Episode 15: Mousetrap
What’s the worst that could happen? No, seriously: This is the worst that could happen.
In the last episode of Season 2, we're recalling the worst things that ever happened to us as creative people, and trying to excavate whatever lessons we can from the wreckage. Featuring: Murder in Encino, and a near-international incident in Beijing.
We'll be back with a new season of Imagination & Junk after a short break.
Episode 14: The Gorgeous Notebook Store
Every trade has its tools. But they serve a variety of purposes, from signifiers of status to objects of desire.
In this episode we're talking about tools of the trade. Every creative trade has them. But they function in a variety of ways: As tools, yes, but also as signifiers of membership in a group, and as objects of desire. Also: Man purses, puppies, promiscuous scribbling, snappy suits, Japanese dining tables, Toots Thielemans, custom juggling balls and cricket.
Episode 13: Six Feet From Genius
Here's a creativity brain puzzler: Is it better to break new ground or to keep polishing the same act until it gleams?
Here's a creativity brain puzzler: Is it better to break new ground or to keep polishing the same act until it gleams? It depends, to a degree, on for whom you create in the first place. Also: Jackie Chan, treading water, private eyes, the changeup pitch, Eurovision, litigation, the verdict of history, singularity, space shoes, The Shipping Forecast and quite a bit, actually, about the eternal villainy of The Beach Boys' Mike Love.
Episode 12: Chaotic Playtime
Is GTD an aid to creative work, or is it the exact opposite of what creativity needs?
This week we're looking at Getting Things Done, and at the cult of productivity that's sprung up around David Allen's original GTD methodology. It looks good, it sounds good -- but is it an aid to creative work or the exact opposite of what creativity calls for? Once again, we have thoughts. And this time we've put them in a nice list, with checkboxes. Also: Raccoons, stone tablets, Starfighters, making a mess and tidying up, disresepcting the Bing, shallots and where to put them, things that are too good to check, and the night Bobby Flay made a mockery of Kitchen Stadium.
Episode 11: Super Auto
Can creativity be malign? Or is it always just... creativity?
Can creativity be malign? Or is it always just... creativity? In this episode we're looking at what researchers call "dark creativity," or the use of creative tools to gain an unfair advantage over another person. And yes: We have thoughts. Also: Con artists, hammers, work snacks, spoon-bending, Bond villains, Stevie Wonder Wednesday and the trouble with ponds.
Episode 10: Buzzing Neon
Criticism, self-criticism, and the worst heckle ever.
This week we're talking about criticism, including the trickiest kind: Self-criticism. We'll also look at the buzzing neon sign hanging outside the hotel room of your mind, the one that spells out your own doubts and insecurities, and how to filter it out. Plus: Humility and its plodding cousin experience, spoons, the Dunning-Kruger Effect, sleeping policemen, fixed-rate mortgages, the magical power of putting things in drawers, and the worst heckle ever. (Seriously. The all-time worst.)
Episode 9: Catch Me If You Can
You’re not a fraud. You only think you are.
In this episode we're looking at Impostor Syndrome, the conviction that you've been faking it and are always just inches away from being unmasked. We have a theory about where it came from (hint: it was the '70s), and some thoughts about how it can be turned to creative people's advantage. Plus: Penn & Teller, non-apology apologies, fresh batteries, a ridiculous excess of materials, and the Moscow Philharmonic. (Or were they?)
Episode 8: The Lede (and how to swing it)
How do you get your audience in the tent? And how do you send them happy at the end?
How do you get your audience in the tent? And how do you send them home happy at the end? Journalists have the lede and the kicker; entertainers have the opener and the closer. But they're not the only creative people with tricks. Every art form has them, and if you dig into them you can see some of the wiring that holds all creative work together. Also: Coco Chanel, Spot is a dog, a bowler hat with a chess piece on the top, and that time Bill had a chance to alter the course of history and declined to do so.
Episode 7: Struck by Lightning
How do we measure success in creative work?
How do we measure success in creative work? Is it about the reception the work gets, or is the scale more elusive? Answering this question takes some clarity of thought and a good grasp of expectations. This week, in the first episode of season 2, we're talking about meter-setting. Also: Explosions, sleepy Labradors, and coffee with butter in it.
Episode 6: Elephants in rooms
Is it frivolous to do creative work when the world seems to be falling apart around you?
Is it frivolous to do creative work when the world seems to be falling apart around you? Or can it be a palliative -- for both the creator and their audience? In the last episode of Season 1 we're looking at creativity in hard times, and peeling back the curtain on some decisions we're made about how to approach the hulking coronavirus-shaped elephant in the room. Also: Way too much talk about how to get an elephant out of a room.
Season 2 comes your way in 2022.
Episode 5: Angry playtime
Do anger and other negative emotions unlock creativity?
A decade ago a group of Dutch researchers postulated that anger may under some conditions be an effective spur to creativity. We’re unpacking that eccentric idea this week, and comparing it with our own histories as creators. Do anger and other negative emotions unlock creativity? Also: How and when can arrogance be useful? Plus: Bad sitcoms, toxic bosses, Jetskis and a standup desk you definitely did not want to explore.
Episode 4: Stupid, stupid genius
It's almost impossible to get creative work done without discipline, but not all of us are naturally disciplined creators. That's where habit and routine come in.
"Forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable." -- Octavia Butler
It's almost impossible to get creative work done without discipline, but not all of us are naturally disciplined creators. That's where habit and routine enter the scene -- they're ways we impose discipline on ourselves. And they're more important skills to develop then ever before in a world where the old structures propping up creative careers have fallen away. This week we're looking at ways habit and routine help keep us on track -- and at some ways in which they don't. Also: Mat recalls working a street pitch with Eddie Izzard, and Bill recalls a near-brush with greatness involving Bob Dylan and a fancy wedding venue. Plus: Hats!
Episode 3: Gorilla position
Style is the beautiful face we put on what we do.
Style is the beautiful face we put on what we do. It goes hand in hand with technique, but they inflect each other in a complicated dance -- technique without style can be dull, but style without technique is something worse; it shreds the all-important trust that has to exist between a creative person and her audience. In this episode we talk about what style is, the critical distinction between style and technique, and how style helps a creative person stake her claim on a place in the lineage of people who do what she does. Also: Mat goes all in on professional wrestling as metaphor, and Bill talks about writing the weirdest thing to ever appear in a national newsmagazine. Plus: Bananarama!
Hamburger Madness, by Jack Ziegler
Episode 2: The squeeze
Ideas are one thing, results are another, and the distance between them can only be traversed by work.
There's a misconception that creativity means coming up with ideas. But ideas are one thing, results are another, and the distance between them can only be traversed by work. How do creative people sort ideas, develop them and emerge on the other end? That's where process and technique enter the picture. Also: Mat makes the first of several references to professional wrestling, and Bill explains why, if you're a comedy writer, the name "Nakamura" gives you night sweats.
BONUS: Here’s the cigar-box trick Mat talks about in this episode. You can find it at 9:02 of this TEDx talk he delivered in London in 2017.
Episode 1: Just start
There are a million possible ways to start a new creative project, but they can all be reduced to one: Just start.
There are a million possible ways to start a new creative project, but they can all be reduced to one: Just start. In the premiere episode of Imagination & Junk you’ll meet your hosts: Bill Barol, a longtime professional writer in just about every medium, and Mat Ricardo, a variety performer who’s toured the world for decades, playing every kind of venue from street corners to theaters and festivals. Locked down by COVID in their respective home countries (the US for Bill, the UK for Mat) they begin a Transatlantic correspondence that attempts to get at some basic questions about the kind of work they do: What is creativity? Where does it come from? Why is it worth thinking about? And how much does it boil down to a magic trick?