Writers on Memory, Language & the Power of the Unconscious

How do writers develop their voice, showing us what is important in life?ADA LIMÓN (24th U.S. Poet Laureate, Startlement, The Carrying) explains that her poetry begins with a bodily sensation or curiosity, not an idea. She values the space and breath poetry offers for unknowing and mystery, finding solace in the making and the mess, not in answers. She discusses being free on the page to be her whole, authentic, complicated self.JAY PARINI (Author, Filmmaker, Borges and Me) calls poetry the prince of literary arts—language refined to its apex of memorability. He recounts how his road trip with Borges around Scotland restored him from depression and anxiety following the Vietnam War death of his friend.JERICHO BROWN (Pulitzer Prize-winning Poet, The Tradition, How We Do It: Black Writers on Craft, Practice, and Skill) discusses the rhythm of black vernacular and capturing "symphonic complexity of black life". He shares how he’s found a way not to think about personal risk as he’s writing.ADAM MOSS (Fmr. Editor, New York Magazine; Author, The Work of Art) relates David Simon’s concept of the bounce, in which creativity gains momentum as it is passed between people.VIET THANH NGUYEN (Pulitzer Prize-winning Author, The Sympathizer; To Save and to Destroy) discusses his path to expansive solidarity and capacious grief and how it works against the state's power to divide and conquer. He emphasizes that literature is crucial because authoritarian regimes abuse language; a commitment to the beauty of language is a commitment to truth, and fear is often an indicator of a truth that needs to be spoken.To hear more from each guest, listen to their full interviews.Episode Websitewww.creativeprocess.info/podInstagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

How can we use negative spaces in fiction to engage with readers’ imaginations? How are memory and trauma passed onto us through language? How do we become more than the stories we tell ourselves?KATIE KITAMURA (Author, Audition) emphasizes that a book is created in collaboration with the reader and how negative spaces in the narrative allow for reader interpretation.PAUL LYNCH (Booker Prize-winning Novelist, Prophet Song) on the richness of the English language in Ireland, shaped by the overlay of English onto Irish.DANIEL PEARLE (Screenwriter The Beast in Me) on how audiences are fascinated by characters with an unfettered, uncensored ID who act without consequences.HALA ALYAN (I’ll Tell You When I’m Home: A Memoir) describes her work as an excavation of the darkest hours and intergenerational trauma, which has endured repeated exile.T.C. BOYLE shares that the creative process involves a magic in reaching for the unconscious and the surprise of the creative process. He emphasizes that art and nature are our salvations, over money.ADAM ALTER (Anatomy of a Breakthrough) discusses the axioms of creativity, noting that being around more people is generally beneficial for creativity by providing diversity of opinion.SHEHAN KARUNATILAKA (The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida) explains his decision to write in the second person as a way of exploring the spiritual dimension of the internal voice.DANIEL HANDLER A.K.A LEMONY SNICKET (A Series of Unfortunate Events) argues that his books for children and adults are not fundamentally different and says everyone's childhood is full of powerful emotions which shape us.ADA LIMÓN (24th U.S. Poet Laureate, Startlement) talks about her responsibility as a writer to honor her ancestors who had to sublimate their creative spirit for safety and belonging.To hear more from each guest, listen to their full interviews.Episode Websitewww.creativeprocess.info/pod:@creativeprocesspodcast

“ I think we're betting on AI as something that can help to solve a lot of problems for us. It's the future, we think, whether it's producing text or art, or doing medical research or planning our lives for us, etc., the bet is that AI is going to be great, that it's going to get us everything we want and make everything better. But at the same time, we're gambling, at the extreme end, with the future of humanity  , hoping for the best...but we'll see.”As we move towards 2026, we are in a massive “upgrade moment” that most of us can feel. New pressures, new identities, new expectations on our work, our relationships, and our inner lives. Throughout the year, I've been speaking with professional creatives, climate and tech experts, teachers, neuroscientists, psychologists, and futureists about how AI can be used intelligently and ethically as a partnership to ensure we do not raise a generation that relies on machines to think for them. It’s not that we are being replaced by machines. It’s that we’re being invited to become a new kind of human. Where AI isn’t the headline; human transformation is. And that includes the arts, culture, and the whole of society. Generative AI – the technologies that write our emails, draft our reports, and even create art – have become a fixture of daily life, and the philosophical and moral questions they raise are no longer abstract. They are immediate, personal, and potentially disruptive to the core of what we consider human work.Our guest today, Sven Nyholm, is one of the leading voices helping us navigate this new reality. As the Principal Investigator of AI Ethics at the Munich Center for Machine Learning, and co-editor of the journal Science and Engineering Ethics. He has spent his career dissecting the intimate relationship between humanity and the machine. His body of work systematically breaks down concepts that worry us all: the responsibility gap in autonomous systems, the ethical dimensions of human-robot interaction, and the question of whether ceding intellectual tasks to a machine fundamentally atrophies our own skills. His previous books, like Humans and Robots: Ethics, Agency, and Anthropomorphism, have laid the foundational groundwork for understanding these strange new companions in our lives.His forthcoming book is The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence: A Philosophical Introduction. The book is a rigorous exploration of everything from algorithmic bias and opacity to the long-term existential risks of powerful AI. We’ll talk about what it means when an algorithm can produce perfect language without genuine meaning, why we feel entitled to take credit for an AI’s creation, and what this technological leap might be costing us, personally, as thinking, moral beings.Episode Websitewww.creativeprocess.info/podInstagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

As we move towards 2026, we are in a massive “upgrade moment” that most of us can feel. New pressures, new identities, new expectations on our work, our relationships, and our inner lives. Throughout the year, I've been speaking with professional creatives, climate and tech experts, teachers, neuroscientists, psychologists, and futureists about how AI can be used intelligently and ethically as a partnership to ensure we do not raise a generation that relies on machines to think for them. It’s not that we are being replaced by machines. It’s that we’re being invited to become a new kind of human. Where AI isn’t the headline; human transformation is. And that includes the arts, culture, and the whole of society. Generative AI – the technologies that write our emails, draft our reports, and even create art – have become a fixture of daily life, and the philosophical and moral questions they raise are no longer abstract. They are immediate, personal, and potentially disruptive to the core of what we consider human work.Our guest today, Sven Nyholm, is one of the leading voices helping us navigate this new reality. As the Principal Investigator of AI Ethics at the Munich Center for Machine Learning, and co-editor of the journal Science and Engineering Ethics. He has spent his career dissecting the intimate relationship between humanity and the machine. His body of work systematically breaks down concepts that worry us all: the responsibility gap in autonomous systems, the ethical dimensions of human-robot interaction, and the question of whether ceding intellectual tasks to a machine fundamentally atrophies our own skills. His previous books, like Humans and Robots: Ethics, Agency, and Anthropomorphism, have laid the foundational groundwork for understanding these strange new companions in our lives.His forthcoming book is The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence: A Philosophical Introduction. The book is a rigorous exploration of everything from algorithmic bias and opacity to the long-term existential risks of powerful AI. We’ll talk about what it means when an algorithm can produce perfect language without genuine meaning, why we feel entitled to take credit for an AI’s creation, and what this technological leap might be costing us, personally, as thinking, moral beings.Episode Websitewww.creativeprocess.info/podInstagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

Today’s episode is about something most of us long for: feeling healthy in our bodies and calm in our minds – not by pushing harder, but by letting the body restore itself. Our guest today is LD Chen, an entrepreneur-turned-author who discovered the ancient wisdom that healing doesn’t come from trying harder, but from restoring the body’s natural intelligence. LD believes everyone has the right to live peacefully and free from constant stress and anxiety – to move through life with genuine joy, peace, and appreciation. After quickly building a 1,000-person company and then facing burnout and serious health issues, LD’s life changed when he encountered an ancient standing practice called Oneness. He is now the Head Coach of the Oneness Institute for America and Europe, and author of the Amazon bestseller Oneness: The Self-Healing Secret You Were Never Supposed to Know.“Oneness is actually not about learning in the usual way. Most teachings tell you how to learn – how to let go, how to calm down, how to manage anger. Oneness does the opposite: we stand, we train the body to correct the heart, and then we live from that heart.”Episode Website Oneness Weekly newsletter TEDx; How AI is changing us- And what means to be humanwww.creativeprocess.info/pod Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

“Oneness is actually not about learning in the usual way. Most teachings tell you how to learn – how to let go, how to calm down, how to manage anger. Oneness does the opposite: we stand, we train the body to correct the heart, and then we live from that heart.”Today’s episode is about something most of us long for: feeling healthy in our bodies and calm in our minds – not by pushing harder, but by letting the body restore itself. Our guest today is LD Chen, an entrepreneur-turned-author who discovered the ancient wisdom that healing doesn’t come from trying harder, but from restoring the body’s natural intelligence. LD believes everyone has the right to live peacefully and free from constant stress and anxiety – to move through life with genuine joy, peace, and appreciation. After quickly building a 1,000-person company and then facing burnout and serious health issues, LD’s life changed when he encountered an ancient standing practice called Oneness. He is now the Head Coach of the Oneness Institute for America and Europe, and author of the Amazon bestseller Oneness: The Self-Healing Secret You Were Never Supposed to Know.Episode Website Oneness Weekly newsletter TEDx; How AI is changing us- And what means to be humanwww.creativeprocess.info/pod Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

We’re undergoing a massive upgrade moment. This conversation focuses on one of the most immediate and profound challenges to humanity: the ways technology is engineered to exploit our vulnerabilities and slowly erase our ability to make original, conscious choices. Our guest is Jacob Ward, a journalist who has spent over 20 years covering the breakthroughs and powerful forces that determine the course of history. Jacob is a Reporter-in-Residence at The Omidyar Network and the founding editor and host of The Rip Current, a newsletter and podcast that examines technology, politics, and the fight to protect the future.He’s the author of the book, The Loop: How AI Is Creating a World Without Choices and How to Fight Back. He served as the editor-in-chief of Popular Science and was a correspondent for NBC, The TODAY Show, and Al Jazeera. His PBS documentary series, Hacking Your Mindpredicted the rise of Donald Trump. We discussed creativity in the age of AI, the importance of emotional and intuitive intelligence, and the need to reclaim the aspects of life—like connection and nature—that algorithms cannot commodify.“As a worried parent of teenagers, I'm caught between wanting regulation because, right now in the United States, there are no data privacy laws and no regulation whatsoever. So, I definitely want something, but do I want a random four-year executive making those choices? Do I want it to be as top-down a system of control as China has implemented? I don't think so, but there's something in between no rules, which is what we are currently living in, and the rules that are out there in the world.”Episode Websitewww.creativeprocess.info/podInstagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

“Civilization is really a very new and very glitchy thing. If you talk to evolutionary psychologists and people who've looked at how our brains have developed over hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years, they'll tell you that our sense of wonder and creativity, as well as our ability to be cautious and rational, and to trust people we've never met to govern us, all of that kind of stuff—the vast majority of our decision-making actually rests on a much older, much more ancient system. We are so much more like primates than we like to think. Certainly, that's been the lesson of the last sort of 50 years of behavioral science.My worry with AI, of course, is that as we automate decision-making more and more, we use automated systems not only to entertain ourselves but to decide who gets a job, who gets a loan, and who gets bail. I worry that we're going to be in a position in 20 years where we don't have the internal compass we once did. We may have slid away from that higher human functioning—the creativity, the rationality, and all that stuff—and back toward a more primitive version of ourselves, because that's the part that gets played on by this kind of technology. And that's how all these companies wind up making money.”We’re undergoing a massive upgrade moment. This conversation focuses on one of the most immediate and profound challenges to humanity: the ways technology is engineered to exploit our vulnerabilities and slowly erase our ability to make original, conscious choices. Our guest is Jacob Ward, a journalist who has spent over 20 years covering the breakthroughs and powerful forces that determine the course of history. Jacob is a Reporter-in-Residence atThe Omidyar Networkand the founding editor and host of The Rip Current, a newsletter and podcast that examines technology, politics, and the fight to protect the future.He’s the author of the book, The Loop: How AI Is Creating a World Without Choices and How to Fight Back. He served as the editor-in-chief of Popular Science and was a correspondent for NBC, The TODAY Show, and Al Jazeera. His PBS documentary series, Hacking Your Mind,predicted the rise of Donald Trump. We discussed creativity in the age of AI, the importance of emotional and intuitive intelligence, and the need to reclaim the aspects of life—like connection and nature—that algorithms cannot commodify.Episode Websitewww.creativeprocess.info/podInstagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

“People today are so used to Basquiat's prices being extraordinarily high and rising that it's almost hard for people to understand that wasn't always the case. In the year he died, 1988, a terrific painting by Basquiat might have sold for $30,000. Relative to his other artistic peers, like a great Julian Schnabel painting that cost $800,000. After Basquiat died, some speculative capital entered his market, and his prices did pop, but in the early 1990s, his prices fell apart, and for much of the first half of the 1990s, his work was selling for 80% off what it had been selling before. Auction houses didn't want to include him in their auctions. There was a really good chance he was going to be remembered, but certainly not become a great star. Three key figures believed in him and proceeded to buy almost every available Basquiat in the first half of the 1990s. They were also just passionate believers in his work. But for those three people, it would have taken much longer for Basquiat to achieve acclaim, if ever.”Today, we’re joined by someone uniquely positioned to unpack the art world’s inner workings and to help us understand one of its most mythic figures — Jean-Michel Basquiat. Doug Woodham is the author of the new biography, Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Making of an Icon, the first major life study of Basquiat in over twenty-five years. Drawing on more than a hundred interviews — from family and friends to collectors and curators — Doug traces the rise, fall, and resurrection of an artist who redefined what it means to be a cultural icon. Before turning to writing, Doug served as President of the Americas for Christie’s, one of the world’s leading auction houses. That role gave him an insider’s perspective on how value is created — and mythologized — in the modern art market. In this conversation, we’ll explore not just the man behind the legend, but the powerful machinery that turned Jean-Michel Basquiat into one of the most recognized and commercially successful artists in the world.Episode Websitewww.creativeprocess.info/podInstagram:@creativeprocesspodcastImages courtesy of Doug Woodham and Thames & Hudson. For image credits, see Episode Website.

“All of the great artists are there for a reason: because they rebelled in some way. They created a visual vocabulary that felt fresh and new, which excited people. So, the great artists are not built on sort of anthills of sand. They're built on things of substance and of meaning. Though this is not a sufficient condition to become an icon, it's a necessary but not sufficient condition. I think you have to have an interesting and vivid personality or personal narrative that makes you interesting for people to talk about and want to learn about. I think you also have to have a support network of galleries, curators, and collectors who are excited about your work and want to push it forward, not wanting it to be forgotten. Basquiat's visual vocabulary is distinctive and stands out relative to what was being done in the 1980s. That's the sort of strong hill on which his reputation is built. Basquiat benefited from being the first black artist of note who got pushed forward. As in many things, the first benefits.”Today, we’re joined by someone uniquely positioned to unpack the art world’s inner workings and to help us understand one of its most mythic figures — Jean-Michel Basquiat. Doug Woodham is the author of the new biography, Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Making of an Icon, the first major life study of Basquiat in over twenty-five years. Drawing on more than a hundred interviews — from family and friends to collectors and curators — Doug traces the rise, fall, and resurrection of an artist who redefined what it means to be a cultural icon. Before turning to writing, Doug served as President of the Americas for Christie’s, one of the world’s leading auction houses. That role gave him an insider’s perspective on how value is created — and mythologized — in the modern art market. In this conversation, we’ll explore not just the man behind the legend, but the powerful machinery that turned Jean-Michel Basquiat into one of the most recognized and commercially successful artists in the world.Episode Websitewww.creativeprocess.info/podInstagram:@creativeprocesspodcast