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

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, playwri...

“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...

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 he...

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., EarthD...

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 e...

“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...

"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...

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 Anto...

“ 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...

“ 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...

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...

“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 environ...

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...

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 terrify...

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 G...

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 e...

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 journali...

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 Schmid...

“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-L...

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, a...

“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...

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 hi...

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 Tenness...

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 Tutka...

“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 inc...