Becoming Wise
Activity Overview
Episode publication activity over the past year
Episodes
What did you love? What would you like to hear?
15 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Releasing Anger as an Act of Self-Compassion | Sharon Salzberg and Robert Thurman
08 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The last episode of season two. Robert Thurman and Sharon Salzberg are icons of American Buddhism, and they are joyful, longtime friends. They challen...
Healing Through Story | Desmond Tutu
01 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
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...
The Daily Opportunity in Randomness | Leonard Mlodinow
24 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
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 li...
The Inner Life of Social Change | Ruby Sales
17 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
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 w...
Empathy Rooted in Action | Terry Tempest Williams
10 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Naturalist Terry Tempest Williams brings meaning and direction to the grief around ecological loss and climate change. She’s a self-described “cit...
Who We’re Called to Become | James Martin
03 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Father James Martin is a beloved Jesuit writer and teacher who says desire ultimately is not selfish — and instead a path to understanding our calli...
Happiness Is Practice, Not Pleasure | Matthieu Ricard
27 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Matthieu Ricard is helping us redefine happiness in a culture convinced that it’s a passive experience. The French-born Tibetan Buddhist monk refram...
A Planetary Sense of Love | Natalie Batalha
20 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Astronomer Natalie Batalha embodies a planetary sense of what “love” is and means. She says her experience searching the universe for exoplanets —...
Our Lives Can Be Signposts for What's Possible | Vincent Harding
13 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
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 hurt...
Art and Justice Work Together | Rami Nashashibi
06 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
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 —...
Nurturing Our Children’s Souls | Sandy Eisenberg Sasso
29 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
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 Everyday Gift of Writing | Naomi Shihab Nye
22 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
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 p...
Friendship and the Democratic Process | Kwame Anthony Appiah | Becoming Wise
15 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah offers hope for quiet, sustained culture shift through the “endless shared conversation” of friendship. The write...
Life Beyond the Mind | Eckhart Tolle
08 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
“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 a...
We Believe Each Other into Being | Jennifer Michael Hecht
01 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
“Imagine yourself alone on this planet. Would anything be the same?” Jennifer Michael Hecht is a poet, philosopher, and historian who wants to cha...
The Pilgrimage of “Who Am I?” | Paulo Coelho
25 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Rediscover the wonder in the mundane and the everyday with writer Paulo Coelho. He reframes the practice of pilgrimage as a journey into the mysteriou...
Season Two Trailer
11 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
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....
Einstein Speaks to Us About Race | S. James Gates
25 Jul 2016
Contributed by Lukas
“His capability to ask the ‘What if?’ question opened the door to the deepest marker of humanity, and that’s empathy.” Physicist S. James Ga...
Trauma and Resilience Land in Our Bodies | Bessel van der Kolk
25 Jul 2016
Contributed by Lukas
“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.” Psychiat...
Evil, Forgiveness, and Prayer | Elie Wiesel
08 Jul 2016
Contributed by Lukas
“When words bring you closer to the prisoner in his cell, to the patient who is dying on his bed alone, to the starving child, then it’s a prayer....
We Are the Beloved Community | John Lewis
05 Jul 2016
Contributed by Lukas
“I discovered that you have to have this sense of faith that what you’re moving toward is already done.” Civil rights leader John Lewis on livin...
The Universe Participates in the Mystery of God | Guy Consolmagno and George Coyne
27 Jun 2016
Contributed by Lukas
“If you’re sure about something, you don’t need faith. It’s when you have the doubts that faith kicks in. And that’s true in science as well...
I Feel, Therefore I Am | Eve Ensler
20 Jun 2016
Contributed by Lukas
“How in our daily lives are we connecting with ourselves and everything around us? Because that’s where real, energetic transformation comes from....
We Reclaim Abandoned Spaces | Shane Claiborne
13 Jun 2016
Contributed by Lukas
“There’s something magnetic about a group of people that say, ‘Hey, we don’t have it all figured out, and we need each other.'” New Monastic...
We Choose Our Own Tribes | Seth Godin
06 Jun 2016
Contributed by Lukas
“The challenge of our future is to say, are we going to connect and amplify positive tribes that want to make things better for all of us?” Entrep...
Spirituality Is Enfolded Into the Act of Living | Sylvia Boorstein
31 May 2016
Contributed by Lukas
“Sometimes the pain of the world seems incomprehensible. And if there’s anything that balances it, it’s wonder at the world, the amazingness of ...
The Good in the Other, the Doubt in Ourselves | Frances Kissling
23 May 2016
Contributed by Lukas
“You’ve got to be willing to risk in order to make change. You’ve got to approach differences with the notion that there is good in the other.”...
The Inner World Is a Great, Undiscovered Terrain | Pico Iyer
16 May 2016
Contributed by Lukas
“The point of gathering stillness is not to enrich the sanctuary or the mountaintop, but to bring that reality into the motion, the commotion, of th...
Present to Life, Moment by Moment | Jon Kabat-Zinn
09 May 2016
Contributed by Lukas
“The more we can learn these lessons, the more we will not be running towards our death, but opening to our lives.” Mindfulness researcher Jon Kab...
The Paradox of Suffering and Love | Kate Braestrup
02 May 2016
Contributed by Lukas
“The question isn’t whether we’re going to have to do hard, awful things. The question is whether we have to do them alone.” UU law enforcemen...
Enriched by Difference | Jonathan Sacks
25 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
“That’s how we are as a people. It’s the authentic, the unique, the different that makes us feel enriched when we encounter it.” Rabbi and phi...
The Hidden Hand of the Equations | Brian Greene
18 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
“Call it the hidden hand of God; I would simply call it the hidden hand of the equations. And that gets us from the beginning to here.” Physicist ...
The Desire to Know Each Other | Elizabeth Alexander
11 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
“Are we human beings who are in community, do we call to each other? Do we heed each other? Do we want to know each other?” Poet Elizabeth Alexand...
Compassion for Our Bodies | Matthew Sanford
04 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
“Your body, for as long as it possibly can, will be faithful to living. That’s what it does.” Matthew Sanford, an innovator of adaptive yoga, on...
Beauty Is an Edge of Becoming | John O'Donohue
18 Mar 2016
Contributed by Lukas
“Beauty isn’t all about just niceness, loveliness. Beauty is about more rounded, substantial becoming.” Beloved Irish poet John O’Donohue on b...
Courage Is Born from Struggle | Brené Brown
18 Mar 2016
Contributed by Lukas
“Hope is a function of struggle.” Brené Brown, a researcher and scholar, on the value and power of adversity to give rise to the astonishing stre...
Mapping Meaning in a Digital Age | Maria Popova
18 Mar 2016
Contributed by Lukas
“Critical thinking without hope is cynicism. But hope without critical thinking is naïveté. I try to live in this space between the two.” The cr...