Twice 5 Miles Radio with James Navé

Welcome to Twice 5 Miles Radio. I'm your host, James Navé. This week I'm flying solo, recording on a smoke-hazed midsummer morning in Arroyo Seco, New Mexico, and turning my unscripted, wandering style toward a single subject: improvisation. I argue improvisation isn't a rare stage skill reserved for the bold, but a birthright I've practiced since infancy, present in every drive down a country roa...

Welcome to Twice 5 Miles Radio. I'm your host, James Navé. In this solo episode, I pull poems from decades-old notebooks and read them aloud: old highway verses, a bawdy e.e. cummings romp, and originals from my cancer-recovery collection, while explaining why I trust what bubbles up. Recorded outdoors in Taos with birdsong and a distant tractor as backdrop, it doubles as a meditation on memory: I...

James Navé here. I put together this eight-minute music track for a writing workshop I'm teaching at the Estelle Center in La Veta, Colorado. Here's the invitation. Play the music and keep moving for the entire eight minutes. There are no rules. Walk, stretch, sway, dance, or simply move in whatever way feels natural. When the music ends, sit down with a blank sheet of paper and a pen. Begin writi...

Welcome to Twice 5 Miles Radio . I'm your host, James Navé . What can acting teach us about poetry and living a more authentic life? In this solo episode, I explore acting not as a profession but as a way of understanding ourselves. Drawing on decades of performing memorized poetry, studying theater, and learning from master acting teacher Susan Batson, I reflect on what it really means to create...

In this solo episode, I explore what it means to Live Life Like a Festival , inspired by Jennifer Pickering's vision for the LEAF Festival and our upcoming book of the same title. Along the way, I reflect on my thirty years with the LEAF Festival, William Carlos Williams' poem The Dance , my visit with my friend John Van Hasselt as he navigates Parkinson's disease in Paris, producing a surprise bi...

A Paris lunch. One decision. Six books later. What happens when a coach decides to write a book and discovers she has no idea what she's doing? In this conversation, I sit down with my longtime friend and collaborator, Lynn Burney, to explore her remarkable journey from writing for herself to becoming the author of six self-published books. We begin in Paris at Le Train Bleu , the legendary restau...

What if creativity isn't a talent reserved for artists, writers, and musicians? What if it's something far more fundamental—something woven into human nature itself? In this conversation, Allegra Huston and I explore a concept that has become central to our work over the last several years: Imaginative Intelligence. We discuss why creativity may be less about making products and more about partici...

Welcome to Twice 5 Miles Radio. I'm your host, James Navé. In this solo episode, I take you along on a twenty-two-hour journey from Paris to Taos, New Mexico—a trip that begins with coffee, oatmeal, a forgotten iPhone, and a ride on the Paris Metro, then winds through Charles de Gaulle Airport, a transatlantic flight, immigration in Salt Lake City, and a rain-soaked drive home through New Mexico....

Welcome to Twice 5 Miles Radio. I’m your host, James Navé. Today my guest is Jay Hill, whose TEDx Asheville talk may be one of the funniest and most unexpectedly thought-provoking presentations I’ve encountered in years. Jay’s subject? Men sitting down to pee. Yes, really. What begins as a provocative comic premise quickly opens into a larger conversation about responsibility, habit, fairness, emo...

Welcome to Twice 5 Miles Radio. I’m your host, James Navé. Today, my guest is Diana Gustafson. Recorded in Taos, New Mexico, following the Imaginative Storm Writing Workshop, this conversation moves through memoir, creativity, spirituality, storytelling, wholeness, poetry, meditation, and the mysterious force that drives us to write. Diana reflects on leaving Washington, D.C., after years serving...

Welcome to Twice 5 Miles Radio . I’m your host, James Navé. Today’s conversation unfolds in a sunlit adobe room in Taos, New Mexico, where writer Rebecca Jarmas, also known by her pen name Alice W Meadows, joins me to explore the deep intersection of creativity, community, and resilience. Rebecca shares her journey from a successful career in finance into the uncertain, demanding, and ultimately l...

Narrative. Authority. Voice. Ease. Four elements shape everything you do. Welcome to Twice 5 Miles Radio. I'm your host, James Navé.   In this solo episode, I explore the living framework of narrative, authority, voice, and ease—not as abstract ideas, but as practical forces shaping how we move through the world. From a two-day drive out of Asheville to a quiet morning on a sun porch in Saint Loui...

  Welcome to Twice 5 Miles Radio . I’m your host, James Navé. Today I’m going solo—reflecting on time, memory, and the places that shape us. From spring mornings in western North Carolina to long walks in the south of France, this episode moves through poetry, travel, and friendships that hold across decades. At the center is Fern Hill by Dylan Thomas—a poem I memorized years ago that continues to...

Math, Poetry, and the Calculations of Everyday Life Welcome to Twice 5 Miles Radio. I’m your host, James Navé. This week I’m going solo from Lake Eden, looking out at early spring and thinking about something I once believed I couldn’t do—math. For most of my life, I thought I was “bad at math.” What I didn’t understand is that I’ve been doing math all along—estimating distance, time, sound, movem...

Welcome to Twice 5 Miles Radio. I’m your host, James Navé. This episode traces a prostate cancer diagnosis, surgery, and 100 days of writing through recovery. Fifteen years ago, I had surgery for prostate cancer. The next morning, I started writing—one piece a day for 100 days. I’m recording this at Lake Eden in Western North Carolina, and today I’m going solo. The first piece was just a report fr...

Welcome to Twice 5 Miles —fertile ground for conversations worth listening to and remembering. I’m your host, James Navé , going solo today. This episode is an improvisational field recording of a question I’ve been invited to answer onstage in six minutes: how do we unlabel words like death? A friend, Dr. Aditi Sethi, nudged me toward the idea that many of us carry rigid definitions of death—defi...

Welcome to Twice 5 Miles Radio. I’m your host, James Navé. Today, my guest is Megan O’Malley—coach, speaker, and soon-to-be TEDx Asheville presenter—whose work explores our cultural addiction to certainty, control, and the subtle ways “should” shapes our lives In this wide-ranging conversation, Megan reflects on what it means to surrender without collapsing, to choose agency over fear, and to cult...

To Tell or Not to Tell with James Navé Telling a poem is different than performing it.  It’s closer to telling a story than delivering a text. Welcome to Twice 5 Miles Radio. I’m your host, James Navé. Today I’m going solo once again, spending time with a subject that’s been close to me for many years: how we read, perform, recite—or, as I prefer to say, tell —a piece of literature. I’ve earned my...

Welcome to Twice 5 Miles Radio, I’m your host, James Navé. In this episode, I step out from behind the interview microphone and into a solo exploration of memory, storytelling, and the uneasy work of writing a memoir. What begins with a terrible improvised hot dog poem—captured on camera during the 1996 National Poetry Slam Championships—opens into a deeper inquiry: how stories choose us, how tens...

Welcome to Twice 5 Miles Radio . I’m your host, James Navé , and today my guest is Sekou Coleman .  Sekou Coleman is a community historian, cultural organizer, and one of the speakers appearing on the TEDxAsheville stage in March 2026. For more than three decades, he has worked alongside communities to protect memory, strengthen local decision-making, and resist the quiet erasure that often accomp...

Welcome to provocative conversations from Twice 5 Miles Radio. I’m your host, James Navé, and today my guest is Asheville’s David Huff—one of the twelve TEDxAsheville speakers taking the stage at the Diana Wortham Theatre on March 20, 2026. David is a business consultant and environmentalist, an outdoor explorer, and a mythopoetic thinker who believes the antidote to cynicism isn’t another opinion...

Welcome to Provocative Conversations from Twice 5 Miles Radio. I’m your host James Navé. In this episode, I sit down with Lisa Raleigh, Executive Director of RiverLink in Asheville—and one of the twelve speakers taking the TEDxAsheville stage on March 20, 2026 at the Diana Wortham Theater, under the theme Messy. Lisa was on site in Black Mountain when Hurricane Helene hit, and she helps us underst...

Welcome to provocative conversations from Twice 5 Miles Radio. I’m your host, James Navé. In this episode, I record on location in Taipei, Taiwan, tracing a single day as it unfolds—from morning rain and quiet memorial grounds to crowded streets, shared meals, and a luminous night market. What emerges is a listening-based travelogue: part reportage, part reflection, part improvisation. The episode...

In this episode, I sit down with George Hope Johnson, a TEDx Asheville speaker whose upcoming talk explores transgender identity through lived experience, clarity, and deep human insight. George is a thoughtful, articulate young man with years of public speaking experience, and he brings both courage and nuance to a subject that is often reduced to headlines and sound bites. Our conversation moves...

What if creativity isn’t something you learn—but something you remember? Welcome to Provocative Conversations from Twice 5 Miles Radio. I’m your host, James Navé, and today poet and educator Laura Hope Gill joins us for a far-reaching exploration of creativity as a vital human intelligence—one that is biological, emotional, and deeply spiritual. Laura challenges the idea that poetry is ornamental...