A far-ranging interview with David N. Meyer, cinema studies professor, screenwriter and author of Twenty Thousand Roads: The Ballad of Gram Parsons and his Cosmic American Music; The Bee Gees: The Biography; and A Girl and A Gun; the Complete Guide to Film Noir. Our conversation spans the neurobiology of addiction, the so-called '27 club' (Hendrix, Joplin, Cobain), addiction as creative hijack, and covering figures from Beethoven to Miles Davis, to painter Georgia O'Keefe, filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard, and Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation (1974).

A short episode covering topics for my upcoming book: the erosion of civil discourse, 'slow motion disaster' and the collective trauma responses it induces, and a brief overview of how the psychological traits of cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias have corroded our public spaces.

An in depth conversation with Simon Fraser University professor Dr. Mark Fettes about Lewis Hyde's powerful book The Gift: How Creativity Transforms The World. Dr. Fettes is Associative Director of SFU's Imaginative Education Research Group.

Show Notes:

• The buddhist psychotherapist mentioned is Jack Engler. You can find his updated commentary on his infamous statement "You have to be somebody to become nobody" in the book Psychotherapy and Buddhism (https://www.amazon.ca/Psychoanalysis-Buddhism-Unfolding-Jeremy-Safran/dp/0861713427"
• The painter referenced as doing the portrait of Winston Churchill is Graham Sutherland.