Crafting Human™ Podcast
Crafting Human celebrates the creative brilliance of humans and the value of the soulful human touch expressed in the process of making, building and creating. Each week we have conversations with global creatives, makers, artisans, craftsmen, designers and storytellers, and we discuss how their work creates meaningful connections, distinctly shapes cultures and transforms communities & ecosystems. Crafting Human is a quiet resistance to the values of the industrial mindset that erode and devalue humans in the creative process. Through each guest's stories and creative expressions, we restore attention to what cannot be automated: the human hand, the human process, and the human story, which reflect our identity and values, and shape our experiences. We are reclaiming agency, the value of our humanity and the priceless beauty of the "slow" work made with intention and soul.
Crafting Human™ Podcast
Crafting Human™ Ep. 4 | Susan Magsamen & Ivy Ross on How Art Changes the Brain
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On this episode of Crafting Human™, I sit down with Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross, authors of Your Brain on Art, for a conversation about how the arts and aesthetics shape us, emotionally, physically, and neurologically.
Drawing from neuroscience, lived experience, and the emerging field of neuroaesthetics, Susan and Ivy explore how engaging our senses through art, beauty, design, movement, and sound can rewire the brain, support well-being, and deepen our capacity for empathy and meaning.
Together, we reflect on what it means to live as embodied human beings in a world often oriented toward speed, efficiency, and constant production, and why the arts are not an extra, but essential to our humanity.
Crafting Human™ is a space for conversations that go beyond aesthetics to explore what it means to create, to lead, and to remain human in a world increasingly shaped by optimization and automation.
In this episode:
– How art and aesthetics influence the brain and body
– The science behind neuroplasticity and sensory engagement
– Why meaning, empathy, and creativity deepen through the arts
– What it means to cultivate an aesthetic mindset in everyday life
– Moving beyond survival toward a more flourishing way of living
You can explore Susan and Ivy’s work here:
Website: yourbrainonart.com
Instagram: @yourbrainonart
New episodes of Crafting Human™ air every Wednesday. Subscribe to the channel and join the Crafting Human creative community to stay connected.
Subscribe to the Crafting Human YouTube channel here:
www.youtube.com/@CraftingHuman-Media
Join our creative tribe for updates on future conversations:
craftinghuman.myflodesk.com/jointhecreativetribe
Thank you for helping keep these conversations and this community alive.
- Sharon