Kenneth Lonergan

Director, playwright and screenwriter Kenneth Lonergan is widely known for winning the Oscar for best original screenplay at the 89th Academy Awards for his film Manchester By the Sea, and as a co-writer on Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York. In this episode, host Helga Davis and Lonergan work through their shared upbringing at the Walden School in New York – exploring memories both charged and powerfully formative – while also exploring daily rituals and what it means to fuel one's creativity.

"Without cultural appropriation there is no culture. Especially in this country. I know what it means, but I know that it's misapplied when it's taken to that [extreme] degree and it becomes meaningless. You can't name an artist, a writer, or anybody who puts anything out in any kind of creative capacity, who doesn't appropriate left and right from all kinds of cultures and influences." -Kenneth Lonergan

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