October 2-5
original thinkers festival 2025
Discover Original Thinkers — where ideas come alive in bold new ways through:
• Captivating Films • Inspiring Speakers • Memorable Art • Unique Performances • Soul-Stirring Adventures
If you are unable to see an option to purchase tickets above, please click here for an alternate way to get your passes.
More programming to come
the people
Rachel Kolar
Rachel lovingly upholds a Private Practice specializing in artistic, ceremonial, and therapeutic approaches to healing through live music and medicine, designing and facilitating private and group gatherings, rituals, and rites of passage. She provides therapeutic support for her clients and community, specializing in experiential learning, bespoke preparation and integration, couples therapy, optimization, and assisting individuals in returning to their baseline after challenging life experiences.
Orpheo McCord
Orpheo lovingly upholds a Private Practice specializing in ceremonial and therapeutic approaches to healing through live music and medicine. Through McCord’s continuous exploration of non-ordinary states of consciousness, he developed a unique sonic palette used to facilitate and activate these states.
He is co-founder and composer for Chromasonic, creating immersive experiences exploring the relationship between light and sound and has been an active member of the Grammy award winning group Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros since the group’s inception in 2009.
Kate Woodsome
Kate has spent more than two decades reporting and leading news teams on the frontlines of global and domestic upheaval, studying democracy, trauma, and repair from Cuba to Cambodia, Hong Kong to D.C. She worked for the Voice of America, Al Jazeera English, and The Washington Post, where the story became personal.
Kate founded Invisible Threads, a media, education, and action hub exploring how mental health and democracy are intertwined. As a visiting affiliate scholar at Georgetown University's Psychology Department and senior fellow with the school's Red House research unit, she bring science-backed approaches to her workshops, speaking engagements, and coaching practice.
Auden Schendler
Auden Schendler spent twenty-six years running sustainability programs at Aspen One, which operates ski resorts, hotels, restaurants, and retail stores. He focuses on scale solutions to climate change, including clean-energy development, policy, advocacy, movement building, and activism.
An avid outdoorsman and “dirtbag,” he has climbed Denali, North America’s highest peak; kayaked the Grand Canyon in winter; and twice ascended Mount Rainier’s Liberty Ridge: the first time terrified, the second competently.
Adrian Molina, aka Molina Speaks
Adrian H Molina, aka Molina Speaks, is an artist, poet, and master of ceremonies. Molina is a New America Us@250 Fellow. He does it all at Warm Cookies from program design to poetic scribing to coordinating our Future Town program.
Sandi Dubowski
Sandi DuBowski is the Director/Producer of Sabbath Queen, Director/Producer of Trembling Before G-d, Producer of A Jihad for Love, and Co-Producer of Budrus.
From 2009-2016, DuBowski worked with over 125 of the world’s best social justice documentaries as the Outreach Director of Doc Society’s Good Pitch. He is Co-Founder of The Creative Resistance, a collective of media makers who create award-winning political ads and design. In the mid-1990’s he began his media and activism work at Planned Parenthood Federation of America focused on the Christian right and the anti-abortion movement.
Three generations of DuBowski’s family made chocolate syrup in Deep Coastal Brooklyn.
Bill Masters
Bill Masters graduated from college with a degree in criminal justice and moved to Telluride, Colorado in 1974. He had no intention of putting his education to use and instead was planning to become a ski bum. Telluride had been a mining town and the ski area had just opened and there were a lot of unruly characters around so when the Town Marshall found out what Masters had studied, he essentially drafted the young man into service not long after he arrived.
That same Town Marshall soon resigned to take a bigger job and the 23-year old Masters was now in charge of law enforcement in Telluride. He looked particularly young and was very green so the ornery miners who had lived there for a long time had little patience for him and his efforts to enforce the law. Yet Masters stayed with it and by 1980, became the Sheriff of San Miguel County, an elected position he has held for 45 years.
Colin Hudon
Owner and founder Colin Hudon developed Living Tea through his lifelong immersion in Tea and Tao. As an herbalist, acupuncturist, and practitioner of Traditional Chinese Medicine, he discovered through the tea ceremony a means of sharing the extraordinary depth of Eastern traditions in the West. Following many years of study and travel throughout Asia, Colin began sharing tea with others as a form of moving meditation and living art. Thousands of tea ceremonies later, Living Tea continues to share this way, these old-growth trees, and this ancient tradition with you.
Jenn Turner
Jenn Turner is a yoga teacher, ecstatic dance facilitator, functional fitness instructor, and certified holistic health coach (FDN-P). With over 500 hours of yoga education (E-RYT 500), she specializes in yoga, somatic movement as medicine, and cycle-based lifestyle & functional fitness training for women. Her teaching experience spans beginners to advanced practitioners, as well as professional athletes and those with physical limitations. Jenn approaches her practice, teaching, and all of life with a sense of curiosity, athleticism, and joy. She holds sacred space for transformative movement, breathwork, and dropping into the innate healing powers of the body through storytelling, conscious surrender, mindfulness, and integration. Her greatest joy is sharing the practices that have profoundly impacted her own life, and she continues to be inspired by the transformative power of dance, yoga and holistic wellness. Jenn offers classes and workshops in Ridgway, Colorado, online, and at retreats worldwide.
Jade Rose
Jade Rose has a Masters in Fine art and a master's in Social Work. She has been teaching Pranakriya yoga and meditation since 2008. Her paintings, writings, and philosophy revolve around the unity of all beings. The abstract realism of her work reflects her vision: that we are one with our breath, with the water we drink, and with the mountains we see. Magic is present at this moment. Jade Rose has been reading tarot for twenty years, she has written four books on the subject. Tarot card reading is like looking at oneself through the clarifying reflection of an intuitive friend. In her Tea and Tarot sessions, you will participate as Jade leads a Tea Ceremony and interprets the tarot cards drawn from her deck. Tarot is not about reading the future or divining destiny. The cards are a set of elemental archetypes so ancient and true that we find ourselves magnetized to those that speak to our present situation.
the films
Sabbath Queen
SABBATH QUEEN, a feature documentary filmed over 21 years, follows Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie's epic journey as the dynastic heir of 38 generations of Orthodox rabbis including the Chief Rabbis of Israel. He is torn between rejecting and embracing his destiny and becomes a drag-queen rebel, a queer bio-dad and the founder of Lab/Shul—an everybody-friendly, God-optional, artist-driven, pop-up experimental congregation.
More programming to come
the activities
Tea Ceremony with Living Tea, Colin Hudon
Living Tea offers a gateway to the art of ritualistic tea, providing an accessible journey into the profound connection between tea and self-discovery. Rooted in the 5-element seasonal principles of nature, our offerings guide you toward personal transformation and deeper self-understanding. Through inspired and committed practice, we equip you with the teas, tools, and wisdom to cultivate a lifelong love affair with Tea and Mother Earth, fostering harmony
Ecstatic Dance with Jennifer Turner
Ecstatic Dance is an immersive experience of movement, freedom of expression, and fun that has the potential of opening you to a state of flow and feeling that allows for a journey of reconnection back to yourself. Dance is our birthright and the universal language of the soul. Whether you’re a dancing queen/king or think you have two left feet, this experience is for you. So put on something comfy, kick off your shoes, and we will see you on the dance floor.
Tea & Tarot with Jade Rose
Tea Ceremony is a perfect elemental art. Silently, we drink tea from ancient trees grown in reverence. In this special space we give the water, fire and tea leaves a chance to communicate with us in their subtle and silent tongue. Old growth trees have been taking in sunlight, rainwater and starlight for hundreds of years. Drinking tea from their leaves in a ceremonial space allows us access parts of our heart which we usually cannot reach.
This practice pairs perfectly with tarot. Tarot card reading is like looking at oneself through the clarifying reflection of an intuitive friend. In group and private sessions, you will participate as Jade interprets the tarot cards you draw from her deck. Tarot is not about reading the future or divining destiny. The cards are a set of elemental archetypes so ancient and true that we find ourselves magnetized to those that speak to our present situation.
You will leave this session feeling honored and held in reverence. A practice of tea ceremony and tarot can allow you to feel reconnected to your intuition. The elemental realm is already working on your behalf to create what your higher self desires. When we listen to the heart’s wisdom, we open to following the water course way toward what is in our highest potential. Jade has been a student of tarot for over twenty years. She is the author of three books on the subject. She has been teaching meditation since she was eighteen. She has found tea ceremony to be one of the most profound and yet easy-to-enter methods of meditation. The tea leaves allow us to quickly drop into a deep heart space of openness and radical truth.
the sponsors
