Something Rather Than Nothing
by Ken Volante | Creative Organizing
Why is there something rather than nothing? This podcast is a philosophical and psychological exploration into the act of creation. Follow the paths to personal liberation, creativity, music, painting, deep thinking and the art of the intelligent conversation.ONE LOVE!
Episodes
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Alex Behr and Animal Kingdom
Alex Behr is the author of the story collections ANIMAL KINGDOM and PLANET GRIM, both on 7.13 Books, and the poetry chapbook GRIEF STICK, Picture Frame Press. Her writing has been published in Tin House, Epiphany, Salon, Oregon Humanities, The Rumpus, Buckman Journal, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, in...
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Sophie Dunér
Sophie Dunér is a singer, songwriter, composer, arranger and visual artist from Sweden who has lived and performed in the United States and Spain. Originally a jazz singer, her writing and performing have evolved into a unique style of wild, risky, passionate and exhilarating music for vocals and...
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Lawrence Q. Markx
Lawrence Q. Markx was born on December 20th, 1980, in Miami, Florida—also known as Little America, or Cuba Adjacent, depending on your politics and GPS signal. From an early age, he challenged authority without getting expelled, mastering righteous mischief before most kids finished learning...
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Di Slaney and Manor Farm
Di Slaney lives with her husband in a Grade II Listed, 400 year old farmhouse in Bilsthorpe, Nottinghamshire with more animals than is sensible. She runs Manor Farm Charitable Trust which offers a home for life for livestock, particularly elderly animals or those with special needs. She operates…
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Steven Seidenberg and The Architecture of Silence
Steven Seidenberg is an artist, poet, and philosopher whose collections of photographs include The Architecture of Silence (Contrasto, 2023), Pipevalve: Berlin (Lodima Press, 2017), and the forthcoming Kanazawa Vacancy (Chin Music, Fall 2026). He has had solo exhibitions of his work in Japan,...
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Kazu Haga and Fierce Vulnerability
Kazu Haga I have lived in Buddhist monasteries. I have spent the last twenty-five years in social justice movements. I have sat in hundreds of circles with incarcerated people witnessing them do the hard work of healing and accountability. And I have been humbled and inspired by my own,...
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J Webster Sharp
Podcast Host Ken Volante here. I am pleased to present J Webster Sharp, who is my favorite, illustrator, like, ever. Jemma has created The Scrapbook of Life and Death, Fondant, and an upcoming work on the super famous early 20th century actor Fatty Arbuckle. I can't even wait to lay my fingers on...
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Vanessa and Isobel Stockard tackle The Universe
Famous Painter Vanessa Stockard and her adventurer-space-mind-explorer-daughter Isobel tackle The Universe! A Something Rather Than Nothing podcast exclusive
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swinewomb
Swinewomb is a Southern Gothic psychosexual horror play set in the deeply religious town of Caleb’s Rest, where two siblings unravel in the aftermath of their parents’ deaths. As Shiloh spirals into a dangerous affair and begins hearing a voice that may be the devil’s, hysteria spreads through…
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Victor V Gurbo
Victor V. Gurbo is a roots revivalist singer-songwriter whose work blends folk, blues, and Americana into a sound that feels both timeless and contemporary. Backed by a four-piece band, he delivers original songs anchored in storytelling and driven by raw, rhythmic energy. His music draws...
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Jadon Allen and Guilt!
Guilt! is a clothing & video company founded in Portland, Oregon, by Jadon Allen. Each creative work from the company draws inspiration from street art, life experiences, and collaboration. Dark themes are juxtaposed with unapologetically bold and colorful visuals. The company recently relocated…
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NOX SINISTER with Nathan Shapiro
Nox Sinister is hard to pin down into just one subgenre of heavy metal. They use a blend of techniques borrowed from NWOBHM, thrash, progressive, death and even power metal. The members of Sinister pride themselves on marrying aggression with theatricality, often using brutal thrashing riffs to...
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Something Rather Than Nothing Trailer
Listen to Something Rather Than Nothing one of the world's biggest indie podcasts! Explore ways to creativity, paths to philosophy, ideas to transform and introductions to life's most fascinating creators. Find dancers, painters, thinkers, musicians, esoteric conceptualists, physical...
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Rachael Renae and How to Prioritize Play
Rachael Renae Rachael Renae is an artist, play enthusiast, and creativity hype gal based in Detroit, MI. She helps people prioritize play to overcome creative blocks, better connect with themselves and their people, and confidently live big, fulfilling lives. When she’s not facilitating play...
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'On the Phone' Film Premiere with Kenny Sale and Matthew Kyle Levine
When a young influencer lands a dog food sponsorship, she recruits her estranged mother to co-star - hoping to turn a work obligation into a chance to reconnect. As she road-trips with her boyfriend toward the visit, anxiety builds while personal and professional pressures blur, culminating in a...
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k.g.m.r. and The Rockford Files aesthetic
kgmr is a composer, songwriter, keyboardist, field recorder, sampler, and noise maker. kgmr writes for solo piano, rock trio, larger ensembles, and electronic instrumentation. Her music has been used in films, theater, and radio. She appears elsewhere as a guest keyboardist.kgmr started writing…
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Cryptic Divination from the soil of Eugene, Oregon
Influenced by bands like Opeth and Cynic, Cryptic Divination is a unique "second generation" of sounds from '90s death metal to '70s prog rock. Utilizing heavy riffs, clean sections and screams, they embody a new wave of pacific-northwest progressive death metal.
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April Fox and Deep Dark Yoga
April Fox has been teaching yoga in Portland OR since 2014, and running classes to doom metal since 2016. 🌒Deep Dark Yoga 🌘 is slow, gentle flow to the sludgiest, heaviest tunes you can test your amps to. Great for beginners and “not into yoga” people — perfect for anyone interested in tuning…
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Lee Upton
Introduction to Lee Upton: I am a multi-genre author, not because I’m polygamous when it comes to genre, but because each genre is addictive and possibly a bit contagious. Along with The Withers and Tabitha, Get Up, I’ve written seven collections of poetry, two short story collections, a novella,...
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SWOON with Caledonia Curry
Caledonia Curry, known as Swoon, is a contemporary artist and filmmaker recognized around the world for her pioneering vision of public artwork. Through intimate portraits, immersive installations, and multi-year community based projects, she has spent over 20 years exploring the depths of human...
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Darrin Doyle
Darrin Doyle was born in Saginaw, Michigan. He has worked as a paperboy, a janitor, a mover, a telemarketer, a door-to-door salesman, a Kinko's Copy Consultant, a porn store clerk, a pizza delivery guy, a prep cook, a magazine store clerk, a technical writer, a freelance newspaper writer, an...
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ART BAR Magazine
Art Bar is a thick, coffee table Art Magazine, printed in the U.S. on high quality paper stock. The features are about the lived human experiences of creatives and how they shape our artwork. We are aiming to fill a space in the art world, inspiring both established and emerging artists.
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Keeli Littleleaf and Indigenous Fashion
A proud powwow dancer, cultural educator, and fashion visionary, Keeli Littleleaf continues to blaze trails wherever she goes. Known for her signature high-step jingle and fringe style, she embodies power, healing, and movement through every step and every stitch. As the founder of the...
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'Connoly' with Stefan Diethelm and Bradly Valenzuela
Stefan Diethelm is a Swiss and German artist, originally from Uzwil, Switzerland. He fell in love with performing at a young age, was trained in classical voice throughout his teens, and studied musical theatre in Hamburg, Germany. He moved to New York City to further his craft, and studied at…
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Crystal Skillman
Crystal Skillman is an internationally award-winning playwright, fictional podcast writer, and comic book author who has written for Stories Podcast (Wondery Kids), Girl Tales, Adventure Time comics, as well as Marvel comics. In addition to Open and The Rocket Men, Crystal is the dramatist of…
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Patricia Lynn
Patricia Lynn is a playwright/actor who has worked extensively in NYC independent theatre. As a writer, Patricia fancies herself to be a gothic feminist; she loves to subvert the classic genre by creating provocative plays inspired by traditional gothic stereotypes. Her plays have been developed…
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Victoria Astuto
Victoria Astuto is a musician, composer, videographer, and educator based in the Hudson Valley. Her debut EP, The Place features clarinet, saxophone, flute, bass clarinet, synthesizers, and vocals to create dreamy, lush, and atmospheric textures. The album is inspired by a cross country trip she...
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Leanna Renee Hieber
Leanna Renee Hieber is an actress, playwright, ghost tour guide, audiobook narrator and the award-winning, bestselling author of over Gothic, Gaslamp Fantasy, Supernatural Suspense and Non-Fiction books for adults and teens with publishers such as Tor, Sourcebooks and Kensington Books. A Haunted...
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Blair Borax
Born on the East Coast, and home to the West, Blair Borax’s relationship with music began unexpectedly in 2016, when a friend gifted her a cheap guitar. Since then, Borax has become a prolific songwriter, recording artist, and performer, known for her distinctive voice, captivating melodies, and...
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Jesi Bender
Jesi Bender is an artist from Upstate New York. Her work leans towards experimental historical fiction that interrogates the tension between language's utility & malleability. Jesi's gorgeous new book A Child of LIght is out now date-of-episode August 12, 2025!
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Jen Michalski
Jen Michalski currently lives in Carlsbad, California. She graduated from St. Mary’s College of Maryland with a BA in English and received her MS in Professional Writing from Towson University. She was voted one of the best authors in Maryland by CBS News, one of "50 Women to Watch" by The...
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Ophelia Darkly
Ophelia Darkly is a DJ, model, writer, performer, and Doll Tarot reader based out of Portland, Oregon. Magic, dreams, and storytelling are the threads that bind all of her creative ventures together. She believes that art, in all its forms, is one of the most sacred forces of the universe. Enjoy...
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Calvin John Smiley and Abolition
Something Rather Than Nothing Podcast Episode 300!!! We talk ABOLITION. Calvin John Smiley, Ph.D. is an associate professor of sociology at Hunter College-CUNY. His research and scholarship broadly focus on issues related to justice, inequality, and race. Smiley is the co-editor of Prisoner…
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Katie Marie
Katie Marie is a Cherokee/Choctaw educator, Indigenous Wisdomkeeper, and decolonial guide who works at the intersection of healing, community, and education. Enjoy this ranging conversation into matriarchy, wellness of being, Indigenous futures, our planet, Art & Philosophy!
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Annabel McConnachie
Annabel McConnachie (she/her) is an actress, writer, singer, dancer and content creator. She is originally from Sydney, Australia but is currently based in New York City. She is best known for her work in the critically acclaimed miniseries 'IKEA Heights - The Next Generation'. Her much…
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Sophia Hembeck
Sophia Hembeck is a bilingual writer and artist based in Edinburgh. She has published three books (Things I Have Noticed, 2020 & Things I Have Loved, 2023 & Thiings That Are Different Now, 2025) which are compromised of her essays and short prose as well as artwork that she specifically created…
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LIVE at Browsers' Bookstore with Abe Richmond and Pete Dryden
This episode was recorded and captured LIVE on Independent Bookstore Day (April 26, 2025) from Browsers' Bookstore in Albany, Oregon. Pete Dryden: Photographer, cabinet maker, professional overthinker. Hiding out in Albany, Oregon—dodging small talk, chasing meaning in the grain and the frame....
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Craig Randall
About Craig Randall - I've loved stories and literature and writing for as long as I can remember. For just as long, I've also struggled with anxiety and depression. They have loomed over me, all my life, threatening to steal away whatever hope and joy i've worked so hard to build. All my work…
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Kola Shippentower
Shippentower is named Co-Captain of the Oregon Ravens Football Team! Kola Shippentower is an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation. She has co-founded and is the Director of The Wisáwca Project - Enough Iz Enough, a non-profit organization working together...
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Meghan Lamb
Meghan Lamb is the author of Mirror Translation (Blamage Books, 2025), COWARD (Spuyten Duyvil, 2022), Failure to Thrive (Apocalypse Party, 2021) All of Your Most Private Places (Spork Press, 2020) and Silk Flowers (Birds of Lace, 2017). Her work has also appeared in Quarterly West, DIAGRAM,...
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Raechel Wolfe
Raechel Wolfe is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Portland, OR, whose work spans film, writing, modeling, and Creative Direction. She made waves by creating FINK, the world’s first Instagram-exclusive short film, and was a founding member of the core team behind Buckman Journal. Raechel...
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elle nash will you deliver me
elle nash is an electrifying writer based in glasgow, scotland this is about her book 'deliver me' - At a meatpacking facility in the Missouri Ozarks, Dee-Dee and her co-workers kill and butcher 40,000 chickens in a single shift. The work is repetitive and brutal, with each stab and cut a...
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Vanessa Stockard
Vanessa Stockard recently visited the podcast for the 3rd time! Vanessa Stockard was born in 1975 in Sydney and spent her formative years in a small country town in the Mid North Coast of New South Wales. At 12 she returned to Sydney as a boarder at Abbotsleigh. After graduating from the College…
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Aaron Keuter and show bits
Aaron Keuter is an editor, motion designer, animator, and visual effects artist in Portland, Oregon. Aaron creates show bits Something Rather Than Nothing is a worldwide podcast that features the greatest creators you can find.
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Rachael Tyrell
Rachael Tyrell aims to create art that reimagines classic pinup aesthetics through a contemporary lens. Working primarily with Sharpies and various inks, she crafts pieces that radiate raw energy. Her sculptural work transforms everyday objects into surreal expressions, challenging expectations....
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Lady Ro
Lady Ro is a Baltimore based indie folk rock musician. Formally know as Baby Carrots, Lady Ro began playing shows in Baltimore in 2019, where she quickly garnering a solid following. Her performances are a dynamic blend of heartfelt song writing, humor, a stirring powerful voice, and a wicked…
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Tina aka poler.t.ina
Stop in and enjoy this lovely chat with dancer Tina! We chatted a bit of horror, a bit of art, a bit of dancing, standup comedy and constantly challenging yourself. There was even a special guest visit by Ripley The Cat. Thanks for visiting from Germany, Tina.! Tina's Instagram
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Squirm! with Kels & Tess & Kenny & Jenny
Enjoy a lovely and vulnerable chat with Kels & Tess. Host Kenny and Co-host Jenny explore health, excitement, sex, p*rn and the powerful things that move us. Kels is a producer, businesswoman, and sex and relationship enthusiast. She never underestimates the power of a good story or a good...
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Albany, Oregon Teacher Strike Special! (with Liz Craig, Dana Lovejoy and Voices of GAEA)
SRTN Podcast presents a special STRIKE episode from Albany, Oregon. SRTN gives you an up to the moment report on the brave educators of The Greater Albany Education Association (GAEA) who have been on strike for five (5) days as of this episode’s release. GAEA is fighting for student safety…
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Besa Tetova
Besa is a film photographer and model who resides in Chicago. Her work is largely editorial, drawing inspiration from old Hollywood film noir and the creative direction of Sofia Coppola. Besa
About this show
Why is there something rather than nothing? This podcast is a philosophical and psychological exploration into the act of creation. Follow the paths to personal liberation, creativity, music, painting, deep thinking and the art of the intelligent conversation.ONE LOVE!
Hosted by
Ken Volante | Creative Organizing
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