Still Searching

Why Do We Create? | Jack Williams | Still Searching — Episode 4

What if creativity isn't simply something we do, but something we need?

In this episode of Still Searching, David Gourgues sits down with longtime friend Jack Williams for a deeply personal, sometimes humorous, and thought-provoking conversation about creativity, depression, faith, vulnerability, and the human search for meaning.

Jack is a landscape architect, artist, writer, and storyteller who grew up in Plaquemine, Louisiana, and now lives in Austin, Texas. His artistic work includes whimsical drawings of South Louisiana buildings, personal writing, comedy, and theatrical performance.

But behind that creativity is a remarkable personal journey.

Jack shares how an unexpected period of emotional difficulty and depression led him toward therapy, journaling, improvisational comedy, and eventually a one-man theatrical performance called Crying for Nothing.

What began as an attempt to understand his own emotions became a deeper exploration of identity, spirituality, and the creative impulse.

In this conversation, we explore:

• Why human beings feel compelled to create
• How depression and emotional struggles can lead to unexpected forms of expression
• Why men often struggle with vulnerability and expressing their emotions
• The relationship between beauty, art, and spirituality
• Carl Jung, Richard Rohr, Thomas Merton, and the search for the authentic self
• Whether creativity can be understood as an act of faith
• How artificial intelligence might change our understanding of artistic expression
• The importance of humor, friendship, and the memories that shape us

Along the way, Jack shares stories about his experiences performing stand-up comedy in Austin, his short film about an unsuccessful hitman who becomes a chiropractor, and the surprising ways our past continues to influence our lives.

David and Jack also reflect on the difference between simply living a comfortable life and feeling an internal need to search for something more.

And perhaps the question beneath all the others is this:

What if creating something is one of the ways we discover who we really are?

This episode is a reminder that creativity isn't reserved for professional artists. Sometimes it's simply the courage to express something we've been carrying inside us for years.

About Still Searching

Hosted by David Gourgues, Still Searching explores the questions that make us human - faith, doubt, suffering, love, meaning, creativity, and the mystery of existence.

Curiosity over certainty. Conversation over outrage.

Because the best questions are worth asking.

YouTube Episode artwork: Original artwork by Jack Williams

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The Long Walk Between Faith and Doubt | Kevin LeBlanc | Still Searching Episode 3 - Part I

What happens when you spend days walking with little more than the pack on your back and your own thoughts for company?

My longtime friend Kevin LeBlanc walked part of the Camino de Santiago across Spain. He went without knowing exactly what he was searching for. What he found included one of the few experiences of genuine peace he remembers having.

That became the starting point for a much bigger conversation.

Kevin and I grew up together in south Louisiana, surrounded by the Catholic faith. Decades later, both of us still believe—but both of us still have questions.

We talk about the Camino, faith and doubt, unanswered prayer, the loss of people we love, the problem of suffering, whether certainty is even possible, and why questioning God doesn't necessarily mean abandoning God.

Kevin talks movingly about losing his mother-in-law and eventually changing the way he prayed. I talk about losing my first son, Matthew, after 18 days and the questions that experience left me carrying.

There are places in this conversation where Kevin and I see things differently. We don't try to resolve those differences. We talk through them.

Maybe that's what Still Searching is supposed to be.

Not finding all the answers.

Just being willing to keep walking.

This is Part I of our conversation.

Still Searching
Curiosity over certainty. Conversation over outrage

What happens to faith when the unimaginable happens?

In the first episode of Still Searching, I sit down with George O'Dwyer - someone I first knew many years ago when I was a young teacher and coach and George was one of my students and players.

Years later, we reconnected and discovered something neither of us had known: we had both lost our first child.

George shares what followed the loss of his daughter Kennedy - grief, anger, questions about God, struggles with alcohol, challenges in his marriage, and ultimately a faith that became very different from the one he had known before.

We talk about loss, family, doubt, gratitude, getting older, the world we're leaving our children, and what it means to keep searching even after you think you've found some answers.

Near the end, I ask George the question I hope to ask every guest on this podcast:

What are you still searching for?

His answer: peace.

Still Searching is about curiosity over certainty and conversation over outrage. It's a place for honest conversations about the questions that don't have easy answers.

Welcome to Still Searching, a podcast about the questions that don't come with easy answers. In this brief introduction, David Gourgues shares why he created the show and what you can expect: conversations about faith and doubt, meaning and mortality, science, leadership, culture, and the things that connect us.

Curiosity over certainty. Conversation over outrage. Because the best questions are worth asking.