Let's Have a Renaissance: The DateKeepers Podcast with Itto and Mekiya Outini

In this episode, we speak with composer Ray Lustig and audio engineer Maximilien Hein about the importance of trust, the productive symbiosis of creativity and technical skills, and their latest collaboration, an opera about the revolutionary 19th-century obstetrician Ignaz Semmelweis. Ray is a classical composer and rock musician with a background in molecular biology and a persistent interest in science, nature, and the mind. Max is a Senior Staff Audio Engineer at The Hit Factory with a Master of Music from New York University, where his research on spatial audio was published by the Audio Engineering Society. Their years of collaboration have borne many fruits, of which Semmelweis is but the latest.

In this episode, we speak with painter Julie Heffernan about getting lost in the woods with a baby, the Winchester Mystery House, the hidden wisdom encoded in paintings, flowers, nutmeg, Amitav Ghosh, volcanos, and the secret about spirituality that Vermeer was trying to expose. Julie’s work has been described by Rebecca Solnit as “a new kind of history painting” and by The New York Times as “ironic rococo realism with a social-satirical twist.” She’s received support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Fulbright, MacDowell, Camargo, and others, and has served as an artist-in-residence at the University of Tampa in Florida and the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Along with Virginia Wagner, Julie is a co-founder of the online journal Painters on Painting. She holds an BFA from the University of California at Santa Cruz and an MFA from Yale and now teaches fine arts at Montclair State University.  

In this episode, we speak with poet and art writer Dean Rader about the convergence of the visual and verbal arts, what makes a poem, and the fraught relationship of critic to audience. Dean has authored or contributed to thirteen books, which range from the poetic to the scholarly, including the debut collection Works & Days, which won the 2010 T.S. Eliot Poetry Prize; and he’s earned support from several prestigious arts foundations, including MacDowell and Guggenheim. 

In this episode, we speak with author and MacDowell fellow John Dalton about marketing excellent novels that seem to lack mass appeal, emergent developments in AI writing, and the future of authorship. John is the author of two novels: Heaven Lake, which won the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Barnes and Noble Discover Award for fiction in 2004, and The Inverted Forest, which was selected as a best book of the year by The St. Louis Post-Dispatch and The Wall Street Journal's "Book Lover" in 2011. He’s currently teaching at the University of St. Louis, Missouri while working on a third. 

In this episode, we speak with painter Kati Gegenheimer about one of her favorite subjects, luck: what it is, whether it exists at all, and what role—if any—it plays in residency applications. Besides luck, Kati’s work also deals with love and time. She’s been supported by residencies at Pollock-Krasner, The Goldey House, Elizabeth Murray, the Edward F. Albee Foundation, and others and has participated in exhibitions around the US, particularly in her home city, Philadelphia. Kati holds a BFA from Temple and an MFA from Yale. 

In this episode, we speak with Cape Cod artist Sheryl Jaffe about the art of papermaking, the properties and uses of various organic materials, and how to think more productively about invasive species in a mixed-up and mongrelized world. Sheryl also has extensive teaching experience, both domestic and international, and her work has been supported by residencies at Yellowstone National Park and the Edward F. Albee Foundation in Montauk and shown at galleries around Massachusetts and up and down North America’s eastern seaboard.

In this episode, we speak with Super Lawyer Elissa D. Hecker, who takes on several common misconceptions about intellectual property, trademark, and copyright law and shares what she thinks every writer and artist needs to know. Elissa has been recognized as one of the best lawyers in America for copyright law. She’s edited three books, Entertainment Litigation – Know the Issues and Avoid the Courtroom, In the Arena, and Counseling Content Providers in the Digital Age, and she’s a member of the Board of Editors for the Copyright Society’s Journal. She also practices business law, arts and entertainment law, and intellectual property law in New York. 

In this episode, we speak with oil painter David Molesky about the importance of legitimate alternatives to college, the role of AI in the breakdown of higher education in the West, and the threat potentially posed to visual artists by AI image generators. David’s compositions deal with themes such as masculinity, tragicomedy, heroism, and the tension between organic abstraction and mythological figuration. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, New American Painting, and American Arts Quarterly and is held in permanent collections at Long Beach Museum of Art, the Iloilo Museum of Contemporary Art in the Philippines, and elsewhere. He’s also been supported by residency programs around the world. 

In this episode, we speak with composer Anthony Gatto about the evolution of music in the 20th century, imitation vs. innovation, whether the American dream is still alive for immigrant artists, and what he learned from studying under giants like Ornette Coleman and Harold Bloom. Anthony’s compositions for film, theater, opera, and the concert hall engage dynamically with literature and the visual arts and have earned support from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Bush Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, the Fulbright Association, and others. He teaches at City University of New York. 

In this episode, we speak with poet Michele Wolf about rebuilding communities in the wake of the pandemic, the importance of in-person readings, why emerging poets are struggling to publish debuts, and her own latest collection, Peacocks on the Streets (Broadstone Books, 2025). Michele is also the author of two other collections and a chapbook: Immersion (The Word Works, 2011), Conversations During Sleep (Anhinga Press), and The Keeper of Light (Painted Bride Quarterly’s Poetry Chapbook Series, 1995).