Hi there, I'm Jason Gots, and you're listening to Think Again, a Big Think podcast.

Since 2008, Big Think has been sharing big ideas from creative and curious minds.

The Think Again podcast takes us out of our comfort zone, surprising our guests and me, your host, with unexpected

conversation starters from Big Thinks Interview Archives, ideas we didn't necessarily come here

prepared to discuss. Today I'm really happy to be speaking with Krista Tippett. She's the Peabody

award-winning host of the radio program and podcast On Being, in which she and her

guests discuss the deeper mysteries of the universe and human existence, which can be difficult

things to talk about. Her new book is called Becoming Wise, an inquiry into the mystery and

art of living. It distills and organizes some of the insights she's gained over 12 years of talking to spiritual,

scientific, artistic, and social pioneers about many, many, many things, but maybe fundamentally

about how to live a good life.

Welcome to think again, Krista.

I'm so glad to be with you.

I wanted to start with a quote from a quote.

So it's a Flannery O'Connor quote that you quote in the book from an interview with, I believe, Robert Coles.

Flannery O'Connor, for those who might not know, is a Southern Gothic author.

She wrote sort of novellas that are extraordinary.

The quote is, the task of the novelist is to deepen mystery, but mystery is a great embarrassment to the modern mind.

And one of the things that's interesting to me about what you do,

and I think that you do it extraordinarily well, it's very hard to do, is that you talk about

these mysteries of the human spirit. I think it's really hard to talk about mystery because,

right, right? I mean, don't, isn't there

...