The Creators Podcast

Musicians: Ted Lucas 25.05.2026 24Min.

Ted Lucas (1939–1992) was a Detroit-born guitarist, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist whose music blended folk, blues, psychedelia, raga influences, and intimate singer-songwriter traditions. Emerging from Detroit’s vibrant 1960s underground scene, Lucas first gained attention as a member of the psychedelic folk-blues band The Spike Drivers before releasing his now-cult 1975 solo album OM, a private-press acoustic record later hailed by collectors and musicians as a lost masterpiece of American folk music. Though admired by peers for his extraordinary guitar work and melodic sensibility, Lucas struggled with the music industry and never achieved widespread recognition during his lifetime. Decades after his death, renewed interest from archivists, collectors, and Third Man Records helped introduce his work to a new generation. ***This episode would not exist without the extraordinary archival work of Detroit historian and record collector Mike Dutkewych, whose years of dedication to recovering, preserving and championing Ted Lucas's music helped bring this overlooked artist back into the public consciousness. His care and commitment to Ted's legacy are deeply felt throughout this story. FOR MOREThird Man Records--Ted Lucas' Images of LifeDetroit Free PressCreative MentorshipCurrently Rainier is enrolling for several 1x1 mentorship spots. This is for people who are looking to recover their sense of creative passion and purpose. A 3-4 month container, combining individual time, community, and independent study, all working towards bringing you to the next stage in your artistic identity.To ApplyThe Creators CollectiveIf you want to go beyond listening about the lives of creators and take your next steps in becoming one, consider signing up for the Creators Collective, the membership for people who want to be artistic with living. Monthly masterclasses, craft workshops, co-creation spaces, and open mics, as well as hundreds of archived hours of teaching, and ongoing community prompts.Find out More

Outlaws: Jean Genet 18.05.2026 28Min.

Jean Genet (1910–1986) was a French novelist, playwright, poet, and political provocateur whose life and work transformed twentieth-century literature. Genet spent much of his youth in reformatories, prisons, and on the margins of European society as a thief, drifter, and sex worker. While imprisoned during World War II, he began writing novels such as Our Lady of the Flowers and The Thief’s Journal, works that praised criminals, outsiders, and the condemned and elevated them into figures of beauty and almost religious significance. Championed by intellectuals like Jean-Paul Sartre and artists such as Pablo Picasso, Genet became one of France’s most influential literary figures despite never abandoning his fascination with transgression, betrayal, and rebellion. In his later years he aligned himself with radical political movements including the Black Panther Party and Palestinian liberation groups, remaining an uncompromising outsider until his death in Paris in 1986.FOR MORE:Encyclopedia Britannica The Works of GenetWant to go beyond listening to creators and become one? The Creators Collective is for individuals who are looking to transform their own life through art and creation. Writers, poets, painters, and ordinary radicals wanting to take the next steps and make a difference. With monthly masterclasses, craft workshops, co-creation studios, open mic salons, hundreds of hours of archived teaching, and an ongoing community of others engaged in the same work. This is a deep dive into your creative soul.Find out more here

Rebels: George Sand 11.05.2026 26Min.

George Sand (1804–1876), born Aurore Dupin in Paris, was one of the most prolific and influential writers of 19th-century France. She married Baron Casimir Dudevant before leaving the marriage to pursue an independent literary life in Paris. Adopting the male pseudonym “George Sand,” she published novels, essays, plays, and political writings that explored class, gender, rural life, love, and social freedom. Known for wearing men’s clothing in public and moving within radical artistic circles, Sand became a major cultural figure and had a highly publicized relationship with composer Frédéric Chopin. Over her lifetime she produced more than seventy novels and maintained correspondence with many of the leading intellectuals and artists of her era, remaining a central voice in French literature until her death in 1876.FOR MORE:Frederic Chopin & George SandGeorge Sand BooksThe Creators Collective is open for enrollment. This is the membership where you create your self alive. We have monthly masterclasses, craft workshops, co creation spaces, open mic salons, a dedicated community chat board to connect with others, and hundreds of hours of archived teaching, helping you establish your own creative voice. Take the next step!Learn More

Saints: Anthony DeMello 04.05.2026 30Min.

Anthony DeMello (1931-1987)Indian born Jesuit priest and trained psychologist. He was the founder of Sadhana Institute in Pune. DeMello spent his life trying to wake people up. His method was short, funny, disorienting stories and his core teaching was awareness. He taught that human suffering comes from unconscious conditioning, from clinging to identity, beliefs, and outcomes. He was an inter religious pioneer and training in Buddhism. He considered the teachings of Christ as valid as those of Buddha or Laozi, a position that eventually drew a Vatican censure. He died in the middle of teaching a course in New York in 1987 at 55 years old.FOR MORE:Awakening to Reality As It IsAwareness by Anthony De MelloWant to go beyond listening to stories about creators and become one? Consider joining the Creators Collective--a school and community for those who want to create their own life. Sign up and receive access to monthly masterclasses, craft workshops loaded with practical how-to's, co-creativity sessions, open-mic nights, and ongoing community with other creators.Find out more here

Lovers: Jack Gilbert 27.04.2026 33Min.

Jack Gilbert (1925–2012) An American poet born in Pittsburgh, he published his first collection, Views of Jeopardy, in 1962; it won the Yale Younger Poets Prize, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, and brought him immediate recognition. Gilbert left the United States on Guggenheim Fellowships and spent nearly twenty years living mostly in Greece, as well as in Italy and Japan, often in deliberate poverty, writing slowly and refusing the machinery of literary fame. His marriage to Japanese sculptor Michiko Nogami and her death from cancer in 1982 became the emotional center of much of his later work, especially in The Great Fires (1994), followed by Refusing Heaven (2005), which won the National Book Critics Circle Award. His final major publication, Collected Poems (2012), arrived near the end of his life as a summation of a career built on radical attention, grief, eros, and delight. For More:Collected PoemsPoetry FoundationCreators Collective:Consider going beyond listening, and start creating. This a membership dedicated to deepening your creative potential, unlocking your purpose, and unblocking your passion. Masterclasses, craft workshops, open mics, and creative co-working spaces, as well as hundreds of hours of archived teachings, along with the amazing community of others, doing the work, just like you! Join us!Be a Creator

Myths: The First Novel Is a Lie 20.04.2026 22Min.

Rainier sets out on a journey to uncover the origins of the novel. Starting in Madrid, researching Don Quixote and Miguel de Cervantes, he ultimately follows the trail around the world to Japan in the 11th century. He discovers the story of a woman known as Murasaki Shikibu who began to write in a very different way, long before the West named it as the novel. What starts as a search for a literary birth place, becomes something much stranger. The question of how history is shaped. Who gets remembered. And what gets left out. FOR MORE:The Tale of Genji: The Novel: A Biography: The Diary of Lady Marusaki: The Creators Collective:Consider joining the next Creators Collective masterclass. This month we’re stepping into the life and work of Johnny Cash in a class called Sacred Rebellion, an exploration of the man in black not as myth, but as a creator who refused certainty, and respectability in favor of real whole hearted living. A session for anyone drawn to the edge… and ready to make something honest from the parts of themselves that don’t quite fit.SIGN UP NOW

Rebels: Arthur Cravan 13.04.2026 24Min.

Arthur Cravan (1887–1918?):Swiss-born writer, poet, boxer, and provocateur who turned his life into a deliberate act of artistic disruption. Born Fabian Avenarius Lloyd, he adopted a new name and drifted across Europe and the Americas, publishing the short-lived magazine Maintenant! in which he attacked the art world and became the original troll. He staged chaotic lectures, anticipating performance art decades before it had a name. Cravan boxed professionally, most famously fighting heavyweight champion Jack Johnson in 1916. He married modernist poet Mina Loy before sailing from Mexico in 1918 and disappearing at sea. Cravan stands as a radical figure of self-invention, who treated identity as the ultimate art project.FOR MORE:The Original Troll-Paris ReviewMina Loy bioTHE CREATORS COLLECTIVEWant to go beyond listening about creators and actually live like one? Consider joining the next Creators Collective class, on Johnny Cash and Sacred Rebellion. You can find more details about the collective and what it offers HERE

Musicians: Alice Coltrane 06.04.2026 20Min.

Alice Coltrane (1937–2007):Alice Coltrane was a pianist, harpist, and spiritual composer who expanded jazz beyond form and into devotion. She grew up in a rich musical environment shaped by gospel, classical training, and the city’s thriving Black artistic culture. In 1965 when she joined the band of saxophonist John Coltrane. Their partnership, both musical and personal, pushed her toward increasingly exploratory forms of sound. After John Coltrane’s death in 1967, she entered a period of profound grief and transformation that led her toward spiritual practice, Eastern philosophy, and a radically expanded musical language. She fused jazz, drone, harp, and devotional music into something entirely her own. In the 1970s she founded an ashram in California and became a spiritual teacher, creating music as offering. For creators, she is someone who represents artistic and spiritual rebirth out of grief.FFor More:Turiyasangitananda The Legacy of a Female Jazz MusicianThe Creators CollectiveWant to go beyond listening about creators and actually live like one? Consider joining the next Creators Collective session. This month we’re stepping into the life and work of Johnny Cash in a class called Sacred Rebellion, an exploration of the man in black not as myth, but as a creator who refused certainty, and respectability in favor of real whole hearted living. We’ll look at the tension he carried: faith and failure, love and addiction, darkness and redemption, and what his life reveals about creating from contradiction instead of resolving it.Find Out More

Sorcerers: Nikola Tesla (Part Three) 30.03.2026 27Min.

In this final episode, we follow Tesla’s final years, the strange signals, the obsessive rituals, the rumors of new inventions that would revolutionize the world, death rays and disappearing ships and time travel. We ask a deeper question: what happens when imagination outpaces the conditions that can hold it? Because not every great idea becomes a breakthrough. Some become stories. Some become warnings. And some… wait. This is an episode about creativity itself. How it appears. How it’s received. And what it asks of the people willing to follow it… even when no one else does.FOR MORE:The Art of Grief: Creating Through Despair begins April 6. Through weekly teaching, tangible assignments, live gatherings, and an in-person closing ceremony, we’ll explore how loss becomes language, and how sorrow can become structure for a new life. If you’re standing in the aftermath of something, and ready to make art from what remains, this is your invitation.Sign up here

Sorcerers: Nikola Tesla (Part Two) 23.03.2026 20Min.

Nikola Tesla set out to build a machine that could change the way energy moved through the world. A tower on the north shore of Long Island designed to transmit power and information across the planet itself. It was bold. It was expensive. And depending on who you ask… it was either genius or madness. In this episode, we follow the rise and fall of Wardenclyffe, the strange experiment that brought imagination into direct conflict with power, who get’s to control imagination and the unwritten future.For More:The TowerWardenclyffe by Ernst Willem van BerghWant to go beyond listening about creators and actually begin living like one?I’ve been expanding The Creators Collective into something much deeper: weekly craft workshops, immersive masterclasses, live salons and open mics, and a growing vault of teachings and creative prompts designed to move you out of consumption and into creation. This isn’t just a class anymore. It’s a living, breathing creative ecosystem.Right now, there’s a short window to join at the Founders Rate, which means you lock in the lowest price the Collective will ever have. If you’ve been feeling the pull to create… this is your invitation.Find out more!

Sorcerers: Nikola Tesla (Part One) 16.03.2026 27Min.

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943):Nikola Tesla was a Serbian American inventor and electrical engineer whose ideas helped electrify the modern world. Born in the Austrian Empire (modern-day Croatia), he arrived in the United States in 1884 and became a central figure in the development of alternating current power systems, which made large-scale electrical grids possible. But Tesla’s imagination extended far beyond practical infrastructure. He envisioned wireless communication, wireless power, and a planet connected through invisible fields of energy. Through inventions like the Tesla coil and experiments in Colorado Springs and Wardenclyffe, he pursued ideas that often ran ahead of the technology, and the institutions, of his time. For creators, Tesla stands as a reminder that imagination often sees the future long before the world is ready for it.For More:My Inventions — Nikola TeslaWizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla — Marc J. SeiferThis spring, I’m leading a twelve-week immersive journey: The Art of Grief: Creating Through Despair. Grief strips away what is excess. It clarifies. It refines. Through weekly transmissions, real assignments, live gatherings, and an in-person closing ceremony, we’ll explore how loss becomes language, and how sorrow can become structure for a new life. If you’re standing in the aftermath of something—and ready to make art from what remains, this is your invitation.Find Out MoreThe Creators CollectiveTHE SALON THE INNER CIRCLE

Outlaws: Lenny Bruce 09.03.2026 26Min.

Lenny Bruce (1925–1966): Lenny Bruce was the comedian who transformed stand-up from light entertainment into cultural confrontation. After serving briefly in the U.S. Navy during World War II, he drifted into the nightclub circuit of the late 1940s and 1950s, where comedians were expected to deliver safe jokes and predictable punchlines. Bruce broke those rules. His routines became rapid-fire explorations of religion, race, hypocrisy, censorship, and the strange contradictions of American life. By the early 1960s he was being arrested repeatedly for obscenity, with police officers sitting in clubs transcribing his jokes as legal evidence. In 1964 he was convicted in New York after a controversial trial. Bruce died of a morphine overdose in Los Angeles in 1966 at the age of forty. He is widely recognized as one of the architects of modern stand-up comedy, paving the way for comedians who bravely dared to question the system. For More: How to Talk Dirty and Influence People — Lenny Bruce Lenny Bruce: Let the Buyer Beware — Lenny BruceWant to go beyond listening about creators and actually live like one? Consider joining the next Creators Collective class. This month, March 22nd, we’re exploring the life and work of Robin Williams in a session called The Cost of Joy, an honest look at the strange emotional territory where comedy, sensitivity, grief, and creative brilliance meet. Together we’ll explore what Williams’ life reveals about creativity, emotional depth, and the courage it takes to stay fully alive as an artist.Sign up here

Saints: Madam Guyon 02.03.2026 32Min.

Madame Jeanne Guyon (1648–1717):Jeanne-Marie Bouvier Guyon was a French mystic who taught that dissolving into divine love was the highest spiritual path. Born into minor nobility during the reign of Louis XIV, she wrote in an age defined by monarchy and church authority. She taught that the soul could encounter God directly, without striving, fear, or reward. In A Short and Easy Method of Prayer, she described prayer as a simple act of surrender. Her teachings, later labeled Quietism, were seen as destabilizing to the institutions of her time. She was imprisoned for years in the Bastille. Yet her insistence on interior freedom quietly influenced European spirituality, philosophy and psychology for generations. For More: A Short and Easy Method of Prayer & Spiritual Torrents— Madame GuyonThe Seeking Heart--FenelonThe Art of Grief: A Course for Creating Through Despair. April 6. Through weekly transmissions, real assignments, live gatherings, and an in-person closing ceremony, we’ll explore how loss becomes language, and how sorrow can become structure for a new life. If you’re standing in the aftermath of something, and ready to make art from what remains, this is your invitation.Sign up NowThe Creators CollectiveTHE SALON

Visionaries: Mary Austin 23.02.2026 27Min.

Mary Austin (1868–1934):Mary Austin was a chronicler of the American Southwest who refused the myth that the desert was empty. Born in Illinois, she moved west where scarcity, wind, and water refined both her perception and her prose. In an era intoxicated by expansion, railroads, aqueducts, and industrial ambition, she wrote about attention, insisting that the land was not backdrop but teacher. Through works like The Land of Little Rain, she articulated a radical cosmology of conservation and care for a living land. For creators, she stands as a reminder that attention itself is an ethical act, and that restraint can be a deeper form of abundance.For More: The Land of Little Rain — Mary Austin The Life of Lozen, Apache WarriorThis spring, beginning April 6, I’m leading a twelve-week immersive journey: The Art of Grief: Creating Through Despair. Grief strips away what is excess. It clarifies. It refines. Through weekly transmissions, real assignments, live gatherings, and an in-person closing ceremony, we’ll explore how loss becomes language, and how sorrow can become structure for a new life. If you’re standing in the aftermath of something—and ready to make art from what remains, this is your invitation.Sign up now!

Sorcerers: Maxwell Perkins 09.02.2026 25Min.

Maxwell Perkins (1884–1947) Max Perkins was an American book editor whose greatest work was not authorship, but fidelity. He spent thirty-six years at Charles Scribner’s Sons, where he reshaped American literature by standing beside writers at moments when their work, and their lives, were most unstable. Perkins edited and championed figures like F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Thomas Wolfe. He believed editors should remain invisible, that the book belonged to the author, and that the highest creative labor was helping something become fully itself without claiming it. For More: Editor of Genius — A. Scott BergGenius (The Movie)Consider joining The Creators Collective, the community Rainier started for people who want to make art that is alive, grounded, and aligned with their deepest convictions. Inside: live teachings, historical deep dives, creative prompts, and a shared refusal to numb out. Next class is February 22 on PRINCE!Sign up here!

Healers: Arundhati Roy 02.02.2026 17Min.

Arundhati Roy (1961– )Arundhati Roy is an Indian novelist, essayist, and political thinker whose work insists that beauty and moral clarity belong to the same sentence. Born in Shillong and raised in Kerala, she emerged onto the global literary stage with her debut novel The God of Small Things, which won the Booker Prize in 1997. Rather than following literary success with market-friendly sequels, Roy turned her attention toward essays confronting nationalism, empire, caste violence, environmental destruction, and the quiet brutalities of modern power. Her nonfiction has made her one of the most influential and controversial public intellectuals of her generation. Roy is a creator who refused separation between art and conscience, choosing witness over comfort, and clarity over safety, even as that choice narrowed her life. She stands as a reminder that creativity is not merely expression, but orientation: a lifelong practice of attention, courage, and refusal to look away.For More:The God of Small Things — Arundhati RoyThe End of Imagination — Arundhati RoyArundhati Roy — Encyclopædia BritannicaWant to go beyond listening about creators and become one?Consider joining The Creators Collective, the community Rainier started for people who want to make art that is alive, grounded, and aligned with their deepest convictions. Inside: live teachings, historical deep dives, creative prompts, and a shared refusal to numb out.Create yourself alive.Sign up here!

Lovers: Kay Parker 26.01.2026 25Min.

Kay Parker (1944–2022):Kay Parker became an unexpected icon during the so-called Golden Age of Porn in the 1970s and ’80s. She was widely recognized, intensely projected upon, and narrowly defined by roles she would later outgrow. In the early 2000s, Parker quietly re-emerged as a metaphysical teacher and writer, turning her attention to the nature of identity itself. Through her book Taboo: Sacred, Don’t Touch and years of intimate teaching, she explored how the self is constructed in response to fear, desire, and expectation. She passed away from cancer in 2022. For More: Taboo: Sacred, Don’t Touch — Kay Parker Archival interviews & reflectionsWant to go beyond listening about creators and actually live like one?Consider joining the next Creators Collective class. This month, we’re diving into Friedrich Nietzsche—not as meme or misquote, but as a companion for creators dismantling borrowed identities and learning how to author their own lives. A potent evening for anyone standing at the edge of change, ready to stop playing the role and start telling the truth.THE SALON THE INNER CIRCLE

Rebels: Thomas Morton 19.01.2026 26Min.

Thomas Morton (c. 1579–1647)Thomas Morton was America’s first banned poet and one of its earliest heretics of joy. A classically trained English lawyer with a humanist soul, Morton immigrated to New England in the late 1620s and became best known as the leader of the short-lived settlement of Merry Mount near present-day Quincy, Massachusetts. There he promoted poetry, music, seasonal celebrations, and social mixing that openly defied Puritan norms joy. Authorities raided the settlement and arrested Morton, eventually exiling him to England, where he wrote New English Canaan (1637), a satirical and critical account of Puritan society and colonial practices; the book was banned from entering the colonies. FOR MORE:The New English Canaan of Thomas MortonThe Lord of MisruleWant to go beyond listening about creators and actually live like one? Consider joining the next Creators Collectiveclass. This month, we’re diving into Friedrich Nietzsche—not as meme or misquote, but as a guide for creators dismantling borrowed values and learning how to author their own lives. A potent evening for anyone standing in the aftermath of certainty, ready to create from what’s real.THE SALON THE INNER CIRCLEAre you interested in claiming one of the THREE spots for the Re-Wilding Imagination Retreat, February 12-15? If so, you can learn more here.

Heretics: Rainer Maria Rilke 12.01.2026 26Min.

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926): Rainer Maria Rilke was the poet of inwardness, solitude, and becoming; a writer who refused answers in favor of deeper questions. Born in Prague at the crossroads of cultures, Rilke grew up exquisitely sensitive and perpetually displaced, a condition that would shape both his life and his work. He moved restlessly across Europe, apprenticing himself to lovers, artists, and places, most notably Lou Andreas-Salomé and the sculptor Auguste Rodin. His poetry and letters confront uncertainty as a vital condition of growth, urging readers to “live the questions” rather than rush toward certainty. Through works like The Book of Hours, Letters to a Young Poet, the Duino Elegies, and the Sonnets to Orpheus, Rilke articulated a radical ethic for creators: a willingness to let beauty and terror belong to the same life. For More: Letters to a Young Poet — Rainer Maria Rilke The Book of Hours — Rainer Maria Rilke Rilke: In Paris — Documentary / biographical essaysWant to go beyond listening about creators and actually live like one? Consider joining the next Creators Collectiveclass. This month, Jan 18, we’re diving into Friedrich Nietzsche as a guide for creators dismantling borrowed values and learning how to author their own lives. Don't miss this class!THE SALON THE INNER CIRCLE

Visionaries: Lou Andreas-Salomé 05.01.2026 37Min.

Lou Andreas-Salomé (1861–1937): Lou Andreas-Salomé was born in St. Petersburg and later living across the great nerve-centers of German-speaking culture, she published novels, essays, and criticism on religion, eros, selfhood, and the inner life, writing about desire and identity decades before those subjects were culturally safe. She engaged with some of the most brilliant minds of her time: Friedrich Nietzsche, Rainer-Maria Rilke, and Sigmund Freud. Lou negotiated a form of autonomy, structure, and freedom in an age that demanded women follow rigid expectations. She was a creator of creators, a thinker who inspired other thinkers, and was a living argument that intimacy does not require ownership.For More:Lou Andreas-Salomé — Encyclopædia BritannicaSigmund Freud and Lou Andreas-Salomé, Letters (Norton) Johns Hopkins Library Exhibit: “Lou Andreas-Salomé: A Brief Biography”Want to go beyond listening about creators, and become one? Consider joining The Creators Collective, the community Rainier started to unblock your purpose and ignite your passions. This group is filled with resources, and live teachings from Rainier. This month we'll be studying Nietzsche, on January 18. Sign up now to join us live!