Imagination State

This is an update on the episode that was supposed to go live today. My guest for this last episode of the season is an artist and art teacher living in Gaza, Noura Al Qasasia . Ahead of our interview, she and her family was pushed to pack up and move to another area of the Gaza Strip. My hope is that this interview will still happen, if Noura is willing, able, and wanting to use this platform to...

What might an imagination curriculum look like? How is learning the art of interruption a key part of that?  This week's guest is Barbara Leckie, professor at Canada's Carleton University, author of Climate Change Interrupted: Representation and the Remaking of Time , and host of the podcast Commons Sense . Barbara’s work moves between Victorian literature, climate communication, and env...

César Jung-Harada has a wildly adventurous life: He’s a justice-oriented philosopher-inventor traversing the world’s oceans to help humanity adapt to climate change. He has built oil-spill robots, shape-shifting boats, floating cities, and hydrogen devices. The inventions range in technology and scale, but the heart and soul remains the same. César uses imagination and inclusion to scaffold all he...

Daniel Tam-Claiborne is a writer, producer, and nonprofit leader whose work bridges cultures and builds belonging. His debut novel Transplants   (Simon & Schuster, 2025), a finalist for the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction, follows two young women navigating borders, responsibility, and the search for home. A former Fulbright Scholar and NEA Fellow, Daniel is now Deputy Direct...

This week on Imagination State , we are joined by Amelia Hruby - feminist writer, podcaster, and creator of Off the Grid , a podcast and community for people reclaiming their attention from social media. With Off the Grid and as the founder of Softer Sounds , Amelia helps artists and entrepreneurs build thriving creative lives beyond the extractive attention economies of social media. A former phi...

Why wouldn’t we want all stories together? We miss out when we’re segregated. Marcie’s stories open the door to her home and her heart - and, somehow, to your own. She once wrote that newsletters are like the Off-Broadway productions of what’s happening in Midtown. Her recent Love Letters on Substack feel like the main show: intimate, arresting, and something you carry with you long after it’s ove...

Hello again, and a warm welcome to new listeners! This is the first episode of a new season and, in a way, the first chapter of an entirely new story. Old friends will remember The Heart Gallery ; now, we’ve stepped out into the wider - and wilder? - landscape of the imagination. In this short opening episode, I share the tale of a matrescence-sparked imagination awakening, the first beginning of...

In this episode, we step into the world of ethnomusicology with Angela Impey. Angela is a researcher, author, and senior lecturer at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, where she explores the links between music, culture, and social change. Angela shares her experiences during apartheid in South Africa, where music became a powerful form of political expression, along with storie...

In this episode launching on Juneteenth, come on a trip down the road from Selma, Alabama - home of the 1960s Selma Voting Rights Movement and the Selma to Montgomery marches - to the tiny little enclave of Gee’s Bend, situated in a bend of the Alabama river. This is the home of the famous Gees Bend quilters. The community of Gee’s Bend, Alabama, traces its roots back to the enslaved individuals w...

Did you know that the average person encounters 10,000 commercial images in a day? That neighborhoods where people have lower incomes tend to have more advertisements for unhealthy foods and have more stores selling and advertising commercial tobacco? That the majority of images we see of the African continent are mostly from Western sources? This is some of what I’ve learned from the new book , T...

A recurring theme on the podcast is the climate crisis and the ways in which artists are addressing it in their work, whether they're focused on showing ways forward for society, making the issue more concrete for individuals and specific communities, or inviting people sideways into the issue through art that is focused on elements of celebration, curiosity, care. If you listen to the podcas...

This episode of The Heart Gallery will take you into the history and ongoing realities of Indigenous affairs in Canada. Recent years have shed light on a painful and violent history, as well as present-day systemic challenges. From the harrowing legacy of the residential school system, which remained active until the 1990s, to the continuous struggles over land rights and cultural preservation, th...

In today's episode, Justin Cook takes us into the evolving world of climate storytelling where he's been a journalist and photographer covering "communities living along the edges in America" for the past several years. Justin's work stands in stark contrast to the conventional climate storytelling landscape that's so often dominated by dire predictions and a sense of...

In today's escalating humanitarian crises, the term itself is complex, influenced by various factors. The United Nations reports 235 million people needing humanitarian help, nearly double from a decade ago. These crises and the treatment of them, often rooted in colonialism, affect everything from resources to power structures, and, as discussed in the episode with Patrick Gathara, may perpe...

For the 12th episode of The Heart Gallery, I am in conversation with Gaelynn Lea.   Gaelynn, a violinist and songwriter who won NPR Music’s Tiny Desk Contest in 2016, has a unique perspective on the challenges and opportunities in the music industry, especially for disabled artists. She has performed over 600 shows in 45 states and 9 countries, but her path hasn't been without obstacles. And...

This is the second part of my conversation with Patrick Gathara . In this segment, we continue to dissect inclusive storytelling and its critical role in understanding humanity - both that of the world as well as our own.  We cover the genocide in Gaza, inclusive stories from other context, the problems of western media today, and how to go beyond "the single story". HW from Patrick: &qu...

For the first episode of The Heart Gallery Season 2, I talk to Patrick Gathara , The New Humanitarian's Senior Editor of Inclusive Storytelling.  Patrick talks about what inclusive storytelling look like in a context where the news is changing by the minute, where echo chambers are swirling with recycled talking points, where mainstream media is saturated with dehumanization of whole groups o...

For the 10th episode (and the season finale!) of The Heart Gallery Podcast, I connect with my wonderful friend Taylor Freesolo Rees . Taylor is a filmmaker, documentarian, storyteller and photographer. She has won numerous film festival awards for her work exploring environmental justice, natural resource issues, the outdoor adventure industry and its various players, nonhuman creatures and our re...

For Episode 9 of The Heart Gallery Podcast, Rebeka Ryvola de Kremer talks to climate story consultant Alisa Petrosova . This episode explores how the film and TV industry is doing on climate messaging. According to research from Good Energy and The Media Impact Project that analyzed 37, 453 scripted television episodes and films released from 2016 through 2020, less than 3% acknowledge climate cha...

For Episode 8 of The Heart Gallery Podcast , Rebeka Ryvola de Kremer talks to artist and writer John Kazior . Today’s guest on The Heart Gallery sparks imagination incredibly well. He is John Kazior, an American artist and writer based in Sweden. John's writing also reveals the depths of these dark arts and shares how we can come to see these efforts more clearly. He talks about how we can le...

For Episode 7 of The Heart Gallery Podcast, Rebeka Ryvola de Kremer talks to curators Lara Goodband & Gemma Lloyd . Lara & Gemma are curators of Earth Spells: Witches of the Anthropocene , happening now at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter. The exhibit features works from some incredible artists from around the globe: Caroline Achaintre, Emma Hart, Kris Lemsalu, Mercedes Mühleisen...

For Episode 6 of The Heart Gallery Podcast, Rebeka Ryvola de Kremer talks to artist Lauren Shapiro .  Lauren has spent her whole life in Southern Florida and her work explores the potential of art to cultivate awareness of the environment. She often works alongside ecologists to understand and narrate nature and she merges craft, science and technology to document disappearing ecosystems like cora...

For Episode 5 of The Heart Gallery Podcast, Rebeka Ryvola de Kremer talks to Morel Doucet . Morel is a Miami-based multidisciplinary artist and arts educator from Haiti. He creates captivating ceramic, illustration, and print works that examine the realities of climate gentrification, migration, and displacement within the Black diaspora communities. Listen and learn from the magical Morel Doucet....

For Episode 4 of The Heart Gallery Podcast, Rebeka Ryvola de Kremer talks to "artivist" Vidushi Yadav . Vidushi’s work revolves around gender justice, South Asian identity, access & right-based content. She is a communication & design consultant for multiple women rights, humanitarian & development organizations world-wide. Through her work she attempts to investigate gaze, r...

For Episode 1 of The Heart Gallery Podcast, Rebeka Ryvola de Kremer introduces the podcast in conversation with writer & podcaster Alice Irene Whittaker. Visit The Heart Gallery's visual accompaniment for this podcast episode here (podcast transcript also available here). Mentioned: - Poet & ornithologist Drew Lanham - Doireann Ní Ghríofa , author of  A Ghost in the Throat   - Tamara...