Director, playwright and screenwriter Kenneth Lonergan is widely known for winning the Oscar for best original screenplay at the 89th Academy Awards for his film Manchester By the Sea, and as a co-writer on Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York. In this episode, host Helga Davis and Lonergan work through their shared upbringing at the Walden School in New York – exploring memories both charged and powerfully formative – while also exploring daily rituals and what it means to fuel one's creativity.

"Without cultural appropriation there is no culture. Especially in this country. I know what it means, but I know that it's misapplied when it's taken to that [extreme] degree and it becomes meaningless. You can't name an artist, a writer, or anybody who puts anything out in any kind of creative capacity, who doesn't appropriate left and right from all kinds of cultures and influences." -Kenneth Lonergan

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