No Time to be Timid

We’ve just started Season Five, and once a month I’ll bring you a compilation of Manifesto Minutes, the short pieces I post on social media about the principles in the No Time to Be Timid Manifesto. You can also watch them on YouTube and Instagram. Did you nourish or neglect your creativity this week? I share what creative coach Mark McGuinness told me about getting physically ill when he neglects...

When my mother died in April of 2025, it was hard, partly because she was my last parent. Both of mine are gone now, and my sense of mortality grew more intense. But Mama was thirty years older than me, so the finish line still felt far away. Then Dolly Parton died in August, at the top of her game, with a Broadway show, a hotel, and new recordings still in the works. Dolly was only fourteen years...

I don’t think I’ve ever had a guest who checks off more of our manifesto principles than David Peck. The riskiest thing you can do is play it safe. There’s more than one right way. Don’t expect a linear path. Constraints are opportunities. Make your mark now. He’s lived every one of those, and in our conversation, I asked him how. David is a fashion designer — Taylor Swift launched a campaign wear...

Welcome to the first compilation of Manifesto Minutes, short pieces built around the principles of the No Time to Be Timid Manifesto. I share how tea bags, rusted umbrella parts, and masking tape became my art supplies, and what Twyla Tharp and Grandma Moses taught me about creating with limits. I read a favorite passage from The Natural Way to Draw about valuing effort over results, and tell you...

What can a Jack Russell with resource guarding issues teach you about creativity? Our dog Jiggy came into our home speaking a completely different language than the two Jack Russells we had before him. We kept talking to him the old way, and it wasn't working. He bit my husband four times, and we even talked with our trainer about behavioral euthanasia. When his life was on the line, we had to lea...

We kick off the season with Krista Monson, a choreographer, director, producer, and former artistic director of Cirque du Soleil's O at the Bellagio for more than 13 years. I saw Krista speak several years ago, I knew she'd be a perfect fit for the show.  As Krista says, she has a background in "big spectacle" and is in the business of emotions. We talk about the risks that shaped her career,...

My producer/composer Adam Arnone and I are sitting down to talk about what's coming this fall. We're talking a longer season (September all the way through May) and a brand-new mix of episode types so you never run out of brave. Here's the lineup:   Guest interviews every other Thursday    Solo casts — just me, talking straight to you, filling in the gaps   Manifesto Minutes —...

In this episode, I reflect on a full-circle reconnection more than 20 years in the making — and on two people who convinced me, once again, that art has the power to change the world. The first is Joni Doherty a former colleague from my teaching days at Franklin Pierce University, who commissioned my very first one-woman show decades ago. After losing touch for two decades, we reconnected when Jon...

Exhausted by grief and life, I’d already decided to miss my niece's wedding in Cairo. Then the phone rang. A story about saying yes anyway — whirling dervishes, hand-fasting ceremonies, doing my best at Arabic, and the surprising discovery that across ten countries and four continents, we're all the same.  Last October, I was running on empty. Six months after losing my mother, four months after c...

We're re-airing one of our favorite conversations: Season 4 guest Devin Finigan, chef and owner of Aragosta at Goose Cove in Maine. Since we first spoke with Devin, Food & Wine named Aragosta the #1 hotel for food and drink in the country, and her cookbook, A Kitchen on Goose Cove: Recipes from the Heart of Maine, has officially been released. This episode also holds special meaning for me, as I o...

I take you along to Foxboro Stadium for a World Cup match between Paraguay and Germany — my first live World Cup experience. Between the multicultural crowd, the national anthems that had me tearing up, and Paraguay's stunning underdog upset in penalty kicks, I stumble onto an unexpected connection to the show's whole theme: the World Cup actually ranks players on a "creativity" score, rewarding r...

I open up about giving my own TEDx talk at TEDx Portsmouth in May — built around a question that's haunted me for 35 years: what if I'd said yes to a free demo reel offer from a major New York radio station back when I was 28? I walk through what it cost me to play it safe, the audacious move I made to finally set things right, and how you all responded.  Memorable Moment One of my fellow speakers...

Last week I was invited to a VIP tour of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, guided by their Chief Curator. What I found was a woman who turned grief into one of the most unconventional art collections in American history — and who once glued tea-box tinfoil to her dining room walls because she liked the way it looked. I even got to stand two feet from a Rembrandt that survived the larg...

What does Bruce Springsteen have to do with the No Time to Be Timid Manifesto? Everything. I recently caught Bruce live at TD Garden in Boston—from the second to last row—and couldn't stop thinking about how his 50-year career checks off principle after principle from the manifesto. From singing for three hours straight at 76 years old, to speaking truth to power since the 1980s, to calling an ent...

This week, we’re revisiting my 2023 conversation with Amy Grant, the Grammy-Award winning singer/songwriter and there’s a good reason why. At the time we talked, Amy hadn’t recorded anything in the studio that wasn’t holiday in nearly 10 years and she was just starting to record new music. Well, she kept that momentum going and on May 8, she’ll be releasing her first new album in 13 years, “The Me...

With more than 4 million podcasts available, why make another one? That was the question I was asked to answer in my talk at the Amos Fortune Forum in Jaffrey, NH. During my presentation — which you’ll hear in this episode — I talk about my unconventional journey from clueless amateur to an award-winning podcast producer. I also take the audience through the No Time to be Timid Manifesto with insp...

My guest is Aaron Calafato, an award-winning storyteller, narrative designer, and content strategist, for some of the world’s fastest growing companies. His podcast, 7 Minute Stories,  is autobiographical and extemporaneous — the man writes nothing down — and has achieved a cult following, reaching more than 30 million people worldwide. When he’s not telling seven-minute stories, he’s also the co-...

SC Perot is the perfect guest for these trying times. She’s the author of the USA Today bestselling book Styles of Joy , which prompts readers to examine joy in their own lives. And while the book is about joy, it sprang from a place of deep grief. After leaving her corporate law career, then enduring a divorce, which resulted in losing family, friends, and her dog, and reeling in a post-pandemic...

Our guest, Barry Dean, is a double threat. Not only is he a writer of No.1 country and pop songs but he's also the CEO of Luci, a company dedicated to creating smart wheelchair technology for individuals with disabilities, like his daughter Catherine. Our conversation is one of the most compelling we've had on the show -- he's a fantastic, funny, and wise storyteller. He talks about his journey fr...

In this episode, I talk with documentarian Abby Epstein about her creative journey becoming a theater and film director and women’s health advocate. A co-creator of the landmark film, The Business of Being Born , Abby tells honest women’s stories — from periods to menopause and everything in between. She shares her experiences in creating compelling documentaries, the importance of creative partne...

In this episode, I’ve invited three women on the show who also happen to be my dear friends — they don’t know each other, but I’ve known them for decades. And in this past year, I’ve watched each of them explode with creativity. Carolyn Blank Cary published a cookbook, which became a mini memoir; Beth Huddleston developed an app introducing infants and toddlers to the sounds of languages and music...

Vince Gill is a music icon, winning armloads of awards over his 50-year musical career, including 22 Grammys, 8 Academy of Country Music Awards, and 18 CMA awards. He’s collaborated with every possible country music great like Dolly Parton and Reba McEntire, but also music legends in other genres like Sting and Barbra Streisand. Along with his unforgettable tenor voice, Vince is an extraordinary g...

Devin Finigan, chef owner of Aragosta at Goose Cove in Maine, is an award-winning chef who never attended culinary school. In our conversation, she shares her unconventional journey into the culinary world, highlighting her passion for cooking, the artistic process behind plating a dish, and the importance of mentorship and travel in her growth as a chef. With unmatched enthusiasm, she discusses t...

Shannon Cason is a master storyteller -- seen on Snap Judgment, TEDx, and The Moth stages to name a few -- and is the host of the podcast Homemade Stories. In his words, he's also a late bloomer, and with his trademark wit, wisdom, and incredible sense of timing, he shares how the right perspective can turn life's rough patches into life-changing art.   Check out Shannon's website .  Watch his sto...

Starting Over with a Creative Life featuring Nell Painter In this episode, we talk to the renowned historian and bestselling author Nell Painter, who left her wildly successful academic career to enter art school at the age of 65 — an experience she documented in her book, Old in Art School, A Memoir of Starting Over, which was named a National Book Critics Circle finalist. We talk about working w...