'On Being's' Krista Tippett Asks Big Questions In Search Of Connection

Some people shy away from big questions, those that come up against and embrace the mysteries of human existence. Not Krista Tippett. For over a decade she's been guiding listeners through thoughtful conversations with leaders, scientists, religious figures and artists with her public radio show, On Being.

On Thursday evening, Tippett will visit Wake Forest University as part of the Voices of Our Time series. She recently spoke with WFDD's Bethany Chafin.  

Interview Highlights

On the questions that guide Tippett's work with On Being:

What does it mean to be human and how do we want to live and who will we be to each other? And that last question I think – well in this century, given how our technologies have bound us together and given the nature of the challenges and the opportunities we face – the third question of who will be to each other is absolutely inextricable from those others. ... If we really want to rise to our best, we have to walk all three of those questions together and figure out what that means culturally.

On a society that feels fractured and The Civil Conversations Project:

The Civil Conversations Project is kind of our offering, and at heart it's a body of work within our body of work. It's programs that we create, conversations we curate that offer language and ideas and questions. Questions are great resources in a moment like this where our answers are all pitted against each other. [The project offers] questions and, kind of, tools for living. 

I think conversation and listening as a basic social art, I think these are really important, basic things that have always been part of human community that we kind of have to relearn for our age. And so I think the Civil Conversations Project is about speaking together differently, in order to live together differently.

On the early meaning of conversation:

Conversation in the old-fashioned sense was not just about words passing between mouths and ears, but it's about shared life. And that's been a really important image for me to think about, how do we bring our lives into conversation with each other? Conversation doesn't mean you're exactly alike, it doesn't mean you agree on everything, but it means that there is a genuine curiosity and exchange, and I think a sense that we have a shared stake in some things and that we are honoring that by staying in conversation, staying in relationship.

On when Tippett learned the power of a question:

I grew up in an answers-soaked world. I grew up in a small town in Oklahoma, and my grandfather was a preacher. My grandfather had a beautiful mind, a beautiful big mind. But I think even at a young age I was aware that he didn't feel free to bring his questions or even the life of his mind to that biblical text that he loved so much. So I think for me, my reverence for questions grew out of a living in a culture where they weren't honored and taken seriously.

I've walked this path and I think questions are really powerful civic tools. And I think a lot of the things that we're grappling with now would be better served with us, instead of having another debate that we can all imagine exactly how it will go, that we know all the arguments on both sides, if we would just kind of give some big questions, just let them sit there in the room and let us ponder, you know, frame the questions really carefully in terms of what is at stake for all of us in human terms and do some dwelling. Be quiet and reverent before the enormity of those questions and then I think something could emerge from that.

(Ed.: This transcription has been lightly edited for clarity.)