Creative Destruction Podcast

Abbey Runion is an artist who has dabbled in numerous mediums over the years, and host Cameron Cook talks to them in this episode about that journey of self-discovery. They also discuss mental illness, moving away from home, loneliness, emotional honesty, and which Avenger is the most attractive. 

CW: Self-harm, depression

Host Cameron Cook met David Mruz in the creative writing program at their college, and ever since the two have developed a friendship based around writing, movies, graphic novels, video games, history, philosophy, and anything else they are curious to learn more about. Today they discuss the books they are writing, developing plot and characters for an audience, Japanese horror, and how to deal with creative roadblocks. Look for Mruz's novel Skyscape, coming out Fall 2020. 

Host Cameron Cook and guest MJ Slide go way back as filmmaking collaborators. MJ is an infinitely creative, gracious, and interesting person, and the conversation in this episode touches upon such seemingly disparate topics as Science Fiction, Race in America, Public Libraries, Filmmaking, Mental Illness, and Emotional Labor. You can find more from MJ on instagram @MJ_Slide and online at www.thisismjslide.com. 

Anna Duren is an artist, an academic, an activist, a dog trainer, and one of the smartest people host Cameron Cook has ever met. In this interview, the two sit down to discuss a high school graduation during COVID-19, living with Type 1 Diabetes, social anxiety, and more. 

Cameron and Justin were best friends throughout high school, and by the end of junior year, they barely spoke. At thirty, they speak for the first time in years about High School, why the friendship may have stalled, working during COVID-19, marriage, and more. 

Host Cameron Cook tells a story about waking up early in the winter of his freshman year in college.

Hannah and Cameron discuss Tommy Orange's 2018 Novel

Hannah and Cameron come up with their dream class reading lists. 

Hannah's Syllabus: 

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Native Guard by Natasha Trethewey

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

There There by Tommy Orange

Alambrista! by Robert Young

A Place for Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza

Cameron's Syllabus:

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O'Connor

Opening Night by John Cassavetes

The World According to Garp by John Irving

Mulholland Drive by David Lynch

Hamlet by William Shakespeare

All that Jazz by Bob Fosse

The White Ribbon by Michael Haneke

Books mentioned in this episode: 

Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake by James Joyce

The Sound and the Fury and Absalom! Absalom! by William Faulkner

The Nix by Nathan Hill

The Vegetarian by Han Kang

House of Leaves by Mark Z Danielewski

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'engle

Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

Swann's Way by Marcel Proust

Any Man by Amber Tamblyn

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

On the Road by Jack Kerouac

"The Hollow Men" by TS Eliot

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

"The Metamorphosis" and The Trial and Amerika by Franz Kafka

City of Glass by Paul Auster

Mulholland Drive by David Lynch (Film)

Host Cameron Cook has a rough night on the job.