Support for on-being with Christa Tippett comes from the Fetzer Institute, helping build the spiritual foundation for a loving world.

Fetzer's new study, what does spirituality mean to us?

Reveals how spirituality informs our understanding of ourselves and each other, and inspires us to take action for the common good.

Explore these findings and more at spiritualitystudy.org.

What if the future of well-being is about tipping the scales in the world away from fear and toward love?

And what if it's a surgeon general of the United States, Dr. Viva Kmorthy, who talks this way?

I engaged him together with his friend, the groundbreaking neuroscientist, Richard Davidson.

I'm Christa Tippett and this is on-being.

This conversation was part of a Zoom event hosted by the Center for Healthy Minds.

Richard Davidson, who everyone knows as Richie, welcomed the online audience and I offered an introduction.

Hello, it's such an honor and a pleasure to be here.

If any of you have listened to me or read things I've been writing over the last few years, I have so often used these words.

I have said, you know, as we walk beyond what we've been living through, we have a world to remake.

And so of course I had to say yes to this invitation, to this event called The World We Make.

And in the context of drawing out, Richard Davidson and surgeon general, Viva Kmorthy, and their deep intelligence and vision from the realms of science and public health, expansively understood, about the agency we have.

And how we are learning about the agents we have to grow and shape our minds and our bodies and our presence in and into the world.

It's such a strange and hard and fascinating time. We are called to be part of so much healing and so much growth.

And at the same time, we are learning a great deal that can help move us forward as a species.

So I think that is my audacious vision for what we're going to, the ground we will traverse in this next hour.

So I also want to encourage the two of you to speak to each other. This will be a conversation.

And I'd like to start with the language of well-being. That is kind of a primary concept.

It's a word and a phrase that is used a great deal by the two of you. It's relatively new in our life together.

...