Spark & Fire
Every creative work you’ve ever loved has a hero’s journey behind it. On Spark & Fire, you’ll hear creators tell the story of bringing one beloved work to life.
Iconic creatives — like Wicked composer Stephen Schwartz, Pixar director Domee Shi, comedian Patton Oswald, musician Wynton Marsalis, and novelist Isabel Allende — share the endless iterations, the inevitable setbacks, and the breakthrough ideas along the epic process of creation. But this isn’t an interview show. It’s a story — told entirely in the artist’s own words.
Follow and listen to Spark & Fire wherever you get your podcasts
Spark & Fire is a WaitWhat original series in partnership with the BBC. With host June Cohen, cofounder of WaitWhat and the former executive producer of TED Talks.
Featured in the new season…
Comedian Patton Oswalt
How can you recover your creativity – after a loss that feels like ‘total shipwreck’? You let yourself feel it, and then open yourself up to inspiration.
Genius comedian Patton Oswalt shows the way in the Spark & Fire podcast.
Knives Out director Rian Johnson
How do you create deeply imaginative work? There’s a method behind the magic.
As Rian Johnson (Last Jedi, Looper, Brick) takes us on the journey of joyfully reinventing the murder-mystery, you’ll hear the way he draws on childhood memories to inspire his work.
Novelist Ann Patchett on “The Dutch House”
When Ann Patchett sat down to read through her first draft of The Dutch House, she realized she had made a terrible mistake. A wrong turn, on page 36, sent the entire rest of the novel careening down the wrong path.
So what’d she do?