"Cynicism is actually the laziest stance you could take. If you choose it over hope, you don’t have to lift a finger to make anything better."

In her book Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living, broadcaster Krista Tippett collates insights from years of interviews from her award-winning radio show and podcast, On Being. Through dialogue with scientists, theologians, activists and poets, Tippett takes a broad view of the human condition—one more nuanced than that composed of facts and rationality alone.

Your book distills insights from your conversations with people from various walks of life. Why have you presented these under the banner of wisdom, rather than, say, knowledge? We’ve reached a moment where we’ve realized the limits of focusing on knowledge and rationality alone. We’re more complicated than data can address and that has brought us back to the fact that in order to advance, we have t...