On Being with Krista Tippett

We were made and set here, the writer Annie Dillard once wrote, “to give voice to our astonishments.” Katy Payne is a renowned acoustic biologist with a Quaker sensibility. She’s found her astonishment — and many life lessons — in listening to two of the world’s largest creatures. From the wild coast of Argentina to the rainforests of Africa, she discovered that humpback whales compose ever-changing songs and that elephants communicate across long distances by infrasound. Katy Payne is a researcher in the bioacoustics research program of Cornell University’s Laboratory of Ornithology and part of the research team that produced the original recording “Songs of the Humpback Whale.” Her book is Silent Thunder: In the Presence of Elephants. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Katy Payne — In the Presence of Elephants and Whales." Find more at onbeing.org. This interview originally aired in February 2007. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Spiritual border-crossing and social creativity were themes in a conversation between Shane Claiborne and Omar Saif Ghobash, two people who have lived with some discomfort within the religious groups they continue to love. Ghobash is a diplomat of the United Arab Emirates and author of Letters to a Young Muslim. One of his responses to the politicization of Islam has been to bring a new art gallery culture to Dubai, creating spaces for thought and beauty. Claiborne is a singular figure in Evangelical Christianity as co-founder of The Simple Way, an intentional neighborhood-based community in North Philadelphia. One of the things he’s doing now is a restorative justice project inspired by a Bible passage — to transform guns into garden tools. This conversation took place at the invitation of Interfaith Philadelphia, which hosted a year of civil conversations modeled after the work of On Being’s Civil Conversations Project. Shane Claiborne is the founder of The Simple Way, an intentional community in North Philadelphia. He’s recently written a book, Beating Guns, about the movement he co-leads to transform America’s guns into garden tools. His other books include The Irresistible Revolution. His Excellency Omar Saif Ghobash is now the assistant minister for cultural affairs in the Cabinet of the United Arab Emirates. He was formerly UAE ambassador to France and Russia. His book is Letters to a Young Muslim. 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.

Spiritual border-crossing and social creativity were themes in a conversation between Shane Claiborne and Omar Saif Ghobash, two people who have lived with some discomfort within the religious groups they continue to love. Ghobash is a diplomat of the United Arab Emirates and author of Letters to a Young Muslim. One of his responses to the politicization of Islam has been to bring a new art gallery culture to Dubai, creating spaces for thought and beauty. Claiborne is a singular figure in Evangelical Christianity as co-founder of The Simple Way, an intentional neighborhood-based community in North Philadelphia. One of the things he’s doing now is a restorative justice project inspired by a Bible passage — to transform guns into garden tools. This conversation took place at the invitation of Interfaith Philadelphia, which hosted a year of civil conversations modeled after the work of On Being’s Civil Conversations Project. Shane Claiborne is the founder of The Simple Way, an intentional community in North Philadelphia. He’s recently written a book, Beating Guns, about the movement he co-leads to transform America’s guns into garden tools. His other books include The Irresistible Revolution. His Excellency Omar Saif Ghobash is now the assistant minister for cultural affairs in the Cabinet of the United Arab Emirates. He was formerly UAE ambassador to France and Russia. His book is Letters to a Young Muslim. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Shane Claiborne and Omar Saif Ghobash — Called and Conflicted." Find more 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.

Darnell Moore says honest, uncomfortable conversations are a sign of love — and that self-reflection goes hand-in-hand with culture shift and social evolution. A writer and activist, he’s grown wise through his work on successful and less successful civic initiatives, including Mark Zuckerberg’s plan to remake the schools of Newark, New Jersey, and he is a key figure in the ongoing, under-publicized, creative story of The Movement for Black Lives. This conversation was recorded at the 2019 Skoll World Forum in Oxford, England. Darnell Moore is the U.S. head of strategy and programs at Breakthrough, a global human rights organization. He is a civic media fellow at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Innovation Lab and a writer-in-residence at Columbia University’s Center on African-American Religion, Sexual Politics, and Social Justice. His book is “No Ashes in the Fire: Coming of Age Black and Free in America.” 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.

Darnell Moore says honest, uncomfortable conversations are a sign of love — and that self-reflection goes hand-in-hand with culture shift and social evolution. A writer and activist, he’s grown wise through his work on successful and less successful civic initiatives, including Mark Zuckerberg’s plan to remake the schools of Newark, New Jersey, and he is a key figure in the ongoing, under-publicized, creative story of The Movement for Black Lives. This conversation was recorded at the 2019 Skoll World Forum in Oxford, England. Darnell Moore is the U.S. head of strategy and programs at Breakthrough, a global human rights organization. He is a civic media fellow at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Innovation Lab and a writer-in-residence at Columbia University’s Center on African-American Religion, Sexual Politics, and Social Justice. His book is “No Ashes in the Fire: Coming of Age Black and Free in America.” This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Darnell Moore — Self-Reflection and Social Evolution." Find more 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.

Forms of religious devotion are shifting — and there’s a new world of creativity toward crafting spiritual life while exploring the depths of tradition. Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie is a fun and forceful embodiment of this evolution. Born into an eminent and ancient rabbinical lineage, as a young adult he moved away from religion towards storytelling, theater, and drag. Today he leads a pop-up synagogue in New York City that takes as its tagline “everybody-friendly, artist-driven, God-optional.” It’s not merely about spiritual community but about recovering the sacred and reinventing the very meaning of “we.” Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie is a rabbi and founding spiritual leader of Lab/Shul in New York City. He’s also the founding director of Storahtelling. This interview originally aired in July 2017. Find the transcript and more 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.

Forms of religious devotion are shifting — and there’s a new world of creativity toward crafting spiritual life while exploring the depths of tradition. Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie is a fun and forceful embodiment of this evolution. Born into an eminent and ancient rabbinical lineage, as a young adult he moved away from religion towards storytelling, theater, and drag. Today he leads a pop-up synagogue in New York City that takes as its tagline “everybody-friendly, artist-driven, God-optional.” It’s not merely about spiritual community but about recovering the sacred and reinventing the very meaning of “we.” Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie is a rabbi and founding spiritual leader of Lab/Shul in New York City. He’s also the founding director of Storahtelling. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Amichai Lau-Lavie — First Aid for Spiritual Seekers." Find more 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.

Applied philosopher Jonathan Rowson insists on holding a deeper appreciation for how our inner worlds influence our outer worlds. His research organization, Perspectiva, examines how social change happens across “systems, souls, and society.” “If we can get better and more nimble and more generous about how we move between those worlds, then the chance of creating a hope that makes sense for all of us is all the greater,” he says. We engage his broad spiritual lens on the great dynamics of our time, from social life to the economy to the climate.Jonathan Rowson is co-founder and director of the research institute Perspectiva based in London. He is also the former director of the Social Brain Centre at the Royal Society of Arts and is a chess grandmaster and three-time British Chess Champion. His books include “The Seven Deadly Chess Sins,” “Chess for Zebras,” and, most recently, “Spiritualize: Cultivating Spiritual Sensibility to Address 21st Century Challenges.” His forthcoming book, “The Moves that Matter: A Chess Grandmaster on the Game of Life,” will be published in November 2019.Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.___________Sign up for The Pause to receive our seasonal Saturday morning newsletter and advance invitations and news on all things On Being.And: if you can, please take a minute to rate On Being in this podcast app — you'll be bending the arc of algorithms towards this adventure of conversation and living. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Applied philosopher Jonathan Rowson insists on holding a deeper appreciation for how our inner worlds influence our outer worlds. His research organization, Perspectiva, examines how social change happens across “systems, souls, and society.” “If we can get better and more nimble and more generous about how we move between those worlds, then the chance of creating a hope that makes sense for all of us is all the greater,” he says. We engage his broad spiritual lens on the great dynamics of our time, from social life to the economy to the climate.Jonathan Rowson is co-founder and director of the research institute Perspectiva based in London. He is also the former director of the Social Brain Centre at the Royal Society of Arts and is a chess grandmaster and three-time British Chess Champion. His books include “The Seven Deadly Chess Sins,” “Chess for Zebras,” and, most recently, “Spiritualize: Cultivating Spiritual Sensibility to Address 21st Century Challenges.” His forthcoming book, “The Moves that Matter: A Chess Grandmaster on the Game of Life,” will be published in November 2019.This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Jonathan Rowson — Integrating Our Souls, Systems, and Society." Find more at onbeing.org.___________Sign up for The Pause to receive our seasonal Saturday morning newsletter and advance invitations and news on all things On Being.And: if you can, please take a minute to rate On Being in this podcast app — you'll be bending the arc of algorithms towards this adventure of conversation and living. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

We must shine a light on the past to live more abundantly now. Historian Annette Gordon-Reed and painter Titus Kaphar lead us in an exploration of that as a public adventure in this conversation at the Citizen University annual conference. Gordon-Reed is the historian who introduced the world to Sally Hemings and the children she had with President Thomas Jefferson, and so realigned a primary chapter of the American story with the deeper, more complicated truth. Kaphar collapses historical timelines on canvas and created iconic images after the protests in Ferguson. Both are reckoning with history in order to repair the present. Titus Kaphar is an artist whose work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions from the Savannah College of Art and Design and the Seattle Art Museum to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His 2014 painting of Ferguson protesters was commissioned by “TIME” magazine. He has received numerous awards including the Artist as Activist Fellowship from the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation and the 2018 Rappaport Prize. Annette Gordon-Reed is the Charles Warren Professor of American Legal History at Harvard Law School and a professor of history in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University. Her books include “The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family,” for which she won the Pulitzer Prize, and “‘Most Blessed of the Patriarchs’: Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination.” This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Annette Gordon-Reed and Titus Kaphar — Are We Actually Citizens Here?” Find more 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.