Explore every episode of the podcast The Creative Process · Arts, Culture & Society: Books, Film, Music, TV, Art, Writing, Creativity, Education, Environment, Theatre, Dance, LGBTQ, Climate Change, Social Justice, Spirituality, Feminism, Tech, Sustainability

My guest today is Ada Limón. She served two historic terms as the 24th poet laureate in the United States. She has brought poetry to public parks across the US, and her words have traveled through deep space, engraved on NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft. In over 20 years of writing in celebrated collections like Bright Dead Things and The Carrying and her new book, Startlement: New and Selected Poems, Ada has brought a sincerity to American poetry rooted in connection to the natural world.

She’s written with inspiring honesty about the death of loved ones, trying to conceive and also the unexpected liberation of deciding to step away from societal expectations of motherhood and embrace a life happily childfree. Her latest book on craft, Against Breaking: On the Power of Poetry, asks how a poem can hold our heaviest grief without letting the human spirit fracture.

After years living in Kentucky and New York, she bought back her childhood home in Sonoma Valley, stepping back into the rooms where her poetic imagination first took root. We’ll talk about the discipline of paying attention and why poetry remains an essential act of human survival.

(1:45) Silence as the Music of the World

(9:17) The Deepening of Roots

(13:19) 'On Earth As It Is on Earth'

(18:08) Bearing Witness Without Surrendering to Grief

(21:02) Singing Back the Wounded World and the Case for Beauty

(28:22) Love as an Active Daily Choice

(30:38) The Practice of Loving-Kindness Meditation

(37:34) Writing Without Music, Listening to the Landscape

(40:04) Dreams as Archetypes of Consciousness

(42:51) The Creative Toll of AI

(51:29) Embracing the Liberation of a Childfree Life

(1:01:06) Listening to Trees as an Act of Reciprocity

(1:06:44) Interconnectedness of Living Beings

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

“It’s always very interesting that we have to make a case for art because we don’t have to make a case for fast food. Like, we don’t have to make a case for all of these sort of things in our lives that we do not need, and yet we have to make a case for beauty? We have to make a case for the soul? We have to make a case for humanity? We have to make a case for singing back the wounded world? That to me is fascinating”

My guest today is Ada Limón. She served two historic terms as the 24th poet laureate in the United States. She has brought poetry to public parks across the US, and her words have traveled through deep space, engraved on NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft. In over 20 years of writing in celebrated collections like Bright Dead Thingsand The Carryingand her new book, Startlement: New and Selected Poems, Ada has brought a sincerity to American poetry rooted in connection to the natural world.

She’s written with inspiring honesty about the death of loved ones, trying to conceive and also the unexpected liberation of deciding to step away from societal expectations of motherhood and embrace a life happily childfree. Her latest book on craft, Against Breaking: On the Power of Poetry, asks how a poem can hold our heaviest grief without letting the human spirit fracture.

After years living in Kentucky and New York, she bought back her childhood home in Sonoma Valley, stepping back into the rooms where her poetic imagination first took root. We’ll talk about the discipline of paying attention and why poetry remains an essential act of human survival.

(0:03) The Case for Beauty  

(0:39) About Ada Limón

(2:44) The Deepening of Roots

(5:01) Reading 'On Earth As It Is on Earth'

(6:08) Bearing Witness Without Surrendering to Grief

(7:50) The Definition of Beauty and the Dissolving Self

(9:41) Love as an Active Daily Choice

(11:11) The Practice of Loving-Kindness Meditation

(13:28) Reading 'Hell or High Water'

(17:01) Writing Without Music and Listening to the Landscape

(19:08) Dreams as Archetypes of Consciousness

(21:34) The Environmental and Creative Toll of Generative AI

(24:02) AI and the Future of the Arts

(25:21) Stewardship, Conservation, and Faith in the Invisible Workers

(28:14) The Childfree Daughter

(29:57) Listening to Trees as an Act of Reciprocity

(32:40) The Music of the World

(34:03) The Seed of Interconnectedness

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

“Lincoln Center is multiple stages. I think probably over three dozen stages across 16 acres. It is a vast canvas in and of itself. And then we have this beautiful plaza that leads to this beautiful campus, and that’s the visual I think that most people have when they think of Lincoln Center is this beautiful fountain in the center and these three gorgeous buildings.It’s New York’s biggest plaza, and it feels very vibrant and beautiful. In the summer, we really take that plaza and we transform it into a dance floor. So this idea of also interrupting what people’s notion of Lincoln Center is because it’s a space that is very aspirational, which is a great thing.”

Shanta Thake is the Chief Artistic Officer at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts—the nation's largest performing arts complex. Before stepping into this role, she spent nineteen years at The Public Theater, shaping the city's cultural landscape through Joe's Pub and expansive community initiatives. Today, she is tearing down walls—both the literal barriers separating Lincoln Center from its neighbors, and the figurative ones that dictate who belongs in our cultural spaces. She views the arts not as a luxury, but as essential civic infrastructure. We are pleased to have Shanta Thake to discuss her journey, the power of radical curation, and the future of public performance.

(0:00) Reimagining Lincoln Center

(2:27) Art and the Human Experience

(4:40) The Curiosity of Childhood

(5:44) Alvin Ailey and the Pivot

(8:29) The Invisible Arts

(9:06) The Power of Public Theater

(17:03) Curation, Programming and the Art of Listening

(23:42) San Juan Hill and The Wall

(31:23) Art as the Oldest Technology

(35:02) globalFEST: Music and Connection

(38:20) Finding Universal Belonging

(41:20) The Gift of Pause

(54:27) A Collective Caretaking

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

"I really do believe that the arts are critical to how we move forward together, and live performance in particular, I think, is a way of us practicing how to move across our ideological boundaries and find one another and imagine these new worlds together and create together."

Shanta Thake is the Chief Artistic Officer at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts—the nation's largest performing arts complex. Before stepping into this role, she spent nineteen years at The Public Theater, shaping the city's cultural landscape through Joe's Pub and expansive community initiatives. Today, she is tearing down walls—both the literal barriers separating Lincoln Center from its neighbors, and the figurative ones that dictate who belongs in our cultural spaces. She views the arts not as a luxury, but as essential civic infrastructure. We are pleased to have Shanta Thake to discuss her journey, the power of radical curation, and the future of public performance.

"I really do believe that the arts are critical to how we move forward together, and live performance in particular, I think, is a way of us practicing how to move across our ideological boundaries and find one another and imagine these new worlds together and create together."

Shanta Thake is the Chief Artistic Officer at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts—the nation's largest performing arts complex. Before stepping into this role, she spent sixteen years at The Public Theater, shaping the city's cultural landscape through Joe's Pub and expansive community initiatives. Today, she is tearing down walls—both the literal barriers separating Lincoln Center from its neighbors, and the figurative ones that dictate who belongs in our cultural spaces. She views the arts not as a luxury, but as essential civic infrastructure. We are pleased to have Shanta Thake to discuss her journey, the power of radical curation, and the future of public performance.

(00:00) Reimagining Lincoln Center

(03:09) A Collective Caretaking

(03:47) The Technology of Human Creation

(04:20) The Curiosity of Childhood

(09:25) San Juan Hill and The Wall

(14:20) globalFEST: Music and Connection

(16:06) The Gift of Pause

(17:20) A Collective Caretaking

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

“We are in the middle of a labyrinth which suggests to us many fake corridors. What's the superpower of literature? Literature is like an antidote against propaganda. Propaganda explains the world easily in a two-dimensional way.  Literature gives you a more complex explanation. Literature tells personal stories.”

Today, we have a conversation about time, memory, and the bittersweet geography of human sorrow. Georgi Gospodinov is widely considered one of the most daring voices in contemporary European literature. His acclaimed novel, The Physics of Sorrow, won the prestigious Jan Michalski Prize in 2016, blending ancient myth and quantum physics to chronicle the delicate realities of post-socialist Eastern Europe. Joining him is Angela Rodel, a brilliant linguist, musician, and translator whose profound artistic empathy carries the flowing cadences of the Bulgarian language into vivid English. Together, this extraordinary creative duo made history by winning the 2023 International Booker Prize for Time Shelter—the first book written in Bulgarian to ever receive the honor.

Time Shelter is a masterfully dark, funny, and prescient novel. It begins with an enigmatic psychiatrist opening a clinic that treats Alzheimer’s patients by meticulously recreating past decades to match their internal clocks. But the experiment quickly escapes the clinic walls, triggering a pan-European crisis where entire nations hold democratic referendums to choose which era of the past they will retreat into. It is a book that holds up a mirror to our own world, exploring what happens when a civilization faces a deficit of meaning and tries to weaponize nostalgia.

(0:00) The Trap of Nostalgia

(2:13) The Art of Translation

(5:44) The Pandemic of the Past

(11:30) Reading from ‘Time Shelter’

(14:28) Death and the Gardener

(19:34) The Translator's Calling

(26:05) Cultural Rhythms of the Bulgarian Language

(30:00) The Nonlinear Approach to Storytelling

(34:30) Separating Personal and Historical Pasts

(42:55) Storytelling vs Propaganda

(47:19) Bodies, Animals and the Loneliness of the Minotaur

(56:00) Reading ' Eight Minutes and 19 Seconds’

(1:00:28) What makes a good life? What has given your life meaning?

(1:04:18)   Childhood, Memory and Imagination

(1:10:38) Reflections on God and the Stories His Grandmother Told Him

(1:17:20) Education and the Empathic Imagination

(1:23:25) The Museum of Memory

(1:26:15) The Importance of Hugging and Empathy

(1:28:02) AI and the Future of Humanity

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

Today, we have a conversation about time, memory, and the bittersweet geography of human sorrow. Georgi Gospodinovis widely considered one of the most daring voices in contemporary European literature. His acclaimed novel, The Physics of Sorrow, won the prestigious Jan Michalski Prize in 2016, blending ancient myth and quantum physics to chronicle the delicate realities of post-socialist Eastern Europe. Joining him is Angela Rodel, a brilliant linguist, musician, and translator whose profound artistic empathy carries the flowing cadences of the Bulgarian language into vivid English. Together, this extraordinary creative duo made history by winning the 2023 International Booker Prizefor Time Shelter—the first book written in Bulgarian to ever receive the honor.

Time Shelter is a masterfully dark, funny, and prescient novel. It begins with an enigmatic psychiatrist opening a clinic that treats Alzheimer’s patients by meticulously recreating past decades to match their internal clocks. But the experiment quickly escapes the clinic walls, triggering a pan-European crisis where entire nations hold democratic referendums to choose which era of the past they will retreat into. It is a book that holds up a mirror to our own world, exploring what happens when a civilization faces a deficit of meaning and tries to weaponize nostalgia.

(0:00) The Trap of Nostalgia

(1:22) The Nonlinear Approach to Storytelling

(3:53) Translating the Atmosphere

(4:31) The Pandemic of the Past

(6:37) Death and the Gardener

(9:49) The Translators Calling

(11:00) Slowing Down Time

(13:14) Storytelling vs Propaganda

(15:54) Translating the Atmosphere

(18:19) What makes a good life? What has given your life meaning?

(20:56) Reflections on God and the Stories His Grandmother Told Him

(23:43) The Importance of Hugging, Empathy and Storytelling

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

Our creative lives are shaped by those who come before us. But where does creativity come from? Today, we hear from voices across the arts and sciences. The visual artists exploring emotions through imagery: Eric Fischl, Donald Sultan, Anthony White, Lee Jaffe, and Gloria Pacis. Director Benh Zeitlin, cinematographer Chayse Irvin, and actor, director, and art historian Peter Weller discuss the beauty of small details hidden in the larger story.

We examine jazz and the improvised life with musician and artist Dickie Landry, and author Bruce Evan Barnhart. We speak with former NYTimes Magazine editor Adam Moss on how magazines help us understand and honor the urgency of events like 9/11, while sociologist Richard Sennett, writer Paul Levinson, and scientist Julio Ottino talk about the need for a nexus of creativity across disciplines to meet the challenges of our current moment.

(0:00) PETER WELLER (Actor, Director, Musician) Remembers Miles Davis

(3:08) CHAYSE IRVIN (Cinematographer, Blonde, BlacKkKlansman) On Imperfection

(4:30) LEE JAFFE (Artist, Writer) On Life with Bob Marley and Basquiat

(6:02) ERIC FISCHL (Artist)  To Create an Immediate Narrative,  You Need to Have Imbalance

(8:02) ADAM MOSS (Fmr. Editor New York Magazine)

(12:12) ANTHONY WHITE (Artist)

(13:54) DICKIE LANDRY (Musician, Artist) Art, Music and Rauschenberg

(16:47) BRUCE EVAN BARNHART (Author) Jazz and Improvisation

(18:05) BENH ZEITLIN (Director, Writer of Beasts of the Southern Wild) Freedom, Childhood, Films

(20:11) RICHARD SENNETT (Sociologist) Art Can Create or Destroy

(21:17) DONALD SULTAN (Artist)

(22:59) GLORIA PACIS (Artist) The Dance of Life

(24:17) PAUL LEVINSON (Writer)

(26:17) JULIO OTTINO (Scientist) The Nexus of Art, Tech, Science

For more, listen to their full interviews http://www.creativeprocess.info/pod

http://www.creativeprocess.info/interviews-featured/anth-role-artist

“In Paris, when these same people, who had friends who were their police, came to Paris and found themselves tear gassed and shot with LBDs and losing their eyes and feet, and coming back with red all down their faces and blood everywhere, and they began to understand that the violence is beyond legal. And so they began to understand what was happening in areas, what we might call the ghettos or the poor areas of Paris, where Black people or people of color were being harassed by the police.“

In 2018, hundreds of thousands of people in France showed up day after day, month after month, to protest the French government’s attacks on labor, on social benefits, and on the environment, among other things, including police violence. Anthropologist Ida Susser took part in these communal actions, interviewing a vast array of participants, who came from all walks of life, from political positions across the spectrum, and from many different regions and class identities. We learn how people formed common cause, organized unique social worlds, and how their struggles, defeats, and successes, can teach us critical lessons in making the a new, more just, world. In the spirit of communing, Ida Susser has made Yellow Vests a free download here.

Ida Susser, PHD is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the Graduate Center and Hunter College, CUNY. Her recent book The Yellow Vests and the Battle for Democracy: taking to the streets of Paris in the 21st Century(Routledge 2026) focuses on commoning movements and new visions. Her previous books include: Norman Street(Oxford, 2012) a study of working class opposition to cutbacks during the New York City fiscal crisis and the transition of Greenpoint-Williamsburg from a working class neighborhood to a gentrified enclave, andAIDS, Sex and Culture: Global Politics and Survival in Southern Africa (Wiley-Blackwell 2009), a history of the power of social movements to transform health.

(0:00) The Reality of Police Violence in Paris

(1:00) The Yellow Vests Movement

(3:00) The Erosion of French Labor Laws

(7:05) The Beginnings of the Diesel Tax Protest

(11:00) The Three Commons and Progressive Transformation

(16:26) Building a Concrete Utopia

(22:16) The Success of the Nuit Debout Commissions

(27:57) The Birth of Co-op Cycle

(29:34) Redefining Class in the Flexible Economy

(34:45) Building a Historical Bloc

(38:05) Making Knowledge Free and Open Access

Episode Website

www.palumbo-liu.com

https://speakingoutofplace.com

Bluesky @palumboliu.bsky.social

IG @speaking_out_of_place

 "I'm a believer in this technology. I believe that the cheaper it is, the more people will use it. So, even if we assume that models will get smaller for the same level of intelligence, the demand to actually have more compute is going to be enormous. And the reason why you want to have the compute close to you is not only in terms of performance. As a national security threat, I'm not saying this will happen, but it could happen that China or US or whoever decides to stop exporting compute to the rest of the world. If that happens today, Europe has zero AI at the scale of data the data center."

For over a decade, technology has promised to make life easier. Social media was meant to connect us, we were told smartphones would simplify our lives, and now artificial intelligence promises to lift even more daily burdens. Yet these advances also raise an important question: when do tools enhance human creativity, and when do they replace the very experiences that give life meaning? While AI holds immense promise, many people face challenges coping with current technological advancements that ‘redefine’ human communication, work, education, and democratic values. Today, we examine societal and cultural impacts of AI, identity, inclusion, governance, education, and community well-being. And are speaking with Nacho de Gregorio, author of TheWhiteBox, one of Medium's most-followed AI analysts, for a level-headed conversation about both the remarkable potential and the real limitations of AI.

(0:22) The hidden risks of the AI debt bubble

(0:55) Shadow borrowing and the data center boom

(3:12) The AI compute gap and national security

(5:40) Europe's missing infrastructure and tech sovereignty

(8:13) The Jevons paradox and the demand for compute

(10:25) Why open source AI is the best path forward

(12:31) The chess paradox and the future of human art

(12:53) Unmeasurable domains and future-proofing your career

(14:00) Tutoring and AI in education

(15:11) Navigating AI slop and the information ecosystem

(16:24) The Pleasure of Waiting vs. The Hustle

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

For over a decade, technology has promised to make life easier. Social media was meant to connect us, we were told smartphones would simplify our lives, and now artificial intelligence promises to lift even more daily burdens. Yet these advances also raise an important question: when do tools enhance human creativity, and when do they replace the very experiences that give life meaning? While AI holds immense promise, many people face challenges coping with current technological advancements that ‘redefine’ human communication, work, education, and democratic values. Today, we examine societal and cultural impacts of AI, identity, inclusion, governance, education, and community well-being. And are speaking with Nacho de Gregorio, author of TheWhiteBox, one of Medium's most-followed AI analysts, for a level-headed conversation about both the remarkable potential and the real limitations of AI.

(0:00) The AI compute gap and national security

(1:56) The hidden risks of the AI debt bubble

(4:40) Separating AI hype from job displacements

(12:38) Shadow borrowing and the data center boom

(17:19) Europe's missing infrastructure and tech sovereignty

(21:52) The Jevons paradox and the demand for compute

(26:37) Regulatory capture and doomerism

(31:12) Why open source AI is the best path forward

(42:19) The chess paradox and the future of human art

(46:35) Unmeasurable domains and future-proofing your career

(53:45) Tutoring and AI in education

(1:01:48) Navigating the AI slop and information ecosystem

(1:16:00) Finding beauty in the natural world

(1:20:18) The pleasure of waiting vs. the hustle

(1:35:01) Setting healthy boundaries with technology

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

“When we look at police brutality, when we look at violent conditions, you can't break a cycle of violence with more violence. And the prison is, if not the most profound and devastating state sanctioned and institutional expression of violence, it is a violence incubator.”

In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with Elizabeth Hinton and Elsa Julien Lora about their new book, Harm and Punishment: Incarcerated Writers on Violence and the US Prison. Along with two research assistants, Lora and Hinton pored over hundreds of essays by prisoners, found in the American Prison Writing Archive. They then selected and organized the essays found in this volume, offering illuminating introductions to each section.

Our discussion moves through many topics—the brutal, dehumanizing, and punitive nature of the prison system, the damage it does to lives both inside and outside prison, and the ways prisoners find to survive and offer each other support, despite being pitted against each other. At base, we consider how we, as a society, are “addicted to violence,” and why and how it is crucial to understand that violence can only produce more violence. These essays organically blend personal observations and stories with a deep understanding of the broad, systemic nature of violence.

(0:00) The violence incubator

(3:03) Harm and Punishment: Essay Collection

(4:18) Curating the American Prison Writing Archive

(8:29) A society addicted to violence

(13:00) A lack of cohesive theory

(15:23) Slow violence and medical neglect

(16:59) Childhood trauma and street corner refuges

(21:18) Rational responses to untenable conditions

(25:35) The picture of despair and heartache

(30:00) Razor wire, iron bars, and the slow boil

(32:47) Dancing in the penitentiary and moments of joy

(37:00) No one here gets out alive

(43:21) The logical response is abolition

(47:57) A silenced pedagogy for the future

Episode Website

www.palumbo-liu.com

https://speakingoutofplace.com

Bluesky @palumboliu.bsky.social

Instagram @speaking_out_of_place

If you live in a city, you’ve probably had that moment in the middle of the night. You hear a scratching in the walls, or you catch the glowing eyes of a raccoon peering out from a dumpster, and for a second, the concrete world feels a lot less 'controlled' than we like to pretend. We’ve been taught to think of cities as 'biological deserts'—places where nature goes to die. But my guest today, Dan Werb, says that’s a myth we tell ourselves to feel safe. Dan is an award-winning epidemiologist and a musician, and in his new book, Our Wild Familiars, he explores the 'synanthropes'—the wild creatures that aren't our pets, but aren't quite strangers either. They are the coyotes, the bats, and even the octopuses that are learning to use our cities as laboratories for their own rapid evolution. He’s also the author of The Invisible Siege and City of Omens.

(0:02) The unexpected biodiversity of urban areas and wild familiars

(1:18) What is a Synanthrope?

(4:15) The Myth of the Biological Desert

(8:04) The Ancestral Bond between early humans, ravens, and foxes

(9:15) Crows and Grudges

(12:42) Stepping Stones in the Concrete

(14:20) The Epidemiological Triangle

(17:58) The Illusion of AI Connection

(19:56) The Museum of Memory

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

"So synanthropes are animals that have adapted to human-modified environments, and the Greek translation essentially is together with humans, so synanthrope. And they're a fascinating subset of wild animals that they're all around us, but we don't really notice them. And so in this new book, I was excited about writing something that had to do with the natural world. I was excited about writing something that touched on climate change. These are not just insects and earthworms and things like that. These are very large predators that have nevertheless found a way to survive among us. And that in and of itself I think is just an amazing story and what I explore in this book."

If you live in a city, you’ve probably had that moment in the middle of the night. You hear a scratching in the walls, or you catch the glowing eyes of a raccoon peering out from a dumpster, and for a second, the concrete world feels a lot less 'controlled' than we like to pretend. We’ve been taught to think of cities as 'biological deserts'—places where nature goes to die. But my guest today, Dan Werb, says that’s a myth we tell ourselves to feel safe. Dan is an award-winning epidemiologist and a musician, and in his new book, Our Wild Familiars, he explores the 'synanthropes'—the wild creatures that aren't our pets, but aren't quite strangers either. They are the coyotes, the bats, and even the octopuses that are learning to use our cities as laboratories for their own rapid evolution. He’s also the author of The Invisible Siege and City of Omens.

(0:02) The unexpected biodiversity of urban areas and wild familiars

(2:32) What are synanthropes?

(6:04) Why cities are becoming magnets for wildlife and natural biodiversity

(14:32) How our discarded garbage acts as a reliable nutrition source

(18:01) The raccoon city and highly adaptable urban mesopredators

(21:49) Redesigning cities as crucial sites for wildlife conservation and containerisation

(26:31) The impact of highways on mountain lion migration in Los Angeles

(31:03) The ancestral spiritual bond between early humans, ravens, and foxes

(38:24) Facial recognition, grudges, and the intense intelligence of urban crows

(42:40) Discovering giant Pacific octopuses living in discarded garbage near Seattle

(49:04) How translucent boardwalks helped save baby salmon afraid of the dark

(52:42) Building green corridors and ecological stepping stones in the concrete

(1:01:07) Cultural shifts in pods of orcas sinking boats off the Iberian coast

(1:05:23) Social epidemiology, vulnerable populations, and insights from City of Omens

(1:08:29) The epidemiological triangle and the environmental causes of novel viruses

(1:16:08) The rhythm shift required to observe wild animals in urban spaces

(1:25:26) Why we need more cosmological humility when studying animal biology

(1:31:06) The illusion of AI connection and why engaging with nature expands the mind

(1:34:46) Memories, Laughter, and Animal Connection

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

It is an ordinary human impulse to find a reflection of ourselves in the machines we build. But what happens when the lifeless begins to talk back, to paint, to compose and to simulate our emotions? How do we hold on to what makes us human? Today we hear from philosophers and writers Siri Hustvedt, C. Thi Nguyen, and Bayo Akomolafe on the myth of machine consciousness. Artist Jonathan Yeo, playwright and screenwriter Laura Eason, composer Max Richter, and photographer Ralph Gibson discuss why the struggle of the creative process cannot be outsourced. They are joined by actress Catherine Curtin, neuroscientist Liad Mudrik, tech journalist Jacob Ward, and museum director Chris Dercon, who examine the power of imperfection, imagination, intuition, and how to avoid getting lost in the machine.

(0:00) Siri Hustvedt (Author of Ghost Stories, What I Loved) (4:07) Jonathan Yeo (Portrait Artist) (5:08) Catherine Curtin (Actress, Orange is the New Black, Stranger Things) (8:49) C. Thi Nguyen (Philosopher, Author of The Score) (10:35) Bayo Akomolafe (Philosopher, Writer, Founder of The Emergence Network) (13:41) Chris Dercon (Museum Director, Fondation Cartier) (17:58) Laura Eason (Playwright, Screenwriter, Three Women, House of Cards) (20:58) Max Richter (Composer, Pianist, SLEEP, Hamnet) (23:44) Jacob Ward (Tech Journalist, Author, The Loop: How Technology is Creating a World Without Choices) (28:19) Liad Mudrik (Neuroscientist, Professor, Tel Aviv University) (29:04) Ralph Gibson (Photographer)

To hear more from each guest, listen to their full interviews.

Episode Site

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

“Imagining with precision is a very fundamental part of my work. When I sit down to write about anything, whether it be The Hungry Tide in the Sundarbans, or let's say The Shadow Lines, or Ghost-Eye. It's very important for me to get the topography right, to get the outlay of the streets or the house exactly right so I can actually picture all of that in my head. It's very important for me to have a sort of pictorial sense of what I'm seeing and what I'm writing about. Before I can write about it, I need to see it, as it were. So that's absolutely fundamental to my craft. That's just how I go about it. Like the Sufis say—behind the apparent reality is a hidden or batin reality. “

In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with Amitav Ghosh about his new novel, Ghost-Eye. The novel is about reincarnation, but also a lot more. In our conversation we talk about the need to address the terrible set of environmental and other crises we face, and the seeming foreclosure of the imagination by the obsession with technology and the future it offers to us. Instead, we look to how we can fashion beginnings out of endings, aided by a renewed sense of wonder, curiosity, and awe. We turn to the body, to the haptic, and perhaps most important, to food as more than simply nourishment. In all this, story-telling, the revival of connections between living beings, and a deep sense of other times and places are central.

(0:56) Planetary Crisis and Accelerating Disasters

(3:50) The Lasting Impact of The Hungry Tide

(5:00) Storytelling and the Existential Crisis

(8:26) Imagining with Precision in Literature

(12:46) The Denuded Human Existence and AI

(15:37) Artisanal Intelligence vs. Artificial Intelligence

(17:57) Food, Industrial Agriculture, and Memory

(21:16) Cultural Assimilation Through Cooking

(24:12) The Sociability and Joy of Cooking

(27:57) The Failure of the Humanities

(31:38) The Role of the Narrator

(35:27) Regaining Our Sense of Wonder

(37:04) Past Life Memories and Circular Temporality

Episode Website

www.palumbo-liu.com https://speakingoutofplace.com Bluesky @palumboliu.bsky.social Instagram @speaking_out_of_place

How much of our consciousness is shaped by our bodies? That rhythmical reality that Siri Hustvedt describes is something we often take for granted until it is disrupted by grief or illness. Much of what we consider the mind is happening in the body.

Today, we're looking at embodied cognition, the idea that we think with our limbs, our breath and our physical interactions with the world. We will hear from researchers and neuroscientists Anil Seth, David J. Linden, Dr. Guy Leschziner and Daisy Fancourt, who are studying how much touch, sleep and the arts physically alter our brains. We will also talk with philosophers, advocates and spiritual leaders Arash Abizadeh, Bayo Akomolafe, Master Shi Heng Yi and Helen Whybrow. To understand how this translates into art and movement, we are joined by author Siri Hustvedt, curator Marie Nipper, psychiatrist Robert Waldinger, dancer and ballet stager Noelani Pantastico and choreographer Sean Curran.

0:00) Siri Hustvedt (Author of Ghost Stories) (18:53) (2:22) Guy Leschziner (Neurologist, Author, The Nocturnal Brain) (3:45) Daisy Fancourt (Author, Art Cure: The Science of How the Arts Transform Our Health) (5:08) Helen Whybrow (Shepherd, Organic Farmer, Author of The Salt Stones) (6:28) Marie Nipper (Dir., Creator Projects, Fmr. Dir., ARKEN Museum of Modern Art) (8:16) Arash Abizadeh (Professor, Political Science, McGill University, Author) (9:04) David Linden (Professor, Neuroscience, Johns Hopkins University, Author of Unique, Touch) (11:16) Bayo Akomolafe (Philosopher, Founder, Emergence Network) (12:13) Master Shi Heng Yi (35th Generation of Shaolin Masters, Headmaster, Shaolin Temple Europe) (13:48) Anil Seth (Author of Being You: A New Science of Consciousness, Co-director, Sussex Centre for Consciousness Science) (15:41) Robert Waldinger (Psychiatrist, Harvard Study of Adult Development, Author, The Good Life) (16:40) Noelani Pantastico (Fmr. Principal Dancer, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Dance Teacher) (18:02) Sean Curran (Dancer, Dir, Sean Curran Company)

For more, listen to their full interviews

Episode Site https://www.creativeprocess.info/interviews-featured/anth-body

Today, we examine how we will adapt to a changing climate and learn to listen to the Earth.(0:00) Abrahm Lustgarten (Reporter, ProPublica) (3:00) Jon Gertner (Author, The Ice at the End of the World) (5:32) Bill Hare (CEO, Climate Analytics) (6:35) Rob Nixon (Prof. Environmental Humanities, Princeton) (8:12) Louis de Jaeger (Co-founder, Food Forest Institute) (10:06) Kathleen Rogers (Pres., EarthDay.org) (11:31) Rebecca Tickell (Filmmaker, Kiss the Ground) (13:42) Ben Goldfarb (Author, Crossings) (14:56) Jane Madgwick (CEO, Plantlife International) (19:23) Jason deCaires Taylor (Sculptor, Underwater Museums) (21:02) William McDonough (Architect, Cradle to Cradle) (23:19) Euan Nisbet (Scientist, Royal Holloway) (26:06) Roland Geyer (Author, The Business of Less) (28:15) Ron Gonen (CEO, Closed Loop Partners) (29:34) Paul Shrivastava (Co-President, Club of Rome) (30:14) Carlo Ratti (Architect, Dir., MIT Senseable City Lab) (31:24) Osprey Orielle Lake (Founder, WECAN) (32:38) Liza Featherstone (Journalist) (33:41) Yolanda Kakabadse (Fmr. President, WWF)

For more, listen to their full interviews

Episode Site: https://www.creativeprocess.info/interviews-featured/anth-regen

Today we explore the collapse of the journalism business model, the rise of spin dictators and how disinformation has become the new censorship. As empires struggle and media consolidates, the pursuit of truth remains an act of hope. We hear from foreign correspondents and journalists Nicholas Kristof, Abrahm Lustgarten, Michael Maren, Richard Black and Jacob Ward. They're joined by scholars and economists Jeffrey Rosen, Sergei Guriev, James Fishkin, Richard Wolff and Daniel Susskind. Writers Viet Thanh Nguyen, T.C. Boyle and Lee McIntyre, TV showrunners George Pelecanos and Debora Cahn and activists Dean Spade and Mike Davis explore language, authoritarianism and human conflict.

(0:00) Nicholas Kristof (Journalist, NYTimes) (3:03) Abrahm Lustgarten (ProPublica) (4:45) Lee McIntyre (Philosopher) (8:40) Richard Black (Fmr. BBC, Dir. of Policy, Ember) (7:40) Jacob Ward (Journalist) (10:50) Jeffrey Rosen (Journalist, Legal Scholar) (11:19) Sergei Guriev (Economist, Dean, LBS) James Fishkin (Dir., Stanford's Deliberative Democracy Lab) (14:14) Viet Thanh Nguyen (Author, The Sympathizer) (15:37) T.C. Boyle (Novelist, Blue Skies) (16:16) George Pelecanos (Writer/Co-creator, We Own This City, The Wire) (17:48) Dean Spade (Activist) (18:15) Debora Cahn (Creator, Netflix's The Diplomat) (18:51) Richard Wolff (Economist, Co-founder, Democracy at Work) (22:23) Daniel Susskind (Economist) (30:19) Mike Davis (CEO, Global Witness) (33:50) Michael Maren (Filmmaker, Fmr. Foreign Correspondent)

https://www.creativeprocess.info/interviews-featured/anth-journalism https://www.creativeprocess.info/pod

“I've discovered in my studies of creativity in general that creativity is not about starting with a brilliant idea and then following a linear path to an execution of your idea. What I see in art and design is a much more iterative, wandering, exploratory process where the ideas emerge from the act of engaging in the work.”

Dr. Keith Sawyer’s work focuses on creativity and human ingenuity. With over 20 books and a career that spans computer science, psychology, and the study of innovation, he has explored what it means to lead a creative life. Following his foundational research with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, his books include Explaining Creativity and Group Genius. In his latest book, Learning to See: Inside the World's Leading Art and Design Schools, he pulls back the curtain on how elite institutions cultivate the creative mind. He has been a jazz pianist for over 40 years. We will explore the evolution of his research, and what music and improvisation have taught him about life.

(0:00) The Non-Linear Process of Creativity

(3:12) Teaching Students to Find Their Own Aesthetic

(7:13) The Pressure to Replicate Success

(13:31) Guided Improvisation in Education

(16:46) Unlearning Rigid Perceptions

(22:52) Embodiment and the Material World

(25:27) Deep Listening and Jazz Improvisation

(27:09) Domain General vs. Domain Specific Creativity

(30:07) Architecture as an Exchange

(37:47) Learning from Nature: The Velcro Lesson

(42:54) Gen AI and Human Ingenuity

(44:42) The System of Improv

(1:01:08) The Value of Problem Finding

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

"What we need to do is learn from nature. If you think about how nature progresses through trial and error. I'm really a fan of how we can do open designs that citizens can respond to, and use the feedback in order to create similar systems to what happens in nature."

Our guest today is Carlo Ratti, an architect, engineer, and academic who is deeply engaged with the critical questions facing our planet and its urban spaces. He's known for his innovative work at MIT's Senseable City Lab, where he explores how digital technologies are transforming our cities and for his groundbreaking design projectsaround the world. Carlo Ratti's work has been called everything from sensory city philosophy to a driving force behind the world of design. And having recently tackled one of the biggest challenges of our time as a curator of the 19th International Architectural Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, the exhibition Intelligence, Natural, Artificial, Collective seeks to fundamentally rethink architecture's role in an altered world and rapidly changing climate.

(0:00) Learning From Nature's Trial and Error

(1:20) The Senseable City

(6:05) The Future Of Concrete and Circular Building

(9:02) Peak Population And The Century Of The City

(10:55) Transforming Architecture With Japanese Joinery and AI

(14:36) Curating the Venice Biennale As An Open Lab

(16:22) Blending The Natural And Artificial Through Data

(20:32) Breaking Down Silos and Staying Curious

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

Look closely at the screen in front of you. It is no longer just a passive device; it is actively shaping your perception. Today, we investigate the cognitive and ethical costs of offloading our reason to algorithms and ask what happens when our tools begin to train us? We explore the rise of surveillance capitalism with those documenting the shift—technologists Jaron Lanier, Henry Ajder, and Antonella Wilby. We hear from those fighting to preserve our essence and agency—philosophers Iain McGilchrist and C. Thi Nguyen, economist Jeffrey Sachs and ecologist Carl Safina. Grounding us in the power of expression, are artists and writers Trevor Paglen, April Gornik, Etgar Keret, and Hans Ulrich Obrist. In these original interviews for The Creative Process, our guests remind us that we must never surrender our messy, human reality to artificial perfection.

(0:00) Trevor Paglen (Artist) The cognitive cost of offloading our reasoning to AI (3:26)

(2:28) Jaron Lanier (Computer Scientist, VR Pioneer) The Turing Test and the degradation of humanity (14:30)

(5:42) Henry Ajder (AI & Deepfakes Expert) The unprecedented speed of generative AI

(8:48) Hans Ulrich Obrist (Artistic Director, Serpentine Galleries) The fight for net neutrality

(10:14) Antonella Wilby (Roboticist, NatGeo Explorer) Encoded biases, the danger of neutral tech

(11:50) C. Thi Nguyen (Philosopher, Author) Thin metrics and the truth about screen time

(13:09) Carl Safina (Ecologist, Author) Mechanization and human dignity

(15:17) Jeffrey Sachs (Economist, Center for Sustainable Development) Citizen responsibility (23:06)

(16:54) Etgar Keret (Writer, Filmmaker) Enslavement to the machine, outsourcing imagination

(19:07) April Gornik (Artist) The historical parallel between AI and nuclear weapons

(20:46) Iain McGilchrist (Psychiatrist, Author) Wisdom vs. utility in artificial intelligence

To hear more from each guest, listen to their full interviews here or http://www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Episode Website IG@creativeprocesspodcast

“ Musk interestingly has this way of excluding the majority of the population from consideration, what he variously calls non-playing characters or NPCs, which is a category from video games, or sometimes bots, vampires. And this is a much more stark version of insider and outsider group creation than even hierarchies of race because it takes this one step further by taking very seriously the idea that other people are not only not human, but they in some way don't even exist, which is the literal reading of Musk's adoption of Nick Bostrom's simulation theory, which is that most people are simply programmable parts of a simulation and only a small number of people are actual players.”

In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff about their new book, Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed. This is much more than a biography or popular account of Elon Musk, it is a radical analysis of a deeply disturbing, computational way of seeing the world. We see a mind that is profoundly troubled by any contagion spreading into seemingly closed systems—it can take the form of racial others, transpeople, “woke” populations, or most generally and dismissively, “Non-Player-Characters.” We talk about the dangers this mindset has on democracy and the public sphere, and argue that what we should do is to “embrace the woke-mind virus as a counter-revolutionary act.”

Quinn Slobodian is professor of international history at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University. His books include Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism, Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World without Democracy and Hayek’s Bastards: Race, Gold, IQ and the Capitalism of the Far Right. Slobodian is a Guggenheim Fellow. has been an associate fellow at Chatham House and held residential fellowships at Harvard University and Free University Berlin. Project Syndicate put him on a list of 30 Forward Thinkers and Prospect UK named him one of the World’s 25 Top Thinkers.

Ben Tarnoff's books include Voices from the Valley: Tech Workers Talk About What They Do-and How They Do It, and Internet for the People: The Fight for Our Digital Future. He's a contributor to the New York Review of Books, NYTimes and The New Yorker.

(4:50) How childhood in apartheid South Africa shaped Musk’s worldview

(11:05) Humans as NPCs

(17:26) Memes & far-right discourse

(21:40) Engineering ideology through Grok & probabilistic language models

(33:03) Automating consent & isolating the public sphere

(38:08) DOGE, the limits of cyborg optimization

(47:46) Unwinding tech monopolies, Embracing the woke mind virus

(53::20) Possible Futures of Carbon Musk & Contractor Musk

https://www.creativeprocess.info/speaking-out-of-place-6/elon-musk-slobodian-tarnoff

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“I think in terms of the Land-Grab project: looking at that history and really beginning to learn more about the history of education in the United States—and especially Indian education—a lot of that was new to me. So, our project that we did about two years ago, building on Land-Grab, was our Misplaced Trust investigation at Grist. We wanted to go back to those universities and start looking at not just the history of how they got their finances, but looking at the present to understand how dispossession and extraction are ongoing.”

In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu and guests Tristan Ahtone, Andrew Herscher and Robert Warrior take a deep look into universities, and education more broadly with We focus on a critique of land grant universities, which were built on land granted by the federal government. What we learn is that lands were stolen from Indigenous peoples through violence-based treaties and seizures. These 57 universities have used wealth derived from those initial acts of theft to buy more property, expand holdings, and enrich themselves. In contrast, we see the continued harm these universities do to Native peoples. This harm comes what Herscher calls “non-memory,” which creates knowledge that distorts and omits historical truths and impedes upon Indigenous futures. We talk about the deep damage non-memory does to education for all, and the ways people have fought back to retrieve, restore, and grow knowledge through scholar-journalist activism like the Land Grab University project.

(6:18) The Morrill Land-Grant Act and the Origins of Institutional Wealth

(7:38) Visualizing the Massive Wealth Transfer

(15:30) The Northwest Ordinance and the Architecture of Deletion

(27:32) Reframing Education as Indigenous Negotiation

(46:33) Settler Insecurity and the Politics of Non-memory

Tristan Ahtone (Kiowa) is Editor at Large at Grist and one of the foremost journalists covering Indigenous affairs in America. He previously served as Editor in Chief of the Texas Observer and Indigenous Affairs editor at High Country News.

Andrew Herscher’s work endeavors to bring the study of architecture and cities to bear on struggles for justice, democracy, and self-determination across a range of global sites. He is the co-founder of a series of militant research collectives, including Detroit Resists, Settler Colonial City Project, and the We the People of Detroit Community Research Collective.

Robert Warrior is Hall Distinguished Professor of American Literature and Culture at the University of Kansas and a member/citizen of the Osage Nation. He is the author of Tribal Secrets: Recovering American Indian Intellectual Traditions, The People and the Word: Reading Native Nonfiction.

https://www.creativeprocess.info/speaking-out-of-place-6/land-grab-universities

https://www.palumbo-liu.com

https://speakingoutofplace.com

Bluesky @palumboliu.bsky.social

IG @speaking_out_of_place

Salwa and Selma Mikou are the founders of Paris-based Mikou Architecture. Born in Fez, Morocco and educated in Paris, they have spent the last two decades reimagining the relationship between the built environment and the cultural landscape.

After honing their craft under two of the world’s most iconic architects, Jean Nouvel and Renzo Piano, they founded their own studio. For them, architecture is a living interaction with landscape and what they call the Atlas of Resonance, interpreting the hidden layers of a territory, geology, memory, and craft. It is a philosophy that rejects the generic, seeking instead to weave together technological innovation with local materials. Whether it is a mosque in the north of England or a hybrid innovation hub in a former royal manufactory, their work asks a fundamental question: How does space shape the way we think, learn and remember? They were selected by Rem Koolhaas to represent Morocco at the Venice Biennale. Most recently, they were commissioned by Hermès to create a 17,000-square-meter facility that bridges industrial performance with poetic expression. At the heart of their practice is a belief that architecture is not just about building—it’s about shaping relationships: between people, between past and future, between technology and craft.

(0:03) Architecture as a Living Transformation

(1:42) The Intuitive Knowledge of Living Art

(2:20) Preserving the Human Core of Expression

(3:14) The Medina and the Geometry of Childhood

(6:35) The Social Spaces of Rooftops

(8:27) The Twin Dynamic and Confrontation with 'l'autre'

(10:21) Contextual Echoes & Traces of the Site

(12:12) The Temples of Water

(13:15) The Mosque as Pure Spatiality

(15:49) Building Culture with Yves Saint Laurent & Pierre Bergé

(16:57) The Wast ed-dar (وسط الدار) and the Heart of a Building

(18:31) The Smells and Sounds of Home

(19:44) Balance, Nature, and Sisterhood

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

“Architecture should bring a true sensation of wellbeing. We were really lucky to experience that as children, and now as architects, we try to bring all that we learned into our practice.”

Salwa and Selma Mikou are the founders of Paris-based Mikou Architecture. Born in Fez, Morocco and educated in Paris, they have spent the last two decades reimagining the relationship between the built environment and the cultural landscape.

After honing their craft under two of the world’s most iconic architects, Jean Nouvel and Renzo Piano, they founded their own studio. For them, architecture is a living interaction with landscape and what they call the Atlas of Resonance, interpreting the hidden layers of a territory, geology, memory, and craft. It is a philosophy that rejects the generic, seeking instead to weave together technological innovation with local materials. Whether it is a mosque in the north of England or a hybrid innovation hub in a former royal manufactory, their work asks a fundamental question: How does space shape the way we think, learn and remember?

They were selected by Rem Koolhaas to represent Morocco at the Venice Biennale. Most recently, they were commissioned by Hermès to create a 17,000-square-meter facility that bridges industrial performance with poetic expression. At the heart of their practice is a belief that architecture is not just about building—it’s about shaping relationships: between people, between past and future, between technology and craft.

(0:04) The Intuitive Knowledge of Living Art

(4:24) The Medina and the Geometry of Childhood

(8:18) The Social Spaces of Rooftops

(13:46) The Intuitive Knowledge of Living Art

(15:31) Contextual Echoes & Traces of the Site

(19:18) The Twin Dynamic and Confrontation with 'l'autre'

(26:42) The Temples of Water

(33:24) The Mosque as Pure Spatiality

(38:01) The Crisis Period and Structural Systems

(48:24) Building Culture with Yves Saint Laurent & Pierre Bergé

(51:38) The Wast ed-dar (وسط الدار) and the Heart of a Building

(57:02) Preserving the Human Core of Expression

(1:04:29) Urban Acupuncture in the Modern City

(1:08:46) The Smells and Sounds of Home

(1:10:02) Balance, Nature, and Sisterhood

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

Creativity is an infinite conversation. The impulse to speak and be heard is what keeps us tethered to each other and to the world. From the cinematic scores of Max Richter and Carter Burwell to the Pulitzer Prize-winning poetry of Jericho Brown, we examine the human imagination. Psychiatrist philosopher Iain McGilchrist and writers Ana Castillo, Andre Dubus III and Hala Alyan discuss the power of the unconscious and embracing imperfection. We listen to the hidden life of nature with painter April Gornik, photographer Ami Vitale and writer Aimee Nezhukumatathil. Curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, scientist Daisy Fancourt, biologist David George Haskell and philosopher C Thi Nguyen remind us of the art of living and human connection. Filmmakers Cherien Dabis and Albert Serra underscore that whether we are fighting for justice or simply seeking maximum fun, the process is the prize.

(0:00) Max Richter (Composer) (2:41) Andre Dubus III (Author, House of Sand and Fog) (3:36) Iain McGilchrist (Psychiatrist) (4:52) Ana Castillo (Author) (6:11) Albert Serra (Director, Pacifiction) (6:39) Daisy Fancourt (Author, Art Cure) (8:35) David George Haskell (Biologist) (9:49) C. Thi Nguyen (Philosopher) (11:14) Cherien Dabis (Director, All That’s Left of You) (13:27) Aimee Nezhukumatathil (Author, World of Wonders) (14:31) Ami Vitale (Photographer) (16:17) April Gornik (Artist) (20:12) Carter Burwell (Composer) (22:59) Hala Alyan (Author) (24:24) Jericho Brown (Pulitzer Prize-winning Poet) (27:11) Hans Ulrich Obrist (Artistic Director, Serpentine)

For more, listen to their full interviews

http://www.creativeprocess.info/interviews-featured/anth-richter

Can fiction help us make sense of an increasingly chaotic world? For Mark Greaney, writing international thrillers isn't just about explosive action—it's about untangling the messy realities of disinformation, institutional erosion, and AI-driven conflict. The author of The Gray Man series joins us to discuss his path to publishing, training alongside military operatives, and why the most terrifying threats in his novels are often pulled straight from today’s headlines.

Mark Greaney is a #1 New York Times bestselling author and has spent his career exploring the technical and human complexities of the modern thriller. A student of international relations and political science, he has spent the last two decades at the intersection of deep-state espionage and the high-tech future of warfare. The Grey Man series is also a motion picture starring Ryan Gosling. Greaney was entrusted to carry forward the Jack Ryan universe created by the late Tom Clancy. To get the details right, Mark doesn’t just sit at a desk; his writing is built on a foundation of immersive experiential research. He’s traveled to dozens of countries, trained with SWAT teams, and even flown in Navy fighter jets.

His latest book, The Hard Line, brings his protagonist back to a landscape of old conflicts in Northern Ireland and forces him to confront a father he hasn't seen in twenty years. It’s a story about the blood we share and the blood we shed. It arrives at a moment when the boundaries of global conflict are being redrawn by AI, disinformation, and a shifting geopolitical order.

(0:00) The AI Arms Race

(0:53) Maladaptive Daydreaming in Childhood

(1:50) Following Your Passion

(4:39) Growing Up with a Newsman Father

(8:10) Collaborating with Tom Clancy

(11:05) Work Ethic and Enjoying the Process

(13:24) The Weight of Grief and Becoming an Adult

(16:18) The Reality of Consequences in Fiction

(18:01) The Evolution of Court Gentry

(22:02) An Unconventional Path to Writing

(26:33) Writing Through Physical Pain

(30:56) The Weaponization of AI in Warfare

(32:41) The Erosion of Truth and Bot Farms

(38:06) The Cold War vs Modern Political Polarization

(40:46) The Gray Man Film Adaptation

(42:56) Immersive Military and Weapons Research

(45:14) The Value of the Outsider Perspective

(46:31) Reading from The Hard Line

(50:42) Justifying Treason in Espionage

(54:40) The Climate Crisis and Erosion of Institutions

(57:51) The Media and Complexity

(1:00:55) Adapting Education for a Changing World

(1:05:49) Advice for Writers to Follow Your Passion

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

Mark Greaney is a #1 New York Times bestselling author and has spent his career exploring the technical and human complexities of the modern thriller. A student of international relations and political science, he has spent the last two decades at the intersection of deep-state espionage and the high-tech future of warfare. He is the creator of the Gray Man series, a motion picture starring Ryan Gosling, and was entrusted to carry forward the Jack Ryan universe created by the late Tom Clancy. To get the details right, Mark doesn’t just sit at a desk; his writing is built on a foundation of immersive experiential research. He’s traveled to dozens of countries, trained with SWAT teams, and even flown in Navy fighter jets.

His latest book, The Hard Line, brings his protagonist back to a landscape of old conflicts in Northern Ireland and forces him to confront a father he hasn't seen in twenty years. It’s a story about the blood we share and the blood we shed. It arrives at a moment when the boundaries of global conflict are being redrawn by AI, disinformation, and a shifting geopolitical order.

(0:00) The AI Arms Race

(1:42) Maladaptive Daydreaming

(2:34) Following Your Passion

(3:05) Collaborating with Tom Clancy

(3:38) The Weight Of Grief

(6:03) The Reality Of Consequences

(7:26) The Value Of Outsider Perspective

(8:30) The Weaponization Of AI

(9:00) The Erosion Of Truth

(11:05) The Erosion Of Institutions

(13:14) The Media And Complexity

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

We look to the arts to help us make sense of the world. Today on The Creative Process, we bring together twelve writers. We hear from Booker Prize winners, Paul Lynch, discussing "cosmic fiction", and Yann Martel on the necessity of magical thinking. We’re joined by Andre Dubus III and Megan Abbott, who share their thoughts on memory and family; while Siri Hustvedt, Etgar Keret and A.L. Kennedy explore the ordinary madness of grief. We listen to the novelists Katie Kitamura, Intan Paramaditha, and Liz Moore reflecting on displacement, trauma and the liminal state—and find a connection to the natural world with T.C. Boyle, and Ada Limón.

(0:00) Andre Dubus III –(Bestselling Author of House of Sand and Fog)

(0:55) Etgar Keret (Celebrated Author · Filmmaker) (5:08)

(3:03) Paul Lynch (Booker Prize-winning Author of Prophet Song)

(4:12) Megan Abbott (Bestselling Author of The Turnout)

(5:53) Katie Kitamura (Author of Audition · Intimacies)

(8:02) Liz Moore (Bestselling Author of Long Bright River)

(9:10) A.L. Kennedy (Award-winning Author of Day · Alive in the Merciful Country)

(10:14) Siri Hustvedt (Author of Ghost Stories · What I Loved)

(13:10) Yann Martel (Booker Prize-Winning Author Of Life Of Pi · Son Of Nobody)

(14:27) Intan Paramaditha (Author of The Wandering)

(16:18) T.C. Boyle (Bestselling Author of Talk to Me and Blue Skies) (20:27)

(17:46) Ada Limón (24th U.S. Poet Laureate · Author of The Hurting Kind)

To hear more from each guest, listen to their full interviews.

https://www.creativeprocess.info/interviews-featured/writers-on-memory

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After 40 years of reporting on the world's most pressing ecological crises, you might expect Fred Pearce to be a cynic. Instead, he’s one of our greatest advocates for hope.

If you follow the news about the environment, it’s easy to feel a sense of impending doom. We hear about accelerating extinctions, collapsing water cycles, and climate tipping points. But my guest today, environmental journalist Fred Pearce, says that if you look at the "ground-truth"—the stories of nature and people he has encountered—there is a surprising, even radical, case for hope. His work has taken him to more than eighty countries, from the logging concessions of Borneo to the radioactive exclusion zones of Chernobyl. He is the environment consultant for New Scientist and a regular contributor to The Guardian.

In his latest work, Despite It All: A Handbook for Climate Hopefuls, he challenges the prevailing narrative of environmental collapse. He argues that the "population bomb" is being defused, that we are approaching "peak stuff" in developed nations, and that nature possesses a staggering capacity for resilience that we often ignore. He says that a "Good Anthropocene" is not only possible but is already beginning to take shape through a combination of ancient wisdom and modern technical fixes. We’ll talk today about his life as a journalist and why pessimism may be the greatest enemy of progress.

(0:00) The Radical Case for Climate Optimism

(2:46) Traveling the World to Find Environmental Resilience

(5:08) Fixing the Anthropocene and Escaping Despondency

(10:22) Indigenous Wisdom and Local Stewardship

(15:28) Rewilding and Trusting Nature's Adaptability

(21:10) The Renewable Energy Transition in China and Beyond

(23:56) Peak Stuff and Redesigning the Cities of the Future

(34:01) Defending Democracy and Environmental Protestors

(36:12) Drinking Radioactive Vodka in Chernobyl's Exclusion Zone

(41:29) When the Rivers Run Dry and Water Scarcity

(50:37) Why the Population Bomb is Defusing

(55:36) The Origins of an Environmental Journalist

(1:03:15) The Future of Journalism in the Age of AI

(1:13:27) Generational Hope and the Next Industrial Revolution

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

Today, on Earth Day, we explore the Living World—a reality where we are not merely on a planet, but are a moving part of its very metabolism. We travel from the High Sierras with Paul Hawken to the forests of Costa Rica with Thomas Crowther. Guided by Merlin Sheldrake and David George Haskell, we explore ecology, policy and music with guests Paula Pinho, Hans Bruyninckx, Bill Hare and Alice Schmidt. Alongside Tiokasin Ghosthorse, Tom Chi, Erland Cooper, Rebecca Tickell and Britt Wray, we ask what happens when we stop trying to dominate and start trying to collaborate with the Earth?

(0:04) TIOKASIN GHOSTHORSE Founder, First Voices Radio

(2:05) PAUL HAWKEN Founder, Project Regeneration, Project Drawdown, Author (24:25)

(4:57) THOMAS CROWTHER Founder, Restor, Co-chair UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration

(5:51) MERLIN SHELDRAKE Biologist, Author, Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds

(8:23) DAVID GEORGE HASKELL Biologist, Author, How Flowers Made Our World

(10:43) HANS BRUYNINCKX Fmr. Director European Environment Agency

(11:39) REBECCA TICKELL (Director, Kiss the Ground) Soil Health (26:27)

(13:32) TOM CHI Founding Partner, At One Ventures, Author, Climate Capital

(14:44) PAULA PINHO Chief Spokesperson, European Commission

(16:08) BILL HARE Founder/CEO, Climate Analytics, Physicist

(18:03) ALICE SCHMIDT Global Sustainability Advisor, Author

(19:18) ERLAND COOPER (Composer) Earth as Collaborator

(22:38) BRITT WRAY Author, Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Crisis

To hear more from each guest, listen to their full interviews

https://www.creativeprocess.info/interviews-featured/earth-day2026

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IG @creativeprocesspodcast

“Algorithms are deciding whether you are eligible for a loan, a job, an apartment or insurance. They determine what you see online, who reads your social media posts and who connects with you on dating apps. They may even decide whether you get arrested or go to jail. Your very life hangs in the balance of prophecies.”

In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with Carissa Véliz, an associate professor at the University of Oxford, about her new book,Prophecy: Prediction, Power, and the Fight for the Future—from Ancient Oracles to AI. Linking this work to her previous book, Privacy is Power: Why and How You Should Take Back Control of Your Data, Véliz writes: “ surveillance and prediction are digital technology’s original sins.”

In our wide-ranging discussion, we talk about how both massive and intrusive invasions of privacy at all levels of society and false claims to be able to predict the future erode democracy, are corrosive to ethics, and undermine people’s ability to think for themselves. Instead, we are conditioned to trust an unregulated band of “effective altruists” who claim to know better than we what kinds of lives we should prefer and the choices we should make. Véliz argues instead that we should embrace the uncertain to build resilience, to prepare for contingency but not be determined by what we cannot see, and to foster curiosity and imagination.

EPISODE CHAPTERS

(0:00) Digital Technology's Original Sins

(2:34) How Books and Prophecies Choose Their Readers

(5:50) The Link Between AI, Mass Surveillance, and Profit

(8:46) Why Ethics Is the Hidden Foundation of Democracy

(13:52) The Future Tense as a Tech Executive Power Play

(16:20) Predictions as Speech Acts and Self-Fulfilling Prophecies

(22:04) Artificial Intelligence as the Ultimate Bullshitter

(26:38) Effective Altruism, Utilitarianism, and the Dangers of Infinity

(35:10) Losing Connection to the Analog World and Critical Thinking

(42:16) Family Stories and Absorbing the Shock of Life

(46:56) Cultivating Bravery and Defying Tech’s Probabilistic Vision

(49:19) Practical Advice for Everyday Life and Preparation

Episode Website

www.palumbo-liu.com https://speakingoutofplace.com Bluesky @palumboliu.bsky.social Instagram @speaking_out_of_place

Why does our economy treat environmental destruction as an inevitable side effect rather than a massive design flaw? How can shifting our focus from polarizing "talkers" to practical "builders" literally save the planet? We are repeatedly told that the climate crisis is too vast and volatile to solve, but what if the true obstacle is simply bad design?

Tom Chi is a physicist, designer, inventor, and investor whose work has shaped everything from Google Glass and rapid prototyping at Google X to some of the most ambitious climate technologies being built today. He’s now the founding partner of At One Ventures, where he invests in deep-tech companies focused on a bold goal: a world where humanity is a net positive to nature.

Tom’s new book, Climate Capital: Investing in the Tools for a Regenerative Future, reframes economics itself—not as a fixed law, but as a design discipline that can be reimagined to align with the physical realities of our planet. Drawing on science, systems thinking, and lessons from nature, the book offers a grounded, practical framework for moving beyond both climate doom and empty optimism—and toward real, regenerative solutions. Today’s conversation is about what Tom calls the 4Cs: Capital, Compassion, Climate, and Community—but also about agency, responsibility, and what becomes possible when we stop treating the future as something that happens to us and start designing it deliberately.

0:00) Build Integrity: Choosing Builders Over Talkers

Why prioritizing those who physically create solutions over those who merely debate them is essential for systemic change

(1:21) Overcoming Powerlessness Through Creativity, Critical Thinking, Community Compassion

Utilizing a specific framework of portable skills to move from climate anxiety into meaningful, iterative action

(2:22) Capital Misallocation: Taxing What We Want to See

A critique of current tax structures that burden labor while under-taxing capital and failing to serve societal needs

(3:47) The Volatility Gap: Why Average Temperatures Mislead

Understanding why increasing climate volatility—rather than just average temperature rise—is the true driver of human distress

(6:19) Economics As Design: Redesigning The Global Engine

Moving beyond "physics envy" in economics to treat the global market as a discipline that can be redesigned for better outcomes

(9:11) Depth Over Breadth: Reforming Education Through Experience

(13:30) Local Resilience: How Cities Can Lead The Transformation

Practical, block-by-block strategies for urban adaptation, from expanding tree canopies to improving household efficiency

(16:33) AI and Robotics in Agriculture

(19:12) Human-Centric AI: Flipping The Priority Of Automation

(20:18) Thinking In Pictures: A Language Beyond Words

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

IG @creativeprocesspodcast

“In the book I spend a bunch of time basically teaching skills and teaching frameworks of thinking. Not to indoctrinate, it's not a framework like an ideology where you need to believe exactly these things. This is a lot more about how does one use their minds effectively to solve problems that have been solved before. Of course, I work on things that have to do with investment and climate and the future of the economy and automation. The main things I'm trying to teach in the book are skills around creativity, critical thinking, community compassion and frameworks around how to go and use that on problems that should be relatively portable to a bunch of problems that are meaningful to you. The way that education needs to change is that people need to actively be working on things that truly matter to them so that over time they end up being able to go make that difference.”

Tom Chi is a physicist, designer, inventor, and investor whose work has shaped everything from Google Glass and rapid prototyping at Google X to some of the most ambitious climate technologies being built today. He’s now the founding partner of At One Ventures, where he invests in deep-tech companies focused on a bold goal: a world where humanity is a net positive to nature.

Tom’s new book, Climate Capital: Investing in the Tools for a Regenerative Future, reframes economics itself—not as a fixed law, but as a design discipline that can be reimagined to align with the physical realities of our planet. Drawing on science, systems thinking, and lessons from nature, the book offers a grounded, practical framework for moving beyond both climate doom and empty optimism—and toward real, regenerative solutions. Today’s conversation is about what Tom calls the 4Cs: Capital, Compassion, Climate, and Community—but also about agency, responsibility, and what becomes possible when we stop treating the future as something that happens to us and start designing it deliberately.

(0:00) Overcoming Powerlessness through Creativity, Critical Thinking, Community Compassion

Why broad hopelessness about the future is a purposeful tactic to maintain the status quo

(7:16) How average temperature metrics fail to communicate the true danger of extreme climate volatility.

(11:54) Economics as Design

(17:11) Multi-disciplinary Learning Centered on Real-World Impact

(26:12) Local Resilience

(31:15) Tax & Capital Misallocation

(36:52) Build Integrity

(45:32) AI and Robotics in Agriculture

(51:08) The First Honeybee Vaccine

(56:11) The Entropy Curve of Pollution

(1:15:31) Human-Centric AI

Flipping the priority of automation to serve the collective good rather than enriching a select few

(1:20:59) Thinking in Pictures

How learning to communicate and problem-solve without language fueled a career in deep tech invention

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

Step into the deep time of the forest floor, where a single fallen leaf contains the history of the world, and invisible fungal networks hum with ancient conversations. Biologist and acclaimed author David George Haskell reveals a staggering truth: we are completely dependent on the botanical world, and our belief in strict human individuality is a biological illusion.

Haskell has spent much of his life training himself to see the universal within the infinitesimally small. He's famously sat for a year in a single square meter of Tennessee's forest, a mandala experience that revealed the deep history of the world through a single fallen leaf. He's a two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for his books The Forest Unseen and Sounds Wild and Broken, and he received the John Burroughs Medal for The Songs of Trees.

His work often focuses on what he calls the unwaged labor of the natural world, the complex biological communities that sustain our planet without a monetary ledger. And his latest book is How Flowers Made Our World. In it, he argues that we are essentially grass apes dependent on the ancient innovations of flowering plants for two-thirds of our daily calories.

(0:00) How Flowers Made Our World

(1:33) Networked Connection is the Foundation of Life

(2:00) Contemplating the Small

(4:07) Consciousness, Intelligence & Memory in the More-Than-Human-World

(4:18) We Are Grass Apes

(5:41) Memories of His Childhood in Paris & Wild Orchids

(6:34) The Networked Intelligence of Forests

(7:45) The Earth in Full Song

(8:46) The Practice of Listening

(10:11) Escaping the Screen: Real Connections in the Classroom

(11:35) The True Cost of AI

(12:11) Transforming Ourselves

(14:23) Silence Without Expectation

(15:32) A Sensory Legacy for the Future

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

What if the defining revolution of Earth's history wasn't led by animals or humans, but by flowers? Are we truly individuals, or are our bodies and minds just walking ecosystems?

Our guest today is David George Haskell, a biologist who has spent much of his life training himself to see the universal within the infinitesimally small. He's famously sat for a year in a single square meter of Tennessee's forest, a mandala experience that revealed the deep history of the world through a single fallen leaf. He's a two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for his books The Forest Unseen and Sounds Wild and Broken, and he received the John Burroughs Medal for The Songs of Trees.

His work often focuses on what he calls the unwaged labor of the natural world, the complex biological communities that sustain our planet without a monetary ledger. And his latest book is How Flowers Made Our World. In it, he argues that we are essentially grass apes dependent on the ancient innovations of flowering plants for two-thirds of our daily calories.

(0:00) How Flowers Made Our World

The incredible ancient history of flowers on Earth

(4:56) Contemplating the Small

Expanding our world by restricting our gaze

(14:30) The Illusion of Individuality

Why atomism is false and interconnectedness is the foundation of life

(26:08) We Are Grass Apes

The evolutionary origins of humans and our dietary dependence on grass

(33:32) Memories of His Childhood in Paris & Wild Orchids

(38:55) The Networked Intelligence of Forests

How trees communicate and share resources beneath the soil

(44:00) The Earth in Full Song

Tracing the sonic history of our planet

(51:08) The Practice of Listening

Why tuning in to the natural world is crucial for our survival

(1:01:21) Silence Without Expectation

Sitting with nature without demanding progress or enlightenment

(1:11:01) Transforming Ourselves

Why personal change matters in the fight for the climate

(1:15:20) Escaping the Screen

Finding real human-to-human connection away from technology

(1:16:16) The True Cost of AI

The devastating impact of data centers on our fossil fuel consumption

(1:23:18) A Sensory Legacy for the Future

What we must preserve for the generations not yet born

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

How does the literature of a collective that shares neither one nation nor any one language function? What can the study of state violence in Latin America teach us about the dehumanization occurring in West Asia? And how do we imagine paths out of generations of violence to build new utopias?

In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with Serhat Tutkal and Hevin Karakurt to Speaking Out of Place. These two scholars engage in a broad discussion of Kurdish history, culture, politics, literature and language, with particular attention to issues of statelessness, identity, and violence. We talk about the current moment with regard to Turkey, Syria, Palestine, and the US-Israel war on Iran and beyond. We use as a starting poet Serhat’s remarkable essay, “Note from Non-People,” and then move to a discussion of his work on dehumanization. We end with imagining paths out of cycles of violence and dehumanization, and consider specifically the way we might imagine new sorts of utopias and vistas of life-affirmation.

Hevin Karakurt is a PhD candidate in Comparative Literature at Stanford University, where she studies Kurdish literature across languages and territories. In this way, she works on the question of how a literature of a collective that shares neither one nation nor any one language might function. Before coming to Stanford, she worked as a researcher in the Swiss National Science Foundation funded research project “Half-Truths. Truth, Fiction, and Conspiracy in the ‘Post-Factual’ Age”, at the University of Basel.

Serhat Tutkal is a Kurdish academic. He is a postdoctoral researcher funded by the Secretariat of Science, Humanities, Technology and Innovation (Secihti) in Mexico. He has a PhD from Universidad Nacional de Colombia (Bogotá) with a dissertation on the legitimation and delegitimation of Colombian state violence. He mainly works on violence, racism, and dehumanization in West Asia and Latin America.

(3:54) READING "NOTE FROM NON-PEOPLE"

(8:00) DECODING STATELESSNESS

The foundational aspects of Kurdish identity and existing outside the nation-state

(17:00) THE STRUGGLE OF LANGUAGELESSNESS

What it means to borrow languages when your native tongue is unrecognized.

(31:00) DEHUMANIZATION & ACADEMIA'S ROLE

Examining the legitimation of violence and the changing role of the university in critical thought

(44:00) DATA RESEARCH & GEOPOLITICS

Connecting data research on social media racism to current events in Turkey, Syria, Palestine, and Iran.

(1:05:00) IMAGINING UTOPIAS

Episode Website

www.palumbo-liu.com

https://speakingoutofplace.com

Bluesky @palumboliu.bsky.social Instagram @speaking_out_of_place

“The United States has this mentality that if somebody is serving a prison sentence or if somebody is in jail, they somehow deserve whatever happens. Whether it is medical neglect, whether it is abuse by staff or the other incarcerated people, whether it is terrible food, whether it is not being able to communicate or see their family members and loved ones. What happened in 2020 is that being incarcerated became a possible death sentence. Because we saw that prison deaths jumped 77% compared to the previous year where there was not a pandemic in the United States.”

In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu speaks with veteran journalist Victoria Law. She is the author of such books as Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women, Prison By Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms (co-authored with Maya Schenwar), and “Prisons Make Us Safer” and 20 Other Myths about Mass Incarceration. Today we talk about her new book, Corridors of Contagion: How the Pandemic Exposed the Cruelties of Incarceration.

In this devastating study, Law shows how instead of focusing on care during the outbreak of COVID, prisons took the pandemic as an opportunity to amplify their inhumanity, cruelty, and violence. We hear how contagion spread through ventilation systems and through guards who spread viruses from outside to the prisoners, we learn how things like solitary confinement and strip searches only intensified their worse aspects, and how extractive communications systems preyed on those hungry for news from their loved ones. Law also tells us of the personal stories she was able to track that give a human dimension to the statistics of the pandemic, and also remarkable stories of self-sacrifice and solidarity, as prisoners gave each other the care and support so badly needed. We end by learning about organizations that are at the forefront of fighting for decarceration and restructuring of parole boards, and other actions to fight against the inhumane and cruel practices of the prison industrial complex.

(0:00) Corridors of Contagion

(2:21) Pre-Pandemic Prison Conditions Severely crowded and destabilizing environment of jails and prisons before COVID-19

(8:42) Global Releases vs. US Incarceration

(12:44) The Horrors of Solitary Confinement An exploration of how isolation cells offer no protection from respiratory droplets or viruses

(16:55) Punished for Seeking Safety

(19:07) Dehumanization Through Video Visits

(26:47) Extractive Electronic Messaging

(33:43) Humanizing the Statistics

(43:56) Solidarity Behind Bars

(51:57) The Fight for Decarceration

Episode Website

www.palumbo-liu.com

https://speakingoutofplace.com

Bluesky @palumboliu.bsky.social

Instagram @speaking_out_of_place

“By pretending like science is neutral or apolitical, we're really feeding a particular discourse which serves whatever political structures are in place right now, whatever status quo is in place right now. Science can never be apolitical because it's a human activity, it's practiced in society with others, with human and more-than-human beings.”

In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with Fernando Racimo, a leading scientist-activist, about his new book, Science in Resistance. This book gives a riveting account of the founding and growth of the international group Scientist Rebellion, in which now thousands of scientists from around the world have organized direct actions to draw attention to the climate crisis. Breaking through the censorship and silencing carried on by big fossil fuel companies and also scientific groups in and out of academia, which often collude with each other, members of SR have put their careers and their bodies on the line to raise public consciousness and to spur action. We talk about the connection between power and knowledge, between ecocide and genocide and the need to democratize education and research if we are going to have the kind of world we want to both live in and to pass on to other generations.

(2:00) Moving to Direct Action

(6:00) The Power of the Teach-In

(10:00) The Climate Killjoy

(11:00) The Myth of Scientific Neutrality

(15:00) Fossil Fuel Complicity in Universities

(23:00) Education for a World on Fire

(30:00) Ecocide and Genocide

(36:00) Learning from the Global South

Racimo is a scientist-activist and the author of the new book Science in Resistance. He co-founded the Danish chapters of Scientist Rebellion and Academics for Palestine and works at the intersection of academia and social movement organizing. He earned his bachelor from Harvard and his PhD from UC Berkeley and is now an assoc. professor in ecology and evolution at the Globe Institute, University of Copenhagen. He has written articles and OpEds on the urgent need for scientists to join and support social movements fighting structures of oppression, as well as on strategies for transforming and democratizing academic institutions to serve positive socio-ecological needs. He teaches ecology and evolution, degrowth and socio-ecological justice, decolonizing global health and social movement theory and practice.

Episode Site

www.palumbo-liu.com

https://speakingoutofplace.com

Bluesky @palumboliu.bsky.social

IG @speaking_out_of_place

Today, we hear from writers Yann Martel, Carl Safina and David George Haskell on the practice of listening to the living world. Tom Chi discusses the dangerous volatility of a one-degree shift. Clayton Aldern explores how climate change alters brain health and behavior, while Ami Vitale,Osprey Orielle Lake and Martín Von Hildebrand remind us of the kinship we share with nature. Fred Pearce discusses 40 years as a journalist reporting on climate from around the world, while Richard Black of the environmental think tank Ember and Paula Pinho, European Commission’s Chief Spokesperson, talk about policy, hope and the radical empathy required to protect the planet for future generations.

(0:00) Clayton Page Aldern – Finding awe and beauty in the world

(0:40) David George Haskell – On consequences of humans tuning out the sounds of the living world

(2:11) Yann Martel – How animals ask us to step out of our humanity

(3:12) Carl Safina – The interior lives of non-human animals

(5:08) Ami Vitale – Environmental collapse and human conflict

(6:37) Martín von Hildebrand – Indigenous views of nature

(8:00) Richard Black – Transition to clean energy vs. massive fossil fuel subsidies

(10:01) Tom Chi – Climate destabilization

(11:07) Paula Pinho – Europe’s vision for energy independence

(14:04) Osprey Orielle Lake – Māori concept of "I am the river and the river is me”

(16:08) Bill Hare – On limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees

(17:19) Fred Pearce – Finding hope in nature’s resilience

To hear more from each guest, listen to their full interviews.

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

IG @creativeprocesspodcast

“Storytelling, which is a very whole person kind of activity, is one that delivers all kinds of truths. It's on the factual ground of reality that we build our cathedrals and our castles that we live in. And those are not just made of facts. They're made of other kinds of truths that make the stories of who we are, the cities we live in, the languages we speak—these are made of fact and fiction together, and those are the stories that define our lives.”

My guest today is Yann Martel,the internationally acclaimed author best known for his Booker Prize-winning Life of Pi and weaving philosophy, imagination, and profound human questions into unforgettable stories. His new novel, Son of Nobody, is a feat of literary imagination. Written in Homer-esque verses and layered with footnotes, the book draws us into the voice of a Greek storyteller while simultaneously mirroring our own present moment. It’s a work rich with history and intertextual echoes—ancient stories resurfacing in modern life, reminding us how deeply the past still speaks through us.

At its heart, Son of Nobody isa meditation on life, death, grief, and the fragile ways our human vanity can cloud our search for meaning. Through myth, memory, and philosophical storytelling, Martel explores what it means to long for home, to wrestle with ambition, and to confront loss. It’s a deeply moving reflection on how ancient tales—told and retold across centuries—can still teach us compassion, humility, and perhaps the courage to recognize that we can be nobody and still matter. It’s a beautiful, sometimes haunting story about what we can learn from the past when it comes to homesickness, love, grief, and ambition—and about remembering to value what we have before the search for more blinds us to it.

(0:00) Why is there human suffering? Why humanizing conflict is essential to understanding it

(5:48) The Limits of Rationality & Magical Thinking Why pure logic fails to answer life's deepest philosophical questions

(6:41) Education is Everything

(8:59) Why War Needs Stories How individual narratives help us comprehend the true tragedy of conflict

(9:44) Facts vs. Truth in Storytelling How psychological and emotional truths surpass factual accuracy

(11:47) The Iliad vs. The Gospels

(15:21) The Heroism of Translators

(16:03) AI vs. Human Creativity

(17:07) Animals as Ambassadors of the Wild

(18:08) Art, Religion and Ways to Go Beyond

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Insta @creativeprocesspodcast

Why do ancient myths still hold the answers to our modern anxieties? When faced with inexplicable grief or the incomprehensible scale of modern war, where does rationality fail us? Can the stories of our past save our future?

My guest today is Yann Martel, the internationally acclaimed author best known for his Booker Prize-winning Life of Pi and weaving philosophy, imagination, and profound human questions into unforgettable stories. His new novel, Son of Nobody, is a feat of literary imagination. Written in Homer-esque verses and layered with footnotes, the book draws us into the voice of a Greek storyteller while simultaneously mirroring our own present moment. It’s a work rich with history and intertextual echoes—ancient stories resurfacing in modern life, reminding us how deeply the past still speaks through us.

At its heart, Son of Nobody is a meditation on life, death, grief, and the fragile ways our human vanity can cloud our search for meaning. Through myth, memory, and philosophical storytelling, Martel explores what it means to long for home, to wrestle with ambition, and to confront loss. It’s a deeply moving reflection on how ancient tales—told and retold across centuries—can still teach us compassion, humility, and perhaps the courage to recognize that we can be nobody and still matter. It’s a beautiful, sometimes haunting story about what we can learn from the past when it comes to homesickness, love, grief, and ambition—and about remembering to value what we have before the search for more blinds us to it.

(0:00) Why is there human suffering? Why humanizing conflict is essential to understanding it

(02:14) Introduction to Son of Nobody

(04:20) The Limits of Rationality & Magical Thinking

Why pure logic fails to answer life's deepest philosophical questions

(09:48) Why Greek Myths Still Speak to Us

The universal relevance of ancient stories

(13:38) The Heroism of Translators

(18:32) Facts vs. Truth in Storytelling

How psychological and emotional truths surpass factual accuracy

(21:23) Why War Needs Stories

(24:38) Reflections on Iran and Modern Conflict

(30:35) The Iliad vs. The Gospels

(41:26) What Do You Do with the Sadness of Mortals?

(45:52) How Life of Pi Changed Martel’s Spiritual Beliefs

(51:58) AI vs. Human Creativity

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

@creativeprocesspodcast

In the face of devastating state violence, the people of Iran continue to find new ways to resist. From a female marathon runner pacing her cell in prison, to an underground concert staged in defiance of the law, the fight for a free Iran is fought daily with bodies, art and solidarity.

In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu speaks with journalist Fatemeh Jamalpour about her book, For the Sun After Long Nights, which she wrote with fellow journalist Nilo Tabrizy. In September 2022, the world learned of the murder of a young Kurdish woman in Iran, Mahsa Jina Amini. Her death, while a captive of the Iranian state, sparked the Woman, Life, Freedom protests. Fatemeh and Nilo’s book frames those protests in the deep tradition of Iranian women leading political movements for rights and freedom, that date back at least a century. They also provide incredibly detailed and moving accounts of the everyday lives of people in Iran who are part of a collective movement under the most oppressive and violent conditions imaginable. Fatemeh talks about the significance of the many ethnic minorities in Iran, the unique role of Gen Z in the protests, and the many ways that women’s bodies have become a powerful weapon in the fight for collective freedom, in places as diverse as prisons and illegal music concerts. Clearing up myths and lies about Iran and the resistance, this is an especially important episode of Speaking Out of Place.

(0:00) A Century of Resistance Fatemeh discusses the deep historical roots of the Iranian women's movement

(2:58) Becoming a voice for suppressed women

(4:15) Sisterhood and Co-Authorship Meeting Niloufar Tabrizi and collaborating across borders

(7:15) Interrogations and Writing Documenting state interrogation as an act of defiance and survival

(12:45) The Diversity of Iran Highlighting the vital roles of Kurdish, Turkish, Arab, and Baluchi minorities in the struggle

(16:15) Personal Freedom vs. Collective Liberation Why returning to a "broken country" was an act of profound love and solidarity

(21:15) Gen Z Gamers in the Streets How young Iranians are using online strategy to fight security forces

(26:15) Turning Grief into Resistance

(29:15) Correcting Western Media Myths

(31:15) The Body as a Weapon Women reclaiming their agency through public presence without a hijab

(32:20) The Imaginary Concert The story of an illicit, breathtaking public performance in Iran

(35:15) The Future of Iranian Journalism

Episode Website

www.palumbo-liu.com

https://speakingoutofplace.com

Bluesky @palumboliu.bsky.social

@speaking_out_of_place

“We're looking at a lot of bad things in American history that we should have been thinking about over the past 50 years. What McCarthyism did, what it targeted with regard to the academic community—and that's really what I know the best—is that during the late 1940s and early 1950s, the focus of political oppression was on people who once were, had previously been near or were affiliated with the American Communist Party. It was focused on individuals who had once been in or near the Communist Party and who were refusing to cooperate with the witch hunt. That was it. That was what McCarthyism did. Today, what we're seeing is an attack on everything.”

In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu speaks with Ellen Schrecker, who has been referred to as “the dean of the anti-anti-Communist historians.” Well known for her classic studies of McCarthyism, today Schrecker explains how much worse Trump’s regime is than what we saw in the 1950s and 60s. A fierce defender of democracy, Ellen explains the central role education plays in creating a public culture and in maintaining democracy. Our conversation takes many paths, including an indictment of Capitalism, of the dominance of economistic thinking and values, of the ways university leaders are bending a knee to Trump. We talk about the value of the humanities, the importance of autonomous forms of education and mutual support such as we saw in the pro-Palestinian encampments, and one of the most remarkable differences between the days of McCarthyism—the phenomenon of mass protests like #NoKingsDay.

(0:00) The Prequel To The Civil War The threats to education today compared to the 1950s

(7:20) Democracy And Education

(13:40) Capitalism And Anti-Science How corporate interests fund the suppression of climate science and universities

(23:20) The Capitulation Of Leaders Why modern university administrators are giving in to authoritarian blackmail

(33:40) The Loss Of Cultural Capital The targeted elimination of the humanities and the arts in higher education

(39:20) Unprecedented Resistance Finding hope in modern student politicization and mass protests

Episode Website

www.palumbo-liu.com

https://speakingoutofplace.com

Bluesky @palumboliu.bsky.social

Instagram @speaking_out_of_place

"I am a poet without language and an empath without root. I am overflowing in something I do not recognize... something like terror, but still not quite that."

In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with poet, activist, and scholar Jamaica Osorio. Shortly after October 7, 2023, she began to write a series of astonishing poems about the war in Gaza and the genocide. Osorio graces us with readings of some of those poems, and engages in a rich, complex, and deeply moving discussion of what went into their composition. Throughout, we talk about the power of poetry to suspend time and allow us the space to contemplate the impossible. We talk about the nature of not knowing, of the inexpressible, and the ways certain poems can give us the strength, energy, and commitment to persist in working for the liberation of all peoples, even when dwelling in grief.

Dr. Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio is an Associate Professor of Indigenous and Native Hawaiian Politics at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Her award-winning poetry and activism were the subject of the Sundance Film Festival documentary This is the Way we Rise, and she is the author of Remembering our Intimacies: Moʻolelo, Aloha ʻĀina, and Ea, published by The University of Minnesota Press. She believes in the power of aloha ʻāina and collective action to pursue liberatory, abolitionist futures.

(0:00) Intro

(2:00) The Silence After October 7, Jamaica Osorio discusses the struggle to find language and the pressure to speak out

(5:00) The Sounds of Empire in Hawaiʻi Connecting the military helicopters over Pālolo Valley to the skies of Gaza

(7:00) Reading "For Palestine"

(13:00) Lingering in the Inexpressible Why poetry must offer questions and suspensions rather than simple answers

(18:00) Taking Risks and Earning Trust The vulnerability of sharing deeply personal, grief-stricken art with the public

(24:30) Reading: "It's Time to Dance" A beautiful meditation on holding the joy of a child alongside the terror of a genocide

(29:00) Children as Ancestors and Teachers How Osorio’s daughter teaches her to be fully present in both grief and joy

(37:00) Reading: "Rafah Burns" A raw poem about parenthood, weeping with a newborn, and the global resonance of loss

(42:00) Finding Connection in the Dark The shared emotional vocabulary of crying when the world becomes incomprehensible

(44:00) ʻOnipaʻa: To Be Steadfast

(46:00) The Ungovernable Belief in a Better World Why the organizers and poets will outlast the empires that try to dominate them

Episode Website

www.palumbo-liu.com

https://speakingoutofplace.com

Bluesky @palumboliu.bsky.social

Insta @speaking_out_of_place

Two weeks away from filming her most ambitious film to date, Cherien Dabis and her crew were forced to evacuate Palestine as the devastating events of October 2023 began. Instead of abandoning the project, they adapted, filming across Cyprus, Jordan, and Greece, creating a cinematic love letter to the resilience, joy, and humanity of the Palestinian people.

My guest today is Cherien Dabis. She’s a filmmaker and actress who has spent much of her career trying to fill the silences in the American narrative. In 2022, she became the first Palestinian to receive an Emmy nomination. She has worked on everything from The L Word to Ozark, Only Murders in the Building to the hit Netflix series Mo, always with an eye toward breaking the one-dimensional mold that has historically defined Arab representation in the West. But her latest project is perhaps her most ambitious yet. It’s a film called All That’s Left of You. It follows one Palestinian family across three generations, beginning in 1948 and ending in 2022. It is a story of exile and memory, and it’s Jordan’s official submission for this year’s Academy Awards.

(0:00) The Inheritance of Trauma Cherien Dabis discusses how collective trauma is passed down and the importance of showing Palestinian resilience and humanity

(1:50) Inherited Trauma: Identity And History The passage of trauma requires a multi-generational lens to truly understand how history and political events shape people

(2:37) The Bakri Acting Dynasty: Collaborative Lineage Collaborating with four generations of the Bakri Family brought immense authenticity to the screen

(4:02) Filming The Nakba: Art Imitating Crisis Evacuating Palestine weeks before shooting forced the crew to adapt amidst devastating, ongoing events

(7:09) The Moment Of Activation: Racism In Ohio Experiencing severe racism during the first Gulf War ignited a lifelong drive to challenge dangerous media stereotypes

(9:34) Psychological Violence: Impact Of Humiliation The film explores how non-physical harassment and humiliation leave devastating, long-term relational scars

(10:48) Broken Distribution: Industry Gatekeepers Navigating systemic fear and gatekeeping in Hollywood distribution remains a profound challenge for Palestinian cinema

(11:37) Previous Films, Television And Craft Directing television hones the craft and expands the creative capacity needed for ambitious feature films

(12:28) Truth Seekers: The Next Generation Hope lies with young people who refuse to accept the broken systems and hidden truths of previous generations

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

“These oppressive structures are built to strip us of our humanity. One of the ways they do that is by filling us with anger and hatred. If we allow ourselves to stay there, we're doing the job of the oppressor for them by slowly killing ourselves. I wanted to make a movie that would remind people that we can't allow them to win by giving up our humanity. We have to hold onto our humanity and try in these impossible circumstances.”

My guest today is Cherien Dabis. She’s a filmmaker and actress who has spent much of her career trying to fill the silences in the American narrative. In 2022, she became the first Palestinian to receive an Emmy nomination. She has worked on everything from The L Word to Ozark, Only Murders in the Building to the hit Netflix series Mo, always with an eye toward breaking the one-dimensional mold that has historically defined Arab representation in the West. But her latest project is perhaps her most ambitious yet. It’s a film called All That’s Left of You. It follows one Palestinian family across three generations, beginning in 1948 and ending in 2022. It is a story of exile and memory, and it’s Jordan’s official submission for this year’s Academy Awards.

(0:00) The Inheritance of Trauma

Cherien Dabis discusses showing the multifaceted humanity of Palestinians beyond just pain and suffering

(3:41) Inherited Trauma: Identity And History The film explores how collective trauma is passed down across generations and shapes individual identities

(5:52) The Bakri Dynasty: Collaborative Lineage Working with the legendary Bakri Family brought deep, authentic relational dynamics to the screen

(9:25) Filming The Nakba: Art Imitating Crisis The crew faced severe challenges and had to evacuate Palestine during the October 2023 escalation

(16:10) Representation Gap: Dehumanization In Media Growing up in Ohio, Cherien Dabis witnessed the dangerous misrepresentation of Arabs in Western media

(21:24) The Moment Of Activation: Racism In Ohio The stark racism experienced during the first Gulf War ignited her passion to become a filmmaker

(33:40) Psychological Violence: Impact Of Humiliation The film depicts how psychological harassment under occupation leaves devastating, long-term impacts on families

(38:23) Broken Distribution: Industry Gatekeepers Despite international success, systemic fear and gatekeeping in the US distribution market remain significant obstacles

(45:28) Previous Films, Television And Craft Directing television shows like Only Murders in the Building expanded her creative capacity and adaptability

(51:45) Truth Seekers: The Next Generation Cherien Dabis shares her profound hope for young people who refuse to accept the broken systems of the past

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

"To be in the process of making things, to be in the process of talking to people about what things mean. The creative process is actually, I think, the most meaningful part of life, but it's very hard to measure. When we get shoved towards a world that demands easy measurables, it's very hard to optimize away from the creative process and optimize towards things that are more static."

On this episode of The Creative Process, philosopher C. Thi Nguyen joins us to discuss his new book, The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else's Game. He unpacks the profound concept of "value capture"—the moment we stop caring about the rich, subtle experiences of life and start obsessing over simplified, external metrics like grades, likes, and screen time.

Beyond the trap of quantification, C. Thi Nguyen explores the liberating power of games and art. We discuss how true play requires us to step lightly between different rule sets, the difference between art and craft, and how reclaiming our creative process might just be the ultimate meaning of life.

(0:00) THE TRAP OF VALUE CAPTURE How external metrics and scoring systems hijack our personal values and creativity

(7:09) THE LOGIC OF QUANTIFICATION Why simple numbers travel well but strip away vital human context, from screen time to grades

(11:58) THE MAGIC CIRCLE OF PLAY Understanding the difference between a gamified life and the true, disattached beauty of struggle

(14:57) ART, CRAFT, AND METRICS Why taking the hard way leads to genuine creative expression, and how to spot value-laden systems

(19:34) THE POLITICS OF MEASUREMENT Questioning the assumption that complex human traits, like IQ or consciousness, can be quantified on a single scale

(21:31) THE SPIRIT OF PLAY Using constraints to boost collaborative storytelling and learning to step lightly between different rule worlds

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

We live in a world obsessed with tracking. From our sleep scores to our social media engagement, invisible systems constantly quantify our worth. But when we replace our deepest values with these thin, easily measurable numbers, we lose a part of our humanity. It is time to step outside the magic circle of optimization and reclaim the unstructured joy of being alive.

C. Thi Nguyen is a philosopher whose work gets to the heart of the invisible structures that define modern life. He first established himself as a food writer, exploring the sensory world, before turning his intellectual gaze toward the philosophy of games and agency. He’s the author of Games: Agency As Art.His new book is The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else's Game.He argues that when we simplify our values for the sake of a leaderboard, something inside the human spirit begins to die. In it, he explores a concept called "value capture"—the moment we stop caring about the experience and start obsessing over the metric. He joins me now to discuss how we can lead a playful, spontaneous life without getting lost in the scoring systems of the 21st century.

(0:00) THE MEANING OF LIFE IS THE CREATIVE PROCESS Why the most valuable parts of life are impossible to measure

(6:46) VALUE CAPTURE DEFINED How external metrics and institutional scoring systems take over our personal values

(11:38) THE METRICS WE LIVE BY The invisible toll of screen time, credit scores, and daily optimization

(19:44) THE LOGIC OF QUANTIFICATION Why simple numbers travel well but strip away vital human context

(24:13) THE MAGIC CIRCLE OF PLAY Understanding the difference between a gamified life and the true beauty of struggle

(31:56) ART AS A GAME How taking the hard way and avoiding efficiency leads to genuine creative expression

(38:48) THE POLITICS OF TECHNOLOGY Why tools and systems like factories and databases are never truly value-neutral

(44:23) AI AND HUMAN CREATIVITY Navigating the tension between automated efficiency and expressive human art

(50:44) THE POLITICS OF IQ Questioning the assumption that complex human traits can be measured on a single scale

(1:01:12) NARRATIVE SCAFFOLDING How structured constraints in role-playing games can actually boost collaborative storytelling

(1:10:00) THE SPIRIT OF PLAY Stepping lightly between different rule worlds and reclaiming our agency

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

@creativeprocesspodcast

Are the walls of our most celebrated museums actually monuments to wealth extraction and labor suppression? How did the violent union-busting tactics of the 19th-century robber barons pave the way for modern philanthropy? And what happens when we expose the hidden racial capitalism behind the "genius" of modern art?

In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with Eunsong Kim about her stunning book, The Politics of Collecting: Race & the Aestheticization of Property. It is remarkable in its theoretical conceptualization, argument, and archival work. Kim argues that the beginnings of elite art collection in the United States coincided with the rise of the robber barons and the suppression of the labor movement. She connects this to Taylorism and the idea of scientific management, that further extenuated the rift between the mind and the body, between intellectual activity and labor. Not coincidentally, this distribution of kinds of work created a new distribution of value. In each case, Kim argues, race played a fundamental role. Ranging from the “found” art of Duchamp to the pseudo-Marxist conceptual art of Sierra, Kim eviscerates both pretention and cruelty, and restores the laboring body and what it produces to prominence, along with a truly reinvigorated and capacious sense of the Imagination outside of the constraints of neoliberal aesthetics.

(0:00) The Politics of Collecting

(2:16) The Rise of the Museum Form How art spaces are fundamentally tied to racial capitalism and settler colonialism

(5:18) Carnegie, Frick, and the Homestead Strike, Violent de-unionization of steelworkers that preceded modern philanthropic projects

(10:04) Taylorism and Scientific Management How Frederick Taylor's experiments sought to separate "mind work" from "hand work"

(13:00) The De-skilling of Labor

(16:11) The PR of Robber Barons

(19:42) Duchamp and the Illusion of Meritocracy

(26:17) Racial Violence and the "Ready-Made" Reading Duchamp's Fountain through the lens of segregation and white freedom

(32:26) Santiago Sierra and Neoliberal Aesthetics Critiquing art that replicates capitalism by enacting humiliation on marginalized and precarious workers

(43:12) Artists vs. Workers at the Whitney, 1969 anti-Vietnam War protest

(47:58) Professors as Managers On private university labor laws, unionization, and the weaponization of the "manager" title

(51:24) AI and the Alienation of Thought

Episode Website

www.palumbo-liu.com

https://speakingoutofplace.com Bluesky @palumboliu.bsky.social

@speaking_out_of_place