Atelier

While being a universal experience, sleep remains a poorly understood biological necessity whose mechanisms, disruptions, and cultural meanings have occupied scientists, philosophers, and artists for centuries. In this episode, recorded live at Reid Hall during the Nuit de l'imagination, concert pianist and harpsichordist Magdalena Stern‑Baczewska and sleep physician Jordan Stern trace the intersection of music and medicine through their decade‑long collaboration.Stern outlines the scale of undiagnosed sleep apnea, the limits of pharmaceutical treatment for insomnia, and what neuroscience has and has not resolved about dreaming. Stern‑Baczewska, senior lecturer in music at Columbia University, director of its music performance program, and 2025 – 2026 Fellow of the Institute for Ideas and Imagination, explains how she approached the interpretive challenge of creating music intended not to engage but to release, drawing from her earliest memories of hearing her mother practice during childhood naps. The conversation closes with a live lullaby concert performed at Reid Hall, recorded as part of the evening's program.Organized by the Columbia Global Paris Center and the Institute for Ideas and Imagination, each year the Nuit de l’Imagination chooses a theme of global importance (Climate in 2023, Boredom in 2024, Neighbors in 2025) as a celebration of the work and collaborations that define Reid Hall.Website - globalcenters.columbia.edu/parisNewsletter - globalcenters.columbia.edu/content/paris-newslettersInstagram - instagram.com/cgcparisLinkedIn - linkedin.com/company/cgcparisYouTube - youtube.com/@CGCParisHost: Marie DoezemaProduction: Marie Doezema, Tessa Overvoorde, and Anthony ValetteEditing: Theo AlbaricMusic: Lili Boulanger’s Nocturne performed by Magdalena Baczewska and Sasha HeWith thanks to the Nadia and Lili Boulanger International Centre in ParisThe Columbia Global Paris Center is part of a network of 11 global centers of Columbia University in the City of New York, one of the world's leading academic institutions. The centers serve as knowledge hubs that aim to educate and inspire through research, dialogue, and action. They advance understanding, facilitate partnerships, and build the bridges necessary to tackle our changing world.Columbia Global brings together the Columbia Global Centers, Columbia World Projects, the Committee on Global Thought, and the Institute for Ideas and Imagination.

What can a drawing do that a photograph cannot? In an era of collapsing newsrooms and widespread distrust of the press, comics journalism has emerged as a form of reporting that slows the reader down, grants access to spaces traditional journalists cannot enter, and protects the anonymity of those whose stories most need telling. In this episode, Aubrey Gabel, assistant professor of French at Columbia and Fellow of the Institute for Ideas and Imagination, maps the landscape of French bande dessinée as a space for serious reportage. She traces the medium's political genealogy, examines how the illustrator's hand enriches the notion of objectivity, and asks what it means that, in France, one in four books sold is a comic. Website - globalcenters.columbia.edu/parisNewsletter - globalcenters.columbia.edu/content/paris-newslettersInstagram - instagram.com/cgcparisLinkedIn - linkedin.com/company/cgcparisYouTube - youtube.com/@CGCParisHost: Marie DoezemaProduction: Marie Doezema, Tessa Overvoorde, and Anthony ValetteEditing: Theo AlbaricMusic: Lili Boulanger’s Nocturne performed by Magdalena Baczewska and Sasha HeWith thanks to the Nadia and Lili Boulanger International Centre in ParisThe Columbia Global Paris Center is part of a network of 11 global centers of Columbia University in the City of New York, one of the world's leading academic institutions. The centers serve as knowledge hubs that aim to educate and inspire through research, dialogue, and action. They advance understanding, facilitate partnerships, and build the bridges necessary to tackle our changing world.Columbia Global brings together the Columbia Global Centers, Columbia World Projects, the Committee on Global Thought, and the Institute for Ideas and Imagination.

What happens when a physician steps outside the system she knows and begins to observe another, not as a critic, but as a learner? In this episode, Dr. Mirna Giordano reflects on what a visit to Paris's leading children's hospitals has revealed about how pediatric care is organized, communicated, and experienced across two very different healthcare cultures.A pediatric hospitalist and faculty at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, Dr. Giordano has spent over two decades co‑managing pediatric neurosurgical patients and researching opioid‑sparing treatment outcomes. She discusses the emergence of pediatric hospital medicine as a subspecialty in the United States, the structural and legal forces that shape documentation practices, the growing medical complexity of children who survive extreme prematurity and chronic disease, and the more fluid team dynamics she observed at Necker and Bicêtre hospitals in Paris. She also reflects on what it means to practice medicine as a calling, and on returning from her Reid Hall Faculty Visitorship carrying something she had not anticipated: the desire to do things a little differently.Website - globalcenters.columbia.edu/parisNewsletter - globalcenters.columbia.edu/content/paris-newslettersInstagram - instagram.com/cgcparisLinkedIn - linkedin.com/company/cgcparisYouTube - youtube.com/@CGCParisHost: Marie DoezemaProduction: Marie Doezema, Tessa Overvoorde, and Anthony ValetteEditing: Theo AlbaricMusic: Lili Boulanger’s Nocturne performed by Magdalena Baczewska and Sasha HeWith thanks to the Nadia and Lili Boulanger International Centre in ParisThe Columbia Global Paris Center is part of a network of 11 global centers of Columbia University in the City of New York, one of the world's leading academic institutions. The centers serve as knowledge hubs that aim to educate and inspire through research, dialogue, and action. They advance understanding, facilitate partnerships, and build the bridges necessary to tackle our changing world.Columbia Global brings together the Columbia Global Centers, Columbia World Projects, the Committee on Global Thought, and the Institute for Ideas and Imagination.

Cross-border journalism has reshaped investigative reporting over the past two decades — but as the model matures, it faces real pressure: inequities between partners, funding strain, and the question of whether collaboration can remain both ambitious and sustainable. Recorded live at the International Journalism Festival in Perugia, this episode brings together three leading practitioners to examine what makes transnational investigations work and what must change. Marina Walker Guevara of the Pulitzer Center, Laurent Richard of Forbidden Stories, and Hoda Osman of Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism draw on recent projects to discuss trust, equity, digital security, and the future of a model that, at its best, ensures no story dies with the journalist who started it.Website - globalcenters.columbia.edu/parisNewsletter - globalcenters.columbia.edu/content/paris-newslettersInstagram - instagram.com/cgcparisLinkedIn - linkedin.com/company/cgcparisYouTube - youtube.com/@CGCParisHost: Marie DoezemaProduction: Marie Doezema, Charlotte Force, Tessa Overvoorde, and Anthony ValetteEditing: Theo AlbaricMusic: Lili Boulanger’s Nocturne performed by Magdalena Baczewska and Sasha HeWith thanks to the Nadia and Lili Boulanger International Centre in ParisThe Columbia Global Paris Center is part of a network of 11 global centers of Columbia University in the City of New York, one of the world's leading academic institutions. The centers serve as knowledge hubs that aim to educate and inspire through research, dialogue, and action. They advance understanding, facilitate partnerships, and build the bridges necessary to tackle our changing world.Columbia Global brings together the Columbia Global Centers, Columbia World Projects, the Committee on Global Thought, and the Institute for Ideas and Imagination.

Museums today must reckon with an expanding set of demands—community, spectacle, education, preservation—and their buildings must reckon with them too. In this episode, Chris Dercon, directeur général of the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, reflects on the museum’s new home in the center of Paris, reshaped by Jean Nouvel. The conversation closes with the next exhibition, a project by Ghanaian artist Ibrahim Mahama, staged across from the Louvre as a deliberate rethinking of what a museum can, or should, be.Website - globalcenters.columbia.edu/parisNewsletter - globalcenters.columbia.edu/content/paris-newslettersInstagram - instagram.com/cgcparisLinkedIn - linkedin.com/company/cgcparisYouTube - youtube.com/@CGCParisHost: Marie DoezemaProduction: Marie Doezema, Charlotte Force, Tessa Overvoorde, and Anthony ValetteEditing: Theo AlbaricMusic: Lili Boulanger’s Nocturne performed by Magdalena Baczewska and Sasha HeWith thanks to the Nadia and Lili Boulanger International Centre in ParisThe Columbia Global Paris Center is part of a network of 11 global centers of Columbia University in the City of New York, one of the world's leading academic institutions. The centers serve as knowledge hubs that aim to educate and inspire through research, dialogue, and action. They advance understanding, facilitate partnerships, and build the bridges necessary to tackle our changing world.Columbia Global brings together the Columbia Global Centers, Columbia World Projects, the Committee on Global Thought, and the Institute for Ideas and Imagination.

Description: Recorded live at Reid Hall in Paris as part of the annual Saving Journalism Conference, this episode brings together journalists, researchers, legal experts, and content creators to examine one of the most consequential shifts in the modern media landscape: the rise of the influencer. What does it mean when influencers drive more political engagement than journalists? Who is accountable when political money flows invisibly through social media? And in an era of algorithmic opacity, AI-generated fakes, and billionaire-owned legacy media, is independent creator-led journalism a threat to democracy — or its best remaining hope?This episode features:Moderator Emily Bell, founding director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia Journalism School, Julia Angwin, founder and CEO of Proof NewsTaylor Owen, Beaverbrook Chair in Media, Ethics and Communications at McGill UniversityAlice Cappelle, video journalist and authorAllia Mohamed, co-founder of Openigloo and content creatorEric Munch, legal analyst at the European Audiovisual ObservatoryWebsite - globalcenters.columbia.edu/parisNewsletter - globalcenters.columbia.edu/content/paris-newslettersInstagram - instagram.com/cgcparisLinkedIn - linkedin.com/company/cgcparisYouTube - youtube.com/@CGCParisHost: Marie DoezemaProduction: Marie Doezema, Charlotte Force, Tessa Overvoorde, and Anthony ValetteEditing: Theo AlbaricMusic: Lili Boulanger’s Nocturne performed by Magdalena Baczewska and Sasha HeWith thanks to the Nadia and Lili Boulanger International Centre in ParisThe Columbia Global Paris Center is part of a network of 11 global centers of Columbia University in the City of New York, one of the world's leading academic institutions. The centers serve as knowledge hubs that aim to educate and inspire through research, dialogue, and action. They advance understanding, facilitate partnerships, and build the bridges necessary to tackle our changing world.Columbia Global brings together the Columbia Global Centers, Columbia World Projects, the Committee on Global Thought, and the Institute for Ideas and Imagination.

Irish composer Finola Merivale’s creative practice sits at the intersection of collaboration and solitude, structure and improvisation. In this episode, she discusses recent compositions shaped by field recordings and environmental research. She also discusses creative collaboration with other artists during her fellowship at the Institute for Ideas and Imagination and exploring the creative process through her new podcast, Lodestar.Finola’s upcoming album Abhaile is coming out on Relative Pitch (USA) and Fort Evil Fruit (Ireland) in June. Learn more about her collaborator Catherine Sikora here: catherinesikora.netLodestar, Finola’s podcast with her sister Tamzin, is available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.Website - globalcenters.columbia.edu/parisNewsletter - globalcenters.columbia.edu/content/paris-newslettersInstagram - instagram.com/cgcparisLinkedIn - linkedin.com/company/cgcparisYouTube - youtube.com/@CGCParisHost: Marie DoezemaProduction: Marie Doezema, James Allen, Charlotte Force, and Anthony ValetteEditing: Theo AlbaricMusic: Lili Boulanger’s Nocturne performed by Magdalena Baczewska and Sasha HeWith thanks to the Nadia and Lili Boulanger International Centre in ParisThe Columbia Global Paris Center is part of a network of 11 global centers of Columbia University in the City of New York, one of the world's leading academic institutions. The centers serve as knowledge hubs that aim to educate and inspire through research, dialogue, and action. They advance understanding, facilitate partnerships, and build the bridges necessary to tackle our changing world.Columbia Global brings together the Columbia Global Centers, Columbia World Projects, the Committee on Global Thought, and the Institute for Ideas and Imagination.

In the high-stakes world of pediatric heart transplantation, every saved life is inseparable from another family’s loss. In this episode, Dr. Teresa Lee reflects on the ethical and emotional dimensions of caring for children with heart failure and guiding families through transplant. Drawing inspiration from Maylis de Kerangal’s novel Réparer les vivants, she explores what it means to honor donor families, to sit at the threshold between life and death, and to “repair the living” in more ways than one.A pediatric cardiologist and physician-scientist at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, Dr. Lee also discusses how her research on the genetic causes of cardiomyopathy is shaped directly by the patients she serves. From evolving her own emotional boundaries to finding rare moments of silence and reflection during her time as a Faculty Visitor at Reid Hall in Paris, she offers a meditation on medicine not only as science, but as a practice of care.Further reading:https://healthmatters.nyp.org/amazing-things-jenna-skeete/https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/26/nyregion/nyc-nurses-strike-patients-children.htmlhttps://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/01/well/90-minutes-to-give-baby-luna-a-new-heart.htmlWebsite - globalcenters.columbia.edu/parisNewsletter - globalcenters.columbia.edu/content/paris-newslettersInstagram - instagram.com/cgcparisLinkedIn - linkedin.com/company/cgcparisYouTube - youtube.com/@CGCParisHost: Marie DoezemaProduction: Marie Doezema, James Allen, Charlotte Force, and Anthony ValetteEditing: Theo AlbaricMusic: Lili Boulanger’s Nocturne performed by Magdalena Baczewska and Sasha HeWith thanks to the Nadia and Lili Boulanger International Centre in ParisThe Columbia Global Paris Center is part of a network of 11 global centers of Columbia University in the City of New York, one of the world's leading academic institutions. The centers serve as knowledge hubs that aim to educate and inspire through research, dialogue, and action. They advance understanding, facilitate partnerships, and build the bridges necessary to tackle our changing world.Columbia Global brings together the Columbia Global Centers, Columbia World Projects, the Committee on Global Thought, and the Institute for Ideas and Imagination.

As climate change accelerates the unravelling of ecological and social systems, questions of knowledge, care, and responsibility become ever more urgent. In this episode, cultural and environmental anthropologist Paige West reflects on several decades of collaborative research in Papua New Guinea. Through long-term partnerships with local communities—most notably with fisheries expert and Indigenous leader John Aini—she examines how Indigenous ecological knowledge challenges dominant conservation models.Website - globalcenters.columbia.edu/parisNewsletter - globalcenters.columbia.edu/content/paris-newslettersInstagram - instagram.com/cgcparisLinkedIn - linkedin.com/company/cgcparisYouTube - youtube.com/@CGCParisHost: Marie DoezemaProduction: Marie Doezema, James Allen, Charlotte Force, and Anthony ValetteEditing: Theo AlbaricMusic: Lili Boulanger’s Nocturne performed by Magdalena Baczewska and Sasha HeWith thanks to the Nadia and Lili Boulanger International Centre in ParisThe Columbia Global Paris Center is part of a network of 11 global centers of Columbia University in the City of New York, one of the world's leading academic institutions. The centers serve as knowledge hubs that aim to educate and inspire through research, dialogue, and action. They advance understanding, facilitate partnerships, and build the bridges necessary to tackle our changing world.Columbia Global brings together the Columbia Global Centers, Columbia World Projects, the Committee on Global Thought, and the Institute for Ideas and Imagination.