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“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 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 (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

"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. (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

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

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

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

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

“Grief is a particular kind of unrequited love. It wasn't unrequited in the past. Usually, we think of unrequited love as you never got to do it, you never had it for yourself. But, in fact, there can be requited love, which is then unrequited love in the paroxysms of grief.” Today, we are honored to welcome a writer whose work has long explored the intimate landscapes of the mind, memory and the heart. Siri Hustvedt’s writing moves between the personal and the philosophical, the literary and the deeply human. Her work bridges collections of essays, non-fiction, poetry, and seven novels, including the international bestsellers What I Loved and The Summer Without Men. Recipient of the Princess of Asturias Award for Literature and the Gabarron Prize for Thought, her work has been translated into over thirty languages. Her new memoir, Ghost Stories, is a reflection on forty-three years shared with her late husband, the writer and filmmaker Paul Auster. In its pages, we encounter not only love and loss, but the quiet persistence of presence, memory, and language itself. (0:00) “We were hugely important to the drama of becoming in our own lives” (2:04) Grief as Unrequited Love Siri explores the emotional reality of living without Paul Auster, noting that grief occurs because love does not stop when a person dies. (3:19) The Shared Space of a 43-year Marriage (4:36) Reading from Ghost Stories Siri reads the opening passage of her memoir, detailing how the loss of her husband deranged her sense of time and bodily rhythms. (7:02) How Loss Changes Our Sense of Time (11:24)  How Powerful Emotions and a Person's Life Can Play a Role in Illness (13:04) Believing in a Reality that Transcends the Individual (20:06) Physical Love in Marriage On the importance of physical intimacy in long-term marriages, a reality often left out of grief memoirs. Episode Website www.creativeprocess.info/pod Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

“Grief happens because you don't stop loving the person who died. The person doesn't exist in your reality anymore. The everyday is not colored and shaped by this other human being, but you don't stop loving the person. So grief is a particular kind of unrequited love. And probably without that dynamic relationship with this person, I would be someone else. And he would've been someone else. I mean, Paul died before me. But we were, I think, hugely important to the drama of becoming in our own lives.” Today, we are honored to welcome a writer whose work has long explored the intimate landscapes of the mind, memory and the heart. Siri Hustvedt’s writing moves between the personal and the philosophical, the literary and the deeply human. Her work bridges collections of essays, non-fiction, poetry, and seven novels, including the international bestsellers What I Loved and The Summer Without Men. Recipient of the Princess of Asturias Award for Literature and the Gabarron Prize for Thought, her work has been translated into over thirty languages. Her new memoir, Ghost Stories, is a reflection on forty-three years shared with her late husband, the writer and filmmaker Paul Auster. In its pages, we encounter not only love and loss, but the quiet persistence of presence, memory, and language itself. (0:00) Grief as Unrequited Love Siri explores the emotional reality of living without Paul Auster, noting that grief occurs because love does not stop when a person dies. (4:00) Facing Death with Courage The importance of not hiding from mortality and how discussing end-of-life wishes offered a necessary perspective. (12:37) Reading from Ghost Stories Siri reads the opening passage of her memoir, detailing how the loss of her husband deranged her sense of time and bodily rhythms. (18:41) The Phantom Limb: ” The beloved is taken away and it feels as if you're amputated or gutted.” (21:50)  Grandfather, Father and Son: Generational Traumas Behind Paul Auster's Writing (24:11)  How Powerful Emotions and a Person's Life Can Play a Role in Illness (30:09) Feeding the Earth "Paul very pointedly told me that he wanted to be buried in the Jewish mode. And the phrase he used was, “I want my body to feed the earth.” (44:23) Physical Love in Marriage On the importance of physical intimacy in long-term marriages, a reality often left out of grief memoirs. (54:00) The Philosophy of the Between How relational existence is foundational to life. (1:00:16) The Hubris of Controlling Nature (1:12:00) The Dark History of Statistics (1:32:12) The Art of Learning vs. AI and Automated Outcomes “I think we have to ask ourselves, what is education? What do we want from it? How do we want people to learn? Episode Website www.creativeprocess.info/pod Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

"Within society, we seem to have separated the arts out, so they're not so much a part of our daily lives. Often there's something that we feel we should do as a kind of leisure activity or hobby if we have enough time or if we have enough money to engage in them. And this is so fundamentally different to how humans engaged with the arts. When we look back thousands of years, it just was part of the everyday, and I feel like that's a major loss within contemporary societies." Daisy Fancourt is a Professor of Psychobiology & Epidemiology at UCL and the author ofArt Cure: The Science of How the Arts Transform Our Health. A pioneer in the field of psychoneuroimmunology, she directs the WHO Collaborating Center on Arts and Health, where her research influences global health policy and the integration of the arts into medical care. (0:00) The Healing Power of the Arts: Longevity, Immunity & Wellbeing (1:17) Singing to Daphne: How Daisy used singing to comfort her premature daughter in the ICU (2:47) The Story of Russell: How a stroke survivor used art classes to reclaim his life, health, and identity (5:23) A Planet of 8 Billion Artists: Tracing the evolutionary origins of creativity back 40,000 years (8:58) Psychoneuroimmunology. Defining the biological mechanisms: how art reduces inflammation and cortisol (12:42) Art & Longevity. How arts engagement can slow biological aging and alter gene expression (18:24) Safeguarding Creativity. Why we should use AI for routine tasks but protect the human joy of the creative process Episode Website www.creativeprocess.info/pod Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

Can curiosity and empathy be taught? How can we expand our sense of solidarity through stories? In this episode, we explore the internal dialogues of artists, actors and writers to ask what it means to step into someone else's shoes. (0:00) Novelist  Jim Shepard discusses Literature as a Tool for Emotional Education and Exploring History (2:05) Tony Award-winning Actor Neil Patrick Harris on Being Moved by Theater and its Ability to Bridge Worlds (3:55) Novelist Katie Kitamura on How a Book is Made in Collaboration with the Reader (5:00) Screenwriter, Playwright Laura Eason on Inhabiting the Hearts of Characters Different from Ourselves (6:03) Academy Award-winning Director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy on the Art of Visual Storytelling (6:37) Cinematographer, Director Benoit Delhomme on the Freedom of Handheld Cinematography (7:19) Author Etgar Keret on Looking for Humanity through Shared Intention (8:18) Viet Thanh Nguyen – Opposing Power through Expansive Solidarity (9:27) Adam Moss – Author, Fmr. Editor New York magazine on “The Work of Art” (10:29) John Patrick Shanley – Tony & Academy Award-winning Writer, Director on Finding Value in Ordinary Experiences and the Creative Power of Daydreaming (11:56) Pulitzer Prize-winning Journalist Nicholas Kristof on Why Individual Stories are Necessary to Generate Connection To hear more from each guest, listen to their full interviews. Episode Website www.creativeprocess.info/pod Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

In this special edition, we hear from our guests from across the arts and sciences. From composers and poets to forest ecologists and climate envoys, they tell the story of our planet. Moving beyond the data of destruction, we explore the intelligence of nature, the ethics of what we eat, and the empathy required to save our future. MAX RICHTER, Composer, Sleep, The Blue Notebooks CARL SAFINA, Author, Becoming Wild ADA LIMÓN, 24th US Poet Laureate CYNTHIA DANIELS, Grammy Award-winning Sound Eng. SUZANNE SIMARD, Finding the Mother Tree JOELLE GERGIS, Lead Author, IPCC 6th Assessment Rpt NOAH WILSON-RICH, CEO, Best Bees Company INGRID NEWKIRK, PETA Founder BERTRAND PICCARD, Solar Impulse Foundation DAVID FARRIER, Author, Footprints KATHLEEN ROGERS, Pres, Earth Day Network ODED GALOR, Unified Growth Theory PETER SINGER, Philosopher GEOFF MULGAN, Another World Is Possible CLAIRE POTTER, Welcome to the Circular Economy CHRIS FUNK, Dir. Climate Hazards Car. JENNIFER MORGAN, Special Envoy, International Climate Action To hear more from each guest, listen to their full interviews. Episode Website

On Music, Trust and Connection with the Animal World “Mostly I’ll play in a minor key, something sad, which I think can work for an animal because they can sense the sadness, and they try to reassure me and comfort me. I chose love songs because I'm convinced they are very intuitive and they can sense what I am trying to say to them, and profess my love in a way. I think there's always a way to connect, and if you're being cautious and don't threaten the animals, something beautiful can happen.” Musician Plumes takes his guitar to the world's most unlikely concert halls—farms, sanctuaries, and wild habitats. A passionate advocate for veganism and animal welfare, we discuss what animals hear, how trust forms, and what music can reveal when it enters a world not made for humans alone. Episode Website www.creativeprocess.info/pod Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

How is music a pathway to understanding animals? Musician Plumes‍ takes his guitar to the world's most unlikely concert halls—farms, sanctuaries, and wild habitats. A passionate advocate for veganism and animal welfare, we discuss what animals hear, how trust forms, and what music can reveal when it enters a world not made for humans alone. “Mostly I’ll play in a minor key, something sad, which I think can work for an animal because they can sense the sadness, and they try to reassure me and comfort me. I chose love songs because I'm convinced they are very intuitive and they can sense what I am trying to say to them, and profess my love in a way. I think there's always a way to connect, and if you're being cautious and don't threaten the animals, something beautiful can happen.” Episode Website www.creativeprocess.info/pod Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

On the urgent need to reclaim our political voices, the forces that silence dissent, and how art and poetry are crucial tools for survival Our guest today is an activist scholar who believes the classroom is inseparable from the public square. David Palumbo-Liu is the Louise Hewlett Nixon Professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford University and a founding faculty member of Stanford’s Program in Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity. But his work has long reached beyond the academy. Through his book, Speaking Out of Place: Getting Our Political Voices Back, and his podcast of the same name, he insists that the great global crises of our time—from escalating wars and democratic failures to environmental collapse—are fundamentally crises of value and voice. His recent work has put him on the front lines of campus activism, challenging institutions, resigning his membership from the MLA, a move that highlights the ethical cost of speaking truth to power. We’ll talk about what he calls the "carceral logic" of the modern university, why art and poetry are crucial tools for survival in times of war, and what he tells his students about preparing for a future defined by uncertainty. His perspective is rooted in literature, but his urgency is all about the world we live in now. We will discuss the forces that silence dissent, the "imperial logic" of AI, and what it means to be a moral, active citizen when the systems we rely on are failing. “There is a dispute about what the American Dream is or how it would play out in different circumstances. The American dream has essentially been narrowed into a white Christian nationalist notion of things so that everything that falls outside what they imagine that to be is not only undesirable, but should be the subject of extermination, deportation, and detention. I am heartened by the fact that more of our 'better angels' are emerging with a more capacious and expansive notion of what the American dream could be.” Episode Website www.creativeprocess.info/pod Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast