Can curiosity and empathy be taught? How can we expand our sense of solidarity through stories? In this episode, we explore the internal dialogues of artists, actors and writers to ask what it means to step into someone else's shoes. (0:00) Novelist Jim Shepard discusses Literature as a Tool for Emotional Education and Exploring History (2:05) Tony Award-winning Actor Neil Patrick Harris on Being Moved by Theater and its Ability to Bridge Worlds (3:55) Novelist Katie Kitamura on How a Book is Ma...
Feb 11, 2026•14 min•Season 16Ep. 1211
"Within society, we seem to have separated the arts out, so they're not so much a part of our daily lives. Often there's something that we feel we should do as a kind of leisure activity or hobby if we have enough time or if we have enough money to engage in them. And this is so fundamentally different to how humans engaged with the arts. When we look back thousands of years, it just was part of the everyday, and I feel like that's a major loss within contemporary societies." Daisy Fancourt is a...
Feb 11, 2026•20 min•Season 16Ep. 1217
Did you know that visiting a museum can lower your cortisol levels? Or that singing can bond a group faster than almost any other activity? We tend to think of the arts as entertainment, but science tells a different story. Today, we explore why creativity is hardwired into our biology and how it can be used to treat everything from postnatal depression to stroke recovery. Daisy Fancourt is a Professor of Psychobiology & Epidemiology at UCL and the author of Art Cure: The Science of How the ...
Feb 11, 2026•1 hr 3 min•Season 16Ep. 1216
“They're kind of like a hidden superhero in your body and we just didn't know they existed. Muse cells eat the damaged cells, and they can actually turn into new cells using the cellular machinery.” Dr. Adeel Khan is a global thought leader in regenerative medicine. He is the CEO and Founder of and founder of Eterna Health , whose work with MUSE cell therapy—developed in collaboration with its discoverer, Professor Mari Dezawa—has made him the go-to expert for world leaders, athletes, and celebr...
Jan 25, 2026•22 min•Season 16Ep. 1212
"The repair mechanisms don't work as well as you get older... The whole idea was: if we can give you more of the 'repair guys,' maybe we can reverse disease." Dr. Adeel Khan is a global thought leader in regenerative medicine. He is the CEO and Founder of and founder of Eterna Health , whose work with MUSE cell therapy—developed in collaboration with its discoverer, Professor Mari Dezawa—has made him the go-to expert for world leaders, athletes, and celebrities Chris Hemsworth, Kim Kardashian, a...
Jan 23, 2026•48 min•Season 16Ep. 1211
In this special edition, we hear from our guests from across the arts and sciences. From composers and poets to forest ecologists and climate envoys, they tell the story of our planet. Moving beyond the data of destruction, we explore the intelligence of nature, the ethics of what we eat, and the empathy required to save our future. MAX RICHTER , Composer, Sleep, The Blue Notebooks CARL SAFINA , Author, Becoming Wild ADA LIMÓN , 24th US Poet Laureate CYNTHIA DANIELS , Grammy Award-winning Sound ...
Jan 09, 2026•18 min•Season 16Ep. 1209
On Music, Trust and Connection with the Animal World “Mostly I’ll play in a minor key, something sad, which I think can work for an animal because they can sense the sadness, and they try to reassure me and comfort me. I chose love songs because I'm convinced they are very intuitive and they can sense what I am trying to say to them, and profess my love in a way. I think there's always a way to connect, and if you're being cautious and don't threaten the animals, something beautiful can happen.”...
Dec 31, 2025•Season 15Ep. 1208
How is music a pathway to understanding animals? Musician Plumes takes his guitar to the world's most unlikely concert halls—farms, sanctuaries, and wild habitats. A passionate advocate for veganism and animal welfare, we discuss what animals hear, how trust forms, and what music can reveal when it enters a world not made for humans alone. “Mostly I’ll play in a minor key, something sad, which I think can work for an animal because they can sense the sadness, and they try to reassure me and co...
Dec 31, 2025•41 min•Season 15Ep. 1207
On the urgent need to reclaim our political voices, the forces that silence dissent, and how art and poetry are crucial tools for survival Our guest today is an activist scholar who believes the classroom is inseparable from the public square. David Palumbo-Liu is the Louise Hewlett Nixon Professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford University and a founding faculty member of Stanford’s Program in Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity. But his work has long reached beyond the academy. Thr...
Dec 27, 2025•12 min•Season 15Ep. 1206
On the urgent need to reclaim our political voices, the forces that silence dissent, and how art and poetry are crucial tools for survival “There is a dispute about what the American Dream is or how it would play out in different circumstances. The American dream has essentially been narrowed into a white Christian nationalist notion of things so that everything that falls outside what they imagine that to be is not only undesirable, but should be the subject of extermination, deportation, and d...
Dec 27, 2025•1 hr 7 min•Season 15Ep. 1204
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 ...
Dec 13, 2025•14 min•Season 15Ep. 1204
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, Intimacies ) emphasizes that a book is created in collaboration with the reader , using negative spaces in the narrative structure to allow for reader interpretation, paralleling the space between audience and actor in performance. PAUL LYNCH (Booker Prize-winning Nove...
Dec 12, 2025•12 min•Season 15Ep. 1203
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, ...
Dec 08, 2025•10 min•Season 15Ep. 1200
“ 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 d...
Dec 08, 2025•37 min•Season 15Ep. 1199
“ 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 and hoping that this, what I'm calling the AI wager, is going...
Dec 01, 2025•16 min•Season 15Ep. 1202
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 no...
Dec 01, 2025•1 hr 2 min•Season 15Ep. 1201
“ 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 t...
Nov 27, 2025•12 min•Season 15Ep. 1196
“ 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 interesti...
Nov 27, 2025•1 hr 35 min•Season 15Ep. 1195
“How do you render something interior filmically? How do you communicate the details of the lost child, of the amount of time of the stuck creative process, and even the exterior, or the externalization of the house as a kind of hellish thing that's barely staying together—literally flooding with waste—and that you can't afford? So those are the details that we had to carefully figure out how to weave. But, you know, when you look at the first 10 minutes, it could be a horror movie. From that mo...
Nov 09, 2025•18 min•Season 15Ep. 1190
“And I think there's also just something about an unfettered or uncensored id that is so captivating. We all have that fantasy of doing exactly what we want with no consequences and sort of letting that go. I think when you see an athlete at the peak of their game, doing that embodied thing and living that dream, or when someone has actually done horrible things that you would never allow yourself to do, there is a fascination there. I had one teacher who said, "Anyone who drives you crazy or th...
Nov 09, 2025•46 min•Season 15Ep. 1189
“ I can change my mind. I can reduce anger, hatred. Nothing to do with religion. All religions carry the message of love, loving kindness, and tolerance. With different views, there is a possibility to synthesize new ideas. If majority of the world leaders become female, world become safer. I feel that. Compassion is the key factor. Non-violence, compassion and self-confidence, these are key factors for happy individual, happy community, peaceful world. This century should be century of compassi...
Nov 06, 2025•14 min•Season 15Ep. 1188
“ Everybody wants happiness, joyfulness, peaceful world. Our 21st century will not be easy century. Fear, anger, hatred. In our mind we created distinctions. Different nationality, different color, different religion. Strong concept of “we” and “they”. Brothers and sisters of this small planet, we are same human beings. Meanwhile, global warming is a serious problem. Destruction of this planet is actually destruction of yourself. Our common responsibility should be work together, to save our wor...
Nov 06, 2025•44 min•Season 15Ep. 1187
“So when we decided to do a documentary to follow Ai Weiwei, we knew, of course, it wouldn't be just a simple opera, and we knew he would bring his own very special and original vision. Because, of course, he is not an opera director. From his point of view, it's a challenge, but from another perspective, it’s probably an enrichment for the opera audience because he doesn't follow the rules of opera. And, of course, once you decide to do a documentary about Ai Weiwei, it's in his DNA to be polit...
Oct 22, 2025•Season 15Ep. 1186
“Everything is Art. Everything is Politics. I think art competes with reality. And art will give you the last words.” –Ai Weiwei The renowned artist and activist Ai Weiwei has used sculpture, photography, documentaries, and large-scale installations to challenge authoritarian power for decades. But his project at the Rome Opera House, directing Puccini’s final opera, Turandot , may be his most powerful fusion of art and politics yet. Puccini’s original is a fairy tale set in ancient China about ...
Oct 22, 2025•1 hr•Season 15Ep. 1185
How do our environments shape who we are and how we care for the world and each other? There are many solutions to climate change, inequality, and poverty around the world. How can we learn from them and transform our society? Eiren Caffall ( All the Water in the World ) discusses the importance of embracing complexity and emotional flexibility in facing ecological grief. Irvin Weathersby Jr. ( In Open Contempt ) discusses the transformative power of meditation and nature, drawing inspiration fr...
Oct 18, 2025•13 min•Season 15Ep. 1184
“There are many ways in which I think human exceptionalism has seeped into the sciences, but one of the many ways is through the methodologies we use when we compare the intelligence of humans and other species. In particular, in my field, I’m a primatologist by training, comparing the cognitive abilities of humans with the abilities of our closest living relatives, the great apes. Many times, those studies compare the intelligence of captive chimpanzees who are living in highly restricted, manm...
Oct 17, 2025•Season 15Ep. 1183
“The Future of Life Institute has been working on AI governance-related issues for the last decade. We're already over 10 years old, and our mission is to steer very powerful technology away from large-scale harm and toward very beneficial outcomes. You could think about any kind of extreme risks from AI, all the way to existential or extinction risk, the worst kinds of risks and the benefits. You can think about any kind of large benefits that humans could achieve from technology, all the way t...
Oct 02, 2025•1 hr 3 min•Season 15Ep. 1180
“This awe that I feel every time I meet an artist who has the courage to deal with what it means to be in the world as a human being and to tackle it from different ways and through different media. I always feel that through the collaborations I have with artists, I learn a little bit more about the world, myself, my feelings or emotions, and how I reflect on things. Getting another person's perspective and taking that in is extremely generous. What we can take with us from the artistic practic...
Sep 25, 2025•12 min•Season 15Ep. 1179
“We don't need to find an end solution, but it's a space where we can speculate, imagine, and practice our foresight. We can be part of a bigger imagination together with an institutional framework, which is really what we try to motivate as well when we communicate these exhibitions to our audience and speak with our guests about these works. We can also sense that it's really a place where a lot of people like to enter these days. When you turn on a TV, look at a newspaper, listen to your radi...
Sep 25, 2025•1 hr 9 min•Season 15Ep. 1178
“Poetry is like one of the great loves of my life, and I think it's probably the longest relationship I'll ever have. I read a lot of poetry. I also wrote these short stories even when I was pretty young, like in second grade, and the stories kept getting shorter and shorter. My family used to go to Damascus in Syria and Lebanon every summer for three months until 2011, when the Civil War broke out in Syria. In 2015, we made our first return after that gap, and my father and I went to Lebanon fo...
Sep 21, 2025•38 min•Season 15Ep. 1176
