The PAUSE with Ari Clibe

In a more human world, what happens when the life you've carefully constructed begins to crumble from within?Irish architect and mentor Michael Rice has spent decades designing spaces that respond to nature, beauty, and the people who inhabit them. But what happens when those same architectural principles are turned toward a human life?Our conversation begins with Michael's childhood in Ireland, where asking a question about the meaning of life brought a violent response from a religious teacher. Years later, the death of his parents, financial upheaval, and a fracture in his marriage challenged the foundations of a life that had once appeared beautifully constructed.Together, we explore the rooms within ourselves we're afraid to enter, the relationship between intuition and certainty, and the conditions that allow men to experience vulnerability, safety, and genuine connection.Michael also describes a moment when someone he mentored challenged his own understanding of the world. It leaves us with a provocative question: Are we opening possibilities for others, or quietly imposing our own?Along the way, Japanese concepts of Zanshin and Mushin enter our conversation—awareness, disciplined practice, and the possibility of acting without forcing an outcome.And then something unexpected happens. Asked to complete a simple sentence about what makes a beautiful life, Michael discovers an answer that surprises even him.Perhaps creativity isn't only about what we make. Perhaps it's also about how we feel while making it.An episode about belonging, reciprocity, self-worth, and the extraordinary possibility of laughing our way into a life that fits.Explore Michael Rice's workZeMArC Design — Michael Rice and Zana Zu — Holistic architecture, design, mentoring, and creative practice.Michael Rice Architect — Architectural projects and bioarchitecture.Michael Rice on YouTube — Videos exploring sacred geometry, natural design, and architecture.BioArchitecture: Designing Spaces That Stimulate Blissful States — A filmed introduction to Michael's architectural philosophy.Biologic Architecture: Buildings Inspired by Nature — Michael's writing about the relationship between buildings, biology, and human experience.Mentorus — How to Rebuild a Life That Fits — Another conversation with Michael about his mentoring practice and men's lives. For Mentorus inquiries: [email protected] listening to THE PAUSEWhat the Baby Body Remembers — with Alexandra Beller (S4E3) — Intuition, surrender, embodiment, and the body's memory.Fried Grief — with Ari in Two Voices (S4E4) — Work, worth, vulnerability, and the longing to belong without performing.The Unspoken Sounds of Somatic Silence — with David Shea, Part One (S4E5) — Artistic mastery, listening, failure, and the freedom to create.The Unspoken Sounds of Somatic Silence — with David Shea, Part Two (S4E6) — Compassion, accountability, recovery, and connection.Wild Intelligence — with Asher Crispe (S4E2) — Embodied intelligence, curiosity, and what makes us human.You Can Hear Everything — with David J. Greenberg (S4E7) — The uneasy relationship between truth, storytelling, certainty, and creative interpretation.Listen and connectFollow THE PAUSE on Apple PodcastsListen to Radio KCM, Knoxville — Thursdays, 2–3 PM Eastern.THE PAUSE with Ari Clibe — Providing sanctuary for the wild ones.Financial support in part comes from the Clibanoff-Gotsdiner Family Fund, devoted to celebrating our mutual creativities.

When does documenting reality become creating it?Journalism asks us to seek the truth. Art invites us to shape what we see and feel. But what happens when those two intentions collide?In this episode of The PAUSE, Ari welcomes filmmaker, screenwriter, and film educator David J. Greenberg for a spirited conversation about You Can See Everything, the provocative new documentary from Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim about Elizabeth Holmes, the convicted founder of Theranos.What begins as a film review wanders into more unsettled territory: the difference between what we can do and what we're capable of doing; the seductions of certainty; the personas we construct; and the peculiar trust we place in filmmakers who promise to show us reality.Along the way, Ari and David explore Fielder's uncomfortable humor, the blurring of documentary and fiction, and the ways editing, performance, and even the placement of a camera can change the truth we believe we're witnessing.Are filmmakers witnesses, storytellers, magicians—or something of all three?And when we surrender ourselves to a story, how much of what we experience belongs to the artist, and how much do we bring ourselves?Perhaps seeing everything isn't the same as knowing what we've seen.Explore furtherYou Can See Everything — Official film page and trailerYou Can See Everything — New York Film FestivalDavid Greenberg's Screenwriting for Micro-Budget Films — RoutledgeRadio KCM — Knoxville Community RadioThe PAUSE PodcastListener advisory: This conversation discusses sexual assault, trauma, and themes from the film. Some plot details are revealed.Financial support in part comes from the Clibanoff-Gotsdiner Family Fund, devoted to celebrating our mutual creativities.

Can we listen deeply without compassion? And what happens when the lives we've composed leave us with regret?In the second of two conversations, composer David Shea and Ari move beyond music into the complicated terrain of relationships, responsibility, and recovery.David proposes that listening is not merely an expression of compassion — it is compassion in action. Together, they explore spiritual practice, the mythology of artistic genius, the wisdom of silence, and the conditions that allow creativity and human connection to flourish.As the conversation grows more personal, David reflects on the costs of independence, the communities he kept at a distance, and choices he might have made differently. Ari considers the difference between intending no harm and recognizing the harm our actions can cause.What does it mean to recover from our mistakes? Can relationships be repaired without returning to what they once were? And might belonging begin with a willingness to listen, take responsibility, and remain open to change?

What if listening isn't something we do with our ears, but something we experience with our entire bodies?Composer, improviser, and educator David Shea joins Ari again this season for the first of two conversations exploring the relationships between sound, chaos, creativity, and human connection.Drawing on more than forty years of friendship, they consider what it means to pursue artistic excellence without demanding perfection. David challenges familiar ideas about mastery, failure, and authorship, suggesting that composition itself is an act of listening — and listening an act of co-creation.From Buddhist practice and experimental music to cultural appropriation and the vulnerability of performance, their conversation opens into a larger inquiry: Can we make room for one another without needing to control what happens between us?

What happens when being useful becomes the price of belonging?In Fried Grief, Ari performs a two-voice dialogue between his former identity Andy and current identity Ari—two sides of a conversation about work, worth, childhood wounds, friendship, and the longing to be loved without having to prove anything.A memory of a work ticket dropped onto a desk becomes an unexpected exploration of power, vulnerability, and trust. Through anger, silence, play, and the simple act of holding a folded piece of paper, the conversation asks what it means to stay with another person without needing to fix them—or open them up.An intimate experiment in grief, listening, and the possibility of belonging.The PAUSE: A sanctuary for the wild ones.

Choreographer, author, and movement analyst Alexandra Beller joins The PAUSE for a conversation about intuition, surrender, and the body’s memory. She recounts learning the dances of her young children, and how that process opened a path to younger parts of herself. Together, we explore the meaning we make from uncertainty, the grief of losing faith in humanity, and the hope that keeps us creating. At the heart of it is a question of belonging: what might become possible when we let ourselves be fully seen?

What kinds of intelligence become more valuable as artificial intelligence gets faster?Technology futurist and self-described “free-range chicken” Asher Crispe joins Ari from Vermont for a conversation about AI, education, failure, embodiment, curiosity and the limits of efficiency. Asher works near the accelerating edge of artificial intelligence, but the conversation keeps returning to what cannot be reduced to speed or computation: deep listening, signaling intent, getting lost, nonlinear thought, the body, the forest, and the difference between the map and the territory.Along the way: teenage zombies, a year of work compressed into a week, brakes for AI, becoming rejection-proof, “world-poor” digital life, and why walking in the woods may be a necessary counterweight to technological acceleration.An episode about preserving something unruly in the way we think.

The premiere episode of Season Four begins in Denver with ten-year-old returning guest Virginia “Ginny” Sexton. Before heading to Red Rocks, Ginny sings, talks about growing up, and pulls Ari into a series of unexpected listening and acting experiments. What begins as a conversation about music gradually becomes something less controlled: an inquiry into attention, play, change, and what happens when a host stops steering long enough to follow where a guest is actually going.

The Season Three finale brings together two people whose practices appear very different. Jessica Wan is an opera singer, a coach, and the creator of The Ampersand Manifesto. She has spent years exploring how the many parts of a human life can nourish one another rather than compete with one another. Our second guest, writer Joel Beverly, has spent years listening in a different register. His journey eventually carried him around the world, but one of the deepest discoveries he shares has nothing to do with geography. It has to do with silence. Not silence as emptiness, but silence as readiness.While Jessica listens through song, Joel listens through stillness.One teaches us that a voice can become a gift.The other reminds us that silence can become one.

Discover the benefits of participation in making creative culture within community. Listen to two conversations in one episode.--Cohegent's Sue Spolan on meeting Artificial Intelligence (AI) where you can grow as a person and artist followed by Nief Norf's Alex Dally on cultivating Experimental Music where you can expand your palette of listening.