A beautiful and free flowing conversation with the great filmmaker and artist Pen Densham on his fascinating creative path. He also shares some wonderful wisdom for anyone in the creative world as timely life notes on how to be more fully yourself.

Pen Densham is a fine art photographer whose work blends realism and abstraction, transforming the natural world into immersive, almost cinematic experiences. Beginning his artistic journey in England, where he captured nature in the New Forest and early portraits for the BBC, Pen has consistently used photography as a way to process emotion and celebrate beauty. After rediscovering his passion through his daughter’s playful use of his old cameras, he developed an intuitive style that treats the camera like a paintbrush, capturing koi as water spirits, streams as sculptural flows, and kaleidoscopic mirrored reflections he calls “Organic Mandalas.” His images—entirely created in-camera—evoke Monet’s lyricism, Pollock’s spontaneity, and Freeman Patterson’s reverence, yet remain wholly original. Exhibited internationally from Los Angeles to Monaco, his art has been praised for its color, rhythm, and spiritual immediacy.

Equally accomplished in film, Pen is an Oscar-nominated screenwriter, director, and producer whose career was mentored by Norman Jewison and launched with the global success of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Through Trilogy Entertainment, he produced films such as Backdraft, Larger Than Life, Moll Flanders, and Houdini, and revived both The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits. His collaborations include icons like Kevin Costner, Morgan Freeman, and Jodie Foster, and he recently executive produced the Oscar-nominated Harriet. Pen also authored the bestselling screenwriting guide Riding the Alligator and is a sought-after speaker on creative authenticity. His archives are being acquired by the University of Toronto, cementing his legacy as a multidisciplinary artist who unites photography and film through a shared vision of intuition, renewal, and reverence for life’s impermanence.

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Paul Samuel Dolman, author, podcaster, and speaker, presents What Matters Most (the book!) a series of interview transcriptions from more than twenty inspirational Nashville and Tennessee residents, including special guest the journalist and author Bill Moyers.

Nashville Mayor Megan Barry, former Governor Don Sundquist, Academy Award-winning actress Patricia Neal, Grammy Award-winning entertainer Wynonna Judd, and many more share intimate and inspirational aspects of themselves.

This twentieth anniversary edition also features bonus material from thirty more notables from Tennessee, including local business owners, spiritual leaders, coaches, radio personalities, authors, and educators.

The post Pen Densham #1183 appeared first on Paul Samuel Dolman.

The wonderful Mary Madeiras and I discuss her fascinating new book, The Akashic Way: Living Through the Lens of the Akashic Records plus so much more in this inspiring exchange & dialogue.

Mary Madeiras is an Advanced Akashic Records practitioner, author, and three-time Emmy Award-winning television director whose career bridges the worlds of spiritual transformation and broadcast storytelling. She has opened the Akashic Records for individuals and corporations around the world, offering soul-level guidance, healing, and divine remembrance. Her book, The Akashic Way – Living Through the Lens of the Akashic Records, shares direct transmissions from the Records as a sacred offering for humanity’s evolution.

Mary’s celebrated directing career spans news, talk shows, sports, and seven top-rated daytime dramas—including General Hospital and Another World—earning her three Emmy Awards and a Directors Guild of America Award. Her creative life and spiritual practice now exist in a living collaboration, where divine wisdom informs every story she tells.

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Paul Samuel Dolman, author, podcaster, and speaker, presents What Matters Most (the book!) a series of interview transcriptions from more than twenty inspirational Nashville and Tennessee residents, including special guest the journalist and author Bill Moyers.

Nashville Mayor Megan Barry, former Governor Don Sundquist, Academy Award-winning actress Patricia Neal, Grammy Award-winning entertainer Wynonna Judd, and many more share intimate and inspirational aspects of themselves.

This twentieth anniversary edition also features bonus material from thirty more notables from Tennessee, including local business owners, spiritual leaders, coaches, radio personalities, authors, and educators.

The post Mary Madeiras #1182 appeared first on Paul Samuel Dolman.

My scientific hero Dr. Michael E. Mann returns to discuss his essential new book, Science Under Siege: How to Fight the Five Most Powerful Forces that Threaten Our World. We cover the current state of climate change that we are dealing with and the concerted obstacles we are fighting.

Dr. Mann is Presidential Distinguished Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania, with a secondary appointment in the Annenberg School for Communication. He also serves as Director of the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media (PCSSM).

Dr. Mann received his undergraduate degrees in Physics and Applied Math from the University of California at Berkeley, an M.S. degree in Physics from Yale University, and a Ph.D. in Geology & Geophysics from Yale University. His research interests include the study of Earth’s climate system and the science, impacts and policy implications of human-caused climate change.

Dr. Mann was a Lead Author on the Observed Climate Variability and Change chapter of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Third Scientific Assessment Report in 2001 and was organizing committee chair for the National Academy of Sciences Frontiers of Science in 2003. He has received a number of honors and awards including NOAA’s outstanding publication award in 2002 and selection by Scientific American as one of the fifty leading visionaries in science and technology in 2002. He contributed, with other IPCC authors, to the award of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. He was awarded the Hans Oeschger Medal of the European Geosciences Union in 2012 and was awarded the National Conservation Achievement Award for science by the National Wildlife Federation in 2013.

He made Bloomberg News’ list of fifty most influential people in 2013. In 2014, he was named Highly Cited Researcher by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) and received the Friend of the Planet Award from the National Center for Science Education. He received the Stephen H. Schneider Award for Outstanding Climate Science Communication from Climate One in 2017, the Award for Public Engagement with Science from the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2018 and the Climate Communication Prize from the American Geophysical Union in 2018. In 2019 he received the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement and in 2020 he received the World Sustainability Award of the MDPI Sustainability Foundation. He was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 2020. He received the Leo Szilard Award of the American Physical Society in 2021 and was named Humanist of the Year by the American Humanist Association in 2023.

He was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society in 2024. He is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union, the American Meteorological Society, the Geological Society of America, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. He is also a co-founder of the award-winning science website RealClimate.org.

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What Matters Most is 100% listener supported by generous pledges from people just like you.

Did this episode speak to you? Please consider pledging your support for as little as $5.00 per month… or pledge at higher levels and enjoy perks like a guided meditation audiobook, a library of Paul Samuel Dolman e-books… and more!

Paul Samuel Dolman, author, podcaster, and speaker, presents What Matters Most (the book!) a series of interview transcriptions from more than twenty inspirational Nashville and Tennessee residents, including special guest the journalist and author Bill Moyers.

Nashville Mayor Megan Barry, former Governor Don Sundquist, Academy Award-winning actress Patricia Neal, Grammy Award-winning entertainer Wynonna Judd, and many more share intimate and inspirational aspects of themselves.

This twentieth anniversary edition also features bonus material from thirty more notables from Tennessee, including local business owners, spiritual leaders, coaches, radio personalities, authors, and educators.

The post Dr. Michael E. Mann #1181 appeared first on Paul Samuel Dolman.

Writer, journalist, rhetorician, and Teilhardian scholar Christine M. Tracy joins me to talk about her beautiful new book, Just Trust Life: A Journey with Teilhard de Chardin. In this gritty memoir about tackling life’s challenges with the promise of transcendence, Christine illustrates how seemingly chance encounters with Teilhard’s work catalyzed her emotional and spiritual expansion.

Christine holds a Ph.D. from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where she studied the evolution of media and worked as a founding editor of one of the web’s first e-zines, Computer-Mediated Communication Magazine. Inspired by the “noosphere,” Teilhard’s word for collective thought energy, Tracy coined the term “newsphere” and wrote The Newsphere: Understanding the News and Information Environment (Peter Lang 2012) to explain the paradox of the current news environment. She believes the energy of the noosphere can enhance collective evolution and wrote The Mystic As Everyman (Thought Catalog 2018) to help readers connect their “insides with their outsides.”

She is a member of the Council of Scholar Advisors for The Teilhard Project and has published scholarly essays exploring Teilhard’s relationship to progressive disciplines, including media ecology and integral theory. She has reported for The Ann Magazine, The Albany Times Union, and other news outlets, and her non-fiction work has appeared in the University of Michigan’s Bear River Review. She lives in Boulder, Colorado, where she skis, swims, hikes, and is engaged with progressive ideas and spiritual communities.

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What Matters Most is 100% listener supported by generous pledges from people just like you.

Did this episode speak to you? Please consider pledging your support for as little as $5.00 per month… or pledge at higher levels and enjoy perks like a guided meditation audiobook, a library of Paul Samuel Dolman e-books… and more!

Paul Samuel Dolman, author, podcaster, and speaker, presents What Matters Most (the book!) a series of interview transcriptions from more than twenty inspirational Nashville and Tennessee residents, including special guest the journalist and author Bill Moyers.

Nashville Mayor Megan Barry, former Governor Don Sundquist, Academy Award-winning actress Patricia Neal, Grammy Award-winning entertainer Wynonna Judd, and many more share intimate and inspirational aspects of themselves.

This twentieth anniversary edition also features bonus material from thirty more notables from Tennessee, including local business owners, spiritual leaders, coaches, radio personalities, authors, and educators.

The post Christine M. Tracy #1180 appeared first on Paul Samuel Dolman.

The heroic and inspiring Roger Hallam returns to talk about his work as an environmental activist and his new book, Your Party – Grasping the Enormity of the Moment.

Roger Hallam is an environmental activist known for having co-founded Extinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil, Insulate Britain, the cooperative federation organization Radical Routes, and the political party Burning Pink.

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What Matters Most is 100% listener supported by generous pledges from people just like you.

Did this episode speak to you? Please consider pledging your support for as little as $5.00 per month… or pledge at higher levels and enjoy perks like a guided meditation audiobook, a library of Paul Samuel Dolman e-books… and more!

Paul Samuel Dolman, author, podcaster, and speaker, presents What Matters Most (the book!) a series of interview transcriptions from more than twenty inspirational Nashville and Tennessee residents, including special guest the journalist and author Bill Moyers.

Nashville Mayor Megan Barry, former Governor Don Sundquist, Academy Award-winning actress Patricia Neal, Grammy Award-winning entertainer Wynonna Judd, and many more share intimate and inspirational aspects of themselves.

This twentieth anniversary edition also features bonus material from thirty more notables from Tennessee, including local business owners, spiritual leaders, coaches, radio personalities, authors, and educators.

The post Roger Hallam #1179 appeared first on Paul Samuel Dolman.

Author Jodi-Ann Burey joins me to discuss her powerful new book, Authentic: The Myth of Bringing Your Full Self to Work, as well as several other topics & issues.

Jodi-Ann Burey is a writer, critic, and sought-after speaker on race, culture, and health equity. Her essays appear in various arts, business, and literary publications. Jodi-Ann created and hosts the prose and poetry salon Lit Lounge: The People’s Art and the Black Cancer podcast. She was born in St. Catherine, Jamaica; lives in Seattle, Washington; and will always call New York City home.

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What Matters Most is 100% listener supported by generous pledges from people just like you.

Did this episode speak to you? Please consider pledging your support for as little as $5.00 per month… or pledge at higher levels and enjoy perks like a guided meditation audiobook, a library of Paul Samuel Dolman e-books… and more!

Paul Samuel Dolman, author, podcaster, and speaker, presents What Matters Most (the book!) a series of interview transcriptions from more than twenty inspirational Nashville and Tennessee residents, including special guest the journalist and author Bill Moyers.

Nashville Mayor Megan Barry, former Governor Don Sundquist, Academy Award-winning actress Patricia Neal, Grammy Award-winning entertainer Wynonna Judd, and many more share intimate and inspirational aspects of themselves.

This twentieth anniversary edition also features bonus material from thirty more notables from Tennessee, including local business owners, spiritual leaders, coaches, radio personalities, authors, and educators.

The post Jodi-Ann Burey #1178 appeared first on Paul Samuel Dolman.

Syrian expert and prolific author David W. Lesch joins me to talk about his captivating new biography, “Dodgers to Damascus: David Lesch’s Journey from Baseball to the Middle East,” written by Catherine Nixon Cooke.

David W. Lesch is a modern-day Renaissance man whose work has spanned continents and allowed him to explore cultures near and far. An acclaimed scholar, educator, author, and conflict resolution specialist, he has advised five U.S. presidential administrations at the highest levels about the head-spinning political, religious, and cultural complexities of the Middle East. He is the author or editor of seventeen books, including A History of the Middle East since the Rise of Islam, Syria: A Modern History, and The Arab-Israeli Conflict: A History.

Long before, as the number one draft pick for the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1980, Lesch followed his American dream, playing with many baseball greats until a shoulder injury sidelined him. He later became a distinguished professor of Middle East studies at Trinity University in San Antonio and was soon tapped by the United Nations, the U.S. State Department, and policy centers and governments internationally.

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What Matters Most is 100% listener supported by generous pledges from people just like you.

Did this episode speak to you? Please consider pledging your support for as little as $5.00 per month… or pledge at higher levels and enjoy perks like a guided meditation audiobook, a library of Paul Samuel Dolman e-books… and more!

Paul Samuel Dolman, author, podcaster, and speaker, presents What Matters Most (the book!) a series of interview transcriptions from more than twenty inspirational Nashville and Tennessee residents, including special guest the journalist and author Bill Moyers.

Nashville Mayor Megan Barry, former Governor Don Sundquist, Academy Award-winning actress Patricia Neal, Grammy Award-winning entertainer Wynonna Judd, and many more share intimate and inspirational aspects of themselves.

This twentieth anniversary edition also features bonus material from thirty more notables from Tennessee, including local business owners, spiritual leaders, coaches, radio personalities, authors, and educators.

The post Dr. David Lesch #1177 appeared first on Paul Samuel Dolman.

Science journalist Peter Brannen joins me to discuss his brilliant new book, The Story of CO2 Is the Story of Everything: How Carbon Dioxide Made Our World plus so much more. I am also a huge fan of his earlier book, The Ends of the World: Volcanic Apocalypses, Lethal Oceans, and Our Quest to Understand Earth’s Past Mass Extinctions.

Peter Brannen is a science journalist who specializes in planetary science. His stories cover deep time, astrobiology, paleoclimate, paleontology, geology, geochemistry, marine biology, the philosophy of science, and evolutionary biology. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Wired, The Washington Post, Slate, The Boston Globe, Aeon, and others. He was a 2015 journalist-in-residence at the Duke University National Evolutionary Synthesis Center and a 2011 Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Ocean Science Journalism Fellow. Peter is a placental mammal, aerobic heterotroph and Boston Celtics fan.

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If you enjoyed this — or any! — episode of the What Matters Most podcast, please leave a review of the show! Reviews help boost the show in rankings, which makes it more visible… and that means more listeners! It’s a great way to spread the word about What Matters Most!

Create your review – click here!

What Matters Most is 100% listener supported by generous pledges from people just like you.

Did this episode speak to you? Please consider pledging your support for as little as $5.00 per month… or pledge at higher levels and enjoy perks like a guided meditation audiobook, a library of Paul Samuel Dolman e-books… and more!

Paul Samuel Dolman, author, podcaster, and speaker, presents What Matters Most (the book!) a series of interview transcriptions from more than twenty inspirational Nashville and Tennessee residents, including special guest the journalist and author Bill Moyers.

Nashville Mayor Megan Barry, former Governor Don Sundquist, Academy Award-winning actress Patricia Neal, Grammy Award-winning entertainer Wynonna Judd, and many more share intimate and inspirational aspects of themselves.

This twentieth anniversary edition also features bonus material from thirty more notables from Tennessee, including local business owners, spiritual leaders, coaches, radio personalities, authors, and educators.

The post Peter Brannen #1176 appeared first on Paul Samuel Dolman.

The beautiful and mystical Priyanka Kumar joins me to talk about her inspiring new book The Light Between Apple Trees: Rediscovering the Wild Through a Beloved American Fruit has been called “environmental writing at its best.”

Priyanka Kumar is a nationally acclaimed naturalist and the author of Conversations with Birds, praised as “a landmark book” that “could help people around the world rewild their hearts and souls” (Psychology Today). She profoundly re-envisions our place in Nature—and Nature’s place in our hearts—and has been compared _to Rachel Carson. A documentary inspired by Conversations with Birds produced by an Emmy-award-winning team is forthcoming.

Priyanka’s essays appear in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Review of Books, Orion, and Sierra magazine, and she has been featured on CBS, Oprah Daily, and Yale Climate Connections, among others. She holds an MFA from the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts and is an alumna of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference.

She has taught at the University of California Santa Cruz and the University of Southern California and serves on the Advisory Council of the Leopold Writing Program. Her feature documentary, The Song of the Little Road, is in the permanent collection of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. Her forthcoming book, The Grassland Queen, will be published in Fall 2026. Her awards include an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Award, a New Mexico/New Visions Governor’s Award, an International Center for Jefferson Studies Fellowship, and an Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences Fellowship.

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What Matters Most is 100% listener supported by generous pledges from people just like you.

Did this episode speak to you? Please consider pledging your support for as little as $5.00 per month… or pledge at higher levels and enjoy perks like a guided meditation audiobook, a library of Paul Samuel Dolman e-books… and more!

Paul Samuel Dolman, author, podcaster, and speaker, presents What Matters Most (the book!) a series of interview transcriptions from more than twenty inspirational Nashville and Tennessee residents, including special guest the journalist and author Bill Moyers.

Nashville Mayor Megan Barry, former Governor Don Sundquist, Academy Award-winning actress Patricia Neal, Grammy Award-winning entertainer Wynonna Judd, and many more share intimate and inspirational aspects of themselves.

This twentieth anniversary edition also features bonus material from thirty more notables from Tennessee, including local business owners, spiritual leaders, coaches, radio personalities, authors, and educators.

The post Priyanka Kumar #1175 appeared first on Paul Samuel Dolman.

The inspiring Carole Hopson joins us to talk about her compelling new book, A Pair of Wings: A Novel plus so many other topics.

Carole Hopson is a Boeing 737 Captain for United Airlines, based in Newark, NJ.

After a remarkable 20-year career as a journalist and executive, she followed her dream to become a pilot and share her passion with others as a flight instructor, while raising her family.

Walking away from executive-level positions, she went to flight school with gusto and completed flight training at the peak of her corporate accomplishments.

True to her roots as a writer, Carole published her debut novel: A Pair of Wings, based on the life story of pioneer aviatrix Bessie Coleman, the first American to earn a French civilian pilot’s license.

Carole also heads the Jet Black Foundation, dedicated to sending 100 Black women to flight school by the year 2035.

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If you enjoyed this — or any! — episode of the What Matters Most podcast, please leave a review of the show! Reviews help boost the show in rankings, which makes it more visible… and that means more listeners! It’s a great way to spread the word about What Matters Most!

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What Matters Most is 100% listener supported by generous pledges from people just like you.

Did this episode speak to you? Please consider pledging your support for as little as $5.00 per month… or pledge at higher levels and enjoy perks like a guided meditation audiobook, a library of Paul Samuel Dolman e-books… and more!

Paul Samuel Dolman, author, podcaster, and speaker, presents What Matters Most (the book!) a series of interview transcriptions from more than twenty inspirational Nashville and Tennessee residents, including special guest the journalist and author Bill Moyers.

Nashville Mayor Megan Barry, former Governor Don Sundquist, Academy Award-winning actress Patricia Neal, Grammy Award-winning entertainer Wynonna Judd, and many more share intimate and inspirational aspects of themselves.

This twentieth anniversary edition also features bonus material from thirty more notables from Tennessee, including local business owners, spiritual leaders, coaches, radio personalities, authors, and educators.

The post Carole Hopson #1174 appeared first on Paul Samuel Dolman.