Becoming Wise

What did you love? What would you like to hear?

Season two of Becoming Wise is a wrap! We’re so grateful you joined us for these months of reflection and recentering. Before we go away to work on our next season, we’d

Releasing Anger as an Act of Self-Compassion | Sharon Salzberg and Robert Thurman

The last episode of season two. Robert Thurman and Sharon Salzberg are icons of American Buddhism, and they are joyful, longtime friends. They challenge us to reframe our

Healing Through Story | Desmond Tutu

Archbishop Desmond Tutu is one of our wisest models on the territory of reckoning with past wrongs that infuse and haunt the present. In the 1990s, he helped galvanize So

The Daily Opportunity in Randomness | Leonard Mlodinow

The physicist Leonard Mlodinow changes how we think about the agency we have in shaping our own destinies. As a scientist, he works with principles like Brownian motion,

The Inner Life of Social Change | Ruby Sales

Public theologian Ruby Sales opens up what it was like to be a teenage participant in the civil rights movement — including the impatience she had with religion and how s

Empathy Rooted in Action | Terry Tempest Williams

Naturalist Terry Tempest Williams brings meaning and direction to the grief around ecological loss and climate change. She’s a self-described “citizen writer” rooted in t

Who We’re Called to Become | James Martin

Father James Martin is a beloved Jesuit writer and teacher who says desire ultimately is not selfish — and instead a path to understanding our callings in life. He says e

Happiness Is Practice, Not Pleasure | Matthieu Ricard

Matthieu Ricard is helping us redefine happiness in a culture convinced that it’s a passive experience. The French-born Tibetan Buddhist monk reframes happiness not as pl

A Planetary Sense of Love | Natalie Batalha

Astronomer Natalie Batalha embodies a planetary sense of what “love” is and means. She says her experience searching the universe for exoplanets — earth-like bodies beyon

Our Lives Can Be Signposts for What's Possible | Vincent Harding

A civil rights elder and speechwriter for Martin Luther King, Jr., the late Vincent Harding brought the wisdom of the movement to young people in hurting places. He offer

Art and Justice Work Together | Rami Nashashibi

Rami Nashashibi champions how art can make humans visible to each other. He brings a new energy to Islam’s core commitment to beauty and humanity — and to the power of st

Nurturing Our Children’s Souls | Sandy Eisenberg Sasso

A rabbi and parent, Sandy Eisenberg Sasso wants us to think about how we might teach our children’s souls, not just their minds. She says nurturing the spiritual lives of

The Everyday Gift of Writing | Naomi Shihab Nye

Naomi Shihab Nye says writing is “an act that helps you, preserves you, energizes you in the very doing of it.” She calls herself a “wandering poet,” and her words point

Friendship and the Democratic Process | Kwame Anthony Appiah | Becoming Wise

Philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah offers hope for quiet, sustained culture shift through the “endless shared conversation” of friendship. The writer of the New York Times 

Life Beyond the Mind | Eckhart Tolle

“There is a place inside me that is far more powerful than the continuous mental noise,” says Eckhart Tolle. The spiritual teacher began to gain attention with his 1997 b

We Believe Each Other into Being | Jennifer Michael Hecht

“Imagine yourself alone on this planet. Would anything be the same?” Jennifer Michael Hecht is a poet, philosopher, and historian who wants to change the way we talk to o

The Pilgrimage of “Who Am I?” | Paulo Coelho

Rediscover the wonder in the mundane and the everyday with writer Paulo Coelho. He reframes the practice of pilgrimage as a journey into the mysterious question, “Who am

Season Two Trailer

A preview of season two, returning on Monday March 25, 2019. Hosted by Krista Tippett. Depth and discovery, in the time it takes to make a cup of tea. Curated from hundr

Einstein Speaks to Us About Race | S. James Gates

“His capability to ask the ‘What if?’ question opened the door to the deepest marker of humanity, and that’s empathy.” Physicist S. James Gates celebrates the scientific

Trauma and Resilience Land in Our Bodies | Bessel van der Kolk

“Trauma treatment starts at the foundation of a body that can sleep, a body that can rest, a body that feels safe, a body that can move.” Psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk