On Being with Krista Tippett

So no wonder it comes as a relief to be reminded of your insignificance. It's the feeling of realizing that you'd been holding yourself all this time to standards you couldn't reasonably be expected to meet.

And this realization isn't merely calming but liberating because once you're no longer burdened by such an unrealistic definition of a life well spent, you're free to consider the possibility that many more things than you'd previously imagined might qualify as meaningful ways to use your finite time.

You're free too to consider the possibility that many of the things you're already doing with it are more meaningful than you'd supposed and that until now you'd subconsciously been devaluing them on the grounds that they weren't significant enough.

From this new perspective it becomes possible to see that preparing nutritious meals for your children might matter as much as anything could ever matter even if you won't be winning any cooking awards or that your novels worth writing if it moves or entertains a handful of your contemporaries even though you know you're no Tolstoy or that virtually any career might be a worthwhile way to spend a working life if it makes things slightly better for those it serves.

I feel like time management is a very... is almost a misleading title for this book that you've written. Because it really is about great existential questions of meaning.

4,000 Weeks Time and How to Use It

4,000 Weeks Time Management for Mortals

I really like the time management for mortals phrase, I got to confess, just because it brings together that very sort of quotidian and worldly and in a way sort of shallow seeming, I suppose, idea right alongside mortality. The serious fact of mortality.

So to consider the possibility that many more things than you'd previously imagined might qualify as meaningful ways to use your finite time. You're free to to consider the possibility that many of the things you're already doing with it are more meaningful than you'd supposed. And then until now, you'd subconsciously been devaluing them on the grounds that they weren't significant enough. From this new perspective, it becomes possible to see that preparing nutritious meals for your children might matter as much as anything could ever matter. Even if you won't be winning any cooking awards or that your novels worth writing, if it moves or entertains a handful of your contemporaries, even though you know you're no Tolstoy. Or that virtually any career might be a worthwhile way to spend a working life if it makes things slightly better for those it serves.

The first book I read about Jews and Judaism was the children's version of the protocols of the elders of Zion at the age of 12.

The first book I read about Jews and Judaism was the children's version of the protocols of the elders of Zion at the age of 12.

She said the challenge with the self-esteem movement is you know we have to be unique and fabulous and great and we have to be above average. But of course you know she said that's how can we all be above average that just mathematically doesn't make any sense we can't all be above average so that when we're talking about self-esteem it actually increases the pressure that we have on ourselves to be you know super wonderful.

She said the challenge with the self-esteem movement is you know we have to be unique and fabulous and great and we have to be above average. But of course you know she said that's how can we all be above average that just mathematically doesn't make any sense we can't all be above average so that when we're talking about self-esteem it actually increases the pressure that we have on ourselves to be you know super wonderful.

She's the co-author of Blindspot, Hidden Biases of Good People.

The title of the book therefore has been Blindspot, Hidden Biases of Good People. And the good people is extremely important to me.

In the book, we report on a little riddle which many people now have heard.

The title of the book, therefore, has been Blindspot, hidden biases of good people. And the good people is extremely important to me.

In the book, we report on a little riddle which many people now have heard. It was originally a riddle printed in Reader's Digest, I believe, but it also appeared in the book because everybody's kind of knows this riddle.

There's a little test, a grid, really I think in the preface into your book Blindspot, the first page where you actually are able as the reader in less than a minute to have this experience of seeing something on a page, moving the picture so the part of the picture disappears and experiencing that your brain fills in the blank with what it expected to see there.

I made a beginning on the science fiction opus of Octavia Butler, who Adrienne Marie Brown introduced me to in our early summer on being conversation.

There's this passage from the Parable of the Sower. The Book of the Living, verse 19. And it's all successful life.

And I've seen you kind of work with the words, with the language and the ideas that are at the core of your work. Also kind of emergent from this passage or at least, right? And so all successful life is.

And I just love that framing, right? Because as you said, it's the apocalypse, but it's also it's what could we be moving towards, right?

How does successful life function? Is adaptable, opportunistic, tenacious, interconnected, fecund, understand this, use it, shape God. Yes.

She was very solution oriented in her writing, she was very like, practical in her writing. So everything is very clear, like you're not going to read Octavia and come away confused, you're going to read it and be like, Oh, I should pack a bag so that I'm prepared for when the apocalypse comes. And here's what I should put in it.

The big book of Alcoholics and Nonomus is the guiding text crafted in 1939 by the movements first 100 or so members.

Here's a recording of AA co-founder Bill Wilson, reading in 1963 from a chapter called How It Works.

from the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous

if we are painstaking about this phase of our development we will be amazed before we are halfway through we are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness we will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it we will comprehend the words serenity and we will know peace that feeling of uselessness and self pity will disappear we will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows self-seeking will slip away fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us we will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us we will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves are these extravagant promises we think not they are being fulfilled among us sometimes quickly sometimes slowly they will always materialize if we work for them

The big book of Alcoholics Anonymous is the guiding text crafted in 1939 by the movements first hundred or so members.

Here's a recording of AA co-founder Bill Wilson, reading in 1963 from a chapter called How It Works.

If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are halfway through. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace.

From the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous,

How to Change Your Mind, colon, what the new science of psychedelics teaches us about consciousness, dying, addiction, depression and transcendence.

I loved How to Change Your Mind.

maybe psychedelics are wasted on the young.

How to Change Your Mind, colon, what the new science of psychedelics teaches us about consciousness, dying, addiction, depression and transcendence.

I loved How to Change Your Mind.

maybe psychedelics are wasted on the young.

His most recent book, published in 2020, is Until the End of Time, Mind, Matter and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe.

But when you look at the science more closely, you realize that that summary is a little quick. Because the science itself makes clear that there can be these intermediate windows of time. In fact, we're living in that window right now, when the universe can enjoy order, it can enjoy structure, it can be the home of beauty.

So I keep thinking of, you know, Augustine or Reinhold Niebuhr, basically this analysis, this sophisticated analysis of the human condition that you know, that we are torn between the fact of our finitude and mortality, and these intimations we have almost at a physical level, right in our bones and our bodies of eternity, or infinity.

And Ernest Becker is for me, one of the great influences in my way of thinking about the world. He wrote a book that isn't well known anymore. It won the Pulitzer Prize back in the 70s, but I don't really hear many people speak about it any longer called The Denial of Death.

And then this book that you published Until the End of Time also kind of moves beyond that into a different territory. But you begin with some organizing principles from physics, from science.

My view from the perspective of what we are as physical beings is we are nothing but collections of particles that are fully governed by the laws of physics, you know, colloquially where we are bags of particles that have a particular organization that allows for certain biological functions to take place. And that's all that we are.

The fact that we can do that and the fact that we're willing to do that in the face of our realizations about reality, to me, that's deeply noble. That's the nobility.

Science is a powerful, exquisite tool for grasping an eternal reality. But within that rubric, within that understanding, everything else is the human species contemplating itself, grasping what it needs to carry on and telling a story that reverberates into the darkness, a story carved of sound and etched into silence, a story that at its best stirs the soul.

Glennon Doyle's book, Untamed, has been a sensation of 2020 and beyond.

Glennon Doyle has written several bestselling books before Untamed, including Love Warrior.

Her books include Untamed and Love Warrior.

We gather to solve problems we can't solve on our own. We gather to celebrate, to mourn and to mark transitions. We gather to make decisions. We gather because we need one another. We gather to show strength. We gather to honor and acknowledge. We gather to build companies and schools and neighborhoods. We gather to welcome and we gather to say goodbye.

The paperback came out April 2020, I mean, in the middle of a pandemic when gathering was illegal.

I wrote The Art of Gathering in 2018.

Why do we gather? We gather to solve problems we can't solve on our own. We gather to celebrate, to mourn and to mark transitions. We gather to make decisions. We gather because we need one another. We gather to show strength. We gather to honor and acknowledge. We gather to build companies and schools and neighborhoods. We gather to welcome and we gather to say goodbye.

The paperback came out April 2020, in the middle of a pandemic when gathering was illegal.

So I define a gathering as any time three or more people come together for a purpose with a beginning, middle and end.

I recently read this wonderful book called fault lines by Carl Pillmer.

how lonely sits the city that once was full of people how like a widow she has become she that was great among the nations

how lonely sits the city that once was full of people how like a widow she has become she that was great among the nations

He said that he picked up Ghost just a couple of years ago and was immediately drawn by the way you told stories that intersected themes of race, community, social change, failure, insecurity, etc. He said it was the story of my life.

He said it was the story of my life