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

“We are in the middle of a labyrinth which suggests to us many fake corridors. What's the superpower of literature? Literature is like an antidote against propaganda. Propaganda explains the world easily in a two-dimensional way.  Literature gives you a more complex explanation. Literature tells personal stories.”
Today, we have a conversation about time, memory, and the bittersweet geography of human sorrow. Georgi Gospodinov is widely considered one of the most daring voices in contemporary European literature. His acclaimed novel, The Physics of Sorrow, won the prestigious Jan Michalski Prize in 2016, blending ancient myth and quantum physics to chronicle the delicate realities of post-socialist Eastern Europe. Joining him is Angela Rodel, a brilliant linguist, musician, and translator whose profound artistic empathy carries the flowing cadences of the Bulgarian language into vivid English. Together, this extraordinary creative duo made history by winning the 2023 International Booker Prize for Time Shelter—the first book written in Bulgarian to ever receive the honor.
Time Shelter is a masterfully dark, funny, and prescient novel. It begins with an enigmatic psychiatrist opening a clinic that treats Alzheimer’s patients by meticulously recreating past decades to match their internal clocks. But the experiment quickly escapes the clinic walls, triggering a pan-European crisis where entire nations hold democratic referendums to choose which era of the past they will retreat into. It is a book that holds up a mirror to our own world, exploring what happens when a civilization faces a deficit of meaning and tries to weaponize nostalgia.
(0:00) The Trap of Nostalgia
(2:13) The Art of Translation
(5:44) The Pandemic of the Past
(11:30) Reading from ‘Time Shelter’
(14:28) Death and the Gardener
(19:34) The Translator's Calling
(26:05) Cultural Rhythms of the Bulgarian Language
(30:00) The Nonlinear Approach to Storytelling
(34:30) Separating Personal and Historical Pasts
(42:55) Storytelling vs Propaganda
(47:19) Bodies, Animals and the Loneliness of the Minotaur
(56:00) Reading ' Eight Minutes and 19 Seconds’
(1:00:28) What makes a good life? What has given your life meaning?
(1:04:18)   Childhood, Memory and Imagination
(1:10:38) Reflections on God and the Stories His Grandmother Told Him
(1:17:20) Education and the Empathic Imagination
(1:23:25) The Museum of Memory
(1:26:15) The Importance of Hugging and Empathy
(1:28:02) AI and the Future of Humanity
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

Today, we have a conversation about time, memory, and the bittersweet geography of human sorrow. Georgi Gospodinovis widely considered one of the most daring voices in contemporary European literature. His acclaimed novel, The Physics of Sorrow, won the prestigious Jan Michalski Prize in 2016, blending ancient myth and quantum physics to chronicle the delicate realities of post-socialist Eastern Europe. Joining him is Angela Rodel, a brilliant linguist, musician, and translator whose profound artistic empathy carries the flowing cadences of the Bulgarian language into vivid English. Together, this extraordinary creative duo made history by winning the 2023 International Booker Prizefor Time Shelter—the first book written in Bulgarian to ever receive the honor.
Time Shelter is a masterfully dark, funny, and prescient novel. It begins with an enigmatic psychiatrist opening a clinic that treats Alzheimer’s patients by meticulously recreating past decades to match their internal clocks. But the experiment quickly escapes the clinic walls, triggering a pan-European crisis where entire nations hold democratic referendums to choose which era of the past they will retreat into. It is a book that holds up a mirror to our own world, exploring what happens when a civilization faces a deficit of meaning and tries to weaponize nostalgia.
(0:00) The Trap of Nostalgia
(1:22) The Nonlinear Approach to Storytelling
(3:53) Translating the Atmosphere
(4:31) The Pandemic of the Past
(6:37) Death and the Gardener
(9:49) The Translators Calling
(11:00) Slowing Down Time
(13:14) Storytelling vs Propaganda
(15:54) Translating the Atmosphere
(18:19) What makes a good life? What has given your life meaning?
(20:56) Reflections on God and the Stories His Grandmother Told Him
(23:43) The Importance of Hugging, Empathy and Storytelling
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

Our creative lives are shaped by those who come before us. But where does creativity come from? Today, we hear from voices across the arts and sciences. The visual artists exploring emotions through imagery: Eric Fischl, Donald Sultan, Anthony White, Lee Jaffe, and Gloria Pacis. Director Benh Zeitlin, cinematographer Chayse Irvin, and actor, director, and art historian Peter Weller discuss the beauty of small details hidden in the larger story.
We examine jazz and the improvised life with musician and artist Dickie Landry, and author Bruce Evan Barnhart. We speak with former NYTimes Magazine editor Adam Moss on how magazines help us understand and honor the urgency of events like 9/11, while sociologist Richard Sennett, writer Paul Levinson, and scientist Julio Ottino talk about the need for a nexus of creativity across disciplines to meet the challenges of our current moment.
(0:00) PETER WELLER (Actor, Director, Musician) Remembers Miles Davis
(3:08) CHAYSE IRVIN (Cinematographer, Blonde, BlacKkKlansman) On Imperfection
(4:30) LEE JAFFE (Artist, Writer) On Life with Bob Marley and Basquiat
(6:02) ERIC FISCHL (Artist)  To Create an Immediate Narrative,  You Need to Have Imbalance
(8:02) ADAM MOSS (Fmr. Editor New York Magazine)
(12:12) ANTHONY WHITE (Artist)
(13:54) DICKIE LANDRY (Musician, Artist) Art, Music and Rauschenberg
(16:47) BRUCE EVAN BARNHART (Author) Jazz and Improvisation
(18:05) BENH ZEITLIN (Director, Writer of Beasts of the Southern Wild) Freedom, Childhood, Films
(20:11) RICHARD SENNETT (Sociologist) Art Can Create or Destroy
(21:17) DONALD SULTAN (Artist)
(22:59) GLORIA PACIS (Artist) The Dance of Life
(24:17) PAUL LEVINSON (Writer)
(26:17) JULIO OTTINO (Scientist) The Nexus of Art, Tech, Science
For more, listen to their full interviews http://www.creativeprocess.info/pod
http://www.creativeprocess.info/interviews-featured/anth-role-artist

“In Paris, when these same people, who had friends who were their police, came to Paris and found themselves tear gassed and shot with LBDs and losing their eyes and feet, and coming back with red all down their faces and blood everywhere, and they began to understand that the violence is beyond legal. And so they began to understand what was happening in areas, what we might call the ghettos or the poor areas of Paris, where Black people or people of color were being harassed by the police.“
In 2018, hundreds of thousands of people in France showed up day after day, month after month, to protest the French government’s attacks on labor, on social benefits, and on the environment, among other things, including police violence. Anthropologist Ida Susser took part in these communal actions, interviewing a vast array of participants, who came from all walks of life, from political positions across the spectrum, and from many different regions and class identities. We learn how people formed common cause, organized unique social worlds, and how their struggles, defeats, and successes, can teach us critical lessons in making the a new, more just, world. In the spirit of communing, Ida Susser has made Yellow Vests a free download here.
Ida Susser, PHD is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the Graduate Center and Hunter College, CUNY. Her recent book The Yellow Vests and the Battle for Democracy: taking to the streets of Paris in the 21st Century(Routledge 2026) focuses on commoning movements and new visions. Her previous books include: Norman Street(Oxford, 2012) a study of working class opposition to cutbacks during the New York City fiscal crisis and the transition of Greenpoint-Williamsburg from a working class neighborhood to a gentrified enclave, andAIDS, Sex and Culture: Global Politics and Survival in Southern Africa (Wiley-Blackwell 2009), a history of the power of social movements to transform health.
(0:00) The Reality of Police Violence in Paris
(1:00) The Yellow Vests Movement
(3:00) The Erosion of French Labor Laws
(7:05) The Beginnings of the Diesel Tax Protest
(11:00) The Three Commons and Progressive Transformation
(16:26) Building a Concrete Utopia
(22:16) The Success of the Nuit Debout Commissions
(27:57) The Birth of Co-op Cycle
(29:34) Redefining Class in the Flexible Economy
(34:45) Building a Historical Bloc
(38:05) Making Knowledge Free and Open Access
Episode Website
www.palumbo-liu.com
https://speakingoutofplace.com
Bluesky @palumboliu.bsky.social
IG @speaking_out_of_place

"I'm a believer in this technology. I believe that the cheaper it is, the more people will use it. So, even if we assume that models will get smaller for the same level of intelligence, the demand to actually have more compute is going to be enormous. And the reason why you want to have the compute close to you is not only in terms of performance. As a national security threat, I'm not saying this will happen, but it could happen that China or US or whoever decides to stop exporting compute to the rest of the world. If that happens today, Europe has zero AI at the scale of data the data center."
For over a decade, technology has promised to make life easier. Social media was meant to connect us, we were told smartphones would simplify our lives, and now artificial intelligence promises to lift even more daily burdens. Yet these advances also raise an important question: when do tools enhance human creativity, and when do they replace the very experiences that give life meaning? While AI holds immense promise, many people face challenges coping with current technological advancements that ‘redefine’ human communication, work, education, and democratic values. Today, we examine societal and cultural impacts of AI, identity, inclusion, governance, education, and community well-being. And are speaking with Nacho de Gregorio, author of TheWhiteBox, one of Medium's most-followed AI analysts, for a level-headed conversation about both the remarkable potential and the real limitations of AI.
(0:22) The hidden risks of the AI debt bubble
(0:55) Shadow borrowing and the data center boom
(3:12) The AI compute gap and national security
(5:40) Europe's missing infrastructure and tech sovereignty
(8:13) The Jevons paradox and the demand for compute
(10:25) Why open source AI is the best path forward
(12:31) The chess paradox and the future of human art
(12:53) Unmeasurable domains and future-proofing your career
(14:00) Tutoring and AI in education
(15:11) Navigating AI slop and the information ecosystem
(16:24) The Pleasure of Waiting vs. The Hustle
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast