The Shawna Foundation (https://www.shawnafoundation.org) Presents Creating Dangerously.
Creating Dangerously, (https://www.shawnafoundation.org/general-6) is based on the lecture by Albert Camus which he gave on December 14, 1957 at Uppsala University in Sweden, four days after he gave his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
In it he said “To create today means to create dangerously. Every publication is a deliberate act, and that act makes us vulnerable to the passions of a century that forgives nothing."
” He said this 12 years after the end of World War II, in which he played a major role in the French Underground. Being a witness to the holocaust, fascism, Stalin’s crimes against humanity and the dropping of the atom bomb twice only helped confirm his philosophy of absurdism which he had formed in the shadows of World War I which took his father.
What has changed? We have lived through things like the September 11 attack, to a pandemic to the new threat of the rise of fascism globally. Again. This century also forgives nothing.
With hosts Skip Shea, Patrick Bracken and Andrea Wolanin we will explore artists past and present who are doing their part to create dangerously to try to make sense of a world that often doesn't make sense at all.
Interview with Iryna Pravylo & Yulia Zi of the Documentary Film Flowers Beyond the Dark
Welcome to this episode of the Creating Dangerously Podcast sponsored by the Shawna Foundation. Today we have the privilege of speaking with the director, Iryna Pravylo and producer Yulia Zi of the documentary film Flowers Beyond the Dark, which will be screening at the Massachusetts Independent Film Festival, which runs from April 2 -4 in Worcester.
“Flowers beyond the Dark” is an artful exploration of the human side of war, a raw witness account of people who know what it’s like to stare the enemy in the eyes, feel the pain, yet maintain hope and determination for victory. All while facing the prospect of being a victim of genocide. We get to know them, follow them in church, at home, behind the artist’s canvas, and in armored vehicles.
Important links
Film’s website: https://www.righttimestudios.com/flowersbeyondthedark (https://www.righttimestudios.com/flowersbeyondthedark)
Instagram page: https://www.instagram.com/flowersbeyondthedark/ (https://www.instagram.com/flowersbeyondthedark/)
Raphael Lemkin’s article: https://holodomormuseum.org.ua/en/publikacija/raphael-lemkin-soviet-genocide-in-ukraine-article-in-33-languages/ (https://holodomormuseum.org.ua/en/publikacija/raphael-lemkin-soviet-genocide-in-ukraine-article-in-33-languages/) Book about the Holodomor: https://www.amazon.com/Red-Famine-Stalins-War-Ukraine/dp/0385538855 (https://www.amazon.com/Red-Famine-Stalins-War-Ukraine/dp/0385538855)
Mass Indie Film Fest Schedule: https://www.shawnafoundation.org/ (https://www.shawnafoundation.org/)
Ukrainian Poem by Yevhen Stankovych: https://music.apple.com/us/album/ukrainian-poem/1195984640?i=1195985111 (https://music.apple.com/us/album/ukrainian-poem/1195984640?i=1195985111)
3 Mar 2026
Cold Coffee and Stale Diet Cola
Join Patrick Bracken and Skip Shea as they drown in the sea of the never-ending daily stories of bad news. Nothing like cold coffee and stale diet cola to lift those existential blues. But then there is the cost of Bruce Springsteen Tickets.
This Episode:
This year’s Oscar nominees arrive at a moment when the world feels politically unstable, socially fragmented, and morally uncertain. The films we’re discussing today—Sinners, One Thing After Another, It Was Just an Accident, and, in tribute to the recently departed Béla Tarr, his masterpiece Werckmeister Harmonies—all wrestle with questions about responsibility, truth, and the fragility of social order.
In very different ways, these films remind us that cinema has always been a mirror for its time, reflecting the anxieties, contradictions, and ethical dilemmas of the moment we’re living in.
Taken together, these films suggest that the most powerful stories today are not simply about heroes or villains, but about systems—systems that shape how people behave, how truth is defined, and how communities respond to fear and uncertainty.
Whether through allegory, satire, or stark realism, filmmakers continue to ask the same question that great cinema has always asked: when institutions falter, what responsibility falls on the individual?
6 Jan 2026
New Classics Audio Play Adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants"
The Modern Classics Audio Play Series revisits foundational texts not to preserve them in amber, but to place them in conversation with the present. In this episode we adapt Ernest Hemingway's Hills Like White Elephants. The original story, linked below, is a tense conversation between an American man and his girlfriend at a Spanish train station, revolving around an unspoken, implied abortion.
Hemingway wrote Hills Like White Elephants at a moment when patriarchy, empire, and authority were rarely questioned aloud. Yet the story itself is built on tension rather than certainty—on what is said too often, what is not said at all, and who is ultimately asked to carry the weight of a decision.
Hemingway’s work frequently exposes power as something maintained through calm insistence and silence rather than moral clarity. In this story, the imbalance of voice reveals an underlying instability: the fear that inherited authority may no longer be enough.
This adaptation reframes that instability. By shifting the center of the narrative from persuasion to choice, it foregrounds autonomy as an act of courage rather than defiance. The woman’s decision is not presented as a conflict to be won, but as a departure—quiet, deliberate, and irreversible.
In keeping with the mission of the Shawna E. Shea Memorial Foundation, this production reflects a broader commitment to amplifying voices that step away from coercive structures and toward self-definition. The play invites listeners to sit with uncertainty, to listen closely, and to recognize that change often begins not with argument, but with clarity—and the resolve to leave the table.
Gregory Velez: The Host
Tiziana Guarini: The Woman
Patrick Bracken: The American
Claudia Zonetti: The Barista
Hills Like White Elephants by Ernest Hemingway (https://www.sevanoland.com/uploads/1/1/8/0/118081022/hemingway-hills-like-white-elephants.pdf)
Reach and audience
Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.
Apple Podcasts (US)
5.0 / 5
1 ratings
Spotify
5.0 / 5
2 ratings
Podcast Authority Score: 19 / 100
A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.
Quality
11
Social presence
0
YouTube
0
Engagement
68
Host of Creating Dangerously?
Claim your podcast to manage its listing and keep your show details accurate.
Pod Engine is an independent podcast discovery and analytics service and is not affiliated with or endorsed by this podcast. Artwork and show content belong to their owners. Full legal notice.
Explore this show Podcast research with Pod Engine
