The years of pandemic and lockdown are still working powerfully on us from the inside. But we have trouble acknowledging this, much less metabolizing it. This conversation with Christine Runyan, which took place in the dark middle of those years, helps make sense of our present of still-unfolding epidemic distress — as individuals, as communities, as a species. She has cultivated a reverence for the human nervous system. She tells truths about our bodies that western medicine itself is only fitfully learning to see. This quiet conversation is not just revelatory, but healing and calming. It holds startling prescience about some of what we’re navigating now. And it offers self-compassion and simple strategies for finding ease within ourselves — and with each other — as we live forward from here.
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On Being is a conversation that has been building for over two decades with wise and graceful lives — across spiritual inquiry and science, social healing and the arts. You likely know us through On Being with Krista Tippett, our Peabody award-winning show that began on public radio — now podcasting special seasons. We can be found in ears, and in conversations that matter, around the world.
We are animated by humanity’s ancient questions, newly alive in this century:
What does it mean to be human?
How do we want to live?
And who will we be to each other?
Foundations for Being Alive Now
On seeing the generative story of our time, living your questions, taking a long view of time, and the calling to be whole. Start listening now.
Also enjoy Krista’s new TED Talk: 3 Practices for Wisdom and Wholeness.
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Conflict and the Human Condition
A special Poetry Unbound mini-season featuring poems as teachers — with wisdom, protest, assertion, curiosity, understanding, refusal, strangeness, dreams, declaration, and admission.
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Grounding Virtues
We speak together differently in order to live together differently. These six “grounding virtues” guide the On Being way of conversation. They are inspiring and grounding initiatives — analog and digital, institutional and communal — around the world. Read More.
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Our Libraries are thematic collections of writings and episodes from the On Being archive dating back to 2003. Wander the rows and scan the shelves.
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