On Being with Krista Tippett

"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.”
This conversation unfolded at the New York Public Library.
Find an excellent transcript, edited by humans, on our show page.
Sign yourself and others up for The Pause to be on our mailing list for all things On Being and to receive Krista's monthly Saturday newsletter, including a heads up on new episodes, special offerings, recommendations, and event invitations.

Azita Ardakani Walton is a writer, nature-based researcher, and creative strategist. Drawing on the wisdom of living systems, she explores the relationship between the inner life and the natural world and how we might reimagine the ways we live, create, and care for one another. She is the founder of Kindred. Ocean of Stars is her debut picture book.
Robin Wall Kimmerer is a scientist, professor, and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. Her books include the children’s book, Bud Finds Her Gift, as well as The Serviceberry and Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Learn more about her work, including Plant Baby Plant, at Robinwallkimmer.com and plantbabyplant.com
You can listen to Krista's previous conversation with them in your podcast feed or at OnBeing.org: The Intelligence of Plants, with Robin Wall Kimmerer, and On Nature’s Wisdom for Humanity, with Azita together with biomimicry founder Janine Benyus.
Special thanks for this show to Claudia Bedrick and Enchanted Lion Books, the Kindred Team, and Humbleriot, which produced the New York Public Library event.





Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

From Krista:

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? 

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.

I spoke with Michael at the W Hotel New York, Union Square. Our conversation was hosted by the Perfect Earth Project, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting chemical-free ecological gardening, as part of its Grounded Conversations series in collaboration with the W Hotel Union Square. Perfect Earth Project was founded and is led by visionary landscape architect and designer Edwina von Gal. Learn more at perfectearthproject.org.

This episode was produced by Chris Heagle, Zack Rose, Carla Zanoni, Andrea Prevost, Daryl Chen, and Ron Passaro. 

Sign yourself and others up for The Pause to be on our mailing list for all things On Being and to receive Krista's monthly Saturday newsletter, including a heads up on new episodes, special offerings, recommendations, and event invitations. 

Find an excellent transcript of this show, edited by humans, on our show page.

Michael Pollan is the author of culture-shaping books, including The Botany of Desire, The Omnivore's Dilemma, and How to Change Your Mind. His new book is A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness. He is the John S. and James L. Knight Professor of Journalism at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism and the director of the Knight Program in Science and Environmental Journalism. In 2020, he co-founded the UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics with Dacher Keltner and others. 

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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 his “Beyond Vietnam” Speech. His own allies criticized it as a risky departure from a focus on civil rights. But Dr. King had never seen his calling confined to those two words. The Vietnam War needed to end, he believed, and he needed to say that plain. And in the waging of this war — and all of its consequences for people at home, especially the poor — he saw an underlying crisis that threatened the very soul of our nation.

On that same date this year, the 59th anniversary of this speech, hundreds gathered again at Riverside for reflection, song, and a reading of portions of the speech. It was drafted by Dr. King’s friend and comrade Vincent Harding, a beloved former On Being guest, and many of his friends and family joined this year.

None of the words of this speech is as famous as the sentence “I have a dream.” This speech altogether gives voice to the less remembered and heeded evolution of the vision of Dr. King and Vincent Harding and others. It invokes the work that endures beyond leaders and events of the day, and that can be neglected at our peril if too many of us too narrowly focus our imaginations and creativity and callings on what transfixes and demoralizes in the moment. It calls for a “revolution of values” in the face of glaring contrasts of poverty and wealth and the human cost of a world order that settles differences with wars. That our world is broken, it tells us, should come as no surprise. There were deep moral and spiritual underpinnings to the events of 59 years ago, which we did not acknowledge, much less have risen to as a nation.

A line from this speech seems directly aimed at our ears and our hearts: “We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now.” What are the callings now, finally, for us to pick up in creating the world we want to inhabit in the beyond of this moment of great peril and an equal magnitude of possibility?

This is a conversation with two human beings who loved Vincent Harding and whom he loved and formed: Michelle Alexander and Lucas Johnson.

You do not need to have heard or read the speech to follow this conversation, but here are links to do so if you wish:

Hear the speech, as recorded in 1959, in full.

Read the speech in full here.

Listen to Krista's original conversation with Vincent Harding here. 

Find an excellent transcript of this show, edited by humans, on our show page. 

Sign yourself and others up for The Pause to be on our mailing list for all things On Being and to receive Krista's monthly Saturday newsletter, including a heads up on new episodes, special offerings, recommendations, and event invitations.

Michelle Alexander is a civil rights lawyer, legal scholar, and bestselling author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. She is currently a Scholar in Residence at Union Theological Seminary, where she is preparing to launch Spirit of Justice, a new organization dedicated to nurturing the spiritual lives of those committed to justice. Learn more at spiritofjustice.org

Lucas Johnson is an organizer and public theologian, who cultivates space for the spiritual transformation that brings about beloved community. He is currently traveling the United States, evoking stories about the movements that expanded American democracy and raising the question ”Is America possible?” in this 250th year since the Declaration of Independence. Find him at lucasjohnson.online. If you would like to invite Lucas to your congregation or organization to explore the personal stories of democratic revival, please learn about the Storytelling Tour here.

This event was produced by a new project at Union Theological Seminary called Into the Crowd, which brings nourishing stories of faith into our broader public life. Into the Crowd is led by Casey Donahue and funded by Lilly Endowment Inc. 

Special thanks to the amazing team of people that made the event at Riverside Church possible, including Casey Donahue, Kym Allen, Rev. Adriene Thorne, Jacob Shmid, Okera Correia, and saxophonist Langston Hughes II, whose exquisite performance of “Precious Lord” opened this episode.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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 our hard realms of politics and war. Yet it is an enduring truth that love is the only force as powerful in a human body as fear. And we inhabit a world that calls us to grow up our capacity to love — and to redeem our relationships to neighbors, strangers, and enemies — as never before, both in the present and for the sake of the world beyond this age of violence we've come to inhabit.

Rabbi Shai Held has written an epic theological work called Judaism is About Love. And, as he interrogates Judaism's complicated history with love, he makes an offering that is of relevance to us all.

—

Find an excellent transcript of this show, edited by humans, on our show page. 

Sign yourself and others up for The Pause to be on our mailing list for all things On Being and to receive Krista's monthly Saturday newsletter, including a heads up on new episodes, special offerings, recommendations, and event invitations.

Shai Held is a philosopher, biblical scholar, and rabbi. He is the President and Dean of the Hadar Institute, which describes itself as a center of life, learning, and practice supporting a Judaism that is both traditional and egalitarian. His recent book is Judaism is About Love, and he also hosts a podcast called Answers WithHeld. Learn more at hadar.org

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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 got my chance at the 2025 Aspen Ideas Festival. Jason’s perspective is so urgent for the world we've now walked into: on giving ourselves grace to be hopeless, the virtue of stamina, and the hope that stays strong in him from his life in relationship with the very young in our midst — "the arbiters and purveyors of the future" — as well as an occasional stranger in a bar. Jason himself is preternaturally wise as well as talented and kind and humble. He's become a friend across the years and is one of my favorite people in the world. 

—

Find an excellent transcript of this show, edited by humans, on our show page.

Sign yourself and others up for The Pause to be on our mailing list for all things On Being and to receive Krista's monthly Saturday newsletter, including a heads up on new episodes, special offerings, recommendations, and event invitations.

Jason Reynolds is a New York Times bestselling author of over 20 books for children and young adults. From 2020–2022, he served as National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. Among many honors, he has received the Newbery, Printz, and Coretta Scott King Awards, and was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2024. He is on the faculty at Lesley University for the Writing for Young People M.F.A. Program.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.