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Society & Culture

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Books

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17 MAY · BONUS

Closing: Poems as Teachers (ft. Kai Cheng Thom) | Ep 7

In this concluding episode of "Poems as Teachers," our special miniseries on conflict and the human condition, host Pádraig Ó Tuama says the poems discussed in this offering are a different kind of teacher: “not as teachers that give us rules to follow — more so teachers that share something of their own intuition.” And for a final reflection, he offers Kai Cheng Thom’s “trauma is not sacred,” which speaks directly, fiercely, and lovingly to the pain, scars, and violence that we humans carry and inflict upon one another.

17 May · Bonus

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13 min
03/12/2015

Mark Hyman, James Gordon, and Penny George — The Evolution of Medicine

A transformation of medicine is underway, a transition from a science of treating disease to a science of health. Mark Hyman is a family physician and a pioneer in the new discipline of functional medicine. James Gordon is an expert in using mind-body medicine to heal depression, anxiety, and psychological trauma. Penny George became a philanthropist of integrative medicine after she experienced cancer in mid-life. Before a live audience at the University of Minnesota, they discuss the challenge and promise of aligning medicine with a 21st century understanding of human wholeness.

03/12/2015

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51 min
01/12/2011

Diane Winston — Monsters We Love: TV's Pop Culture Theodicy

Amoral zombies. Loving vampires. Righteous serial killers. And lots of God. That’s all in the new TV season — a place where great writers and actors are telling the story of our time — playfully, violently, soulfully.

01/12/2011

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51 min
26/03/2015

Bruce Kramer — Forgiving the Body: Life with ALS

From the moment of his diagnosis with ALS, Bruce Kramer began writing — openly, deeply, and spiritually — about his struggle, as he puts it, to live while dying. He died on March 23, 2015, while we were in production on this show. His words hold abiding joy and beauty, and reveal an unexpected view opened by this disease.

26/03/2015

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51 min
06/03/2014

Sherwin Nuland — The Biology of the Spirit

Dr. Sherwin Nuland died this week at the age of 83. He became well-known for his first book, “How We Die,” which won the National Book Award. For him, pondering death was a way of wondering at life — and the infinite variety of processes that maintain human life moment to moment. He reflects on the meaning of life by way of scrupulous and elegant detail about human physiology.

06/03/2014

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51 min
19 JAN

Sandra Cisneros — When in Doubt

Even in the most uneventful of human lives, uncertainty and doubts will inevitably intrude. When faced with those, what can you do to steady yourself? One suggestion: Turn to the poem “When in Doubt” by Sandra Cisneros, where she generously shares some of the wisdom that she’s gleaned over the years.

19 Jan

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15 min
12/10/2023

Baratunde Thurston — How to Be a Social Creative

Baratunde Thurston is a comedian, writer, and media entrepreneur. He has eyes open to the contradictions, strangeness, and beauty of being human. He looks for learning happening even amidst our hardest cultural tangles. And he intertwines all of this, innovatively and searchingly, with his lifelong joy in the natural world. The kaleidoscopic view of life and love and the world that is Baratunde's builds and builds in this conversation Krista had with him around the edges of the 2023 Aspen Ideas Festival — towards an exuberant glimpse of how we can all be more fully human and socially creative.

12/10/2023

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1h 10m
09/10/2020

Natasha Trethewey — Miscegenation

Were you born during a time when laws were different? What impact did those laws have on you? In this poem, Natasha Trethewey recalls the story of how her parents crossed state lines to wed because Mississippi forbade interracial marriage at the time. It is written in the form of a ghazal, with birth and belonging, names and death coming together.

09/10/2020

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11 min
20/01/2022

Michael Pollan and Katherine May - The Future of Hope 4

Michael Pollan is one of our most revelatory explorers of the interaction between the human and natural worlds — especially the plants with which we have, as he says, co-evolved — from food to caffeine to psychedelics. In this episode of our series, The Future of Hope, Wintering’s Katherine May draws him out on the burgeoning human inquiry and science to which he’s now given himself over — the transformative applications of altered states for healing trauma and depression, for end-of-life care — and the thrilling matter of grasping what consciousness is for. This is an informative, intriguing, utterly uncategorizable conversation. You may know Katherine May from her On Being conversation with Krista about “wintering” as a season in the natural world — and a recurrent season in every human life. She too operates out of a deep curiosity about the human mind — the remarkable complexity of mental states and well-being — informed in part by her own welcome mid-life diagnosis of autism and her love of cold-water swimming. Her books of fiction and memoir include: Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times, The Electricity of Every Living Thing, and Burning Out. She is also the editor of an anthology of essays about motherhood, called The Best, Most Awful Job. Her podcast is The Wintering Sessions. Michael Pollan is a professor at the University of California Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. His many bestselling books include The Omnivore’s Dilemma, In Defense of Food, How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence, and most recently, This Is Your Mind on Plants. In 2020, he co-founded the UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics.

20/01/2022

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51 min
05/05/2022

A Lovingkindness Meditation with Sylvia Boorstein

The beloved Buddhist-Jewish teacher Sylvia Boorstein led this impromptu, short meditation as part of her On Being conversation with Krista Tippett (“What We Nurture”) at a gathering in Michigan in 2011. It was a magical experience in which the audience fully participated.

05/05/2022

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9 min

Two seasonal podcasts: On Being with Krista Tippett & Poetry Unbound with Pádraig Ó Tuama. Wisdom to replenish and orient: spiritual inquiry, science, social healing, and poetry. Conversations to live by in a tender, tumultuous world. Also: a 20-year archive of beloved, celebrated, revelatory shows, with Mary Oliver, John O'Donohue, Thich Nhat Hanh, Ada Limón, Isabel Wilkerson, Desmond Tutu. And so much more. Explore at onbeing.org.

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Top Shows

Top Episodes

Closing: Poems as Teachers (ft. Kai Cheng Thom) | Ep 7

Mark Hyman, James Gordon, and Penny George — The Evolution of Medicine

Diane Winston — Monsters We Love: TV's Pop Culture Theodicy

Bruce Kramer — Forgiving the Body: Life with ALS

Sherwin Nuland — The Biology of the Spirit

Sandra Cisneros — When in Doubt

Baratunde Thurston — How to Be a Social Creative

Natasha Trethewey — Miscegenation

Michael Pollan and Katherine May - The Future of Hope 4

A Lovingkindness Meditation with Sylvia Boorstein

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