On Being with Krista Tippett

We reflect on the mystery and meaning of autism in one family and in society. Jennifer Elder and Paul Collins, a painter and a literary historian, are the parents of an 10-year-old son, Morgan, who has autism. In life and writing, they've explored autism in historical, medical, and literary perspective.

This unedited interview is included in our program "Being Autistic, Being Human." Download the mp3 of the produced show at speakingoffaith.org.

We travel to a monastic library that rescues manuscripts from across the centuries and across the world. And there are worlds in this place on palm leaf and papyrus, in microfilm and pixels -- stories of ordinary life as well as the rise and fall of civilizations. We explore this with Fr. Columba Stewart, a Benedictine monk and its executive director, and Getachew Haile, an Ethiopian scholar who has led some of its most intriguing work. In their lives as in this work, the relevance of ancient manuscripts to people of the present, and the cultural cargo of the past itself, are revealed in a new light.

Fr. Columba Stewart is executive director of the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library at St. John's Abbey and University in Collegeville, Minnesota. He spoke with Krista on September 3, 2008 at the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library. This interview is included in our program "Preserving Words and Worlds." Download the mp3 of the produced show at speakingoffaith.org.

Desmond Tutu helped galvanize South Africa's peaceful transition from apartheid to democracy. Yet inequality and violance still mark the country today. He discusses these topics and how his understanding of God has unfolded through the history he's helped shape - and even through his friendship with the Dalai Lama.

Desmond Tutu is a Nobel laureate and archbishop emeritus who helped shape the history of South Africa's transition from apartheid to democracy. He spoke with Krista in person in Kalamazoo, Michigan on March 12, 2010. This interview is included in our program "Desmond Tutu's God of Surprises." Download the mp3 of the produced show at speakingoffaith.org.

Psychologist Alan Dienstag has led support groups and a writing group for people in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease. We explore the human and spiritual terrain of this illness, what it might teach about the nature of human memory and identity, and what remains when memory unravels.

Alan Dienstag is a clinical psychologist in private practice in New York. He has led support groups with early Alzheimer's patients as well as a writing group he co-designed with novelist Don Delillo. He spoke with Krista using a broadcast-quality telephone connection on March 4, 2009. Doretti was in a private recording studio in New York City and Krista in the studios of American Public Media in Saint Paul, Minnesota. This interview is included in our program "Alzheimer's, Memory, and Being." Download the mp3 of the produced show at speakingoffaith.org.

Forensic sciences have entered 21st-century imaginations, from CSI to Indiana Jones. We explore the human landscape of this work and its emergence as a tool for human rights in Ethiopia to Juarez, Mexico. We also hear Argentinean human rights activist and poet, Alicia Partnoy. Mercedes Doretti is an Argentinean forensic anthropologist who has unearthed bones and stories of dead and disappeared civilians from Argentina's Dirty War. She shares her perspective on reparation, the need to bury our dead, and the many facets of justice.

Mercedes Doretti is a forensic anthropologist and senior researcher of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team. She spoke with Krista using a broadcast-quality telephone connection on February 26, 2009. Doretti was in a private studio in New York City and Krista in the studios of American Public Media in Saint Paul, Minnesota. This interview is included in our program "Laying the Dead to Rest." Download the mp3 of the produced show at speakingoffaith.org.

A parallel story to the ubiquitous news of China's economy and politics. With scholar and filmmaker Mayfair Yang, we learn about the ancient and reemerging traditions of reverence and ritual — revealing background to its approach to Tibet. And, we explore the irony that the Chinese state gleaned some of dismissive, modern ideas about religion from the West.

Mayfair Yang is the director of the East Asia Center at the University of California in Santa Barbara. She spoke with Krista using a broadcast-quality telephone connection on on June 26, 2008. Yang was in the studios of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in Sydney, Australia and Krista in the studios of American Public Media in Saint Paul, Minnesota. This interview is included in our program "China's Hidden Spiritual Landscape." Download the mp3 of the produced show at speakingoffaith.org.

We explore life, faith, and the universe with two astronomers who study the composition of meteorites and the life and death of stars. Brother Guy Consolmagno is curator of meteorites at the Vatican Observatory. Father George Coyne is director emeritus and president of the Vatican Observatory Foundation. They are both Jesuits, and both have asteroids named after them.

Krista's unedited conversation with Br. Guy Consolmagno and Fr. George Coyne, two astronomers who work at the Vatican Observatory. She spoke with him using a broadcast-quality telephone connection on February 24, 2010. Krista was in the studios of American Public Media in St. Paul, Minnesota, and they were in the studios of KUAZ in Tucson, Arizona. This interview is included in our program "Asteroids, Stars, and the Love of God" and originally podcast in April 2010. Download the mp3 of the produced show at speakingoffaith.org.

Michael McCullough describes science that helps us comprehend how revenge came to have a purpose in human life. At the same time, he stresses, science is also revealing that human beings are more instinctively equipped for forgiveness than we've perhaps given ourselves credit for. Knowing this suggests ways to calm the revenge instinct in ourselves and others and embolden the forgiveness intuition.