On Being

On Being is a public radio conversation and podcast, a Webby Award-winning website, publisher and public event convener. Hosted by Krista Tippett, it examines what it calls the "animating questions at the center of human life: What does it mean to be human, and how do we want to live?"

Radio program and podcast

Format

On Being is an hour-long radio show and podcast, hosted by Krista Tippett.

Tippett has interviewed guests ranging from poets to physicists, doctors to historians, artists to activists. Her guests include the 14th Dalai Lama, Maya Angelou, Mohammed Fairouz, Desmond Tutu, Thich Nhat Hanh, Rosanne Cash, Wangari Maathai, Yo-Yo Ma, Paulo Coehlo, Brian Greene, John Polkinghorne, Jean Vanier, Joanna Macy, Sylvia Earle, and Elie Wiesel.

In 2006, On Being became the first national public radio show to offer unedited interviews alongside the produced radio show in their podcast and on their website.

History

Krista Tippett pitched a series of pilots on religion, meaning, and ethics to Bill Buzenberg, then Vice President for News at Minnesota Public Radio/American Public Media, in the late 1990s. The program became a monthly series in 2001 and a weekly national program distributed by American Public Media (APM) in 2003. In 2010, the show's name changed from Speaking of Faith to On Being. In 2013, Tippett left APM to start the non-profit production company, Krista Tippett Public Productions, which she described as "a social enterprise with a radio show at its heart".