What happens when your answers stop working?
“Leave the map. Follow the signal.”
The Series
An artist searching for belonging. A systems thinker who wants evidence. An elder who calls himself a doorman. At Shope Creek, outside Asheville, their lives meet in a gathering of musicians, skeptics, families and seekers. Stay Curious follows what happens when the stories they inherited no longer explain the lives they are living.
An Open Invitation
The Mantra
Curiosity ≠ Credulity
The show can enter a room with an open mind and still ask who said it, what happened, what can be verified, what cannot, and what it did to the person.
“Believe, allow. There’s an enormous field in between there.”
Stephen Sedmak
Season One
Ten episodes in development · None released yet
Belonging. Belief. Art. Family. The lives that unfold when we leave the map behind.
After years of performing under different names, Kenny McCormick IV follows a song back to a childhood memory and forward to Shope Creek. An artist and an analytical skeptic meet around one question: what’s the price of belonging?
Dale Sanders has spent his life inside powerful rooms. Invited to Camp Mary, he finds himself in one he can’t quite explain. His uncertainty opens a story about invitation, belonging and the freedom to stop performing.
People with radically different beliefs enter the same room and leave with different realities. Through Gary and the skeptics at Camp Mary, this chapter asks whether curiosity can survive disagreement.
Stephen Sedmak calls himself a doorman, not someone with all the answers. Alongside Mary and the people of Shope Creek, he explores what becomes possible when we make room for experience instead of trying to control it.
Patricc Reed approaches painting with the freedom of a kid at play. Among artists carrying careers, identities and expectations, he offers a simpler invitation: have fun, make something and follow what feels alive.
The camera turns toward Mary, Joda, Jill and the women of the story. Their experiences reveal what they have witnessed, carried and chosen while the men were busy explaining everything.
Faith, expectation, protection and approval weave through the stories of fathers and sons. Kenny, Dale and other families ask what gets passed down without our noticing, and what a son is allowed to put down.
Craig Rose keeps finding people with something still waiting to be released. From Sedona to Shope Creek, his invitations reveal the possibilities and limits of believing in someone before the outcome is known.
The story returns to the people who lived it and asks what actually followed them home. At Shope Creek’s open house, new conversations explore what stayed, what disappeared and what remains unresolved.
The season returns to Kenny as he releases an album under his birth name. The music becomes something real and shareable, bringing his search for belonging back to a new question: what happens when you finally belong to yourself?
The Journey
From the stories we inherit to the lives we choose, each chapter opens a different question.
Who am I after I leave the identity I inherited?
Why am I in this room?
Why can two people experience the same thing differently?
Who opens the door?
What happens when we stop performing?
What were the women carrying?
What are we passing down?
Who sees something in us before we do?
What actually followed us home?
What happens when we finally put the thing into the world?
The People
Meet the artists, skeptics, elders, families and guests who make up the world of Stay Curious.
Known to audiences as Kenny Holland and Jimmy Flinders, Kenny has built a life in music while questioning the faith, identities and expectations he inherited. The Deer Trail leads him to Shope Creek and toward releasing music under his birth name.
Military service, nuclear-threat analysis and a career in healthcare technology have shaped Dale’s instinct to ask for evidence. At Camp Mary, he brings that same scrutiny to a room unlike the ones he has spent his life entering.
Gary brings questions of faith, medicine and personal experience into the conversations at Camp Mary. His encounters reveal the distance between what someone believes, what they experience and what another person sees in the same moment.
After co-founding SRS Labs, Stephen stepped away from the business world to explore consciousness, nature and the stories people live by. At Shope Creek, he calls himself a doorman: someone who opens a door without deciding what another person will find.
Read the full story ↗A former special-education teacher in inner-city Philadelphia, Mary earned her master’s degree in education at fifty. Her life with Stephen, her family and the home they share at Shope Creek are at the heart of the gathering that bears her name.
Craig’s path has crossed churches, artists, founders, retreats and new communities. He recognizes possibility in people, invites them into unexpected rooms and helps give their work space to emerge, without knowing how the story will end.
Read the full story ↗Patricc paints, creates, paints over it and starts again. His approach makes creativity an act of play rather than a performance of being an artist. At Camp Mary, making something matters more than getting permission.
Joda brings decades of experience in integrative health, nutrition, life coaching and retreat development. At Shope Creek, she helps translate expansive ideas into practical care, practitioner relationships and an experience centered on the person.
Read the full story ↗Jill’s relationship with Shope Creek began before Camp Mary. Her perspective follows the longer life of the place, the people who return to it and the questions that remain after a gathering ends.
Frances created artwork and installations within the Shope Creek environment. Her work is part of the visual world that people encounter when they arrive on the land.
The founder behind Zuka Juice, Rumbi Island Grill and Zao Asian Cafe, Dave brings a lifetime of building businesses into a more personal conversation about family, stewardship and what the next generation inherits.
Dave’s son Solomon is completing a master’s degree in software engineering before hiking the Appalachian Trail. His own path brings another generation’s questions about adventure, technology and the future into the gathering.
An entrepreneur, board advisor and longtime friend of Dave Duffin, David brings a steady presence to Camp Mary. Alongside the stories of fathers and sons, he considers belief, protection and the legacies families carry.
A wingsuit pilot and BASE jumper, Sean explores the edges of possibility through adventure, storytelling and creative work. His perspective sits alongside his father David’s in a conversation about choosing a path of your own.
Ruby brings music, performance and creative experience to the gathering at Camp Mary.
Deva brings performance and ceremonial music into the shared creative life of Camp Mary.
The voice of The Holy Howlers, Lion is a musician and songwriter connected to the artists gathered at Camp Mary.
The author of Coming Home: Healing & Finding Yourself, Jamie brings writing, art and music to Camp Mary’s creative community.
Creating plant-based food since 1979, Robert co-founded Alpha Foods and Third Wave Foods. He is also an author and life coach whose work connects nourishment, community and personal reflection.
Through Bright Light, Stacey contributes readings and a personal perspective to the range of experiences shared at Camp Mary.
Brittany brings food and hospitality to Camp Mary, part of the everyday care that makes a gathering possible.
In Their Words
“Believe, allow. There’s an enormous field in between there.”
“Our definition of sharing is giving without anticipation of receipt.”
“I’m not making magic. I’m just being a freaking kid and having fun.”
“I would like to move the collective beyond fear.”
“We all become butterflies, and then we go and we pollinate the world.”
The Invitation
An artist finding his own name. A skeptic entering an unfamiliar room. Families asking what they carry forward. No single answer. Just the courage to keep looking.
Leave the map. Follow the signal.
A Hollow Bone Initiative Docuseries · In Development