North Carolina. He’s the author of Does Jesus Really Love Me?: A Gay Christian's Pilgrimage in Search of God in America and completed the late Rachel Held Evans’ unfinished work, Wholehearted Faith.Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Dec 23, 2021 • 1h 23min
[Unedited] Jeff Chu with Krista Tippett
Here we are in a religiously-infused season — and in a world in which more and more of us experience ourselves to be religious nomads, misfits, even refugees. This deep reality of our life together is often simplified in analyses of the decline of traditional religious identity, of the rise of the spiritual-but-not-religious. Yet there is abundantly, alongside all of that, a rising theological and liturgical searching, a passionate calling towards service that echoes the heart of the great traditions. This is nowhere more true than around the boundaries of Christianity. And no person has given more winsome voice to it than Rachel Held Evans, who died suddenly at the age of 37 in 2019. Now her dear friend, journalist and preacher Jeff Chu, has midwifed her unfinished last book, Wholehearted Faith, into the world. He’s Krista’s wonderful conversation partner this hour — articulating a spacious understanding of God and grief, searching and belonging, for this changed world Rachel did not live to see, but speaks to still.Jeff Chu describes himself as a “writer, reporter, pretend farmer, co-host, preacher, teacher.” He is co-curator of the Evolving Faith conference, alongside Sarah Bessey, who founded the gathering with Rachel Held Evans. He has written for an eclectic range of publications including Fast Company, Time Magazine and Modern Farmer, and is a teacher in residence at Crosspointe Church in Cary, North Carolina. He’s the author of Does Jesus Really Love Me?: A Gay Christian's Pilgrimage in Search of God in America and completed the late Rachel Held Evans’ unfinished work, Wholehearted Faith.This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Jeff Chu: A Life of Holy Curiosity — In Friendship with Rachel Held Evans." Find the transcript for that show at onbeing.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

5 snips
Dec 16, 2021 • 50min
Jane Hirshfield – The Fullness of Things
The esteemed writer Jane Hirshfield has been a Zen monk and a visiting artist among neuroscientists. She has said this: “It’s my nature to question, to look at the opposite side. I believe that the best writing also does this … It tells us that where there is sorrow, there will be joy; where there is joy, there will be sorrow … The acknowledgement of the fully complex scope of being is why good art thrills … Acknowledging the fullness of things,” she insists, “is our human task.” And that’s the ground Krista meanders with Jane Hirshfield in this conversation: the fullness of things — through the interplay of Zen and science, poetry and ecology — in her life and writing.Jane Hirshfield is the author of books of poetry, including The Beauty, Come, Thief, and most recently, Ledger, with selections read this hour. She’s also written two books of essays: Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry and Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World.Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Dec 16, 2021 • 1h 19min
[Unedited] Jane Hirshfield with Krista Tippett
The esteemed writer Jane Hirshfield has been a Zen monk and a visiting artist among neuroscientists. She has said this: “It’s my nature to question, to look at the opposite side. I believe that the best writing also does this … It tells us that where there is sorrow, there will be joy; where there is joy, there will be sorrow … The acknowledgement of the fully complex scope of being is why good art thrills … Acknowledging the fullness of things,” she insists, “is our human task.” And that’s the ground Krista meanders with Jane Hirshfield in this conversation: the fullness of things — through the interplay of Zen and science, poetry and ecology — in her life and writing.Jane Hirshfield is the author of books of poetry, including The Beauty, Come, Thief, and most recently, Ledger, with selections read this hour. She’s also written two books of essays: Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry and Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World.This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Jane Hirshfield — The Fullness of Things." Find the transcript for that show at onbeing.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.


