Santa Cruz feels different the moment you notice what is missing: billboards. That small design choice opens a bigger conversation about attention, consumerism, and why being five minutes from nature can change your nervous system. We sit down with filmmaker Scott Leiserson to talk about arriving here from San Diego, living inside the UCSC bubble, and then stepping into the wider Santa Cruz community through documentary filmmaking and video production work.

From there, we get honest about the creative life. Scott breaks down what it takes to “capture” a documentary instead of forcing a scripted story, why the edit is where meaning gets written, and how the promise of objectivity can hide a thousand subjective choices. We also talk about the real tension artists face: chasing the next adventurous shoot versus choosing the stability that protects your marriage, your time, and your ability to show up for people. If you care about storytelling, creative careers, or media literacy, there’s a lot here to sit with.

The conversation widens into something we all feel but rarely name: isolation in an algorithmic world. We dig into third places, community structure, and why podcasts work when everything else turns into sound bites. We also touch AI and social media curation, and the bigger challenge underneath it all: choosing each other on purpose instead of letting feeds choose for us.

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