On Being with Krista Tippett

Michael Pollan — The Mystery of Consciousness

From Krista: Michael Pollan’s latest book, A World Appears, is an exploration — with scientists and journalists and technologists and spiritual teachers — of what consci

“The Fierce Urgency of Now” — Michelle Alexander and Lucas Johnson

From Krista: On April 4, 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. gave a speech at Riverside Church in New York City called “A Time to Break Silence.” This is often referred to as h

Shai Held — On Love, and Judaism

From Krista: I'm on record bemoaning across the years that “love” is the most watered-down word in the English language. I know that invoking love feels very soft for ou

Jason Reynolds — On Hopelessness, the Virtue of Stamina, and Showing Grace to Ourselves

From Krista: I was longing for a deep dive on the radiant and common-sense hope that Jason Reynolds embodies after I interviewed him at a Georgetown event last year. I g

Arab Aramin, Robi Damelin, Liora Eilon, Mohamed Abu Jafar — Turning Unbearable Loss Into Ground of Shared Life

From Krista: A few months ago, I was invited to sit with four people sharing a very different Israeli-Palestinian story than that which comes to us in headlines. They ar

Gül Dölen — Psychedelic Science and Radical Healing

From Krista: This episode is a journey inside what I've come to see as a parallel universe unfolding, where our species is unlocking knowledge about ourselves and capaci

Joy Harjo and Tracy K. Smith – "This world is full of everything good, everything beautiful."

From Krista: These days I sometimes have to remind myself to keep breathing. I think this is true of human beings across all of our differences and divides. But in a roo

A New Season for a Tender New Year

Five new On Being episodes will begin to roll out next week … We begin with the delightful beloved poets (and friends) Joy Harjo and Tracy K. Smith in conversation toget

Jane Goodall, In Memoriam — What It Means to Be Human

The great primatologist and humanitarian, Jane Goodall, died on October 1, 2025, at the age of 91. It is a joy and a comfort to revisit our last broadcast of her 2020 con

Joanna Macy, In Memoriam — Beauty and Wisdom and Courage (and Rilke) to Sustain Us

This rich, gorgeous conversation will fill your soul. The singular and beloved Joanna Macy died at home at the age of 96 on July 20, 2025. She has left an immense legacy

Ross Gay — Hope Portal, Episode 7

Ross Gay is a poet, community gardener, and teacher who brings another way of wisdom to the conviction that we have to know what we love and what delights us. And that we

Joy Harjo — The Hope Portal Ep. 6

Our teacher this time is the extraordinary Joy Harjo. She is a musician, a visual artist, a member of the Muscogee Creek Nation, and she’s also former Poet Laureate of th

Joanna Macy — Hope Portal, Episode 5

Our teacher and inspiration for this session is Joanna Macy. What she embodies is a wild love for the world and a fierce hope that rises irrepressible from that. And she

Ocean Vuong — Hope Portal, Episode 4

If hope is to be defining and forceful in the world we have to remake ahead of us, we must also speak hope into being. Ocean Vuong is a fascinating and singular person. T

Naomi Shihab Nye — Hope Portal, Episode 3

In these next few sessions, we investigate some orientations and ways of being that are companions to hope. If hope is a muscle that can be exercised to become stronger a

Walter Brueggemann, In Memoriam — When the World We Have Trusted In Is Vanishing

The great Christian scholar of the biblical prophets died on June 5, 2025. Yet, in the lineage of the prophets who called humanity to face its hardest realities, this pro

adrienne maree brown — Hope Portal, Episode 2

adrienne maree brown shines a light on an emerging ecosystem in our world over and against the drumbeat of what is fractured and breaking. She works with the complex full

Krista Tippett — Hope Portal, Episode 1

Beginning today, and for the next six weeks in the On Being podcast feed and Substack, we’re opening a reflection/course experience curated by Krista and drawing upon her

Roberta Bondi — What is Prayer and How to Begin

Buried treasure from the On Being archive! Krista writes of this conversation from the earliest pre-history of On Being:  In the years in which I was on a whole new spi

Yochi Fischer and Loaay Wattad — On Seeing the Trauma of the Other

This episode emerged from a private gathering in The Hague in the fall of 2024 with a small group of people who live in Israel — both Jewish and Palestinian, Jews and Pal