On Being with Krista Tippett

And we've had some wonderful conversations and your book is so rich and beautiful.

Your book is so rich and beautiful.

Prayer, like poetry, like breath, like our own names, has a fundamental rhythm in our bodies. It changes, it adapts, it varies from the canon.

So let us pick up the stones over which we stumble, friends, and build altars. Let us listen to the sound of breath in our bodies. Let us listen to the sounds of our own voices, of our own names, of our own fears.

Let us name the harsh light and soft darkness that surround us. Let's claw ourselves out from the graves we've dug. Let's lick the earth from our fingers. Let us look up and out and around.

The world is big and wide and wild and wonderful and wicked, and our lives are murky, magnificent, malleable and full of meaning. Oremus, let us pray.

Prayer can be a rhythm that helps us make sense in times of senselessness, not offering solutions but speaking to and to be heard. Not offering solutions, but speaking to and from the mystery of humanity.

The Sorry For Your Troubles book opens up with a kind of a reflection on the limitation of language, because I felt very complicit, I suppose, in the sense of going, I need to be very careful in terms of that. And it's a short, it's a short poem. It's called The Word Became Stretched and Crept Among Us.

After Arlie Hochschild published her book, Strangers in Their Own Land, Anger and Mourning on the American Right, just before the 2016 election, it came to feel prescient.

In my latest book, Strangers in Their Own Land, I got very interested in something I call the deep story which is a way of thinking about emotion.

So the companies with the money that the state gives them in this, I think it was $1.6 billion that was in the last five years- In Louisiana? Offered to companies, yeah, to come in with that public money that came from taxes.

There's a passage in the book that I, in Strangers in Their Own Land, that I just, this is just an example of this. And maybe this is the person you're talking about, you know, Harold, someone in the state always seems to come down on the little guy.

You in Strangers in Their Own Land near the end you say you write a letter to a friend on the liberal left.

In my latest book, Strangers in Their Own Land, Anger and Mourning on the American Right, I got very interested in something I call the deep story, which is a way of thinking about emotion.

What I came to feel and realize is that both the left and the right have different deep stories.

So what is a deep story? A deep story is what you feel about a highly salient situation that's very important to you. You take facts out of the deep story. You take moral precepts out of the deep story. It's just what feels true.

The metaphor for the right-wing deep story that I describe in Strangers is that you're waiting in line for the American dream that you feel you very much deserve.

And then they felt like Strangers in Their Own Land.

In addition to her global sensation Eat, Pray, Love, she's the author of Big Magic, a book about creativity.

And then I started dreaming about learning Italian. I think it was that little spark in the right side of my amygdala that said, want to create, want to make something, want to do something other than live in fear and despair. And that was the beginning of Eat Pray Love.

It's the 10th anniversary of Eat, Pray, Love, and there was a thing on Good Morning America today about it, and as props they made spaghetti and meatballs.

And then I was like, wait, is this fake food or is it real food? If it's real food, I'm eating it. And it was delicious. And that was my breakfast.

Elizabeth Gilbert's name is synonymous with her fantastically best-selling memoir, Eat, Pray, Love.

Eat, Pray, Love was born of a moment of total collapse in her life. And you can call it chiclet, but it's inspired millions to move forward with their lives differently.

So I kind of resisted interviewing you earlier because there was a time when, you know, eat, pray, love was everywhere.

And I was reading the once-in-future king, that book in Merlin says to Aritha, When you're very sad, the only thing to do is to go learn something.

And I was reading the once-of-future king that book in Merlin says to Aritha, when you're very sad the only thing to do is to go learn something.

And I was reading the once-in-future king, that book in Merlin says to Aritha, When you're very sad, the only thing to do is to go learn something.

And I was reading the once-of-future king that book in Merlin says to Aritha, when you're very sad the only thing to do is to go learn something.

Resmaa Menakem's book, My Grandmother's Hands, and his original insights into racialized trauma in all kinds of bodies has offered new ways forward for us all.

Resmaa Menakem's book, My Grandmother's Hands, and his original insights into racialized trauma in all kinds of bodies, have offered new ways forward for us all.

So I've been, I've been taken to a calling. A friend of mine had a Instagram picture up and he had a mask on and on the mask, it said, I'm still dealing with COVID-16-19, not just COVID-19. And that's true for me. The weathering effects of white body supremacy has affected my very skeletal structure, has affected my respiratory system, has affected my cardiovascular system, has affected my mom's cardiovascular system, her mother's. I mean, the effects of racialization and white body supremacy and the weathering effects of it is why COVID-19 has run rampant through my communities and run rampant through the East African community.

Rezma's literary agent reached out and told me about Rezma's book and that Rezma loved my work. And he would love if I would read it and write an endorsement. And I read it.

His New York Times bestselling book, part narrative, part workbook is My Grandmother's Hands, Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies.

His book, My Grandmother's Hands, is a completely original contribution, part narrative, part workbook, of old wisdom and very new science around healing racial trauma in our bodies.

And then when I read it in your book, it made me feel like I wasn't crazy.

I've been thinking this my whole life.

That's from picking cotton.

Them damn cotton plants got a burr in them. They got a burrs in them like that. And she goes, I started walking up and down them roads when I was four years old. And she said, As you're walking up and down the roads, you put your hands in them cotton plants, rip your hands up. And so when they rip your hands up, your hands bleed.

The white body sees itself as fragile and vulnerable, and it looks to police bodies for safety and protection. It sees black bodies as dangerous and needing to be controlled, yet also as potential sources of service and comfort. The black body sees the white body as privileged, controlling and dangerous. It is conflicted about the police body, which sees as sometimes a source of protection, sometimes a source of danger, and sometimes both at once. The police body sees black bodies as often dangerous and disruptive, as well as superhumanly powerful and impervious to pain.

I never lose. I either win or I learn.

all adults need to learn how to soothe and anchor themselves rather than expect or demand that others soothe them. And all adults need to heal and grow up.

In addition to her global sensation Eat, Pray, Love, she's the author of Big Magic, a book about creativity.

So much of that coalesces around this idea of what it means to be creative and I think kind of demystifying that and then like so on the one hand demystifying creativity. What did you say? What's your definition? Creative living? Is choosing the path of curiosity over the path of fear which is pretty straightforward.

So I wrote some poems recently and a friend of mine who was a songwriter, I showed them to her and she said we should turn these into songs and you should sing them and we should get a band together and we should get a recording studio and we should make some music.

And it's for saying that we're not just here to pay bills and die and we're not just here to make great things. We're here to co-create our lives in accordance and in concordance with the creation that's going on all around us and that that is holy and also cool and also fun and also not a big deal. That's what it's for.

And I think what a friendly artist, when I say friendly I mean somebody who has a friendly curiosity about their art and about themselves. And I think that sense of sort of open-hearted, forgiving, oh well, you know, the absence of perfectionism, what that artist does and this is how I've come to feel about my work is I cobble together my attempt to make an amethyst butterfly is always just so bizarre.

She's published seven books, including most recently Big Magic, Creative Living Beyond Fear.

So on the one hand demystifying and on the one hand revealing it as magic, but kind of everyday attainable magic. Practical magic.

In your latest book, Big Magic.

And I thought of that when I was reading, you know, how you go back and forth in Big Magic, especially between, you know, yes, you work like a farmer. And then sometimes there's this fairy dust thing that happens.

His forthcoming book, Originals, will be out in February 2016.

His forthcoming book, "Originals," will be published in February, 2016.

I have lived 30 years in these 30 days. I am 30 years sadder. I feel like I am 30 years wiser.

resilience is the strength and speed of our response to adversity. And we can build it. It isn't about having a backbone. It's about strengthening the muscles around our backbone

Our child dies a second time when no one speaks their name.

How we spend our days is how we spend our lives.

I don't believe this happened for a reason But it has given us all a reason to be more present parents, more loving spouses, more supportive friends, and more caring leaders

I have lived 30 years in these 30 days. I am 30 years better. I feel like I am 30 years wiser.

Resilience is the strength and speed of our response to adversity. And we can build it. It isn't about having a backbone. It's about strengthening the muscles around our backbone.

Our child dies a second time when no one speaks their name.

How we spend our days is how we spend our lives.

I don't believe this happened for a reason but it has given us all a reason to be more present parents, more loving spouses, more supportive friends and more caring leaders.

I have lived 30 years in these 30 days. I am 30 years sadder. I feel like I am 30 years wiser.

resilience is the strength and speed of our response to adversity. And we can build it. It isn't about having a backbone. It's about strengthening the muscles around our backbone

Our child dies a second time when no one speaks their name.

how we spend our days is how we spend our lives.

I don't believe this happened for a reason, But it has given us all a reason to be more present parents, more loving spouses, more supportive friends, and more caring leaders.

I have lived 30 years in these 30 days. I am 30 years better. I feel like I am 30 years wiser.

Resilience is the strength and speed of our response to adversity. And we can build it. It isn't about having a backbone. It's about strengthening the muscles around our backbone.

Our child dies a second time when no one speaks their name.

How we spend our days is how we spend our lives.

I don't believe this happened for a reason but it has given us all a reason to be more present parents, more loving spouses, more supportive friends and more caring leaders.

I can somehow remember all that I did not allow myself to feel walking away from that unemployment office and through the Harlem streets that day, just as I remember all that I did not let myself feel in those young years trapped between the schools and the street.

And I know that there are black boys and girls out there lost in a Bermuda triangle of the mind or stranded in the doldrums of America, some of them treading and some of them drowning, never feeling and never forgetting.

I talk about that actually a lot in my writing.

My previous book, Between the World and Me, is about a friend of mine who was killed by the police.

And he just...And that was Prince. Prince Jones, yes, yes.

And he was just swallowed into the abyss where all the lives of other black people who had been snuffed out in similar ways just sort of were forgotten.

In America, it is traditional to destroy the black body. It is heritage.

If I knew that things would no longer be, I would have tried to remember better.

Daddy, that man talks funny. Well, he wasn't born here, Sam. You mean he wasn't born in Baltimore? No. He came to America in 1914. He said it was the most beautiful place he'd ever seen.

If I knew that things would no longer be there, I would have tried to remember better.

Daddy, that man talks funny. Well, he wasn't born here, Sam. You mean he wasn't born in Baltimore? No. He came to America in 1914. He said it was the most beautiful place he'd ever seen.

Oh, very interesting, really yes The women in King Arthur's on to Raj and they've read these books and they feel that wow avalan sacred place glass and very even though You know we're not really sure that avalan was glass and very but it's the place that has the claim to it

I mean, it's one of the best books ever written, nothing. It certainly the best one. Steve's ever written. It's a wonderful book.

I mean, it's one of the best books ever written, nothing. It certainly the best one. Steve's ever written. It's a wonderful book.

there's only one philosophical question, and that's suicide

there is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question.

But I don't think that I either got to the end or really took in what you're saying was really the whole sweep of his argument.

The only consistent book that people come up to me and say, this helped me is Camus' myth of Sisyphus.

So if they read it, it helps them save their lives. They tell me over and over.

In the opening sentences Kamu talks about how knowledge of certain features of the world, like whether or not there are three dimensions. [...] He basically listed a variety of scientific questions. And he said, all of those are secondary because the only true philosophical question he said was that of suicide.

The tone of that book was less fear than sadness because the big changes weren't yet breaking over our heads the way they are now.

Then it was mostly the anticipation 20 years ago of what it would feel like to live in a world that meant something different not just a world that didn't operate effectively or easily anymore but one that spiritually, psychologically, philosophically meant something different and something less than the one that I'd been born into.

It came out 20 years ago this fall that's right.

In these years since you wrote *The End of Nature* in '89 and now and this turns up in all your writing um you've become much less focused on individual uh life and life in action and on and much more on the value of community and this as the context for all the important changes we need to make.

Only in the disappearance of nature as we have known it he warned, May we finally realize how essential it has been to human civilization.

The tone of that book was less fear than sadness because the big changes weren't yet breaking over our heads the way they are now. Then it was mostly the anticipation 20 years ago of what it would feel like to live in a world that meant something different, not just a world that did not operate effectively or easily anymore. But one that spiritually psychologically philosophically meant something different and something less than the one that I'd been born into.

The tone of that book was less fear than sadness because the big changes weren't yet breaking over our heads the way they are now.

Then it was mostly the anticipation 20 years ago of what it would feel like to live in a world that meant something different not just a world that didn't operate effectively or easily anymore but one that spiritually, psychologically, philosophically meant something different and something less than the one that I'd been born into.

It came out 20 years ago this fall that's right.

In 1968 when I was a boy Apollo 8 sent back the first pictures of our planet that blue-white marble floating in space. Well those pictures are as out of date as my high school yearbook photo.

The planet doesn't look like that or behave like that anymore. There's more blue and less white, more cyclones swirling in the tropics. It's a different earth.

Only in the disappearance of nature as we have known it he warned, May we finally realize how essential it has been to human civilization.

From this vantage point, writing The End of Nature seems to have crystallized a change in the entire direction of his life.

The tone of that book was less fear than sadness because the big changes weren't yet breaking over our heads the way they are now.

But one that spiritually psychologically philosophically meant something different and something less than the one that I'd been born into.

I was reading, um, I was reading Pearl Sagan's book, um, Demon-Hunted World. And I remember about halfway through. I actually threw the book across the room and it was, I wasn't a, I wasn't a Catholic or anything. I was raised Catholic but I wasn't a Catholic or anything. And I was so put off and so angry about what he was saying about Catholics.

I was reading, um, I was reading Pearl Sagan's book, um, Demon-Hunted World. And I remember about halfway through. I actually threw the book across the room and it was, I wasn't a, I wasn't a Catholic or anything. I was raised Catholic but I wasn't a Catholic or anything. And I was so put off and so angry about what he was saying about Catholics.

I was reading, um, I was reading Pearl Sagan's book, um, Demon-Hunted World. And I remember about halfway through. I actually threw the book across the room and it was, I wasn't a, I wasn't a Catholic or anything. I was raised Catholic but I wasn't a Catholic or anything. And I was so put off and so angry about what he was saying about Catholics.

I was reading, um, I was reading Pearl Sagan's book, um, Demon-Hunted World. And I remember about halfway through. I actually threw the book across the room and it was, I wasn't a, I wasn't a Catholic or anything. I was raised Catholic but I wasn't a Catholic or anything. And I was so put off and so angry about what he was saying about Catholics.

He's a Turkish political commentator and author of the book, Islam without Extremes, a Muslim case for Liberty.

who said, well, democracy actually corresponds to the Islamic idea of consultation and the western principle of freedom, and the liberty, these actually come from the roots of our village and the idea of individual rights.

But in the third term, now they have defeated the establishment. Now they began to enjoy power and now they're showing some of the symptoms of the people that they got rid of.

In the sense that the belief at Turkey has a historic mission on earth, Turks as a people. The idea that Turks were the standard barriers of Islamic civilization for centuries after they abossed in the initial centuries of the Arabs.

But ultimately, Ottomans realized this and they set apostasy free. So it became possible in late Ottoman Empire to become a Christian if you're a Muslim.

He's a Turkish political commentator and author of the book, Islam without Extremes, a Muslim case for Liberty.

who said, well, democracy actually corresponds to the Islamic idea of consultation and the western principle of freedom, and the liberty, these actually come from the roots of our village and the idea of individual rights.

But in the third term, now they have defeated the establishment. Now they began to enjoy power and now they're showing some of the symptoms of the people that they got rid of.

In my book, Islamic extremes, I go back to the earliest centuries of Islam and show some of the early discussions, theological discussions which would help us today, some nurtures on liberal ideas.

But ultimately, Ottomans realized this and they set apostasy free. So it became possible in late Ottoman Empire to become a Christian if you're a Muslim.