Emerging Form

“Invest always in relationships before you need them, be vulnerable with them,” says Courtney E. Martin, journalist, author, podcaster and speaker. In this episode, she shares with us an essential question for all journalists and creatives and discusses how it shaped a specific project, plus she offers advice for living a creative life based on Parker Palmer’s thoughts on “the tragic gap.” This is an episode focused on transparency, vulnerability, community and humility.Courtney E. Martin is the author of four books, most recently, Learning in Public, a popular newsletter, called Examined Family, host of “The Wise Unknown” podcast from PRX, and co-host of the Slate “How To!” podcast. She’s also a co-founder of the Solutions Journalism Network and FRESH Speakers, and the Storyteller-in-Residence at The Holding Co. Her literal happy place is her co-housing community in Oakland, Calif. Her metaphorical happy place is asking people questions. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emergingform.substack.com/subscribe

image: Eben Pariser and Molly Venter How do we get in the zone? What does that even mean for creatives? And how do we stay in it? And how do we get back in when kicked out? We speak with musicians and marriage partners Molly Venter and Eben Pariser about using the ancient technologies of poetry and music to help people tap into their subconscious and explore what treasure they have within them. Goodnight Moonshine is a guitar and vocal duet, and a musical marriage in all senses. The Duo combines the evocative voice and songwriting of Molly Venter, with Eben Pariser’s adventurous guitar playing. The result is folk music with a depth of improvisation and tonal subtlety usually reserved for jazz. Molly is well known for her sublime singing in the prominent female-vocal-group Red Molly, Her voice has been called “biker-chick smoky,” and with Goodnight Moonshine she is in full force as a songwriter with a trance-induced stream-of-consciousness writing style.  Eben cut his teeth as a street performer in New York City, playing guttural music of New Orleans with his band Roosevelt Dime, but he was quickly captured by classic jazz, and his improvisational skills are a hallmark of Goodnight Moonshine’s sound.  This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emergingform.substack.com/subscribe

It’s all about balance–and in this episode we speak with botanist and writer Erin Zimmerman about choices she made in her new book Unrooted: Botany, Motherhood and the Fight to Save an Old Science. We also talk about the choices she’s made as she balances motherhood and work, being an introvert and finding a writing community, pursuing her passions and finding meaningful ways to recharge. Plus how she was inspired by Charles Darwin’s parenting. Erin Zimmerman is an evolutionary biologist turned science writer and essayist. She studied at the University of Guelph and at the Université de Montréal before traveling to South America to collect plant specimens, and then working at the Royal Botanic Gardens in England. In addition to her academic writing, her essays have appeared in publications including Smithsonian Magazine, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Undark, and Narratively. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emergingform.substack.com/subscribe

[image: Christie working with her Scientific American editor, Jeff DelViscio.]We live in a society that wants to know. And yet uncertainty underlies all of science–one of our most essential tools for understanding the world. What is our relationship with uncertainty? Why is this relationship so important? And what does it have to do with creative practice? In this episode of Emerging Form, Christie Aschwanden talks about her new short-run podcast, Uncertain, hosted by Scientific American. We discuss the genesis of the project, the importance of finding people who are also passionate about your project, being receptive to opportunities, how we can be smart about creating congruent projects, how trying new media can spark our creative practice, and the importance of encouragement.Uncertain from Scientific American https://scientificamerican.com/uncertainChristie’s FiveThirtyEight story “There’s No Such Thing as ‘Sound Science’” This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emergingform.substack.com/subscribe

“The day is about certainty, answers, lists, data,” says author Annabel Abbs-Streets. But at night, she says, “I felt I could put my arm through to another world” — a world of creativity, inspiration, open-mindedness and insight. In this episode, we discuss her new book, Sleepless: Unleashing the Subversive Power of the Night Self, which weaves science, memoir, and history into a powerful, intimate conversation about creativity and the night and why we (especially women) might find our empathy, creativity, and connection to the divine might be heightened after the sun goes down.Annabel Abbs-Streets is an award-winning writer of highly researched fiction, non-fiction and memoir.  Sleepless is her seventh book, and her work has been published in over 30 languages.  She writes regularly for a wide range of newspapers and magazines, and has spoken at literary festivals across the world. She has a degree in English Literature, an MA in Marketing, Research and Statistics, and is a Fellow of the Brown Foundation. She lives with her family  in London and Sussex.Annabel Abbs-StreetsSleepless: Unleashing the Subversive Power of the Night Self Rosemerry’s album on endarkenment, Dark Praise This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emergingform.substack.com/subscribe

When Kelly and Zach Weinersmith proposed a book on colonizing Mars, they had no idea that halfway through their research they’d change their position. Their title says it all: A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through? What happens when two people who eschew conflict find themselves in a position of dashing people’s dreams about space? In this light-hearted episode we talk about their research process, how they organized crazy amounts of information, their collaborative processes, negotiating critique with each other, how to make hard science more accessible and palatable to the public and how humor helps everything. Dr. Kelly Weinersmith received her PhD in Ecology at the University of California Davis, and is an adjunct faculty member in the BioSciences Department at Rice University. Kelly studies parasites that manipulate the behavior of their hosts, and her research has been featured in The Atlantic, National Geographic, BBC World, Science, and Nature. With her husband, Zach Weinersmith she wrote Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That’ll Improve and/or Ruin Everything, was a New York Times Bestseller.and Zach Weinersmith is the cartoonist behind the popular geek webcomic, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal and he illustrated the New York Times-bestselling Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration. His work has been featured by The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, Slate, Forbes, Science Friday and many others. Zach and Kelly live in Virginia with their children. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emergingform.substack.com/subscribe

It happens. We screw up. Sometimes, mid creative process, we realize we need to start over again. In this episode, we look at one of Rosemerry’s recent midnight bouts with “uh oh” and how it became a chance to explore trust in the process and trust in the creative self. “It was so empowering, so exciting, so revolutionary for my creative process to have this ability to be able to move forward with compassion toward myself instead of shaming of the self,” she says. In this heartfelt episode, Christie and Rosemerry explore vulnerability, authenticity, the gift of struggle, radical acceptance and the benefits of creating a cocoon of tenderness for the creative self. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emergingform.substack.com/subscribe

How can you build a palace in your mind? We speak with Paul Hearding, the North American Champion for Reciting Pi, about how he used storytelling to memorize 16,106 digits in February 2020. He shares how his process evolved (obey the emerging form!) so that now, as he continues to memorize more, he’s included rhyme. It’s fun episode exploring passion projects and practical applications for story. After receiving his master's in Mathematics from the University of Delaware and teaching at the college level, Paul Hearding packed up his things and followed a lifelong dream of moving out west. That journey brought him to Telluride, Colorado, where he taught high-school math and science. Paul now runs his own tutoring business, nurturing an appreciation for the art of mathematics in his students while pursuing his own mathematical passions, including the practice of reciting digits of pi from memory. In 2020, Paul recited 16,106 digits of pi, setting the US record.He is actively doing original research in the area of finite fields and is currently researching permutation polynomials, a phenomenon in abstract algebra with applications to the information sciences, particularly cryptology. He plans to submit his dissertation this year and earn his Ph.D. from the University of Delaware. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emergingform.substack.com/subscribe

How can a creative practice help us to meet what Rilke named the “dark hours of our being?” How can we participate in a more self-compassionate creative practice? In this heart-opening, soul-nourishing, deeply vulnerable episode of Emerging Form, we speak with comedian and poet John Roedel about how writing helped him wonder again and again “what if I go just a little bit deeper?” We talk about how through a daily writing practice in a period of personal struggle, he was able to become increasingly vulnerable, increasingly courageous about sharing his work, and increasingly connected to his own heart. John Roedel is a comic who unexpectedly gained notability as a writer and poet through his heartfelt pieces he shared on social media that went viral. He is the author of six self-published books that went on to become Amazon bestsellers, including—Hey God. Hey John, Upon Departure and his latest work, “Fitting In is For Sardines.”Offering a sincere and very relatable look at his faith crisis, mental health, personal struggles, perception of our world, and even his fashion sense, John's writing has been shared millions of times across social media. He teaches at universities and retreat centers across the US. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emergingform.substack.com/subscribe

How does one go from writing articles to writing a full book? How does this change creative rhythms of research, scheduling and writing? In this episode of Emerging Form we speak with journalist Rebecca Boyle whose first book, OUR MOON: How Earth’s Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us Who We Are comes out January 16. We speak, too, about how to do creative work while parenting young children and how to find focus with a subject literally as big as the moon. As a journalist, Rebecca Boyle has reported from particle accelerators, genetic sequencing labs, bat caves, the middle of a lake, the tops of mountains, and the retractable domes of some of Earth’s largest telescopes. Her first book, OUR MOON: How Earth’s Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us Who We Are (Random House, 2024) is a new history of humanity’s relationship with the Moon, which Rebecca has not yet visited on assignment. Based in Colorado Springs, Colo., Rebecca is a contributing editor at Scientific American, a contributing writer at Quanta Magazine and The Atlantic, and a columnist at Atlas Obscura. She is a frequent contributor to the New York Times, Smithsonian Air & Space, and Popular Science. Her work has appeared in Wired, MIT Technology Review, Nature, Science, Popular Mechanics, New Scientist, Audubon, Distillations, and many other publications. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emergingform.substack.com/subscribe

It’s the epiphany episode! Every year Rosemerry & Christie think back on the year in creative practice to see what we had hoped we might explore and do … and what actually happened. So many revelations in this episode! Full of laughter and sincerity, celebration and curiosity. We pick new words for 2024 to help guide our process, and of course, we hand out magic wands … though it’s surprising what happens with them. Christies’s 5280m essay Liz Gilbert interview This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emergingform.substack.com/subscribe

Best way to tackle a creative fear? With a friend! We talk with comedians Chris Duffy and Zach Sherwin about how they offered inspiration and accountability for each other in a 101-day TikTok content creation challenge. We touch on creative habits, perfectionism, practical tips for negotiating TikTok, collaborative projects, the vicissitudes of algorithms, and metrics of success. It’s a heart-warming, laughter-full episode full of friendship, fear, birds, and success. Chris Duffy is a comedian, television writer, and radio/podcast host. Chris currently hosts TED’s hit podcast How to Be a Better Human. He has appeared on Good Morning America, ABC News, NPR, and National Geographic Explorer. Chris wrote for both seasons of Wyatt Cenac's Problem Areas on HBO, executive produced by John Oliver. He’s the creator/host of the streaming game show Wrong Answers Only, where three comedians try to guess what a leading scientist does all day, in partnership with LabX at the National Academy of Sciences. He has performed live in venues as big as a sold out Lincoln Center and as small as a walk-in closet (also sold out). Chris is both a former fifth grade teacher and a former fifth grade student. Zach Sherwin is a Los Angeles-based comedian and the creator and host of The Crossword Show, in which a panel of comedians solves a crossword puzzle live onstage in front of an audience. In 2022, he published his debut crossword puzzle in the New York Times. His writing for the web series “Epic Rap Battles of History” has received multiple Streamy Awards and Emmy nominations, and the Epic Rap Battles in which he’s appeared have amassed well over half a billion YouTube views and an RIAA-certified Gold record. His own YouTube videos have been viewed many millions of times, and his other writing credits range from “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” (The CW) to MAD Magazine. As a performer, Zach has appeared on “Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell” (FX) and “The Pete Holmes Show” (TBS), both long cancelled, as well as “America’s Got Talent” (NBC), which seems to be doing just fine! Zach has also worked extensively as a TV audience warm-up comic, including at the 2023 National Spelling Bee finals. For more information on Zach and The Crossword Show, please visit www.crosswordshow.com.Zach’s first video of the 101 day experiment: This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emergingform.substack.com/subscribe

Wow, it’s been a minute! Today’s episode is number 100, and we use the occasion to reflect on the origins of Emerging Form and how it has evolved since February 21, 2019 when we released episode 1. (We have been releasing bonus episodes every other week since episode 10, which means that this is actually episode 190!!)We also discuss what we’ve learned how doing the podcast has enriched our lives and our friendship.Episodes mentioned:Ep 2: Is talent necessary with Jenn KahnEp 76 Bonus Chris Duffy on Differentiating Between You and Your IdeasEp 28 The daily grind with Holiday MathisEp 9: how should we think of awards and contests (live show!) Ep 82 Bonus: Creative Pleasures with Brad Aaron Modlin Ep 57: How play can fuel creativity with Catherine Price  (and #45 protecting your creative time)Ep 88: Emily Scott on the art of performingEp 19: Creativity and COVID-19 with Peter HellerEp 79: Lauren Fleshman on Telling Her Story to Create Social ChangeEp 40: Envy, with Cheryl Strayed Ep 74: T.A. Barron on the Magic of StoriesEp 93: Melissa L. SevignyEp 77 Bonus: Aaron Abeyta ep. 77 bonus   This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emergingform.substack.com/subscribe

What guidance does the earth offer for creative practice? We speak with Jacqeline Suskin, author of A Year in Practice: Seasonal Rituals and Prompts to Awaken Cycles of Creative Expression about how to rest, when to push, when to engage in reflection, when to seek inspiration. We explore the rhythms of the earth and of creativity, specifically focusing on autumn and how this season might inform your creative practice. Jacqueline Suskin has composed over forty thousand poems with her ongoing improvisational writing project, Poem Store. She is the author of six books, including Help in the Dark Season. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, the Atlantic, and Yes! magazine. She lives in Detroit. For more, see jacquelinesuskin.com.https://www.jacquelinesuskin.com/**Vanessa Zoltan explains why she believes “writing a bad novel is an amazing sacred practice” in this Slate article Christie and Rosemerry discuss: Don’t Just Write a Novel This November. Write a Bad Novel. It’s good for you! This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emergingform.substack.com/subscribe

We’ve got a quick announcement. You probably noticed that we didn’t put out a new episode today. That's not because it’s Rosemerry’s birthday, though it is! Happy birthday Rosemerry! Nope, we are taking a short break, this week and next, to get ready for some great stuff ahead. We are one episode away from our 100th episode, which is actually more like our 180th episode, because most episodes have a bonus to go along with it.We are going to be going over some of our favorite moments from the podcast so far. In the meantime, Rosemerry and I are going to re-listen to ep 12, about saying no. We’ll be back on Nov 16. Catch you then! This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emergingform.substack.com/subscribe

As a culture, we spend a lot of our time watching tv and movies and reading and popular fiction, but we rarely stop to reflect on the influence these forms of entertainment have on our lives. In his new book, You Are What You Watch, data journalist Walt Hickey takes deep, fun, rambunctious dive into all the ways that movies, television, and other forms of pop culture are fundamentally important to how we experience the world, how we see ourselves and the kind of the values that we embrace. He explains how Jurassic Park inspired him to study math in college and got people interested in paleontology while also increasing funding for the field. He graphs how movies drive tourism and influence what kind of dogs people want. Best of all, the book contains an entire chapter exploring what stories do to their creators. Turns out, writing fan fiction puts a rocket on someone’s ability to write. Walt Hickey is the Deputy Editor for Data and Analysis at Insider News. He  works on cool stories and supports the newsroom through data journalism. In 2022, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Illustrated Reporting. In Spring of 2018, he launched his creator-owned daily morning newsletter Numlock News. It’s all about the cool numbers buried in the news. It’s funny and makes you smarter. He also predicts the Oscars in the Numlock Awards Supplement, a seasonal pop-up spinoff of Numlock. He’s the author of the new book You Are What You Watch: How Movies and TV Affect Everyting. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emergingform.substack.com/subscribe

How could embracing change help grow and develop your creative practice? We speak with best-selling author Brad Stulberg about “rugged flexibility” and new definitions for stability, how your expectations might be inhibiting your creativity, how the way you define yourself limits or grows your creative potential, and much more. We also discuss why it sometimes sucks to succeed. Brad Stulberg is the bestselling author of Master of Change and The Practice of Groundedness. He writes for The New York Times and is on faculty at the University of Michigan's Graduate School of Public Health. He lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Western North Carolina.Christie’s TEDx talk about envy and how someone else wrote her book.Episode 73: Steve Magness on Doing Hard Things This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emergingform.substack.com/subscribe

What happens when science, spirituality and poetry weave together? We speak with heralded poet David Keplinger about his newest poetry collection, Ice, which he playfully describes as “poetry via the Pleistocene.” The book, and our conversation, explores emergence–the emergence of Ice Age animals once preserved in ice and the emergence of feelings and old versions of the self as the heart melts with age and self-compassion. We talk about how creative practice can help us move from “stuckness to spontaneity” and how it is creativity helps us “remember we are here.”David Keplinger is the director of the MFA Program at American University, recipient of two NEA fellowships, the Colorado Book Award, the TS Eliot Award (selected by Mary Oliver), the Cavafy Prize (selected by Ilya Kaminsky), the Rilke Prize, and the Emily Dickinson Award from the Poetry Society of America. He’s a longtime translator of Büchner Preis winning German poet Jan Wagner. His new poetry book is called Ice, which combines a concern for climate change with a metaphor for inner light. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emergingform.substack.com/subscribe

Versatility in writing across genres can be a great blessing for a writer, and in this episode we speak with Cameron Walker who works as a journalist, writes poetry and fiction, and has two books coming out this year—one, a book of essays, and the other is an illustrated book for kids about US National Monuments. We speak about how to push yourself in different genres, the importance of trust in your process, how gratefulness became an important part of her writing practice, and the challenges of telling a complicated story in a way simple enough for kids to comprehend without sacrificing the truth of the complexities.Cameron Walker is a writer based in California. Her journalism, essays, and fiction have appeared in publications including The New York Times, Hakai, The Missouri Review, and The Last Word on Nothing. She’s won awards for her writing from the American Society of Journalists and Authors, the American Institute of Physics, and Terrain.org. She is the author of National Monuments of the U.S.A., a book for kids beautifully illustrated by Chris Turnham. Her essay collection, Points of Light, is coming out this fall from Hidden River Press.Links:Cameron’s website: www.cameronwalker.netCameron’s Last Word On Nothing archive: https://www.lastwordonnothing.com/category/cameron/Cameron’s beautiful book, National Monuments of the USA (with illustrations by Chris Turnham) https://www.quarto.com/books/9780711265493/national-monuments-of-the-usa This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emergingform.substack.com/subscribe

This episode is all about passion. What happens when a curiosity takes on a life of its own? How do you juggle a passion project with a full-time job? What are the benefits to working alone? How do you determine a project has chops? We speak with Christine Laskowski, who recently launched an independent passion project, T&J, a podcast devoted to 6th century Byzantium and the greatest recorded love story on earth, between Empress Theodora and her husband, the Emperor Justinian.Laskowski is a Berlin-based, multimedia journalist with 15 years of reporting, music and storytelling experience from around the world. Her video and audio work has appeared on CBS News, NPR, FiveThirtyEight, and Vox/Netflix. Two years ago, she pitched and then supervised the first TikTok news account for the German broadcaster, Deutsche Welle. http://christinelaskowski.com/Christine_Laskowski/Home.htmlvimeo.com/christinelaskowski @laskowski_chttps://tandj.buzzsprout.com/ This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emergingform.substack.com/subscribe