On being is brought to you by the John Templeton Foundation, harnessing the power of the sciences

to explore the deepest and most perplexing questions facing humankind.

Learn about the latest discoveries in the study of hope and optimism, intellectual humility,

and free will at templeton.org.

When I interviewed the psychiatrist, Bessel Vendor Kolk, for the first time, his book,

The Body Keeps the Score, was about to be published.

And I described him as an innovator in treating the effects of overwhelming experiences on people

and society, what we call trauma when we encounter it in life and in the news.

So I have needed to catch up with him in a time unlike any other in my life,

in which we are living through one vast overwhelming experience after the other.

And the body keeps the score has become one of the most widely read books in the pandemic world.

His knowledge is so very practically helpful, a distinctively illuminating perspective

towards meeting what is happening in our world and inside each of us.

I'm Krista Tippett and this is on being.

Bessel Vendor Kolk has been a leading researcher of traumatic stress since it first became a diagnosis.

That was in the wake of the Vietnam War and from there it was identified and studied in other

parts of the population. We take off this hour from some of my original conversation with him,

laying out intricacies of his insights into the human brain and body and strategies for transmuting

trauma that logic and language cannot reach. In the second half, I pick up with Bessel Vendor Kolk

to mind that wisdom for 2021. He was born in the Netherlands, his own father spent time as a

religious prisoner in a German concentration camp during World War II.

I always start my conversations with this question, whoever I'm speaking with.

...