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Clearing my podcast queue elicits a sense of panic in me. The need to know that there’s an audio clip on deck at any moment to fill my ears and mind with knowledge, chatter, or white noise is a comfort that feels more like an actual addiction.
But this past week, running out of new episodes created an opportunity to revisit a favorite podcast from the past: Becoming Wise from Krista Tippett. The host is best known for her long-running podcast, On Being. Her second podcast offers a quick (and I mean quick) study in what she does best—facilitating rich conversations with brilliant minds.
This limited run of just 38 conversations—succinct snippets from On Being’s longer discussions—run from 5 to 15 minutes long.
I’m not ashamed to say that I binged the series in two days. I came away from my most recent consumption session with a well-rounded reminder of the depth and breadth of the human experience. From mindfulness researcher Jon Kabat-Zinn’s notes on the significance of staying mindful to astronomer Natalie Batalha’s universal perspective, the following insights are the moments that most lit me up while listening.
7 Takeaways From Becoming Wise
Because even a tiny slice of new perspective can shift your entire experience of the world.
1. Our Outer Landscape Informs Our Inner One
The late poet John O’Donohue credits the limestone formations in his native western Ireland as the initial foundation and inspiration for his creative mind.
“I often think that the forms of the limestone are so abstract and aesthetic, and it is as if they were all laid down by some wild surrealistic kind of deity. So being a child and coming out into that—it was waiting like a huge, wild invitation to extend your imagination.”
2. We Live With a Time Bias
Maria Popova, creator of the beloved newsletter The Marginalian, asserts that Internet culture has created a media world that’s centered on urgency at the expense of context and perspective. She calls this bias “presentism,” and cites the reverse chronology of social media and news—the constant focus on what’s current—as evidence.
“I think that’s conditioning us to believe, rather falsely, that the most recent is the most important, and that the older matters less, or just exists less.”
3. Believing in Other Humans Is Essential
The late civil rights leader John Lewis believes that while every person is born innocent, some are taught the way of fear and hate, while others are taught the way of peace, love, and non-violence. Still, everyone has the potential to learn to live with respect and kindness for others—especially if we don’t give up on each other.
“The love is there. How do you make it real? How do you paint the picture? It’s like an artist using a canvas. How do you get people to move from A, to B, and you get C? […] You’re on a path. And you have to be consistent and you have to be persistent. And patient.”
4. We Are Stardust
This reminder comes from Batalha, who has spent decades researching the cosmos and talks about the power of love and connectedness through a practical, scientific lens. The fact that we are all stardust is more than flowery language—it’s our literal and shared human makeup.
“I am the Universe and I’m taking a look at myself through these senses that I have. That is an amazing thing.”
5. Vulnerability is Strength
Brené Brown has made a career of championing vulnerability, a quality that she believes has been mistakenly associated with weakness or frailty. According to her research, the opposite is actually true.
“I cannot find a single example of courage—moral courage, spiritual courage, leadership courage, relational courage—in my research that was not born completely of vulnerability.”
6. The World Relies on Connection
According to naturalist Terry Tempest Williams, interconnectedness is an overlooked factor when thinking about climate change and its effects on the natural world beyond the immediate. Our dwindling collective knowledge of living beings, from species name to identification, means we lose the ability to mourn their loss, says Williams.
“It all comes down to relationships, to place, to paying attention, to staying, to listening, to learning. A heightened curiosity with other.”
7. Without Mindful Attention, We Abandon Our Experience
Kabat-Zinn makes it abundantly clear what’s at stake for those who fail to stay present throughout their days: life.
“The practice of mindfulness […] the real practice is living your life as if it really mattered from moment to moment. The real practice is life itself.”
