Journalist, National Humanities Medalist, and bestselling author Krista Tippett has created a singular space for reflection and conversation in American and global public life. She founded and leads the On Being Project (www.onbeing.org)—a groundbreaking media and public life initiative pursuing “deep thinking and moral imagination, social courage and joy to renew inner life, outer life, and life together.” As the creator and host of the Peabody Award-winning On Being radio show, heard on over 400 public radio stations across the US, Tippett takes up the great animating questions of human life: What does it mean to be human, how we do want to live, and who will we be to each other?
Tippett and her guests—from theologians to social activists, physicists to poets—reach beyond the headlines to explore meaning amidst the political, economic, cultural, and technological shifts of twenty-first century life. The On Being podcast has been downloaded and played more than 300 million times and has been recognized as a “Best Podcast” by The New York Times, The Atlantic, and iheartradio Podcast Awards, among others.
“The Tippett style represents a fusion of all her parts — the child of small-town church comfortable in the pews; the product of Yale Divinity School able to parse text in Greek and theology in German; and, perhaps most of all, the diplomat seeking to resolve social divisions.”
—The New York Times
Tippett founded On Being’s Civil Conversations Project—now a front edge of her work and her organization’s growth—in 2011. It began as a series of conversations, public events, and resources towards new conversation and relationship across the differences of our age. The project’s “Six Grounding Virtues” are being taken up in contexts of community, service, and social repair around the world. President Obama awarded her National Humanities Medal at the White House in 2014 for “thoughtfully delving into the mysteries of human existence. On the air and in print, Tippett avoids easy answers, embracing complexity and inviting people of every background to join her conversations about faith, ethics, and moral wisdom.”
Tippett is the author of three highly regarded books at the intersection of spiritual inquiry, social healing, science, and the arts including the New York Times bestseller Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living, Einstein’s God: Conversations about Science and the Human Spirit, and Speaking of Faith: Why Religion Matters and How to Talk About It. Becoming Wise was named a best nonfiction book of 2016 by The Washington Post and The Library Journal. She is currently at work on a new book about moral imagination and the human challenges and promise of this young century and the post-pandemic world, tentatively slated for 2022.
“Hardly anyone in our time has been a greater amplifier of spirits than longtime journalist, On Being host, and patron saint of nuance Krista Tippett… In her interviews with the great spiritual geniuses of our time, Tippett has cultivated a rare space for reflection and redemption amid our reactionary culture—a space framed by her generous questions exploring the life of meaning. “
—Maria Popova
Krista Tippett grew up in a small town in Oklahoma, attended Brown University, and worked as a young journalist and diplomat in Cold War Berlin. After returning to the US and pursuing a Masters of Divinity at Yale University in the early 1990’s, she saw a black hole where intelligent public reflection and conversation about the religious, moral, and spiritual aspects of humanity might be.
In recent honors, Tippett was a recipient of the Four Freedoms Medal of the Roosevelt Institute at Hyde Park. She also received an honorary doctorate from Middlebury College, and was a Mimi and Peter E. Haas Distinguished Visitor at the Hass Center for Public Service at Stanford University.
For more information on Krista Tippett, please visit The On Being Project on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and at onbeing.org.
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Pico Iyer