[Extended] Clint Smith with Krista Tippett @onbeing

Uploaded November 2023 | Updated September 2026, 1 hour ago

This phrase recurs throughout Clint Smith's writing: "in the marrow of our bones." It is an example of how words can hold encrypted wisdom — in this case, the reality that memory and emotion lodge in us physically. Words and phrases have carried this truth forward in time long before we had the science to understand it.

Clint Smith is best known for his 2021 book, How the Word Is Passed (@LittlebrownandCo) but he is first and foremost a poet. He and Krista discuss how his various life chapters have been real-world laboratories for him to investigate the entanglement between language and the intelligence of the body — and the related entanglement between history and place. His poetic sensibility has singularly opened readers to approach a generative reckoning with American history — on whatever side of that history our ancestors stood.

Clint Smith has a way of making reckoning possible at a humanizing, softening, bodily level — in the marrow, you might say, of our bones.

This interview is extended and uses autogenerated closed captioning. You can find the edited and produced interview with music and full closed captioning in the On Being episode "Clint Smith — What We Know in the 'Marrow of Our Bones'." Listen here: youtu.be/PmD9Stf2EY8

Animation by: Neon Zoo, @weareneonzoo

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[Extended] Clint Smith with Krista Tippett

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