Humanitou: Exploring Humanness + Creativity

The Humanitou Podcast is about humanness and creativity. It's created and hosted by artist and writer Adam Williams, a super-curious introvert who might not be a superstar at small talk but loves thoughtful, energizing, one-on-one conversations. Humanitou shines light on failure and triumph, fear and love and all the messy and real parts of being human. There are conversations with fellow artists,...

Adam Williams, creator and host of the Humanitou Podcast, wraps up Season One of the podcast, and talks about the newest goings on around Humanitou and his plans for the season break before he jumpstarts Season Two early in 2021. Along the way, he talks about Lewis Hyde's classic book, "The Gift," and how it's influencing his perspective on art creation (and even selling) as a means of gift giving...

Dr. Chip Thomas, a.k.a. "Jetsonorama," as a boy, avoided the violence of school desegregation by spending a fateful few years in a Quaker community. He later carried those Quaker values with him into a four-year commitment to serve as a young doctor on the Navajo Nation. That was in the Eighties. He's still there, more than 30 years later, and has become an integral part of the community, not only...

Ber-Henda Williams is an empathic coach and facilitator, a bilingual poet and storyteller, and founder of The Power of Girlhood, a leadership institute for teen girls in Detroit. In this conversation, we talk about Detroit, and about going against the tide and leading from where we are. We talk about the need for curiosity, love poetry as a tool against the political power structure, and going toe...

Amanda E.K.  is a writer and filmmaker, the editor-in-chief and publisher of Suspect Press, a memoirist about purity culture and an  ex vangelical . In this conversation, Amanda talks about her fundamentalist evangelical upbringing, purity culture, rapture anxiety and religious trauma syndrome. We also talk about when she started to question the faith, and about eventually coming into her own trut...

Adam Williams, creator of Humanitou, gets into a topic that he's  really not comfortable talking about: love. In this solo episode, he  starts with an odd little story that finally got him to speak on this issue he's got with love. He explores  why he's not comfortable having this talk with you today, why that’s got to change and how he's changing it. He  also briefly digresses into the nuances of...

Lucas LaRochelle is a designer and artist, and the founder of Queering the Map,  a collaborative digital archive of queer experience across the world. With Lucas, we dive into the storytelling and the magic of Queering the Map.  We talk about the importance and the transcendental powers of anonymity, and we talk about one of the most powerful aspects of love. We also dig into truth and fiction, an...

Lewis Lee struggled to stay out of prison when he was a young man, and then to find life purpose once he did. Now, he's a community leader, facilitator and mentor, a voice for social justice, and the Milwaukee-based curator of the Shared Studios Portal in the neighborhood where he came up. The 53206, where Lewis still lives, is  the zip code with the highest incarceration rate of black men in Amer...

Humanitou creator Adam Williams digs into some thoughts, resources and ideas about recognizing life purpose and cultivating success through the Zen Buddhist koan, "chop wood, carry water." Along the way, he dips into the wisdom of sages like Jedi master Yoda and Michael Jordan, Baba Ram Dass and Pablo Picasso, an 8th century Buddhist poet and the lightbulb inventor Thomas Edison. Adam also shares...

Ber-Henda Williams is an empathic coach and facilitator, a bilingual poet and storyteller, and founder of The Power of Girlhood, a leadership institute for teen girls in Detroit. In this conversation, in the days following the police shooting of Jacob Black seven times in the back in Kenosha, Wisconsin, we talk about empathy and getting curious about ourselves, systemic biases and anti-racism. We...

Virgil Ortiz, an artist internationally renowned for his work in pottery, fashion and film, carries on a legacy of pueblo potters. He bridges the past with the future, conceptually and technologically, through his blend of indigenous and sci-fi-influenced work. His art is featured in  museums and galleries across the U.S., including the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, and in...

Chef Brother Luck  is the owner of two restaurants in Colorado Springs: Four by Brother Luck and Lucky Dumpling. And he's got a new project underway, even in the heat of the economic and health crises of 2020, The Lucky Lounge.  Brother has also been a crowd favorite in the celebrity chef universe of the Food Network, where he was a finalist on Chopped , and where he beat Chef Bobby Flay on the Ne...

In this solo episode, Adam Williams, creator and host of Humanitou, digs into his own "humanness and creativity," going into those corners he so often asks his guests to vulnerably explore on the podcast. He talks about how his immense curiosity led him into the U.S. Army, and now guides Humanitou. He talks about leadership and empathy, communication and connection as humans who experience differe...

Lisa Congdon is an illustrator, and the author of eight books, most recently: “Find Your Artistic Voice: The Essential Guide to Working Your Creative Magic.” Her client list runs deep, including  the Obama Campaign, the United Nations, Lululemon, Crate & Barrel, MoMA, REI, AirBnB, Martha Stewart Living …  I n this conversation, we talk about failure, impostor syndrome, and the stories and expe...

Elliana Grace grew up in a circus family and in the circus life. From infancy. Like, from being a baby being breastfed while sitting atop an elephant kind of infancy.  She and her two younger brothers, who also are globe-traveling professional circus performers, spent more time at their fantastically strange and sometimes dangerous home-away-from-home in St. Louis, the City Museum, than they did t...

In this episode, Adam Williams, creator and host of Humanitou, which typically features guests in "conversations of humanness and creativity," is riding solo and launching something new. Starting with this episode, Adam is committing to a series of five solo episodes mixed in with the coming months' conversations.  In these, he explores his own humanness and creativity through topics that are rele...

Sara Meghdari, an interdisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn, NY., is Iranian and American. She comes from a family that honors two religions, two languages and two cultures. We  talked as protests grew across the United States after police officers in Minneapolis killed George Floyd. This, on top of months of dealing with extraordinary upheaval and isolation due to the Covid-19 pandemic. We talk...

Lucas Krump is CEO and co-founder of Evryman, a social enterprise that is cultivating a global men’s community, and is helping men to connect and to hone their emotional skills together.  We get into Lucas’ personal journey. F rom growing up in Kansas and learning largely to support himself at a very young age in a house of turmoil. To a decade of pursuits around the world in his 20s, y ears spent...

Inaiah Lujan is a multifaceted and prolific creator.  Music is at the heart of his work. In fact, he might be most widely known for his time with a folk band he co-founded, The Haunted Windchimes.  Inaiah recently wrapped his first seasons of a web series called “Hanging Out with Inaiah Lujan” and his new podcast, Cast the Line, an interview series about creative process and wellness.  We talk abo...

Kate is an Emmy ® -nominated producer and director, a writer and filmmaker, a television host with Rocky Mountain PBS, and a rock musician -- currently in the band, Spirettes -- who has performed, recorded and toured near and far with her music.  Kate shares her story of growing up in poverty on a 40-acre vegetable farm in remote Minnesota. She tells of leaving home for college at 16 and the impor...

Dáreece Walker talks with Humanitou about his artwork, which combines race, identity and religion into socio-political responses. We talk about his work that speaks against police brutality, and his series that celebrates black fathers and addresses the lack of positive imagery of black men in society. We navigate creative process, and facing fear, vulnerability and one's inner critic. Among other...

In this episode of the Humanitou Podcast, Jessica Patterson shares some intensely shaping experiences in her life and where her feral spirit comes from. We talk about yoga as a homonym, how the word, while it looks and sounds the same in its uses, conjures different meanings for different people and leads to common misperceptions.  We talk about how we construct identities and realities through la...

In this episode of the Humanitou Podcast series, I talk with singer-songwriter and musician Joe Johnson, a storyteller that learned at the sides of homegrown orators on the porches of Southern Mississippi. T he most common themes of his music -- death, loss and isolation -- have been with him his entire life. He’ll share why. We find plenty of laughter in our conversation, too.  We explore truth i...

Sister Ayya Dhammadhira is a Bhikkhuni, a fully ordained Buddhist nun, who has lived, worked and practiced in Buddhist monasteries around the world -- and now does so independently -- these past 20 or so years.  We talk about Ayya’s upbringing in a Catholic family and the family tragedy that sent her inward with her spiritual questions at 12 years old.  We talk about what carried Ayya from her you...

Jamal Parker is a two-time International Slam Poetry Champion. He  grew up in Japan, where he first explored his poetry, and in Florida, where as a teenager he first came to recognize the politics of race with the murder of Trayvon Martin nearby.  In this conversation, we cover a range of topics, many of which you can find laid bare by Jamal in his poetry and performances, including:  identity and...