Singer-songwriter-guitarist Camila Meza on growing up in Chile, the nature of translation, improvisation, self observation, bootleg videotapes, identity, cruise ship living, synesthesia and distortion.

Ryan Scott on his love affair with an 8 track cassette recorder, crossing the “jazzy line”, “keeping things open”, moving to New York right out of high school and falling in with a crowd of itinerant musicians who taught him how to “roll cigarettes and drink beer”, and what it’s like inside his head.  

Writer and scholar Jeremy Dauber on his book Jewish Comedy: A Serious History, how comedy evolves through context, the “complicated relationship of ownership and loss” among contemporary Jewish comedians in America, what’s so funny about fart jokes, and whether or not it’s possible to hide inside an apple pie.  

Singer, songwriter, composer, writer Peter Himmelman on finding “beauty in tragedy”, confronting “the harsh architecture of now”, and unpacking questions of ergonomics, economics, loss, discovery, desire, faith, fearlessness, impermanence, songwriting, real estate, college tuition, doing meaningful work, and performing naked.

Richard J. Davidson had an intuition early on: the mind was fundamental to the human experience. “If we wanted to promote a different way of seeing the world, we needed to change our minds.” Here he outlines his personal journey and how it intersects with his work, why he sees this as a crucial moment for humanity and what mind training can do to help, why “reality is a movie”, how his relationship with the Dalai Lama has informed his choices, what it means to meditate with compassion, and what jazz bassist Charles Mingus has to do with any of this.