The One You Feed - How to Live the Questions of Life with Krista Tippett

Episode Date: September 1, 2023

In this episode, Krista Tippett invites us to unlock the power of questions and discover the profound beauty of embracing uncertainty. She explores the idea of investigating the stories we tell ourselves, the narratives that shape our understanding and interpretation of the world. In this episode you’ll be able to: Discern the importance of nurturing the good nature inside you for personal growth Uncover how harnessing the power of questions can help you embrace the unknown Learn how to navigate through uncertainty and make decisions that lead to positive change Understand the critical role you play in facing the existential challenges brought about by the ecological crisis Delve into how spirituality intersects with our collective participation in life To learn more, click here!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com

and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really Know Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There's something very strange and interesting about us, that we have an experience

of reality and we don't factor it into how we expect things to work. I feel like this is kind of a growth edge for our species. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what

we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Krista Tippett, a Peabody Award-winning broadcaster, National Humanities Medalist, and New York Times bestselling author. She created and hosts On Being, which won the highest honors in broadcast, internet, and podcasting. She leads the On Being Project, which produces a second successful podcast, Poetry Abound, and is evolving to meet the callings of the post-2020

world. Emergent in 2023 is The Lab for Art of Living, alongside gatherings and quiet conversations to accompany the generative people and possibilities within this tender, tumultuous time to be alive. Krista grew up in a small town in Oklahoma, attended Brown University, worked as a journalist and a diplomat in Cold War Berlin, and later received a Master of Divinity from Yale. Her books are Speaking of Faith, Einstein's God, and most recently, Becoming Wise, An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living. Hi, Krista. Welcome to the show. Hi, Eric. It's into the Mystery and Art of Living. the number of podcasts there are today. But yours was one of the few where I was like, that's really what I want to do. Like, it's been a beacon to us the whole time. So, so thank you for that. And it's been lovely to watch you grow this too. We'll start like we always do with the parable. Yeah.

In the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and they think about it for a second. They look up at their grandparent and they say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. You know, I was wondering because I was with you once before and it was years ago.

And it was also what feels like eons ago because it was pre-2020. I was wondering what I said before and I didn't have time to look it up. You know, I have to tell you that I had this interesting reaction because I started thinking about it like last night. So this might be kind of an unorthodox answer, but I feel like right now in my life and in the world, my concern, which is for myself and for the world and for all of us, is that we can be paralyzed by all the choices and reckonings and challenges and callings that are before us, you know, that I feel like these years have placed before us. And, you know, they were there before, but that we've really been given to see in a new

way. And my fear is that we just get paralyzed. And even if we feel the good wolf, right, that we don't know how to nourish in either direction, which ends up being a choice of a kind. Does that make sense to you? Totally. Yeah. I mean, I think that there's the sense in that parable that you know, which is the right one, right? Which I think is... And that you have the energy and that you are stepping into your agency to do that nourishing in a direction. And that's what I think is endangered right now. And I don't say it judgmentally, right? There's a lot of fragility and there is a lot to be reasonably fearful about. It's a different kind of peril that we're in. reasonably fearful about. It's a different kind of peril that we're in.

I'm curious about that because you are someone I know who tends to think a lot about time. Yeah. And one of the ways that you think about time is to think about it in the really long view. And we hear again and again and again that these times are worse times or that they're uniquely bad times. And I'm kind of curious from your perspective, taking a long view of history, in what ways does this feel like a more challenging time than, say, 1507? Or I mean, I'm just making updates. It doesn't matter which, right? No, it's a great question. I thought a lot in this century about how the early 2014, 2015, 16, 17, 18, the kind of teenage years of our century didn't hold a candle to the early years of the 20th century and World War, you know, the deaths of millions and millions, millions upon millions and starvation and a flu that I think was at least more catastrophic than ours, but so paled beside the other, or a virus, right, beside the other

catastrophes of the time that it was barely recorded. And, you know, incredible time of tumult, socially, economically, great drama, and heading towards what we know now, you know, looking at it backwards, heading towards another war and Holocaust, right? So I think it would be hard to argue that our problems, our challenges, that on some level, that there's nothing special about the gravity and the magnitude of what we face and of the terrible degrees of suffering. I think what is different for us is that some of our challenges, particularly the ecological crisis, it's truly, truly existential. And it's an accumulation. I mean, we've walked into this place over hundreds of years, but I think there is something singular about the plight of our species in this century and

the consequences of the way we've lived for a while. I think that is new. I think the choice we have to make is whether we can rise to this moment so that we are not at some point merely surviving. I think that's new. Yeah, I would tend to sort of agree. You know, to me, it feels like human suffering for all intents and purposes has always been almost infinite. And by infinite, what I mean is more than any one human could ever begin to comprehend. Like, I think that's just the nature of life and it's always been there. And I do think in many, many ways, the world has become a better place. You know,

we can just look at all sorts of measures of wellbeing out there and see that like, it's good that we have less children in slavery than we used to. We have higher literacy rates, less infant mortality. All those things seem to be good news, but I agree with you that climate crisis does seem to be sort of like our car is looking good in some ways as it's getting ready to drive off a cliff. Yeah, I never know what to do with those kinds of comparisons. You know, everything is relative and everything is being compared from a certain perspective. But there are things I also feel impatient with in some of the catastrophizing, right? I'm impatient with, like, I know that the young and, you know, that the whole matter of education, that there's been incredible disruption with the pandemic and that that's

fallen harder on some children and in some places than others. But when I hear people talking about just in the context of having some years of school disrupted, of the lost generation, I mean, if I think about all the children across time who've lost a school or, right? I mean, so there's some ways in which I just, I don't know. I think it's hard for us to comprehend the ecological moment we're in and to actually take it seriously, even though it may make everything that we actually obsess over just pale in comparison eventually. And then there's the way in which we will catastrophize about school being disrupted for a couple of years. And again, I know there has been a real

cost. And I also think that I trust the resilience of our young to recover from not having what we think of as the way education should be. Yep. Yep. I'd love to turn to, I'm sure we talked about this when we talked before, because I think it's probably somewhat of an obsession for people like us who do this for a living, which is asking people questions. And I know that you love the idea of questions. And there's something that you wrote that I saw, and I don't know where, but I loved this line. And you said, if you are faithful to living a question, that question will be faithful back to you. Can you say more about that? The context of that thought is this advice, this counsel that Rainer Maria Rilke gave to a young person, a young poet in the early 20th century. And this was a young person who was full of despair about all the answers that they didn't have and all the things they weren't sure about. And Rilke said, you know, you should love all that is unresolved in your heart and try to

love the questions themselves. And that has come back to me in this century where I think, and this was true, you know, pre-COVID in our lives. I think on some level, all of the great challenges before us are just vast, aching, open questions that are not going to have answers anytime soon. answers anytime soon. And so this wisdom, you know, comes to me that when this is the situation we're in, then what we're called to do is to love and to hold and to live the questions themselves. And this way of thinking has been with me for a long time and accompanied me. And, you know, because we're so in love with answers and we do crave them and we understandably crave them. But answers are not really a feature of the time. We live in a time of evolution and disruption and upheaval of things whose time has come to an end. But it's very, very stressful for us as human beings to live with uncertainty. And yet this counsel that when what we're given

is uncertainty, when to rush to an answer would be to deny the gravity and the importance of the questions, then we live the answers. And I've actually across the years really like taken that up as a practice, you know, when I find myself personally at those junctures or even as I think about questions of, you know, this world we inhabit and what is my place, you know, standing before these challenges, all I have to work with is uncertainty. Then I really turn to this work of crafting a better question, a question that can keep me company, a question that can point me to what I need to be seeing or moving towards or moving away from. And I have had this experience over and over again, that if I hold a question, if I live a question, if I'm faithful to it, it will be a guide. I love that idea. You say commit to having it over your shoulder, in your ear as you move through life. And it's not just for a day or a week. I have to say it's kind of this American way of thinking, okay, I'll do that. Do that until next

Monday. It's a longer term commitment. Well, and I think a lot of the most important questions, if they ever get answered, they are answered in a temporary sort of way. Like, I mean, a question about like, what's important to me and what matters is a question to me that if I'm not asking it frequently, then I'm not doing it. Right. Because what mattered to me two years ago was very different than what matters to me today. I mean, I guess I shouldn't say very different. There are some core similarities there. But, you know, there's a lot that bears looking at again and again. We interviewed a poet recently. I don't know if you're familiar with her. Rosemary Watola Traumer. No. She's a lot that bears looking at again and again. We interviewed a poet recently.

I don't know if you're familiar with her, Rosemary Watola Trommer. No. She's a beautiful poet. I think you would like her, but she has a poem called The Question. I'm not going to read the whole thing to you, but the basis of it is, is this the path of love? I ask myself as I rise, as I wake my children, as I do the dishes, as I follow too close behind the slow blue Subaru, right? Like this idea. But that idea of a question like that is not a question you ever answer, but it is a question that guides your life.

Right. It is a question that orients and reorients and shows you what to see and what to pay attention to. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. I find questions like that to be really, really helpful as, like you said, orienting questions, ways of consistently asking, you know, what matters here? What's important? Yeah. So you talk about something, and you may have recently just given a TED Talk on this topic, I'm not entirely sure,

but that you call the generative narrative of our time. I have been talking about that and I did give a TED talk. It's not in the world yet. I don't know when it will be. Well, and I don't know when we'll release this. So it may be in the world by then or not. But what do you mean by that? the generative narrative of our time? Well, I definitely use that language as a contrast to the narrative of our time, the story of our time, you know, the story of what happened today that is worth our attention. You know, the narrative of what is important, which is how these things get translated in our minds. important, which is how these things get translated in our minds. And the narrative that we're just really familiar with and that we consume in a thousand ways in the course of a day tends to be this narrative of danger and destruction and what is failing and what is going wrong and what is corrupt and what is catastrophic. And as you and I have been discussing, there's certainly reality to that story, but it's not the whole story. So there is also, as part of the whole story,

there is this story of what is generative, of what is good, of people feeding the wolf of kindness and love and care, right? That is ordinary. It's quiet. It's happening all around us all the time. It's happening in moments. It's happening in all kinds of lives and all kinds of places. And although it is ordinary and omnipresent, we don't tell ourselves that story to be as defining or as serious as the things that do get reported, right?

And that we do dwell on, which is what goes wrong. In wanting to talk about this and just wanting us to have more of a consciousness that we let infuse our presence in the world and our sense of what's possible and our sense of who other human beings might be in their complexity. I'm not talking about this in order to deny that we have problems to grapple with. I am talking about it for us to claim the agency of our possibility for goodness and for making better decisions and for building and repairing and healing and just seeing that we actually know how to do these things. And we see people doing it around us all the time. And let's start factoring that in.

Yeah. I mean, I think the word there that, well, I mean, I guess both those words, generative narrative, both mean a lot to me. I mean, the generative part, I think, is exactly what you're saying, which is, is the story, the narrative that I'm telling myself, one that is actually useful or leads to something good or positive? Like, is it doing that? And the recognition that it's a narrative means that we are always telling ourselves some story about the way things are. And those stories, you know, none of them are accurate, right? None of them are complete. None of them cover everything. So knowing that, you know, I've often thought to myself, like, if I'm making so much of this up, like, or I'm giving the meaning to all these different things, doesn't it make sense to give meanings to them and versions of them that are actually empowering to me, that are actually going to make it more likely that I'm going to solve the problems that I see, that I'm going to embody the goodness that I want to put out there?

And I do think it is a narrative that is complex. And as we said earlier, we don't tend to like that. What we're talking about, you know, the power of the stories we tell is about a lot more than story, right? It is about how we are interpreting the world. It is about how we are deciding what matters. And it is about the conclusions we're drawing about what's possible and what agency we might have to be part of generative possibilities. And I think what's interesting about this is that what I just said may be something that people are aware of or not. people are aware of or not. But the fact is that all day long, we're taking in stories and we're taking them in sometimes taking them in in the form of what we call information or what we call news. And they are absolutely shaping the way we are not just thinking about the world and ourselves, but walking through the world. And so part of this is just getting conscious of what is, which I think

is also a definition of spiritual life. That's a little bit of a transition there that might be interesting to go to, which is that phrase you just use, spiritual life. What does that mean to you? You know, the word spirituality is not a word that I use a lot. I try not to overuse it because I think it can be very meaningful in any, you know, given in the life or in the imagination of any given person who's using it. But as a kind of general word, it's vague. or the life of the spirit to me is really, you know, a very basic way to talk about what we're talking about is, you know, interior life, inner life. And it's getting reflective, as opposed to merely thinking. It's being in discernment as opposed to merely deciding, you know, it's how we think about who we are and what matters as opposed to merely the action we'll take. You know, this is a similar point to the one I just was kind of

making about the destructive narrative and how it shapes us. That's a very active thing, even if we're not conscious of it. We actually get a lot of active formation in our world, in education, outside education, in culture. We get a lot of formation of our exterior presentation, right? We get a lot of training in things we do and in ways to behave and in ways to present. And in fact, in ways to be successfully performative. And we get so much less formation and that experience inside ourselves, that possibility that we have to be at home in ourselves, those internal muscles of making sense and making meaning, and in that, setting priorities and shaping not just what we're going to do, but the quality

of our lives and the quality of our presence to other people. So all of that, to me, just starts to point out what spiritual life is. My favorite definition of spiritual life at its best is, and here I want to really point out what the great traditions offer to us in the human enterprise, is really befriending reality in all its complexity, walking into the world as it is, not as we wish it to be, and making a home and making sense and making beauty and finding courage and being of service right there. We all know that good habits are ways that we bring what we value into the world. And we each have our own list of what matters to us. Maybe you want to feel more energetic, improve your relationships, have a tidier home,

cook more instead of eating out four nights a week. Whatever habit you want to build, it's entirely possible to make it happen. But if you feel under-equipped and overwhelmed to make real sustainable change, you are not alone. And that's why I've made my free masterclass open to everyone and available to watch anytime now. It's called Habits That Stick, How to Be Remarkably Consistent No Matter matter what goal you set. You can grab it at oneufeed.net slash habits. Again, it's free and you can watch it whenever it works for you. Go to oneufeed.net slash habits. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like

why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts his stuntman

reveals the answer and you never know who's gonna drop by mr. Bryan Cranston is what I know my friend way night about Jurassic Park way night welcome to really really sir bless you all hello Newman and you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging really that's the opening?

Really, no, really. Yeah, really. No, really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really, No, Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I love that last part about befriending reality in all its forms. I've used the term spiritual for a program we've got called Spiritual Habits, but I've used it

reluctantly. And the longer I've used it, the more reluctantly I've gotten. And yet I can't quite find the other word. Because again, when you're trying to name something, you can't have like a 74 word description, is that like, it's not psychology, but it's similar. It's not philosophy, but it's similar. If I were to sort of try and describe it, it would be about meaning and connection, you know, what matters to me and what am I connected to? But again, there's not a good word for this, you know, deeper than just psychological, because you could say, well, the interior life, you know, psychology covers the interior life. And yes, it does, but maybe not in the same way. And I love that you said sort of the difference between discernment and decision making, right? Because decision making

is very much something that psychology spends a lot of time on. But discernment is a slightly different animal. Yeah. Yeah. Part of the problem is that all of these words are inadequate. They will never touch or encompass what you and I are wanting to point at. And of course, you could make the distinction that, you know, psychology is dealing with the psyche. And when we talk about the life of the spirit, we're dealing with the soul. But, you know, that's another word that kind of dissolves even as we say it. You can't define it, right? And it's a mystery, right? We can try to talk about it and it's something that we experience.

But it's ultimately in that realm of mystery. ultimately in that realm of mystery. These most important things at the intersection of interior life and lives in our bodies and our lives within ourselves and our lives in the world, we just have to keep reaching for words that can only get proximate to those larger truths, much less when we're talking about things that are transcendent. Yep. Ineffable. Yeah. You know, one of the things you've done over the last, I think it's in the last year, I'm terrible with time, that I saw you do as sort of a project that

I really loved was contemplative reading. Yeah. Can you share a little bit about kind of what that phrase means to you and what you did? And then there might be a few points within that actual work we could dive into. Yeah, well, this might sound familiar to you. I have just started to realize more and more in recent years that conversation is my medium. And by which I mean, like, I love being on either side of a conversation. And I think conversationally and I learn conversationally. There's no better way for me to kind of clarify my own thoughts than in an exchange with someone else. In addition to there's no better way for me to really have my mind opened and take in new knowledge than in a conversation with someone. with someone. And last summer, the summer of 2022, I went away, you know, we had had a big year,

we'd made a big change. And we'd ended our weekly radio show that I'd done for 20 years. We're still in production on On Being, but we're doing seasons. So we do two seasons a year and we just did the first one. But that was a big transition out of that life of 52 weeks a year. And I'd just been running hard for a long time. So I had some time away. It was kind of a sabbatical. And I had a lot of resting to do, but I felt like I had a lot of thinking to do too. And I kind of wanted to write, but I but I felt like I had a lot of thinking to do too. And I kind of wanted to write, but I also felt at a loss about where to begin. And I started getting up in the morning and reading books that were interesting and, you know, that stretched me. And actually, I know given my work, I don't know if you're like this, but I do read a lot of wonderful

stretching things for work. But when I'm not you're like this, but I do read a lot of wonderful stretching things for work. But when I'm not working, because that's what I do for my work, I read a lot of fiction. I want to take my mind away. But in this instance, I was away and I was able to kind of read things that were stretching my mind for pleasure. And then I just kind of got in conversation with what I was reading and let that be the springboard for journaling and writing and kind of just clearing out my head and figuring out what was in there and what wanted to come out and what I needed to figure out. And it felt like prayer. It felt like a form of meditation. It was very pleasurable and grounding. And so I just started calling what I was doing, you know, contemplative reading,

conversational reading. I have actually thought about, so, you know, in my kind of morning practice, which has varied a lot across the years, Sometimes what I do is just read just a little something and really savor something, you know, a poem or some kind of spiritual text. And I've always thought of that as contemplative reading. And this was just kind of a step farther. It was reading contemplative and then really getting into conversation on the page with what I was reading. And it was just a beautiful experience. And I came home and started talking about it. And maybe this is where you heard about it. I kind of started writing about it and kind of shared some of the fruits of this contemplative reading in this newsletter we

have, The Pause. Yeah. I mean, there's so many things that you said in there that resonate with me since this is what I do for work. When I'm not working, I, like you, go to fiction. I'm going to be taking a lot of June away from interviews. And so now I'm like, okay, now I'm going to read fiction. And it's almost an existential crisis as to what to read because I don't get to do it that often. And I'm like, oh my God, this is a big decision. You know, I love that idea of having the chance to, you know, read something that stretches you I love that idea of having the chance to read something that stretches you and taking it much more slowly. I know in my Zen practice with my teacher, I began reading. But unlike my current pace where I'm reading like a book a week or something for work, I might read the same 30 pages for six months. And it was just a totally different way of engaging.

And it was just a totally different way of engaging. But I love the way you sort of took it one step further, which is the conversational element. Because I've learned the same thing that you're sort of saying. I've realized like I'm working on a book. I'm a first time writer. I don't have the chops yet. I've said to my partner a couple times, like, I wish I could just record me responding to people's questions. Cause like, that's where I feel like I'm at my very best. I know in my mind, I can pretend I'm talking to somebody else and, but there's something about the actual element of it that is special. But I love that idea of writing back and forth with what you're reading and asking those questions. And what came out of it was really lovely. And you did it with a book by someone that I was not familiar with, James Bridle. Yeah. And the book is called Ways of Being, Animals, Plants, Machines, The Search for a Planetary Intelligence, which sounds like a fascinating book. And so I thought maybe we could pull just a couple of things out of there that you wrote that were intriguing and we could talk about. Yeah, that would be fun. I mean, the first one was this general idea, and I'm summarizing bridal in this case.

Instead of resolving into order and clarity, ever closer examination reveals only more and more splendid detail and variation. And you followed that by saying, isn't that true in life as well as in science? Yeah. I mean, it's true of a person when we come to know them. It's true of ourselves that the closer you get, the more you're able to see. The picture always gets more complicated, right? Yeah. complicated, right? It doesn't get simpler or clearer. And in that complexity, and even in our

contradictions is such richness and is all of our opening for growth and for surprising each other and for continuing to evolve. And what I just said is something that we all experience all the time. But we walk around, you know, with our ideas about how things should be, how my life should be, how I should be, how that other person should be, how much less complicated our organization should be. I don't know. There's something very strange and interesting about us that we have an experience of reality and we don't factor it into how we expect things to work. I feel like this is kind of a growth edge for our species. And I feel like, you know, people like James Bridle and all the kind of new science and understanding of the natural world that he was kind of looking at in a very holistic way is giving us the language for making this move. Yeah. I was just having a conversation with my partner, Ginny, this morning

about how anytime anyone is too certain of anything, I will argue the counterpoint, even if I mostly believe them. There's something in me that just comes up. We were joking because it's almost just so common in the way I respond that it's almost, you know, become predictable. But it ties into that core idea, which is instead of resolving into order and clarity, right? When we get closer, we only get more detail and variation and complexity. And that just seems to be kind of the orientation that I just naturally kind of have. the orientation that I just naturally kind of have. They go on to say, every time we train our most sophisticated tools upon the central questions of our existence, who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going? The answer comes back clearer, everyone, everywhere. I know, isn't that

fantastic? That's just one of my favorite lines of the book and my favorite thoughts to just walk around with. Yeah, yeah. And you have a phrase you use called life together, which I think you're trying to point at the same thing. Bridal kind of framed it and what we're learning about just how entangled and in kinship and inextricable, not just from each other we are, but from, you know, all of life. I do always come back to this idea of what interests me is, I mean, I am very interested in the human search for meaning and interior life. And I'm very interested and passionate about what is the connection between the investment we make in that, the nurture we give to that, and our ability to participate generatively in our life together, our life with others, with our beloveds and with strangers. I guess that's kind of my focal point is that intersection. Right, right. Because I think one thing that sort of modern, again, I'll use the word because I don't have a better one, the modern sort of spiritual movement, I think there's been a lot

of really great things about sort of having all these different traditions on the table and so many different teachers and all these things. But one of the ways that I often feel like it falls short is it almost becomes a narcissistic tendency in that it's always only directed inward. And while inward direction is half the equation, so is the outward., ideally the way it works, at least for me, is that what's happening interiorly finds a way out into the world, you know, that is generative and then that feeds back and it's a loop. But when it gets stuck kind of only inside, you know, to me, that's when we go from sort of like self-awareness to like self-obsession. Yeah, I think about this a lot. I mean, I hold it with a sense of compassion

towards myself and others that, you know, it is a time in the life of the world where a lot of times we're just trying to hold it together, right? And I think that spiritual teachings and gifts and practices and certainly meditation, there's a lot on offer and it's a great gift. But when we're in this kind of survival mode, what we imbibe is really a diminishment of how those gifts really, right, the context in which those gifts appear and the fullness of what they're meant to bring, which is not just about holding it all together inside yourself. I like that rephrasing, saying it's sort of narcissistic is a little bit of a harsh way to phrase the idea. Yeah, and there's a spectrum. And I think there's an idea that spiritual practices will have the range of human possibility as well, right? And just because you pray doesn't mean that you are a moral person. And just because you meditate doesn't mean that you are not a great narcissist, right?

These are not silver bullets. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer.

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Looking at the number of scandals you see in spiritual communities is a clue to that last one. I've noticed that tendency in myself, right, which is that it becomes just this interior focus. And for me, that tends to be a place where when that goes too far, I find myself in trouble. place where when that goes too far, I find myself in trouble because as a recovering alcoholic, I mean, one of the very first lessons was it's by helping others that you stay sober, you know? And so let's move on from there to a topic that if you'd asked me two weeks ago, I would have said, I don't see this showing up on my agenda to discuss with Krista, which is AI. And the reason is because you said something about it that in typical fashion, you really sort of just arrested my attention. And you said the bedrock fact lost in all the spectacle and speculation is that what we are marveling at when we marvel at chat GPT is ourselves. It is a student of a mirror on all the kinds of

intelligence we possess, good, bad, and ugly, and all the ways we interact. And that is a fascinating way to sort of think about it. Yeah. You know, I was fortunate and this wasn't very long ago, because I mean, we all know now that there have been places and people that were working on this, but I think it kind of really burst into public view very suddenly for most of us. And I was very fortunate in those weeks when this was unleashed to be with some people from the tech industry who kind of just helped me understand at a really basic level what this is. And then I have found that to be lacking. I mean, there's so much to pull apart and react to. And on some level, I'm not saying that I understand it, right? I mean, there's so much

that is incomprehensible now, even to the creators, which is one of the things that's fascinating and terrifying. But just understanding, as I did come to do, that this would not have been possible without the internet. This is about kind of unleashing, sure that artificial intelligence is not going to be what we call this, like five years or an hour. I'm so curious to be what we call this like five years or an hour i'm so curious to see what we come up with but it's basically about computers robots whatever you want to call it artificial intelligence like being able to take in the fullness of human communication and knowledge and interaction as it has become represented on this bizarre canvas that is the internet. And then kind of giving that back to us. But what AI can do that we can't do is that we all

function in our silos of our passions, our knowledge, our worlds, right? You and I know about a lot about some things and absolutely nothing about others. What the AI can do, I mean, it's just looking at us. It's looking at human intelligence. It's drawing on human intelligence, but it's able to see all of it at once. So it can work with all of these different ways of knowing and things that we know and ways that that is communicated and different ways that human beings relate to it. And it's able to take it out of all those boxes and see it all together. So, you know, it is an incredible testament to the brilliance of humanity just as the

invention of these, you know, these, I don't know, like, are they devices? I don't know. Or these software devices, whatever it is, is also a testament to human brilliance. What that does is it invites us, I mean, it forces us on some level, but I prefer to say it invites us to get really curious about, precisely about this question of what it means to be human and what intelligence means to us and how we wish to deploy it. You know, you and I were talking about questions a minute ago, and it's very clear to me that the quality of what comes back from AI is absolutely joined with the quality of the questions that are being asked of it and what is being asked of it. And this ability to formulate a question is a human

superpower. And I do think that these technologies kind of invite us to step up to that in a new way. It's really astounding the quality of the question you ask depending on what you get back. I mean, it is such a almost real-time mirror of that in a way that is even beyond what we see when we ask each other questions, because the results range from straight out insane, depending on how you answer the question, to very ordinary and vanilla, to mind-blowingly, I hesitate to use the word profound, but maybe that is the right word. But I love the idea that you share there of if we step back from the fear and the utility and the, I would say, certain degree of, you know, maybe greed that can come around it. When we step back away from those sort of normal human

things and we just look, you know, my overall feeling is just one of astonishment, is just like, holy mackerel, how on earth did we build something like this? Because we did build it. Now I know that its ability to teach itself is part of what causes it to sort of outstrip what we're able to think about. But it also brought me back to a line from your contemplative reading with James Breidel, where they say, what if the meaning of AI is not to be found in the way it competes, supersedes, or supplants us? What if, like the emergence of network theory, its purpose is to open our eyes and minds to the reality of intelligence as doable in all kinds of fantastic ways, many of them beyond our own rational understanding? that this is something really powerful that's been kind of unleashed on the world that we can't be naive about and that we have to be responsible stewards of. But I don't think there's anything

naive about also naming what is astonishing. And, you know, to use that word generative, like what it is inviting us to see and to do that is generative, that can actually, you know, I don't think improve is a big enough word that can actually bring us to a different level of our different types of intelligence. Because I mean, one of my favorite sort of like mind games to play in my own brain is like trying to imagine like what sort of intelligence might an octopus have. Now, I know I can't do it, right? But it's a fascinating way of thinking about the world and recognizing that it has intelligences that are so far beyond mine. And I think that's the idea of, you know, some of the very interesting is too bland a word aspects of AI is that it may discover and be able to convey types of intelligences that we don't have. And that can be very scary, but could also be very beautiful. Yeah. I mean, in the moments in which you can set aside what is terrifying if you think too

hard about it. The existential terror. It's absolutely fascinating. I think we get to allow ourselves in moments to be in wonder. Yes. Yes. I think that's a beautiful way to think about it. If we go back to the generative narrative of our time, right? AI is a part of the narrative of our time. Yeah. I have to actually say, you know, they're calling it generative AI, and I'm a little bit annoyed by that because I really think this word generative is important. And I always hate it when words get this word generative is important and I always hate it when words get captured in a context that actually, you know, really constrains them. I know what the distinction is that's being made with generative, but yeah, I'm a little dismayed by that. Yep. Yep. Personally.

Have you checked to see whether you have that term trademarked? Even if they don't, I'm sure they'll be able to buy it. Yeah. Yeah. they have deeper pockets we're nearing the end of our time but i spent a fair amount of time in your most recent book which is still i mean at this point what seven years old yeah becoming wise yeah something like that i loved it and there's a term in there that you use, and I wanted to bring it forth because it's a term I happen to also like and think about, and that term is virtue. Say a little bit about what that word means to you and why it feels important. Well, you know, it's other language for talking about the wolves, right? It's other language for these capacities that we have and practical capacities that we

have to rise to our highest humanity, to be good human beings, to lead lives that are worthy and I think also pleasurable. And virtues are, you know, there's a philosophical tradition of virtues. And I think that virtues are what our spiritual traditions have these spiritual technologies to cultivate. I think that virtues, you know, to be kind, to be generous, to be compassionate, to forgive, I don't know, all the ways that we kind of, again, rise to our best of our humanity, they don't always come naturally. They're not always the reflexive move, but they're things we can practice. They're actually muscles we can flex. And the spiritual traditions have all this sophistication about that. And it happens through

ritual and it happens through wise community and it happens through teachings. And then I'm just so fascinated that neuroscience has come along not that long ago and, you know, shown that what we practice we become. And that's also true for just deciding to act like a compassionate person and becoming a more compassionate person. And to me, that's really just a beautiful discovery and so emboldening. Because I think at least in modernity, there's been this kind of idea that, you know, these are qualities you're born with or not. You know, I'm that kind of person or they're that kind of person. And I'm not like that. And the truth is, we can decide what we'll be like, and we can become that. And these are better ways to live. And that's why there's so much tradition and thought

and reflection and traditions of cultivation around them. But it's kind of an old-fashioned word, having said that. But I kind of like it for that reason, too. Yeah, it is an old-fashioned word, but I tend to like it also. And I think when we take it in this phrase that you use, which is moral imagination, something that's different than moral perfection, I think that shines a light on them in a slightly, slightly different way that perhaps can move. Although the fact that we're using the word moral there is going to make some people again, sort of be like, whoa, hold on. But I think those words are still really useful because they speak to something important. Yeah. And I think moral imagination for me is language that I feel for me and for a lot of people kind of helps open it up

again. It's not moralizing, you know, it is expansive and it is creative and it is about being centered and grounded and tethered and choosing where we're centered and grounded and tethered. But, you know, it honors the life of the mind and it is creative. There's a virtue, you don't name it exactly, but I would say it sort of sums you up to a large degree. And I'm just going to read a couple sentences you wrote and then I'll trot out the potential word, right? But you're talking about growing older. And you say, as I watched my children move through the primal metamorphosis of adolescence, I made a decision to be fascinated rather than terrified. I'm trying to impose the same discipline on my reaction to myself on this end of agents metamorphosis. And I think the

virtue there, which shows up, and I think, you know, it shows up in the same way we were just talking about AI, right? Which is to be fascinated rather than terrified is maybe this is oversimplifying it, but a deep curiosity. Yes. Yeah, I guess that's right. Yeah. There's hardly anything in human life that is more powerful or more possibility opening than curiosity. is more powerful or more possibility opening than curiosity. And it's something that we, you know, we're basically equipped to be, but it's also something that, you know, again, very kind of stealthily is trained out of us. And so it's something that's so natural and so

powerful, but we have to relearn it. We have to actively seek it out. And it is liberating. And it opens all kinds of space for us to keep growing. Well, I think that is a beautiful place for us to wrap up. Krista, thank you so much for coming back on. I always enjoy talking with you. And I obviously love your podcast and your newsletter. And it's just always a pleasure to interact with you and your mind. So with you. And I obviously love your podcast and your newsletter. And it's just always

a pleasure to interact with you and your mind. So thank you. Thank you so much, Eric. I really appreciate it. And I'm your fan as well. And I'm really honored to do this again. And I'm always cheering you on. Thank you so much. Blessings. Yes. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast. When you join our membership community with this monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members-only benefits. It's our way of saying thank you for your support. Now, we are so grateful for the members of our community. We wouldn't be able to do what we do without their support, and we don't take a single dollar for granted. To learn more, make a donation at any level, and become a member of the One You Feed community, go to oneyoufeed.net slash join.

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