The French geophysicist Xavier Lepishon knows fragility to be a

fundament of vital evolving systems in the Earth's crust and in human communities.

He was one of the original pioneers of the field of plate tectonics, a key

figure at a time when science not only radically revised its view of the

world but changed the way all of us see it. He's also spent decades living in

community with people and families facing disabilities and he's emerged from

all of this with a rare perspective on the very meaning of humanity. I think

it's going to be a big discovery in in life sciences when they realize the

importance of the fragility of human life and the fact that the human life is

really so fragile that it needs to create a whole new way of culture of dealing

with with the others. The fragility is the a sense of man and women and it is at

the heart of humanity. I'm Christa Tippett and this is on BA.

I spoke with Xavier Lepishon in 2009. Still a practicing scientist he's also a

lifelong Catholic. Since 2003 he's lived in an intentional community he and his

family helped found to provide retreat for families caring for a loved one

with mental illness. Before that for nearly three decades he and his wife raised

their six children at the original French large community centered around

people with mental disabilities. Xavier Lepishon was born in 1937 the son of a

rubber plantation manager in a region of French and a China that is current

David Nomme. During World War II he and his family spent six months in a

Japanese concentration camp there. When the war ended they moved back to their

native France. Let's just start by getting a sense of your your background

...