We are in the final weeks as On Being evolves to its next chapter — in a world that is evolving, each of us changed in myriad ways we’ve only begun to process and fathom. So it felt right to listen again to one of our most beloved shows of this post-2020 world. In fact, Krista interviewed the wise and wonderful Ocean Vuong right on the cusp of that turning, in March 2020, in a joyful and crowded room full of podcasters in Brooklyn. Yet what’s most stunning is how presciently and exquisitely Ocean spoke, and continues to speak, to the world we have since come to inhabit — its heartbreak and its poetry, its possibilities for loss and for finding new life.
--
LISTENING TO OUR LISTENERS - Please take our short (but important) survey! This summer, we’re entering creative recharge and learning mode. Would you visit onbeing.org/survey and answer a few questions about who you are and how On Being can accompany you in the time ahead? We would be so grateful 🙏.
--
Ocean Vuong is a professor in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at New York University. His new collection of poetry is Time Is a Mother. He is also the author of a novel, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, and the poetry collection Night Sky with Exit Wounds, which won the T.S. Eliot Prize and the Whiting Award. He was a 2019 MacArthur Fellow.
This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Ocean Vuong — A Life Worthy of Our Breath." Find the transcript for that show at onbeing.org.
This show originally aired on April 30, 2020.
Janine Benyus and Azita Ardakani Walton — On Nature's Wisdom for Humanity
Befriend Your Body: A Compassionate Body Scan
Christine Runyan — On Healing Our Distressed Nervous Systems
“Joy is the Justice (We Give Ourselves)” by J. Drew Lanham
Lyndsey Stonebridge and Lucas Johnson — On Love, Politics, and Violence (Channeling Hannah Arendt)
New From Poetry Unbound: A Series on Conflict and the Human Condition
Colette Pichon Battle — On Knowing What We're Called To
Kate DiCamillo — On Nurturing Capacious Hearts
Wisdom, Solace, and Courage for 2024
Nick Cave — Loss, Yearning, Transcendence
A Word from Krista
Sara Hendren — Our Bodies, Aliveness, and the Built World
Christiana Figueres — Ecological Hope, and Spiritual Evolution
Clint Smith — What We Know in the "Marrow of Our Bones"
“Dance Party” by Clint Smith
“Ode to Those First Fifteen Minutes After the Kids Are Finally Asleep” by Clint Smith
[Extended] Clint Smith with Krista Tippett
Three Skills for Staying Calm, Sane, and Open in a Chaotic World | Krista interviewed by Dan Harris for Ten Percent Happier
Latanya Sweeney — On Shaping Technology to Human Purpose
[Unedited] Latanya Sweeney with Krista Tippett
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
Baseball Tonight with Buster Olney
Selected Shorts
This American Life
The Frank Skinner Show
Judge John Hodgman