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The On Being Project

@onbeing

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Wisdom to replenish & orient. Conversations to live by. Poetry, science, social healing, spiritual inquiry — 20 years of beloved, revelatory shows.

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From Krista, with a new episode:⁠
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“What does it mean to bring life into a trembling world? What does it mean to bless existence without denying its terror?” These questions animated the writing of Azita Ardakani Walton’s beautiful children’s book, Ocean of Stars. It is a story of life’s beginnings. And it was a joy to sit with Azita, together with the wise and renowned botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer, and dive deep into why such an offering is not merely serious and relevant but essential and urgent — even and especially in a time like ours. Like every good children’s book, Ocean of Stars speaks to the mind and heart of the adult as well as the child. But children, Azita has written, “may be the last among us who still understand that a creation story is not a primitive explanation for what adults now know better. It is a way of staying tender before the facts. The facts are strange enough … To say that water remembers the stars is not only poetry. It is also a way of listening to chemistry.”⁠
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This conversation unfolded at the New York Public Library. Listen for yourself, wherever you stream podcasts. ⁠ by @onbeing

From Krista:⁠
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Michael Pollan’s latest book, A World Appears, is an exploration — with scientists and journalists and technologists and spiritual teachers — of what consciousness is, and is not, or might be: from the plants which have always fascinated him, to the new technologies which we are marveling at and fearing in equal measure. Do sentience, feeling, thought, or a sense of self amount to consciousness? Does it emerge from inside us? Or is it a force beyond us, in which we partake? ⁠
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Before a rapt gathering in New York City, we explored where Michael has come on these questions and others. The word “mystery” kept landing the longer we spoke, and I brought some intriguing (and somewhat mysterious) conversations I’ve been having with Anthropic’s Claude briefly near the end. I’m delighted to bring you into that room with us now.⁠
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Photo: Sarah Bidgood for @PerfectEarthProject⁠
Thanks to @PenguinPress and W New York - Union Square @wnyunionsquare by @onbeing

We are opening a reflection/course experience, The Hope Portal, curated by Krista and drawing upon her conversations with several visionary humans: @adriennemareebrown, @nshihab2018, @ocean_vuong, @joyharjoforreal, Joanna Macy, and Ross Gay. Together, they extend rich and actionable invitations for a muscular, reality-based hope. They offer ways of seeing and living to lay our hands and our hearts, our imaginations and life force on the generative possibilities of life in this time. ⁠
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Join us. Listen wherever you find podcasts. Instructions to download our free downloadable journal is included in the show notes. ⁠
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Sign up for The Pause, our newsletter for reminders when each edition drops. https://onbeing.substack.com ⁠
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Illustration: Jesse Zhang⁠ by @onbeing

A new season of Poetry Unbound — its 11th! — will begin one month from now on Monday, November 30; episodes will be released on Mondays and Fridays. Before then, there will be two more Poetry Unbound In Conversation episodes. For now, in recognition of Halloween, host @padraigotuama reads aloud Edgar Allan Poe’s classic poem “The Raven.”

Listen for yourself, wherever you stream podcasts.

#poetry #poems #poetrycommunity #contemplation #podcast by @onbeing

Join Krista with Azita Ardakani for PHILANTHRŌPIA, an in-person (and virtual) event designed to radically recontextualize our relationship with the natural world. The offering is part of a series organized by the @fetzerinstitute and @mundo.comun⁠
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Join them. Friday, November 6th | 11:00am – 1:00pm EST. Watch live on YouTube. Link in bio. ⁠ by @onbeing

This episode isn’t about poetry but about another kind of art: the art of conflict resolution. In a deeply practical conversation, host @padraigotuama sits down with Columbia University’s Peter Coleman (@petercoleman3248), author of The Way Out: How to Overcome Toxic Polarization and an expert in constructive conflict. Coleman shares advice for “the exhausted middle majority” — the large number of Americans fed up with our divided politics — on how to engage with others in ways that lead to openness and learning. He also talks about the surprising power of taking a walk with your challenger, the limitations of bringing together people from both sides, and the three factors that matter most when handling conflict. ⁠
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Listen for yourself, wherever you stream podcasts. ⁠
#poetry #poems #poetrycommunity #contemplation #podcast #meditation #writing⁠ by @onbeing

"I think joy and melancholy have a lot to say to each other," says PÁDRAIG Ó TUAMA (@padraigotuama) in this week's episode of Wild Card on NPR (@npr). Listen in as host Rachel Martin asks Ó TUAMA questions like "What moment from your past would you linger in?", and learn more about the inspiration behind his new collection LOVE BETWEEN MEN, called "gorgeous" by Pulitzer Prize winner JERICHO BROWN.

Episode link in bio! ⬆️
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#npr #PádraigÓTuama #LoveBetweenMen #WildCard #LGBTpoetry by @onbeing

“Politics by themselves are necessary but not sufficient … [and] poetry by itself is necessary but not sufficient. We must find a way to bring them together,” says Martín Espada (@martinespadapoet), a poet and professor. With crystalline language, an all-seeing gaze, and innate musicality, he writes poems that show us the world and people as they are — sometimes violent, vicious, unjust, but also tender, tenacious, courageous. In this potent conversation recorded for the 2026 @greenbeltfestival in Kettering, England, he reads from his work, and he and host @padraigotuama discuss the resistance he’s met when mixing politics and poetry, his parents as influences and teachers, and how his writing (and editing) have changed over time. ⁠
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Listen for yourself, wherever you stream podcasts. ⁠
#poetry #poems #poetrycommunity #contemplation #podcast #meditation #writing⁠ by @onbeing

Happy pub day to PÁDRAIG Ó TUAMA’s (@padraigotuama) newest collection, LOVE BETWEEN MEN! In deadly sonnets and punked-up poems, Ó TUAMA pairs tenderness with rage to reimagine beginnings and endings. The voices of Adam and Eve, past selves, and old friends fill these pages, exploring the depth and limits of love in its many forms.

Get your copy today at the link in our bio! ⬆️
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#PádraigÓTuama #newpoetry #pubday #LoveBetweenMen #CopperCanyonPress by @onbeing

After actor, dialect coach, and teacher @amandamquaid was diagnosed with a serious illness in 2021, she responded by trying something new — she wrote poetry. She says, “I was looking for an art form that allowed me to be with uncertainty in a beautiful way.” The result is a captivating memoir-in-poetry, No Obvious Distress, that uses words and phrases from her medical charts to create verse that rings with laughter, tears, and truth. In this conversation recorded at New York City’s @themorganlibrary, Amanda reads from her book, and she and host @padraigotuama talk about the three principles that guided her through illness, her parenting a young child through this time, and her work with medical students, actors, and CEOs.

Listen for yourself, wherever you stream podcasts.
#poetry #poems #poetrycommunity #contemplation #podcast meditation writing by @onbeing

Translator and musician Haleh Liza Gafori (@halehliza) describes the revered 13th-century Persian poet Rumi as a “good pal” and “a good pal to humanity”. As she puts it, “He's rooting for our liberation.” In this exuberant conversation recorded at the 2025 @greenbeltfestival in Kettering, England, she reads some of her translations, and she and host @padraigotuama illuminate the life of the man known as Rumi — his intense love of all things earthly and divine, the Islamic faith and universalist vision that flow through his work, and his brief relationship with a Sufi mystic that catalyzed his transformation from preacher to poet. ⁠
Listen for yourself, wherever you stream podcasts. ⁠
#poetry #poems #poetrycommunity #contemplation #podcast #meditation #writing⁠ by @onbeing

Becoming a mother cracked something open for Krista Tippett.

Not because she suddenly found answers to life's biggest questions, but because her children kept asking them: - Why do people die?
- Why do people suffer?
- Why are people mean to each other?

In this week's episode of Birth of a Parent, the founder of @onbeing reflects on how parenthood reminder her what it means to be human.

Krista describes children as "little theologians", constantly inviting us back to the mysteries of the universe. Parenthood however, she says, teaches us that we do not always need answers. Sometimes what matters is learning to honour the question, sit with it, and return to it together.
For Krista, children are also our "beloved teachers" in hope. They stretch our sense of the future and remind us that things do not have to stay as they are.

💭 Has a question from a child ever stopped you in your tracks?

🎧 Listen now via the link in our bio.

#BirthofaParent #Podcast #Parenthood #Hope #theology by @onbeing