Unapologetically Creative
Unapologetically Creative
Podcast Description
Unapologetically Creative is the official podcast from Vermont College of Fine Arts, featuring bold voices in art, design, and storytelling. Through fearless creativity and cross-disciplinary thinking, each episode explores how culture is shaped and reimagined. Hosted by Andrew Ramsammy, the show highlights how VCFA’s collaborative community empowers creators to challenge convention, embrace risk, and lead with purpose.
Podcast Insights
Content Themes
The podcast delves into themes of creativity, identity, and the artistic journey, showcasing episodes such as Creative Courage with Michael Riley about embracing uncertainty and Finding Your Path in the creative industry, and Expanding the Frame with Amy Fortunato discussing identity and the power of questions in storytelling.
Unapologetically Creative is the official podcast from Vermont College of Fine Arts, featuring bold voices in art, design, and storytelling. Through fearless creativity and cross-disciplinary thinking, each episode explores how culture is shaped and reimagined. Hosted by Andrew Ramsammy, the show highlights how VCFA’s collaborative community empowers creators to challenge convention, embrace risk, and lead with purpose.
Cover Art by David Jon Walker
Daniel Nayeri explores how specific details in a story can reveal something universal. He reflects on his fascination with “welcome,” from inviting strangers into his home for dinner to the moment characters meet around a fire, and discusses the role of food in his life and how being a pastry chef shaped his sense of pleasure, honesty, and craft. Daniel also shares what readers have taught him about vulnerability, why trusting his own palate matters, and how children and adults bring different emotional tools to stories, showing how specificity and truth help readers see pieces of their own lives in someone else’s story.
0:41 Introduction of Daniel Nayeri and Everything Sad Is Untrue.
1:14 The idea of “welcome” and storytelling through food.
2:27 Shoes on or off? Cultural norms and politeness as storytelling entry points.
3:47 Hosting strangers: the publisher’s reaction and surprising outcomes.
4:38 Unexpected connections — photographers, dinners, and shared creative space.
5:05 Daniel’s philosophy: everyone begins with welcome, but it can be lost.
5:54 Campfire metaphor: the moment two strangers negotiate trust.
7:33 Visualization and metaphor: crafting scenes with all five senses.
10:02 Life as a pastry chef: honest reactions in an open kitchen.
11:40 Applying the pastry chef mindset to writing.
13:52 Entertainment vs. art: palate cleansers and deeper meaning.
14:48 Why art isn’t just “chocolate and cocaine.”
15:34 Cooking and fighting: Daniel’s primary metaphors for truth.
16:35 Mike Tyson’s “everyone has a plan until they get punched.”
18:18 “Trust your palate”: the chef’s lesson on honesty.
19:04 Why trusting your own palate matters creatively.
20:08 Writing for children: appropriateness and development.
21:26 Children’s emotional depth and articulation.
26:07 Emails from readers and the weight of their stories.
29:03 Seeing ourselves everywhere; anthropomorphizing the world.
29:35 Art’s purpose: inviting others in without dehumanizing them.
30:30 Being unapologetically creative as a primal human act.
Disclaimer
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