In this conversation with the impossible-to-categorize Lola Villa, we dive into everything from finding your voice to following your curiosity, and trusting that the more deeply you become yourself, the more aligned opportunities begin to find you. Lola—a creative strategist, musician, curator, and storyteller—shares her journey from working in traditional media and visual storytelling to creating music, working with nature, and eventually being invited to help shape a new version of NASA’s legendary Golden Record, a project designed to tell the story of humanity and the Earth to other intelligent life in the universe.Lola believes authenticity can actually be a trap, as we’re all inevitably shaped by the people, books, music, languages, and cultures that influence us (which is why copying can actually be a powerful part of developing your own creative voice). We explore the creative process, the importance of becoming obsessed with a subject, and what it means to see ourselves as porous beings constantly shaped by the world around us. Essentially, this conversation is an invitation to stop striving for some perfect version of authenticity and simply start creating from your own unique way of seeing the world.Resources & sites mentioned in this episode:<a href="https://grist.org/">Grist</a>, a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to reporting on climate change.Book recommendations: <a href="https://amzn.to/4cVUJom">Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants</a> by Robin Wall Kimmerer, <a href="https://amzn.to/4c6ZM5c">Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good</a> by adrienne maree brown, and <a href="https://amzn.to/4cyXnQO">The Overstory</a> by Richard Powers<a href="https://vimeo.com/85040589">The Gap</a>, a short video by Ira Glass. The audio is taken from a talk on storytelling he gave; watch <a href="https://youtu.be/5pFI9UuC_fc?si=xIujjWa-BIa88mD4">parts 1</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dx2cI-2FJRs">2</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2wLP0izeJE">3</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sp_8pwkg_R8">4</a> here (the excerpt is from part 3).<a href="https://www.futuresoundofnature.com/">Future Sound of Nature</a>, Lola’s record label that blends the soul of electronic music with the rhythms of the Earth.<a href="https://atmos.earth/">Atmos</a>, the nonprofit media organization focused on the cross-pollination of climate and culture where Lola worked.<a href="https://science.nasa.gov/mission/voyager/voyager-golden-record-overview/">NASA's Golden Record</a>, a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk containing sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth, first launched in 1977 to communicate a story of our world to extraterrestrials. Here’s the <a href="https://radiolab.org/podcast/91520-space">Radio Lab episode</a> that talks ab

NASA Found Her Work, Now She's Curating the Story of Humanity

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