The Creative Process in 10 minutes or less · Arts, Culture & Society: Books, Film, Music, TV, Art, Writing, Creativity, Education, Environment, Theatre, Dance, LGBTQ, Climate Change, Sustainability, Social Justice, Spirituality, Feminism, Technology

Two weeks away from filming her most ambitious film to date, Cherien Dabis and her crew were forced to evacuate Palestine as the devastating events of October 2023 began. Instead of abandoning the project, they adapted, filming across Cyprus, Jordan, and Greece, creating a cinematic love letter to the resilience, joy, and humanity of the Palestinian people.
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 how collective trauma is passed down and the importance of showing Palestinian resilience and humanity
(1:50) Inherited Trauma: Identity And History The passage of trauma requires a multi-generational lens to truly understand how history and political events shape people
(2:37) The Bakri Acting Dynasty: Collaborative Lineage Collaborating with four generations of the Bakri Family brought immense authenticity to the screen
(4:02) Filming The Nakba: Art Imitating Crisis Evacuating Palestine weeks before shooting forced the crew to adapt amidst devastating, ongoing events
(7:09) The Moment Of Activation: Racism In Ohio Experiencing severe racism during the first Gulf War ignited a lifelong drive to challenge dangerous media stereotypes
(9:34) Psychological Violence: Impact Of Humiliation The film explores how non-physical harassment and humiliation leave devastating, long-term relational scars
(10:48) Broken Distribution: Industry Gatekeepers Navigating systemic fear and gatekeeping in Hollywood distribution remains a profound challenge for Palestinian cinema
(11:37) Previous Films, Television And Craft Directing television hones the craft and expands the creative capacity needed for ambitious feature films
(12:28) Truth Seekers: The Next Generation Hope lies with young people who refuse to accept the broken systems and hidden truths of previous generations
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

"To be in the process of making things, to be in the process of talking to people about what things mean. The creative process is actually, I think, the most meaningful part of life, but it's very hard to measure. When we get shoved towards a world that demands easy measurables, it's very hard to optimize away from the creative process and optimize towards things that are more static."
On this episode of The Creative Process, philosopher C. Thi Nguyen joins us to discuss his new book, The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else's Game. He unpacks the profound concept of "value capture"—the moment we stop caring about the rich, subtle experiences of life and start obsessing over simplified, external metrics like grades, likes, and screen time.
Beyond the trap of quantification, C. Thi Nguyen explores the liberating power of games and art. We discuss how true play requires us to step lightly between different rule sets, the difference between art and craft, and how reclaiming our creative process might just be the ultimate meaning of life.
(0:00) THE TRAP OF VALUE CAPTURE How external metrics and scoring systems hijack our personal values and creativity
(7:09) THE LOGIC OF QUANTIFICATION Why simple numbers travel well but strip away vital human context, from screen time to grades
(11:58) THE MAGIC CIRCLE OF PLAY Understanding the difference between a gamified life and the true, disattached beauty of struggle
(14:57) ART, CRAFT, AND METRICS Why taking the hard way leads to genuine creative expression, and how to spot value-laden systems
(19:34) THE POLITICS OF MEASUREMENT Questioning the assumption that complex human traits, like IQ or consciousness, can be quantified on a single scale
(21:31) THE SPIRIT OF PLAY Using constraints to boost collaborative storytelling and learning to step lightly between different rule worlds
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

"To be in the process of making things, to be in the process of talking to people about what things mean. The creative process is actually, I think, the most meaningful part of life, but it's very hard to measure. When we get shoved towards a world that demands easy measurables, it's very hard to optimize away from the creative process and optimize towards things that are more static."
On this episode of The Creative Process, philosopher C. Thi Nguyen joins us to discuss his new book, The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else's Game. He unpacks the profound concept of "value capture"—the moment we stop caring about the rich, subtle experiences of life and start obsessing over simplified, external metrics like grades, likes, and screen time.
Beyond the trap of quantification, C. Thi Nguyen explores the liberating power of games and art. We discuss how true play requires us to step lightly between different rule sets, the difference between art and craft, and how reclaiming our creative process might just be the ultimate meaning of life.
(0:00) THE TRAP OF VALUE CAPTURE How external metrics and scoring systems hijack our personal values and creativity
(7:09) THE LOGIC OF QUANTIFICATION Why simple numbers travel well but strip away vital human context, from screen time to grades
(11:58) THE MAGIC CIRCLE OF PLAY Understanding the difference between a gamified life and the true, disattached beauty of struggle
(14:57) ART, CRAFT, AND METRICS Why taking the hard way leads to genuine creative expression, and how to spot value-laden systems
(19:34) THE POLITICS OF MEASUREMENT Questioning the assumption that complex human traits, like IQ or consciousness, can be quantified on a single scale
(21:31) THE SPIRIT OF PLAY Using constraints to boost collaborative storytelling and learning to step lightly between different rule worlds
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

"The thing that puzzled him was why people don't agree to be fully expressed while they're alive. Why does it only happen in their last moment? Why wouldn't you live being fully expressed?"
My guest today is AL Kennedy. She is one of Britain’s most acclaimed and versatile literary voices, a writer who can inhabit the internal life of a soldier in a POW camp, as she did in her Costa Book Award-winning novel Day, as easily as she can navigate the "professional lying" of a modern civil servant.
Her latest novel, Alive in the Merciful Country, takes place during the 2020 lockdown. It tells the story of a primary school teacher who receives a confession from an undercover police officer who infiltrated her life decades earlier. It’s a provocative investigation into state power, the "Spy Cops" scandal and the search for mercy in an age of surveillance. It’s a book about the breakdown of trust. We talk about her life, her activism, and why she believes fiction is the only way to tell the truth when the facts are forbidden and how she balances the truth of her novels with the relief of stand-up comedy.
(0:00) Finding Your Voice
On the Alfred Wolfsohn voice method and the power of being fully expressed
(2:30) Reading from Alive in the Merciful Country
Kennedy shares a passage from her latest novel, exploring hope and resilience in dark times.
(4:43) The Myth of Shrinking Attention Spans
Challenging the narrative that modern audiences cannot focus, and the importance of engaging storytelling.
(6:22) Education and the Foundation of Democracy
The dangers of dismantling education and how critical thinking protects us from fascism.
(10:26) The Spy Cop Scandal and State Surveillance
Unpacking the reality of undercover police infiltrating peaceful protests and intimate lives.
(13:59) Lockdown: A Global Pause and the Inrush of Empathy
The fleeting moment of unified humanity during the pandemic and how it was ultimately betrayed.
(17:34) Writing Without Theft: The Ethics of Character Creation
Kennedy explains her imaginative process and why she refuses to steal details from real people's lives.
(28:16) AI, Digital Slop, and the Loss of Trust
Reflections on artificial intelligence as an unstable plagiarism machine and its impact on truth.
(30:03) Nature, Spirituality, and the Merciful Country
Finding healing in the natural world and navigating the future with love and awareness.
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

“Grief is a particular kind of unrequited love. It wasn't unrequited in the past. Usually, we think of unrequited love as you never got to do it, you never had it for yourself. But, in fact, there can be requited love, which is then unrequited love in the paroxysms of grief.”
Today, we are honored to welcome a writer whose work has long explored the intimate landscapes of the mind, memory and the heart. Siri Hustvedt’s writing moves between the personal and the philosophical, the literary and the deeply human. Her work bridges collections of essays, non-fiction, poetry, and seven novels, including the international bestsellers What I Loved and The Summer Without Men. Recipient of the Princess of Asturias Award for Literature and the Gabarron Prize for Thought, her work has been translated into over thirty languages. Her new memoir, Ghost Stories, is a reflection on forty-three years shared with her late husband, the writer and filmmaker Paul Auster. In its pages, we encounter not only love and loss, but the quiet persistence of presence, memory, and language itself.
(0:00) “We were hugely important to the drama of becoming in our own lives”
(2:04) Grief as Unrequited Love
Siri explores the emotional reality of living without Paul Auster, noting that grief occurs because love does not stop when a person dies.
(3:19) The Shared Space of a 43-year Marriage
(4:36) Reading from Ghost Stories
Siri reads the opening passage of her memoir, detailing how the loss of her husband deranged her sense of time and bodily rhythms.
(7:02) How Loss Changes Our Sense of Time
(11:24)  How Powerful Emotions and a Person's Life Can Play a Role in Illness
(13:04) Believing in a Reality that Transcends the Individual
(20:06) Physical Love in Marriage
On the importance of physical intimacy in long-term marriages, a reality often left out of grief memoirs.
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast