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Revisiting 'Becoming Wise' With Krista Tippett On Monday's Access Utah

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“I’m a person who listens for a living. I listen for wisdom, and beauty, and for voices not shouting to be heard. This book chronicles some of what I’ve learned in what has become a conversation across time and generations, across disciplines and denominations.” That’s Krista Tippett, host of “On Being” (heard on UPR Sunday evenings at 5:00) talking about her new book “Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living” Tippett has interviewed many of the most profound voices examining the great questions of meaning for our time.

Tippett says that the open questions and challenges of our time are intimate and civilizational all at once – definitions of when life begins and when death happens, of the meaning of community and family and identity, of our relationships to technology and through technology. The wisdom we seek, she says, emerges through the raw materials of the everyday. And the enduring question of what it means to be human has now become inextricable from the question of who we are to each other.  She says that “Becoming Wise” offers a grounded and fiercely hopeful vision of humanity – of personal growth but also renewed public life and human spiritual evolution. It insists on the possibility of a common life for this century marked by resilience and redemption, with beauty as a core moral value and civility and love as muscular practice. 

 

Krista Tippett will speak at USU on Wednesday, November 7th in the Eccles Conference Center Auditorium. Following her keynote lecture, there will be a 15-20 minute Q&A. At 8:30, there will be a reception and book-signing, with books available for purchase. The event is free and open to the public.

Krista Tippett is a Peabody Award-winning broadcaster and New York Times bestselling author.  In 2014, she received the National Humanities Medal at the White House for “thoughtfully delving into the mysteries of human existence. On the air and in print, Ms. Tippett avoids easy answers, embracing complexity and inviting people of ​every background to join her conversation about faith, ethics, and moral wisdom." Tippett grew up in Oklahoma, the granddaughter of a Southern Baptist preacher. She studied history at Brown University and went to Bonn, West Germany in 1983 on a Fulbright Scholarship to study politics in Cold War Europe. In her 20s, she ended up in divided Berlin for most of the 1980s, first as The New York Times stringer and a freelance correspondent for Newsweek, The International Herald Tribune, the BBC, and Die Zeit. She later became a special assistant to the U.S. Ambassador to West Germany. She left Berlin in 1988, the year before the Wall fell. She lived in Spain, England, and Scotland for a time, then pursued a M.Div. from Yale. When she graduated in 1994, she saw a black hole where intelligent coverage of religion should be. As she conducted a far-flung oral history project for the Benedictines of St. John's Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota, she began to imagine radio conversations about the spiritual and intellectual content of faith that could open imaginations and enrich public life. In 2007, Tippett published her first book, “Speaking of Faith.” It is a memoir of religion in our time, including her move from geopolitical engagement to theology and the cumulative wisdom of her interviews these past years. Her book, “Einstein's God,” illustrates some of the important ways her radio program and her vision have continued to evolve. Krista Tippett’s two children are at the center of her life. She also loves cooking for her children and their friends, radio plays, beautiful writing, great science fiction, cross country skiing, and hot yoga.

Tom Williams worked as a part-time UPR announcer for a few years and joined Utah Public Radio full-time in 1996. He is a proud graduate of Uintah High School in Vernal and Utah State University (B. A. in Liberal Arts and Master of Business Administration.) He grew up in a family that regularly discussed everything from opera to religion to politics. He is interested in just about everything and loves to engage people in conversation, so you could say he has found the perfect job as host “Access Utah.” He and his wife Becky, live in Logan.