Feminism, Women’s Stories: The Creative Process: Empowering Stories, Inspiring Women, Gender Equality, Women's Rights & Empowerment

“I think first of all that in order to have disillusion, you need to have illusion and I really want to sort of take a stand in the name of being a delusional person, you know? I do think illusions are necessary to our sense of creativity, and we need to fall in love with extreme projects, and we need to have ideas that are sometimes unsustainable. We need to dream big in order to be creative and feel alive. The illusions that are a part of Aqua are larger illusions. They're illusions that have to do with my adult life. They're connected to nature and the presence or absence of water, the illusion that we can keep sustaining a city even though the water has run out.”

My guest today, Chiara Barzini, has spent her life navigating the literal and cultural fault lines between Italy and California. Today we will discuss her book, Aqua: A Story of Water and Lost Dreams, and her life as an artist living between two countries. In her acclaimed 2017 novel, Things That Happened Before the Earthquake, she wrote about arriving in the San Fernando Valley just weeks after a catastrophic natural disaster and the illusions of the '90s.

In Aqua, she examines nature, the California water crisis and the broken dreams of the Hollywood machine. We talk about family, film, art as an act of faith and our collective ecological coming of age, where the end of empire meets the end of abundance, and the consequences of hypercapitalism and colonialism. What does it mean to stare our illusions in the eye and find the courage to imagine a better future?

(0:00) The Necessity of Illusions

(1:40) Chiara Barzini, Author, Screenwriter

(4:44) The End of Empire and Ecological Anxiety

(12:15) The Allure and Cruelty of Capitalism

(16:07)   Aqua: A Reading - On Hollywood and Water

(21:02) Screenwriter Robert Towne and the Legacy of Chinatown

(26:20) AI Consumption and Water Bankruptcy

(30:23) The Edge of Apocalypse and Bombay Beach

(33:41) The Etruscans and the Art of Dying

(42:33) Translation and Creativity

(44:28) Raising Children in a Crazy World

(47:30) Poetry, Ruins, and The Waste Land

(57:33) Scents and Sounds of Rome and Los Angeles

(01:04:17) The Connection with Animals and Nature

(01:07:35) The Evolution of Love and Compassion

(01:09:17) The Memory Museum

(01:13:00) We Are in This Lifetime Together

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

Chiara Barzini has spent her life navigating the literal and cultural fault lines between Italy and California. Today we will discuss her book, Aqua: A Story of Water and Lost Dreams, and her life as an artist living between two countries. In her acclaimed 2017 novel, Things That Happened Before the Earthquake, she wrote about arriving in the San Fernando Valley just weeks after a catastrophic natural disaster and the illusions of the '90s.

In Aqua, she examines nature, the California water crisis and the broken dreams of the Hollywood machine. We talk about family, film, art as an act of faith and our collective ecological coming of age, where the end of empire meets the end of abundance, and the consequences of hypercapitalism and colonialism. What does it mean to stare our illusions in the eye and find the courage to imagine a better future?

(0:00) Water as Power

(2:17) The Necessity of Illusions

(4:24) Aqua: A Reading - On Hollywood and Water

(7:51) The Edge of Apocalypse & Writing

(9:10) The Etruscans and the Art of Dying

(13:13) Translation and the Creative Spark

(14:38) Raising Children in a Crazy World

(16:18) Poetry, Ruins, and The Waste Land

(18:48) Scents and Sounds of Two Cities (Rome and Los Angeles)

(20:43) The Connection with Animals and Nature

(22:54) The Evolution of Love and Compassion

(24:12) The Memory Museum

(27:04) We are in this lifetime together

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

Today, we have a conversation about time, memory, and the bittersweet geography of human sorrow. Georgi Gospodinovis widely considered one of the most daring voices in contemporary European literature. His acclaimed novel, The Physics of Sorrow, won the prestigious Jan Michalski Prize in 2016, blending ancient myth and quantum physics to chronicle the delicate realities of post-socialist Eastern Europe. Joining him is Angela Rodel, a brilliant linguist, musician, and translator whose profound artistic empathy carries the flowing cadences of the Bulgarian language into vivid English. Together, this extraordinary creative duo made history by winning the 2023 International Booker Prizefor Time Shelter—the first book written in Bulgarian to ever receive the honor.

Time Shelter is a masterfully dark, funny, and prescient novel. It begins with an enigmatic psychiatrist opening a clinic that treats Alzheimer’s patients by meticulously recreating past decades to match their internal clocks. But the experiment quickly escapes the clinic walls, triggering a pan-European crisis where entire nations hold democratic referendums to choose which era of the past they will retreat into. It is a book that holds up a mirror to our own world, exploring what happens when a civilization faces a deficit of meaning and tries to weaponize nostalgia.

(0:00) The Trap of Nostalgia

(1:22) The Nonlinear Approach to Storytelling

(3:53) Translating the Atmosphere

(4:31) The Pandemic of the Past

(6:37) Death and the Gardener

(9:49) The Translators Calling

(11:00) Slowing Down Time

(13:14) Storytelling vs Propaganda

(15:54) Translating the Atmosphere

(18:19) What makes a good life? What has given your life meaning?

(20:56) Reflections on God and the Stories His Grandmother Told Him

(23:43) The Importance of Hugging, Empathy and Storytelling

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

“Lincoln Center is multiple stages. I think probably over three dozen stages across 16 acres. It is a vast canvas in and of itself. And then we have this beautiful plaza that leads to this beautiful campus, and that’s the visual I think that most people have when they think of Lincoln Center is this beautiful fountain in the center and these three gorgeous buildings.It’s New York’s biggest plaza, and it feels very vibrant and beautiful. In the summer, we really take that plaza and we transform it into a dance floor. So this idea of also interrupting what people’s notion of Lincoln Center is because it’s a space that is very aspirational, which is a great thing.”

Shanta Thake is the Chief Artistic Officer at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts—the nation's largest performing arts complex. Before stepping into this role, she spent nineteen years at The Public Theater, shaping the city's cultural landscape through Joe's Pub and expansive community initiatives. Today, she is tearing down walls—both the literal barriers separating Lincoln Center from its neighbors, and the figurative ones that dictate who belongs in our cultural spaces. She views the arts not as a luxury, but as essential civic infrastructure. We are pleased to have Shanta Thake to discuss her journey, the power of radical curation, and the future of public performance.

(0:00) Reimagining Lincoln Center

(2:27) Art and the Human Experience

(4:40) The Curiosity of Childhood

(5:44) Alvin Ailey and the Pivot

(8:29) The Invisible Arts

(9:06) The Power of Public Theater

(17:03) Curation, Programming and the Art of Listening

(23:42) San Juan Hill and The Wall

(31:23) Art as the Oldest Technology

(35:02) globalFEST: Music and Connection

(38:20) Finding Universal Belonging

(41:20) The Gift of Pause

(54:27) A Collective Caretaking

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

"I really do believe that the arts are critical to how we move forward together, and live performance in particular, I think, is a way of us practicing how to move across our ideological boundaries and find one another and imagine these new worlds together and create together."

Shanta Thake is the Chief Artistic Officer at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts—the nation's largest performing arts complex. Before stepping into this role, she spent nineteen years at The Public Theater, shaping the city's cultural landscape through Joe's Pub and expansive community initiatives. Today, she is tearing down walls—both the literal barriers separating Lincoln Center from its neighbors, and the figurative ones that dictate who belongs in our cultural spaces. She views the arts not as a luxury, but as essential civic infrastructure. We are pleased to have Shanta Thake to discuss her journey, the power of radical curation, and the future of public performance.

(00:00) Reimagining Lincoln Center

(03:09) A Collective Caretaking

(03:47) The Technology of Human Creation

(04:20) The Curiosity of Childhood

(09:25) San Juan Hill and The Wall

(14:20) globalFEST: Music and Connection

(16:06) The Gift of Pause

(17:20) A Collective Caretaking

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

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 is a living interaction with landscape and what they call the Atlas of Resonance, interpreting the hidden layers of a territory, geology, memory, and craft. It is a philosophy that rejects the generic, seeking instead to weave together technological innovation with local materials. Whether it is a mosque in the north of England or a hybrid innovation hub in a former royal manufactory, their work asks a fundamental question: How does space shape the way we think, learn and remember? They were selected by Rem Koolhaas to represent Morocco at the Venice Biennale. Most recently, they were commissioned by Hermès to create a 17,000-square-meter facility that bridges industrial performance with poetic expression. At the heart of their practice is a belief that architecture is not just about building—it’s about shaping relationships: between people, between past and future, between technology and craft.

(0:03) Architecture as a Living Transformation

(1:42) The Intuitive Knowledge of Living Art

(2:20) Preserving the Human Core of Expression

(3:14) The Medina and the Geometry of Childhood

(6:35) The Social Spaces of Rooftops

(8:27) The Twin Dynamic and Confrontation with 'l'autre'

(10:21) Contextual Echoes & Traces of the Site

(12:12) The Temples of Water

(13:15) The Mosque as Pure Spatiality

(15:49) Building Culture with Yves Saint Laurent & Pierre Bergé

(16:57) The Wast ed-dar (وسط الدار) and the Heart of a Building

(18:31) The Smells and Sounds of Home

(19:44) Balance, Nature, and Sisterhood

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

Why do we write? Is it to capture a memory before it vanishes or to build a bridge between the person we are and the stories we've been told? In this episode of The Creative Process, we explore the practice of writing as an awakening and tool for discovery with a group of celebrated poets, novelists, musicians and thinkers.

We hear from neuroscientist, dancer and author Julia Christensen on how literature inspires transformative aesthetic experiences. Award-winning poet and clinical psychologist Hala Alyan discusses navigating displacement through narrative, while bestselling author Andre Dubus III reflects on the honest labor of the writer and the willingness to fail.

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Jericho Brown shares how the sounds of American vernacular guide his work and Fmr. US Poet Laureate Ada Limón discusses holding hope within frightening thoughts about the future of our planet. NYT Bestseller Aimee Nezhukumatathil speaks on tenderness towards the natural world and naturalist Sy Montgomery shares how animals have been her greatest teachers.

The conversation expands with poet Max Stossel on finding humanity in conflict, Tiokasin Ghosthorse on the ancient energy of the earth and Julian Lennon on art as a collective human endeavor. Finally, composer Erland Cooper takes us to the landscape of his youth, where the sound of the sea informed his creative voice. 

To hear more from each guest, listen to their full interviews.

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

“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 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 is a living interaction with landscape and what they call the Atlas of Resonance, interpreting the hidden layers of a territory, geology, memory, and craft. It is a philosophy that rejects the generic, seeking instead to weave together technological innovation with local materials. Whether it is a mosque in the north of England or a hybrid innovation hub in a former royal manufactory, their work asks a fundamental question: How does space shape the way we think, learn and remember?

They were selected by Rem Koolhaas to represent Morocco at the Venice Biennale. Most recently, they were commissioned by Hermès to create a 17,000-square-meter facility that bridges industrial performance with poetic expression. At the heart of their practice is a belief that architecture is not just about building—it’s about shaping relationships: between people, between past and future, between technology and craft.

(0:04) The Intuitive Knowledge of Living Art

(4:24) The Medina and the Geometry of Childhood

(8:18) The Social Spaces of Rooftops

(13:46) The Intuitive Knowledge of Living Art

(15:31) Contextual Echoes & Traces of the Site

(19:18) The Twin Dynamic and Confrontation with 'l'autre'

(26:42) The Temples of Water

(33:24) The Mosque as Pure Spatiality

(38:01) The Crisis Period and Structural Systems

(48:24) Building Culture with Yves Saint Laurent & Pierre Bergé

(51:38) The Wast ed-dar (وسط الدار) and the Heart of a Building

(57:02) Preserving the Human Core of Expression

(1:04:29) Urban Acupuncture in the Modern City

(1:08:46) The Smells and Sounds of Home

(1:10:02) Balance, Nature, and Sisterhood

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

Today, we hear from writers Yann Martel, Carl Safina and David George Haskell on the practice of listening to the living world. Tom Chi discusses the dangerous volatility of a one-degree shift. Clayton Aldern explores how climate change alters brain health and behavior, while Ami Vitale,Osprey Orielle Lake and Martín Von Hildebrand remind us of the kinship we share with nature. Fred Pearce discusses 40 years as a journalist reporting on climate from around the world, while Richard Black of the environmental think tank Ember and Paula Pinho, European Commission’s Chief Spokesperson, talk about policy, hope and the radical empathy required to protect the planet for future generations.

(0:00) Clayton Page Aldern – Finding awe and beauty in the world

(0:40) David George Haskell – On consequences of humans tuning out the sounds of the living world

(2:11) Yann Martel – How animals ask us to step out of our humanity

(3:12) Carl Safina – The interior lives of non-human animals

(5:08) Ami Vitale – Environmental collapse and human conflict

(6:37) Martín von Hildebrand – Indigenous views of nature

(8:00) Richard Black – Transition to clean energy vs. massive fossil fuel subsidies

(10:01) Tom Chi – Climate destabilization

(11:07) Paula Pinho – Europe’s vision for energy independence

(14:04) Osprey Orielle Lake – Māori concept of "I am the river and the river is me”

(16:08) Bill Hare – On limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees

(17:19) Fred Pearce – Finding hope in nature’s resilience

To hear more from each guest, listen to their full interviews.

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

@creativeprocesspodcast

“These oppressive structures are built to strip us of our humanity. One of the ways they do that is by filling us with anger and hatred. If we allow ourselves to stay there, we're doing the job of the oppressor for them by slowly killing ourselves. I wanted to make a movie that would remind people that we can't allow them to win by giving up our humanity. We have to hold onto our humanity and try in these impossible circumstances.”

My guest today is Cherien Dabis. She’s a filmmaker and actress who has spent much of her career trying to fill the silences in the American narrative. In 2022, she became the first Palestinian to receive an Emmy nomination. She has worked on everything from The L Word to Ozark, Only Murders in the Building to the hit Netflix series Mo, always with an eye toward breaking the one-dimensional mold that has historically defined Arab representation in the West. But her latest project is perhaps her most ambitious yet. It’s a film called All That’s Left of You. It follows one Palestinian family across three generations, beginning in 1948 and ending in 2022. It is a story of exile and memory, and it’s Jordan’s official submission for this year’s Academy Awards.

(0:00) The Inheritance of Trauma

Cherien Dabis discusses showing the multifaceted humanity of Palestinians beyond just pain and suffering

(3:41) Inherited Trauma: Identity And History The film explores how collective trauma is passed down across generations and shapes individual identities

(5:52) The Bakri Dynasty: Collaborative Lineage Working with the legendary Bakri Family brought deep, authentic relational dynamics to the screen

(9:25) Filming The Nakba: Art Imitating Crisis The crew faced severe challenges and had to evacuate Palestine during the October 2023 escalation

(16:10) Representation Gap: Dehumanization In Media Growing up in Ohio, Cherien Dabis witnessed the dangerous misrepresentation of Arabs in Western media

(21:24) The Moment Of Activation: Racism In Ohio The stark racism experienced during the first Gulf War ignited her passion to become a filmmaker

(33:40) Psychological Violence: Impact Of Humiliation The film depicts how psychological harassment under occupation leaves devastating, long-term impacts on families

(38:23) Broken Distribution: Industry Gatekeepers Despite international success, systemic fear and gatekeeping in the US distribution market remain significant obstacles

(45:28) Previous Films, Television And Craft Directing television shows like Only Murders in the Building expanded her creative capacity and adaptability

(51:45) Truth Seekers: The Next Generation
Cherien Dabis shares her profound hope for young people who refuse to accept the broken systems of the past

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast