Where Dreams Come From

So far in this podcast, most of my guests have told us about their aspirations in life and their quest to achieve their dream.  My guest today, Deirdre Barrett, is different. She studies dreams. She writes books about the dreams people have in their sleep and she teaches classes at Harvard about those dreams. Deirdre has been interested in dreams from a very young age and her search is, in part, about the dreams we have while asleep and their bearing on our waking lives.Support the show

Jeremy Sherman set out, fairly early in life – to be a hippie. He now asserts that science is his spiritual path. Possessing a naturally questioning mind, Jeremy abandoned the quest for undefined enlightenment to seek out answers to higher truths by applying scientific methods. Working closely with Harvard and Berkley neuroscientist and biological anthropologist Terrence Deacon he seeks to explain the basis on which biological organisms aspire or try. He told me that this aspect of life – trying or aspiring or dreaming, so to speak – distinguishes living organisms from machines. It has names but little in way of explanation. Support the show

Michael Smolens has been a serial entrepreneur all his life. He says he went with his gut at every stage. The motivation was never money, it was to do things that were never done before. Even when he fell down, he just continued. Now, approaching the fourth quarter of life, he has labeled himself Collector of Puzzle Pieces. Give it a listen.Support the show

Ruby Hembrom is the founder of Adivaani – a platform for indigenous people’s expression in India. She, has been awarded the Asia Foundation Development Fellowship and an Atlantic Fellowship – among other honors. However, Ruby did not set out in life imagining she would become a publisher and archivist of indigenous literature and culture in India. Born into a Santal tribal family, her formative years were spent with experiences of colorism that affected her deeply. Ultimately, her dream formed as a response to the exclusion that she felt at every step. Support the show

Ruth Jeannoel’s mother fled the oppressive Duvalier regime in Haiti and settled in Boston, Massachusetts where Ruth was born. From all accounts, it was hard to be a single mother, without knowing any English and never having had faced the brutal New England winters. Ruth, who learnt Haitian Creole at home and English at School became her mother’s interpreter, as she tried to make her way in the United States. In the absence of money – the church was their sole source of solace and inspiration. In this conversation, Ruth explains her early influences, the discovery of words for the inequalities that surrounded her and, ultimately, as a woman of African ancestry – the deep desire to help others like her.Support the show

Bijayini Satpathy, came of age as a classical Odissi dancer at Nrityagram – a dance village in South India, founded in 1990 by the socialite and danseuse Protima Gauri Bedi.When Bijayini decided to leave Nrityagram and strike out on her own in 2018, she told Marina Harss of the New York Times that she had a (I quote) “strong urge to push into an untouched and unexplored dimension, before it was too late.” And, even though she felt a “shocking sense of loss” of her hold on dance at the self-imposed severance, she has rebuilt herself. It has been as if she was compelled to undertake a painful path to fully realize her dream. Bijayini Satpathy spoke to me from her home, outside Bangalore and not very far from the Nrityagram campus. Support the show

Imagine you are walking along a road in rural Central India, in the state of Madhya Pradesh. A place where infrastructure is sparse and people continue to live in poverty, many excluded by circumstance to fully participate in India’s heady economic development. It’s quiet, and then you hear the unmistakable low rumble of a Royal Enfield Bullet motorbike’s 4-stroke engine. Then you see it. It’s blue in color and astride it is a venerable European woman.My guest, Ulrike Reinhard, grew up in Germany and discovered her gift as a basketball player early. Although her middle-class parents were not really happy about whom she chose to date, they did give her the freedom with sports and education. It seems that this freedom allowed her to live life on her own terms. In 2013, while on a trip to India, Ulrike was inspired to build a skatepark for children in a village in Central India. The thought was, that a skatepark could be instrumental in breaking down barriers of caste, class and gender. Be a positive disruptor in an otherwise stagnant setting. Seven years on, it seems the experiment is thriving to the benefit of the children of Janwaar, Madhya Pradesh and their families. Ulrike Reinhard spoke to me recently from Portugal.Support the show

Almost four decades ago, while still in college in India, I played bass in a rock band. My guest today, Rahul Ram, was the bassist in a rival band. Then we lost touch, until one day, in the early 2000s, the song Bandé by the band Indian Ocean for the Bollywood film Black Friday came bursting into the scene. Rahul Ram was ostensibly the band’s front man. In our conversation, he outlines his various interests and how they got channeled, and defined his music and life. Rahul spoke to me from his home near Naggar, Himachal Pradesh.Support the show

In November 1969, when Sesame Street premiered on Public Television, my guest Dr. Loretta Long was there. As we will hear, based on her fortitude and thinking on her feet, she had landed the role of Susan Robinson - a housewife. Later, her character developed into a working nurse and mother to an adopted son. Sesame Street was pathbreaking in that it aimed to be an influential educational program for American children by combining rigorous research, educational content and entertainment; to engage kids in learning while having fun. Despite the fact that Sesame Street has gone on to be one of the most successful edutainment programs in the anywhere, in this conversation, Dr. Loretta reveals she never felt successful – even through all the fanfare. Support the show

Steven Lavine spent 29 years of his working life as the president of California Institute of the Arts –  CALARTS. Having grown up in a small Wisconsin town, Steven could not wait to go out into the world. As he puts it, invoking his distant cousin Bob Dylan, he wanted to explore where the wind was blowing. After attending Ivy League institutions and becoming a professor for a while, he landed a job at the Rockefeller Foundation to discover the possibility that elite institutions could be instrumental in bringing about social change. His next job, as the president of Calarts, afforded him the dream of trying this idea out for himself. Support the show

Trained as an engineer at the Indian Institutes of Technology or IIT, my guest Rahul Banerjee gave up the securities of an Indian middle class life to serve his country. He threw his lot behind the indigenous Bhil tribal folk in central India. Along the way, he has completed a PhD, become an Ashoka Fellow and completed numerous research projects for organizations internationally. But the central focus, as Banerjee explains, has been a lifelong process of unlearning and then organizing to secure constitutional rights for the poorest of the poor in India. This conversation is a snapshot of that journey.Support the show

Amy Lehman, my guest today, trained to be a surgeon to be a better doctor than the ones who treated her when she was younger. She found her passion in working with underserved communities along the shores of Lake Tangayanika in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Over the past decade, her original dream of creating the Lake Tangayanika Floating Health Clinic has evolved into something much more holistic.Support the show

Sarnath Banerjee, is best known for his incisive portrayal of South Asian characters in his graphic novels and serial graphic publications. But a conversation with him quickly reveals his multifaceted search for purpose and the right medium to express the mystical cities and apparitional characters that, it would seem, took up residence in his imagination and were struggling to come out and speak to all of us. At once, a science communicator, filmmaker, historian, anthropologist - artist – Sarnath cuts a rather enigmatic figure. Apparitional, like so many of his characters. Sarnath spoke to me from Berlin, where he lives with his young son, while dreaming and telling the stories of places and people in South Asia that doggedly occupy the landscape of his fertile imagination. Support the show

Pablo Corral Vega is an Ecuadoran photographer and winner of many accolades including a Neiman Fellowship at Harvard University. From a childhood balanced between a patient and practical lawyer father and a very creative mother – as he tells it – Pablo’s imagination was fired by light. Possessed by his own creativity Pablo did climb to heights few photographers outside the United States and were able to reach. At a time when top publications in the United States were most likely to hire White, American, male photographers for their global assignments, Pablo was one of the early breakaways. Despite early rejection, even from friends, he persevered – and prevailed. Today, he lives to collaborate with others and help the next generation of artists thrive. Pablo spoke to me from his home in Quito, Ecuador. The same home he grew up in - many years ago.Read more about Pablo Corral Vega at http://pablocorralvega.com/en/bio/Support the show

From an early age, Mitchell Kaplan was afforded the freedom to go explore life and discover possibilities. For him, finding an exact focal point for his passion for a literary life came in stages. It took from being and English major in Colorado where the Beat movement was experiencing a resurgence in the 1970s to fleeing law school to settle for becoming an English teacher back in his hometown – Miami to realize what he really wanted to do was start an independent bookstore. The rest – as they say is history. As his career as an independent bookseller progressed, Kaplan also became a principal in founding the Miami Book Fair and began bringing books to screens big and small. Today, it is no exaggeration to say that Kaplan has built a legacy that guarantees his place among those who have made Miami the city it is today. I spoke to Mitch Kaplan, not very long ago,  at one of his 5 Books & Books stores in Miami on a busy weekday morning.Support the show

Peter Zuccarini started dreaming of becoming an underwater cameraman early. Starting his life in Key Biscayne, Florida, he pursued his dream with a passion that clearly went beyond a way to make a living. Ultimately he did reach the peaks in a career that has taken him across the globe. His work as an underwater cameraman and director of photography includes movies like Pirates of the Caribbean, Life of Pi, The Cove, Avatar...to name a few. In this conversation with Media for Change founder Sanjeev Chatterjee, Zuccarini reflects on the climb of a child innocently gathering creatures on a Florida beach to the heights of Hollywood. He also has some basic advice for other dream chasers.Support the show

Shahidul Alam is a Bangladeshi photographer, activist and institution builder. In 2018 he was put in a Bangladeshi jail for speaking truth to power by openly criticizing the government of Bangladesh for its ruthless suppression of student protests. The worldwide call for Shahidul's release galvanized his position not only as a photographer but also as a champion for the powerless. Following his arrest Time magazine included Shahidul in its list of Persons of the Year, 2018.Shahidul Alam is the founder of Chhobi Mela - the international photography exhibition, DRIK - a photo agency,  and Pathshala - a photography school. All are based in Dhaka, Bangladesh.Support the show

Thinking about the outstanding career of photographer Maggie Steber, the words Resilience, Persistence and Faith in the World – come to mind. Having found photography quite by chance, Steber has followed her passion from her first journalism job in Galveston, Texas step by step to the pinnacles of photojournalism. Her work has been published in the New York Times, Newsweek, National Geographic…the list is long. She has been honored by World Press Photo and is a Guggenheim Fellow. I spoke to Maggie at her home in Miami - about her dream of becoming a better photographer everyday. Support the show

Dr. Isaac Prilleltensky is Vice Provost for Institutional Culture. He speaks here to Media for Change founder Sanjeev Chatterjee about his very humble beginnings in Argentina and his dream of a world that cares about community and happiness. Dr. Prilleltensky is a leading figure in the field of critical psychology and is the former dean of the School of Education and Human Development at the University of Miami.Support the show