Paula Gaither
The Emergence Room
Okay – today’s episode is one of those conversations that reminds us why we love doing this podcast. We’re so excited to share this conversation with Paula Gaither – and truly, talking with Paula was such a gift. She is equal parts party, equal parts scholar, equal parts absolute bright light of a human being. Paula is a PhD candidate at Stanford and a Rome Prize Fellow here at the American Academy in Rome, and her research looks at how ancient Roman depictions of Blackness have been shaped – and misshaped – by modern scholarship and museum practices. But what makes Paula so...
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Anita Contini
The Emergence Room
Just moments before we recorded this episode of The Emergence Room, roles briefly reversed. Anita Contini – founder of Creative Time and longtime leader at Bloomberg Philanthropies – was in the midst of conducting interviews for her current research project, Origins and Outcomes. As part of that work, she interviewed T.J. while T.J. is working at the American Academy in Rome. Then we pressed record—and the conversation simply shifted direction. What followed was a grounded, generous exchange about how ambitious artistic visions meet reality: how ideas evolve once they encounter scale,...
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Timothy Darden
The Emergence Room
We’re excited to welcome Timothy Darden, also known as @blackostume, to The Emergence Room. Timothy is a filmmaker and musician currently completing his BFA in Film, and during his time as a Fellow Traveler at the American Academy in Rome, he’s been immersed in cinema, sound, and study — watching Italian films, listening deeply, and learning how culture, language, and rhythm shape storytelling. In this episode, we talk about what it means to be an undergraduate artist finding your voice, how music and filmmaking inform one another, and how studying film in Rome has opened new ways of...
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David Keplinger
The Emergence Room
This week in The Emergence Room, we sit down with someone whose presence feels like stepping into a poem — David Keplinger, poet, translator, teacher, and Rome Prize Fellow. David moves through the world with a quiet radiance, shaped by years of listening: to language, to silence, to the histories that live between words. Our conversation traces an emergence arc from stillness to voice, from interiority to offering, and from the private act of writing toward the communal act of being witnessed. He shares how translation has become a spiritual practice, what it means to write into the...
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Margo Weitzman
The Emergence Room
This week we sit down with Margo Weitzman, Rome Prize Fellow and PhD candidate at Rutgers University, whose research traces a sixteenth-century merchant moving between India and Italy—translating worlds through trade, language, and desire. Margo opens up about her own emergent journey: being adopted, navigating queerness, partnership, travel, and the ongoing search for belonging. We explore how her scholarship and personal history inform one another, and how mining the histories of objects, places, and people parallels the work of assembling identity from fragments, archives, and lived...
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Boris Dramov & Bonnie Fisher
The Emergence Room
In this episode of The Emergence Room, we sit down with the extraordinary duo Bonnie Fisher and Boris Dramov of the ROMA Design Group—partners in life, in practice, and in purpose. This married team of architects has shaped communities, cities, and cultural memory through their work, including the iconic Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington, D.C. Our conversation moves from the foundations of architecture to the architecture of a life well-lived—exploring what it means to collaborate with intention, nurture creativity, raise a family, and stay aligned with one’s values in the...
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Pythagoras the Sage
The Emergence Room
In this episode of The Emergence Room, we sit down with Pythagoras The Sage — artist, philosopher, musician, and fellow traveler at the American Academy in Rome — to explore how flow, music, and philosophy merge in a practice rooted in transformation and queerness. Pythagoras moves fluidly through electronic sound, ritual, and reflection, accessing multiple modalities and inversions of self to communicate and exist beyond fixed identity. Together we discuss culture shock, creative intuition, and the ways queerness expands what it means to think, feel, and listen. This episode moves like...
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Rick Luttmann – The Addendum Episode
The Emergence Room
Rick Luttmann – Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Sonoma State University – joins The Emergence Room as a Rome Fellow Traveler at the American Academy in Rome. A mathematician, public servant, and lifelong wanderer of unconventional paths, Rick brings a generosity of spirit and a catalog of stories that simply do not fit into one episode. Rick’s second arc continues with the beaten-path to off-the-beaten-path to even-further off-the-beaten-path, capturing the freewheeling, curiosity-driven spirit of his adventures.
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Rick Luttmann
The Emergence Room
Rick Luttmann – Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Sonoma State University – joins The Emergence Room as a Rome Fellow Traveler at the American Academy in Rome. A mathematician, public servant, and lifelong wanderer of unconventional paths, Rick brings a generosity of spirit and a catalog of stories that simply do not fit into one episode. In fact, Rick’s life has been so full of adventure that, for the first time in Emergence Room history, we recorded an addendum episode—a double feature dedicated entirely to him. From participating in political life and serving his community, to...
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Chuna McIntyre
The Emergence Room
In this powerful and expansive episode, we sit down with Chuna McIntyre, Founder and Director of the Nunamta Yup’ik Eskimo Singers and Dancers and current American Academy in Rome Fellow, to talk about his work with the Yup’ik Masks in the “Anima Mundi” of the Vatican Museums. Our conversation weaves together memory, ancestry, and care — from Chuna’s reflections on his grandmother and the Vatican’s stewardship of these sacred objects, to the deeper meanings of reciprocity, generosity, and giving without expectation. Chuna reminds us what it means to be among the real, true...
info_outlineThis week in The Emergence Room, we sit down with someone whose presence feels like stepping into a poem — David Keplinger, poet, translator, teacher, and Rome Prize Fellow.
David moves through the world with a quiet radiance, shaped by years of listening: to language, to silence, to the histories that live between words. Our conversation traces an emergence arc from stillness to voice, from interiority to offering, and from the private act of writing toward the communal act of being witnessed.
He shares how translation has become a spiritual practice, what it means to write into the unsayable, and how Rome — with its ruins and reliquaries — is reshaping his understanding of time, artistry, and devotion. We talk about poetry as wayfinding: a method for surviving grief, cultivating presence, and returning to ourselves.
His story unfolds through movements of
Listening → Vulnerability → Transformation → Offering.
By the end, David reminds us that creativity isn’t a performance of genius — it’s a practice of being porous to the world.
Here’s to David Keplinger, and to this tender, luminous conversation.
Welcome to this week’s episode of The Emergence Room.
David's Website
https://www.davidkeplingerpoetry.com
Meditate with David
https://open.substack.com/pub/davidkeplinger?r=9buxg&utm_medium=ios