149 episodes listed below
A creativity coach on getting unstuck, herself included.
Creativity coach Nancy Norbeck alternates pep talks on burnout, perfectionism and adaptability with interviews featuring a TV comedy writer and novelist, a specialty prop and collectibles artist, and an equity strategist. The goal stays practical: getting a stalled creative life moving, whether the example is Tom Hanks learning a child actor's accent or the host making room for play again.
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Follow Your Curiosity is a creativity podcast from Nancy Norbeck, who introduces herself as a creativity coach and opens with a plain promise: here is how to get unstuck. Norbeck teaches through stories, and she knows it; in one pep talk she pauses to confirm that yes, a story is coming. The show moves between two formats. Numbered CPT episodes are pep talks with very specific prompts. One is built on a truck she saw on the highway with the words 'do not push' across its top, which she reads as a message about a culture that makes pushing feel as ordinary as the air we breathe. Another, 'CPT #126: Tom Hanks and the Art of Not Forcing Your Creativity', retells how director Bob Zemeckis told Hanks he would have to teach the child playing young Forrest Gump the voice Hanks had chosen for the role. Hanks instead spent time with the boy and learned his thick Southern accent. The lesson Norbeck draws is adaptability, because so many creative people lock onto one idea of how a project must go even when circumstances say otherwise. The most distinctive thread is her willingness to turn the coaching on herself. In 'CPT #124: Joy is the Antidote to Burnout' she says she is close to burning herself out because she forgot to let herself have enough fun. She names the irony plainly: it is easier to hand out advice than to remember to take it. A follow-up pep talk reports what came next. She made more room for music, recorded about a week of daily videos for YouTube and TikTok, and then stopped when putting herself under the microscope produced the very stress she meant to undo. The guest conversations trade confession for mechanics. Leslie A. Rasmussen, who has written television comedy for Roseanne Barr and Drew Carey among others, along with award-winning novels, explains that a sitcom outline is built with the writers' room and the script goes back to that room with little time to spare. A novel, by contrast, leaves every decision to the writer, with no network notes to answer. Paul Pape, known as Santa for Nerds, makes custom props, collectibles and prototypes for companies such as Disney and Nickelodeon, and his conversation with Norbeck moves from business jargon that shuts people out to the tax bills freelance creatives face. Danielle Marshall, an equity strategist and executive coach, argues that a book's checklist is no substitute for asking what is true inside an organization right now. For a first listen, the burnout pep talk shows the coach being frank about her own slump, and the Rasmussen interview shows how concrete the guest episodes get. Either way, the encouragement comes with practical detail attached.
Made for: Suits a listener who feels stalled on a creative project, or suspects that perfectionism and constant pushing are part of the problem, and wants encouragement alongside concrete talk about how writers and makers work.
What sets it apart: Nancy Norbeck turns the coaching on herself, admitting she came close to burning out and describing an experiment in filming her attempt to play again that she abandoned, while the guest episodes get specific about writers' rooms, freelance taxes and workplace culture.
Behind-the-scenes stories of creative lives are often as fascinating and worthwhile as the projects they yield, and can inspire us all. Join me as I find out what creators have learned along the way—and help folks get their creative lives back on track.
From sitcom joke rooms to a Nebraska prop studio, Nancy Norbeck finds company for your stalled project.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Danielle Marshall makes curiosity feel practical, using questions to soften judgment, improve feedback, and support shared action.
Curiosity becomes the working alternative to judgment as creativity coach Nancy Norbeck speaks with equity strategist and executive coach Danielle Marshall about cultural divides, feedback, and the questions that can move people forward.
Leslie A. Rasmussen compares the shared work of television comedy with the solo responsibility of writing novels.
Leslie A. Rasmussen gives this conversation a useful shift in scale, moving between the shared machinery of television comedy and the solitude of novel writing.
Paul Pape makes entrepreneurship feel more approachable for creative people by translating business jargon into gaming language.
Paul Pape frames creative entrepreneurship as a translation problem, not a personality transplant. Creative people, in his telling, do not have to give up imagination to make sense of business.
A measured conversation about creative stuckness, openheartedness, nervous-system regulation, and wiser boundaries.
Nancy Norbeck's conversation with clinical psychologist Dr. Kelly Flanagan uses creative stuckness as its way into a broader look at presence, regulation, and repair.
A warm conversation about play, awe, and the creative instincts adulthood can reshape.
Nancy Norbeck and Tim Myers center play as a serious creative force, tracing how childhood imagination gets narrowed by the habits and expectations of adulthood.
Where the setbacks become the whole conversation.
Forgiveness practice, one sentence at a time.
Host Nancy Norbeck interviews freelance artist Will Brooks about his career creating licensed artwork for Doctor Who comics and games.
Host Nancy Norbeck interviews horror author Mark Morris about his career, writing process, and experiences with tie-in fiction and audio scripts.
Host Nancy Norbeck discusses adaptability in creative projects using the example of Tom Hanks adjusting his accent for Forrest Gump.
Nancy Norbeck talks with Danielle Marshall, an equity strategist, executive coach, and host of Unpacked Cultural Chronicles, about curiosity as a practical skill rather than a personality trait.
The host shares a personal story about pushing too hard and forgetting to play, and documents her attempt to address burnout through music and play.
Leslie A.
The host shares her personal struggle with burnout and emphasizes the importance of fun and play for mental health and creativity.
Nancy Norbeck talks with Paul Pape, a Nebraska-based creative problem navigator, TEDx speaker, and author of The Creative Player's Handbook to Business, about his Gamify Business program and why he calls himself “Santa for Nerds.” Paul says he built the method after working with three artists who ran a dragon-making company and could not talk in business language, then turned their coaching session into a four-and-a-half-hour “Dungeons and Dragons business edition” exercise.
Nancy Norbeck talks with Dr.
Nancy Norbeck talks with Tim Myers, who is a writer, songwriter, storyteller, visual artist, and senior lecturer at Santa Clara University, about why he calls creativity “a sacred mystery.” Tim traces his creative life from a sixth-grade poem for Sister Mary Boniface to years of songwriting, a thousand-plus songs, and work on a musical.
Nancy Norbeck talks with British-Nigerian composer Segun Akinola, whose credits include Doctor Who, The Lost Tree, 9-11 Inside the President's War Room, Black and British: A Forgotten History, Origin, and Kingdom.
Louise Jameson traces a path from being a “daydreaming” dyslexic child who performed Little Miss Muffet at age four to training at RADA at 17 and working with the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Nancy Norbeck talks with Jocelyn Hastie, who spent more than 30 years in accounting before stage four cancer, long-term disability, and a bankrupt natural-gas plant pushed her into horse-based leadership work.
Robert Constant, who works in higher education fundraising and has published Hey Tuskegee and Hello Grandma, explains how those children’s books grew out of a long-running interest in writing and his time at Tuskegee.
Safiya Robinson, host of Writing Black Joy and author of two books, says she was creative as a child through dance, church music, poetry, and letters, even though she did not call herself creative until about 10 years ago.
Host Nancy Norbeck interviews writer Nev Fountain about his creative journey and writing career.
A creativity coach interviews a working mom about discovering creativity later in life and breaking parenting patterns.
Host Nancy Norbeck interviews author Barbara Hambly about her creative journey, martial arts influence on writing, and genre fiction career.