On Being with Krista Tippett

I've tried to define it in my book about melody.

And I always find I go into a class as I did this morning. I said how many people here are a phatic course in melody. Not one hand ever goes up.

But harmony doesn't develop until four centuries ago five centuries ago.

And the only thing is we define it in our traditional practice.

In the last chapter of the little book it's deep sound gives us what is behind the surface.

You know, I just want to say before we start that although you are all about music and composing and singing and conducting, you're also in a beautiful, you write beautifully about it about it. I love, I love words.

I've tried to define it in my book about melody.

And I always find I go into a class as I did this morning. I said how many people here are a phatic course in melody. Not one hand ever goes up. And that's the thing that we begin with as babies, as children.

So I had just that feeling about all these kids around me all the time if I ever get an opposition where I can sit down for 50 minutes and just be by myself.

To be a physicist is to have an enormous potential to change the world.

the rainbow is beautiful because it's beautiful to behold and that there's a connection between, you have in physics you have to follow your passion.

To be a physicist is to have an enormous potential to change the world.

To be a physicist is to have an enormous potential to change the world.

I mean, it's really your story but it's interwoven with the story of his influence on you. To be a physicist is to have an enormous potential to change the world. That's a very grand sentence.

And his point was that the rainbow is beautiful because it's beautiful to behold and that there's a connection between, you have in physics you have to follow your passion.

Feynman really taught me that you need to follow your passions in life. If you can, I mean, not everyone has that opportunity, but if you can, it's best to follow your passions in life and that not just will that be more fulfilling, but you'll do better work.

And when you look at physics problems, you have to look at it from that point of view, from the point of view of it, this being a beautiful problem and you being excited about trying to solve it. It's not just a job and you should try to live your whole life that way if you can, which was very different because a lot of people in science are very, they may start that way, but they soon get focused on success.

Leonard Mlodinow's books include The Upright Thinkers, The Human Journey from Living and Trees to Understanding the Cosmos, and Fineman's Rainbow, a search for beauty in physics and in life about his friendship and study with the pioneering 20th Century physicist Richard Fineman.

To be a physicist is to have an enormous potential to change the world.

Leonard Mlodinow's books include The Upright Thinkers, The Human Journey from Living and Trees to Understanding the Cosmos, and Fineman's Rainbow, a search for beauty in physics and in life about his friendship and study with the pioneering 20th Century physicist Richard Fineman.

And you've told this story that it was there, you know, by way of a book, by Richard Feynman, that your imagination was captured by physics.

You know, there's this line that is near the end of the beginning of the book you wrote about Feynman, Feynman's rainbow. And it's really your, it's your story, but it's interwoven with the story of his influence on you.

the most recent of which is a book a co-authored by John Corvino and Maggie Gallagher John Corvino being a pro same-sex marriage gay man, philosophy professor and Maggie Gallagher being the founder of the National Organization for Marriage and they wrote a book called Debating Same Sex Marriage.

I don't, I don't do book interviews per say. I find that when people are on book tour it's the least revealing an interesting time for them to talk about what they do.

But so, okay. I'm just going to say. In case you are in all interest, I'm a little blurrier. I was on the, I was on, you know, communicating with the Muslim brothers. I had the Egyptian Muslim brothers in Cairo all this morning before they pushed off to the, to the demonstrations.

So, you know, we had this plan before all of this started happening. So, and the other thing I'm aware of is it's very fluid. So, I want to talk about, you know, how you're watching what's happening and understanding that contextually.

In fact, almost none of them had any religious education whatsoever. They're all born again sort of between the ages of 18 and 22. None of them went to madrosis.

Because those are the terrorists. Those are those who would be terrorists or would be us or our friends. And it is up to us and how we deal with the political world.

In the early years of this century he turned his attention to global Islamist terrorism. Scott Atran tells some of this story in his 2010 book, Talking to the Enemy, faith, brotherhood and the unmaking of terrorists.

So you know I want to keep talking about what you know from the scope of your work about the human dynamics that have fed the terrorist threat in recent years in the world.

Scott Atran is the author of Talking to the Enemy faith brotherhood and the unmaking of terrorists his global field work examines the conditions that drive young people into as well as a way from violent radicalism

at the beginning of your book which is called Talking to the Enemy faith brotherhood and the unmaking of terrorists right before the table of contents you have this absolutely beautiful picture of children

Scott Atran tells some of this story in his 2010 book, Talking to the Enemy, faith, brotherhood and the unmaking of terrorists.

So tell me what you've learned in these past years as you have been up there talking to suicide bombers and potential suicide bombers what have you learned about how people get out how they walk away from that how that longing and that passion can be transferred in more positive directions what's powerful enough to take the way.

because those are the terrorists those are those who would be terrorists or would be us or our friends and it is up to us and how we deal with the political world and the hopes and dreams that emerge in their own societies that will decide whether they go one way or the other it's not again the fact that they're good or bad ideologies out there it's not the fact of lack or presence of economic opportunities per se it's whether there are paths in life that can lead them to something that's more congenial to the way we live in the world I think we have many things to offer but not in the way we're doing it

You're right I mean that they're tends to be this generalized view of of terrorism and it's all al-Qaeda right and it's not even what al-Qaeda is but something that we imagined on September 11, 2001.

So you know at the beginning of your book which is called Talking to the Enemy faith brotherhood and the unmaking of terrorists right before the table of contents you have this absolutely beautiful picture of children looks like they're either coming out of school or going to school they're beautiful children it's kind of a heartbreaking picture in a lovely way and then I read underneath that it's a school that you mentioned earlier on that this if that school's out at this school in Morocco from which five of the seven potters of the petrite train bombing who blew themselves up attended as did several volunteers or martyrdom in Iraq tell me why you put that picture at the beginning of your book and what you would like a reader or someone coming to these ideas to see in that picture

I think in many ways the complexity of the man is lost. He was much more than just a simple poet with a simple message.

if I'd stuck to doing the kind of poetry that first won me that prize, which WB8s so admired poetry called Gitanjali, Song offerings and some other collections.

He got bored in a sense and frustrated I think with the image that had been created at that time in his life in 1913 and around the time of the first World War, and he wanted to get away from it in later life.

Einstein writes this in 1930 if the moon in the act of completing it's eternal way around the earth where gifted will self-consciousness it would feel thoroughly convinced that it was traveling its way of its own accord on the strength of a resolution taken once and for all.

I am a poet I do not debate I look at the world and it's wholeness

He was much more than just a simple poet with a simple message. He was a complex figure. Like Gandhi in that respect.

if I'd stuck to doing the kind of poetry that first won me that prize, which WB8s so admired poetry called Gitanjali, Song offerings and some other collections.

I am a poet I do not debate I look at the world and it's wholeness

the worm thinks it's strange and foolish that man does not eat his books

joy flows through the universe the sun and moon drink of it a full measure the light of the joy of goodness stays ever a full gent effort

He was much more than just a simple poet with a simple message. He was a complex figure. Like Gandhi in that respect.

if I'd stuck to doing the kind of poetry that first won me that prize, which WB8s so admired poetry called Gitanjali, Song offerings and some other collections.

I am a poet. I do not debate. I look at the world and its wholeness.

the worm thinks it's strange and foolish that man does not eat his books

joy flows through the universe the sun and moon drink of it a full measure the light of the joy of goodness stays ever a full gent effort

Among his many books, he wrote five epic volumes, The Defining Work of the 20th Century on Christian Tradition.

He had just compiled and historic collection of creeds from biblical times to the present and from across the globe.

Then before his death in 2006 in his 80th year, Pelican also published Crado, a four-volume collection of Christian creeds from biblical times to the present and from around the world.

I did say in a book a few years ago which was called our final century in Britain and our final hour in America

I did say in a book a few years ago which was called our final century in Britain and our final hour in America

In a book I wrote in 2000 called The Math Gene and I actually made a case based on a sort of rational reconstruction over human evolution of development.

In fact, in a book I wrote in 2000 called the Math G. Now I actually made a case based on the sort of rational reconstruction over human evolutionary developments. I made the case that actually mathematics on language are actually two sides of the same coin in terms of evolutionary development.

In a book I wrote in 2000 called the Math G and I actually made a case based on a sort of rational reconstruction over human evolution of development.

at the heart of honor is the idea that there are things about people that entitle them to respect so one kind of thing that entitles you to respect is significant philanthropic work right that's why we give honorary degrees to philanthropists another thing that entitles you to significant respect is going out of the way to practice your profession above and beyond it's normal standard so we honor nurses who are who are more giving than their profession requires and so on so at the heart of honor then is the idea that it's that we owe certain people respect and there are roughly sort of two main kinds of honor there's there's the sort of competitive honor which honorary degrees represent where you give people respect for being outstanding and then this the kind of honor that's represented by our talk of human dignity where you don't have to be outstanding you just have to be some a human being with the human capacities for suffering and for meaning and for all the things that you know make human being centers of moral concern and so there's there's a kind of competitive honor which I say I endorse it I think that we should honor people who do spectacularly well in in various domains but there's also another kind of honoring which is the granting of respect to everybody who except I mean you can lose your entitlement to respect if you behave sufficiently badly but human beings essentially start out being entitled to respect unless they behave appallingly

Isaac Asimov had another pseudonym called Paul French. And he wrote a series of children's books of adventures on Mars.

And the character's name was Lucky Star with two R's.

And in my drive to read, you know, I had this sort of predisposition to think about space and rockets and what have you. And then in this drive to learn to read, it naturally coalesced around Lucky Starr and science fiction.

Isaac Asimov had another pseudonym called Paul French. And he wrote a series of children's books of adventures on Mars.

And in this drive to learn to read, it naturally coalesced around Lucky Star and science fiction.

The Fear Of Physics, a guide to the perplexed and in 2012 a universe from nothing, why there is something rather than nothing.

His books include the physics of Star Trek and we will talk about that, don't worry. The Fear Of Physics, a guide to the perplexed and in 2012 a universe from nothing.

His books include the physics of Star Trek and we will talk about that, don't worry. The Fear Of Physics, a guide to the perplexed and in 2012 a universe from nothing. Why there is something rather than nothing?

I think C.S. Lewis was caught this. Had his own deep sense of this when he wrote the Magicians nephew in which Oslo on the Great Lion, the Great God, Lion, sings the creation of Narnia brings Narnia into existence in him and saw it just seems to me that that way of understanding creation is different.

I think C.S. Lewis caught this. Had his own deep sense of this when he wrote the Magicians nephew in which Aslan, the Great Lion, the Great God, Lion, sings the creation of Narnia into existence.

but in your garden that whole story becomes real to you

But in your garden, that whole story becomes real to you.

Yes, and in heriting paradise, the narrative is kept up in so much as I write these pieces on important feast days of the church and sort of take you through the calendar, the church, the church, the calendar, the church year. So that the narrative is inside of the pieces and also belongs to the entire ensemble of what I've written there.