Deep Dive with Father Greg Boyle on Humility

Kelly Corrigan Wonders

Kelly Corrigan Show

Society & Culture

4.8 • 3.2K Ratings

🗓️ 13 January 2026

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Kelly sits down with Father Greg Boyle, who has run Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles for nearly 40 years—the largest gang intervention program in the world. They explore humility not as the kind that makes you small, but the kind that sets you free. Father Greg reflects on burying 263 young people and why he keeps count, what happens when someone can't imagine tomorrow, and why gang membership is often a suicide mission in disguise. He talks about the difference between being other-centered and self-absorbed, why curiosity is the antidote to judgment, and how 90% of success is sheer dumb luck. It's about discovering that loving is your home, catching yourself before judgment takes over, and remembering that none of us are well until all of us are well. This is the second episode in a six-part series on super traits, supported by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation. To learn more about the John Templeton Foundation, visit: www.templeton.org. Special thanks to the team at the Aspen Ideas Festival where this episode was recorded. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Kelly Corrigan Wonders. I'm Kelly Corrigan, and today I'm wondering about humility,
0:12.6	not the kind that makes you small, but the kind that sets you free. This is the second episode
0:18.3	of our Super Traits series, which is supported by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation, where we're exploring virtues like humility, creativity, and curiosity.
0:29.3	I'm joined by Father Greg Boyle. For close to 40 years, Father Greg has run Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles, an organization which started as a small jobs program
0:39.9	in one of the most violent neighborhoods in America and has grown into the largest gang intervention
0:46.0	program in the world. He has buried 263 young people and he keeps count because their lives have to matter when the world says they don't.
0:58.7	One of the things I really love about Father Greg is that he's not interested in saving anyone.
1:03.8	He's interested in being changed by them.
1:06.7	If humility is about recognizing that there's no daylight between you and another person,
1:12.8	Father Greg lives that every single day.
1:15.4	Here's my conversation with Father Greg Boyle recorded at the Aspen Ideas Festival.
1:23.9	So you're like the perfect person for me to talk to about humility, I think.
1:30.0	And I want to talk about it in all directions, if you will.
1:34.6	And I want to start with this quote.
1:36.2	You said that it's liberating to be brought back to one's insignificance.
1:40.5	We are allowed to abandon the pretense that we are more than we are and find comfort in knowing
1:46.1	that we are enough. So a thing I thought about when I was rereading you in preparation for today
1:53.3	is if the truth of the matter is that we're somewhat insignificant or deeply insignificant and that we're fragile,
2:04.0	that these bodies that we live in can have cancer or can die. I mean, I can't, I don't know
2:08.8	anyone who has seen as much death as you have. Is the sort of machismo gang attitude a response to that, that like intolerable truth that we don't really
2:24.7	matter that much.
2:26.7	I don't know if gang violence or the gang posture, you know, really addresses that so much
	...

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