Uploaded September 2019 | Updated September 2026, 22 minutes ago
The idea of reciting an unchanging creed sounds suspicious to modern ears. But the late, great historian Jaroslav Pelikan illuminated ancient tradition in order to enliven faith in the present and the future. He insisted that strong statements of belief will be necessary if pluralism in the 21st century is to thrive. We take in his moving, provocative perspective on our enduring need for creeds. (Original Air Date: September 19, 2003)
About the Guest:
Jaroslav Pelikan was professor of history at Yale University for four decades. He authored many books “Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine” and “Credo.”
Visit our website to read the transcript, download the episode, or listen to the unedited interview: onbeing.org/programs/jaroslav-pelikan-the-need-for-creeds
Visit our On Being Classics Library, where this episode is featured: onbeing.org/libraries/classics
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The idea of reciting an unchanging creed sounds suspicious to modern ears. But the late, great historian Jaroslav Pelikan illuminated ancient tradition in order to enliven faith in the present and the future. He insisted that strong statements of belief will be necessary if pluralism in the 21st century is to thrive. We take in his moving, provocative perspective on our enduring need for creeds. (Original Air Date: September 19, 2003)
About the Guest:
Jaroslav Pelikan was professor of history at Yale University for four decades. He authored many books “Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine” and “Credo.”
Visit our website to read the transcript, download the episode, or listen to the unedited interview: onbeing.org/programs/jaroslav-pelikan-the-need-for-creeds
Visit our On Being Classics Library, where this episode is featured: onbeing.org/libraries/classics
STAY IN TOUCH
Facebook: facebook.com/onbeing
Twitter: twitter.com/onbeing
Instagram: instagram.com/onbeing
Newsletter: onbeing.org/newsletter
OUR PODCASTS
On Being with Krista Tippett: onbeing.org/series/podcast
This Movie Changed Me: onbeing.org/series/this-movie-changed-me
Becoming Wise: onbeing.org/series/becoming-wise
![[Unedited] Latanya Sweeney with Krista Tippett](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Y9exAbF0wVY/mqdefault.jpg "[Unedited] Latanya Sweeney with Krista Tippett
You may not know Latanya Sweeneys name, but as much as any other single person — and with good humor and grace as well as brilliance — she has led on the frontier of our gradual understanding of how far from anonymous you and I are in almost any database we inhabit, and how far from neutral all the algorithms by which we increasingly navigate our lives.
In this conversation with Krista, she brings a helpful big-picture view to our lives with technology, seeing how far weve come — and not — since the advent of the internet, and setting that in the context of history both industrial and digital. She insists that we dont have to accept the harms of digital technology in order to reap its benefits — and she sees very clearly the work that will take. From where she sits, the new generative AI is in equal measure an exciting and alarming evolution. And she shares with us the questions she is asking, and how she and her students and the emerging field of Public Interest Technology might help us all make sense.
This is the second in what will be an ongoing occasional On Being episode to delve into and accompany our lives with this new technological revolution — training clear eyes on downsides and dangers while cultivating an attention to how we might elevate the new frontier of AI — and how, in fact, it might invite us more deeply into our humanity.
This interview is unedited and uses autogenerated closed captioning. You can find the edited and produced interview with music and full closed captioning in the On Being episode Latanya Sweeney — On Shaping Technology to Human Purpose. Listen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2W96Pt7OXc
Animation by: Neon Zoo, @weareneonzoo
ABOUT THE ON BEING PROJECT
An adventure in the mystery and the art of living
A home for shaping your presence in a tender, tumultuous world
A companion to the pleasure in thinking deeply with others
A calling to be part of the generative story of our time
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Twenty years of culture-shifting classics: Mary Oliver, Desmond Tutu, Thich Nhat Hanh, and many many more. We can be found in ears, and in conversations that matter, around the world.
On Being with Krista Tippett: https://onbeing.org/series/podcast/
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![[Extended] Clint Smith with Krista Tippett](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Z7cZhPLk09k/mqdefault.jpg "[Extended] Clint Smith with Krista Tippett
This phrase recurs throughout Clint Smiths 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: https://youtu.be/PmD9Stf2EY8
Animation by: Neon Zoo, @weareneonzoo
ABOUT THE ON BEING PROJECT
An adventure in the mystery and the art of living
A home for shaping your presence in a tender, tumultuous world
A companion to the pleasure in thinking deeply with others
A calling to be part of the generative story of our time
THE PODCAST
Twenty years of culture-shifting classics: Mary Oliver, Desmond Tutu, Thich Nhat Hanh, and many many more. We can be found in ears, and in conversations that matter, around the world.
On Being with Krista Tippett: https://onbeing.org/series/podcast/
STAY CONNECTED
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/onbeing/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/onbeing
The Pause Saturday email newsletter: https://onbeing.org/newsletter/")
