Krista Tippett (
née Weedman; born November 9, 1960)[1][2] is an American journalist, author, and entrepreneur. She created and hosts the public radio program and podcast On Being. In 2014, Tippett was awarded the
National Humanities Medal by U.S. President
Barack Obama.[3]
Career
Study and work abroad
After graduating from
Brown in 1983, Tippett was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to study at
University of Bonn in
West Germany.[4] There she worked in The New York Times bureau in Bonn.[5] She wrote about her experiences in
Rostock in "They Just Say 'Over There'" published by Die Zeit.[6] In 1984, she became a
stringer for The New York Times in divided Berlin, where she established herself as a freelance foreign correspondent. She reported and wrote for The Times, Newsweek, the
BBC, the International Herald Tribune, and Die Zeit.[7]
In 1986, Tippett became a special political assistant to the senior United States diplomat in West Berlin,
John C. Kornblum.[citation needed] The next year she became chief aide in Berlin to the U.S. ambassador to West Germany,
Richard Burt. She has written that moral questions arising from that experience of seeing "high power, up close" eventually led to the spiritual, philosophical, and theological curiosities that have defined her work since.[8]
Tippett proposed a show about religion to Minnesota Public Radio in the late 1990s. The radio program became a monthly series in 2001 and a weekly national program distributed by
American Public Media in 2003. In 2013, Tippett left American Public Media to co-found the non-profit production company, Krista Tippett Public Productions, which she described as "a social enterprise with a radio show at its heart."[4][10] Tippett is also the co-creator and convener of the Civil Conversations Project, which she has described as "an emergent approach to healing our fractured civic spaces."[11]
Interview style
"The Tippett style," as described by the New York Times, "represents a fusion of all her parts—the child of small-town church comfortable in the pews; the product of Yale Divinity School able to parse text in Greek and theology in German; and, perhaps most of all, the diplomat seeking to resolve social divisions."[12]
Awards
In July 2014, Tippett was awarded the 2013
National Humanities Medal at the White House for "thoughtfully delving into the mysteries of human existence." She received a
George Foster Peabody Award in 2008, for "The Ecstatic Faith of Rumi,"and three
Webby awards for excellence in electronic media.[13] Her book, Einstein's God (2010), was a New York Times bestseller.[10]
Personal life
Tippett grew up in
Shawnee, Oklahoma.[14] She studied history at
Brown University, and spent a year in Bonn, West Germany in 1983 on a Fulbright scholarship.[15] She has two children and is divorced.[16]
Quotations
"Anger is often what pain looks like when it shows itself in public."[17]
"I can disagree with your opinion, it turns out," she says, "but I can't disagree with your experience."[17]
Works
Speaking of Faith: Why Religion Matters—and How to Talk About It (Penguin, January 29, 2008)
Einstein's God: Conversations About Science and the Human Spirit (Penguin, February 23, 2010)
On Being (radio program and
podcast, formerly Speaking of Faith)