Tech, Innovation & Society - The Creative Process: Recent Episodes

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Today, we have a conversation about time, memory, and the bittersweet geography of human sorrow. Georgi Gospodinovis widely considered one of the most daring voices in contemporary European literature. His acclaimed novel, The Physics of Sorrow, won the prestigious Jan Michalski Prize in 2016, blending ancient myth and quantum physics to chronicle the delicate realities of post-socialist Eastern Europe. Joining him is Angela Rodel, a brilliant linguist, musician, and translator whose profound artistic empathy carries the flowing cadences of the Bulgarian language into vivid English. Together, this extraordinary creative duo made history by winning the 2023 International Booker Prizefor Time Shelter—the first book written in Bulgarian to ever receive the honor.

Time Shelter is a masterfully dark, funny, and prescient novel. It begins with an enigmatic psychiatrist opening a clinic that treats Alzheimer’s patients by meticulously recreating past decades to match their internal clocks. But the experiment quickly escapes the clinic walls, triggering a pan-European crisis where entire nations hold democratic referendums to choose which era of the past they will retreat into. It is a book that holds up a mirror to our own world, exploring what happens when a civilization faces a deficit of meaning and tries to weaponize nostalgia.

(0:00) The Trap of Nostalgia

(1:22) The Nonlinear Approach to Storytelling

(3:53) Translating the Atmosphere

(4:31) The Pandemic of the Past

(6:37) Death and the Gardener

(9:49) The Translators Calling

(11:00) Slowing Down Time

(13:14) Storytelling vs Propaganda

(15:54) Translating the Atmosphere

(18:19) What makes a good life? What has given your life meaning?

(20:56) Reflections on God and the Stories His Grandmother Told Him

(23:43) The Importance of Hugging, Empathy and Storytelling

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

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For over a decade, technology has promised to make life easier. Social media was meant to connect us, we were told smartphones would simplify our lives, and now artificial intelligence promises to lift even more daily burdens. Yet these advances also raise an important question: when do tools enhance human creativity, and when do they replace the very experiences that give life meaning? While AI holds immense promise, many people face challenges coping with current technological advancements that ‘redefine’ human communication, work, education, and democratic values. Today, we examine societal and cultural impacts of AI, identity, inclusion, governance, education, and community well-being. And are speaking with Nacho de Gregorio, author of TheWhiteBox, one of Medium's most-followed AI analysts, for a level-headed conversation about both the remarkable potential and the real limitations of AI.

(0:00) The AI compute gap and national security

(1:56) The hidden risks of the AI debt bubble

(4:40) Separating AI hype from job displacements

(12:38) Shadow borrowing and the data center boom

(17:19) Europe's missing infrastructure and tech sovereignty

(21:52) The Jevons paradox and the demand for compute

(26:37) Regulatory capture and doomerism

(31:12) Why open source AI is the best path forward

(42:19) The chess paradox and the future of human art

(46:35) Unmeasurable domains and future-proofing your career

(53:45) Tutoring and AI in education

(1:01:48) Navigating the AI slop and information ecosystem

(1:16:00) Finding beauty in the natural world

(1:20:18) The pleasure of waiting vs. the hustle

(1:35:01) Setting healthy boundaries with technology

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

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“ I'm a believer in this technology. I believe that the cheaper it is, the more people will use it. So, even if we assume that models will get smaller for the same level of intelligence, the demand to actually have more compute is going to be enormous. And the reason why you want to have the, the compute close to you is not only in terms of performance. As a national security threat, I'm not saying this will happen, but it could happen that, China or US or whoever decides to stop exporting compute to the rest of the world. If that happens today, Europe has zero AI at the scale of data the data center.”

For over a decade, technology has promised to make life easier. Social media was meant to connect us, we were told smartphones would simplify our lives, and now artificial intelligence promises to lift even more daily burdens. Yet these advances also raise an important question: when do tools enhance human creativity, and when do they replace the very experiences that give life meaning? While AI holds immense promise, many people face challenges coping with current technological advancements that ‘redefine’ human communication, work, education, and democratic values. Today, we examine societal and cultural impacts of AI, identity, inclusion, governance, education, and community well-being. And are speaking with Nacho de Gregorio, author of TheWhiteBox, one of Medium's most-followed AI analysts, for a level-headed conversation about both the remarkable potential and the real limitations of AI.

(0:22) The hidden risks of the AI debt bubble

(0:55) Shadow borrowing and the data center boom

(3:12) The AI compute gap and national security

(5:40) Europe's missing infrastructure and tech sovereignty

(8:13) The Jevons paradox and the demand for compute

(10:25) Why open source AI is the best path forward

(12:31) The chess paradox and the future of human art

(12:53) Unmeasurable domains and future-proofing your career

(14:00) Tutoring and AI in education

(15:11) Navigating AI slop and the information ecosystem

(16:24) The Pleasure of Waiting vs. The Hustle

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

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“Architecture should bring a true sensation of wellbeing. We were really lucky to experience that as children, and now as architects, we try to bring all that we learned into our practice.”

Salwa and Selma Mikou are the founders of Paris-based Mikou Architecture. Born in Fez, Morocco and educated in Paris, they have spent the last two decades reimagining the relationship between the built environment and the cultural landscape.

After honing their craft under two of the world’s most iconic architects, Jean Nouvel and Renzo Piano, they founded their own studio. For them, architecture is a living interaction with landscape and what they call the Atlas of Resonance, interpreting the hidden layers of a territory, geology, memory, and craft. It is a philosophy that rejects the generic, seeking instead to weave together technological innovation with local materials. Whether it is a mosque in the north of England or a hybrid innovation hub in a former royal manufactory, their work asks a fundamental question: How does space shape the way we think, learn and remember?

They were selected by Rem Koolhaas to represent Morocco at the Venice Biennale. Most recently, they were commissioned by Hermès to create a 17,000-square-meter facility that bridges industrial performance with poetic expression. At the heart of their practice is a belief that architecture is not just about building—it’s about shaping relationships: between people, between past and future, between technology and craft.

(0:04) The Intuitive Knowledge of Living Art

(4:24) The Medina and the Geometry of Childhood

(8:18) The Social Spaces of Rooftops

(13:46) The Intuitive Knowledge of Living Art

(15:31) Contextual Echoes & Traces of the Site

(19:18) The Twin Dynamic and Confrontation with 'l'autre'

(26:42) The Temples of Water

(33:24) The Mosque as Pure Spatiality

(38:01) The Crisis Period and Structural Systems

(48:24) Building Culture with Yves Saint Laurent & Pierre Bergé

(51:38) The Wast ed-dar (وسط الدار) and the Heart of a Building

(57:02) Preserving the Human Core of Expression

(1:04:29) Urban Acupuncture in the Modern City

(1:08:46) The Smells and Sounds of Home

(1:10:02) Balance, Nature, and Sisterhood

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

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Why does our economy treat environmental destruction as an inevitable side effect rather than a massive design flaw? How can shifting our focus from polarizing "talkers" to practical "builders" literally save the planet? We are repeatedly told that the climate crisis is too vast and volatile to solve, but what if the true obstacle is simply bad design?

Tom Chi is a physicist, designer, inventor, and investor whose work has shaped everything from Google Glass and rapid prototyping at Google X to some of the most ambitious climate technologies being built today. He’s now the founding partner of At One Ventures, where he invests in deep-tech companies focused on a bold goal: a world where humanity is a net positive to nature.

Tom’s new book, Climate Capital: Investing in the Tools for a Regenerative Future, reframes economics itself—not as a fixed law, but as a design discipline that can be reimagined to align with the physical realities of our planet. Drawing on science, systems thinking, and lessons from nature, the book offers a grounded, practical framework for moving beyond both climate doom and empty optimism—and toward real, regenerative solutions. Today’s conversation is about what Tom calls the 4Cs: Capital, Compassion, Climate, and Community—but also about agency, responsibility, and what becomes possible when we stop treating the future as something that happens to us and start designing it deliberately.

0:00) Build Integrity: Choosing Builders Over Talkers

Why prioritizing those who physically create solutions over those who merely debate them is essential for systemic change

(1:21) Overcoming Powerlessness Through Creativity, Critical Thinking, Community Compassion

Utilizing a specific framework of portable skills to move from climate anxiety into meaningful, iterative action

(2:22) Capital Misallocation: Taxing What We Want to See

A critique of current tax structures that burden labor while under-taxing capital and failing to serve societal needs

(3:47) The Volatility Gap: Why Average Temperatures Mislead

Understanding why increasing climate volatility—rather than just average temperature rise—is the true driver of human distress

(6:19) Economics As Design: Redesigning The Global Engine

Moving beyond "physics envy" in economics to treat the global market as a discipline that can be redesigned for better outcomes

(9:11) Depth Over Breadth: Reforming Education Through Experience

(13:30) Local Resilience: How Cities Can Lead The Transformation

Practical, block-by-block strategies for urban adaptation, from expanding tree canopies to improving household efficiency

(16:33) AI and Robotics in Agriculture

(19:12) Human-Centric AI: Flipping The Priority Of Automation

(20:18) Thinking In Pictures: A Language Beyond Words

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

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“In the book I spend a bunch of time basically teaching skills and teaching frameworks of thinking. Not to indoctrinate, it's not a framework like an ideology where you need to believe exactly these things. This is a lot more about how does one use their minds effectively to solve problems that have been solved before. Of course, I work on things that have to do with investment and climate and the future of the economy and automation. The main things I'm trying to teach in the book are skills around creativity, critical thinking, community compassion and frameworks around how to go and use that on problems that should be relatively portable to a bunch of problems that are meaningful to you. The way that education needs to change is that people need to actively be working on things that truly matter to them so that over time they end up being able to go make that difference.”

Tom Chi is a physicist, designer, inventor, and investor whose work has shaped everything from Google Glass and rapid prototyping at Google X to some of the most ambitious climate technologies being built today. He’s now the founding partner of At One Ventures, where he invests in deep-tech companies focused on a bold goal: a world where humanity is a net positive to nature.

Tom’s new book, Climate Capital: Investing in the Tools for a Regenerative Future, reframes economics itself—not as a fixed law, but as a design discipline that can be reimagined to align with the physical realities of our planet. Drawing on science, systems thinking, and lessons from nature, the book offers a grounded, practical framework for moving beyond both climate doom and empty optimism—and toward real, regenerative solutions. Today’s conversation is about what Tom calls the 4Cs: Capital, Compassion, Climate, and Community—but also about agency, responsibility, and what becomes possible when we stop treating the future as something that happens to us and start designing it deliberately.

(0:00) Overcoming Powerlessness through Creativity, Critical Thinking, Community Compassion

Why broad hopelessness about the future is a purposeful tactic to maintain the status quo.

(7:16) How average temperature metrics fail to communicate the true danger of extreme climate volatility.

(11:54) Economics as Design

(17:11) Multi-disciplinary Learning Centered on Real-World Impact

(26:12) Local Resilience

(31:15) Tax & Capital Misallocation

(36:52) Build Integrity

(45:32) AI and Robotics in Agriculture

(51:08) The First Honeybee Vaccine

(56:11) The Entropy Curve of Pollution

(1:15:31) Human-Centric AI

Flipping the priority of automation to serve the collective good rather than enriching a select few

(1:20:59) Thinking in Pictures

How learning to communicate and problem-solve without language fueled a career in deep tech invention

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

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Step into the deep time of the forest floor, where a single fallen leaf contains the history of the world, and invisible fungal networks hum with ancient conversations. Biologist and acclaimed author David George Haskell reveals a staggering truth: we are completely dependent on the botanical world, and our belief in strict human individuality is a biological illusion.

Haskell has spent much of his life training himself to see the universal within the infinitesimally small. He's famously sat for a year in a single square meter of Tennessee's forest, a mandala experience that revealed the deep history of the world through a single fallen leaf. He's a two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for his books The Forest Unseen and Sounds Wild and Broken, and he received the John Burroughs Medal for The Songs of Trees.

His work often focuses on what he calls the unwaged labor of the natural world, the complex biological communities that sustain our planet without a monetary ledger. And his latest book is How Flowers Made Our World. In it, he argues that we are essentially grass apes dependent on the ancient innovations of flowering plants for two-thirds of our daily calories.

(0:00) How Flowers Made Our World

(1:33) Networked Connection is the Foundation of Life

(2:00) Contemplating the Small

(4:07) Consciousness, Intelligence & Memory in the More-Than-Human-World

(4:18) We Are Grass Apes

(5:41) Memories of His Childhood in Paris & Wild Orchids

(6:34) The Networked Intelligence of Forests

(7:45) The Earth in Full Song

(8:46) The Practice of Listening

(10:11) Escaping the Screen: Real Connections in the Classroom

(11:35) The True Cost of AI

(12:11) Transforming Ourselves

(14:23) Silence Without Expectation

(15:32) A Sensory Legacy for the Future

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

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"To be in the process of making things, to be in the process of talking to people about what things mean. The creative process is actually, I think, the most meaningful part of life, but it's very hard to measure. When we get shoved towards a world that demands easy measurables, it's very hard to optimize away from the creative process and optimize towards things that are more static."

On this episode of The Creative Process, philosopher C. Thi Nguyen joins us to discuss his new book, The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else's Game. He unpacks the profound concept of "value capture"—the moment we stop caring about the rich, subtle experiences of life and start obsessing over simplified, external metrics like grades, likes, and screen time.

Beyond the trap of quantification, C. Thi Nguyen explores the liberating power of games and art. We discuss how true play requires us to step lightly between different rule sets, the difference between art and craft, and how reclaiming our creative process might just be the ultimate meaning of life.

(0:00) THE TRAP OF VALUE CAPTURE How external metrics and scoring systems hijack our personal values and creativity

(7:09) THE LOGIC OF QUANTIFICATION Why simple numbers travel well but strip away vital human context, from screen time to grades

(11:58) THE MAGIC CIRCLE OF PLAY Understanding the difference between a gamified life and the true, disattached beauty of struggle

(14:57) ART, CRAFT, AND METRICS Why taking the hard way leads to genuine creative expression, and how to spot value-laden systems

(19:34) THE POLITICS OF MEASUREMENT Questioning the assumption that complex human traits, like IQ or consciousness, can be quantified on a single scale

(21:31) THE SPIRIT OF PLAY Using constraints to boost collaborative storytelling and learning to step lightly between different rule worlds

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

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We live in a world obsessed with tracking. From our sleep scores to our social media engagement, invisible systems constantly quantify our worth. But when we replace our deepest values with these thin, easily measurable numbers, we lose a part of our humanity. It is time to step outside the magic circle of optimization and reclaim the unstructured joy of being alive.

C. Thi Nguyen is a philosopher whose work gets to the heart of the invisible structures that define modern life. He first established himself as a food writer, exploring the sensory world, before turning his intellectual gaze toward the philosophy of games and agency. He’s the author of Games: Agency As Art.His new book is The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else's Game.He argues that when we simplify our values for the sake of a leaderboard, something inside the human spirit begins to die. In it, he explores a concept called "value capture"—the moment we stop caring about the experience and start obsessing over the metric. He joins me now to discuss how we can lead a playful, spontaneous life without getting lost in the scoring systems of the 21st century.

(0:00) THE MEANING OF LIFE IS THE CREATIVE PROCESS Why the most valuable parts of life are impossible to measure

(6:46) VALUE CAPTURE DEFINED How external metrics and institutional scoring systems take over our personal values

(11:38) THE METRICS WE LIVE BY The invisible toll of screen time, credit scores, and daily optimization

(19:44) THE LOGIC OF QUANTIFICATION Why simple numbers travel well but strip away vital human context

(24:13) THE MAGIC CIRCLE OF PLAY Understanding the difference between a gamified life and the true beauty of struggle

(31:56) ART AS A GAME How taking the hard way and avoiding efficiency leads to genuine creative expression

(38:48) THE POLITICS OF TECHNOLOGY Why tools and systems like factories and databases are never truly value-neutral

(44:23) AI AND HUMAN CREATIVITY Navigating the tension between automated efficiency and expressive human art

(50:44) THE POLITICS OF IQ Questioning the assumption that complex human traits can be measured on a single scale

(1:01:12) NARRATIVE SCAFFOLDING How structured constraints in role-playing games can actually boost collaborative storytelling

(1:10:00) THE SPIRIT OF PLAY Stepping lightly between different rule worlds and reclaiming our agency

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

@creativeprocesspodcast

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"The thing that puzzled him was why people don't agree to be fully expressed while they're alive. Why does it only happen in their last moment? Why wouldn't you live being fully expressed?"

My guest today is AL Kennedy. She is one of Britain’s most acclaimed and versatile literary voices, a writer who can inhabit the internal life of a soldier in a POW camp, as she did in her Costa Book Award-winning novel Day, as easily as she can navigate the "professional lying" of a modern civil servant.

Her latest novel, Alive in the Merciful Country, takes place during the 2020 lockdown. It tells the story of a primary school teacher who receives a confession from an undercover police officer who infiltrated her life decades earlier. It’s a provocative investigation into state power, the "Spy Cops" scandal and the search for mercy in an age of surveillance. It’s a book about the breakdown of trust. We talk about her life, her activism, and why she believes fiction is the only way to tell the truth when the facts are forbidden and how she balances the truth of her novels with the relief of stand-up comedy.

(0:00) Finding Your Voice

On the Alfred Wolfsohn voice method and the power of being fully expressed

(2:30) Reading from Alive in the Merciful Country

Kennedy shares a passage from her latest novel, exploring hope and resilience in dark times.

(4:43) The Myth of Shrinking Attention Spans

Challenging the narrative that modern audiences cannot focus, and the importance of engaging storytelling.

(6:22) Education and the Foundation of Democracy

The dangers of dismantling education and how critical thinking protects us from fascism.

(10:26) The Spy Cop Scandal and State Surveillance

Unpacking the reality of undercover police infiltrating peaceful protests and intimate lives.

(13:59) Lockdown: A Global Pause and the Inrush of Empathy

The fleeting moment of unified humanity during the pandemic and how it was ultimately betrayed.

(17:34) Writing Without Theft: The Ethics of Character Creation

Kennedy explains her imaginative process and why she refuses to steal details from real people's lives.

(28:16) AI, Digital Slop, and the Loss of Trust

Reflections on artificial intelligence as an unstable plagiarism machine and its impact on truth.

(30:03) Nature, Spirituality, and the Merciful Country

Finding healing in the natural world and navigating the future with love and awareness.

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

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“Grief happens because you don't stop loving the person who died. The person doesn't exist in your reality anymore. The everyday is not colored and shaped by this other human being, but you don't stop loving the person. So grief is a particular kind of unrequited love. And probably without that dynamic relationship with this person, I would be someone else. And he would've been someone else. I mean, Paul died before me. But we were, I think, hugely important to the drama of becoming in our own lives.”

Today, we are honored to welcome a writer whose work has long explored the intimate landscapes of the mind, memory and the heart. Siri Hustvedt’s writing moves between the personal and the philosophical, the literary and the deeply human. Her work bridges collections of essays, non-fiction, poetry, and seven novels, including the international bestsellers What I Loved and The Summer Without Men. Recipient of the Princess of Asturias Award for Literature and the Gabarron Prize for Thought, her work has been translated into over thirty languages. Her new memoir, Ghost Stories, is a reflection on forty-three years shared with her late husband, the writer and filmmaker Paul Auster. In its pages, we encounter not only love and loss, but the quiet persistence of presence, memory, and language itself.

(0:00) Grief as Unrequited Love

Siri explores the emotional reality of living without Paul Auster, noting that grief occurs because love does not stop when a person dies.

(4:00) Facing Death with Courage

The importance of not hiding from mortality and how discussing end-of-life wishes offered a necessary perspective.

(12:37) Reading from Ghost Stories

Siri reads the opening passage of her memoir, detailing how the loss of her husband deranged her sense of time and bodily rhythms.

(18:41) The Phantom Limb: ” The beloved is taken away and it feels as if you're amputated or gutted.”

(21:50)  Grandfather, Father and Son: Generational Traumas Behind Paul Auster's Writing

(24:11) How Powerful Emotions and a Person's Life Can Play a Role in Illness

(30:09) Feeding the Earth

"Paul very pointedly told me that he wanted to be buried in the Jewish mode. And the phrase he used was, “I want my body to feed the earth.”

(44:23) Physical Love in Marriage

On the importance of physical intimacy in long-term marriages, a reality often left out of grief memoirs.

(54:00) The Philosophy of the Between

How relational existence is foundational to life.

(1:00:16) The Hubris of Controlling Nature

(1:12:00) The Dark History of Statistics

(1:32:12) The Art of Learning vs. AI and Automated Outcomes

“I think we have to ask ourselves, what is education? What do we want from it? How do we want people to learn?

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

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“They're kind of like a hidden superhero in your body and we just didn't know they existed. Muse cells eat the damaged cells, and they can actually turn into new cells using the cellular machinery.”

Dr. Adeel Khan is a global thought leader in regenerative medicine. He is the CEO and Founder of and founder of Eterna Health, whose work with MUSE cell therapy—developed in collaboration with its discoverer, Professor Mari Dezawa—has made him the go-to expert for world leaders, athletes, and celebrities Chris Hemsworth, Kim Kardashian, and Tony Robbins. In this episode, we move beyond the hype of "anti-aging" to explore the hard science of Muse cells (Multilineage-differentiating Stress-Enduring cells). Dr. Khan breaks down how these unique cells differ from the "medicinal signaling cells" (MSCs) found in most clinics and how they act as a bridge to a future where tissue regeneration is standard care.

(0:00) The "Repair Guys" & The Muse Difference Dr. Khan explains why traditional stem cells (MSCs) often disappoint and how Muse cells offer the "best of both worlds": safety and pluripotency.

(2:19) Smart Cells: How They Find the Damage Understanding the "homing mechanism" that allows Muse cells to sense inflammation and instinctively travel to injured areas like the brain or heart.

(3:11) Curing the Incurable: Diabetes & Alzheimer's The potential of the "cure triad"—stem cells, gene therapy, and FMT—to treat complex autoimmune diseases within the next decade.

(4:40) Biological Noise & The Symphony of Health How "static" in our gene expression indicates aging, and how cellular therapy can reduce this noise to restore the body's harmony.

(6:40) The Viral Monkey Study Dr. Khan discusses a recent study showing significant de-aging in monkeys through high-frequency cell dosing.

(7:32) Unshakeable Foundations: Lifestyle as Medicine
Why advanced therapies must be paired with purpose, community, and mindfulness to create a "bulletproof" body.

(8:44) From Sketchy to Standardized
Navigating the regulatory landscape: why Muse cells are being classified as a drug in regions like the UAE and the path toward FDA approval.

(12:24) A Personal Mission
Dr. Khan shares the origin of his journey: trying to find solutions for his mother's chronic illness when traditional medicine failed.

(14:16) The Cancer Hunter
Unlike other pluripotent cells that risk tumor growth, Muse cells have a unique mechanism that can detect cancer cells and trigger their death.

(18:30)Future Outlook: AI, Nature & Blue Zones Reflections on the risks of AI, the importance of "Blue Zone" city design, and reconnecting with nature in a post-human world.

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

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"The repair mechanisms don't work as well as you get older... The whole idea was: if we can give you more of the 'repair guys,' maybe we can reverse disease."

Dr. Adeel Khan is a global thought leader in regenerative medicine. He is the CEO and Founder of and founder of Eterna Health, whose work with MUSE cell therapy—developed in collaboration with its discoverer, Professor Mari Dezawa—has made him the go-to expert for world leaders, athletes, and celebrities Chris Hemsworth, Kim Kardashian, and Tony Robbins. In this episode, we move beyond the hype of "anti-aging" to explore the hard science of Muse cells (Multilineage-differentiating Stress-Enduring cells). Dr. Khan breaks down how these unique cells differ from the "medicinal signaling cells" (MSCs) found in most clinics and how they act as a bridge to a future where tissue regeneration is standard care.

(0:00) The Future of Regenerative Medicine

(6:13) The Muse Difference: Why these cells are "pluripotent" (able to become any tissue) without the cancer risks of Yamanaka factors.

(10:29) Curing the Incurable: Diabetes & Alzheimer's

(11:27) The Cure Triad: How combining stem cells, gene therapy, and Fecal Microbial Transplants (FMT) could cure complex autoimmune diseases within a decade.

(12:56) Biological Noise: Measuring the "mistakes" in our gene expression to quantify aging.

(16:42) Lifestyle as Medicine: Why Dr. Khan prescribes community, mindfulness, and nature immersion alongside advanced therapies.

(18:13) From Sketchy to Standardized: The Regulatory Landscape

(23:25) A Personal Mission: Trying to Save Mom

(25:38) The Cancer Hunter: How Muse cells naturally detect and trigger cell death in tumors.

(29:02) Quantum Biology & Healing Frequencies
(41:13) The AI Pessimist: Planning for a Post-Human World

(44:03) Reconnecting with Nature

Episode Website

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Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

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“ I think we're betting on AI as something that can help to solve a lot of problems for us. It's the future, we think, whether it's producing text or art, or doing medical research or planning our lives for us, etc., the bet is that AI is going to be great, that it's going to get us everything we want and make everything better. But at the same time, we're gambling, at the extreme end, with the future of humanity  , hoping for the best and hoping that this, what I'm calling the AI wager, is going to work out to our advantage, but we'll see.”

As we move towards 2026, we are in a massive “upgrade moment” that most of us can feel. New pressures, new identities, new expectations on our work, our relationships, and our inner lives. Throughout the year, I've been speaking with professional creatives, climate and tech experts, teachers, neuroscientists, psychologists, and futureists about how AI can be used intelligently and ethically as a partnership to ensure we do not raise a generation that relies on machines to think for them. It’s not that we are being replaced by machines. It’s that we’re being invited to become a new kind of human. Where AI isn’t the headline; human transformation is. And that includes the arts, culture, and the whole of society. Generative AI – the technologies that write our emails, draft our reports, and even create art – have become a fixture of daily life, and the philosophical and moral questions they raise are no longer abstract. They are immediate, personal, and potentially disruptive to the core of what we consider human work.

Our guest today, Sven Nyholm, is one of the leading voices helping us navigate this new reality. As the Principal Investigator of AI Ethics at the Munich Center for Machine Learning, and co-editor of the journal Science and Engineering Ethics. He has spent his career dissecting the intimate relationship between humanity and the machine. His body of work systematically breaks down concepts that worry us all: the responsibility gap in autonomous systems, the ethical dimensions of human-robot interaction, and the question of whether ceding intellectual tasks to a machine fundamentally atrophies our own skills. His previous books, like Humans and Robots: Ethics, Agency, and Anthropomorphism, have laid the foundational groundwork for understanding these strange new companions in our lives.

His forthcoming book is The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence: A Philosophical Introduction. The book is a rigorous exploration of everything from algorithmic bias and opacity to the long-term existential risks of powerful AI. We’ll talk about what it means when an algorithm can produce perfect language without genuine meaning, why we feel entitled to take credit for an AI’s creation, and what this technological leap might be costing us, personally, as thinking, moral beings.

Episode Website

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Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

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As we move towards 2026, we are in a massive “upgrade moment” that most of us can feel. New pressures, new identities, new expectations on our work, our relationships, and our inner lives. Throughout the year, I've been speaking with professional creatives, climate and tech experts, teachers, neuroscientists, psychologists, and futureists about how AI can be used intelligently and ethically as a partnership to ensure we do not raise a generation that relies on machines to think for them. It’s not that we are being replaced by machines. It’s that we’re being invited to become a new kind of human. Where AI isn’t the headline; human transformation is. And that includes the arts, culture, and the whole of society. Generative AI – the technologies that write our emails, draft our reports, and even create art – have become a fixture of daily life, and the philosophical and moral questions they raise are no longer abstract. They are immediate, personal, and potentially disruptive to the core of what we consider human work.

Our guest today, Sven Nyholm, is one of the leading voices helping us navigate this new reality. As the Principal Investigator of AI Ethics at the Munich Center for Machine Learning, and co-editor of the journal Science and Engineering Ethics. He has spent his career dissecting the intimate relationship between humanity and the machine. His body of work systematically breaks down concepts that worry us all: the responsibility gap in autonomous systems, the ethical dimensions of human-robot interaction, and the question of whether ceding intellectual tasks to a machine fundamentally atrophies our own skills. His previous books, like Humans and Robots: Ethics, Agency, and Anthropomorphism, have laid the foundational groundwork for understanding these strange new companions in our lives.

His forthcoming book is The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence: A Philosophical Introduction. The book is a rigorous exploration of everything from algorithmic bias and opacity to the long-term existential risks of powerful AI. We’ll talk about what it means when an algorithm can produce perfect language without genuine meaning, why we feel entitled to take credit for an AI’s creation, and what this technological leap might be costing us, personally, as thinking, moral beings.

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“How do you render something interior filmically? How do you communicate the details of the lost child, of the amount of time of the stuck creative process, and even the exterior, or the externalization of the house as a kind of hellish thing that's barely staying together—literally flooding with waste—and that you can't afford? So those are the details that we had to carefully figure out how to weave. But, you know, when you look at the first 10 minutes, it could be a horror movie. From that moment, a lot can happen. But what's important about it is that it sets the table for what does happen.” -Howard Gordon

Today, we explore the dark psychology of obsession, guilt, and the thin line between predator and victim. Our guests are two of television's most accomplished architects of high-stakes drama and moral ambiguity: Howard Gordon, the showrunner and executive producer whose work defined a generation of thrillers with 24 and the multi-award-winning Homeland; and Daniel Pearle, an executive producer and writer who brings a distinct, penetrating depth from his background as a celebrated playwright and his work on series like Accused and American Crime Story.

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“I can change my mind. I can reduce anger, hatred. Nothing to do with religion. All religions carry the message of love, loving kindness, and tolerance. With different views, there is a possibility to synthesize new ideas. If majority of the world leaders become female, world become safer. I feel that. Compassion is the key factor. Non-violence, compassion and self-confidence, these are key factors for happy individual, happy community, peaceful world. This century should be century of compassion, century of peace. No more bloodshed. We should develop a big “we,” rather than “we” or “they.” With these wings, you can fly.” -DALAI LAMA

For decades, the Dalai Lama has been a global symbol of peace, compassion, and resilience, a spiritual leader living in exile from his home in Tibet. But how do you capture the essence of his wisdom—the kind that can truly change a life—in a way that feels intimate and personal? My guest today, documentary filmmaker Barbara Miller, has managed to do just that in her new film, Wisdom of Happiness. It’s a beautiful film that feels less like a documentary and more like a private, heart-to-heart conversation, where he invites us into his thoughts and shares practical steps for finding inner peace in a chaotic world.  She's dealt with anti-globalization, domestic violence, and the fight for female pleasure in her previous works. We’ll talk about how she shifted from exposing systemic pain to focusing on radical hope and her collaboration with Executive Producer Richard Gere and Manuel Bauer, the Dalai Lama’s personal photographer for the last thirty-five years, who made his cinematography debut with this film. She shares what the Dalai Lama taught her about living in harmony with our body, nature, and the world.

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“ Everybody wants happiness, joyfulness, peaceful world. Our 21st century will not be easy century. Fear, anger, hatred. In our mind we created distinctions. Different nationality, different color, different religion. Strong concept of “we” and “they”. Brothers and sisters of this small planet, we are same human beings. Meanwhile, global warming is a serious problem. Destruction of this planet is actually destruction of yourself. Our common responsibility should be work together, to save our world. We all have this marvelous human brain. The problem is, when negative emotions develop, our whole mind is taken over. So, we must deal with emotions.

I can change my mind. I can reduce anger, hatred. Nothing to do with religion. All religions carry the message of love, loving kindness, and tolerance. With different views, there is a possibility to synthesize new ideas. If majority of the world leaders become female, world become safer. I feel that. Compassion is the key factor. Non-violence, compassion and self-confidence, these are key factors for happy individual, happy community, peaceful world. This century should be century of compassion, century of peace. No more bloodshed. We should develop a big “we,” rather than “we” or “they.” With these wings, you can fly.” -DALAI LAMA

For decades, the Dalai Lama has been a global symbol of peace, compassion, and resilience, a spiritual leader living in exile from his home in Tibet. But how do you capture the essence of his wisdom—the kind that can truly change a life—in a way that feels intimate and personal? My guest today, documentary filmmaker Barbara Miller, has managed to do just that in her new film, Wisdom of Happiness. It’s a beautiful film that feels less like a documentary and more like a private, heart-to-heart conversation, where he invites us into his thoughts and shares practical steps for finding inner peace in a chaotic world.  She's dealt with anti-globalization, domestic violence, and the fight for female pleasure in her previous works. We’ll talk about how she shifted from exposing systemic pain to focusing on radical hope and her collaboration with Executive Producer Richard Gere and Manuel Bauer, the Dalai Lama’s personal photographer for the last thirty-five years, who made his cinematography debut with this film. She shares what the Dalai Lama taught her about living in harmony with our body, nature, and the world.

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“The Future of Life Institute has been working on AI governance-related issues for the last decade. We're already over 10 years old, and our mission is to steer very powerful technology away from large-scale harm and toward very beneficial outcomes. You could think about any kind of extreme risks from AI, all the way to existential or extinction risk, the worst kinds of risks and the benefits. You can think about any kind of large benefits that humans could achieve from technology, all the way through to utopia, right? Utopia is the biggest benefit you can get from technology. Historically, that has meant we have focused on climate change, for example, and the impact of climate change. We have also focused on bio-related risks, pandemics and nuclear security issues. If things go well, we will be able to avoid these really bad downsides in terms of existential risk, extinction risks, mass surveillance, and really disturbing futures. We can avoid that very harmful side of AI or technology, and we can achieve some of the benefits.”

Today, we take a closer look at the future of artificial intelligence and the policies that determine its place in our societies. Risto Uuk is Head of EU Policy and Research at the Future of Life Institute in Brussels, and a philosopher and researcher at KU Leuven, where he studies the systemic risks posed by AI. He has worked with the World Economic Forum, the European Commission, and leading thinkers like Stuart Russell and Daniel Susskind. He also runs one of the most widely read newsletters on the EU AI Act. As this technology is transforming economies, politics, and human life itself, we’ll talk about the promises and dangers of AI, how Europe is trying to regulate it, and what it means to build safeguards for a technology that may be more powerful than anything we’ve seen before.

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“At Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, I work with a very international team—people from all over the world, around 50 nationalities in this museum. I’ve never worked in such an environment, and it’s inspiring. When you talk to someone from a different country, you can’t help but be inspired. The most important thing for me is to feel fulfilled, and I find fulfillment in learning something new and being inspired every day. Of course, it doesn’t have to be the same for everyone. People can find fulfillment in charity or teaching kids. Everyone chooses what makes them feel fulfilled, as long as it’s meaningful.”

Art museums have long been pillars of culture, but they are now at a critical juncture, navigating a new era defined by artificial intelligence, immersive technology, and the shifting habits of a global audience. The challenge is immense: how do you honor artistic tradition while building a museum for the future? On Saadiyat Island, Abu Dhabi is answering this question in a dramatic way, with the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi. Designed by the visionary architect Frank Gehry, this $1 billion project is more than just a new museum; it’s a statement—a new cultural superpower announcing itself on the world stage. It will be the largest contemporary art museum in the world, several times the size of the Guggenheim in New York, and a key part of their constellation of museums that is expected to contribute an estimated $200 million annually to the local economy. In the lead-up to its 2027 opening, the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi is embracing a new vision: moving from an "exhibition economy" to an "experience economy," where art becomes a conversation, a laboratory for ideas at the intersection of creativity and technology. Amr Hussein is the Digital Media Manager for the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, and with a background in major sports broadcasting—from the FIFA World Cup to the Olympic Games—he’s bringing a unique perspective to digital storytelling in the arts. We talk to him about his journey and how he’s helping shape the digital narrative for this landmark museum.

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“Guggenheim Abu Dhabi is a unique concept. The idea behind the building itself is a dance. It's a living building because it's a dance between spaces. It's a dance between blocks of spaces and shapes and cones, and it's inspiring for the future because the legacy is a huge factor for every project. It's the legacy for young architects and for other architects. It gives them the space to dream more and to feel like it can be possible, and not to be shy. Present more bold ideas that can inspire creativity because you can't see this building and walk in without feeling like you want to be creative as well.”

Art museums have long been pillars of culture, but they are now at a critical juncture, navigating a new era defined by artificial intelligence, immersive technology, and the shifting habits of a global audience. The challenge is immense: how do you honor artistic tradition while building a museum for the future? On Saadiyat Island, Abu Dhabi is answering this question in a dramatic way, with the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi. Designed by the visionary architect Frank Gehry, this $1 billion project is more than just a new museum; it’s a statement—a new cultural superpower announcing itself on the world stage. It will be the largest contemporary art museum in the world, several times the size of the Guggenheim in New York, and a key part of their constellation of museums that is expected to contribute an estimated $200 million annually to the local economy. In the lead-up to its 2027 opening, the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi is embracing a new vision: moving from an "exhibition economy" to an "experience economy," where art becomes a conversation, a laboratory for ideas at the intersection of creativity and technology. Amr Hussein is the Digital Media Manager for the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, and with a background in major sports broadcasting—from the FIFA World Cup to the Olympic Games—he’s bringing a unique perspective to digital storytelling in the arts. We talk to him about his journey and how he’s helping shape the digital narrative for this landmark museum.

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“Poetry is like one of the great loves of my life, and I think it's probably the longest relationship I'll ever have. I read a lot of poetry. I also wrote these short stories even when I was pretty young, like in second grade, and the stories kept getting shorter and shorter. My family used to go to Damascus in Syria and Lebanon every summer for three months until 2011, when the Civil War broke out in Syria. In 2015, we made our first return after that gap, and my father and I went to Lebanon for two weeks. It's the first time I felt that I belong. To the extent that was true or not, I'm obviously irrevocably American. I speak broken Arabic. I don't think I could ever live in Lebanon or Syria. But for what it was worth at 15 years old, it was a life-changing trip. I wrote my first official poem on the plane back to San Diego from that trip, and I feel that was a formative moment for me. I felt that I had a story to tell and wanted to put it to paper in the form of poetry.”

In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liutalks with poet Maya Salameh about her poetry collection, How to Make an Algorithm in the Microwave, which won the prestigious Etel Adnan Poetry Prize in 2022. The judges remarked, “Maya Salameh’s poetry stood out for its inventiveness in cracking the code of life ‘between system and culture'…The turns and swerves the poems make are astonishing; the expectations they upend are remarkable… It’s a testament to the aesthetic boundaries and intellectual revolt poets of Arab heritage are pushing, breaking, and reinventing.” We talk about what led her to both technology and poetry, language and story-telling, and the challenges and joys of representing life in the diaspora. In a time of war and genocide, Salameh’s poetry shows how patterns of life and reproduction and desire persist. In her readings and discussions of three poems, we find a new lexicon and a new grammar.

Maya Salameh is the author of MERMAID THEORY (Haymarket Books, 2026), HOW TO MAKE AN ALGORITHM IN THE MICROWAVE (University of Arkansas Press, 2022), winner of the Etel Adnan Poetry Prize, and the chapbook rooh (Paper Nautilus Press, 2020). She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference, and the President’s Committee for the Arts and Humanities, and served as a National Student Poet, America’s highest honor for youth poets. Her work has appeared in The Offing, Poetry, Gulf Coast, The Rumpus, AGNI, Mizna, and the LA Times, among others. @mayaslmhhttps://speakingoutofplace.com Bluesky @palumboliu.bsky.social
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“There's something fundamental about the value of art and culture. Not just being integrated for vocational reasons, but because the experience of art and having a cultural element in one's life brings enjoyment, learning, relief, or any of the many experiences and feelings that art provides. I think this is quite fundamental as an element of life. Creativity is key in any career and also in personal life, especially in terms of problem-solving, relationships, kindness, compassion, and empathy. The arts, creativity, and the cultural world at large are not just nice to have; they are essential. Their value is fundamental, although sometimes it's extremely difficult to define. To see the arts lost from the developmental moments in one's life is tragic. Developmental moments in life come at all points in the arc of one's existence. To see that taken or diminished is unfortunate. Everyone involved in working with artists, artists themselves, or those who are creative knows this and believes in it.”

Today, we have with us a figure from the heart of the London art scene, Hannah Barry. At a moment when the art world often feels centered on global mega-galleries, Hannah has cultivated something truly unique in Peckham. With her gallery and the ambitious non-profit, Bold Tendencies, she has created a vibrant platform for a new generation of artists, taking risks and championing experimentation. She has been pivotal in shaping careers and bringing ambitious projects to life. We'll talk to her about the mission behind her work, her journey as a gallerist, and her latest exhibitions, including The Garden with the photographer Harley Weir.

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“My book is called Empire of AI because I'm trying to articulate this argument and illustrate that these companies operate exactly like empires of old. I highlight four features that essentially encapsulate the three things you read. However, I started talking about it in a different way after writing the book.

The four features are: they lay claim to resources that are not their own, which is the centralization of resources; they exploit an extraordinary amount of labor, both in the development of the technology and the fact that they're producing labor-automating technologies that then suppress workers' ability to bargain for better rights; they monopolize knowledge production, which comes when they centralize talent.”

In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with investigative journalist Karen Hao. She explains that OpenAI is anything but “open”—very early on, it left behind that marketing tag to become increasingly closed and elitist. Her massive study, Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI had a rather different subtitle in its UK edition: Inside the reckless race of total domination. She fleshes out the overlap between these two points of emphasis. Hao argues that in general, the AI mission “centralizes talent around a grand ambition” and “centralizes capital and other resources while eliminating roadblocks, regulation, and dissent.” All the while, “the mission remains so vague that it can be interpreted and reinterpreted to direct the centralization of talent, capital, resources, however the centralizer wants.” Karen explains that she chose the word “empire” precisely to indicate the colonial nature of AI’s domination: the tremendous damage this enterprise does to the poor, to racial and ethnic minorities, and to the Global South in general in terms of minds, bodies, the environment, natural resources, and any notion of democracy. This is a discussion everyone should be part of.

Karen Hao is a bestselling author and award-winning reporter covering the impacts of artificial intelligence on society. She was the first journalist to profile OpenAI and wrote a book, Empire of AI, about the company and its global implications, which became an instant New York Times bestseller. She writes for publications including The Atlantic and leads the Pulitzer Center's AI Spotlight Series, a program that trains thousands of journalists worldwide on how to cover AI. She was formerly a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, covering American and Chinese tech companies, and a senior editor for AI at MIT Technology Review. Her work is regularly taught in universities and cited by governments. She has received numerous accolades for her coverage, including an American Humanist Media Award, an American National Magazine Award for Journalists Under 30, and the TIME100 AI. She received her Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering from MIT.

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“I feel that when you don't tell your story, it's as if you have a limited existence. We can always have some kind of choice, but I'm saying that the story we choose may be the most crucial choice that we make, because this story will affect all the other choices.”

Etgar Keret is one of the most inventive and celebrated short story writers of his generation, a voice that captures the absurdities and profound loneliness of modern life with a deceptive, almost casual wit. His work, translated into dozens of languages, uses fantastical premises—from alien visitations to parallel universes—to illuminate the most human of truths. His new collection, Autocorrect, explores a world grappling with technology, loss, and the aftershocks of a global pandemic and, more recently, war. His awards include the Cannes Film Festival’s Caméra d’Or (2007), the Charles Bronfman Prize (2016), and the pres­tigious Sapir Prize (2018). Over a hundred short films and several feature films have been based on his stories. Keret teaches creative writing at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. He now has a weekly newsletter on Substack called Alphabet Soup. He's also the new MFA Director of the Jewish Theological Seminary, where he's pioneering a new approach to storytelling. Joining me today from Tel Aviv is the great Israeli writer and filmmaker Etgar Keret.

“When I write my stories, I don't want to solve things in life. I just want to persuade myself that there is a way out. Maybe I am in a cell, maybe I'm trapped. Maybe I won't make it, but if I can imagine a plan for escape, then I'll be less trapped because at least in my mind, there is a way. I think that my parents are survivors. They always talked about this idea of humanity. My parents always said to me, when you look at people, don't look at their political views; that's not important. Look at the way that they look at you. If they see you, if they listen to you, if they can understand your intention, even if it's a failing one, they're your people. And if they can't, it doesn't matter.

I think that when I came with my mother and father, they thought there are people, there are human beings, and there are people who want to be human beings but are still struggling. And you go with humanity; you go with the person who can go against his ideology if his heart tells him something.”

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“When I write my stories, I don't want to solve things in life. I just want to persuade myself that there is a way out. Maybe I am in a cell, maybe I'm trapped. Maybe I won't make it, but if I can imagine a plan for escape, then I'll be less trapped because at least in my mind, there is a way. I think that my parents are survivors. They always talked about this idea of humanity. My parents always said to me, when you look at people, don't look at their political views; that's not important. Look at the way that they look at you. If they see you, if they listen to you, if they can understand your intention, even if it's a failing one, they're your people. And if they can't, it doesn't matter.

I think that when I came with my mother and father, they thought there are people, there are human beings, and there are people who want to be human beings but are still struggling. And you go with humanity; you go with the person who can go against his ideology if his heart tells him something.”

Etgar Keret is one of the most inventive and celebrated short story writers of his generation, a voice that captures the absurdities and profound loneliness of modern life with a deceptive, almost casual wit. His work, translated into dozens of languages, uses fantastical premises—from alien visitations to parallel universes—to illuminate the most human of truths. His new collection, Autocorrect, explores a world grappling with technology, loss, and the aftershocks of a global pandemic and, more recently, war. His awards include the Cannes Film Festival’s Caméra d’Or (2007), the Charles Bronfman Prize (2016), and the pres­tigious Sapir Prize (2018). Over a hundred short films and several feature films have been based on his stories. Keret teaches creative writing at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. He now has a weekly newsletter on Substack called Alphabet Soup. He's also the new MFA Director of the Jewish Theological Seminary, where he's pioneering a new approach to storytelling. Joining me today from Tel Aviv is the great Israeli writer and filmmaker Etgar Keret.

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“One day, I woke up with this concept of oil being tied up in our lives in ways that we don't talk about. It’s sort of a value-theoretical approach to climate change and the climate crisis. Something that's impersonal and goes to the root of our entire social metabolic structure.”

In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liuwelcomes Malcolm Harris back to the show. Previously, he talked with us about his mammoth study, Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World. This time, we are looking not at a history of Capitalism and the World, but our possible futures under the threat of catastrophic climate change. We talk about not only failed policies, but failed perspectives on society, politics, and culture, and focus on a deadly form of Value that has led us to the abyss precisely because it has emanated from a basic rift between humans and the world. It is a rift that Capital has always both fed and exploited, but will end up exhausting a finite resource—the Planet. We talk about what is needed to heal this, what we are up against, and his latest book, What's Left: Three Paths Through the Planetary Crisis.

Malcolm Harris is the author of the national bestseller Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Kids These Days: The Making of Millennials; and Shit is Fucked Up and Bullshit: History Since the End of History. He was born in Santa Cruz, CA and graduated from the University of Maryland.

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“I think my role and where I'm most comfortable is focusing on the economic harms that the choices this administration is making will limit access to affordable, clean energy. Affordable energy overall, and that they will wind up harming the American people. EDF is standing up and fighting the Trump administration in court every single day. We believe, based on the facts and the law, that we have very good cases and expect to see more wins than not. When the government sets aside all of the things they need to do to land appropriately and just say, "We don't care. This is what Donald Trump wants," there is recourse to step in, intervene, and challenge that. They were sloppy the first time he was president. They're even more brazen now.”

David Kieve has been on the front lines of some of the most critical environmental debates of our time. Before becoming president of EDF Action, the advocacy and political arm of the Environmental Defense Fund, he was in the White House as the director of public engagement at the Council on Environmental Quality. But his journey to the West Wing started on the campaign trail, where he was tasked with a unique role: convincing a broad coalition of voters that Joe Biden was the candidate to tackle the climate crisis. He is a strategist who understands not just the science of climate change but what it takes to implement those policies. We talk about connecting climate policy to everyday costs and the political will required to confront climate change.

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“The origin was really trying to make sense of that 2016-2017 moment and to ask whether the alt-right was, as we were being told, a return to the 1930s, a kind of awakening of the sleeping beast of white supremacy armed in the streets in the United States. There are many explanations, but I decided to take this kind of curious route in with the distorted readings and reinterpretations of the works of people like Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek. As a scholar of comparative literature, I wanted to write a revision based on Crack-Up Capitalism.”

In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liutalks with Quinn Slobodian about his new book, Hayek’s Bastards: Race, Gold, IQ, and the Capitalism of the Far Right. He takes a deep dive into the genesis of a weird and powerful merging of two seemingly different groups the Far Right and neoliberals. Slobodian writes, “as repellent as their politics may be these radical thinkers are not barbarians the gates of neoliberalism but the bastard offspring of that line of thought itself.” They talk about how this meshing is driven by a primitive desire to ward off egalitarianism, difference, democracy, and government that services the common good. The wide-ranging talk ends with addressing DOGE, Trump's tariffs, and yes, the Jeffrey Epstein case.

Quinn Slobodian is a professor of international history at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University. His books, which have been translated into ten languages, include Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism, Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World without Democracy, and Hayek’s Bastards: Race, Gold, IQ and the Capitalism of the Far Right . A Guggenheim Fellow for 2025-6, he has been an associate fellow at Chatham House and held residential fellowships at Harvard University and Free University Berlin. Project Syndicate put him on a list of 30 Forward Thinkers and Prospect UK named him one of the World’s 25 Top Thinkers.https://speakingoutofplace.com Bluesky @palumboliu.bsky.social
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In this time of rapid technological change, how do we hold onto our humanity? How do stories, traditions, and community help us find meaning in loss and face an uncertain future? How can science, art, and spirituality open new pathways to understanding ourselves and the human experience?

PAUL SHRIVASTAVA (Co-President of The Club of Rome) discusses the need for a holistic, eco-civilizational future, emphasizing that science, technology, and economics are important but not the whole picture. He urges us to design our own lives and livelihoods to meet diverse ecological futures, and later highlights the importance of embodied, emotional, and spiritual learning as essential to evolving human consciousness in a technologically dominated world.

BAYO AKOMOLAFE (Philosopher, Psychologist, Writer & Founder of the Emergence Network) shares a deeply personal story about the loss of his father, describing how it forced him to mature quickly and become the breadwinner for his family. He reflects on the lessons learned from his children, especially his autistic son, who teaches him about grace, possibility, and futurity.

MICHEL FORST (Human Rights Advocate & the UN Special Rapporteur on Environmental Defenders) explores how theology and meditation serve as ongoing sources of inspiration, shaping his values and career choices in human rights advocacy.

DR. GUY LESCHZINER(Neurologist & Author of The Nocturnal Brain, The Man Who Tasted Words & other books; Consultant Neurologist & Professor at King's College London) analyzes the concept of free will, suggesting that much of what we do is influenced by factors beyond our control. He also discusses the importance of striving to make the world better, the role of sleep and dreams in memory and emotional processing, and the changing nature of mentorship and education.

EIREN CAFFALL (Musician & Author of All the Water in the World) highlights the importance of preserving knowledge and human history, imagining how future generations might rebuild society after catastrophe by holding onto stories, traditions, and the hope of repair.

DR. FERNANDO GARCÍA-MORENO (Neuroscientist, Ikerbasque Research Associate at the Achucarro Basque Centre for Neuroscience) explains that while our brains have not changed biologically for thousands of years, cultural evolution has accelerated. He emphasizes the unique human roles of generating and transmitting knowledge across generations.

NATASHA HAKIMI ZAPATA (Journalist, Author of Another World Is Possible: Lessons for America From Around the Globe) shares her inspiration from the generosity and hope she encounters in others, and describes how connecting with nature—especially bodies of water—reinforces the importance of conservation policies that integrate human communities into ecosystems.

IRVIN WEATHERSBY JR. (Author of In Open Contempt) reflects on the influence of his church upbringing and family, especially his grandmother, on his writing and creative expression. He discusses the impact of music, particularly hip hop, and the importance of lyricism and cultural heritage in shaping his literary voice.

To hear more from each guest, listen to their full interviews.

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“If we look at the entire history of the human experience, if you saw some text or you heard some spoken language, you could 100 percent reliably infer that there was a human who created that. Our experience of having that text or that image generated for us is very akin to the experience of a magic trick, and we sort of pre-subconsciously want to attribute some kind of intelligence to what's going on on the other side.

At the core of the work is that sense of curiosity, that sense of joy, that sense of beauty, and that sense of learning. I've been fortunate to have all kinds of strange and interesting experiences, whether that's seeing weird things in the sky over secret military bases in the middle of the Nevada desert, going scuba diving and finding internet cables on the bottom of the ocean, or tracking spy satellites in the sky and being able to predict when they'll appear in a flash against the backdrop of stars. The world around us is extraordinary and embodied, right? It is not on screens, and I’m very privileged to have that be so much a part of my process.”

Trevor Paglen is an artist whose work makes the invisible visible, whether he's photographing secret government sites from miles away or revealing the hidden infrastructures of mass surveillance. He's a geographer by training, and he combines investigative journalism with his art practice to explore the hidden power structures of our time, including military technology and artificial intelligence. His work has been exhibited in major museums around the world, and he's also an award-winning author. His exhibitions, like 'The Black Sites' and 'Limit Tele-photography,’ have earned him critical acclaim, including a MacArthur Fellowship. He's recently opened a new exhibition at Pace Gallery in New York called Cardinals (Jun 26–Aug 15) which delves into the intriguing connections between UFO sightings, AI, and the spread of disinformation.

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“There's a word for this brain rot, right? I think that's very real. There are studies coming out now that are showing that the more and more of our cognitive labor we offload to AI systems, the less creative we become, the less critical we become, and the less of our human faculties for reason we use. There's something sad about that, but there’s also something dangerous about it because that leaves us very open to being manipulated. The surveillance capitalism kind of economy of extracting data from every possible moment of everyday life in order to extract value. The sensor systems that we're surrounded with are not simply passive devices that are recording us; they are increasingly becoming active sculptors of our experience of reality. Playing dirty.

If we look at the entire history of the human experience, if you saw some text or you heard some spoken language, you could 100 percent reliably infer that there was a human who created that. Our experience of having that text or that image generated for us is very akin to the experience of a magic trick, and we sort of pre-subconsciously want to attribute some kind of intelligence to what's going on on the other side.

I’m trying to think about these other media strategies, whether that's UFO photography, psychological operations, magic, or neuroscience, and take them seriously as contributing factors to the changing visual culture. With the collection at Pace Gallery, (New York, Jun 26–Aug 15) it was really just to put those images together and show them. They’re all photographed on film. A lot of them are photographed on instant film. They’re not images that are made with AI; they're not images that are photoshopped. What I really wanted to get at was thinking about the ways in which what we see in an image is very often what we're predisposed to see. I am playing with these mechanics of perception and proposing that as a way of thinking about images now.

At the core of the work is that sense of curiosity, that sense of joy, that sense of beauty, and that sense of learning. I've been fortunate to have all kinds of strange and interesting experiences, whether that's seeing weird things in the sky over secret military bases in the middle of the Nevada desert, going scuba diving and finding internet cables on the bottom of the ocean, or tracking spy satellites in the sky and being able to predict when they'll appear in a flash against the backdrop of stars. The world around us is extraordinary and embodied, right? It is not on screens, and I’m very privileged to have that be so much a part of my process.”

Trevor Paglen is an artist whose work makes the invisible visible, whether he's photographing secret government sites from miles away or revealing the hidden infrastructures of mass surveillance. He's a geographer by training, and he combines investigative journalism with his art practice to explore the hidden power structures of our time, including military technology and artificial intelligence. His work has been exhibited in major museums around the world, and he's also an award-winning author. His exhibitions, like 'The Black Sites' and 'Limit Tele-photography,’ have earned him critical acclaim, including a MacArthur Fellowship. He's recently opened a new exhibition at Pace Gallery in New York called Cardinals, which delves into the intriguing connections between UFO sightings, AI, and the spread of disinformation.

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“We're living in a fascinating time, and unfortunately, to an extent, Europe and, very much so, North America are trying to hold onto the past while other parts of the world, like China, Taiwan, Korea, and Japan, are looking to the future. As an Italian citizen and an English citizen, I feel that we’ve left ourselves behind and that others are taking leaps forward. This isn't just about climate science; it’s about big geopolitics. It's about who wins the power battle over the dominant economy, economic thinking, and currencies. Do we have a reserve currency in the petrodollar? All these things are now being questioned in 2025. We're in an extraordinary period of history.”

For decades, the conversation around climate change often felt abstract, a distant threat. But what happens when that threat collides with the very concrete world of finance, with investments, and with the bottom line? Mark Campanale has been at the forefront of this critical intersection for over two decades. He's a veteran of sustainable finance, having helped launch some of the earliest responsible investment funds. But it's his work with the Carbon Tracker Initiative that has truly reshaped how we understand the economic risks of a fossil fuel-dependent future. Carbon Tracker, an independent financial think tank, introduced concepts like the "carbon bubble" and "stranded assets"—terms that have not only become central to the divestment movement but are now indispensable for investors and regulators trying to navigate the path to decarbonization. Mark Campanale and the Carbon Tracker Initiative have made it impossible to ignore the financial implications of a warming planet.

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“Carbon Tracker is a non-profit financial think tank focused on change and the energy transition. I set it up because I spent 20 years working in the financial world, and I noticed that a lot of coal, oil, and gas projects, even with all the evidence we know about climate change, were getting financed through banks and the stock market. It was almost as if investors were completely disregarding what climate change was going to do within our lifetime. What I wanted to do was challenge that, challenge the way people think, and challenge the financial operators, the bankers, stock exchange regulators, and investors to think about what climate change was going to do and what we could do about it. We're saying to the owners of these companies, the shareholders, ‘Why don't you think about what the world will look like in 50 years, and why are you putting these young people's pensions into coal, which we know is going to destroy the planet?’ ”

For decades, the conversation around climate change often felt abstract, a distant threat. But what happens when that threat collides with the very concrete world of finance, with investments, and with the bottom line? Mark Campanale has been at the forefront of this critical intersection for over two decades. He's a veteran of sustainable finance, having helped launch some of the earliest responsible investment funds. But it's his work with the Carbon Tracker Initiative that has truly reshaped how we understand the economic risks of a fossil fuel-dependent future. Carbon Tracker, an independent financial think tank, introduced concepts like the "carbon bubble" and "stranded assets"—terms that have not only become central to the divestment movement but are now indispensable for investors and regulators trying to navigate the path to decarbonization. Mark Campanale and the Carbon Tracker Initiative have made it impossible to ignore the financial implications of a warming planet.

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“Abolishing Silicon Valley means freeing the development of technology from a system that will always relegate it to a subordinate role, that of entrenching existing power relations. It means designing a new system that isn't deluged in the logic of the bucket. It means liberating our worlds from the illegitimate ring of capital. Perhaps this sounds unfair to capital. Perhaps I sound like I'm not grateful enough for everything that capital has given us, but we don't owe capital anything; the things we attribute to capital were built by workers.

People can labor and sometimes die in a process. Their contributions are unrecognized in death as in life. So don't thank capital. It doesn't deserve our gratitude, and it doesn't need it. Thank the people who created everything that capital always takes credit for. Capital is a means of accounting for wealth ownership, not its creation. And that means it's perpetually shrouded in a fundamental untruth; we can leap the swamp of capital behind and start over with something new. “

In this episode on Speaking Out of Place podcast Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with Wendy Liu. Ever since its publication, Abolish Silicon Valley—How to Liberate Technology from Capitalism has proven to be more urgent and insightful. Today, he talks with author Wendy Liu about how developments like AI and LLM, further erosions of intellectual property, and increased invasions of privacy make the case for abolishing Silicon Valley even more important. They talk about how abolition is critical at a time when more and more the private sector has come to eviscerate the public good. Turning to the genocide in Gaza, they discuss the ways Capital has enlisted technology in deadly and horrific manners. They end with a meditation on the commons and how one can live with fewer commodities and find value in common projects to make life more valuable and worthwhile outside of the logic of the market.

Wendy Liu is the author of Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology From Capitalism, a memoir/manifesto about the tech industry from the perspective of a former believer. She lives in San Francisco and is working on a novel.

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“For us, I think it really is about trust and commitments, and I don't think that has necessarily changed over the years. As we work on that, obviously, we are very much invested in how we can engage an audience and spark the curiosity that people are looking for. The most important thing often is how we can spark that curiosity in ourselves. As a way of working, which I think is the most important framework for an institution, the institution should constantly want to learn and evolve, and it isn't a static place. Particularly coming from the opportunity of not being a collecting institution, we are ever-evolving and ever-changing.”

Nicola Lees is truly pushing the boundaries of what a museum can be. Since 2020, she has been director of the Aspen Art Museum, a non-collecting, artist-founded institution dedicated to experimentation and supporting the most innovative voices in contemporary art. Under her direction, the AAM has just unveiled an ambitious, decade-long initiative called AIR Aspen. From July 26–August 1, 2025, AIR isn't just another program; it's the first artist-led global summit, a bold undertaking that will bring together artists, cultural leaders, policymakers, and influencers for yearly talks, performances, workshops, and an annual retreat. It’s designed to explore the profound role of art in addressing the big questions of our time, from AI to how we relate to one another. The inaugural theme, "Life As No One Knows It," promises to be a deeply engaging exploration of what it means to be alive in an era of rapid technological and environmental change, and it will feature an extraordinary roster of creatives whose work transcends traditional disciplines, including Francis Kéré, Paul Chan, Aria Dean, Glenn Ligon, and Maya Lin.
Before her tenure in Aspen, Nicola Lees made her mark as the director and curator of New York University’s 80WSE and as a curator for Frieze Projects at Frieze London. Today, we’ll delve into her philosophy of art, leadership, and the transformative power of this new initiative.

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“As a writer, I do believe that art and literature in and of themselves are important. I'm going to keep on writing novels, and one of the most important reasons why is because, as you mentioned, language is crucial. Part of the way that states and authoritarian regimes exercise their power is not just through physical violence and intimidation, but through a maltreatment of language itself. Trump is a perfect example of this. Everything that comes out of his mouth in terms of language is horrifying for anybody with any sensitivity to language. The excesses of his language in terms of insults and hyperbolic praise for his fans are perfect examples of how language is used by an authoritarian and by the state to obfuscate reality and intimidate people. That language is ugly from my perspective, and there is something about being committed to literature and to art that awakens us to the importance of beauty.

I think about what John Keats, the poet, said: beauty is truth, truth beauty. You can't separate these kinds of things. If you're committed to the beauty of language, you're also committed to the idea that language has a relationship to truth. You can see that authoritarians don't have a relationship to truth. They have a relationship to the abuse of truth and to lying, not only in content but in the form of their language as well. There is a crucial role for writers here in our relationship to language because language is one of the most crucial ways that authoritarianism extends its power. What I've discovered as a writer is that fear is a good indicator that there is a truth. To speak the truth in a society is oftentimes an act that requires some courage.”

Viet Thanh Nguyen has spent much of his life exploring the stories we tell—and the stories we erase—about war, migration, and memory. His 2015 debut novel The Sympathizer, about a communist double agent in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, won the Pulitzer Prize and a long list of other major literary awards. In 2024, The Sympathizer was adapted into a critically acclaimed HBO series directed by Park Chan-wook.He followed it with The Committed, and his latest work, To Save and to Destroy: Writing as an Other, a meditation on writing, power, and the politics of representation.

Nguyen is also the author of Nothing Ever Dies, a finalist for the National Book Award in nonfiction, and the short story collection The Refugees. He’s edited collections like The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives, and most recently the Library of America volume for Maxine Hong Kingston, who was once his teacher.

He was born in Vietnam, came to the U.S. as a refugee, and is now a professor at the University of Southern California. He’s received Guggenheim and MacArthur fellowships, honorary doctorates, and has been named a Chevalier by the French Ministry of Culture. Today, we’ll talk about his books, America’s forever wars, and how the act of writing—across fiction, memoir, and scholarship—can become both a form of resistance and a way of making sense of being, as he puts it in his memoir “A Man of Two Faces.”

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“It's a complicated time to think about how we can slow down, be still, and bring a brilliant group of people together to do something that feels purposeful and can be productive. It's a moment where things are moving so fast. When I brought up the idea of a hinge generation, I think it's impossible to know how we will look back and reflect on this time and these moments. We are very invested in enabling people to build new relationships. What we've found from these past gatherings in Aspen is that those are the things people still talk about from 40, 50, or 60 years ago. You were also asking about a relationship with the environment. I think Maya Lin, who is coming to give a keynote lecture, is someone who is very invested in that conversation.

We are also working with the Serpentine Gallery and Hans Ulrich Obrist on the keynote lectures. Francis Kéré is also coming to talk about the sustainability of his architectural practice and how that navigates the world differently. We're also working with Storefront for Architecture, who have done this brilliant swamp project for the last two years. This year, there is a real emphasis on the relationship between the question we have posed for the retreat, which is fundamentally about our relationship with technology and identifying our relationship with the world and how we want to be present in the moment.

Nicola Lees is truly pushing the boundaries of what a museum can be. Since 2020, she has been director of the Aspen Art Museum, a non-collecting, artist-founded institution dedicated to experimentation and supporting the most innovative voices in contemporary art. Under her direction, the AAM has just unveiled an ambitious, decade-long initiative called AIR Aspen. From July 26–August 1, 2025, AIR isn't just another program; it's the first artist-led global summit, a bold undertaking that will bring together artists, cultural leaders, policymakers, and influencers for yearly talks, performances, workshops, and an annual retreat. It’s designed to explore the profound role of art in addressing the big questions of our time, from AI to how we relate to one another. The inaugural theme, "Life As No One Knows It," promises to be a deeply engaging exploration of what it means to be alive in an era of rapid technological and environmental change, and it will feature an extraordinary roster of creatives whose work transcends traditional disciplines, including Francis Kéré, Paul Chan, Aria Dean, Glenn Ligon, and Maya Lin.
Before her tenure in Aspen, Nicola Lees made her mark as the director and curator of New York University’s 80WSE and as a curator for Frieze Projects at Frieze London. Today, we’ll delve into her philosophy of art, leadership, and the transformative power of this new initiative.

“For us, I think it really is about trust and commitments, and I don't think that has necessarily changed over the years. As we work on that, obviously, we are very much invested in how we can engage an audience and spark the curiosity that people are looking for. The most important thing often is how we can spark that curiosity in ourselves. As a way of working, which I think is the most important framework for an institution, the institution should constantly want to learn and evolve, and it isn't a static place. Particularly coming from the opportunity of not being a collecting institution, we are ever-evolving and ever-changing.”

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“I think I've always been interested in the far-right end of technology, or I should say for several years that’s what I’ve been studying. However, I kept feeling that gender was understudied in these elements. When I was studying the alt-right online, the focus more than anything else was frequently on white nationalism and the racial dynamic. The scholars whose work really inspired me, like sociologist Jesse Daniels, showed how the racial dynamic was always interconnected with the gender dynamic. As I started following breadcrumbs and looking at certain figures, it became clear that gender was at the heart of their worldview, and there was no getting around it. There were absolutely elements around race and immigration and all sorts of different topics, but in many ways, gender was the core of the worldview, and everything else emanated from there.”

Worries about the so-called “pussification of Silicon Valley” are not at all new. In this episode on Speaking Out of Place podcast Professor David Palumbo-Liutalks with Becca Lewis. Her work reaches far back in American history to trace the nexus of gender, technology, and entrepreneurship, such that what we find today seems a foregone conclusion. In today’s wide-ranging discussion we talk about the central figure in this history—George Gilder, whose first book, Sexual Suicide, and subsequent forays into technology, conservative politics, and capitalism included much of what we see today in things like the echo chambers of misinformation of Fox News and the alienated “freedom” of Elon Musk’s SpaceX City. Who are these men, who Becca says, “leave behind the messy physical flows of women’s bodies in favor of the streamlined capitalism of male genius”?

Becca Lewis is a postdoctoral fellow at the Stanford University Department of Communication and an incoming assistant professor of Comparative Media Studies at MIT. Her work examines the rise of reactionary politics in Silicon Valley and online. In September 2024, she received her PhD in Communication from Stanford University. She previously worked as a researcher at the Data & Society Research Institute, where she published flagship reports on far-right online broadcasting, media manipulation, and disinformation. Her work has been published in academic journals including New Media & Society, Social Media + Society, and American Behavioral Scientist, and in news outlets such as The Guardian and Business Insider. In 2022, she served as an expert witness in the defamation lawsuit brought against Alex Jones by the parents of a Sandy Hook shooting victim.

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“ It's a really dangerous time we're living through, and I do think that when we talk about these progressive policies, a huge problem in the US is that we still have a lot of stigma left over from the Cold War that keeps us from really great ideas because they're branded as socialist or communist. And I’ve seen, in the time I've been a journalist for the past 15 years, how that stigma has slowly faded. And you see that younger people are more and more interested in these ideas, whether or not they're considered socialist.”

Natasha Hakimi Zapata is an award-winning journalist, translator, and university lecturer based in Europe. She is the author of Another World Is Possible: Lessons for America From Around the Globe.Her articles appear regularly in The Nation, In These Times, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. She is the former foreign editor of Truthdig and has received several Southern California Journalism and National Arts & Entertainment Journalism awards, most recently in 2024 for her work as a foreign correspondent.

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In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with Lindsay Weinberg and Robert Ovetz about the use of Artificial Intelligence in higher education. Under the guise of “personalizing” education and increasing efficiency, universities are increasingly sold on AI as a cure to their financial ills as public funds dry up and college applications drop. Rather than maintain that education is an essential public good that needs broad support, universities are looking to technology in ways that are changing the nature of education in dangerous and destructive ways. As Lindsay writes in the book, Smart University: “Higher education is becoming increasingly synonymous with digital surveillance in the United States. Advanced network infrastructure, internet- connected devices and sensors, radio frequency identification (RFID), data analytics, and artificial intelligence (AI) are being celebrated as a means of ushering in the age of “smart universities,” one where institutions canrun their services more efficiently and strengthen the quality of higher education using digital tools. However, as this book demonstrates, these tools have a darker side. They allow public universities to respond to and perpetuate corporate logics of austerity, use student data to reduce risk of financial investment in the face of dwindling public resources, and track student behavior to encourage compliance with institutional metrics of success. Surveillance of student behavior forms the foundation of the smart university, often in ways that prove harmful to students— particularly those who are already marginalized within the academy.

They talk about these issues and attach them to critical issues of labor—everything from the outsourcing of the most dangerous work to laborers in the Global South, to the way university workers at all levels are subordinated to the logic that drives AI. They end with a discussion of what we can and should do about it.

Dr. Lindsay Weinberg is a clinical associate professor in the Honors College at Purdue University, and the Director of the Tech Justice Lab. Her research and teaching are at the intersection of science and technology studies, media studies, and feminist studies, with an emphasis on the social and ethical impacts of digital technology. She is interested in the constitutive role that history and unequal power relations play in shaping the design,

Robert Ovetz, Ph.D. is a Senior Lecturer in Political Science and teaches non-profit management and labor relations in the Master of Public Administration program at San José State University. He is the author and editor of four books, including We the Elites (Pluto, 2022), and the forthcoming Rebels for the System: NGOs and Capitalism (2025 Haymarket Press).

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What happens when the state, with the pretext of protecting public safety, can detain indefinitely certain individuals whose dreams seem to indicate they may be capable of committing a crime? Set in a precarious world where sleep-enhancing devices and algorithms provide the tools and formulae for making one’s unconscious a witness to one’s possible waking life, this novel touches on a myriad of political, philosophical, and moral concerns as they particularly connect to issues of gender, race, ethnicity, privacy, and the security state.

In this episode of Speaking Out of Place podcast Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with award-winning novelist Laila Lalami about her new novel, The Dream Hotel. Laila Lalami is the author of five books, including The Moor’s Account, which won the American Book Award, the Arab-American Book Award, and the Hurston / Wright Legacy Award. It was on the longlist for the Booker Prize and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. Her most recent novel, The Other Americans, was a national bestseller, won the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, and was a finalist for the National Book Award in Fiction. Her books have been translated into twenty languages. Her essays have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, The Nation, Harper’s, the Guardian, and the New York Times. She has been awarded fellowships from the British Council, the Fulbright Program, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University. She lives in Los Angeles.

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We are working in the lab to understand this moment in development, which is called phylotypic. This is something that has been known for over a hundred years. When you see many vertebrate embryos at this early embryonic time point, all embryos look very, very similar. We are extrapolating these ideas to the brain. We have seen that at this time point, the phylotypic period, all brains of these species are very simple but very closely related. We share the same features with a fish or with a gecko or with any other mammalian species at this early time point. We have the same brain with the same genes active and the same cell types involved in it.

Dr. Fernando García-Moreno is a neuroscientist whose work explores the deep evolutionary roots of the brain—and what they reveal about identity, complexity, and even the future of technology. From the thalamus to the phylotypic brain, his research uncovers how our most fundamental brain structures co-evolve—and how they shape, and limit, the way we think. As we navigate an age shaped by AI and rapid innovation, Fernando brings a powerful lens: one that reminds us where we come from—and what evolution may still be writing into our futures. He is an Ikerbasque Research Associate at the Achucarro Basque Centre for Neuroscience.

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“What I meant when I said there is no AI is that I don't think we serve ourselves well when we put our own technology up as if it were a new God that we created. I think we confuse ourselves too easily. This goes back to Alan Turing, the main founder of computer science, who had this idea of the Turing test. In the test, you can't tell whether the computer has gotten more human-like or the human has gotten more computer-like. People are very prone to becoming more computer-like. When we're on social media, we let ourselves be guided by the algorithms, so we start to become dumb in the way the algorithms want us to. You see that all the time. It's really degraded our psychologies and our society.”

Jaron Lanier is a pioneering technologist, writer, and musician, best known for coining the term “Virtual Reality” and founding VPL Research, the first company to sell VR products. He led early breakthroughs in virtual worlds, avatars, and VR applications in fields like surgery and media. Lanier writes on the philosophy and economics of technology in his bestselling book Who Owns the Future? and You Are Not a Gadget. His book Dawn of the New Everything: Encounters with Reality and Virtual Reality is an inventive blend of autobiography, science writing, and philosophy. Lanier has been named one of TIME’s 100 most influential people and serves as Prime Unifying Scientist at Microsoft’s Office of the CTO—aka “Octopus.” As a musician, he’s performed with Sara Bareilles, Philip Glass, T Bone Burnett, Laurie Anderson, Jon Batiste, and others.

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“AI is obviously the dominant topic in tech lately, and I think occasionally there's AI that's nonsense, and occasionally there's AI that's great. I love finding new proteins for medicine and so on. I don't think we serve ourselves well when we put our own technology up as if it were a new God that we created. I think we're really getting a little too full of ourselves to think that. This goes back to Alan Turing, the main founder of computer science, who had this idea of the Turing test. In the test, you can't tell whether the computer has gotten more human-like or the human has gotten more computer-like. People are very prone to becoming more computer-like. When we're on social media, we let ourselves be guided by the algorithms, so we start to become dumb in the way the algorithms want us to. You see that all the time. It's really degraded our psychologies and our society.”

Jaron Lanier is a pioneering technologist, writer, and musician, best known for coining the term “Virtual Reality” and founding VPL Research, the first company to sell VR products. He led early breakthroughs in virtual worlds, avatars, and VR applications in fields like surgery and media. Lanier writes on the philosophy and economics of technology in his bestselling book Who Owns the Future? and You Are Not a Gadget. His book Dawn of the New Everything: Encounters with Reality and Virtual Reality is an inventive blend of autobiography, science writing, and philosophy. Lanier has been named one of TIME’s 100 most influential people and serves as Prime Unifying Scientist at Microsoft’s Office of the CTO—aka “Octopus.” As a musician, he’s performed with Sara Bareilles, Philip Glass, T Bone Burnett, Laurie Anderson, Jon Batiste, and others.

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“The three ills of democracy that I propose to address with this method, which we've perfected over the last several decades. Democracy is supposed to make some connection with the "will of the people." But how can we estimate the will of the people when everyone is trying to manipulate it?”

James S. Fishkin holds the Janet M. Peck Chair in International Communication at Stanford University where he is Professor of Communication, Professor of Political Science (by courtesy), Senior Fellow of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and Director of the Deliberative Democracy Lab. He is also a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. His work focuses on Deliberative Polling, a process of deliberative public consultation that has been conducted more than 150 times around the world. He is the author of Can Deliberation Cure the Ills of Democracy?, Democracy When the People Are Thinking (OUP) and other books.

“Deliberative democracy is itself, when properly done, a kind of democracy that can speak to the interests of a community. And we need that all over the world.”

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How can we meet the Paris Climate Accords through Environmental Credit Solutions?

Bill Flederbach is the President & CEO of ClimeCo and is a respected leader in the global environmental commodities market. Following his favorite motto, “To make a difference each day and always do the next right thing,” Bill has created scalable Greenhouse Gas reduction efforts while creating a work culture at ClimeCo that nurtures creativity and empowers his team to embrace an entrepreneurial spirit.

Today, ClimeCo operates at the forefront of an exciting transformation as global businesses, governments, and environmental advocates recognize that market-based solutions are the most efficient way to address environmental challenges. Through his leadership, ClimeCo is well known for its technical role in developing a diverse portfolio of environmental credits and for providing Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) solutions for clients navigating a path to a more sustainable future. He is passionate about supporting clients’ success while encouraging new practices and technologies that will benefit all.
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Season 3 of Business & Society focuses on CEOs, Sustainability & Environmental Solutions
Business & Society is a limited series co-hosted by Bruce Piasecki.

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“Deliberative democracy is itself, when properly done, a kind of democracy that can speak to the interests of a community. And we need that all over the world.”

James S. Fishkin holds the Janet M. Peck Chair in International Communication at Stanford University where he is Professor of Communication, Professor of Political Science (by courtesy), Senior Fellow of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and Director of the Deliberative Democracy Lab. He is also a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. His work focuses on Deliberative Polling, a process of deliberative public consultation that has been conducted more than 150 times around the world. He is the author of Can Deliberation Cure the Ills of Democracy?, Democracy When the People Are Thinking (OUP) and other books.

“The three ills of democracy that I propose to address with this method, which we've perfected over the last several decades. Democracy is supposed to make some connection with the "will of the people." But how can we estimate the will of the people when everyone is trying to manipulate it?”

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How can we free our minds to cultivate curiosity, innovation, and creativity in our daily lives? In this age of AI, where creative tasks are increasingly being performed for us, what is intelligence? And what is the future of education?

Duncan Wardle was Vice President of Innovation and Creativity at Disney and has helped organizations like Apple, the NBA, Coca-Cola, and Spotify to innovate. The Imagination Emporium: Creative Recipes for Innovation is a toolkit with easy-to-use recipes to make innovation and creativity accessible and fun.

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In this episode on Speaking Out of Place podcast Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with Sarah T. Roberts about the hidden humans behind Artificial Intelligence, which is reliant on executives and business managers to direct AI to promote their brand and low-level, out-sourced, and poorly paid content managers to slog through masses of images, words, and data before they get fed into the machine. They talk about the cultural, sociological, financial, and political aspects of AI. They end by taking on Elon Musk and the DOGE project, as an emblem of how Silicon Valley executives have embraced a brand of tech rapture that disdains and destroys democracy and attacks the idea that people can take care of each other, independent of sociopathic libertarianism.

Sarah T. Roberts, Ph.D., is a full professor at UCLA (Gender Studies, Information Studies, Labor Studies), specializing in Internet and social media policy, infrastructure, politics and culture, and the intersection of media, technology, and society. She is the faculty director and co-founder of the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry (C2i2), co-director of the Minderoo Initiative on Technology & Power, and a research associate of the Oxford Internet Institute. Informed by feminist Science and Technology Studies perspectives, Roberts is keenly interested in the way power, geopolitics, and economics play out on and via the internet, reproducing, reifying, and exacerbating global inequities and social injustice.

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“What I have done in my career is just try to assess who we are, what we are, why we are here, and how come we, as animals, are able to walk around and wear pants and dresses and talk on the internet, while the other animals are not. It's been my obsession since I was young. I think if I hadn't become a novelist, I might have been happy to be a naturalist or a field biologist.

There is some kind of magic in the creative process. I am reaching for things in my unconscious that surprise me. I don't know what it's going to be. I'd like to do many, many things. It's all my life's work. I don't want to just write the same book over and over again as some other authors do. I don't want to become formulaic.”

T.C. Boyle is a novelist and short story writer based out of Santa Barbara, California. He has published 19 novels, such as The Road to Wellville and more than 150 short stories for publications like The New Yorker, as well as his many short story collections. His latest novel Blue Skies is a companion piece to A Friend of the Earth. His writing has earned numerous awards, including winning the PEN/Faulkner Award for Best Novel of the Year for World's End.

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“The fact that technologies are being used and combined to capture our attention is concerning. This is currently being done with no limitations and no regulations. That's the main problem. Attention is a very private resource. No one should be allowed to extract it from us by exploiting what we know about the human mind and how it functions, including its weaknesses. We wrote this paper as a call to regulate the attention market and prevent algorithmic emotional governance.”

Computer scientist Fabien Gandon and research engineer Franck Michel are experts in AI, the Web, and knowledge systems. Fabien is a senior researcher at Inria (Institut national de recherche en sciences et technologies du numérique), specializing in the Semantic Web, while Franck focuses on integrating and sharing data through Linked Open Data technologies.

Together, they’ve written Pay Attention: A Call to Regulate the Attention Market and Prevent Algorithmic Emotional Governance. Their research unpacks how digital platforms are monetizing our attention at an unprecedented scale—fueling misinformation and division and even threatening democracy and affecting our emotions and well-being.

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AI competes for our attention because our attention has been commodified. As our entire lives revolve more and more around the attention economy, what can we do to restore our autonomy, reclaim our privacy, and reconnect with the real world.

Computer scientist Fabien Gandon and research engineer Franck Michel are experts in AI, the Web, and knowledge systems. Fabien is a senior researcher at Inria (Institut national de recherche en sciences et technologies du numérique), specializing in the Semantic Web, while Franck focuses on integrating and sharing data through Linked Open Data technologies.

Together, they’ve written Pay Attention: A Call to Regulate the Attention Market and Prevent Algorithmic Emotional Governance. Their research unpacks how digital platforms are monetizing our attention at an unprecedented scale—fueling misinformation and division and even threatening democracy and affecting our emotions and well-being.

“The fact that technologies are being used and combined to capture our attention is concerning. This is currently being done with no limitations and no regulations. That's the main problem. Attention is a very private resource. No one should be allowed to extract it from us by exploiting what we know about the human mind and how it functions, including its weaknesses. We wrote this paper as a call to regulate the attention market and prevent algorithmic emotional governance.”

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“The position of the United States in the world, economically and politically, is the weakest it has been in my lifetime. I was born in the middle of the 20th century, so I have watched the rise of the American empire and the success of American capitalism in the second half of the 20th century. However, over the last 20 years, I have watched that turn into its opposite—a decline. The decline is visible everywhere. Unless you live in the United States and consume mainstream media, there is a level of denial that will be recorded historically as one of the great examples, not just of a declining empire, which typically has people who cannot face it and who refuse to see it. You can go to Great Britain today and find quite a few people who think we still have the British Empire, even though everyone who isn't crazy knows that is silly. But we are earlier in the decline phase than the British are; they have had to endure it for a century while we have just had to do it for a couple of decades. It is fresh.”

Richard D. Wolff is the co-founder of Democracy at Work and host of their nationally syndicated show Economic Update. He was formerly professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Yale University, the City College of the City University of New York, and the University of Paris Sorbonne. Currently, Wolfe is a visiting professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University in New York City.

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When capitalism stops serving the needs of the people, what can we do to create a fairer more equitable society? What can we learn from China's success and economic growth? Are we witnessing the decline of the American Empire and what comes next?

Richard D. Wolff is the co-founder of Democracy at Work and host of their nationally syndicated show Economic Update. He was formerly professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Yale University, the City College of the City University of New York, and the University of Paris Sorbonne. Currently, Wolfe is a visiting professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University in New York City.

“The position of the United States in the world, economically and politically, is the weakest it has been in my lifetime. I was born in the middle of the 20th century, so I have watched the rise of the American empire and the success of American capitalism in the second half of the 20th century. However, over the last 20 years, I have watched that turn into its opposite—a decline. The decline is visible everywhere. Unless you live in the United States and consume mainstream media, there is a level of denial that will be recorded historically as one of the great examples, not just of a declining empire, which typically has people who cannot face it and who refuse to see it. You can go to Great Britain today and find quite a few people who think we still have the British Empire, even though everyone who isn't crazy knows that is silly. But we are earlier in the decline phase than the British are; they have had to endure it for a century while we have just had to do it for a couple of decades. It is fresh.”

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“My mandate focuses on the protection of those trying to protect the planet. Protection of defenders is my main topic. When I'm speaking to states or companies, it's always related to cases of defenders facing threats, attacks, or penalization by companies or governments, like the recent case of Paul Watson (founder of Sea Shepherd) in Denmark… When I travel to places like Peru, Colombia, or Honduras and meet Indigenous people, I realize they have a relationship with nature that we don't have anymore. They express that the food they eat, the water they drink, and the air they breathe goes beyond just air and food; it represents what they call Pachamama or Mother Earth. This is a cosmovision shared across various communities, not only in Latin America but globally.”

Michel Forst is a prominent human rights advocate and the UN Special Rapporteur on Environmental Defenders under the Aarhus Convention. He previously served as the Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders (2014–2020) and has worked with Amnesty International, UNESCO, and the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions, championing protections for activists worldwide. Forst’s career is marked by his unwavering commitment to defending those at risk for advancing justice, environmental protection, and human rights globally.

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“I think AI is sort of inevitable in some ways. It is not very intelligent right now; it is probably closer to artificial stupidity, but it's a question of time before it becomes smarter and smarter. We need to tackle the right to use question and the value question now as it is developing. It can amplify both the positive possibilities as well as the negative consequences, and we want to make sure that it benefits the largest number of people on Earth.

And systems themselves. Are there guidelines? Are there principles? The Club of Rome group has subgroups who are looking at AI, proposing a constitution for AI, and trying to influence its development, understanding fully well that almost $300 billion has been poured into AI already by the United States venture capital, and it is going to start having impacts. We can't stop it, but while the train is moving, we are trying to make sure some guardrails get into place that everybody plays by. All these transformations cannot be done one by one; they have to happen together in order to have an overall impact, and that is the challenge that not a single organization like the Club of Rome or a university or somebody can accomplish alone. All of us need to get involved.”

Paul Shrivastava is Co-President of The Club of Rome and a Professor of Management and Organisations at Pennsylvania State University. He founded the UNESCO Chair for Arts and Sustainable Enterprise at ICN Business School, Nancy, France, and the ONE Division of the Academy of Management. He was the Executive Director of Future Earth, where he established its secretariat for global environmental change programs, and has published extensively on both sustainable management and crisis management.

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What influence do billionaires have on politics, journalism, and the technology that shapes our lives? What drives people to seek absolute power, and how can we hold them accountable?

Darryl  Cunningham is a cartoonist and author of Science Tales, Psychiatric Tales, The Age of Selfishness, and Billionaires: The Lives of the Rich and Powerful. Cunningham is also well-known for his comic strips, which have been featured on the websites Forbidden Planet and Act-i-vate collective, among others. others. His more recent work includes a graphic novel on Elon Musk, titled Elon Musk: Investigation into a New Master of the World.

“It's far too early to say how AI is going to shake out. A lot of it will come to nothing, like many new technologies. VR came along, and people thought it would be a big thing, but it became a niche for a few kinds of people. AI might find a place ultimately, but it has to come from people. We have to make choices. Will people be happy with processed movies done with a few keywords, or will they want to hear the actual voice of a human being? In the end, it's up to the audience, and that's us. We will shape it.”

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How can we shape technology’s impact on society? How do social media algorithms influence our democratic processes and personal well-being? Can AI truly emulate human creativity? And how will its pursuit of perfection change the art we create?

Daniel Susskind (Economist · Oxford & King’s College London · Author of Growth: A Reckoning · A World Without Work) shares insights on the nature of growth driven by technological progress. He contends that while technology can accelerate growth, its impacts can be consciously directed to reduce environmental damage and social inequalities. According to Susskind, the current trajectory of technological progress needs reevaluation to mitigate potential adverse effects on future working lives.

Arash Abizadeh (Professor of Political Science · McGill University Author of Hobbes and the Two Faces of Ethics · Associate Editor · Free & Equal) explores the ethical tensions between democratic needs and commercial imperatives of social media platforms. He highlights how algorithms designed to maximize engagement often foster outrage and fear, contrasting these commercial objectives with the requirements for a healthy democratic public sphere.

Debora Cahn (Creator & Executive Producer of Netflix’s The Diplomat starring Keri Russell & Rufus Sewell · Exec. Producer Homeland · Grey’s Anatomy · Vinyl · Co-Producer The West Wing) toggles between apprehension and optimism about emerging technologies like AI. She reflects on her father's experience with nuclear technology and ponders the unpredictable impacts of AI, drawing parallels with the unforeseen transformation of the internet.

Julia F. Christensen (Neuroscientist - Author of The Pathway To Flow: The New Science of Harnessing Creativity to Heal and Unwind the Body & Mind) examines the rise of AI and its influence on aesthetics in the arts. She argues that technology drives creators towards superficial beauty conforming to popular standards, thereby cluttering the mind and fostering an obsession with perfection fueled by dopamine signals.

Julian Lennon (Singer-songwriter · Documentary Filmmaker · Founder of The White Feather Foundation Photographer/Author of Life’s Fragile Moments) discusses AI's potential in the medical field, highlighting recent advancements that are paving the way for novel treatments and cures. While acknowledging the importance of copyright issues, he remains optimistic about AI’s positive impact on healthcare.

Brian David Johnson(Author of The Future You: How to Create the Life You Always Wanted · Director of the Arizona State University’s Threatcasting Lab Futurist in Residence · ASU’s Center for Science & the Imagination) emphasizes the importance of maintaining a human-centric approach to technology. He questions the purpose behind technological advancements, urging developers to always consider the human impact and clarify their objectives.

To hear more from each guest, listen to their full interviews.

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“I think a lot of joy comes from helping others. One of the things that I've been really focusing on is finding that balance in life, what’s real and what’s true and what makes you happy. How can you help other people feel the same and have a happier life? I think whatever that takes. So if that's charity, if that's photography, if that's documentary, if that's music, and I can do it, then I'm going to do it.

From traveling, especially in Ethiopia, Kenya, and even South America, we just see these scenarios and situations where they don't have enough support or finances. Anything I’m involved in, a good percentage goes to The White Feather Foundation. From what I witnessed, I just wanted to be able to help. My best teacher ever was Mum because I watched her live through life with dignity, grace, respect, and empathy. To me, those are some of the key things that are most important in living life. I think you have to love everybody and yourself. Respect is a real key issue, not only for people but for this world that we live in, Mother Earth. It's of key importance that we honor and respect this beautiful little blue ball that we live on.”

Julian Lennon is a Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter, photographer, documentary filmmaker, and NYTimes bestselling author of the Touch the Earth children’s book trilogy. This autumn, Whispers – A Julian Lennon Retrospective is being presented at Le Stanze della Fotografia, culminating in the publication of Life’s Fragile Moments, his first photography book. It features a compilation of images that span over two decades of Lennon's unique life, career, adventures, and philanthropy. He founded The White Feather Foundation in 2007, whose key initiatives are education, health, conservation, and the protection of indigenous cultures. He was the executive producer of Kiss the Ground and other environmental documentaries and was named a Peace Laureate by UNESCO in 2020.

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Photo credit: © 2024, Julian Lennon. All rights reserved.
Life’s Fragile Moments, published by teNeues, www.teneues.com, August 2024. 27,5 x 34 cm |10 5/6 x 13 3/8 in., 240 pages, Hardcover, approx. 200 color photographs, texts English & German ISBN: 978-3-96171-614-2

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How and when will we transition to a clean energy future? How have wetlands become both crucial carbon sinks and colossal methane emitters in a warming world? What lessons can we learn from non-human animals about living in greater harmony with nature?

Richard Black (Author of The Future of Energy · Fmr. BBC Environment Correspondent · Director of Policy & Strategy · Global Clean Energy Thinktank · Ember) addresses the substantial economic impact of fossil fuel subsidies, noting that the actual costs, when including climate change damages, reach up to six or seven trillion dollars annually, overshadowing the relatively small climate finance provided by Western governments.

Euan Nisbet (Earth Systems Scientist · Royal Holloway University of London) explores the role of methane in the atmosphere, its historical importance in maintaining the planet’s temperature, and its current contribution to global warming. He explains the sources of methane, including natural processes and human activities, and discusses recent trends and challenges tied to rising methane levels.

Julie Pierce (Vice President of Strategy & Planning · Minnesota Power) highlights her company's significant strides in sustainability. She outlines Minnesota Power's decade-long journey towards decarbonization, noting that they have transitioned from a 95% fossil-based portfolio to sourcing 50-60% of their energy from clean sources, including wind, solar, and hydropower.

Arash Abizadeh (Professor of Political Science · McGill University Author ofHobbes and the Two Faces of Ethics · Associate Editor · Free & Equal) reflects on the future we are leaving for the next generations. He underscores the social and political challenges of ensuring that the technologies and resources needed to adapt to climate change are distributed equitably across all societies.

Daniel Susskind(Economist · Oxford & King’s College London · Author of Growth: A Reckoning · A World Without Work) discusses the critical role of technological progress in driving economic growth. He advocates for a shift toward technologies that not only enhance prosperity but also protect the environment and promote social equity.

Ian Robertson(Author of How Confidence Works: The New Science of Self-belief · Co-Director of the Global Brain Health Institute · Co-Leader of The BrainHealth Project) calls for young people to connect with nature and develop mastery over their minds. He envisions a future where individuals can access the joy of being conscious, embodied beings in a healthy, natural world.

Ingrid Newkirk(Founder & President of PETA · People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) emphasizes the shared traits between humans and other animals, advocating for a compassionate approach to all living beings. She urges listeners to recognize the personhood in animals and to treat them with respect and empathy.

This episode brings together diverse voices discussing critical environmental and ethical issues. From the economic burden of fossil fuel subsidies to the equitable distribution of climate adaptation resources, the importance of technological progress, and the need for the ethical treatment of animals.
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“So, syncopation is now the big thing. It will induce people to groove and to like your music more. So let's have a lot of syncopation inside your music and you'll sell a lot. By chasing superficial beauty, which is what AI gives us at the moment, it aims for perfect outcomes. Not that anything these models produce is perfect, because how do you evaluate perfection? But they are based on the data that most people want to see again. That's extremely important to bear in mind. When you say 'cluttered mind,' it's actually also a cluttered brain in terms of the neurotransmitters out and about. As we strive for that perfect coding and external beauty, our brain releases dopamine signals. Dopamine is good; it's a learning signal to the brain, but we need to know how to use it. Constantly swiping our phone and getting this beauty into our brain via our eyes or via the syncopations in the music teaches our mind to seek that all the time because that's a dopamine signal. It's a learning signal. So, striving after these shapes and sound cues repeatedly clutters your brain. That's why your mind is full.”

Dr. Julia F. Christensen is a Danish neuroscientist and former dancer currently working as a senior scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Germany. She studied psychology, human evolution, and neuroscience in France, Spain and the UK. For her postdoctoral training, she worked in international, interdisciplinary research labs at University College London, City, University London and the Warburg Institute, London and was awarded a postdoctoral Newton International Fellowship by the British Academy. Her new book The Pathway to Flow is about the science of flow, why our brain needs it and how to create the right habits in our brain to get it.

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Have we entered what Earth scientists call a “termination event,” and what can we do to avoid the worst outcomes? How can we look beyond GDP and develop new metrics that balance growth with human flourishing and environmental well-being? How can the 15-minute city model revolutionize urban living, enhance health, and reduce our carbon footprint?

Euan Nisbet (Earth Systems Scientist - Royal Holloway University of London) analyzes historical patterns that point to a potential termination event and emphasizes the urgency of addressing abrupt climate changes.

Daniel Susskind(Economist - Oxford & King’s College London - Author of Growth: A Reckoning - A World Without Work) discusses the economic trade-offs involved in pursuing net-zero emissions and the growing public discontent with the costs.

Carlos Moreno (Originator of the 15-Minute City concept - Author of The 15-Minute City: A Solution to Saving Our Time & Our Planet) explores how the 15-minute city model can enhance urban living, promote local commerce, and reduce our carbon footprint.

Richard Black(Author of The Future of Energy - Former BBC Environment Correspondent - Director of Policy & Strategy - Global Clean Energy Thinktank - Ember) explains the future energy landscape, critiques the contributions of oil and gas companies to the clean energy transition, and emphasizes the need for a realistic clean energy transition.

Carissa Carter (Academic Director at Stanford's d.school - Co-author of Assembling Tomorrow: A Guide to Designing a Thriving Future) highlights the importance of people critically interpreting climate data and understanding its emotional impact.

Gordon Lambert (World Economic Forum Global Council - Energy and Sustainability - Former Member of Alberta’s Climate Change Advisory Panel) shares his personal reflections on the harmony of nature and the necessity of aligning business strategies with renewable energy goals.

Dr. Ben Shofty(Functional Neurosurgeon - Professor - University of Utah) discusses the health benefits of exposure to nature and its positive impact on well-being and creativity.

Julia F. Christensen (Neuroscientist - Author of The Pathway To Flow: The New Science of Harnessing Creativity to Heal and Unwind the Body & Mind) explores the neuroscience behind human interaction with nature and its restorative effects on the brain.

The episode examines critical issues surrounding climate change, economic growth, and urban development. Euan Nisbet highlighted the urgency of addressing abrupt climate changes, while Daniel Susskind shed light on the economic complexities of achieving net-zero emissions. Carlos Moreno presented the revolutionary concept of the 15-minute city, and Richard Black emphasized the need for a realistic clean energy transition. Carissa Carter underscored the importance of understanding and visualizing climate data, while Gordon Lambert, Dr. Julia F. Christensen, and Dr. Ben Shofty provided personal and scientific insights into the benefits of integrating nature into our lives. These conversations give us a deeper look into the challenges and potential solutions for creating a sustainable future.

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How is economic inequality undermining our democratic systems? In what ways is social media reshaping political landscapes and democracy? Can we design political institutions that adapt to rapid social and technological changes while remaining stable? How is journalism critical for the health of our democracies?

Arash Abizadeh is the R.B. Angus Professor of Political Science at McGill University. His research has focused on democratic theory, including topics such as immigration and border control. Abizadeh also specializes in 17th and 18th century philosophy and has recently published the book Hobbes and the Two Faces of Ethics. He is currently working on a book about social and political power and is the Associate Editor of Free & Equal: a Journal of Ethics and Public Affairs.

“There's a tension between what democracy needs for a public sphere in order to sustain our democratic institutions and our liberties over the long run and what for-profit commercial corporations need to do to maximize people's time on social media to increase their profits. We know that some of the algorithms that, for example, Facebook was using tend to make prominent posts that engage people the most, often appealing to a sense of outrage, fear, or anger. This can affect the health of the deliberative public sphere.”

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www.cambridge.org/core/books/hobbes-and-the-two-faces-of-ethics/B565348CE9B53945F4F962784A5842C2
https://freeandequaljournal.org

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“The running theme in all of my work has been technology. The first book that I co-authored with my dad was published in 2015. The second book I wrote was A World Without Work: Technology, Automation, and How We Should Respond, published in 2020, just before the pandemic began. My new book Growth: A Reckoning is about growth, but also technological progress, because what drives growth is technological progress—we have a choice to change the nature of growth, and the same is true of our technological progress. To reach a dynamic economy capable of generating ever more ideas about the world, we need to use the technologies we have to generate new ideas about the world. One of the technologies I've been particularly excited by was AlphaFold, developed by DeepMind to solve protein folding problems in biology. Essentially, understanding the 3D shape of proteins is important for understanding disease and designing effective treatment, but incredibly difficult to figure out, and Alpha fold has solved this problem by providing the 3D structures of millions of proteins. As the only economist in The Institute for Ethics in AI, I’ve always found the moral, ethical side of technology interesting. I often get asked, “What can machines do, and what can they not do?” But I think one of the most troubling, but also one of the most fascinating things about technology is it is forcing us to ask the question “What does it really mean to be human? What is humanity?” For a long time, many people thought the core of what it means to be a human being is to be a creative thing. But with the arrival of generative AI in the last few years, I think that that has been really called into question. These AI systems are particularly good at creative tasks—coming up with original, novel text, images, and video. In fact, I actually use these AI systems to generate bedtime stories with my children—getting the kids to craft a good prompt is quite a fun, intellectually demanding exercise, and these technologies now give my children a storytelling capability that would have been unimaginable only a few years ago. So, one of the interesting philosophical consequences of technologies is that it's challenging some of the complacency and deep-rooted assumptions about what it really means to be a human being.”

Daniel Susskind is a Research Professor in Economics at King's College London and a Senior Research Associate at the Institute for Ethics in AI at Oxford University. He is the author of A World without Work and co-author of the bestselling The Future of the Professions. Previously, he worked in various roles in the British Government - in the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit, in the Policy Unit in 10 Downing Street, and in the Cabinet Office. His latest book is Growth: A Reckoning.

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How can we look beyond GDP and develop new metrics that balance growth with human flourishing and environmental well-being? How can we be more engaged global citizens? In this age of AI, what does it really mean to be human? And how are our technologies transforming us?

Daniel Susskind is a Research Professor in Economics at King's College London and a Senior Research Associate at the Institute for Ethics in AI at Oxford University. He is the author of A World without Work and co-author of the bestselling The Future of the Professions. Previously, he worked in various roles in the British Government - in the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit, in the Policy Unit in 10 Downing Street, and in the Cabinet Office. His latest book is Growth: A Reckoning.

“The running theme in all of my work has been technology. The first book that I co-authored with my dad was published in 2015. The second book I wrote was A World Without Work: Technology, Automation, and How We Should Respond, published in 2020, just before the pandemic began. My new book Growth: A Reckoning is about growth, but also technological progress, because what drives growth is technological progress—we have a choice to change the nature of growth, and the same is true of our technological progress. To reach a dynamic economy capable of generating ever more ideas about the world, we need to use the technologies we have to generate new ideas about the world. One of the technologies I've been particularly excited by was AlphaFold, developed by DeepMind to solve protein folding problems in biology. Essentially, understanding the 3D shape of proteins is important for understanding disease and designing effective treatment, but incredibly difficult to figure out, and Alpha fold has solved this problem by providing the 3D structures of millions of proteins. As the only economist in The Institute for Ethics in AI, I’ve always found the moral, ethical side of technology interesting. I often get asked, “What can machines do, and what can they not do?” But I think one of the most troubling, but also one of the most fascinating things about technology is it is forcing us to ask the question “What does it really mean to be human? What is humanity?” For a long time, many people thought the core of what it means to be a human being is to be a creative thing. But with the arrival of generative AI in the last few years, I think that that has been really called into question. These AI systems are particularly good at creative tasks—coming up with original, novel text, images, and video. In fact, I actually use these AI systems to generate bedtime stories with my children—getting the kids to craft a good prompt is quite a fun, intellectually demanding exercise, and these technologies now give my children a storytelling capability that would have been unimaginable only a few years ago. So, one of the interesting philosophical consequences of technologies is that it's challenging some of the complacency and deep-rooted assumptions about what it really means to be a human being.”

www.danielsusskind.com
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How can the 15-minute city model revolutionize urban living, enhance well-being, and reduce our carbon footprint? Online shopping is turning cities into ghost towns. We can now buy anything anywhere, anytime. How can we learn to stop scrolling and start strolling and create more livable, sustainable communities we are happy to call home?

Carlos Moreno was born in Colombia in 1959 and moved to France at the age of 20. He is known for his influential "15-Minute City" concept, embraced by Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo and leading cities around the world. Scientific Director of the "Entrepreneurship - Territory - Innovation" Chair at the Paris Sorbonne Business School, he is an international expert of the Human Smart City, and a Knight of the French Legion of Honour. He is the recipient of the Obel Award and the UN-Habitat Scroll of Honour. His latest book is The 15-Minute City: A Solution to Saving Our Time and Our Planet.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST

I'm inspired by this vision because we can see it in Paris and around the world how cities can be works of art. So championing the 15-minute city is also about revitalizing the social fabric and bringing back the art of conversation, which can be kind of plowed over by this commuter life. You also write about the 7,000-year long history of the development of cities. We've forgotten that it’s only in the last hundred years that cities have changed radically since the development of the car, and it’s made us turn our back on some of this intergenerational living, the intergenerational knowledge. Now we see the 15-minute city concept being adopted by cities around the world with different infrastructures, cultures, and challenges. How are you inspired by their adaptability and the innovative solutions they've come up with to create these more ecological, livable, and socially inclusive cities?

CARLOS MORENO

After COP21 in Paris, I proposed for the first time this concept of the 15-minute city as a new perspective for having a more horizontal city, a multi-service city, a city oriented toward satisfying essential needs for inhabitants, reconciling the quality of life and sustainability. For a long time, we have opposed sustainability and the reduction of CO₂ emissions. With the switch towards renewable energy and economic development and the 15-minute city, we have proposed a way for having, at the same time, a more ecological city with a strong reduction of CO₂ emissions while fostering a local economy for developing more local jobs, shorter circuits to regenerate and reinvigorate neighborhoods for having a more balanced city. This is, in fact, one of the most relevant aspects for explaining the great worldwide success of this concept. To rebalance the ecological, economic, and social aspects in our cities and territories.

*

The reality is that the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, has understood the importance of this concept of joining new lifestyles in the fight against global warming. Proximity is not only about fighting against global warming. Proximity is also about reconciling with nature to develop a less polluted city, having more digitalization, trees, and more nature in cities. And beyond this, to develop a new business model in cities, local jobs, and local commerce. Local commerce means not only buying or selling things. This is a question of social interactions for transforming public space for performing streets. The process of federalizing cities in Paris is at the same time about fostering people's access to the proximity of jobs, and we need to change the mindset of the new generations, in particular, kids and young people.

*

The question is not 15, 10, 20 minutes. The question is how to offer a happy, polycentric proximity adapted to the local conditions. The most relevant point is to go beyond the particulars of fostering walkability and bikeability, even if this is totally necessary. But the really strong lesson from Paris, as I explained in my book, was when the mayor of Paris, just after launching this concept, said we need to change the local urban plan of the city of Paris.

The last time when we brought in Paris a local urban plan was in 2000. With this concept, with the strong commitment of Hidalgo as mayor in May 2023, the city of Paris has voted for the new bioclimate local urban plan. This is plan available for the next 10 years. Based on this idea, by their proximity, nature as a common good, development of the local services, public spaces, low carbon mobilities, local jobs, medical services, etc. I want to advise our different mayors around the world. The strategic point is to vote for a local urban plan, ensuring not only a short-term term solution but a mid-long term based on this inspiration. We need to combine the concrete, immediate measures with the mid-term in order to have this roadmap for reconciling ecological measures, new economic geography based on more local interactions, and local employees, at the same time, fostering more inclusivity, social ethnicity, and social interactions.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST

Yes, we all have to be partners in this transition. As much as there is intelligent planning, green spaces, there are opposing forces like the free market economy. Today strolling has been replaced by scrolling. In our pockets, on our phones, we have the 15-second city. People's shopping habits have changed. How do you combat that when you can purchase anything online, anywhere, anytime, and have it delivered to your door, with all the air pollution and social isolation that involves? I know that there are concrete plans for Paris, making real estate partnerships that help support local shop owners, but how does that work? Even with lower or subsidized rents, we can see cities being hollowed out with shops closing. It's hard for local business owners to compete with the global market.

MORENO

You are totally right. We need to develop a dialogue with the different stakeholders and the different economic actors and to have continuously this same dialogue with citizens. We need to listen to different citizens. Proximity is not the same for a girl from China. For young people, women, and men. It is not the same proximity for a couple with children or for elderly people. It's not the same for elderly people in good health or in bad health. We need to adapt these services in proximity to the different profiles of people that live today in a street, in a district, in an area, and in a city.

We need to mix it with the scientific analysis. We need to understand the sociodemographic and socioeconomic trends. It's not the same to develop a city with a growing elderly populaton as it is to develop a city with a rising younger population, for example. The needs are not the same.

Today, we need to support this model for reinvesting in commerce in cities, for having more local shops, at the same time as creating spots for generating more social interaction. You are totally right. This is not the same thing as having it in 15 seconds; just click for automatic delivery of my order. It’s about going to my street, to work and buying these things in a local shop. We have developed this illusory bubble of my electronic existence. If we continue to develop this isolated life, we’ll develop permanent loneliness. We need to fight against that.

It is necessary to change our mindset in this period of the intensive use of social electric networks and artificial intelligence. We need to give priority to humanizing our cities for immunizing our lives. This is our duty, and we need to discuss with the economic actors how to switch towards a more human city, including business, commerce, cultural activities, and medical services. This is the difference between a technological smart city and a real human smart city towards a 15-minute city as the expression of a human-centered urban approach. This is our challenge for the next decades and our target, to humanize our cities. The Olympic Games in Paris have shown the world that it is possible to recreate, to regenerate a really vibrant city with harmonious life between districts, different places, the role of the Seine River as nature in the presence of a lot of people for having more real livability and not an illusory computer life driven by social networks.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST

What are your reflections on the importance of arts and the humanities and how they help us see our place in the world?

MORENO

Art and culture are two essential keys for transforming our mindset. We need to underline the importance of developing humanities in cities. Humanities are not only about having access to cinema, theatres, and books. This is, of course, absolutely mandatory to have this dimension. But humanities also means developing empathy in cities, developing otherness, and considering that we have a lot of people in cities with different skin color, different origins, with different lifestyles. We can coexist in a city to learn constantly from each one of us. Otherness is a really relevant value for developing more peaceful cities and for offering concrete affirmations for the next generations. We have today, a lot of social tensions in cities. We have a strong development of racism, of populism. Our democracy today is in danger in the face of this totally tremendous radicalization. At its origins, one of the sources is the isolation provoked by the preliminary role of social networks for developing hate as the most current behavior in relationships between people. We need to break out of these relationships on social networks to transform into real life with public spaces with walkability, social mixity, and happy proximity based on the 15-minute city or the X-minute city. These permanent social interactions are at the core of our humanistic project.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST

In this decade of transformation, education along with so much else is changing so rapidly. As you reflect on the future, what would you like young people to know, preserve and remember?

MORENO

Education is at the core of our transformations. Nelson Mandela in South Africa said, “We have three powerful weapons for transforming our life. Education, education, education.” I’ve been a university professor for more than 40 years, and I have observed the process of transformation through different generations. When we have these capabilities for transmitting more humanistic values and for discussing with the new generation, we need to find a sense of life. We need to find a sense of belonging to this humanity. But to have this sense of life, we need to find a sense of our local community, UN-Habitat and the United Nations in charge of cities, for the next World Urban Forum taking place in Cairo in November, has taken a motto: It All Starts at Home. It all starts in our local life. To be aware that all starts at home, all starts in our local community, is to be aware that we constantly need real-life contacts for dating and for this humanistic process. Education is not only about going to school. Education is to constantly have an open mindset, at home with my family, in my building, with the others in the street, in the squares, and in different activities. The otherness should be a permanent lifestyle for transforming our individual behavior and transforming our relationships. This is the sense of this proximity.

For the full conversation, listen to the episode.This interview was conducted by Mia Funk with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producers on this episode were Sam Myers and Sophie Garnier. The Creative Process is produced by Mia Funk. Additional production support by Amy Chen.Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions). Listen on Apple,Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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How can the 15-minute city model revolutionize urban living, enhance well-being, and reduce our carbon footprint? Online shopping is turning cities into ghost towns. We can now buy anything anywhere, anytime. How can we learn to stop scrolling and start strolling and create more livable, sustainable communities we are happy to call home?

Carlos Moreno was born in Colombia in 1959 and moved to France at the age of 20. He is known for his influential "15-Minute City" concept, embraced by Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo and leading cities around the world. Scientific Director of the "Entrepreneurship - Territory - Innovation" Chair at the Paris Sorbonne Business School, he is an international expert of the Human Smart City, and a Knight of the French Legion of Honour. He is the recipient of the Obel Award and the UN-Habitat Scroll of Honour. His latest book is The 15-Minute City: A Solution to Saving Our Time and Our Planet.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST

I'm inspired by this vision because we can see it in Paris and around the world how cities can be works of art. So championing the 15-minute city is also about revitalizing the social fabric and bringing back the art of conversation, which can be kind of plowed over by this commuter life. You also write about the 7,000-year long history of the development of cities. We've forgotten that it’s only in the last hundred years that cities have changed radically since the development of the car, and it’s made us turn our back on some of this intergenerational living, the intergenerational knowledge. Now we see the 15-minute city concept being adopted by cities around the world with different infrastructures, cultures, and challenges. How are you inspired by their adaptability and the innovative solutions they've come up with to create these more ecological, livable, and socially inclusive cities?

CARLOS MORENO

After COP21 in Paris, I proposed for the first time this concept of the 15-minute city as a new perspective for having a more horizontal city, a multi-service city, a city oriented toward satisfying essential needs for inhabitants, reconciling the quality of life and sustainability. For a long time, we have opposed sustainability and the reduction of CO₂ emissions. With the switch towards renewable energy and economic development and the 15-minute city, we have proposed a way for having, at the same time, a more ecological city with a strong reduction of CO₂ emissions while fostering a local economy for developing more local jobs, shorter circuits to regenerate and reinvigorate neighborhoods for having a more balanced city. This is, in fact, one of the most relevant aspects for explaining the great worldwide success of this concept. To rebalance the ecological, economic, and social aspects in our cities and territories.

*

The reality is that the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, has understood the importance of this concept of joining new lifestyles in the fight against global warming. Proximity is not only about fighting against global warming. Proximity is also about reconciling with nature to develop a less polluted city, having more digitalization, trees, and more nature in cities. And beyond this, to develop a new business model in cities, local jobs, and local commerce. Local commerce means not only buying or selling things. This is a question of social interactions for transforming public space for performing streets. The process of federalizing cities in Paris is at the same time about fostering people's access to the proximity of jobs, and we need to change the mindset of the new generations, in particular, kids and young people.

*

The question is not 15, 10, 20 minutes. The question is how to offer a happy, polycentric proximity adapted to the local conditions. The most relevant point is to go beyond the particulars of fostering walkability and bikeability, even if this is totally necessary. But the really strong lesson from Paris, as I explained in my book, was when the mayor of Paris, just after launching this concept, said we need to change the local urban plan of the city of Paris.

The last time when we brought in Paris a local urban plan was in 2000. With this concept, with the strong commitment of Hidalgo as mayor in May 2023, the city of Paris has voted for the new bioclimate local urban plan. This is plan available for the next 10 years. Based on this idea, by their proximity, nature as a common good, development of the local services, public spaces, low carbon mobilities, local jobs, medical services, etc. I want to advise our different mayors around the world. The strategic point is to vote for a local urban plan, ensuring not only a short-term term solution but a mid-long term based on this inspiration. We need to combine the concrete, immediate measures with the mid-term in order to have this roadmap for reconciling ecological measures, new economic geography based on more local interactions, and local employees, at the same time, fostering more inclusivity, social ethnicity, and social interactions.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST

Yes, we all have to be partners in this transition. As much as there is intelligent planning, green spaces, there are opposing forces like the free market economy. Today strolling has been replaced by scrolling. In our pockets, on our phones, we have the 15-second city. People's shopping habits have changed. How do you combat that when you can purchase anything online, anywhere, anytime, and have it delivered to your door, with all the air pollution and social isolation that involves? I know that there are concrete plans for Paris, making real estate partnerships that help support local shop owners, but how does that work? Even with lower or subsidized rents, we can see cities being hollowed out with shops closing. It's hard for local business owners to compete with the global market.

MORENO

You are totally right. We need to develop a dialogue with the different stakeholders and the different economic actors and to have continuously this same dialogue with citizens. We need to listen to different citizens. Proximity is not the same for a girl from China. For young people, women, and men. It is not the same proximity for a couple with children or for elderly people. It's not the same for elderly people in good health or in bad health. We need to adapt these services in proximity to the different profiles of people that live today in a street, in a district, in an area, and in a city.

We need to mix it with the scientific analysis. We need to understand the sociodemographic and socioeconomic trends. It's not the same to develop a city with a growing elderly populaton as it is to develop a city with a rising younger population, for example. The needs are not the same.

Today, we need to support this model for reinvesting in commerce in cities, for having more local shops, at the same time as creating spots for generating more social interaction. You are totally right. This is not the same thing as having it in 15 seconds; just click for automatic delivery of my order. It’s about going to my street, to work and buying these things in a local shop. We have developed this illusory bubble of my electronic existence. If we continue to develop this isolated life, we’ll develop permanent loneliness. We need to fight against that.

It is necessary to change our mindset in this period of the intensive use of social electric networks and artificial intelligence. We need to give priority to humanizing our cities for immunizing our lives. This is our duty, and we need to discuss with the economic actors how to switch towards a more human city, including business, commerce, cultural activities, and medical services. This is the difference between a technological smart city and a real human smart city towards a 15-minute city as the expression of a human-centered urban approach. This is our challenge for the next decades and our target, to humanize our cities. The Olympic Games in Paris have shown the world that it is possible to recreate, to regenerate a really vibrant city with harmonious life between districts, different places, the role of the Seine River as nature in the presence of a lot of people for having more real livability and not an illusory computer life driven by social networks.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST

What are your reflections on the importance of arts and the humanities and how they help us see our place in the world?

MORENO

Art and culture are two essential keys for transforming our mindset. We need to underline the importance of developing humanities in cities. Humanities are not only about having access to cinema, theatres, and books. This is, of course, absolutely mandatory to have this dimension. But humanities also means developing empathy in cities, developing otherness, and considering that we have a lot of people in cities with different skin color, different origins, with different lifestyles. We can coexist in a city to learn constantly from each one of us. Otherness is a really relevant value for developing more peaceful cities and for offering concrete affirmations for the next generations. We have today, a lot of social tensions in cities. We have a strong development of racism, of populism. Our democracy today is in danger in the face of this totally tremendous radicalization. At its origins, one of the sources is the isolation provoked by the preliminary role of social networks for developing hate as the most current behavior in relationships between people. We need to break out of these relationships on social networks to transform into real life with public spaces with walkability, social mixity, and happy proximity based on the 15-minute city or the X-minute city. These permanent social interactions are at the core of our humanistic project.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST

In this decade of transformation, education along with so much else is changing so rapidly. As you reflect on the future, what would you like young people to know, preserve and remember?

MORENO

Education is at the core of our transformations. Nelson Mandela in South Africa said, “We have three powerful weapons for transforming our life. Education, education, education.” I’ve been a university professor for more than 40 years, and I have observed the process of transformation through different generations. When we have these capabilities for transmitting more humanistic values and for discussing with the new generation, we need to find a sense of life. We need to find a sense of belonging to this humanity. But to have this sense of life, we need to find a sense of our local community, UN-Habitat and the United Nations in charge of cities, for the next World Urban Forum taking place in Cairo in November, has taken a motto: It All Starts at Home. It all starts in our local life. To be aware that all starts at home, all starts in our local community, is to be aware that we constantly need real-life contacts for dating and for this humanistic process. Education is not only about going to school. Education is to constantly have an open mindset, at home with my family, in my building, with the others in the street, in the squares, and in different activities. The otherness should be a permanent lifestyle for transforming our individual behavior and transforming our relationships. This is the sense of this proximity.

For the full conversation, listen to the episode.This interview was conducted by Mia Funk with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producers on this episode were Sam Myers and Sophie Garnier. The Creative Process is produced by Mia Funk. Additional production support by Amy Chen.Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions). Listen on Apple,Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Where do creative thoughts come from? How can we harness our stream of consciousness and spontaneity to express ourselves? How are mind-wandering, meditation, and the arts good for our creativity and physical and mental well-being?

Dr. Ben Shofty is a functional neurosurgeon affiliated with the University of Utah. He graduated from the Tel-Aviv University Faculty of Medicine, received his PhD in neurosurgical training from the Israeli Institute of Technology, and completed his training at the Tel Aviv Medical Center and Baylor University. He was also an Israeli national rugby player. His practice specializes in neuromodulation and exploring treatments for disorders such as OCD, depression, and epilepsy, among others, while also seeking to understand the science behind creativity, mind-wandering, and the many complexities of the brain.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

Let's talk about creativity. We know that creativity we still don't know exactly what happens in our brains when we're being creative. So, how do you define creativity in the context of those higher-order functions? Can you help us understand the default mode network? You've written that there is not a specific location in the brain for creativity.

BEN SHOFTY

I think the common thing that happens whenever somebody is doing a creative process is that we have infrequent connection between two or more thought processes that weren't meant to be connected. That's when we get that sort of eureka moment when we are able to fuse two things that, or more that aren’t meant to be fused, and we generate something that is actually great. And to me, this is one of the most interesting things that the human mind sort of evolved and specialized to do.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

In terms of your own experience with creativity, I think you have a really interesting background. You were a former national rugby player in Israel. You’ve experienced creativity in the lab and even as a surgeon, you must be coming up with solutions in the moment. Some people might not label that as creative, but when it's high stakes or something unexpected happens during surgery, I imagine you have to use creative problem solving to turn it around. In that moment, creativity can really save a life, and so often there is this split second thinking that's hard to track what’s happening in the creative mind. Can you speak about the more elusive processes like creativity or high-order cognitive functions? Is there a specific area inside the brain where we can see areas where we can see creative sparks emerage?

AI-generated by the creative process via DALL-E

SHOFTY

So I feel, when you think about the evolution of the human brain–just like other animals that have specialized in speed or keeping warm or gathering food–I feel our brain sort of specialized being creative and flexible and being able to generate different solutions to a given problem. And to me – it's not written in my bio or anywhere else – but I used to cook and work at cooking. And to me, this is the most creative process, right? Taking something and generating a taste or a flavor or something completely different out of it.

To me, this is probably the most fascinating thought process that happens in the human brain. And what I do in neurosurgery–and my subspecialty is called functional neurosurgery–we don't deal with disorders in which there's an anatomical abnormality inside the brain. We deal with disorders in which there is an abnormal connection or abnormal circuitry inside the brain when there's an issue with the way the brain functions. There's no tumor. There are no abnormal blood vessels or anything like that. And that gives us an amazing opportunity to really investigate how different circuits and different areas inside the brain work.

In terms of the more elusive processes like creativity or high-order cognitive functions, we don't really know or understand where they are inside the brain. As you said, there's no creativity cortex, like we have a motor cortex, sensory cortex, or visual cortex.

When we started with this series of projects, we tried to think, if this function just like other higher cognitive functions, cannot be explained by a specific area inside the brain, then what happens? Where does the magic happen? And the answer was that it's a network-dependent function. It doesn't originate from a specific area inside the brain, but it originates from multiple brain networks sort of all of a sudden synchronizing to generate that unexpected function.

*

If you talk about Stephen King or Jerry Seinfeld, you know, these people are creative for a living. So they know how to channel this internal thought process and generate these unexpected connections in order to generate the same sort of type of creativity, whether it's a book or a joke or something else. There are many other people who can harness creativity. For most of us, it's a process that starts with that spontaneous stream of thought when all of a sudden the default mode network synchronizes with other brain networks that sort of channel that internal mental process into generating something that is useful or helpful. So, there's a specific moment in which our internal stream of thought is synchronized with a goal-directed or intentional network. And that's when the creative process happens. And that's the sort of magic that were trying to find or analyze with the study that you're talking about.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

Of course, there’s a dark side to creativity where high levels of creative mania are linked to mental health challenges, bipolar episodes, euphoria, and schizophrenia. I'd always thought that neurosurgical treatments for mental health disorders are complex and could be high risk, but I understand you work in an area where 60 to 70 percent of patients respond well to the treatment. So what are the biggest challenges you face translating research into practical, safe, and widely available treatments for disorders like OCD, depression, and PTSD?

SHOFTY

OCD is a relatively simple or understood disorder. We have a very specific brain circuit that is sort of in charge of the enhancement of obsessive thoughts and the following compulsions. So when we intervene with with the OCD circuitry, and there's, there's a lot of amazing work done by my former mentor at Baylor College of Medicine, Sameer Sheth, and Nicole Provenza from his group that are doing really amazing stuff in terms of dissecting that circuitry that leads to these recurrent obsessions and compulsions. I feel like it's a really sort of different thing. Of course, interventions for OCD are FDA-approved, so that's something that we do on a routine clinical basis. There are other mental health conditions like depression and schizophrenia. I'm intentionally bringing up these two because the way I see them, they represent two different types of default mode dysfunction. For example, depression has many subtypes, and it has apparently many different disorders. But one of the subtypes that we're studying in my lab is what we call rumination-type depression. It's the type of depression in which people keep ruminating and keep focusing on their internal thought process. And they just cannot, you know, shake off and concentrate on anything that happens in the outside world.

When somebody has rumination-type depression, they just can't do that, and they keep on ruminating and thinking about things that have happened, and they just can't shake them off. That leads to significant depressive symptoms. The other side of that default mode dysfunction is, for example, schizophrenia at the beginning of the disease, where they're very active, and patients are really stormy and have a lot of psychosis, which is the inability to differentiate external stimuli from internal stimuli. They have a lot of auditory and visual hallucinations, and the default mode network is so hyperactivated that you can't tell the difference between what's happening inside your brain and what's happening on the outside. These are two extreme conditions of what some people think is default mode network dysfunction or network dysfunction inside the brain, which also overlaps with the creative thought process. For the brain or body to function well, we need everything to be balanced, right?

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

We've been talking about meditation, and so mind wandering is, I think, often considered to be a form of mental rest, but on the flip, it can also lead to this negative rumination that you've discussed. So, what are some of the ways beyond what you've already discussed to harness mind wandering for mental resilience, especially in those individuals with a predisposition to anxiety or depression?

SHOFTY

So, mind wandering is another basic function that we associate with the default mode network. And again, our ability to mind wander can be a positive thing if we harness it into a mental break or rest–the extreme form of that is probably meditation. And it can be a bad thing if we basically are unable to concentrate on everything and our mind constantly wanders.

And it's a big issue today with all the screens and social media. Our ability to generate positive mind wandering is getting lost because our attention span has become a TikTok-length sort of attention span. Our ability to allow our mind to wander in healthy ways is getting lost. So a lot of people are interested in the changes that happen to that very basic critical form of thinking or spontaneous thought. It's hard to investigate, and we haven't had a very big success in investigating it because most of the patients that I work with underwent surgery, an invasive intervention, and they're basically having a hard time with mind wandering.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

Do you foresee a future where such technology could be used to augment or directly tap into the creative process of the brain? Do you see the potential benefits or risks of such advancements?

SHOFTY

I'm one of the people who believe that anything that we as human beings can imagine will eventually happen. So, if somebody has raised the question possibility of having brain implants that augment the brain and generate additional functions, I feel like it will eventually happen. There are a lot of private companies, like Elon Musk's Neuralink and others, that are busy designing these interfaces and planning these devices. Of course, nothing is available or even close to completion right now.

The next step, of course, would be to modulate them. Just like any other thing in medicine, it will start or has already started with pathological states which we've talked about and people looking for potential interventions through TMS (transcranial magnetic stimulation). It doesn't necessarily have to be invasive, but of course the next step, especially when we're talking about the brain is to intervene and generate additional functions or to improve the way the brain functions. Many people are working on trying to generate memory augmentation, navigation augmentations, and a lot of other functions. I assume eventually it will reach a point where we'll be able to pick and choose what we want to augment about our own brains. I assume that the technology will be there eventually. And this is something that will be a part of the natural evolution of the human race.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

What led you to delve into studying the mind, the brain, creativity, and all these area? What was your way in?

SHOFTY

The reason I went into neurosurgery is because it provides the most intimate sort of understanding of what happens in the brain. When you operate on a patient, implant electrodes, or perform a resection for epilepsy or any other type of brain surgery, it puts you in a position where you truly understand the significance of the brain and the changes that the brain undergoes. For example, my old boss in Tel Aviv…we used to see our postoperative patients together. They used to tell us, "I can walk and talk, but I don't feel like the same person." That realization drew my mind to studying what makes us ourselves. I believe that creativity is one of the main things that defines our uniqueness as human beings because it's a very personalized thought process. Everyone is creative in a unique and special way. As someone who is interested in and likes other human beings, the question of what makes us unique and human distilled itself into figuring out what happens when we are creative.

What's interesting about meditation is that for people who are professional meditators, their default mode network is not hyperactive, but it's underactive when they meditate. So basically, when they meditate, they sort of break free from their spontaneous stream of consciousness, and that's how meditation should work.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

There is an ongoing debate about how social media and digital environments can potentially have a negative impact on our mental well-being, especially for young people. Numerous studies have explored the link between social media use and reduced psychological well-being, increased levels of depression, and low self-esteem. What are your views on this? How can we protect ourselves and young people from these potential negative effects?

SHOFTY

This is another philosophical question: whether this is our next step in evolution where we don't have to concentrate and we don't have to focus our attention on anything, but we need to be able to follow 20 different stimuli all at once. Maybe that's the way the human race is working towards? And maybe that's the next sort of attribute that we need to be successful in the future world? I do agree that a lot of scientific evidence is pointing out that these are not healthy processes and that they significantly impair our mental health and our well-being.

The best thing to do is to try and minimize exposure to these social networks and online media at younger ages. And also to find something that gives us a break from these things that are constantly hovering around us. If we can give ourselves and our loved ones a chance to get a break from that during their day, I feel like this will help minimize the effect.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

As you reflect on meditation and those ways to connect to our truest self or who we are when our mind is at rest and focused. Could you share your reflections on the beauty and wonder of the natural world and the different ways you tap into your creativity?

SHOFTY

I moved to Utah, which is a very beautiful place, and I feel like the mountains and the breathtaking nature that we have around here really help. There are many studies that have shown that exposure to nature and spending time in nature really helps us. It helps our well-being as human beings, and it also helps us to be creative, reflective, and calm. My personal creative process works through interaction with other people. Through genuine interest in other people and through spending time with them. These are the times when, through talking to people like you, friends, family, or even strangers, I usually think about questions that interest me and most of the time, these questions are abstract and amorphic. But every now and then, there's a question that I think, "Oh, wait, I can look into that through my lab or through my research, and I can utilize that question to try and help my patients." One such example is another project that we have in our lab, trying to understand how time perception happens in the brain and how subjective time perception works. This is something that, through interactions with other people in my lab, we eventually reach the point where we have a formed question that we can utilize to understand that process inside the brain.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

As you reflect on the future and the kind of world we're leaving the next generation, those lessons that you've learned from your teachers and mentors, what do you tell your children? What would you like young people to know, preserve, and remember?

SHOFTY

I think another thing that makes us human is our generational transfer of information. Our ability to distill the knowledge that was passed on to us and then pass it on and give it our unique stamp is again another one of these things that makes us human. The main thing that I've learned from my mentors and the main thing that I would like to pass on to my children is the notion that compassion is the most important thing that we have as human beings. And hopefully, I'll be able to teach myself and then them how to be also self-compassionate. I feel like this is a very good coping mechanism for this extremely violent and stimulating world that's happening out there. Whatever profession you choose, whatever you choose to study, just remember that there's a human being on the other side. This is something that social networks and online media are trying to make us forget: that there's actually a person on the other side of that video or text. I feel like this is the main thing that I would like to pass on to my children to help them remember that, eventually, we are all human.

For the full conversation, listen to the episode.This interview was conducted by Mia Funk with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producers on this episode were Sophie Garnier and Eva Sanborn. The Creative Process is produced by Mia Funk. Additional production support by Sophie Garnier.Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer, and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions). Listen on Apple,Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Where do creative thoughts come from? How can we harness our stream of consciousness and spontaneity to express ourselves? How are mind-wandering, meditation, and the arts good for our creativity and physical and mental well-being?

Dr. Ben Shofty is a functional neurosurgeon affiliated with the University of Utah. He graduated from the Tel-Aviv University Faculty of Medicine, received his PhD in neurosurgical training from the Israeli Institute of Technology, and completed his training at the Tel Aviv Medical Center and Baylor University. He was also an Israeli national rugby player. His practice specializes in neuromodulation and exploring treatments for disorders such as OCD, depression, and epilepsy, among others, while also seeking to understand the science behind creativity, mind-wandering, and the many complexities of the brain.

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Let's talk about creativity. We know that creativity we still don't know exactly what happens in our brains when we're being creative. So, how do you define creativity in the context of those higher-order functions? Can you help us understand the default mode network? You've written that there is not a specific location in the brain for creativity.

BEN SHOFTY

I think the common thing that happens whenever somebody is doing a creative process is that we have infrequent connection between two or more thought processes that weren't meant to be connected. That's when we get that sort of eureka moment when we are able to fuse two things that, or more that aren’t meant to be fused, and we generate something that is actually great. And to me, this is one of the most interesting things that the human mind sort of evolved and specialized to do.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

In terms of your own experience with creativity, I think you have a really interesting background. You were a former national rugby player in Israel. You’ve experienced creativity in the lab and even as a surgeon, you must be coming up with solutions in the moment. Some people might not label that as creative, but when it's high stakes or something unexpected happens during surgery, I imagine you have to use creative problem solving to turn it around. In that moment, creativity can really save a life, and so often there is this split second thinking that's hard to track what’s happening in the creative mind. Can you speak about the more elusive processes like creativity or high-order cognitive functions? Is there a specific area inside the brain where we can see areas where we can see creative sparks emerage?

SHOFTY

So I feel, when you think about the evolution of the human brain–just like other animals that have specialized in speed or keeping warm or gathering food–I feel our brain sort of specialized being creative and flexible and being able to generate different solutions to a given problem. And to me – it's not written in my bio or anywhere else – but I used to cook and work at cooking. And to me, this is the most creative process, right? Taking something and generating a taste or a flavor or something completely different out of it.

To me, this is probably the most fascinating thought process that happens in the human brain. And what I do in neurosurgery–and my subspecialty is called functional neurosurgery–we don't deal with disorders in which there's an anatomical abnormality inside the brain. We deal with disorders in which there is an abnormal connection or abnormal circuitry inside the brain when there's an issue with the way the brain functions. There's no tumor. There are no abnormal blood vessels or anything like that. And that gives us an amazing opportunity to really investigate how different circuits and different areas inside the brain work.

In terms of the more elusive processes like creativity or high-order cognitive functions, we don't really know or understand where they are inside the brain. As you said, there's no creativity cortex, like we have a motor cortex, sensory cortex, or visual cortex.

When we started with this series of projects, we tried to think, if this function just like other higher cognitive functions, cannot be explained by a specific area inside the brain, then what happens? Where does the magic happen? And the answer was that it's a network-dependent function. It doesn't originate from a specific area inside the brain, but it originates from multiple brain networks sort of all of a sudden synchronizing to generate that unexpected function.

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If you talk about Stephen King or Jerry Seinfeld, you know, these people are creative for a living. So they know how to channel this internal thought process and generate these unexpected connections in order to generate the same sort of type of creativity, whether it's a book or a joke or something else. There are many other people who can harness creativity. For most of us, it's a process that starts with that spontaneous stream of thought when all of a sudden the default mode network synchronizes with other brain networks that sort of channel that internal mental process into generating something that is useful or helpful. So, there's a specific moment in which our internal stream of thought is synchronized with a goal-directed or intentional network. And that's when the creative process happens. And that's the sort of magic that were trying to find or analyze with the study that you're talking about.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

Of course, there’s a dark side to creativity where high levels of creative mania are linked to mental health challenges, bipolar episodes, euphoria, and schizophrenia. I'd always thought that neurosurgical treatments for mental health disorders are complex and could be high risk, but I understand you work in an area where 60 to 70 percent of patients respond well to the treatment. So what are the biggest challenges you face translating research into practical, safe, and widely available treatments for disorders like OCD, depression, and PTSD?

SHOFTY

OCD is a relatively simple or understood disorder. We have a very specific brain circuit that is sort of in charge of the enhancement of obsessive thoughts and the following compulsions. So when we intervene with with the OCD circuitry, and there's, there's a lot of amazing work done by my former mentor at Baylor College of Medicine, Sameer Sheth, and Nicole Provenza from his group that are doing really amazing stuff in terms of dissecting that circuitry that leads to these recurrent obsessions and compulsions. I feel like it's a really sort of different thing. Of course, interventions for OCD are FDA-approved, so that's something that we do on a routine clinical basis. There are other mental health conditions like depression and schizophrenia. I'm intentionally bringing up these two because the way I see them, they represent two different types of default mode dysfunction. For example, depression has many subtypes, and it has apparently many different disorders. But one of the subtypes that we're studying in my lab is what we call rumination-type depression. It's the type of depression in which people keep ruminating and keep focusing on their internal thought process. And they just cannot, you know, shake off and concentrate on anything that happens in the outside world.

When somebody has rumination-type depression, they just can't do that, and they keep on ruminating and thinking about things that have happened, and they just can't shake them off. That leads to significant depressive symptoms. The other side of that default mode dysfunction is, for example, schizophrenia at the beginning of the disease, where they're very active, and patients are really stormy and have a lot of psychosis, which is the inability to differentiate external stimuli from internal stimuli. They have a lot of auditory and visual hallucinations, and the default mode network is so hyperactivated that you can't tell the difference between what's happening inside your brain and what's happening on the outside. These are two extreme conditions of what some people think is default mode network dysfunction or network dysfunction inside the brain, which also overlaps with the creative thought process. For the brain or body to function well, we need everything to be balanced, right?

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

We've been talking about meditation, and so mind wandering is, I think, often considered to be a form of mental rest, but on the flip, it can also lead to this negative rumination that you've discussed. So, what are some of the ways beyond what you've already discussed to harness mind wandering for mental resilience, especially in those individuals with a predisposition to anxiety or depression?

SHOFTY

So, mind wandering is another basic function that we associate with the default mode network. And again, our ability to mind wander can be a positive thing if we harness it into a mental break or rest–the extreme form of that is probably meditation. And it can be a bad thing if we basically are unable to concentrate on everything and our mind constantly wanders.

And it's a big issue today with all the screens and social media. Our ability to generate positive mind wandering is getting lost because our attention span has become a TikTok-length sort of attention span. Our ability to allow our mind to wander in healthy ways is getting lost. So a lot of people are interested in the changes that happen to that very basic critical form of thinking or spontaneous thought. It's hard to investigate, and we haven't had a very big success in investigating it because most of the patients that I work with underwent surgery, an invasive intervention, and they're basically having a hard time with mind wandering.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

Do you foresee a future where such technology could be used to augment or directly tap into the creative process of the brain? Do you see the potential benefits or risks of such advancements?

SHOFTY

I'm one of the people who believe that anything that we as human beings can imagine will eventually happen. So, if somebody has raised the question possibility of having brain implants that augment the brain and generate additional functions, I feel like it will eventually happen. There are a lot of private companies, like Elon Musk's Neuralink and others, that are busy designing these interfaces and planning these devices. Of course, nothing is available or even close to completion right now.

The next step, of course, would be to modulate them. Just like any other thing in medicine, it will start or has already started with pathological states which we've talked about and people looking for potential interventions through TMS (transcranial magnetic stimulation). It doesn't necessarily have to be invasive, but of course the next step, especially when we're talking about the brain is to intervene and generate additional functions or to improve the way the brain functions. Many people are working on trying to generate memory augmentation, navigation augmentations, and a lot of other functions. I assume eventually it will reach a point where we'll be able to pick and choose what we want to augment about our own brains. I assume that the technology will be there eventually. And this is something that will be a part of the natural evolution of the human race.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

What led you to delve into studying the mind, the brain, creativity, and all these area? What was your way in?

SHOFTY

The reason I went into neurosurgery is because it provides the most intimate sort of understanding of what happens in the brain. When you operate on a patient, implant electrodes, or perform a resection for epilepsy or any other type of brain surgery, it puts you in a position where you truly understand the significance of the brain and the changes that the brain undergoes. For example, my old boss in Tel Aviv…we used to see our postoperative patients together. They used to tell us, "I can walk and talk, but I don't feel like the same person." That realization drew my mind to studying what makes us ourselves. I believe that creativity is one of the main things that defines our uniqueness as human beings because it's a very personalized thought process. Everyone is creative in a unique and special way. As someone who is interested in and likes other human beings, the question of what makes us unique and human distilled itself into figuring out what happens when we are creative.

What's interesting about meditation is that for people who are professional meditators, their default mode network is not hyperactive, but it's underactive when they meditate. So basically, when they meditate, they sort of break free from their spontaneous stream of consciousness, and that's how meditation should work.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

There is an ongoing debate about how social media and digital environments can potentially have a negative impact on our mental well-being, especially for young people. Numerous studies have explored the link between social media use and reduced psychological well-being, increased levels of depression, and low self-esteem. What are your views on this? How can we protect ourselves and young people from these potential negative effects?

SHOFTY

This is another philosophical question: whether this is our next step in evolution where we don't have to concentrate and we don't have to focus our attention on anything, but we need to be able to follow 20 different stimuli all at once. Maybe that's the way the human race is working towards? And maybe that's the next sort of attribute that we need to be successful in the future world? I do agree that a lot of scientific evidence is pointing out that these are not healthy processes and that they significantly impair our mental health and our well-being.

The best thing to do is to try and minimize exposure to these social networks and online media at younger ages. And also to find something that gives us a break from these things that are constantly hovering around us. If we can give ourselves and our loved ones a chance to get a break from that during their day, I feel like this will help minimize the effect.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

As you reflect on meditation and those ways to connect to our truest self or who we are when our mind is at rest and focused. Could you share your reflections on the beauty and wonder of the natural world and the different ways you tap into your creativity?

SHOFTY

I moved to Utah, which is a very beautiful place, and I feel like the mountains and the breathtaking nature that we have around here really help. There are many studies that have shown that exposure to nature and spending time in nature really helps us. It helps our well-being as human beings, and it also helps us to be creative, reflective, and calm. My personal creative process works through interaction with other people. Through genuine interest in other people and through spending time with them. These are the times when, through talking to people like you, friends, family, or even strangers, I usually think about questions that interest me and most of the time, these questions are abstract and amorphic. But every now and then, there's a question that I think, "Oh, wait, I can look into that through my lab or through my research, and I can utilize that question to try and help my patients." One such example is another project that we have in our lab, trying to understand how time perception happens in the brain and how subjective time perception works. This is something that, through interactions with other people in my lab, we eventually reach the point where we have a formed question that we can utilize to understand that process inside the brain.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

As you reflect on the future and the kind of world we're leaving the next generation, those lessons that you've learned from your teachers and mentors, what do you tell your children? What would you like young people to know, preserve, and remember?

SHOFTY

I think another thing that makes us human is our generational transfer of information. Our ability to distill the knowledge that was passed on to us and then pass it on and give it our unique stamp is again another one of these things that makes us human. The main thing that I've learned from my mentors and the main thing that I would like to pass on to my children is the notion that compassion is the most important thing that we have as human beings. And hopefully, I'll be able to teach myself and then them how to be also self-compassionate. I feel like this is a very good coping mechanism for this extremely violent and stimulating world that's happening out there. Whatever profession you choose, whatever you choose to study, just remember that there's a human being on the other side. This is something that social networks and online media are trying to make us forget: that there's actually a person on the other side of that video or text. I feel like this is the main thing that I would like to pass on to my children to help them remember that, eventually, we are all human.

For the full conversation, listen to the episode.This interview was conducted by Mia Funk with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producers on this episode were Sophie Garnier and Eva Sanborn. The Creative Process is produced by Mia Funk. Additional production support by Sophie Garnier.Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer, and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions). Listen on Apple,Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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How can we design and adapt for the uncertainties of the 21st century? How do emotions shape our decisions and the way we design the world around us?

Scott Doorley is the Creative Director at Stanford's d. school and coauthor of Make Space: How to Set the Stage for Creative Collaboration. He teaches design communication and his work has been featured in museums and in publications such as Architecture + Urbanism and The New York Times. Carissa Carter is the Academic Director at Stanford's d. school and author of The Secret Language of Maps: How to Tell Visual Stories with Data. She teaches courses on emerging technologies and data visualization and received Fast Company Innovation and Core 77 awards for her work on designing with machine learning and blockchain. Together, they coauthored Assembling Tomorrow: A Guide to Designing a Thriving Future.

Today, someone is putting the finishing touches on a machine-­ learning algorithm that will change the way you relate to your family. Someone is trying to design a way to communicate with animals in their own language. Someone is designing a gene that alters bacteria to turn your poop bright blue when it’s time to see the doctor. Someone is cleaning up the mess someone else left behind seventy years ago yesterday. Today, someone just had an idea that will end up saving one thing while it harms another…

To be a maker in this moment—­ to be a human today—­ is to collaborate with the world. It is to create and be created, to work and be worked on, to make and be made. To be human is to tinker, create, fix, care, and bring new things into the world. It is to design. You—­ yes, you!—­ might design products or policy, services or sermons, production lines or preschool programs. You might run a business, make art, or participate in passing out meals to the poor. You may write code or pour concrete, lobby for endangered species legislation or craft cocktails. Wherever you fit in, you are part of shaping the world. This is design work.

– Assembling Tomorrow
A Guide to Designing a Thriving Future

THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST

You both teach at universities at a time when educational silos are in flux. Young people are living in this kind of giant laboratory of possibilities, innovation, inspiration, and experimentation, and things around us are changing so fast. The rapid advances of AI are challenging many norms, and Assembling Tomorrow really helps us put this into context. It's playful, imaginative, and thought-provoking, and it inspired me to consider: What’s the future that I want to live in? And how I can be a part of that design process? So, what made you write Assembling Tomorrow at this moment in time?

CARISSA CARTER

This moment feels really overwhelming. Like we're overwhelmed with the technology, our climate's on the fritz, and it can feel really unsettling. Yet at the same time, as people that craft learning experiences, we know how much agency each of us has as individuals. And so we wanted to write the book to call attention to the complexity and the feeling of overwhelm of this moment and then also to share things that anybody can do to launch ourselves into that better future.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST

How important are emotions in the design process? And what are the emotional impacts of design?

SCOTT DOORLEY

So if you look at the internet and the creation of the internet, the idea was to move information quickly. And that has been great, but there have been a lot of things where they didn't take into account the fact that, well, there are people attached to all that information, and those people are experiencing emotions. The things that we're designing are actually exciting and aggravating our emotions. So you take something like social media, which is really about the speedy spread of information. And what you see is it also brought along with it teen depression and body image issues. It also led to political polarization.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST

Carissa, you teach data visualization. How important is this in helping us understand, adapt and take action on climate change?

CARTER

One thing to know is that every single climate visualization that we see out in the world, whether that is a map of rising temperatures around the country or the globe or rising sea levels or wildfires, all of that has design decisions behind it. I am also with you that we need to get more people understanding the impacts of their own actions on climate change and being aware of what's happening to the planet. So one is to be able to interpret that work and really interrogate it for what it is. To be able to read any infographic and what we call deconstruct it, understand what emotions it is evoking in you, your gut reaction, why those are happening, and literally what the designer has done to make you feel that way. Literacy in reading infographics is one piece. And to give you very specific examples, in one of the classes that I teach and co-teach with a geoscientist, Kate Maher, and an infographic designer, Catherine Madden, we have students visualize what is known as the climate swerve. So this idea that humans, and the idea that we can't have agency over shifting climate, was coined the climate swerve by Jay Lifton a number of years ago. That concept is one that the more that we have people sourcing what the information is and how to present it, we feel gets that climate literacy in our brains and gets that message across. You can see it in really interesting ways. For example, we have students visualize climate anxiety and where it is cropping up, overlaid with where people should feel anxious about climate. We have even had a student group that visualized the themes of major Marvel movies throughout the past 20 plus years. They looked at what those themes were and how they changed and how some of the themes have started to be much more climate-related, kind of showing how these topics are ingrained in popular culture too.

Speculative Legislation: Preparing for the Future

DOORLEY

We have an assumption that technological innovation outpaces government regulation. That's a very well-founded assumption because that's how it goes. It's always been that way. However, I think we need to start thinking differently, and we should be able to imagine that we can create legislation that precedes the impacts of the things we're creating. If we see a potential effect coming, we should be able to put in a sort of preemptive law to address it prior to the effect actually happening, which we do in a lot of ways. There are tons of examples of that, but I think the pace of legislation needs to accelerate so that it can really grapple with the pace of technological innovation. But then if you do that, you have to be ready for the fact that the legislation might be off. It's speculative, it's anticipatory, and you're not necessarily going to get it right. I think we also need to build in mechanisms into the laws that make them responsive and changeable. So let's have speculative legislation. We'll put a law out there, a regulation that's speculative, but let's have built-in checks that are constantly checking if this is working the way we wanted it to, and it needs to be easy to change if it's not. Which is also not built into the system. We need to be able to imagine things working in ways in which we aren't used to them working. One, I think, is legislation being quick and responsive when generally it's sort of slow and hard to change. That's one thing that I think could really help.

CARTER

Scott and I like to kick around imaginative ideas for types of legislation. One idea is like a 'look both ways' technology where, let's say, we have a big new social media technology that's about to be launched, and AI and all sorts of algorithms that would fit within that bucket. Is there a moment where there's a trial period with technologies like that, where we have some ideas as to how they might need to be governed? We could put those in place and then use that, say, two-year period of time when that technology is learning how it's going to actually work once it's in place. We both look historically and see how similar technologies have affected our world. What should we be looking for in terms of the effects it might have both on our individual persons and our societies? Also, sort of look forward, do some visioning as to what might come to pass 10, 20, 30 years down the road.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST

One of the things you write about are understanding the intangibles.

CARTER

Understanding the intangibles is really about knowing the forces that are coming together that are making this moment feel quite unsettling. These include the fact that everything is interconnected and flows between each other and the feelings that you were talking about before, as well as our human propensity to make stories and come up with narratives to connect ideas, whether they exist or not. Human characteristics and actionables are like: what are ways to notice those forces that are happening, to see the unseen so that each one of us can be more aware of what's happening and build the world for the better.

The Concept of Umwelt: Perception and Reality

DOORLEY

The way our brains work is not really indicative of how the world works. There's a reason for that. Us being able to pay attention to certain things and ignore others allows us to navigate, but it shouldn't be mistaken for an understanding of our holistic view of the world. There's a concept that we talk about in the book called the umwelt. The idea of an umwelt is what your senses can take in, and different species have different senses. As an example, cockroaches sense movement in ways that we don't. Butterflies can see infrared light, and we can't. Butterflies can actually taste with their feet, which is kind of an amazing thing, and I'm kind of glad that we don't. The point is that even through our senses, my understanding of a situation is going to be different from your understanding of the situation. The way I think of a story of what happens is going to be different from the way you thought of a story. There's a man named Gregory Bateson (author of Steps to an Ecology of Mind), who was an environmentalist, and he talks about how most of the problems in the world are actually a problem between the way people think and how the world works. They are not the same thing. The way we understand the world and how the world actually works is just not mapped perfectly. That kind of leads to problems because we don't know exactly what we're doing in the world. We can't see all the repercussions of the things we create until later on.

AI and the Future: Opportunities and Concerns

One silver lining about the technologies we're creating is that technologies like AI could be used to help us with this issue, with the fact that our mental models aren't exactly in line with how the world works. AI is actually very good at predicting and modeling outcomes. It could be used to understand climate change better so that we're able to understand it in a way that allows us to act. It could also help us predict the impacts of the things that we're making. So there's a bit of a silver lining in here, even though it can feel scary to be in a situation where your mental model and how the world works are not in line.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST

As you reflect on AI, how do you feel it's going to change the future of education, the future of work, the way we communicate with ourselves, and our imaginations? We have been living in a digital smog for a long time, now combined with the manic pace of AI. So as our technologies change, how is it changing our sense of self?

CARISSA CARTER

Well, one is it's absolutely going to change us. I think the sooner that we can be very proactive, the better. I don't know if I want to be changed, and I think a lot of people are feeling that too. But it is going to change us, so it's not going to help to pretend like it's not happening. But we can all be proactive in noticing the changes it's having on us, on our children, on our planet, from every scale—from that large system-wide energy footprint scale all the way down to the minuscule. Maybe I won't even call it minuscule, but I worry that AI is changing my thoughts and can control my thoughts, and that used to sound really far-fetched and now seems sort of middle of the road. I guarantee in a year's time that will sound like a very normal concern. Social listening is very sophisticated. All of the data in the websites that we visit, the data trails that we leave out in the world, are tracking us—our locations, our behaviors, and our habits such that there are many sites out there that can predict exactly what we're thinking and feeling and feed us advertising content or things that aren't even advertising content that can change what our next behaviors are.

I think that's getting more and more sophisticated. We have already seen our political elections affected by mass attacks on our social media. When that comes down to our individual agency and behavior, I think that's something we do need to be concerned about. The way that we as individuals can combat it is to be aware that it's happening. Really start to notice the unnoticed, and I still feel optimistic amongst this concern.

When we are prototyping new design ideas with students, we love this mantra that the prototype should never be more resolved than the idea. So if you want to make a new chair and you're concerned with how much space it should take up, you make that thing out of cardboard so that you just get an idea of space. You don't make it at its final beautiful wood and leather resolution because then you're going to be looking at whether this texture feels right. You're not going to be thinking about the amount of space it's taking up. But with AI, you're right. The manicness, the hallucinations, when they appear exactly the same as something that we are used to as just a representation of search, etc., that's confusing. That is confusing to our brains, and if you're working quickly, you can miss it.

The Media Landscape: Protecting Our Imagination

DOORLEY

You mentioned digital smog, Mia, and something Carissa and I have been talking about lately is as you move from the industrial era to the media era, the landscape of what we're working with changes. In a media landscape, the environment is not just the trees and the water and the air. It's actually our minds—our emotions, our feelings, our mental models, and our imagination. So our brains are kind of the environment in which all these new media updates and designs are playing out. Where does pollution show up? Pollution shows up in political polarization, it shows up in difficulties with mental health. We need to think of our imagination in the media space as a public resource that needs to be protected. Our collective imagination, the sum total of our individual imaginations and how they affect each other, is really important to start thinking about with a conservation mindset. This is kind of a silent spring moment of the media era.

Creativity, Innovation and the Importance of a Holistic Design Process

DOORLEY

When you're thinking about a creative field or just bringing creativity to whatever field you have, creativity is often about finding the hidden thing, finding the thing that nobody else is seeing and taking it to reality. Don't think that make believe or imagination or weird ideas are not worth it. I had some mentors in my life that allowed me to understand how you should take make believe seriously, because if you go down this kind of wild path, you find something beyond what's going on, and eventually the world is going to normalize it and integrate it. Otherwise, it just won't work. So don't worry about being out there. We need people to be thinking beyond what is toward what could be. I think that's number one. The second thing is that the way you do things is as important as the things you do. It's not just about the product; it's about how you do it because how you do it actually has more repercussions sometimes than the product. You might create a great product, but if everyone working on it is angry and the people you're trying to serve aren't excited about it or they've been taken advantage of to make it come into the world, that leaves more bad stuff that's harder to see but has an equal or bigger impact. Just how you make it is as important as what you make.

Image credit: Patrick BeaudouinThis interview was conducted by Mia Funk with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producers on this episode were Katie Foster and Surayyah Fofana. The Creative Process is produced by Mia Funk. Additional production support by Sophie Garnier.Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer, and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions). Listen on Apple,Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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How can we design and adapt for the uncertainties of the 21st century? How do emotions shape our decisions and the way we design the world around us?

Scott Doorley is the Creative Director at Stanford's d. school and coauthor of Make Space: How to Set the Stage for Creative Collaboration. He teaches design communication and his work has been featured in museums and in publications such as Architecture + Urbanism and The New York Times. Carissa Carter is the Academic Director at Stanford's d. school and author of The Secret Language of Maps: How to Tell Visual Stories with Data. She teaches courses on emerging technologies and data visualization and received Fast Company Innovation and Core 77 awards for her work on designing with machine learning and blockchain. Together, they coauthored Assembling Tomorrow: A Guide to Designing a Thriving Future.

Today, someone is putting the finishing touches on a machine-­ learning algorithm that will change the way you relate to your family. Someone is trying to design a way to communicate with animals in their own language. Someone is designing a gene that alters bacteria to turn your poop bright blue when it’s time to see the doctor. Someone is cleaning up the mess someone else left behind seventy years ago yesterday. Today, someone just had an idea that will end up saving one thing while it harms another…

To be a maker in this moment—­ to be a human today—­ is to collaborate with the world. It is to create and be created, to work and be worked on, to make and be made. To be human is to tinker, create, fix, care, and bring new things into the world. It is to design. You—­ yes, you!—­ might design products or policy, services or sermons, production lines or preschool programs. You might run a business, make art, or participate in passing out meals to the poor. You may write code or pour concrete, lobby for endangered species legislation or craft cocktails. Wherever you fit in, you are part of shaping the world. This is design work.

– Assembling Tomorrow
A Guide to Designing a Thriving Future

THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST

You both teach at universities at a time when educational silos are in flux. Young people are living in this kind of giant laboratory of possibilities, innovation, inspiration, and experimentation, and things around us are changing so fast. The rapid advances of AI are challenging many norms, and Assembling Tomorrow really helps us put this into context. It's playful, imaginative, and thought-provoking, and it inspired me to consider: What’s the future that I want to live in? And how I can be a part of that design process? So, what made you write Assembling Tomorrow at this moment in time?

CARISSA CARTER

This moment feels really overwhelming. Like we're overwhelmed with the technology, our climate's on the fritz, and it can feel really unsettling. Yet at the same time, as people that craft learning experiences, we know how much agency each of us has as individuals. And so we wanted to write the book to call attention to the complexity and the feeling of overwhelm of this moment and then also to share things that anybody can do to launch ourselves into that better future.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST

How important are emotions in the design process? And what are the emotional impacts of design?

SCOTT DOORLEY

So if you look at the internet and the creation of the internet, the idea was to move information quickly. And that has been great, but there have been a lot of things where they didn't take into account the fact that, well, there are people attached to all that information, and those people are experiencing emotions. The things that we're designing are actually exciting and aggravating our emotions. So you take something like social media, which is really about the speedy spread of information. And what you see is it also brought along with it teen depression and body image issues. It also led to political polarization.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST

Carissa, you teach data visualization. How important is this in helping us understand, adapt and take action on climate change?

CARTER

One thing to know is that every single climate visualization that we see out in the world, whether that is a map of rising temperatures around the country or the globe or rising sea levels or wildfires, all of that has design decisions behind it. I am also with you that we need to get more people understanding the impacts of their own actions on climate change and being aware of what's happening to the planet. So one is to be able to interpret that work and really interrogate it for what it is. To be able to read any infographic and what we call deconstruct it, understand what emotions it is evoking in you, your gut reaction, why those are happening, and literally what the designer has done to make you feel that way. Literacy in reading infographics is one piece. And to give you very specific examples, in one of the classes that I teach and co-teach with a geoscientist, Kate Maher, and an infographic designer, Catherine Madden, we have students visualize what is known as the climate swerve. So this idea that humans, and the idea that we can't have agency over shifting climate, was coined the climate swerve by Jay Lifton a number of years ago. That concept is one that the more that we have people sourcing what the information is and how to present it, we feel gets that climate literacy in our brains and gets that message across. You can see it in really interesting ways. For example, we have students visualize climate anxiety and where it is cropping up, overlaid with where people should feel anxious about climate. We have even had a student group that visualized the themes of major Marvel movies throughout the past 20 plus years. They looked at what those themes were and how they changed and how some of the themes have started to be much more climate-related, kind of showing how these topics are ingrained in popular culture too.

Speculative Legislation: Preparing for the Future

DOORLEY

We have an assumption that technological innovation outpaces government regulation. That's a very well-founded assumption because that's how it goes. It's always been that way. However, I think we need to start thinking differently, and we should be able to imagine that we can create legislation that precedes the impacts of the things we're creating. If we see a potential effect coming, we should be able to put in a sort of preemptive law to address it prior to the effect actually happening, which we do in a lot of ways. There are tons of examples of that, but I think the pace of legislation needs to accelerate so that it can really grapple with the pace of technological innovation. But then if you do that, you have to be ready for the fact that the legislation might be off. It's speculative, it's anticipatory, and you're not necessarily going to get it right. I think we also need to build in mechanisms into the laws that make them responsive and changeable. So let's have speculative legislation. We'll put a law out there, a regulation that's speculative, but let's have built-in checks that are constantly checking if this is working the way we wanted it to, and it needs to be easy to change if it's not. Which is also not built into the system. We need to be able to imagine things working in ways in which we aren't used to them working. One, I think, is legislation being quick and responsive when generally it's sort of slow and hard to change. That's one thing that I think could really help.

CARTER

Scott and I like to kick around imaginative ideas for types of legislation. One idea is like a 'look both ways' technology where, let's say, we have a big new social media technology that's about to be launched, and AI and all sorts of algorithms that would fit within that bucket. Is there a moment where there's a trial period with technologies like that, where we have some ideas as to how they might need to be governed? We could put those in place and then use that, say, two-year period of time when that technology is learning how it's going to actually work once it's in place. We both look historically and see how similar technologies have affected our world. What should we be looking for in terms of the effects it might have both on our individual persons and our societies? Also, sort of look forward, do some visioning as to what might come to pass 10, 20, 30 years down the road.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST

One of the things you write about are understanding the intangibles.

CARTER

Understanding the intangibles is really about knowing the forces that are coming together that are making this moment feel quite unsettling. These include the fact that everything is interconnected and flows between each other and the feelings that you were talking about before, as well as our human propensity to make stories and come up with narratives to connect ideas, whether they exist or not. Human characteristics and actionables are like: what are ways to notice those forces that are happening, to see the unseen so that each one of us can be more aware of what's happening and build the world for the better.

The Concept of Umwelt: Perception and Reality

DOORLEY

The way our brains work is not really indicative of how the world works. There's a reason for that. Us being able to pay attention to certain things and ignore others allows us to navigate, but it shouldn't be mistaken for an understanding of our holistic view of the world. There's a concept that we talk about in the book called the umwelt. The idea of an umwelt is what your senses can take in, and different species have different senses. As an example, cockroaches sense movement in ways that we don't. Butterflies can see infrared light, and we can't. Butterflies can actually taste with their feet, which is kind of an amazing thing, and I'm kind of glad that we don't. The point is that even through our senses, my understanding of a situation is going to be different from your understanding of the situation. The way I think of a story of what happens is going to be different from the way you thought of a story. There's a man named Gregory Bateson (author of Steps to an Ecology of Mind), who was an environmentalist, and he talks about how most of the problems in the world are actually a problem between the way people think and how the world works. They are not the same thing. The way we understand the world and how the world actually works is just not mapped perfectly. That kind of leads to problems because we don't know exactly what we're doing in the world. We can't see all the repercussions of the things we create until later on.

AI and the Future: Opportunities and Concerns

One silver lining about the technologies we're creating is that technologies like AI could be used to help us with this issue, with the fact that our mental models aren't exactly in line with how the world works. AI is actually very good at predicting and modeling outcomes. It could be used to understand climate change better so that we're able to understand it in a way that allows us to act. It could also help us predict the impacts of the things that we're making. So there's a bit of a silver lining in here, even though it can feel scary to be in a situation where your mental model and how the world works are not in line.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST

As you reflect on AI, how do you feel it's going to change the future of education, the future of work, the way we communicate with ourselves, and our imaginations? We have been living in a digital smog for a long time, now combined with the manic pace of AI. So as our technologies change, how is it changing our sense of self?

CARISSA CARTER

Well, one is it's absolutely going to change us. I think the sooner that we can be very proactive, the better. I don't know if I want to be changed, and I think a lot of people are feeling that too. But it is going to change us, so it's not going to help to pretend like it's not happening. But we can all be proactive in noticing the changes it's having on us, on our children, on our planet, from every scale—from that large system-wide energy footprint scale all the way down to the minuscule. Maybe I won't even call it minuscule, but I worry that AI is changing my thoughts and can control my thoughts, and that used to sound really far-fetched and now seems sort of middle of the road. I guarantee in a year's time that will sound like a very normal concern. Social listening is very sophisticated. All of the data in the websites that we visit, the data trails that we leave out in the world, are tracking us—our locations, our behaviors, and our habits such that there are many sites out there that can predict exactly what we're thinking and feeling and feed us advertising content or things that aren't even advertising content that can change what our next behaviors are.

I think that's getting more and more sophisticated. We have already seen our political elections affected by mass attacks on our social media. When that comes down to our individual agency and behavior, I think that's something we do need to be concerned about. The way that we as individuals can combat it is to be aware that it's happening. Really start to notice the unnoticed, and I still feel optimistic amongst this concern.

When we are prototyping new design ideas with students, we love this mantra that the prototype should never be more resolved than the idea. So if you want to make a new chair and you're concerned with how much space it should take up, you make that thing out of cardboard so that you just get an idea of space. You don't make it at its final beautiful wood and leather resolution because then you're going to be looking at whether this texture feels right. You're not going to be thinking about the amount of space it's taking up. But with AI, you're right. The manicness, the hallucinations, when they appear exactly the same as something that we are used to as just a representation of search, etc., that's confusing. That is confusing to our brains, and if you're working quickly, you can miss it.

The Media Landscape: Protecting Our Imagination

DOORLEY

You mentioned digital smog, Mia, and something Carissa and I have been talking about lately is as you move from the industrial era to the media era, the landscape of what we're working with changes. In a media landscape, the environment is not just the trees and the water and the air. It's actually our minds—our emotions, our feelings, our mental models, and our imagination. So our brains are kind of the environment in which all these new media updates and designs are playing out. Where does pollution show up? Pollution shows up in political polarization, it shows up in difficulties with mental health. We need to think of our imagination in the media space as a public resource that needs to be protected. Our collective imagination, the sum total of our individual imaginations and how they affect each other, is really important to start thinking about with a conservation mindset. This is kind of a silent spring moment of the media era.

Creativity, Innovation and the Importance of a Holistic Design Process

DOORLEY

When you're thinking about a creative field or just bringing creativity to whatever field you have, creativity is often about finding the hidden thing, finding the thing that nobody else is seeing and taking it to reality. Don't think that make believe or imagination or weird ideas are not worth it. I had some mentors in my life that allowed me to understand how you should take make believe seriously, because if you go down this kind of wild path, you find something beyond what's going on, and eventually the world is going to normalize it and integrate it. Otherwise, it just won't work. So don't worry about being out there. We need people to be thinking beyond what is toward what could be. I think that's number one. The second thing is that the way you do things is as important as the things you do. It's not just about the product; it's about how you do it because how you do it actually has more repercussions sometimes than the product. You might create a great product, but if everyone working on it is angry and the people you're trying to serve aren't excited about it or they've been taken advantage of to make it come into the world, that leaves more bad stuff that's harder to see but has an equal or bigger impact. Just how you make it is as important as what you make.

Image credit: Patrick BeaudouinThis interview was conducted by Mia Funk with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producers on this episode were Katie Foster and Surayyah Fofana. The Creative Process is produced by Mia Funk. Additional production support by Sophie Garnier.Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer, and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions). Listen on Apple,Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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How can museums remain relevant in the digital age, where visual imagery is more accessible than ever? What role do museums play in fostering creativity and innovation in their communities?

Stephen Reily is the Founding Director of Remuseum, an independent research project housed at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas. Funded by arts patron David Booth with additional support by the Ford Foundation, Remuseum focuses on advancing relevance and governance in museums across the U.S. He works with museums to create a financially sustainable strategy that is human-focused, centering on inclusion, diversity, and important causes like climate change. During his time as director of the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, KY, Reily presented Promise, Witness, Remembrance, an exhibition in response to the killing of Breonna Taylor and a year of protests in Louisville. In 2022, he co-wrote a book documenting the exhibition. A Yale and Stanford Law graduate, Reily clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens before launching a successful entrepreneurial career, experiences he draws upon for public engagement initiatives.Stephen Reily is the Founding Director of Remuseum, an independent research project housed at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas. Funded by arts patron David Booth with additional support by the Ford Foundation, Remuseum focuses on advancing relevance, governance, and sustainability in museums across the U.S. During his time as director of the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, KY, Reily presented Promise, Witness, Remembrance, an exhibition in response to the killing of Breonna Taylor and a year of protests in Louisville. In 2022, he co-wrote a book documenting the exhibition. As an active civic leader, Reily has been a part of numerous community organizations and boards, like the Reily Reentry Project, supporting expungement programs for Kentucky citizens, Creative Capital, offering grants for the arts, and founded Seed Capital Kentucky, a non-profit that aims to improve the food economy in the area. A Yale and Stanford Law graduate, Reily clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens before launching a successful entrepreneurial career, experiences he draws upon for public engagement initiatives.

STEPHEN REILY

When I left the Speed Museum after an orderly succession in 2021, I spent a lot of time thinking about the challenges of museums, how it's so hard to cover their budgets and their expenses outpace their revenues, how their assets often act like liabilities and how their own rules have sometimes made it hard for them to innovate. What I didn't know was how Alice Walton, with a great entrepreneur and philanthropist named David Booth, was having similar conversations at that time. 20 years ago, Alice Walton began with a crazy, bold vision, much like her father had when he began Walmart, although hers was in the arts. And she envisioned this place called Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, which opened a little over a decade ago, and today attracts over 800, 000 visitors a year in a region, Northwest Arkansas, with only 500,000 citizens and in a town with only 40,000 residents.

So Alice thinks big, and she thinks differently. And she and David Booth started talking about why is it so hard for other museums to think differently. And they came up with the idea of putting together a project, which became Remuseum, which I run, in their words, “to help museums break out of these legacy systems and become more innovative.” So I joined the project early last year, gave it a name, and now I'm trying to figure out how we help museums in that effort of becoming more creative and more innovative, how to break out of their legacy systems, matter to more people, and thrive.

**Transparency and Accountability in Museums**

So, 30 to 40 years ago, the average American art museum said that its purpose, its mission, was to preserve objects for the benefit of the public. The public in a very passive role in that formulation. Today, it has dramatically shifted and our own research has documented that 90 percent of American art museums now center the public in their mission statements, not the object. They say that their purpose and mission is to serve and engage the public with art. Sixty percent of them don't even mention objects or collections. And yet, are they really doing the things to reflect and serve these new missions? In fact, when you look at them, they're often, their policies, their norms, their degree of transparency, which you mentioned, and their budgets seem to be much more anchored and aligned with their past missions than with their current missions. And as transparency itself goes, what we showed in a research project we released earlier this summer was that while the missions may center the public in the art museums per stated purpose, the transparency and the information they share do not center the public. And only 17 percent of American art museums share both their number of visitors and their consolidated financial statements. Something that's really kind of a base level of information. They all have this information. They all share it with their boards, but they don't yet share it with the public. So part of Remuseum's work is not just to promote innovation but to ask museums, and boards in particular, to hold themselves accountable to the missions and the public that they serve.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

It's a strange time because museums are fighting for eyeballs. There's all this digital distraction. At no other time, I think, has the average person felt so empowered, even without having art training, to create something. I think that, in some ways, this period of flourishing creativity outside the museum makes it so people aren’t necessarily drawn in to see the physical works of art with fresh eyes.

STEPHEN REILY

I think you've caught exactly the challenge and the opportunity for museums. The opportunity is that we have never had a public that is more passionate and obsessed with visual imagery. If the owners of the best original imagery in the world can't figure out how to take advantage of the fact that the world has now become obsessed with exactly these treasures that we have to offer as museums, then shame on us. You know, this is the opportunity to say that if you're spending all day scrolling on Instagram or other apps looking for amazing imagery, come and see the original source. Come and see the real work. Let us figure out how to make that connection.

At the same time, we need to be learning from them because there is a threat and there's a lot more innovation, frankly, going on in the visual world outside of museums. Whether it's apps like Instagram or Pinterest or whether it's commercial art enterprises. You know, many people are finding these immersive art experiences are a wonderful way to get to know and love the art of mainstream artists like Van Gogh or Monet. And the museum field generally looks down on that.

And I understand it's not necessarily deeply art-historical. It's not trying to transmit a deeper degree of knowledge. And yet, how can we learn from them? How can we learn from the Sphere in Las Vegas, which is employing artists to connect with musicians and give thousands, tens of thousands of people a day a way to experience visual art in a new way. The question is not, you know, museums might say, well, I don't want to sell out. That's not the question. The question is, how do you tap into that energy that the visual imagery is creating for humans all across the country that museums are failing and are not feeling like the places where the public can come experience. There are exceptions. I mean, I think that in the world of AI, museums are really doing interesting work. The Museum of Modern Art last year worked with the great artist Refik Anadol to create a work really grounded in the permanent collection of MoMA in a revolving, mutating kind of explosive giant screen of AI art. And I saw people sitting in the lobby at MoMA transfixed for hours by this work. It was a great new entry point. For young people, for people who might not have felt that the art at the Museum of Modern Art was for them to feel that, yes, this place was leaning into them. Many art critics scoffed at that, whether that was real art or not. But if you looked at the eyes of the visitors, it was becoming…it was art in their eyes. And that's why we have to be a little more expansive in what we share for audiences whose minds may be growing faster than museums are.

I certainly don't want to sound like the role of the curator is diminished in a reimagined role for the museum with its community. I think it asks curators, educators, and museum leaders to really lean deeply into their own missions and the communities they serve without fear. That's another thing. Artists don't have much fear, right? That's the amazing thing about them. And I think museums would do well to copy artists in that respect as well.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

As you think about the future and the importance of the arts, what would you like young people to know, preserve, and remember?

REILY

What I tell my children is to embrace the future and be prepared for the new ways of work, engagement, and citizenship that it may require because the only thing about the future is it shows us that many of the ways that we've been doing things are deeply flawed. And we have to always have the capacity to unthink the things we've been taught and the systems that we've adopted and embraced, which continue to create a lot of good, but also figure out how to balance them with better practices for the future.

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk and Ailin Xu with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interview Producers on this episode were Sam Myers and Ailin Xu. The Creative Process is produced by Mia Funk. Associate Text Editor was Daniela Cordovez Flores. Additional production support by Sophie Garnier.Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions). Listen on Apple,Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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What ignites curiosity in humans? How does our brain select things we need to know and ignore what isn’t essential? How does our perception shape what we know about the world?

Dr. Jacqueline Gottlieb is a Professor of Neuroscience and Principal Investigator at Columbia University’s Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute. Dr. Gottlieb studies the mechanisms that underlie the brain's higher cognitive functions, including decision making, memory, and attention. Her interest is in how the brain gathers the evidence it needs—and ignores what it doesn’t—during everyday tasks and during special states such as curiosity.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

Tell us about your journey. What drew you to neuroscience? As you learned more about the complexities of the human mind and how thoughts shape our actions, what led you to focus on the neural mechanisms of attention and curiosity?

JACQUELINE GOTTLIEB

I came to neuroscience from a humanistic perspective. I was very interested to find out who we are. What do we know? What do we think we know? Why do we think we know certain things? How do we see things? How do we perceive them?

Then I discovered that I was amazed by the precise way that cognitive neuroscience can measure these elusive mental functions, such as attention or memory. You know, it's something that happens in our heads, and it's very fleeting, yet there are experimental methods to really pinpoint them. And slowly I zeroed in on eye movements as this incredible marker of internal cognition. So, if you want to know what somebody is interested in or thinking about or what information they're processing? Eye movements are by no means a perfect marker. It's a very noisy marker, but it's one of the closest ones we have as an index. So why do eye movements tell us about what we think and what we find interesting? Ultimately, the question behind curiosity is what things we find interesting in our environment. The way I think about eye movements is that they really are trained in some largely subconscious process.

I liken eye movements to how we learn to control our skeletal movements. So, how do you learn? How do you stand up right now? How do you sit? How does your body maintain its posture? It's an enormously complicated process. The tens of muscles are controlled in very precise balance, but you're entirely unaware of this. So–and I think that we see similar things–when people do tasks like if you prepare tea or if when you drive, people have very, very consistent patterns of eye movements that are very exquisitely coordinated with what they do with their body. Very reproducible, very consistent. You can also see that they are learned.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

One thing that I really loved hearing from you is that curiosity is the most important thing about our behavior and our brain function. And I love hearing that because sometimes I feel my mind is like a butterfly, too curious about everything, and there's just so much to learn and not enough time. So it's nice to hear that curiosity is valorized, although as you identify, it may sometimes seem like general curiosity does not have a direct purpose. Why do you think this is, and why do you feel curiosity has been often neglected by neuroscience?

GOTTLIEB

That's a very interesting question, and I think there are good reasons for it. As scientists, we like to be reductionists, right? Brain and behavior are hugely complicated questions, and so we simplify them to study them in the lab. Our field has pursued two major traditions: one is the Cognitivist tradition, so people like William James and many others are really fascinated by mental operations. Things like attention, memory, mental imagery, or language. People study the capacities. What is it that we can do? What are the limits? How many items can we memorize? How, for how long? And so on and so forth.

The other half of our field studies decision-making and motivated behavior. That is, what do we like? What do we want? How hard are we willing to work for something we want? And those two fields have really split. So the, so the decision making, half of our field was dominated by behaviorism, founded by B. F. Skinner, and their feeling was, well, all this mental stuff is a bit elusive, and I don't know how to measure it, and it feels like magic and hocus pocus.

But here's what I can do. I can take a rat and put it in a simple cage, and I can make the rat very hungry and give it a lever that delivers food and another that delivers nothing. With this, I will tell you precisely how many times the rat will press the food lever as a function of time. It's just a stimulus-response agent, and it's all about motivation and rewards. That field has gotten very far and has described a number of phenomena, but what happens is that these traditions have continued each one on its track. They have become separate from each other. We have a big social divide among the researchers who pursue these questions. We're now at a point where each field is developed enough that there is nowhere else to go unless you combine the two. Curiosity is precisely the intersection of those things. It has to do with the desire for information.

I need to know how I process information, what it is, and whether I want it. That's precisely curiosity. The time has come to unify these, and it's a huge undertaking because we're talking on each side of the cognitivist and behaviorist traditions. You have hundreds of scientists working on each side; they each have their ideas, and they each have been educated in their traditions. And linking them is going to take several decades, I think, to have a good integration. It's just starting.

This truly has been an explosion of research. When I started thinking about this question, I could barely find anybody who was interested in it. We didn't even know how to begin to ask the question. How do you even formulate that? That is precisely the gap between those two fields because we need to understand how we process information, understand the task, and cognitively represent the situation. Then, we need to understand what you are motivated to do about that situation, in this case, with your eyes.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

So what have you learned? I know that you've mainly studied humans and non-human primates, but what have you learned then from general animal communication?

GOTTLIEB

The way I tend to think about eye movements in general is in terms of a question and answer. I think about the act of making an eye movement like a question that you pose to the world, and you answer that question for yourself by looking at someone.

For example, when you look at a weather forecast, you have partial reliability of information. And then, you combine how uncertain you were to begin with the new information and weigh them by the reliability. If you think the reliability of your source is low, then you're not going to listen to it that much. But if you think the reliability is high, you should listen to it more. And then you update your beliefs. The problem is that knowing these probabilities while making decisions is extremely difficult. What the probabilities are that we're talking about and what our questions are are extremely difficult. And mathematical theory doesn't tell you that. So, to really understand the questions that an individual has at a moment in time, you have to understand the entire individual, what they know, and what they care about. And I wanted to say that because you talked about social communication, I think that eye movements, in particular, really have two functions. One is answering our questions, like I said, gathering visual information, but the other question is in social signaling. In a social context, eye movements can signal your intentions and, in a sense, act on other social beings.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

I want to go back to this element of focus and attention. We're talking about AI, and it's been on a lot of our mindset relation to focus when we're bombarded by so much information, devices, distractions, and sleeplessness. It's affecting our ability to do our jobs, be reflective, and be present in the moment. How do you feel we can protect ourselves and our children from the distractions of having their brains rewired by their devices, apps, and technology? Is our brain equipped to deal with our modern world? How do we better fortify it for this kind of onslaught, which wasn't around even ten years ago?

GOTTLIEB

Those are very important questions. I think that our brain is equipped to deal with the onslaught because we have an onslaught of information the moment we open our eyes. We evolved to deal with an onslaught of information, and we are masters at focusing and ignoring vast amounts of information. Now, AI in this digital age is a relatively new stream of information, which is man-made, so we make it more salient. So, yes, it's harder to ignore it, but people can learn to ignore it, and indeed, it's a learning process. I think it will also require learning how to teach our children. I mean, we're raising generations of kids who will take AI and the digital world as a given. To them, it will be no different than a chair and a table were to us. So they will learn to not be so distracted by chairs and tables.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

You're in New York City, so what do you feel about the effects of urbanization on people living in close proximity to cities with its added distractions, and how that may affect their curiosity, attention, imagination, memory, and focus?

GOTTLIEB

People adapt; our brains are very hierarchically organized. At the highest level of the hierarchy are our wants and values. What do I need? We all need to eat, have social contact, and be safe. That's the highest level of the hierarchy. Then you have your values, right? What are your social values and moral values? And then you have your long-term knowledge. What do you know about the world? That determines how you interpret everything around you. So, what do you know about the world? What more do you want to know? What are your competencies? What do you know how to do? So those levels really control what information you're seeking at the moment by moment.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

You've spoken about the misperception that many people have about scientists. In contrast with artists, people feel that scientists are very rigid people who are not very creative, and in truth, creativity is crucial, as crucial in science as it is in art. So, how do you personally tap into your creativity and curiosity to imagine while still adhering to the rules of science?

GOTTLIEB

This is my favorite thing about science–that you can be creative. I absolutely think that science has to be just as a creative art. It's just that we have different ways of generating and answering questions.

If you ask somebody, what is curiosity? The answer you'll probably get most frequently would be the desire to know. But I think that a much better answer is the desire to ask questions. And these are very different. If you've just mapped out your living room, you've got to say, okay, now I need something new. I need some uncertainty. I need to go outside, even though it might be scary. I need to expose myself to that uncertainty in order to learn. And then once you learn, once you've gone out to your yard and you've learned that yard, you say, okay, well, now I know my backyard. Now, I need to expose myself to uncertainty again to learn something new. So, curiosity is the desire to ask the question in order to learn.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

How much do you feel that memory influences our imagination? I know you also study memory, and I'm interested in intergenerational trauma and how this affects our decision-making processes. I ask because I just came out of a conversation with a journalist and foreign correspondent for the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof. He's written about 170 countries, and he was telling me about having mild PTSD from all the things he's witnessed. So, how do you feel that being born in Israel and its collective memory has influenced your curiosity, memory, and the way you view the world?

GOTTLIEB

I mentioned the cognitivists and behaviorists–all the neuroscientists–who think of information as being given to you bottom up. Again, as if signals come from the outside. But then you realize that this is impossible, that the outside world is way too infinite. Instead, what happens is your brain sort of builds yourself: you build through all your life experiences, episodic and semantic memories: that is your knowledge bank, and that is what generates your curiosities.

You asked how growing up in Israel influenced where I am. I think that the way it influenced where I am– it's interesting– it's being in between. My dad was Jewish and my mother was a Christian, an Orthodox Romanian. So I was, in that sense, born confused. I never belonged to any group. I always felt like I was in between two camps, between two significant traditions. I was born in Romania, and I was educated in a Romanian, European way, more Christian than Jewish. Then we moved to Israel, and that was a big culture shock. I was exposed to more Judaism and the Israeli reality, which was very different from where I grew up. I think that's how it shaped me. I'm not a tribal person, for better or for worse.

One of the most fundamental values I learned from my dad is tolerance and open-mindedness. You have to take every person at face value. This is what I think has the most profound influence on me. I'm always open-minded, and I always want to look at both sides. And this is why I think I sensed this social divide coming to psychology and neuroscience. I noticed that many of my colleagues were perfectly happy to stay in their lane, stay in their tribe, and as long as their tribe agrees, you're happy, and you never need to get outside of that. But I'm someone who needs to get outside the tribe. I mean, I map out the borders of my tribe and the way I was taught to think, but then I'm like, wait a second, there's a lot more out there. I need to go out. And I don't want to see competition. I have a tendency to bring things together. That's funny. I never quite thought about this in the context of my life, but I guess that's what shaped the way that I think the most.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

What role do you believe that neuroscience can play in understanding and motivating behavioral change for a sustainable future?

GOTTLIEB

One of the most important things that neuroscientists can propose is people's reactions to uncertainty. Information is actually all about uncertainty. Some people are more willing to embrace uncertainty, especially if they can learn from it. Other people would do anything to protect themselves from uncertainty, so this is part of the echo chamber phenomenon.

It's like saying that maybe what this other person is saying has a grain of truth to it, but it's just so hard for me to think about it that I'd rather ignore it. I'd rather stay in my safe space. So, people differ. There are emotional and cognitive reactions, and I think that this is where our thinking and our emotions are very closely intertwined in how we deal with uncertainty.

So we've all experienced this sense of awe at the vastness of things in nature, and I think that is a beautiful sense. You're in awe at the vastness things that go beyond your capabilities, also capabilities of understanding and capabilities of knowledge. So I look at it as kind of a form of extreme uncertainty that is not threatening. We can relax. It's pleasurable and inspiring. So, maybe if we can remember the sense of awe that we have with certain things, we can help ourselves when, when we have uncertainties (climate change) that are threatening, maybe that's something that we can use to calm us down. About dealing with climate change, people do adjust, and I think we should enable, so far as policy comes about, a lot of policy has to be geared towards allowing people to adapt. Let's say you think that sea level will rise in a particular area. Well, you can build a bigger dam, right? Or, you can build bigger walls. So, the more resources people have, the more efficient they will be in adapting to whatever comes their way.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

What has been important to you on this journey in pursuit of knowledge and in your creative exploration of the sciences? As you reflect on education, the future, and those teachers who inspired you and made you believe in yourself, what would you like young people to know, preserve, and remember?

GOTTLIEB

I would exhort young people to keep an open mind. One thing that I try to teach my students is, for example, when you read a paper or hear somebody talk about their experiment, try to think about what is not there. Try to bring yourself in, pay a lot of attention, all your resources consumed by understanding what the person says, but see if you can take a mental step back and look at what they say from a slightly different perspective. Look for the contradictions. And don't be afraid of the contradictions because those are the fertile ground for making progress. Right? So, look for the contradictions. Contradictions are good for scientists. If you find them, the more glaring they are, the more progress you can make by trying to resolve them.

Photo credit: John AbbottThis interview was conducted by Mia Funk and Daniela Cordovez Flores with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interview Producer and Associate Text Editor on this episode was Daniela Cordovez Flores. The Creative Process is produced by Mia Funk. Additional production support by Katie Foster.Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions). Listen on Apple,Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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What can we learn from Germany's postwar transformation to help us address today's environmental and humanitarian crises? With the rise of populism, authoritarianism, and digital propaganda, how can history provide insights into the challenges of modern democracy?

Frank Trentmann is a Professor of History at Birkbeck, University of London, and at the University of Helsinki. He is a prize-winning historian, having received awards such as the Whitfield Prize, Austrian Wissenschaftsbuch/Science Book Prize, Humboldt Prize for Research, and the 2023 Bochum Historians' Award. He has also been named a Moore Scholar at Caltech. He is the author of Empire of Things and Free Trade Nation. His latest book is Out of the Darkness: The Germans 1942 to 2022, which explores Germany's transformation after the Second World War.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST

Up until now, you've been mostly a professor of global consumer culture, but you've notably written Empire of Things: How We Became a World of Consumers, from the Fifteenth Century to the Twenty-First. More recently, you've taken what some might think of as a swerve to examine the complexities of the moral remaking of Germany and how its people grappled with questions of guilt and identity in Out of the Darkness: The Germans, 1942-2022. How did Out of the Darkness grow out of some of those ideas you'd reflected on in previous books? It's a very interesting span of history you take in, focusing on what you call the “awakening of conscience” in Germany. Other historians might choose 1945 as the period when it began to emerge out of darkness, but you chose 1942.

FRANK TRENTMANN

The bridge between Out of the Darkness and my previous work, which looked at the transformation of consumer culture in the world, is morality. One thing that became clear in writing Empire of Things was that there's virtually no time or place in history where consumption isn't heavily moralized. Our lifestyle is treated as a mirror of our virtue and sins. And in the course of modern history, there's been a remarkable moral shift in the way that consumption used to be seen as something that led you astray or undermined authority, status, gender roles, and wasted money, to a source of growth, a source of self, fashioning the way we create our own identity. In the last few years, the environmental crisis has led to new questions about whether consumption is good or bad. And in 2015, during the refugee crisis when Germany took in almost a million refugees, morality became a very powerful way in which Germans talked about themselves as humanitarian world champions, as one politician called it. I realized that there's many other topics from family, work, to saving the environment, and of course, with regard to the German responsibility for the Holocaust and the war of extermination where German public discourse is heavily moralistic, so I became interested in charting that historical process.

And why did I start in the middle of the Second World War? The reason for that is that 1945 in Europe isn't really in a proper sense a sharp break. The German people enter peace with a number of preoccupations, values, fears, assumptions which have been created in the course of the Second World War. And there's a big moral turmoil that is spreading, beginning in the winter of 1942, 1943, the time period we now call the Holocaust. A growing number of Germans started asking themselves troubling questions about their own possible responsibility for the plight that they were now being exposed to. So I choose this as an opening partly because it allows the reader to get into the heads of Germans at the time who don't know yet that the war is lost.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST

It's a powerful entry point that helps us understand. Of course from there you bring us all the way up to 2022. And when you talk about family in your book, it's kind of an expansive sense of family, like being part of this greater Mother Earth or the acts of compassion towards refugees, but I was surprised to read, as you cite, that over 50 percent of the population in Germany have been helping refugees in a quite hands-on in a way that I don't think you would see in other countries. So whatever the legacy of guilt or shame, which is so complex, the post-war transformation has been remarkable in that way. And yet, it's complicated. Do you feel Germany has come to terms with its past and moved on? We see now the rise of right-wing groups throughout Europe, the entry of the far-right Alternative for Germany into Parliament in 2017, and, of course, more recently, the wake of unrest in England and Northern Ireland with anti-immigration protests. So, this is not an old narrative. Its roots are buried deep, but they sprout up shoots every so often.

TRENTMANN

Yes, it's not a finished story. You have, in addition to the truly impressive number who were welcoming refugees or helping them in active ways, a sizable minority that does not want to have refugees that are openly skeptical or even hostile, sometimes violently, towards migrants or asylum seekers. You have a rise of populism that is disproportionately high in East Germany, the former communist GDR. Germany was divided and then reunified, so it continues to have serious regional divides up to the present. The first difference the partition of Germany left behind is memory culture. The West German state in 1949 saw itself constitutionally as the rightful successor of the German empire before it, and that included taking on responsibility for debts accumulated, so the Federal Republic introduced major reparations for Jewish victims of the Holocaust. East Germany was radically different. In their minds, they were a radically new state with no obligations towards all the evil that Nazi Germany had committed in the past, so East Germany paid no reparations or compensation to Jews. So when 1990 happened, and the two parts reunified. We have a lack of coherence in collective memory, which remains present to this day. I think there was a certain naivety in many German circles, which assumed that the moment you have an official memory culture, in which the responsibility for the Holocaust is a central source of what it means to be German, problems such as racism will just go away. So many commentators and politicians were deeply confused last autumn after the Hamas attacks on Israel on the 7th of October, when suddenly, you had more or less complete silence in the German population, no show of empathy, no mass demonstrations, a steep rise of anti-semitic attacks. And I think that commemoration, public memory, and public history are all very good and important but do not automatically translate into everyday life and people's attitudes towards German Jews in their midst or towards foreigners.And I think that was the mistake—the belief that once you reform collective memory and draw attention and remember the terrible things previous German generations had done, in the present, people living in Germany would all become wonderfully tolerant people. It's not that simple.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST

Indeed, you can, with the benefit of hindsight, reform collective memory. But when these moral questions arise in real time and current events are just happening too quickly, we don't always see it. I was wondering if you could talk to us a bit more about Neo-Nazism in Germany and the significance of this strand of Neo-Naziism, given Germany's legacy and history. Additionally, your book discusses how Germany became a major supporter of Israel. Do you think that Germany's past has affected its present-day stance on Israel's actions in Gaza? And do you believe that Germany's history has impacted how Germany has treated people protesting Israel's actions? Have any of these more recent events caused you to reconsider or reflect on any of the conclusions you came to in Out of the Darkness?

TRENTMANN

The populist party Alternative for Germany includes some spokespeople and members who have been, by the courts, defined as having fascist leanings. That doesn't mean all populists are Nazis, but Neo-Nazis exist, and they need to be taken seriously. Where do they come from? For a long time, historians and politicians worked with this assumption that since West Germany confronted the past, people woke up and right-wing Neo-Nazi leanings were becoming extinguished, so if you look at older accounts regarding extremists that endanger the Federal Republic, they tended to be written about the left, such as the Baader Meinhof group or the Red Army Faction. But since the resurgence of Neo-Nazi and right-wing attacks on foreigners, asylum seekers, shootings, murder, and so forth, people have revisited the 1970s and 1980s and come to recognize that current fascist groups didn’t come out of nowhere. There were army sort of paramilitary groups in the 1970s and 1980s; a neo-Nazi party, which was founded in the late 60s, and did fairly well in some local elections; Neo-Nazi activists have existed for some time; and a lot of people who have now moved to the populist groups, used to vote for the Christian Democrats which had right-wing values and attitudes. On Israel and Germany, what we've seen is a very robust and persistent attitude by the German government which is firmly standing side by side with Israel, with policies very careful not to issue any criticism of Israeli military strategies. And on the other hand, a majority of the population is either openly critical of the measures and military actions used or thinks Germany should just turn its back on the Middle East and live without concerning themselves too much with international affairs, so Germany is really divided on the question of what to do in the conflict in the Middle East.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST

Yes. And going back to your previous book Empire of Things, you cover how we became a world of consumers and the rise of our material world, examining the global challenges and our relentless pursuit of more from waste and debt to stress and inequality. It just leads me to ask what you feel about the real price of our consumer culture habits, which actually I feel helps fuel modern slavery.

TRENTMANN

Consumption is a tricky business. We've moved ourselves into a situation where on the one hand, we now recognize that possessions are an important source of identity. Most of us believe people should have the right to choose the kind of lifestyle they want to have; on the other hand, we have the environmental costs of that lifestyle, which is causing havoc with our planet and, ultimately, with our lives. And so we're caught in a social-political acceptance of the freedom to choose and a growing awareness that the world is heading towards environmental disaster and taking us down with it. We haven't found a way of resolving that ambivalence. Climate activists, economists, and so forth have come up with solutions from zero growth to simple living, but as a historian who's followed the rise of and transformation of consumption over 600 years, I can assure you that it's too simple to try and demonize consumption and hope that by just drawing attention to environmental problems, people will somehow reform themselves. I think we have to take seriously that in the course of modernity, consumption has become deeply embedded culturally, socially, politically in our lives.Just waving an alarmist poster will not shock us out of the kind of lifestyle that has become normal for us. People tend to equate consumption with individual choice and motivation or desire. But from an environmental point of view, a huge amount of our hyper-consumption lifestyle is not organized or conducted through individual choice. They're social habits. These days, people have a shower as a matter of habit. Some people have two or three showers a day. And then they get to their leisure activities or their work with a car if they have one. They're used to driving, and that's a habit. So lots of things that cause damage are habitual forms of consumption. Those are not driven by individual choice but because our cities have been planned in a particular way—state and other authorities have built highways, car manufacturers get certain subsidies. There's an infrastructure of gas stations and electric charging points. And so if you want to tackle environmental consequences, perhaps a more effective way would be to intervene, try to disrupt those habits and plan cities and mobility in different ways that are environmentally friendlier.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST

Indeed, that illusion of choice is so interesting. Of course, you point to the fact that we, as individuals, do not always make the best choices. I mean, we do sometimes need to be guided or sometimes regarded in ways that are not always good for the welfare of us individually or for the planet. And when we think about AI, which is becoming a new mass surveillance system, it's a new Great Game for powerful multinationals to embed their products and systems and influence our choices. So it's something we have to reflect on a lot. Even if we feel like we have that illusion of choice, who's really making the choices?

TRENTMANN

Yes. When I finished the book in 2016, artificial intelligence already existed, but wasn't much of a topic. The jury is still out on how AI will play out. Some people pin their hope on AI to give straggling Western economies a huge productivity boost they would urgently need. And that point leads back very well to what we talked about earlier with populism. One thing we've seen, and Germany is a good test case for that, is how democratic habits and understandings we've built up from a different era do not necessarily work for generations that are more reliant on social media where there could be outside manipulation, whether by autocracies or AI. What you really need among education reformers is a new democratic skill set and communication tools that teach young students and citizens how to evaluate information, distinguish between fake news and what's not fake news, to be on their guard, and develop critical media and consumption skills that are fit for our much more digital world. There's a lot that needs to be done. In Germany, you have debates and worries about interference with elections or the posting of fake news, and Germany is a country where lots of people don't use digital communication at all. So you have a dual shock on the one hand, being well behind with digital culture and digital communication. On the other hand, a rapidly evolving technological scene generates more fake news and more potential for surveillance.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST

Yes, that’s interesting, and it makes me think again about East and West Germany. And seeing your involvement with museums, I wonder, what are your reflections on the importance of the arts and the humanities, and how do you feel museums can stay relevant and do a better job of expanding access while meeting community needs? And finally, as you think about the future and make sense of history in order to create a better tomorrow, what would you like young people to know, preserve, and remember?

TRENTMANN

Museums have seen funds being cut, so they had to be innovative, not just in terms of finding sponsorship money, but in how to make their collections more attractive to more people. Going back to New Labor in Britain, museums and other cultural institutions were tasked to become more socially engaged and open to groups normally underrepresented, so they've done, I would say, a pretty good job, given the constraints of Brexit, where before Brexit, British museums would often work together with other museums in the EU, but now, that’s a serious challenge because of visa rules and objects needing to be specially arranged. So even though we've seen a certain regionalism or growing provincialism, and that's very sad. I think museums continue to be very important. And well, I would like young people to resist the stories they hear from school teachers or career advisors, or sometimes even from their own parents, especially if they're being urged to move into particular subjects in engineering or the natural sciences. I think history is tremendously important. All the contemporary topics we’ve talked about—environmental crisis, Gaza, the war in Ukraine—all of those don't make sense if you don't have a sense of history. History and the humanities in the United Kingdom, as in the United States, have come under huge pressure. We've seen falling student numbers, and that's a real shame because history continues to be a source of intellectual inspiration and curiosity that not only makes us wiser and more reflective but also creates the dynamism and creativity we need to confront our present and future challenges. I hope that among the young generations, there will be people inspired by history, people that have the ambition to research and write about the past.

Photo credit: Jon WilsonThis interview was conducted by Mia Funk and Eva Sanborn with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producers on this episode were Sophie Garnier and Eva Sanborn. One Planet Podcast & The Creative Process is produced by Mia Funk. Associate Text Editor was Nadia Lam. Additional production support by Katie Foster.Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions). Listen on Apple,Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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In today's podcast, we talk with Guillaume Lafortune, Vice President and Head of the Paris Office of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), the largest global network of scientists and practitioners dedicated to implementing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We discuss the intersections of sustainability, global progress, the UN Summit of the Future, and the daunting challenges we face. From the impact of war on climate initiatives to transforming data into narratives that drive change, we explore how global cooperation, education, and technology pave the way for a sustainable future and look at the lessons of history and the power of diplomacy in shaping our path forward.

Guillaume Lafortune joined SDSN in 2017 to lead work on SDG data, policies, and financing including the preparation of the annual Sustainable Development Report (which includes the SDG Index and Dashboards). Between 2020 and 2022 Guillaume was a member of The Lancet Commission on COVID-19, where he coordinated the taskforces on “Fiscal Policy and Financial Markets” and “Green Recovery”, and co-authored the final report of the Commission. Guillaume is also a member of the Grenoble Center for Economic Research (CREG) at the Grenoble Alpes University. Previously, he served as an economist at the OECD in Paris and at the Ministry of Economic Development in the Government of Quebec (Canada). Guillaume is the author of 50+ scientific publications, book chapters, policy briefs and international reports on sustainable development, economic policy and good governance.

GUILLAUME LAFORTUNE

The SDSN has been set up to mobilize research and science for the Sustainable Development Goals. Each year, we aim to provide a fair and accurate assessment of countries' progress on the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. The development goals were adopted back in 2015 by all UN member states, marking the first time in human history that we have a common goal for the entire world.

Our goal each year with the SDG index is to have sound methodologies and translate these into actionable insights that can generate impactful results at the end of the day. Out of all the targets that we track, only 16 percent are estimated to be on track. This agenda not only combines environmental development but also social development, economic development, and good governance. Currently, none of the SDGs are on track to be achieved at the global level.

SDSN's Summit of the Future RecommendationsSDG Transformation Center · SDSN Global Commission for Urban SDG FinanceThis interview was conducted by Mia Funk with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interview Producer and Associate Text Editor on this episode was Nadia Lam. One Planet Podcast is produced by Mia Funk. Additional production support by Katie Foster.Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions). Listen on Apple,Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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In today's podcast, we talk with Guillaume Lafortune, Vice President and Head of the Paris Office of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), the largest global network of scientists and practitioners dedicated to implementing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We discuss the intersections of sustainability, global progress, the UN Summit of the Future, and the daunting challenges we face. From the impact of war on climate initiatives to transforming data into narratives that drive change, we explore how global cooperation, education, and technology pave the way for a sustainable future and look at the lessons of history and the power of diplomacy in shaping our path forward.

Guillaume Lafortune joined SDSN in 2017 to lead work on SDG data, policies, and financing including the preparation of the annual Sustainable Development Report (which includes the SDG Index and Dashboards). Between 2020 and 2022 Guillaume was a member of The Lancet Commission on COVID-19, where he coordinated the taskforces on “Fiscal Policy and Financial Markets” and “Green Recovery”, and co-authored the final report of the Commission. Guillaume is also a member of the Grenoble Center for Economic Research (CREG) at the Grenoble Alpes University. Previously, he served as an economist at the OECD in Paris and at the Ministry of Economic Development in the Government of Quebec (Canada). Guillaume is the author of 50+ scientific publications, book chapters, policy briefs and international reports on sustainable development, economic policy and good governance.

GUILLAUME LAFORTUNE

The SDSN has been set up to mobilize research and science for the Sustainable Development Goals. Each year, we aim to provide a fair and accurate assessment of countries' progress on the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. The development goals were adopted back in 2015 by all UN member states, marking the first time in human history that we have a common goal for the entire world.

Our goal each year with the SDG index is to have sound methodologies and translate these into actionable insights that can generate impactful results at the end of the day. Out of all the targets that we track, only 16 percent are estimated to be on track. This agenda not only combines environmental development but also social development, economic development, and good governance. Currently, none of the SDGs are on track to be achieved at the global level.

SDSN's Summit of the Future RecommendationsSDG Transformation Center · SDSN Global Commission for Urban SDG FinanceThis interview was conducted by Mia Funk with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interview Producer and Associate Text Editor on this episode was Nadia Lam. One Planet Podcast is produced by Mia Funk. Additional production support by Katie Foster.Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions). Listen on Apple,Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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“There’s the existing AI and the dream of artificial general intelligence that is aligned with our values and will make our lives better. Certainly, the techno-utopian dream is that it will lead us towards utopia. It is the means of organizing human collectivities, human societies, in a way that would reconcile all the variables, all the things that we can't reconcile because we don't have enough of a fine-grained understanding of how people interact, the different motivations of their psychologies and of societies, of groups, of people. Of course, that's another kind of psychology that we're talking about. So I think the dream of AI is a utopian dream that stands correcting, but it is itself being corrected by those who are the curators of that technology. Now you asked me about the changing role of artists in this landscape. I would say, first of all, that I'm for virtuosity. And this makes me think of AI and a higher level AI, it would be virtuous before it becomes super intelligence.”

S. D. Chrostowska is professor of humanities at York University, Canada. She is the author of several books, among them Permission, The Eyelid, A Cage for Every Child, and, most recently, Utopia in the Age of Survival: Between Myth and Politics. Her essays have appeared in such venues as Public Culture, Telos, Boundary 2, and The Hedgehog Review. She also coedits the French surrealist review Alcheringa and is curator of the 19th International Exhibition of Surrealism, Marvellous Utopia, which runs from July to September 2024 in Saint-Cirq-Lapopie, France.

https://profiles.laps.yorku.ca/profiles/sylwiac/

www.sup.org/books/title/?id=33445
https://chbooks.com/Books/T/The-Eyelid
https://ciscm.fr/en/merveilleuse-utopie

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

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As Surrealism turns 100, what can it teach us about the importance of dreaming and creating a better society? Will we wake up from the consumerist dream sold to us by capitalism and how would that change our ideas of utopia?

S. D. Chrostowska is professor of humanities at York University, Canada. She is the author of several books, among them Permission, The Eyelid, A Cage for Every Child, and, most recently, Utopia in the Age of Survival: Between Myth and Politics. Her essays have appeared in such venues as Public Culture, Telos, Boundary 2, and The Hedgehog Review. She also coedits the French surrealist review Alcheringa and is curator of the 19th International Exhibition of Surrealism, Marvellous Utopia, which runs from July to September 2024 in Saint-Cirq-Lapopie, France.

“There’s the existing AI and the dream of artificial general intelligence that is aligned with our values and will make our lives better. Certainly, the techno-utopian dream is that it will lead us towards utopia. It is the means of organizing human collectivities, human societies, in a way that would reconcile all the variables, all the things that we can't reconcile because we don't have enough of a fine-grained understanding of how people interact, the different motivations of their psychologies and of societies, of groups, of people. Of course, that's another kind of psychology that we're talking about. So I think the dream of AI is a utopian dream that stands correcting, but it is itself being corrected by those who are the curators of that technology. Now you asked me about the changing role of artists in this landscape. I would say, first of all, that I'm for virtuosity. And this makes me think of AI and a higher level AI, it would be virtuous before it becomes super intelligence.”

https://profiles.laps.yorku.ca/profiles/sylwiac/
www.sup.org/books/title/?id=33445
https://chbooks.com/Books/T/The-Eyelid
https://ciscm.fr/en/merveilleuse-utopie

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

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The planet’s well-being unites us all, from ecosystems to societies, global systems to individual health. How is planetary health linked to mental health?

Charlie Hertzog Young is a researcher, writer and award-winning activist. He identifies as a “proudly mad bipolar double amputee” and has worked for the New Economics Foundation, the Royal Society of Arts, the Good Law Project, the Four Day Week Campaign and the Centre for Progressive Change, as well as the UK Labour Party under three consecutive leaders. Charlie has spoken at the LSE, the UN and the World Economic Forum. He studied at Harvard, SOAS and Schumacher College and has written for The Ecologist, The Independent, Novara Media, Open Democracy and The Guardian. He is the author of Spinning Out: Climate Change, Mental Health and Fighting for a Better Future.

https://charliehertzogyoung.me
https://footnotepress.com/books/spinning-out/

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
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“The fact is you've got a lot of industrial and political muscle now coming behind clean energy, especially from China, which is the leading country deploying wind energy, the leading country deploying solar, and the leading manufacturer and user of electric vehicles by miles. As one recent report put it, ‘We have petrostates in the world. China is the first electrostate.’ And China is on its way to becoming the world's most powerful country. So, where China leads, the rest of the world is almost certain to follow. Yes, there are massive air pollution problems in China, of course, but I think it's more than that. It's also about seeing that this is the future that the world is going to have. And if these goods are going to be made anywhere, well, the Chinese government clearly would like them to be made in China. And they've set out, you know, industrial policies and all kinds of other policies for, well, at least a decade now, in pursuit of that aim. It's interesting now to see other countries, India, for example, and the United States now sort of deploying muscle to try and carve out a slice of the pie themselves as well.”

The Five-pronged Clean Energy Future
“I thought about it, and I was wondering, what do we actually need in the world? Because we don't need petrol and we don't need coal. We need energy to power various things. So, we need these energy services. So, what's the simplest way of providing all of the energy services? And it really seems to me that we can basically do it all with about five different types of goods. So the system of the future I put out in the book is first of all, you have the generation of electricity, which is mainly going to be with renewables, mainly with wind and solar because they are the cheapest and they're getting cheaper thanks to Wright's Law. Then you need energy storage and other means of sharing matching demand to supply. So, storage is the one that people will be most familiar with, which can be batteries, for example. And again, the price of batteries has also plummeted about 85 percent price reduction in a decade. And it continues because, again, we have mounting volumes. In a competitive market, there's lots of innovation going on in terms of battery design, in terms of construction, and all of this stuff, new materials coming into batteries. So, that's your first two, that's your renewable generation and your battery storage. Electric vehicles will be the main method of transportation. Already, they dominate sales in the two-wheeler market in China and India. They're already eating into global oil demand. They're taking about 1.5 percent of global oil demand already, and the sales are increasing exponentially in China and other countries as well. They are cost-competitive. It's just on the purchase price in some markets with some models now. And it's going to get cheaper again because battery costs will fall. Heating and cooling, which is a big demand for energy. We can use heat pumps, which are super efficient running on electricity…Hydrogen, that will probably be the fifth prong, but a smaller prong, rather like the little finger on your hand."

Richard Black spent 15 years as a science and environment correspondent for the BBC World Service and BBC News, before setting up the Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit. He now lives in Berlin and is the Director of Policy and Strategy at the global clean energy think tank Ember, which aims to accelerate the clean energy transition with data and policy. He is the author of The Future of Energy; Denied:The Rise and Fall of Climate Contrarianism, and is an Honorary Research Fellow at Imperial College London.

https://mhpbooks.com/books/the-future-of-energy
https://ember-climate.org/about/people/richard-black
https://ember-climate.org
www.therealpress.co.uk/?s=Richard+black

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How and when will we transition to a clean energy future? How will the transition empower individuals and transform global power dynamics? How did China become the world’s first electrostate, leading the drive for renewable energy, and what can we learn from this?

Richard Black spent 15 years as a science and environment correspondent for the BBC World Service and BBC News, before setting up the Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit. He now lives in Berlin and is the Director of Policy and Strategy at the global clean energy think tank Ember, which aims to accelerate the clean energy transition with data and policy.

He is the author of The Future of Energy; Denied:The Rise and Fall of Climate Contrarianism, and is an Honorary Research Fellow at Imperial College London.

“The fact is you've got a lot of industrial and political muscle now coming behind clean energy, especially from China, which is the leading country deploying wind energy, the leading country deploying solar, and the leading manufacturer and user of electric vehicles by miles. As one recent report put it, ‘We have petrostates in the world. China is the first electrostate.’ And China is on its way to becoming the world's most powerful country. So, where China leads, the rest of the world is almost certain to follow. Yes, there are massive air pollution problems in China, of course, but I think it's more than that. It's also about seeing that this is the future that the world is going to have. And if these goods are going to be made anywhere, well, the Chinese government clearly would like them to be made in China. And they've set out, you know, industrial policies and all kinds of other policies for, well, at least a decade now, in pursuit of that aim. It's interesting now to see other countries, India, for example, and the United States now sort of deploying muscle to try and carve out a slice of the pie themselves as well.”

The Five-pronged Clean Energy Future
“I thought about it, and I was wondering, what do we actually need in the world? Because we don't need petrol and we don't need coal. We need energy to power various things. So, we need these energy services. So, what's the simplest way of providing all of the energy services? And it really seems to me that we can basically do it all with about five different types of goods. So the system of the future I put out in the book is first of all, you have the generation of electricity, which is mainly going to be with renewables, mainly with wind and solar because they are the cheapest and they're getting cheaper thanks to Wright's Law. Then you need energy storage and other means of sharing matching demand to supply. So, storage is the one that people will be most familiar with, which can be batteries, for example. And again, the price of batteries has also plummeted about 85 percent price reduction in a decade. And it continues because, again, we have mounting volumes. In a competitive market, there's lots of innovation going on in terms of battery design, in terms of construction, and all of this stuff, new materials coming into batteries. So, that's your first two, that's your renewable generation and your battery storage. Electric vehicles will be the main method of transportation. Already, they dominate sales in the two-wheeler market in China and India. They're already eating into global oil demand. They're taking about 1.5 percent of global oil demand already, and the sales are increasing exponentially in China and other countries as well. They are cost-competitive. It's just on the purchase price in some markets with some models now. And it's going to get cheaper again because battery costs will fall. Heating and cooling, which is a big demand for energy. We can use heat pumps, which are super efficient running on electricity…Hydrogen, that will probably be the fifth prong, but a smaller prong, rather like the little finger on your hand."

https://mhpbooks.com/books/the-future-of-energy
https://ember-climate.org/about/people/richard-black
https://ember-climate.org
www.therealpress.co.uk/?s=Richard+black

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“I think it's very early for us to see how AI is going to impact us all, especially documentary filmmakers. And so I embrace technology, and I encourage everyone as filmmakers to do so. We're looking at how AI is facilitating filmmakers to tell stories, create more visual worlds. I think that right now we're in the play phase of AI, where there's a lot of new tools and you're playing in a sandbox with them to see how they will develop.

I don't think that AI has developed to the extent that it is in some way dramatically changing the film industry as we speak, but in the next two years, it will. We have yet to see how it will. As someone who creates films, I always experiment, and then I see what it is that I'd like to take from that technology as I move forward.”

Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy is an Oscar and Emmy award-winning Canadian-Pakistani filmmaker whose work highlights extraordinary women and their stories. She earned her first Academy Award in 2012 for her documentary Saving Face, about the Pakistani women targeted by brutal acid attacks. Today, Obaid-Chinoy is the first female film director to have won two Oscars by the age of 37. In 2023, it was announced that Obaid-Chinoy will direct the next Star Wars film starring Daisy Ridley. Her most recent project, co-directed alongside Trish Dalton, is the new documentary Diane von Fürstenberg: Woman in Charge, about the trailblazing Belgian fashion designer who invented the wrap dress 50 years ago. The film had its world premiere as the opening night selection at the 2024 Tribeca Festival on June 5th and premiered on June 25th on Hulu in the U.S. and Disney+ internationally. A product of Obaid-Chinoy's incredibly talented female filmmaking team, Woman in Charge provides an intimate look into Diane von Fürstenberg’s life and accomplishments and chronicles the trajectory of her signature dress from an innovative fashion statement to a powerful symbol of feminism.

“I think it's very early for us to see how AI is going to impact us all, especially documentary filmmakers. And so I embrace technology, and I encourage everyone as filmmakers to do so. We're looking at how AI is facilitating filmmakers to tell stories, create more visual worlds. I think that right now we're in the play phase of AI, where there's a lot of new tools and you're playing in a sandbox with them to see how they will develop.

I don't think that AI has developed to the extent that it is in some way dramatically changing the film industry as we speak, but in the next two years, it will. We have yet to see how it will. As someone who creates films, I always experiment, and then I see what it is that I'd like to take from that technology as I move forward.”

www.hulu.com/movie/diane-von-furstenberg-woman-in-charge-95fb421e-b7b1-4bfc-9bbf-ea666dba0b02
https://www.disneyplus.com/movies/diane-von-furstenberg-woman-in-charge/1jrpX9AhsaJ6
https://socfilms.com

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“Having worked in this space for seven years, really since the inception of DeepFakes in late 2017, for some time, it was possible with just a few hours a day to really be on top of the key kind of technical developments. It's now truly global. AI-generated media have really exploded, particularly the last 18 months, but they've been bubbling under the surface for some time in various different use cases. The disinformation and deepfakes in the political sphere really matches some of the fears held five, six years ago, but at the time were more speculative. The fears around how deepfakes could be used in propaganda efforts, in attempts to destabilize democratic processes, to try and influence elections have really kind of reached a fever pitch Up until this year, I've always really said, “Well, look, we've got some fairly narrow examples of deepfakes and AI-generated content being deployed, but it's nowhere near on the scale or the effectiveness required to actually have that kind of massive impact.” This year, it's no longer a question of are deepfakes going to be used, it's now how effective are they actually going to be? I'm worried. I think a lot of the discourse around gen AI and so on is very much you're either an AI zoomer or an AI doomer, right? But for me, I don't think we need to have this kind of mutually exclusive attitude. I think we can kind of look at different use cases. There are really powerful and quite amazing use cases, but those very same baseline technologies can be weaponized if they're not developed responsibly with the appropriate safety measures, guardrails, and understanding from people using and developing them. So it is really about that balancing act for me. And a lot of my research over the years has been focused on mapping the evolution of AI generated content as a malicious tool.”

Henry Ajder is an advisor, speaker, and broadcaster working at the frontier of the generative AI and the synthetic media revolution. He advises organizations on the opportunities and challenges these technologies present, including Adobe, Meta, The European Commission, BBC, The Partnership on AI, and The House of Lords. Previously, Henry led Synthetic Futures, the first initiative dedicated to ethical generative AI and metaverse technologies, bringing together over 50 industry-leading organizations. Henry presented the BBC documentary series, The Future Will be Synthesised.www.henryajder.com
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0017cgr

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How is artificial intelligence redefining our perception of reality and truth? Can AI be creative? And how is it changing art and innovation? Does AI-generated perfection detach us from reality and genuine human connection?

Henry Ajder is an advisor, speaker, and broadcaster working at the frontier of the generative AI and the synthetic media revolution. He advises organizations on the opportunities and challenges these technologies present, including Adobe, Meta, The European Commission, BBC, The Partnership on AI, and The House of Lords. Previously, Henry led Synthetic Futures, the first initiative dedicated to ethical generative AI and metaverse technologies, bringing together over 50 industry-leading organizations. Henry presented the BBC documentary series, The Future Will be Synthesised.

“Having worked in this space for seven years, really since the inception of DeepFakes in late 2017, for some time, it was possible with just a few hours a day to really be on top of the key kind of technical developments. It's now truly global. AI-generated media have really exploded, particularly the last 18 months, but they've been bubbling under the surface for some time in various different use cases. The disinformation and deepfakes in the political sphere really matches some of the fears held five, six years ago, but at the time were more speculative. The fears around how deepfakes could be used in propaganda efforts, in attempts to destabilize democratic processes, to try and influence elections have really kind of reached a fever pitch Up until this year, I've always really said, “Well, look, we've got some fairly narrow examples of deepfakes and AI-generated content being deployed, but it's nowhere near on the scale or the effectiveness required to actually have that kind of massive impact.” This year, it's no longer a question of are deepfakes going to be used, it's now how effective are they actually going to be? I'm worried. I think a lot of the discourse around gen AI and so on is very much you're either an AI zoomer or an AI doomer, right? But for me, I don't think we need to have this kind of mutually exclusive attitude. I think we can kind of look at different use cases. There are really powerful and quite amazing use cases, but those very same baseline technologies can be weaponized if they're not developed responsibly with the appropriate safety measures, guardrails, and understanding from people using and developing them. So it is really about that balancing act for me. And a lot of my research over the years has been focused on mapping the evolution of AI generated content as a malicious tool.”www.henryajder.com
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0017cgr

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In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast Professor David Palumbo-Liutalks with acclaimed author and activist, and San Francisco legend, Chris Carlsson about his new novel, When Shells Crumble. It begins in December 2024, when the US Supreme Court nullifies the popular vote in the Presidential election and awards the presidency to an authoritarian Republican, who proceeds to demolish democracy and install a fascistic state that hastens ecological havoc. The novel is much more than your usual dystopian tale—it focuses on how to resist political cynicism and defeatism, and rebuild on planetary wreckage. It is a world-building project filled with wisdom, sadness, and joy. We specifically put this fictional text in conservation with his brilliant non-fiction work, Nowtopia, which offers a radical redefinition of “work” that restores dignity and value to their proper places.

Chris Carlsson, co-director of the “history from below” project Shaping San Francisco, is a writer, publisher, editor, photographer, public speaker, and occasional professor. He was one of the founders in 1981 of the seminal and infamous underground San Francisco magazine Processed World. In 1992 Carlsson co-founded Critical Mass in San Francisco, which both led to a local bicycling boom and helped to incubate transformative urban movements in hundreds of cities, large and small, worldwide. In 1995 work began on “Shaping San Francisco;” since then the project has morphed into an incomparable archive of San Francisco history at Foundsf.org, award-winning bicycle and walking tours, and almost two decades of Public Talks covering history, politics, ecology, art, and more (see shapingsf.org). Beginning in Spring 2020, Carlsson has hosted Bay Cruises along the San Francisco shoreline.

His latest novel, When Shells Crumble was published by Spuyten Duyvil in Brooklyn, NY at the end of 2023. At the dawn of the pandemic, he published a detailed historical guidebook of the city, Hidden San Francisco: A Guide to Lost Landscapes, Unsung Heroes, and Radical Histories (Pluto Press: 2020). His full-length nonfiction work Nowtopia(AK Press: 2008), offers a groundbreaking look at class and work while uniquely examining how hard and pleasantly we work when we’re not at our official jobs. He published his first novel, After The Deluge, in 2004, a story of post-economic utopian San Francisco in the year 2157. He has edited six books, including three “Reclaiming San Francisco” collections with the venerable City Lights Books. He redesigned and co-authored an expanded Vanished Waters: A History of San Francisco’s Mission Bay after which he joined the board of the Mission Creek Conservancy. He has given hundreds of public presentations based on Shaping San Francisco, Critical Mass, Nowtopia, Vanished Waters, and his “Reclaiming San Francisco” history anthologies since the late 1990s, and has appeared dozens of times in radio, television and on the internet.

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“When AI takes over with our information sources and pollutes it to a certain point, we'll stop believing that there is any such thing as truth anymore. ‘We now live in an era in which the truth is behind a paywall and the lies are free.’ One thing people don't realize is that the goal of disinformation is not simply to get you to believe a falsehood. It's to demoralize you into giving up on the idea of truth, to polarize us around factual issues, to get us to distrust people who don't believe the same lie. And even if somebody doesn't believe the lie, it can still make them cynical. I mean, we've all had friends who don't even watch the news anymore. There's a chilling quotation from Holocaust historian Hannah Arendt about how when you always lie to someone, the consequence is not necessarily that they believe the lie, but that they begin to lose their critical faculties, that they begin to give up on the idea of truth, and so they can't judge for themselves what's true and what's false anymore. That's the scary part, the nexus between post-truth and autocracy. That's what the authoritarian wants. Not necessarily to get you to believe the lie. But to give up on truth, because when you give up on truth, then there's no blame, no accountability, and they can just assert their power. There's a connection between disinformation and denial.”

Lee McIntyre is a Research Fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University and a Senior Advisor for Public Trust in Science at the Aspen Institute. He holds a B.A. from Wesleyan University and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Michigan. He has taught philosophy at Colgate University, Boston University, Tufts Experimental College, Simmons College, and Harvard Extension School (where he received the Dean’s Letter of Commendation for Distinguished Teaching). Formerly Executive Director of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University, he has also served as a policy advisor to the Executive Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard and as Associate Editor in the Research Department of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. His books include On Disinformation and How to Talk to a Science Denier and the novels The Art of Good and Evil and The Sin Eater.

https://leemcintyrebooks.com
www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/730833/on-disinformation-by-lee-mcintyre
https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262545051/
https://leemcintyrebooks.com/books/the-art-of-good-and-evil/
https://leemcintyrebooks.com/books/the-sin-eater/

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How do we fight for truth and protect democracy in a post-truth world? How does bias affect our understanding of facts?

Lee McIntyre is a Research Fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University and a Senior Advisor for Public Trust in Science at the Aspen Institute. He holds a B.A. from Wesleyan University and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Michigan. He has taught philosophy at Colgate University, Boston University, Tufts Experimental College, Simmons College, and Harvard Extension School (where he received the Dean’s Letter of Commendation for Distinguished Teaching). Formerly Executive Director of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University, he has also served as a policy advisor to the Executive Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard and as Associate Editor in the Research Department of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. His books include On Disinformation and How to Talk to a Science Denier and the novels The Art of Good and Evil and The Sin Eater.

“When AI takes over with our information sources and pollutes it to a certain point, we'll stop believing that there is any such thing as truth anymore. ‘We now live in an era in which the truth is behind a paywall and the lies are free.’ One thing people don't realize is that the goal of disinformation is not simply to get you to believe a falsehood. It's to demoralize you into giving up on the idea of truth, to polarize us around factual issues, to get us to distrust people who don't believe the same lie. And even if somebody doesn't believe the lie, it can still make them cynical. I mean, we've all had friends who don't even watch the news anymore. There's a chilling quotation from Holocaust historian Hannah Arendt about how when you always lie to someone, the consequence is not necessarily that they believe the lie, but that they begin to lose their critical faculties, that they begin to give up on the idea of truth, and so they can't judge for themselves what's true and what's false anymore. That's the scary part, the nexus between post-truth and autocracy. That's what the authoritarian wants. Not necessarily to get you to believe the lie. But to give up on truth, because when you give up on truth, then there's no blame, no accountability, and they can just assert their power. There's a connection between disinformation and denial.”

https://leemcintyrebooks.com
www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/730833/on-disinformation-by-lee-mcintyre
https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262545051/
https://leemcintyrebooks.com/books/the-art-of-good-and-evil/
https://leemcintyrebooks.com/books/the-sin-eater/

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“I think one very big example of this phenomenon is the computational irreducibility. This idea that even though you know the rules by which something operates, that doesn't immediately tell you everything about what the system will do. You might have to follow a billion steps in the actual operation of those rules to find out what the system does.

There's no way to jump ahead and just say, "the answer will be such and such." Well, computational irreducibility, in a sense, goes against the hope, at least, of, for example, mathematical science. A lot of the hope of mathematical science is that we'll just work out a formula for how something is going to operate. We don't have to kind of go through the steps and watch it operate. We can just kind of jump to the end and apply the formula. Well, computational irreducibility says that that isn't something you can generally do. It says that there are plenty of things in the world where you have to kind of go through the steps to see what will happen.

In a sense, even though that's kind of a bad thing for science, it says that there's sort of limitations on the extent to which we can use science to predict things. It's sort of a good thing, I think, for leading one's life because it means that as we experience the passage of time, in a sense, that corresponds to the sort of irreducible computation of what we will do.

It's something where that sort of tells one that the passage of time has a meaningful effect. There's something that where you can't just jump to the end and say, "I don't need to live all the years of my life. I can just go and say, and the result will be such and such." No, actually, there's something sort of irreducible about that actual progression of time and the actual living of those years of life, so to speak. So that's kind of one of the enriching aspects of this concept of computational irreducibility. It's a pretty important concept. It's something which I think, for example, in the future of human society, will be something where people right now will think of it as this kind of geeky scientific idea, but in the future, it's going to be a pivotal kind of thing for the understanding of how one should conduct the future of human society.”

Stephen Wolfram is a computer scientist, mathematician, and theoretical physicist. He is the founder and CEO of Wolfram Research, the creator of Mathematica, Wolfram|Alpha, and the Wolfram Language. He received his PhD in theoretical physics at Caltech by the age of 20 and in 1981, became the youngest recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship. Wolfram authored A New Kind of Science and launched the Wolfram Physics Project. He has pioneered computational thinking and has been responsible for many discoveries, inventions and innovations in science, technology and business.

www.stephenwolfram.com
www.wolfram.com
www.wolframalpha.com
www.wolframscience.com/nks/
www.amazon.com/dp/1579550088/ref=nosim?tag=turingmachi08-20
www.wolframphysics.org
www.wolfram-media.com/products/what-is-chatgpt-doing-and-why-does-it-work/

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How can computational language help decode the mysteries of nature and the universe? What is ChatGPT doing and why does it work? How will AI affect education, the arts and society?

Stephen Wolfram is a computer scientist, mathematician, and theoretical physicist. He is the founder and CEO of Wolfram Research, the creator of Mathematica, Wolfram|Alpha, and the Wolfram Language. He received his PhD in theoretical physics at Caltech by the age of 20 and in 1981, became the youngest recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship. Wolfram authored A New Kind of Science and launched the Wolfram Physics Project. He has pioneered computational thinking and has been responsible for many discoveries, inventions and innovations in science, technology and business.

“I think one very big example of this phenomenon is the computational irreducibility. This idea that even though you know the rules by which something operates, that doesn't immediately tell you everything about what the system will do. You might have to follow a billion steps in the actual operation of those rules to find out what the system does.

There's no way to jump ahead and just say, "the answer will be such and such." Well, computational irreducibility, in a sense, goes against the hope, at least, of, for example, mathematical science. A lot of the hope of mathematical science is that we'll just work out a formula for how something is going to operate. We don't have to kind of go through the steps and watch it operate. We can just kind of jump to the end and apply the formula. Well, computational irreducibility says that that isn't something you can generally do. It says that there are plenty of things in the world where you have to kind of go through the steps to see what will happen.

In a sense, even though that's kind of a bad thing for science, it says that there's sort of limitations on the extent to which we can use science to predict things. It's sort of a good thing, I think, for leading one's life because it means that as we experience the passage of time, in a sense, that corresponds to the sort of irreducible computation of what we will do.

It's something where that sort of tells one that the passage of time has a meaningful effect. There's something that where you can't just jump to the end and say, "I don't need to live all the years of my life. I can just go and say, and the result will be such and such." No, actually, there's something sort of irreducible about that actual progression of time and the actual living of those years of life, so to speak. So that's kind of one of the enriching aspects of this concept of computational irreducibility. It's a pretty important concept. It's something which I think, for example, in the future of human society, will be something where people right now will think of it as this kind of geeky scientific idea, but in the future, it's going to be a pivotal kind of thing for the understanding of how one should conduct the future of human society.”

www.stephenwolfram.com
www.wolfram.com
www.wolframalpha.com
www.wolframscience.com/nks/
www.amazon.com/dp/1579550088/ref=nosim?tag=turingmachi08-20
www.wolframphysics.org
www.wolfram-media.com/products/what-is-chatgpt-doing-and-why-does-it-work/

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“Generative AI, particularly Large Language Models, they seem to be engaging in conversation with us. We ask questions, and they reply. It seems like they're talking to us. I don't think they are. I think they're playing a game very much like a game of chess. You make a move and your chess computer makes an appropriate response to that move. It doesn't have any other interest in the game whatsoever. That's what I think Large Language Models are doing. They're just making communicative moves in this game of language that they've learned through training on vast quantities of human-produced text.”

Keith Frankish is an Honorary Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield, a Visiting Research Fellow with The Open University, and an Adjunct Professor with the Brain and Mind Programme in Neurosciences at the University of Crete. Frankish mainly works in the philosophy of mind and has published widely about topics such as human consciousness and cognition. Profoundly inspired by Daniel Dennett, Frankish is best known for defending an “illusionist” view of consciousness. He is also editor of Illusionism as a Theory of Consciousness and co-edits, in addition to others, The Cambridge Handbook of Cognitive Science.

www.keithfrankish.com
www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-handbook-of-cognitive-science/F9996E61AF5E8C0B096EBFED57596B42
www.imprint.co.uk/product/illusionism

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Is consciousness an illusion? Is it just a complex set of cognitive processes without a central, subjective experience? How can we better integrate philosophy with everyday life and the arts?

Keith Frankish is an Honorary Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield, a Visiting Research Fellow with The Open University, and an Adjunct Professor with the Brain and Mind Programme in Neurosciences at the University of Crete. Frankish mainly works in the philosophy of mind and has published widely about topics such as human consciousness and cognition. Profoundly inspired by Daniel Dennett, Frankish is best known for defending an “illusionist” view of consciousness. He is also editor of Illusionism as a Theory of Consciousness and co-edits, in addition to others, The Cambridge Handbook of Cognitive Science.

“Generative AI, particularly Large Language Models, they seem to be engaging in conversation with us. We ask questions, and they reply. It seems like they're talking to us. I don't think they are. I think they're playing a game very much like a game of chess. You make a move and your chess computer makes an appropriate response to that move. It doesn't have any other interest in the game whatsoever. That's what I think Large Language Models are doing. They're just making communicative moves in this game of language that they've learned through training on vast quantities of human-produced text.”

www.keithfrankish.com
www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-handbook-of-cognitive-science/F9996E61AF5E8C0B096EBFED57596B42www.imprint.co.uk/product/illusionism

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“We and all living beings thrive by being actors in the planet’s regeneration, a civilizational goal that should commence and never cease. We practiced degeneration as a species and it brought us to the threshold of an unimaginable crisis. To reverse global warming, we need to reverse global degeneration.”

Can we really end the climate crisis in one generation? What kind of bold collective action, technologies, and nature-based solutions would it take to do it?

Paul Hawken is a renowned environmentalist, entrepreneur, author, and activist committed to sustainability and transforming the business-environment relationship. A leading voice in the environmental movement, he has founded successful eco-friendly businesses, authored influential works on commerce and ecology, and advised global leaders on economic and environmental policies. As the founder of Project Regeneration and Project Drawdown, Paul leads efforts to identify and model solutions to reverse global warming, showcasing actionable strategies. His pioneering work in corporate ecological reform continues to shape a sustainable future. He is the author of eight books, including Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation.

https://regeneration.org
https://paulhawken.com
https://drawdown.org
https://regeneration.org/nexus

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www.oneplanetpodcast.org
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Can we really end the climate crisis in one generation? What kind of bold collective action, technologies, and nature-based solutions would it take to do it?

Paul Hawken is a renowned environmentalist, entrepreneur, author, and activist committed to sustainability and transforming the business-environment relationship. A leading voice in the environmental movement, he has founded successful eco-friendly businesses, authored influential works on commerce and ecology, and advised global leaders on economic and environmental policies. As the founder of Project Regeneration and Project Drawdown, Paul leads efforts to identify and model solutions to reverse global warming, showcasing actionable strategies. His pioneering work in corporate ecological reform continues to shape a sustainable future. He is the author of eight books, including Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation.

“We and all living beings thrive by being actors in the planet’s regeneration, a civilizational goal that should commence and never cease. We practiced degeneration as a species and it brought us to the threshold of an unimaginable crisis. To reverse global warming, we need to reverse global degeneration.”

https://regeneration.org
https://paulhawken.com
https://drawdown.org
https://regeneration.org/nexus

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

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“So, New York City will ultimately build a seawall that it estimates will cost somewhere in the order of 120 billion dollars. And, you know, the fact is that many cities in the United States will not be able to afford that, especially smaller ones and especially southern ones.

A part of planning for this needs to include thinking about managed retreat from highly vulnerable areas. The tax base of that community that supports schools undermines the real estate market and the value of property, and it can lead to a spiral of economic decline that can be really dangerous for the people who remain. This can really hollow out a community and that's an enormous challenge to deal with, but one way to deal with it is to try to keep the resources and infrastructure in a community proportional to the population that's utilizing it and to maintain some energy and prosperity and vitality. So, I think a lot of places in the United States need to plan to get smaller, which is really the antithesis of the American philosophy of growth and economic growth.

If you want to keep your community intact, you could move together, or you could move to a place where your neighbors have also moved or something like that. That's the kind of new idea that is being batted around that can help keep communities coherent.”

Abrahm Lustgarten is an investigative reporter, author, and filmmaker whose work focuses on human adaptation to climate change. His 2010 Frontline documentary The Spill, which investigated BP’s company culture, was nominated for an Emmy. His 2015 longform series Killing the Colorado, about the draining of the Colorado river, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Lustgarten is a senior reporter at ProPublica, and contributes to publications like The New York Times Magazine and The Atlantic. His research on climate migration influenced President Biden’s creation of a climate migration study group. This is also the topic of his newly published book, On The Move: The Overheating Earth and the Uprooting of America in which he explores how climate change is uprooting American lives.

https://abrahm.com
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374171735/onthemove

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An estimated one in two people will experience degrading environmental conditions this century and will be faced with the difficult question of whether to leave their homes. Will you be among those who migrate in response to climate change? If so, where will you go?

Abrahm Lustgarten is an investigative reporter, author, and filmmaker whose work focuses on human adaptation to climate change. His 2010 Frontline documentary The Spill, which investigated BP’s company culture, was nominated for an Emmy. His 2015 longform series Killing the Colorado, about the draining of the Colorado river, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Lustgarten is a senior reporter at ProPublica, and contributes to publications like The New York Times Magazine and The Atlantic. His research on climate migration influenced President Biden’s creation of a climate migration study group. This is also the topic of his newly published book, On The Move: The Overheating Earth and the Uprooting of America in which he explores how climate change is uprooting American lives.

“So, New York City will ultimately build a seawall that it estimates will cost somewhere in the order of 120 billion dollars. And, you know, the fact is that many cities in the United States will not be able to afford that, especially smaller ones and especially southern ones.

A part of planning for this needs to include thinking about managed retreat from highly vulnerable areas. The tax base of that community that supports schools undermines the real estate market and the value of property, and it can lead to a spiral of economic decline that can be really dangerous for the people who remain. This can really hollow out a community and that's an enormous challenge to deal with, but one way to deal with it is to try to keep the resources and infrastructure in a community proportional to the population that's utilizing it and to maintain some energy and prosperity and vitality. So, I think a lot of places in the United States need to plan to get smaller, which is really the antithesis of the American philosophy of growth and economic growth.

If you want to keep your community intact, you could move together, or you could move to a place where your neighbors have also moved or something like that. That's the kind of new idea that is being batted around that can help keep communities coherent.”

https://abrahm.com
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374171735/onthemove

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

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“There’s a lot of greenwashing that's going on these days. It is great marketing. And that was really the reason why I wrote this book. I had started to see the patterns. You can start to tell them the companies that are genuinely doing it versus the companies that are just talking about it. So that was one indicator, you know, a company that would send out a press release about their goals and what they anticipated to do in the next 5 to 10 years was very different from companies who had said, you know what, this is what we've achieved. Regenerative started coming into the lexicon, the term in 2017, 2018. And regenerative means to regenerate, means to bring life into something. To sustain means to keep the status quo. And regenerative looks at things from a very holistic lens. You know, it's like if you're going to run a regenerative farm, it's all the different components of the farm and the ecosystem ideally come within the ecosystem.”

Esha Chhabra has written for national and international publications over the last 15 years, focusing on global development, the environment, and the intersection of business and impact. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Economist, The Guardian, and other publications. She is the author of Working to Restore: Harnessing the Power of Business to Heal the Earth.

www.eshachhabra.comwww.beacon.org/Working-to-Restore-P2081.aspx

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What is regenerative business? How can we create a business mindset that addresses social, economic and environmental issues?

Esha Chhabra has written for national and international publications over the last 15 years, focusing on global development, the environment, and the intersection of business and impact. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Economist, The Guardian, and other publications. She is the author of Working to Restore: Harnessing the Power of Business to Heal the Earth.

“There’s a lot of greenwashing that's going on these days. It is great marketing. And that was really the reason why I wrote this book. I had started to see the patterns. You can start to tell them the companies that are genuinely doing it versus the companies that are just talking about it. So that was one indicator, you know, a company that would send out a press release about their goals and what they anticipated to do in the next 5 to 10 years was very different from companies who had said, you know what, this is what we've achieved. Regenerative started coming into the lexicon, the term in 2017, 2018. And regenerative means to regenerate, means to bring life into something. To sustain means to keep the status quo. And regenerative looks at things from a very holistic lens. You know, it's like if you're going to run a regenerative farm, it's all the different components of the farm and the ecosystem ideally come within the ecosystem.”

www.eshachhabra.comwww.beacon.org/Working-to-Restore-P2081.aspx

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www.oneplanetpodcast.org
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“I'd like to focus more on the immediate harms that the kinds of AI technologies we have today might pose. With language models, the kind of technology that powers ChatGPT and other chatbots, there are harms that might result from regular use of these systems, and then there are harms that might result from malicious use. Regular use would be how you and I might use ChatGPT and other chatbots to do ordinary things. There is a concern that these systems might reproduce and amplify, for example, racist or sexist biases, or spread misinformation. These systems are known to, as researchers put it, “hallucinate” in some cases, making up facts or false citations. And then there are the harms from malicious use, which might result from some bad actors using the systems for nefarious purposes. That would include disinformation on a mass scale. You could imagine a bad actor using language models to automate the creation of fake news and propaganda to try to manipulate voters, for example. And this takes us into the medium term future, because we're not quite there, but another concern would be language models providing dangerous, potentially illegal information that is not readily available on the internet for anyone to access. As they get better over time, there is a concern that in the wrong hands, these systems might become quite powerful weapons, at least indirectly, and so people have been trying to mitigate these potential harms.”

Dr. Raphaël Millière is Assistant Professor in Philosophy of AI at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. His research primarily explores the theoretical foundations and inner workings of AI systems based on deep learning, such as large language models. He investigates whether these systems can exhibit human-like cognitive capacities, drawing on theories and methods from cognitive science. He is also interested in how insights from studying AI might shed new light on human cognition. Ultimately, his work aims to advance our understanding of both artificial and natural intelligence.

https://raphaelmilliere.com
https://researchers.mq.edu.au/en/persons/raphael-milliere

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How can we ensure that AI is aligned with human values? What can AI teach us about human cognition and creativity?

Dr. Raphaël Millière is Assistant Professor in Philosophy of AI at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. His research primarily explores the theoretical foundations and inner workings of AI systems based on deep learning, such as large language models. He investigates whether these systems can exhibit human-like cognitive capacities, drawing on theories and methods from cognitive science. He is also interested in how insights from studying AI might shed new light on human cognition. Ultimately, his work aims to advance our understanding of both artificial and natural intelligence.

“I'd like to focus more on the immediate harms that the kinds of AI technologies we have today might pose. With language models, the kind of technology that powers ChatGPT and other chatbots, there are harms that might result from regular use of these systems, and then there are harms that might result from malicious use. Regular use would be how you and I might use ChatGPT and other chatbots to do ordinary things. There is a concern that these systems might reproduce and amplify, for example, racist or sexist biases, or spread misinformation. These systems are known to, as researchers put it, “hallucinate” in some cases, making up facts or false citations. And then there are the harms from malicious use, which might result from some bad actors using the systems for nefarious purposes. That would include disinformation on a mass scale. You could imagine a bad actor using language models to automate the creation of fake news and propaganda to try to manipulate voters, for example. And this takes us into the medium term future, because we're not quite there, but another concern would be language models providing dangerous, potentially illegal information that is not readily available on the internet for anyone to access. As they get better over time, there is a concern that in the wrong hands, these systems might become quite powerful weapons, at least indirectly, and so people have been trying to mitigate these potential harms.”

https://raphaelmilliere.com
https://researchers.mq.edu.au/en/persons/raphael-milliere

“I'd like to focus more on the immediate harms that the kinds of AI technologies we have today might pose. With language models, the kind of technology that powers ChatGPT and other chatbots, there are harms that might result from regular use of these systems, and then there are harms that might result from malicious use. Regular use would be how you and I might use ChatGPT and other chatbots to do ordinary things. There is a concern that these systems might reproduce and amplify, for example, racist or sexist biases, or spread misinformation. These systems are known to, as researchers put it, “hallucinate” in some cases, making up facts or false citations. And then there are the harms from malicious use, which might result from some bad actors using the systems for nefarious purposes. That would include disinformation on a mass scale. You could imagine a bad actor using language models to automate the creation of fake news and propaganda to try to manipulate voters, for example. And this takes us into the medium term future, because we're not quite there, but another concern would be language models providing dangerous, potentially illegal information that is not readily available on the internet for anyone to access. As they get better over time, there is a concern that in the wrong hands, these systems might become quite powerful weapons, at least indirectly, and so people have been trying to mitigate these potential harms.”

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www.oneplanetpodcast.org
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“Bookselling captured my imagination and my heart as soon as I started working at the bookstore because I could see the potential for this great, amazing community-oriented work. Of course, it's a thrill to be around books, to meet authors, to read all this stuff, and to spend all day with people who love books, but what I think I really fell in love with was the sense of community, the people behind it, and the way a bookstore can really be an engine for positive social change within its community and in a broader sense as well. My whole nonfiction book project started with a tweet thread. It was about how every bookseller has to be prepared to have this discussion: a customer comes in, and they're like, this book is 50 percent off on Amazon. Why should I buy it here? So, I don't think about it quite as withholding from Amazon as much as contributing to these local community-oriented businesses.
The thing that unites my poetry and the nonfiction writing is my main obsession as a writer. It's the question of, how do you live meaningfully in late capitalism? As corporations and global capitalist forces take over the world, what does it mean to try to have a meaningful human life? I think the proliferation of objects might reflect that. A lot of what we do in this world is collect objects, and regardless of whether it's good or bad, you build a nest. I think that in Picture Window in particular, I wanted to write about the domestic in a way that I hadn't written in so far. And then the pandemic happened, so I was forced into this weird, uneasy, claustrophobic domesticity. When your attention is so focused within your own home and within your own family, every object in your house takes on a new resonance. So, when a tennis ball that you've never seen somehow shows up in your house, that's weird. It's poetic. It feels dreamlike.”

Danny Caine is the author of the poetry collections Continental Breakfast, El Dorado Freddy's, Flavortown, and Picture Window, as well as the books How to Protect Bookstores and Why and How to Resist Amazon and Why. His poetry has appeared in The Slowdown, Lit Hub, Diagram, HAD, and Barrelhouse. He's a co-owner of The Raven Bookstore, Publisher's Weekly's 2022 Bookstore of the Year.

www.dannycaine.com
www.ravenbookstore.com

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What is the future of literature in the age of generative AI? How can bookstores build community and be engines for positive social change? What does it mean to try to have a meaningful human life?

Danny Caine is the author of the poetry collections Continental Breakfast, El Dorado Freddy's, Flavortown, and Picture Window, as well as the books How to Protect Bookstores and Why and How to Resist Amazon and Why. His poetry has appeared in The Slowdown, Lit Hub, Diagram, HAD, and Barrelhouse. He's a co-owner of The Raven Bookstore, Publisher's Weekly's 2022 Bookstore of the Year.

“Bookselling captured my imagination and my heart as soon as I started working at the bookstore because I could see the potential for this great, amazing community-oriented work. Of course, it's a thrill to be around books, to meet authors, to read all this stuff, and to spend all day with people who love books, but what I think I really fell in love with was the sense of community, the people behind it, and the way a bookstore can really be an engine for positive social change within its community and in a broader sense as well. My whole nonfiction book project started with a tweet thread. It was about how every bookseller has to be prepared to have this discussion: a customer comes in, and they're like, this book is 50 percent off on Amazon. Why should I buy it here? So, I don't think about it quite as withholding from Amazon as much as contributing to these local community-oriented businesses.
The thing that unites my poetry and the nonfiction writing is my main obsession as a writer. It's the question of, how do you live meaningfully in late capitalism? As corporations and global capitalist forces take over the world, what does it mean to try to have a meaningful human life? I think the proliferation of objects might reflect that. A lot of what we do in this world is collect objects, and regardless of whether it's good or bad, you build a nest. I think that in Picture Window in particular, I wanted to write about the domestic in a way that I hadn't written in so far. And then the pandemic happened, so I was forced into this weird, uneasy, claustrophobic domesticity. When your attention is so focused within your own home and within your own family, every object in your house takes on a new resonance. So, when a tennis ball that you've never seen somehow shows up in your house, that's weird. It's poetic. It feels dreamlike.”

www.dannycaine.com
www.ravenbookstore.com

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

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“A lot of our work is comparative. We look at background behavior. Is there a burst of new activity? We zoom in on that and ask why that is suddenly appearing and why it didn't appear before. Imagine one day you wake up and you find water in a pot is boiling and you want to understand why water is boiling. If you go at it one molecule at a time, it's not giving you the big picture of what is going on. We've probably all done this: you take milk, stick it in the fridge, too lazy to go to the grocery, so you just leave it there. The 11th day, the milk's gone bad. Why did that happen on the 11th day? What was happening was that all you could see was the kind of macro level, you couldn't see the individual pieces of milk. This is a new area of physics, exactly the same as how shock waves—a wave that builds up so quickly, there's no kind of precursor—appear. Using the data we collect online, we have a tool for making predictions of when we expect shocks to arise and what shape they'll have. So the reason we went for a systems level view is because you can't understand water boiling one molecule at a time.”

How can physics help solve messy, real world problems? How can we embrace the possibilities of AI while limiting existential risk and abuse by bad actors?

Neil Johnson is a physics professor at George Washington University. His new initiative in Complexity and Data Science at the Dynamic Online Networks Lab combines cross-disciplinary fundamental research with data science to attack complex real-world problems. His research interests lie in the broad area of Complex Systems and ‘many-body’ out-of-equilibrium systems of collections of objects, ranging from crowds of particles to crowds of people and from environments as distinct as quantum information processing in nanostructures to the online world of collective behavior on social media. https://physics.columbian.gwu.edu/neil-johnson https://donlab.columbian.gwu.edu

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How can physics help solve messy, real world problems? How can we embrace the possibilities of AI while limiting existential risk and abuse by bad actors?

Neil Johnson is a physics professor at George Washington University. His new initiative in Complexity and Data Science at the Dynamic Online Networks Lab combines cross-disciplinary fundamental research with data science to attack complex real-world problems. His research interests lie in the broad area of Complex Systems and ‘many-body’ out-of-equilibrium systems of collections of objects, ranging from crowds of particles to crowds of people and from environments as distinct as quantum information processing in nanostructures to the online world of collective behavior on social media.

“A lot of our work is comparative. We look at background behavior. Is there a burst of new activity? We zoom in on that and ask why that is suddenly appearing and why it didn't appear before. Imagine one day you wake up and you find water in a pot is boiling and you want to understand why water is boiling. If you go at it one molecule at a time, it's not giving you the big picture of what is going on. We've probably all done this: you take milk, stick it in the fridge, too lazy to go to the grocery, so you just leave it there. The 11th day, the milk's gone bad. Why did that happen on the 11th day? What was happening was that all you could see was the kind of macro level, you couldn't see the individual pieces of milk. This is a new area of physics, exactly the same as how shock waves—a wave that builds up so quickly, there's no kind of precursor—appear. Using the data we collect online, we have a tool for making predictions of when we expect shocks to arise and what shape they'll have. So the reason we went for a systems level view is because you can't understand water boiling one molecule at a time.”

https://physics.columbian.gwu.edu/neil-johnsonhttps://donlab.columbian.gwu.edu

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“The creation of roads is this process that's sort of innate to all beings. You know, we're all sort of inclined to create and follow trails. We just do it at a much vaster and more permanent and destructive scale. I think we need to reconceive how we think about roads in some ways, right? I mean, we think about roads, certainly here in the U. S., as these symbols of movement and mobility and freedom, right? There's so much about the romance of the open road and so much of our popular culture going back to the mid-20th century when the interstate highway systems were built and writers like Jack Kerouac were singing the praises of the open highway. And certainly, roads play that role. I like driving. The iconic Western American road trip is kind of this wonderful experience, but you know, I think the purpose of this book is to say: Yes, roads are a source of human mobility and freedom, but they're doing precisely the opposite for basically all other forms of life, right? They're curtailing animal movement and mobility and freedom, both by killing them directly in the form of roadkill, but also by creating these kinds of impenetrable walls of traffic that prevent animals from moving around the landscape and accessing big swaths of their habitat. Right? So, that's kind of the mental reconfiguration we have to go through, which is to recognize that, hey, roads aren't just forms of mobility and freedom for us. They're also preventing that mobility in basically all other life forms.”

Ben Goldfarb is a conservation journalist. He is the author of Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping The Future of Our Planet, named one of the best books of 2023 by the New York Times, and Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter, winner of the 2019 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award.

www.bengoldfarb.com
https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324005896
www.chelseagreen.com/product/eager-paperback

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What is road ecology? How are our roads driving certain species towards extinction? And what can we do about it?

Ben Goldfarb is a conservation journalist. He is the author of Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping The Future of Our Planet, named one of the best books of 2023 by the New York Times, and Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter, winner of the 2019 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award.

“The creation of roads is this process that's sort of innate to all beings. You know, we're all sort of inclined to create and follow trails. We just do it at a much vaster and more permanent and destructive scale. I think we need to reconceive how we think about roads in some ways, right? I mean, we think about roads, certainly here in the U. S., as these symbols of movement and mobility and freedom, right? There's so much about the romance of the open road and so much of our popular culture going back to the mid-20th century when the interstate highway systems were built and writers like Jack Kerouac were singing the praises of the open highway. And certainly, roads play that role. I like driving. The iconic Western American road trip is kind of this wonderful experience, but you know, I think the purpose of this book is to say: Yes, roads are a source of human mobility and freedom, but they're doing precisely the opposite for basically all other forms of life, right? They're curtailing animal movement and mobility and freedom, both by killing them directly in the form of roadkill, but also by creating these kinds of impenetrable walls of traffic that prevent animals from moving around the landscape and accessing big swaths of their habitat. Right? So, that's kind of the mental reconfiguration we have to go through, which is to recognize that, hey, roads aren't just forms of mobility and freedom for us. They're also preventing that mobility in basically all other life forms.”

www.bengoldfarb.com
https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324005896
www.chelseagreen.com/product/eager-paperback

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www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

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“We've got four billion years of biological accidents that created all of the intricate aspects of everything about life, including consciousness. And it's about what's going on in each of those cells at the time that allows it to be connected to everything else and for the information to be understood as it's being exchanged between those things with their multifaceted, deep, complex processing.”

Joseph LeDoux is a Professor of Neural Science at New York University at NYU and was Director of the Emotional Brain Institute. His research primarily focuses on survival circuits, including their impacts on emotions, such as fear and anxiety. He has written a number of books in this field, including The Four Realms of Existence: A New Theory of Being Human, The Emotional Brain, Synaptic Self, Anxious, and The Deep History of Ourselves. LeDoux is also the lead singer and songwriter of the band The Amygdaloids.

www.joseph-ledoux.com
www.cns.nyu.edu/ebi
https://amygdaloids.net
www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674261259

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How does the brain process emotions? How are emotional memories formed and stored in the brain, and how do they influence behavior, perception, and decision-making? How does music help us understand our emotions, memories, and the nature of consciousness?

Joseph LeDoux is a Professor of Neural Science at New York University at NYU and was Director of the Emotional Brain Institute. His research primarily focuses on survival circuits, including their impacts on emotions, such as fear and anxiety. He has written a number of books in this field, including The Four Realms of Existence: A New Theory of Being Human, The Emotional Brain, Synaptic Self, Anxious, and The Deep History of Ourselves. LeDoux is also the lead singer and songwriter of the band The Amygdaloids.

“We've got four billion years of biological accidents that created all of the intricate aspects of everything about life, including consciousness. And it's about what's going on in each of those cells at the time that allows it to be connected to everything else and for the information to be understood as it's being exchanged between those things with their multifaceted, deep, complex processing.”

www.joseph-ledoux.com
www.cns.nyu.edu/ebi
https://amygdaloids.net
www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674261259

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www.oneplanetpodcast.org
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Music courtesy of Joseph LeDoux

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“AI is brilliant at cognitive empathy. However, the next kind is emotional empathy. Emotional empathy means: I know what you feel because I'm feeling it too. And this has to do with circuitry in the fore part of the brain, which creates a brain-to-brain circuit that's automatic, unconscious, and instantaneous. And emotions pass very  well across that. I think AI might flunk here because it has no emotion. It can mimic empathy, but it doesn't really feel empathy. The third kind is empathic concern. Technically, it means caring. It's the basis of love. It's the same circuitry as a parent's love for a child, actually. But I think that leaders need this very much.
AI has no emotion, so it doesn't have emotional self-awareness. It can't tune in. I don't think it can be empathic because AI is a set of codes, basically. It doesn't have the ability to manage emotion because it doesn't have emotion. It's interesting. I was just talking to a group at Microsoft, which is one of the leading developers of AI, and one of the people there was talking about Inculcating love into AI or caring into AI as maybe an antidote to the negative potential of AI for humanity. But I think there will always be room for the human, for a leader. I don't think that people will find that they can trust AI the same way they can trust a leader who cares.”

Daniel Goleman is an American psychologist, author, and science journalist. Before becoming an author, Goleman was a science reporter for the New York Times for 12 years, covering psychology and the human brain. In 1995, Goleman published Emotional Intelligence, a New York Times bestseller. In his newly published book Optimal, Daniel Goleman discusses how people can enter an optimal state of high performance without facing symptoms of burnout in the workplace.

www.danielgoleman.info
www.harpercollins.com/products/optimal-daniel-golemancary-cherniss?variant=41046795288610

www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/69105/emotional-intelligence-by-daniel-goleman/

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How can we enhance our emotional intelligence and avoid burnout in a changing world? How can we regain focus and perform in an optimal state? What do we mean by ecological intelligence?

Daniel Goleman is an American psychologist, author, and science journalist. Before becoming an author, Goleman was a science reporter for the New York Times for 12 years, covering psychology and the human brain. In 1995, Goleman published Emotional Intelligence, a New York Times bestseller. In his newly published book Optimal, Daniel Goleman discusses how people can enter an optimal state of high performance without facing symptoms of burnout in the workplace.

“AI is brilliant at cognitive empathy. However, the next kind is emotional empathy. Emotional empathy means: I know what you feel because I'm feeling it too. And this has to do with circuitry in the fore part of the brain, which creates a brain-to-brain circuit that's automatic, unconscious, and instantaneous. And emotions pass very  well across that. I think AI might flunk here because it has no emotion. It can mimic empathy, but it doesn't really feel empathy. The third kind is empathic concern. Technically, it means caring. It's the basis of love. It's the same circuitry as a parent's love for a child, actually. But I think that leaders need this very much.
AI has no emotion, so it doesn't have emotional self-awareness. It can't tune in. I don't think it can be empathic because AI is a set of codes, basically. It doesn't have the ability to manage emotion because it doesn't have emotion. It's interesting. I was just talking to a group at Microsoft, which is one of the leading developers of AI, and one of the people there was talking about Inculcating love into AI or caring into AI as maybe an antidote to the negative potential of AI for humanity. But I think there will always be room for the human, for a leader. I don't think that people will find that they can trust AI the same way they can trust a leader who cares.”

www.danielgoleman.info
www.harpercollins.com/products/optimal-daniel-golemancary-cherniss?variant=41046795288610

www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/69105/emotional-intelligence-by-daniel-goleman/

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“I've been playing with AI just to see what it can do. People who are not privileged with the skills of conceptualizing, the skills of abstract thinking, they will be replaced. And I'm just thinking about people from the Global South at this moment. People from the Global South have been working as supporters. They do a lot of support for creative work of entrepreneurs in the Global North. They do social media. They create content and things like that. The people who would provide the support live in, let's say, the Philippines. So, what I'm worried about is how AI technology could take the jobs of people who are not really trained to sort of do conceptual thinking.”

Intan Paramaditha is a writer and an academic. Her novel The Wandering (Harvill Secker/ Penguin Random House UK), translated from the Indonesian language by Stephen J. Epstein, was nominated for the Stella Prize in Australia and awarded the Tempo Best Literary Fiction in Indonesia, English PEN Translates Award, and PEN/ Heim Translation Fund Grant from PEN America. She is the author of the short story collection Apple and Knife, the editor of Deviant Disciples: Indonesian Women Poets, part of the Translating Feminisms series of Tilted Axis Press and the co-editor of The Routledge Companion to Asian Cinemas (forthcoming 2024). Her essay, “On the Complicated Questions Around Writing About Travel,” was selected for The Best American Travel Writing 2021. She holds a Ph.D. from New York University and teaches media and film studies at Macquarie University, Sydney.

https://intanparamaditha.com
www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/626055/the-wandering-by-intan-paramaditha/9781787301184

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
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“As technology becomes more dominant, the arts become ever more important for us to stay in touch the things that the sciences can't tackle. What it's actually like to be a person? What's actually important? We can have this endless progress inside this capitalist machine for greater wealth and longer life and more happiness, according to some metric. Or we can try and quantify society and push it forward. Ultimately, we all have to decide what's important to us as humans, and we need the arts to help with that. So, I think what's important really is just exposing ourselves to as many different ideas as we can, being open-minded, and trying to learn about all facets of life so that we can understand each other as well. And the arts is an essential part of that.”

How is being an artist different than a machine that is programmed to perform a set of actions? How can we stop thinking about artworks as objects, and start thinking about them as triggers for experiences? In this conversation with Max Cooper, we discuss the beauty and chaos of nature and the exploration of technology music and consciousness.

Max Cooper is a musician with a PhD in computational biology. He integrates electronic music with immersive video projections inspired by scientific exploration. His latest project, Seme, commissioned by the Salzburg Easter Festival, merges Italian musical heritage with contemporary techniques, was also performed at the Barbican in London.

He supplied music for a video narrated by Greta Thunberg and Pope Francis for COP26.

In 2016, Cooper founded Mesh, a platform to explore the intersection of music, science and art. His Observatory art-house installation is on display at Kings Cross until May 1st.

https://maxcooper.net
https://osterfestspiele.at/en/programme/2024/electro-2024
https://meshmeshmesh.net
www.kingscross.co.uk/event/the-observatory

The music featured on this episode was Palestrina Sicut, Cardano Circles, Fibonacci Sequence, Scarlatti K141. Music is from Seme and is courtesy of Max Cooper.

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

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How is being an artist different than a machine that is programmed to perform a set of actions? How can we stop thinking about artworks as objects, and start thinking about them as triggers for experiences? In this conversation with Max Cooper, we discuss the beauty and chaos of nature and the exploration of technology music and consciousness.

Max Cooper is a musician with a PhD in computational biology. He integrates electronic music with immersive video projections inspired by scientific exploration. His latest project, Seme, commissioned by the Salzburg Easter Festival, merges Italian musical heritage with contemporary techniques, was also performed at the Barbican in London.

He supplied music for a video narrated by Greta Thunberg and Pope Francis for COP26.

In 2016, Cooper founded Mesh, a platform to explore the intersection of music, science and art. His Observatory art-house installation is on display at Kings Cross until May 1st.

“As technology becomes more dominant, the arts become ever more important for us to stay in touch the things that the sciences can't tackle. What it's actually like to be a person? What's actually important? We can have this endless progress inside this capitalist machine for greater wealth and longer life and more happiness, according to some metric. Or we can try and quantify society and push it forward. Ultimately, we all have to decide what's important to us as humans, and we need the arts to help with that. So, I think what's important really is just exposing ourselves to as many different ideas as we can, being open-minded, and trying to learn about all facets of life so that we can understand each other as well. And the arts is an essential part of that.”

https://maxcooper.net
https://osterfestspiele.at/en/programme/2024/electro-2024
https://meshmeshmesh.net
www.kingscross.co.uk/event/the-observatory

The music featured on this episode was Palestrina Sicut, Cardano Circles, Fibonacci Sequence, Scarlatti K141. Music is from Seme and is courtesy of Max Cooper.

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

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"So, I am a data reporter at Grist. And what does that mean? I'm building statistical models of phenomena. I'm writing web scrapers and building data visualizations, right? I have quite a technical job in terms of my relationship with the field of journalism. I just don't think that those tools ought to be put on some kind of pedestal and framed as the be-all end all of the possibility of the field, right? I think that data science, artificial intelligence, and the advent of these new LLMs they're useful tools to add to the journalistic toolkit. We don't know what the ultimate effect of AI is going to be on journalism, but I think journalism is maybe going to look a little bit different in 20 years."

Clayton Page Aldern is an award winning neuroscientist turned environmental journalist whose work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Guardian, The Economist, and Grist, where he is a senior data reporter. A Rhodes Scholar, he holds a Master's in Neuroscience and a Master's in Public Policy from the University of Oxford. He is also a research affiliate at the Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology at the University of Washington. He is the author of The Weight of Nature: How a Changing Climate Changes Our Minds, Brains, and Bodies, which explores the neurobiological impacts of rapid environmental change.

https://claytonaldern.com
www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/717097/the-weight-of-nature-by-clayton-page-aldern
https://csde.washington.edu

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www.oneplanetpodcast.org
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How does a changing climate affect our minds, brains and bodies?

Clayton Page Aldern is an award winning neuroscientist turned environmental journalist whose work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Guardian, The Economist, and Grist, where he is a senior data reporter. A Rhodes Scholar, he holds a Master's in Neuroscience and a Master's in Public Policy from the University of Oxford. He is also a research affiliate at the Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology at the University of Washington. He is the author of The Weight of Nature: How a Changing Climate Changes Our Minds, Brains, and Bodies, which explores the neurobiological impacts of rapid environmental change.

"So, I am a data reporter at Grist. And what does that mean? I'm building statistical models of phenomena. I'm writing web scrapers and building data visualizations, right? I have quite a technical job in terms of my relationship with the field of journalism. I just don't think that those tools ought to be put on some kind of pedestal and framed as the be-all end all of the possibility of the field, right? I think that data science, artificial intelligence, and the advent of these new LLMs they're useful tools to add to the journalistic toolkit. We don't know what the ultimate effect of AI is going to be on journalism, but I think journalism is maybe going to look a little bit different in 20 years."

https://claytonaldern.com
www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/717097/the-weight-of-nature-by-clayton-page-aldern
https://csde.washington.edu

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

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“The album 1 0 0 1 is really like a journey from our connection with nature to where we are now, in this moment where we're playing with technology. We're almost in this hybrid space, not fully understanding where it's going. And it's very deep in our subconscious and probably much greater than we realize. And it sort of ends in this space where the consciousness of what we're creating, it's going to be very separate from us. And I believe that's kind of where it's heading – the idea of losing humanity, losing touch with nature and becoming outside of something that we have created."

Dustin O’Halloran is a pianist and composer and member of the band A Winged Victory for the Sullen. Winner of a 2015 Emmy Award for his main title theme to Amazon's comedy drama Transparent, he was also nominated for an Oscar, a Golden Globe, and a BAFTA for his score for Lion, written in collaboration with Volker Bertelmann (aka Hauschka). He has composed for Wayne McGregor (The Royal Ballet, London), Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, Ammonite starring Kate Winslet, and The Essex Serpent starring Claire Danes. He produced Katy Perry’s “Into Me You See” from her album Witness and appears on Leonard Cohen’s 2019 posthumous album Thanks For The Dance. With six solo albums under his name, his latest album 1 0 0 1, which explores ideas of technology, humanity and mind-body dualism, is available on Deutsche Grammophon.

https://dustinohalloran.com/
www.deutschegrammophon.com/en/artists/dustin-o-halloran
www.imdb.com/name/nm0641169/bio/?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm

Music courtesy of Dustin O’Halloran and Deutsche Grammophon

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

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What will happen when Artificial General Intelligence arrives? What is the nature of consciousness? How are music and creativity pathways for reconnecting us to our humanity and the natural world?

Dustin O’Halloran is a pianist and composer and member of the band A Winged Victory for the Sullen. Winner of a 2015 Emmy Award for his main title theme to Amazon's comedy drama Transparent, he was also nominated for an Oscar, a Golden Globe, and a BAFTA for his score for Lion, written in collaboration with Volker Bertelmann (aka Hauschka). He has composed for Wayne McGregor (The Royal Ballet, London), Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, Ammonite starring Kate Winslet, and The Essex Serpent starring Claire Danes. He produced Katy Perry’s “Into Me You See” from her album Witness and appears on Leonard Cohen’s 2019 posthumous album Thanks For The Dance. With six solo albums under his name, his latest album 1 0 0 1, which explores ideas of technology, humanity and mind-body dualism, is available on Deutsche Grammophon.

“The album 1 0 0 1 is really like a journey from our connection with nature to where we are now, in this moment where we're playing with technology. We're almost in this hybrid space, not fully understanding where it's going. And it's very deep in our subconscious and probably much greater than we realize. And it sort of ends in this space where the consciousness of what we're creating, it's going to be very separate from us. And I believe that's kind of where it's heading – the idea of losing humanity, losing touch with nature and becoming outside of something that we have created."

https://dustinohalloran.com/
www.deutschegrammophon.com/en/artists/dustin-o-halloran
www.imdb.com/name/nm0641169/bio/?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm

Music courtesy of Dustin O’Halloran and Deutsche Grammophon

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

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"There's no more empowering act for me than simply turning the devices off. The simple rule that I'm not allowed to browse in the morning until I've done my reading has opened up worlds. So much of tech and the net are designed to capture our attentions, to turn us into consumers rather than citizens, to fan our base passions and emotions, and to send us down rabbit holes. That the best thing we can do is to turn it off.

'The pictures in our minds,' I guess that was Walter Lippmann, are confirmed by the enlightenment empiricists like John Locke, who insists that our reality is shaped by our external sensations and what we put into our minds. And then, of course, we are what we think. Life shaped by the mind, as The Dhammapada states. And then, the great injunction that my dad used to quote from Paracelsus, 'As we imagine ourselves to be, so shall we be.' “

Jeffrey Rosen is President and CEO of the National Constitution Center, where he hosts We the People, a weekly podcast of constitutional debate. He is also a professor of law at the George Washington University Law School and a contributing editor at The Atlantic. Rosen is a graduate of Harvard College, Oxford University, and Yale Law School. He is the author of seven previous books, including the New York Times bestseller Conversations with RBG: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Life, Love, Liberty, and Law. His essays and commentaries have appeared in The New York Times Magazine; on NPR; in The New Republic, where he was the legal affairs editor; and in The New Yorker, where he has been a staff writer. His latest book is The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America.

https://constitutioncenter.org/about/board-of-trustees/jeffrey-rosen
www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Pursuit-of-Happiness/Jeffrey-Rosen/9781668002476
https://constitutioncenter.org/news-debate/podcasts

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What is the true meaning of the pursuit of happiness? What can we learn from the Founding Fathers about achieving harmony, balance, tranquility, self-mastery, and pursuing the public good?

Jeffrey Rosen is President and CEO of the National Constitution Center, where he hosts We the People, a weekly podcast of constitutional debate. He is also a professor of law at the George Washington University Law School and a contributing editor at The Atlantic. Rosen is a graduate of Harvard College, Oxford University, and Yale Law School. He is the author of seven previous books, including the New York Times bestseller Conversations with RBG: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Life, Love, Liberty, and Law. His essays and commentaries have appeared in The New York Times Magazine; on NPR; in The New Republic, where he was the legal affairs editor; and in The New Yorker, where he has been a staff writer. His latest book is The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America.

"There's no more empowering act for me than simply turning the devices off. The simple rule that I'm not allowed to browse in the morning until I've done my reading has opened up worlds. So much of tech and the net are designed to capture our attentions, to turn us into consumers rather than citizens, to fan our base passions and emotions, and to send us down rabbit holes. That the best thing we can do is to turn it off.

'The pictures in our minds,' I guess that was Walter Lippmann, are confirmed by the enlightenment empiricists like John Locke, who insists that our reality is shaped by our external sensations and what we put into our minds. And then, of course, we are what we think. Life shaped by the mind, as The Dhammapada states. And then, the great injunction that my dad used to quote from Paracelsus, 'As we imagine ourselves to be, so shall we be.' “

https://constitutioncenter.org/about/board-of-trustees/jeffrey-rosen
www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Pursuit-of-Happiness/Jeffrey-Rosen/9781668002476
https://constitutioncenter.org/news-debate/podcasts

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

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"I am deeply concerned about the digital world. My deep concern about the handheld is it's casting everybody to be in a trance, and it's taking from them the only thing we have, which is the present moment. Everyone's walking around in a state of continuous partial attention."

Andre Dubus III’s nine books include the New York Times’ bestsellers House of Sand and Fog, The Garden of Last Days, and his memoir, Townie. His work has been included in The Best American Essays and The Best Spiritual Writing anthologies. His novel, House of Sand and Fog was a finalist for the National Book Award and was made into an Academy Award-nominated film starring Ben Kingsley and Jennifer Connelly. His most recent books are the novel, Such Kindness and a collection of personal essays, Ghost Dogs: On Killers and Kin.
Dubus has been a finalist for the National Book Award, and has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, The National Magazine Award for Fiction, two Pushcart Prizes, and is a recipient of an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature. His books are published in over twenty-five languages, and he teaches at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.

www.andredubus.com
www.andredubus.com/ghost-dogs
www.andredubus.com/house-of-sand-and-fog
www.andredubus.com/such-kindness

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

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What can reading teach us about loss, healing, and survival? How can we transform anger into empathy? What can we learn from the creative act about turning personal setbacks into opportunities for self-discovery and growth?

Andre Dubus III’s nine books include the New York Times’ bestsellers House of Sand and Fog, The Garden of Last Days, and his memoir, Townie. His work has been included in The Best American Essays and The Best Spiritual Writing anthologies. His novel, House of Sand and Fog was a finalist for the National Book Award and was made into an Academy Award-nominated film starring Ben Kingsley and Jennifer Connelly. His most recent books are the novel, Such Kindness and a collection of personal essays, Ghost Dogs: On Killers and Kin.
Dubus has been a finalist for the National Book Award, and has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, The National Magazine Award for Fiction, two Pushcart Prizes, and is a recipient of an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature. His books are published in over twenty-five languages, and he teaches at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.

"I am deeply concerned about the digital world. My deep concern about the handheld is it's casting everybody to be in a trance, and it's taking from them the only thing we have, which is the present moment. Everyone's walking around in a state of continuous partial attention."

www.andredubus.com
www.andredubus.com/ghost-dogs
www.andredubus.com/house-of-sand-and-fog
www.andredubus.com/such-kindness

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

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"So it's what you do with the invention that's important. And with AI, it's exactly the same. If you make deep fakes, I think you can just destroy trust and confidence in the world because you will never know what is true and what is false, but if you use AI to balance the grid, to incorporate renewable energies that are intermittent, the storage, the usage by consumers, then you begin to be much more efficient because you use energy at the right moment, in the right way, at the right place, for the right people, you will save a lot of energy. So, in the end, it's always human behavior that decides if an invention is good or not. What I would really like to avoid is AI being used for useless things."

Bertrand Piccard is a notable Swiss environmentalist, explorer, author, and psychiatrist. His ventures include being the first to travel around the world in a non-stop balloon flight and years later in a solar-powered airplane. He is regarded as a pioneer in clean technology. Piccard is also the founder of the Solar Impulse Foundation, which has identified over 1500 actionable and profitable climate solutions and connects them with investors. As a UN Ambassador for the Environment, his goal is to convince leaders of the viability of a zero-carbon economy, which he will demonstrate via his next emission-free project Climate Impulse, a green hydrogen-powered airplane that can fly nonstop around the earth.

http://www.solarimpulse.com
https://climateimpulse.org/
https://bertrandpiccard.com/

Photos:
Bertrand Piccard with Ilham Kadri, CEO Syensqo (main technological partner of Climate Impulse)
Bertrand Piccard @ Solar Impulse, Jean Revillard

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What is the future of green aviation? How do we share environmental solutions to unite people and change the climate narrative from sacrifice and fear to enthusiasm and hope?

Bertrand Piccard is a notable Swiss environmentalist, explorer, author, and psychiatrist. His ventures include being the first to travel around the world in a non-stop balloon flight and years later in a solar-powered airplane. He is regarded as a pioneer in clean technology. Piccard is also the founder of the Solar Impulse Foundation, which has identified over 1500 actionable and profitable climate solutions and connects them with investors. As a UN Ambassador for the Environment, his goal is to convince leaders of the viability of a zero-carbon economy, which he will demonstrate via his next emission-free project Climate Impulse, a green hydrogen-powered airplane that can fly nonstop around the earth.

"So it's what you do with the invention that's important. And with AI, it's exactly the same. If you make deep fakes, I think you can just destroy trust and confidence in the world because you will never know what is true and what is false, but if you use AI to balance the grid, to incorporate renewable energies that are intermittent, the storage, the usage by consumers, then you begin to be much more efficient because you use energy at the right moment, in the right way, at the right place, for the right people, you will save a lot of energy. So, in the end, it's always human behavior that decides if an invention is good or not. What I would really like to avoid is AI being used for useless things."

http://www.solarimpulse.com
https://climateimpulse.org/
https://bertrandpiccard.com/

Photos:
COPSummit
Bertrand Piccard with Simon Stiell, Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC
Ville de Demain exhibition, Cité des sciences et de l'industrie, Paris

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"AI is a fascinating question. You know children are sponges. They look and say this is something different. So your values are no longer good enough for the future. And this is what we are confronted with with AI. And that's a fantastic tool, but at a certain moment, this technology will evolve and become super efficient and smarter than we are. And at this moment, our children could simply reject everything that makes us human. And our society at this moment, and maybe that of our humanity, could collapse on itself.

I begin the book with a question of intelligence outside of Earth. That could be AI, that could be extraterrestrials. This is fascinating for us because this is another intelligence. Now, we have created AI, and we are fascinated by what we see because we can discuss with an AI and it's very clear that the AI understands our concepts and responds with our own concepts."

Ludovic Slimak is a paleoanthropologist at the University of Toulouse in France and Director of the Grotte Mandrin research project. His work focuses on the last Neanderthal societies, and he is the author of several hundred scientific studies on these populations. His research has been featured in Nature, Science, the New York Times, and other publications. He is the author of The Naked Neanderthal: A New Understanding of the Human Creature

http://ww5.pegasusbooks.com/books/the-naked-neanderthal-9781639366163-hardcover
https://lampea.cnrs.fr/spip.php?article3767
www.odilejacob.fr/catalogue/sciences-humaines/archeologie-paleontologie-prehistoire/dernier-neandertalien_9782415004927.php

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
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Who were the Neanderthals? And what can our discoveries about them teach us about intelligence, our extractivist relationship to the planet, and what it means to be human?

Ludovic Slimak is a paleoanthropologist at the University of Toulouse in France and Director of the Grotte Mandrin research project. His work focuses on the last Neanderthal societies, and he is the author of several hundred scientific studies on these populations. His research has been featured in Nature, Science, the New York Times, and other publications. He is the author of The Naked Neanderthal: A New Understanding of the Human Creature.

"AI is a fascinating question. You know children are sponges. They look and say this is something different. So your values are no longer good enough for the future. And this is what we are confronted with with AI. And that's a fantastic tool, but at a certain moment, this technology will evolve and become super efficient and smarter than we are. And at this moment, our children could simply reject everything that makes us human. And our society at this moment, and maybe that of our humanity, could collapse on itself.

I begin the book with a question of intelligence outside of Earth. That could be AI, that could be extraterrestrials. This is fascinating for us because this is another intelligence. Now, we have created AI, and we are fascinated by what we see because we can discuss with an AI and it's very clear that the AI understands our concepts and responds with our own concepts."

http://ww5.pegasusbooks.com/books/the-naked-neanderthal-9781639366163-hardcover
https://lampea.cnrs.fr/spip.php?article3767
www.odilejacob.fr/catalogue/sciences-humaines/archeologie-paleontologie-prehistoire/dernier-neandertalien_9782415004927.php

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

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“I want to quote a poem because it's not only a poem. It's a poem rethought by and revisited by a conceptual artist. It's called "All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace". So this originally is a 1967 poem by an American author Richard Brautigan, but then in 2021, it became a video by Turkish artist Memo Akten. This video brings together an amazing array of images in which you see different natural environments and artificial intelligence. Gradually, they come to blend, and then they melt, and then they become one.”

I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.

–Richard Brautigan

Paola Spinozzi is Professor of English Literature at the University of Ferrara and currently serves as Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Internationalisation. She is the coordinator of the PhD Programme in Environmental Sustainability and Wellbeing and the co-coordinator of Routes towards Sustainability. Her research encompasses the ecological humanities and ecocriticism, utopia and sustainability; literature and the visual arts; literature and science; cultural memory. She has co-edited Cultures of Sustainability and Wellbeing: Theories, Histories and Policies and published on post/apocalyptic and climate fiction, nature poetry, eco-theatre; art and aesthetics, imperialism and evolutionism in utopia as a genre; the writing of science; interart creativity.

https://docente.unife.it/paola.spinozzi https://www.unife.it/studenti/dottorato/it/corsi/riforma/environmental-sustainability-and-wellbeing
https://www.routesnetwork.net
https://www.routledge.com/Cultures-of-Sustainability-and-Wellbeing-Theories-Histories-and-Policies/Spinozzi-Mazzanti/p/book/9780367271190.

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
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How can we create positive change? What does it mean to have an ecological mind? How can interdisciplinary collaborations help us move beyond educational silos and create sustainable futures?

Paola Spinozzi is Professor of English Literature at the University of Ferrara and currently serves as Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Internationalisation. She is the coordinator of the PhD Programme in Environmental Sustainability and Wellbeing and the co-coordinator of Routes towards Sustainability. Her research encompasses the ecological humanities and ecocriticism, utopia and sustainability; literature and the visual arts; literature and science; cultural memory. She has co-edited Cultures of Sustainability and Wellbeing: Theories, Histories and Policies and published on post/apocalyptic and climate fiction, nature poetry, eco-theatre; art and aesthetics, imperialism and evolutionism in utopia as a genre; the writing of science; interart creativity.

“I want to quote a poem because it's not only a poem. It's a poem rethought by and revisited by a conceptual artist. It's called "All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace". So this originally is a 1967 poem by an American author Richard Brautigan, but then in 2021, it became a video by Turkish artist Memo Akten. This video brings together an amazing array of images in which you see different natural environments and artificial intelligence. Gradually, they come to blend, and then they melt, and then they become one.”

I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.

–Richard Brautigan

https://docente.unife.it/paola.spinozzi https://www.unife.it/studenti/dottorato/it/corsi/riforma/environmental-sustainability-and-wellbeing
https://www.routesnetwork.net
https://www.routledge.com/Cultures-of-Sustainability-and-Wellbeing-Theories-Histories-and-Policies/Spinozzi-Mazzanti/p/book/9780367271190.

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“I write science fiction, so it's fascinating from a technological standpoint, but we have dozens and dozens of years of science fiction warning us about technology unchecked. The irony is that now so many of those science fiction stories have probably been used to feed the AI training algorithms that they are now repurposing and ripping off. So it's very ironic in that regard to me. I've heard artists refer to AI as a plagiarism machine, and I do think that's a very apt descriptor. I have a lot of friends who are affected by this. And these tech companies think if we can make it easier and cheaper to capture some aspect of the human spirit and then, by God, isn't that best for shareholders?” -Kyle Higgins

Kyle Higgins is an Eisner award-nominated #1 New York Times best-selling comic book author and award-winning filmmaker known for his work on DC Comics’ Batman titles as well as his critically-acclaimed reinventions of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers for Boom! Studios/Hasbro, Ultraman for Marvel Comics, and his creator-owned series Radiant Black, NO/ONE and Deep Cuts for Image Comics. Kyle is the founder and creative director of Black Market Narrative and The Massive-Verse.

Karina Manashil is the President of MAD SOLAR. After graduating from Chapman University with a BFA in Film Production, she began her career in the mailroom at WME where she became a Talent Agent. In 2020, she partnered with Scott Mescudi and Dennis Cummings to found MAD SOLAR. Its first release was the documentary “A Man Named Scott” (Amazon), and she then went on to Executive Produce Ti West trilogy “X,” “Pearl” and “MaXXXine” (A24). Manashil received an Emmy nomination as an Executive Producer on the Netflix animated event “Entergalactic." She also produced the Mescudi/Kyle Higgins comic book “Moon Man” which launched through Image Comics. She is next producing the upcoming Mescudi/Sam Levinson/The Lucas Bros film “HELL NAW” (Sony) and the animated feature “Slime” from auteur animator Jeron Braxton.

moonmancomics.com
https://imagecomics.com
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm3556462/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Audio of Scott Mescudi courtesy of Mad Solar and Moon Man Comic Book Release and Revenge Of (Eagle Rock, CA, Jan 31, 2024)

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What does the future hold for our late-stage capitalist society with mega-corporations owning and controlling everything? How can the world-building skills of the makers of films and comics help us imagine a better future?

Kyle Higgins is an Eisner award-nominated #1 New York Times best-selling comic book author and award-winning filmmaker known for his work on DC Comics’ Batman titles as well as his critically-acclaimed reinventions of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers for Boom! Studios/Hasbro, Ultraman for Marvel Comics, and his creator-owned series Radiant Black, NO/ONE and Deep Cuts for Image Comics. Kyle is the founder and creative director of Black Market Narrative and The Massive-Verse.

Karina Manashil is the President of MAD SOLAR. After graduating from Chapman University with a BFA in Film Production, she began her career in the mailroom at WME where she became a Talent Agent. In 2020, she partnered with Scott Mescudi and Dennis Cummings to found MAD SOLAR. Its first release was the documentary “A Man Named Scott” (Amazon), and she then went on to Executive Produce Ti West trilogy “X,” “Pearl” and “MaXXXine” (A24). Manashil received an Emmy nomination as an Executive Producer on the Netflix animated event “Entergalactic." She also produced the Mescudi/Kyle Higgins comic book “Moon Man” which launched through Image Comics. She is next producing the upcoming Mescudi/Sam Levinson/The Lucas Bros film “HELL NAW” (Sony) and the animated feature “Slime” from auteur animator Jeron Braxton.
“I write science fiction, so it's fascinating from a technological standpoint, but we have dozens and dozens of years of science fiction warning us about technology unchecked. The irony is that now so many of those science fiction stories have probably been used to feed the AI training algorithms that they are now repurposing and ripping off. So it's very ironic in that regard to me. I've heard artists refer to AI as a plagiarism machine, and I do think that's a very apt descriptor. I have a lot of friends who are affected by this. And these tech companies think if we can make it easier and cheaper to capture some aspect of the human spirit and then, by God, isn't that best for shareholders?” -Kyle Higgins

moonmancomics.com
https://imagecomics.com
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm3556462/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Audio of Scott Mescudi courtesy of Mad Solar and Moon Man Comic Book Release and Revenge Of (Eagle Rock, CA, Jan 31, 2024)

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"So everyone should probably throw their smartphones in a river, myself included. And I think that it is hard. There's never going to be a version where you get the right answer, and suddenly your life falls into place, and everything's perfect. And that's not what it's supposed to be for anyway. And I think there is a tendency in self-care circles that once we solve our demons and figure out our path in life, we are in touch with the vibes of the universe. Like suddenly, we're going to be wealthy and healthy and happy and have the perfect marriage. And I think the questions of philosophical inquiry are about how to live a good life, but that's not the same thing as assuming, as so much of contemporary wellness culture assumes, that a normatively successful life will come to us by virtue of doing the right things."

Tara Isabella Burton is the author of the novels Social Creature, The World Cannot Give, and Here in Avalon, as well as the nonfiction books Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World and Self-Made: Curating Our Image from Da Vinci to the Kardashians. She is currently working on a history of magic and modernity, to be published by Convergent in late 2025. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The New York Times, National Geographic, Granta, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and other publications.

www.taraisabellaburton.com
www.simonandschuster.com/books/Here-in-Avalon/Tara-Isabella-Burton/9781982170097?fbclid=IwAR30lnvlXMrDJtCq_568jUM3hvzr6yUz_GUUZSkbR2RarreOF6PMcvhabBg

www.amazon.com/dp/B07W56MQLJ/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?keywords=strange+rites+tara+isabella+burton&qid=1565365017&s=gateway&sr=8-1-fkmr0

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How can we better educate young people about the future & the planet? How can we address eco-anxiety while providing students with climate optimism, hope, and solutions?
Bryce Coon is the Director of Education at EarthDay.ORG, a nonprofit that champions climate education for all students and is the global driving force behind Earth Day. Previously, Coon was a high school teacher for 11 years in Montgomery County, teaching economics and leading a variety of projects for students, such as a school-wide tutoring program. Throughout his teaching career, Bryce participated in international fellowships where he studied climate education and policy in Asia, Europe, and Oceania.

https://www.earthday.org/campaign/climate-environmental-literacy/
Planet vs. Plastics www.earthday.org
Sign The Global Plastic Treaty Petition
https://action.earthday.org/global-plastics-treaty
Toolkits: https://www.earthday.org/our-toolkits
NDC Guide for Climate Education
https://www.earthday.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/NDC-GUIDE-Final.pdf

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
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Photos courtesy of EARTHDAY.ORG

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How can we reimagine a world without plastic? How can we push governments and companies to admit what they know about the health impacts of plastics and change public policy?

Kathleen Rogers is the President of EARTHDAY.ORG. Under her leadership, it has grown into a global year-round policy and activist organization with an international staff. She has been at the vanguard of developing campaigns and programs focused on diversifying the environmental movement, highlighted by Campaign for Communities and Billion Acts of Green. Prior to her work at EARTHDAY.ORG, Kathleen held senior positions with the National Audubon Society, the Environmental Law Institute, and two U.S. Olympic Organizing Committees. She’s a graduate of the University of California at Davis School of Law, where she served as editor-in-chief of the law review and clerked in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. EARTHDAY.ORG’s 2024 theme, Planet vs. Plastics, calls to advocate for widespread awareness of the health risks of plastics, rapidly phase out all single-use plastics, urgently push for a strong UN Treaty on Plastic Pollution, and demand to end fast fashion. Let's build a plastic-free planet for generations to come.

"The world recognizes that plastics have imperiled our future. Many environmentalists, myself included, view plastics as on par with, if not worse than, climate change because we do see a little light at the end of the tunnel on climate change. Babies vs. Plastics is a collection of studies, and we particularly focused on children and babies because their bodies and brains are more impacted than adults by the 30, 000 chemicals that assault us every day.

We have histories littered with dozens of stories and court cases of malfeasance where companies knew for years before we, the public, did about the impacts. Climate change is a perfect example because we know Exxon scientists knew in 1957 that burning fossil fuels was creating climate change and that eventually, the temperature of the planet would heat up, and they hid it from us for 50-plus years. And more and more reports are coming out every day about what companies and some governments know. Tobacco companies knew tobacco caused cancer for decades before our scientists did. And so we have the same problem with plastics.”

Planet vs. Plastics www.earthday.org
Sign The Global Plastic Treaty Petition
https://action.earthday.org/global-plastics-treaty
Toolkits: https://www.earthday.org/our-toolkits
NDC Guide for Climate Education
https://www.earthday.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/NDC-GUIDE-Final.pdf

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Photos courtesy of EARTHDAY.ORG

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Microplastics and nanoplastic pollution are currently blanketing the planet. They are in the air we breathe, the food we eat, and the water we drink, infiltrating our bodies and even brains and human embryos. Coca-Cola alone sells 100 billion+ single-use plastic bottles each year, ending up in landfills and the ocean. Earth’s population will reach 9.8 billion people by 2050. Two-thirds of humans will become city dwellers. Our waste will drive a mounting worldwide crisis.

Highlights from our interview with Kathleen Rogers, the President of EarthDay.org. The full episode will be published next week.

Planet vs. Plastics
Sign The Global Plastic Treaty Petition

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
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Ed Zwick is a writer, director, and producer who's been active in the film industry for over 40 years. He has been nominated for two Golden Globes for directing the films Glory and Legends of the Fall and received an Academy Award as one of the producers of Shakespeare in Love. Zwick continues to work with his longtime friend and partner, Marshall Herskovitz, at their company Bedford Falls, where they created the widely loved TV show Thirtysomething. His memoir Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions details many of his greatest experiences in the film industry.

www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Ed-Zwick/212290077
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001880/

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

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Ed Zwick is a writer, director, and producer who's been active in the film industry for over 40 years. He has been nominated for two Golden Globes for directing the films Glory and Legends of the Fall and received an Academy Award as one of the producers of Shakespeare in Love. Zwick continues to work with his longtime friend and partner, Marshall Herskovitz, at their company Bedford Falls, where they created the widely loved TV show Thirtysomething. His memoir Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions details many of his greatest experiences in the film industry.

www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Ed-Zwick/212290077
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001880/

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Image Courtesy of Dick Thomas Johnson

Creative Commons 2.0

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How can the arts help cultivate our intuitive intelligence? What does visual art teach us about consciousness and the human condition?

Jonathan Yeo is one of the world’s leading figurative artists and portrait painters. From celebrated figures such as Sir David Attenborough, peace activist Malala Yousafzai, the Duke of Edinburgh, Nicole Kidman, and Tony Blair, sitting for a portrait with Yeo is a provisional necessity for any 21st century icon. His work, which has been exhibited in museums and galleries around the world, is the subject of several major mid-career retrospectives in the UK and internationally. Yeo’s course on portrait painting is available now on BBC Maestro.

"I'm optimistic about education. There will likely be more traffic between technology and the arts. The tech world needs more creative-minded people and less literal people who have some understanding of how things work.

With Jony Ive, you've got someone who designed the iPhone and was very interested in photography himself. We were talking about doing a portrait. He mentioned that he'd been fascinated by self-portraiture as a kid, so much so that when he was doing his industrial design degree, he wrote his thesis on artists' self-portraits. Fast forward a few years, and we are all taking photos every day and learning really fast how to compose images and read images and why they've been cropped in a certain way. All these things, which were probably the preserve of artists and art historians in the past, are suddenly things that kids are thinking about because it's the way they communicate with each other. So I think that that shift is interesting."

www.jonathanyeo.com
www.bbcmaestro.com

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
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Images courtesy of Jonathan Yeo

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"I'm optimistic about education. There will likely be more traffic between technology and the arts. The tech world needs more creative-minded people and less literal people who have some understanding of how things work.

With Jony Ive, you've got someone who designed the iPhone and was very interested in photography himself. We were talking about doing a portrait. He mentioned that he'd been fascinated by self-portraiture as a kid, so much so that when he was doing his industrial design degree, he wrote his thesis on artists' self-portraits. Fast forward a few years, and we are all taking photos every day and learning really fast how to compose images and read images and why they've been cropped in a certain way. All these things, which were probably the preserve of artists and art historians in the past, are suddenly things that kids are thinking about because it's the way they communicate with each other. So I think that that shift is interesting."

Jonathan Yeo is one of the world’s leading figurative artists and portrait painters. From celebrated figures such as Sir David Attenborough, peace activist Malala Yousafzai, the Duke of Edinburgh, Nicole Kidman, and Tony Blair, sitting for a portrait with Yeo is a provisional necessity for any 21st century icon. His work, which has been exhibited in museums and galleries around the world, is the subject of several major mid-career retrospectives in the UK and internationally. Yeo’s course on portrait painting is available now on BBC Maestro.

www.jonathanyeo.com
www.bbcmaestro.com

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Images courtesy of Jonathan Yeo

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"AI is neither inherently good nor inherently bad. It promises both enormous potential and capability from helping with medical diagnosis and catching cancer early or removing a lot of tedium and repetitive nature of many jobs. It can make a lot of great contributions. It's how we control that technology by making active decisions that can be the pathway to the future. There's been a lot of doomsday talk about artificial general intelligence and the Terminator-type outcome, and it's certainly not impossible, but I don't personally believe that is a probable outcome from where we are now.

I think one of the things that AI is very good at is churning through and processing vast amounts of data, assuming that you've got your machine learning system set up correctly and trained properly and you're using it in the way that it was intended to be used. Machine learning and AI techniques are incredibly powerful in pulling out the important information in a sea of data, but to convert that information into new understanding, that is the role of humans in that process. And it will remain the role of humans in understanding what is important and how to implement that information once you've fished out this sea of data."

How have our psychology and cognitive biases altered the course of human history? What would you do if you had to rebuild our world from scratch?

Lewis Dartnell is an author, researcher, and holds the Professorship in Science Communication at the University of Westminster. He researches astrobiology and the search for microbial life on Mars. He also works as a scientific consultant for the media and has appeared in numerous TV documentaries and radio shows. Dr. Dartnell has won several awards for his science writing and outreach work. He has published five books, including The Knowledge: How to Rebuild our World from Scratch; Origins: How the Earth Made Us; and Being Human: How Our Biology Shaped World History.

http://www.lewisdartnell.com
http://lewisdartnell.com/en-gb/2013/11/the-knowledge-how-to-rebuild-our-world-from-scratch
www.penguin.co.uk/books/433955/origins-by-lewis-dartnell/9781784705435
www.penguin.co.uk/books/442759/being-human-by-dartnell-lewis/9781847926708

www.creativeprocess.info
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IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Photo credit: Shortlist/Paul Stuart

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How have our psychology and cognitive biases altered the course of human history? What would you do if you had to rebuild our world from scratch?

Lewis Dartnell is an author, researcher, and holds the Professorship in Science Communication at the University of Westminster. He researches astrobiology and the search for microbial life on Mars. He also works as a scientific consultant for the media and has appeared in numerous TV documentaries and radio shows. Dr. Dartnell has won several awards for his science writing and outreach work. He has published five books, including The Knowledge: How to Rebuild our World from Scratch; Origins: How the Earth Made Us; and Being Human: How Our Biology Shaped World History.

"AI is neither inherently good nor inherently bad. It promises both enormous potential and capability from helping with medical diagnosis and catching cancer early or removing a lot of tedium and repetitive nature of many jobs. It can make a lot of great contributions. It's how we control that technology by making active decisions that can be the pathway to the future. There's been a lot of doomsday talk about artificial general intelligence and the Terminator-type outcome, and it's certainly not impossible, but I don't personally believe that is a probable outcome from where we are now.

I think one of the things that AI is very good at is churning through and processing vast amounts of data, assuming that you've got your machine learning system set up correctly and trained properly and you're using it in the way that it was intended to be used. Machine learning and AI techniques are incredibly powerful in pulling out the important information in a sea of data, but to convert that information into new understanding, that is the role of humans in that process. And it will remain the role of humans in understanding what is important and how to implement that information once you've fished out this sea of data."

http://www.lewisdartnell.com
http://lewisdartnell.com/en-gb/2013/11/the-knowledge-how-to-rebuild-our-world-from-scratch
www.penguin.co.uk/books/433955/origins-by-lewis-dartnell/9781784705435
www.penguin.co.uk/books/442759/being-human-by-dartnell-lewis/9781847926708

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Photo credit: Shortlist/Paul Stuart

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"My TED Talk and work are really about figuring out how, right now, AI is using resources like energy and emitting greenhouse gases and how it's using our data without our consent. I feel that if we develop AI systems that are more respectful, ethical, and sustainable, we can help future generations so that AI will be less of a risk to society.

And so really, artificial intelligence is not artificial. It's human intelligence that was memorized by the model that was kind of hoovered up, absorbed by these AI models. And now it's getting regurgitated back at us. And we're like, wow, ChatGPT is so smart! But how many thousands of human hours were needed in order to make ChatGPT so smart?

The US Executive Order on AI still does need a lot of operationalization by different parts of the government. Especially, with the EU and their AI Act, we have this signal that's top down, but now people have to figure out how we legislate, enforce, measure, and evaluate? So, there are a lot of problems that haven't been solved because we don't have standards or legal precedent for AI. So I think that we're really in this kind of intermediate phase and scrambling to try to figure out how to put this into action.”

What are the pros and cons of AI’s integration into our institutions, political systems, culture, and society? How can we develop AI systems that are more respectful, ethical, and sustainable?

Dr. Sasha Luccioni is a leading scientist at the nexus of artificial intelligence, ethics, and sustainability, with a Ph.D. in AI and a decade of research and industry expertise. She spearheads research, consults, and utilizes capacity-building to elevate the sustainability of AI systems. As a founding member of Climate Change AI (CCAI) and a board member of Women in Machine Learning (WiML), Sasha is passionate about catalyzing impactful change, organizing events, and serving as a mentor to under-represented minorities within the AI community. She is an AI Researcher & Climate Lead at Hugging Face, an open-source hub for machine learning and natural language processing.

https://www.sashaluccioni.com
https://huggingface.co/
http://www.climatechange.ai
https://wimlworkshop.org

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What are the pros and cons of AI’s integration into our institutions, political systems, culture, and society? How can we develop AI systems that are more respectful, ethical, and sustainable?

Dr. Sasha Luccioni is a leading scientist at the nexus of artificial intelligence, ethics, and sustainability, with a Ph.D. in AI and a decade of research and industry expertise. She spearheads research, consults, and utilizes capacity-building to elevate the sustainability of AI systems. As a founding member of Climate Change AI (CCAI) and a board member of Women in Machine Learning (WiML), Sasha is passionate about catalyzing impactful change, organizing events, and serving as a mentor to under-represented minorities within the AI community. She is an AI Researcher & Climate Lead at Hugging Face, an open-source hub for machine learning and natural language processing.

"My TED Talk and work are really about figuring out how, right now, AI is using resources like energy and emitting greenhouse gases and how it's using our data without our consent. I feel that if we develop AI systems that are more respectful, ethical, and sustainable, we can help future generations so that AI will be less of a risk to society.

And so really, artificial intelligence is not artificial. It's human intelligence that was memorized by the model that was kind of hoovered up, absorbed by these AI models. And now it's getting regurgitated back at us. And we're like, wow, ChatGPT is so smart! But how many thousands of human hours were needed in order to make ChatGPT so smart?

The US Executive Order on AI still does need a lot of operationalization by different parts of the government. Especially, with the EU and their AI Act, we have this signal that's top down, but now people have to figure out how we legislate, enforce, measure, and evaluate? So, there are a lot of problems that haven't been solved because we don't have standards or legal precedent for AI. So I think that we're really in this kind of intermediate phase and scrambling to try to figure out how to put this into action.”

https://www.sashaluccioni.com
https://huggingface.co/
http://www.climatechange.ai
https://wimlworkshop.org

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"So, geoengineering has its champions, and there are people who say we shouldn't be doing anything, but I think we cannot foreclose any options because, as you said a few minutes ago, how far are we from 1.5 or even 2 degrees of change? I think we really need to have work done on all of these things, but when it comes to applying them, we need to be far more prudent and be far more effective with our institutions. It can't just be that we use the same existing institutions because they may not be fit for purpose when it comes to these kinds of institutions. Just on that note, many people fault the United Nations. They say, oh, it's a useless kind of organization. They can't really take action. But actually, that's by design. The UN was never meant to take some of these actions because they are at the behest of member states. And if a single member state says, 'No, we can't. We don't want you to do this.' They're stuck, right? And so, in some sense, it's unfair to blame a system that's not been designed to advance the public good other than through means of communicating the right things and exhorting the policymakers to do the right thing."

How do urbanization and rural development impact communities differently? How can we make public policy and enlightened self-interest advance climate action?

Dr. Shiv Someshwar is a Development Clinician, diagnosing development of cities and nation states. A Visiting Professor at Columbia University, New York and at Sciences Po, Paris, he was the founder chair-holder of the European Chair for Sustainable Development and Climate Transition at Sciences Po. He helped set up the initial national and regional networks of the global Sustainable Development Solutions Network.

His publications cover a range of issues: planning, institutions and governance of sustainable development; climate change mitigation, adaptation, risks and offsets; and ecosystem management. He edited Re-living the Memories of an Indian Forester: Memoirs of S. Shyam Sunder and is presently writing The Fallacy of Evidence-Based Policy Making.

He convened and chaired the Independent Task Force on Creative Climate Action. Dr. Someshwar received a Ph.D. in urban planning from the University of California, Los Angeles, and he was a Bell-MacArthur fellow at Harvard University. He has two masters’ degrees, on housing and on environmental planning, and is also trained as a professional architect. He has previously worked at the Earth Institute, Columbia University, the Rockefeller Foundation in New York, and the World Bank in Washington D.C.

https://www.sciencespo.fr/psia/sites/sciencespo.fr.psia/files/ITFClimateReport_Web.pdf www.amazon.com/Reliving-Memories-Indian-Forester-Memoir/dp/9388337131

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
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How do urbanization and rural development impact communities differently? How can we make public policy and enlightened self-interest advance climate action?

Dr. Shiv Someshwar is a Development Clinician, diagnosing development of cities and nation states. A Visiting Professor at Columbia University, New York and at Sciences Po, Paris, he was the founder chair-holder of the European Chair for Sustainable Development and Climate Transition at Sciences Po. He helped set up the initial national and regional networks of the global Sustainable Development Solutions Network.

His publications cover a range of issues: planning, institutions and governance of sustainable development; climate change mitigation, adaptation, risks and offsets; and ecosystem management. He edited Re-living the Memories of an Indian Forester: Memoirs of S. Shyam Sunder and is presently writing The Fallacy of Evidence-Based Policy Making.

He convened and chaired the Independent Task Force on Creative Climate Action. Dr. Someshwar received a Ph.D. in urban planning from the University of California, Los Angeles, and he was a Bell-MacArthur fellow at Harvard University. He has two masters’ degrees, on housing and on environmental planning, and is also trained as a professional architect. He has previously worked at the Earth Institute, Columbia University, the Rockefeller Foundation in New York, and the World Bank in Washington D.C.

"So, geoengineering has its champions, and there are people who say we shouldn't be doing anything, but I think we cannot foreclose any options because, as you said a few minutes ago, how far are we from 1.5 or even 2 degrees of change? I think we really need to have work done on all of these things, but when it comes to applying them, we need to be far more prudent and be far more effective with our institutions. It can't just be that we use the same existing institutions because they may not be fit for purpose when it comes to these kinds of institutions. Just on that note, many people fault the United Nations. They say, oh, it's a useless kind of organization. They can't really take action. But actually, that's by design. The UN was never meant to take some of these actions because they are at the behest of member states. And if a single member state says, 'No, we can't. We don't want you to do this.' They're stuck, right? And so, in some sense, it's unfair to blame a system that's not been designed to advance the public good other than through means of communicating the right things and exhorting the policymakers to do the right thing."

https://www.sciencespo.fr/psia/sites/sciencespo.fr.psia/files/ITFClimateReport_Web.pdf www.amazon.com/Reliving-Memories-Indian-Forester-Memoir/dp/9388337131

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

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“The wealth of learning that can come from our collective awareness that essentially AI is a fancy-sounding way of saying computers can learn from the collective wisdom that exists throughout the Internet. And if we can empower the local stewards of biodiversity, local landowners, farmers indigenous populations with all of that wealth of information in a smart way, it can be incredibly empowering to many rural communities. AI might also open up an opportunity for us to rethink what life is about.”

Although they comprise less than 5% of the world population, Indigenous peoples protect 80% of the Earth’s biodiversity. How can we support farmers, reverse biodiversity loss, and restore our ecosystems?

Thomas Crowther is an ecologist studying the connections between biodiversity and climate change. He is a professor in the Department of Environmental Systems Science at ETH Zurich, chair of the advisory council for the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, and founder of Restor, an online platform for the global restoration movement, which was a finalist for the Royal Foundation’s Earthshot Prize. In 2021, the World Economic Forum named him a Young Global Leader for his work on the protection and restoration of biodiversity. Crowther’s post-doctoral research transformed the understanding of the world’s tree cover, and the study also inspired the World Economic Forum to announce its Trillion Trees initiative, which aims to conserve and restore one trillion trees globally within the decade.

https://crowtherlab.com/about-tom-crowther
https://restor.eco/?lat=26&lng=14.23&zoom=3

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Although they comprise less than 5% of the world population, Indigenous peoples protect 80% of the Earth’s biodiversity. How can we support farmers, reverse biodiversity loss, and restore our ecosystems?

Thomas Crowther is an ecologist studying the connections between biodiversity and climate change. He is a professor in the Department of Environmental Systems Science at ETH Zurich, chair of the advisory council for the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, and founder of Restor, an online platform for the global restoration movement, which was a finalist for the Royal Foundation’s Earthshot Prize. In 2021, the World Economic Forum named him a Young Global Leader for his work on the protection and restoration of biodiversity. Crowther’s post-doctoral research transformed the understanding of the world’s tree cover, and the study also inspired the World Economic Forum to announce its Trillion Trees initiative, which aims to conserve and restore one trillion trees globally within the decade.

“The wealth of learning that can come from our collective awareness that essentially AI is a fancy-sounding way of saying computers can learn from the collective wisdom that exists throughout the Internet. And if we can empower the local stewards of biodiversity, local landowners, farmers indigenous populations with all of that wealth of information in a smart way, it can be incredibly empowering to many rural communities. AI might also open up an opportunity for us to rethink what life is about.”

https://crowtherlab.com/about-tom-crowther
https://restor.eco/?lat=26&lng=14.23&zoom=3

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

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"I have very mixed feelings about AI, and I think its future and our future with it is very much up for grabs. And here's the reason why. At the moment, these extraordinary achievements like ChatGPT, I mean literally mind-boggling achievements, are completely indifferent to truth. They crawl around in the web and learn how words go together, and so they produce coherent meaningful strings of words, sentences, and paragraphs that you're astonished could have been produced by a machine. However, there are no filters that weed out the false concatenations of words from the true ones. And so you get something that's totally believable, and totally plausible, and totally grammatical. But is it true? And if AI continues to move in this direction, getting more and more sophisticated as a mock human, and continuing to be indifferent to truth, the problems that we started our conversation with are only going to get worse."

Does having too many choices make us unhappy? How can we learn practical wisdom?

Dr. Barry Schwartz is the Dorwin P. Cartwright Professor Emeritus of Social Theory and Social Action in the psychology department at Swarthmore College. He is the author of many books, including Why We Work, The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less, and co-author of Practical Wisdom: The Right Way to Do the Right Thing.

www.swarthmore.edu/profile/barry-schwartz
www.simonandschuster.com/books/Why-We-Work/Barry-Schwartz/TED-Books/9781476784861
https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-paradox-of-choice-barry-schwartz?variant=32207920234530
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/307231/practical-wisdom-by-barry-schwartz-and-kenneth-sharpe

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Photo credit: Bill Holsinger-Robinson - CC BY 2.0

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Does having too many choices make us unhappy? How can we learn practical wisdom?

Dr. Barry Schwartz is the Dorwin P. Cartwright Professor Emeritus of Social Theory and Social Action in the psychology department at Swarthmore College. He is the author of many books, including Why We Work, The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less, and co-author of Practical Wisdom: The Right Way to Do the Right Thing.

"I have very mixed feelings about AI, and I think its future and our future with it is very much up for grabs. And here's the reason why. At the moment, these extraordinary achievements like ChatGPT, I mean literally mind-boggling achievements, are completely indifferent to truth. They crawl around in the web and learn how words go together, and so they produce coherent meaningful strings of words, sentences, and paragraphs that you're astonished could have been produced by a machine. However, there are no filters that weed out the false concatenations of words from the true ones. And so you get something that's totally believable, and totally plausible, and totally grammatical. But is it true? And if AI continues to move in this direction, getting more and more sophisticated as a mock human, and continuing to be indifferent to truth, the problems that we started our conversation with are only going to get worse."

www.swarthmore.edu/profile/barry-schwartz
www.simonandschuster.com/books/Why-We-Work/Barry-Schwartz/TED-Books/9781476784861
https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-paradox-of-choice-barry-schwartz?variant=32207920234530
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/307231/practical-wisdom-by-barry-schwartz-and-kenneth-sharpe

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Photo credit: Bill Holsinger-Robinson - CC BY 2.0

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"The idea that the laws of nature are fixed is taken for granted by almost all scientists and within physics, within cosmology, it leads to an enormous realm of speculation, which I think is totally unnecessary. We're assuming the laws of nature are fixed. Most of science assumes this, but is it really so in an evolving universe? Why shouldn't the laws evolve? And if we think about that, then we realize that actually, the whole idea of a law of nature is a metaphor. It's based on human laws. I mean, after all, dogs and cats don't obey laws. And in tribes, they don't even have laws. They have customs. So it's only in civilized societies that you have laws. And then if we think through that metaphor, then actually the laws do change.

All artists are influenced by other artists and by things in the collective culture, and I think that morphic resonance as collective memory would say that all of us draw unconsciously as well as consciously on a collective memory and all animals draw on a collective memory of their kind as well. We don't know where it comes from, but there's true creativity involved in evolution, both human and natural."

How do we navigate ambiguity and uncertainty? Moving beyond linear thinking into instinct and intuition, we might discover other sources within ourselves that lie beyond the boundaries of science and reason.

Rupert Sheldrake is a biologist and author best known for his hypothesis of morphic resonance. His many books include The Science Delusion, The Presence of the Past, and Ways to Go Beyond and Why They Work. At Cambridge University, Dr. Sheldrake worked in developmental biology as a fellow of Clare College. From 2005 to 2010, he was director of the Perrott Warrick Project for research on unexplained human and animal abilities, funded by Trinity College Cambridge. He was among the top 100 global thought leaders for 2013, as ranked by the Duttweiler Institute.

www.sheldrake.org

www.amazon.com/Science-Delusion/dp/1529393221/?tag=sheldrake-20

www.amazon.com/Science-Set-Free-Paths-Discovery/dp/0770436722/?tag=sheldrake-20

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How do we navigate ambiguity and uncertainty? Moving beyond linear thinking into instinct and intuition, we might discover other sources within ourselves that lie beyond the boundaries of science and reason.

Rupert Sheldrake is a biologist and author best known for his hypothesis of morphic resonance. His many books include The Science Delusion, The Presence of the Past, and Ways to Go Beyond and Why They Work. At Cambridge University, Dr. Sheldrake worked in developmental biology as a fellow of Clare College. From 2005 to 2010, he was director of the Perrott Warrick Project for research on unexplained human and animal abilities, funded by Trinity College Cambridge. He was among the top 100 global thought leaders for 2013, as ranked by the Duttweiler Institute.

"The idea that the laws of nature are fixed is taken for granted by almost all scientists and within physics, within cosmology, it leads to an enormous realm of speculation, which I think is totally unnecessary. We're assuming the laws of nature are fixed. Most of science assumes this, but is it really so in an evolving universe? Why shouldn't the laws evolve? And if we think about that, then we realize that actually, the whole idea of a law of nature is a metaphor. It's based on human laws. I mean, after all, dogs and cats don't obey laws. And in tribes, they don't even have laws. They have customs. So it's only in civilized societies that you have laws.

And then if we think through that metaphor, then actually the laws do change.

All artists are influenced by other artists and by things in the collective culture, and I think that morphic resonance as collective memory would say that all of us draw unconsciously as well as consciously on a collective memory and all animals draw on a collective memory of their kind as well. We don't know where it comes from, but there's true creativity involved in evolution, both human and natural."

www.sheldrake.org

www.amazon.com/Science-Delusion/dp/1529393221/?tag=sheldrake-20

www.amazon.com/Science-Set-Free-Paths-Discovery/dp/0770436722/?tag=sheldrake-20

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"So we get to a certain stage in Western society, I'd never call it a culture, but a society trying to figure out its birth and how to become mature. Whatever it's doing it has slowed down natural relationships. It took us out of the land, put us into factories, put us into institutions where you can learn a trade. It kept giving you jobs that had nothing to do with Earth. And so if you're living, you're working in this box called a factory, and the farmers out there are becoming less and less. Even the farming, the ideas of farming are foreign. And I think that when the technical language came out, we dropped another natural umbilical cord to and with Earth. And so we severed that relationship. So you can see this gradual severing of relationships to Earth with Earth, that now we have to have retreats to learn empathy again. We do all these Westernized versions of piecing ourselves back together and as Indigenous folks where we're getting that way now, but a lot of traditional people don't need that. We don't need environmental movements. You know, Wild Earth is a foreign concept. There are a lot of words that organizations use to rationalize why we need to teach how to be human beings. So you see technology, the Industrial Machine Age taught us this language of disconnection, taught us things like plug-in, get connected. You know, all these words that came along to fill that information that could be controlled by authority now in the Western process. John Gatto, who won the New York State Teacher of the Year award in 2008, upon his retirement, specifically said, 'It takes 12 years to learn how to become reflexive to authority.' And who is the authority? Who is controlling information? Who's controlling education? Who's controlling knowledge? And now they want to control Wisdom, and all wisdom means is common sense.”

Tiokasin Ghosthorse is a member of the Cheyenne River Lakota Nation of South Dakota and has a long history with Indigenous activism and advocacy. Tiokasin is the Founder, Host and Executive Producer of “First Voices Radio” (formerly “First Voices Indigenous Radio”) for the last 31 years in New York City and Seattle/Olympia, Washington. In 2016, he received a Nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize from the International Institute of Peace Studies and Global Philosophy. Other recent recognitions include: Native Arts and Cultures Foundation National Fellowship in Music (2016), National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship Nominee (2017), Indigenous Music Award Nominee for Best Instrumental Album (2019) and National Native American Hall of Fame Nominee (2018, 2019). He also was recently nominated for “Nominee for the 2020 Americans for the Arts Johnson Fellowship for Artists Transforming Communities”. He is the Founder of Akantu Intelligence.

https://firstvoicesindigenousradio.org/
https://akantuintelligence.org

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Songs featured on this episode are “Butterfly Against the Wind”
And from the album Somewhere In There
“Spatial Moon” and “Sunrise Moon”
Composed by Tiokasin Ghosthorse and Alex Alexander
Music on this episode is courtesy of Tiokasin Ghosthorse.

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How can we learn to speak the language of the Earth and cultivate our intuitive intelligence?

Tiokasin Ghosthorse is a member of the Cheyenne River Lakota Nation of South Dakota and has a long history with Indigenous activism and advocacy. Tiokasin is the Founder, Host and Executive Producer of “First Voices Radio” (formerly “First Voices Indigenous Radio”) for the last 31 years in New York City and Seattle/Olympia, Washington. In 2016, he received a Nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize from the International Institute of Peace Studies and Global Philosophy. Other recent recognitions include: Native Arts and Cultures Foundation National Fellowship in Music (2016), National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship Nominee (2017), Indigenous Music Award Nominee for Best Instrumental Album (2019) and National Native American Hall of Fame Nominee (2018, 2019). He also was recently nominated for “Nominee for the 2020 Americans for the Arts Johnson Fellowship for Artists Transforming Communities”. He is the Founder of Akantu Intelligence.

"So we get to a certain stage in Western society, I'd never call it a culture, but a society trying to figure out its birth and how to become mature. Whatever it's doing it has slowed down natural relationships. It took us out of the land, put us into factories, put us into institutions where you can learn a trade. It kept giving you jobs that had nothing to do with Earth. And so if you're living, you're working in this box called a factory, and the farmers out there are becoming less and less. Even the farming, the ideas of farming are foreign. And I think that when the technical language came out, we dropped another natural umbilical cord to and with Earth. And so we severed that relationship. So you can see this gradual severing of relationships to Earth with Earth, that now we have to have retreats to learn empathy again. We do all these Westernized versions of piecing ourselves back together and as Indigenous folks where we're getting that way now, but a lot of traditional people don't need that. We don't need environmental movements. You know, Wild Earth is a foreign concept. There are a lot of words that organizations use to rationalize why we need to teach how to be human beings. So you see technology, the Industrial Machine Age taught us this language of disconnection, taught us things like plug-in, get connected. You know, all these words that came along to fill that information that could be controlled by authority now in the Western process. John Gatto, who won the New York State Teacher of the Year award in 2008, upon his retirement, specifically said, 'It takes 12 years to learn how to become reflexive to authority.' And who is the authority? Who is controlling information? Who's controlling education? Who's controlling knowledge? And now they want to control Wisdom, and all wisdom means is common sense.”

https://firstvoicesindigenousradio.org/
https://akantuintelligence.org

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Songs featured on this episode are “Butterfly Against the Wind”
And from the album Somewhere In There
“Spatial Moon” and “Sunrise Moon”
Composed by Tiokasin Ghosthorse and Alex Alexander
Music on this episode is courtesy of Tiokasin Ghosthorse.

View Details

"With the speed and the precision of the AI, make no mistake, we are becoming creators of something that is far more advanced than humans. Is this a bad thing? I see it as a very bad thing, but I also see it as a natural evolution. We are becoming creators and in our evolution process, we are evolving ourselves to something much more advanced. It's what the world, what the universe, what nature wants us to become: stronger so we reach our limit in terms of biological capacity. So this is the fascinating thing, the creation and evolution go hand in hand. It's a circle that feeds into each other."

Dr. Melvin M. Vopson is Associate Professor of Physics at the University of Portsmouth, Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, Chartered Physicist and Fellow of the Institute of Physics. He is the co-founder and CEO of the Information Physics Institute, editor-in-chief of the IPI Letters and Emerging Minds Journal for Student Research. He is the author of Reality Reloaded: The Scientific Case for a Simulated Universe. Dr. Vopson has a wide-ranging scientific expertise in experimental, applied and theoretical physics that is internationally recognized. He has published over 100 research articles, achieving over 2500 citations.

https://www.port.ac.uk/about-us/structure-and-governance/our-people/our-staff/melvin-vopson

https://ipipublishing.org/index.php/ipil/RR

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

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Are we living in a Simulated Universe? How will AI impact the future of work, society & education?

Dr. Melvin M. Vopson is Associate Professor of Physics at the University of Portsmouth, Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, Chartered Physicist and Fellow of the Institute of Physics. He is the co-founder and CEO of the Information Physics Institute, editor-in-chief of the IPI Letters and Emerging Minds Journal for Student Research. He is the author of Reality Reloaded: The Scientific Case for a Simulated Universe. Dr. Vopson has a wide-ranging scientific expertise in experimental, applied and theoretical physics that is internationally recognized. He has published over 100 research articles, achieving over 2500 citations.

"With the speed and the precision of the AI, make no mistake, we are becoming creators of something that is far more advanced than humans. Is this a bad thing? I see it as a very bad thing, but I also see it as a natural evolution. We are becoming creators and in our evolution process, we are evolving ourselves to something much more advanced. It's what the world, what the universe, what nature wants us to become: stronger so we reach our limit in terms of biological capacity. So this is the fascinating thing, the creation and evolution go hand in hand. It's a circle that feeds into each other."

https://www.port.ac.uk/about-us/structure-and-governance/our-people/our-staff/melvin-vopson

https://ipipublishing.org/index.php/ipil/RR

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

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"Meta reaches between three and four billion people every day through their platforms, right? That's way more people than any government legitimately can claim to govern. And yet this one company with four major platforms that many of us use is able to reach so many people and make decisions about content and access that have real consequences. It's been shown they fueled genocide in multiple places like in Ethiopia and Myanmar. And I think that's exactly why human rights matter because human rights are obligations that states have signed on for, and they're supposed to protect human values. And I think from a human rights perspective, it's important to argue that we shouldn't be collecting certain types of data because it's excessive. It's violating autonomy. It starts violating dignity. And when you start violating autonomy and dignity through the collection of data, you can't just go back and fix that by making it private.”

Does privacy exist anymore? Or are humans just sets of data to be traded and sold?

Wendy H. Wong is Professor of Political Science and Principal's Research Chair at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan. She is the author of two award-winning books: Internal Affairs: How the Structure of NGOs Transforms Human Rights and (with Sarah S. Stroup) The Authority Trap: Strategic Choices of International NGOs. Her latest book is We, the Data: Human Rights in the Digital Age.

www.wendyhwong.com
https://mitpress.mit.edu/author/wendy-h-wong-38397

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

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Does privacy exist anymore? Or are humans just sets of data to be traded and sold?

Wendy H. Wong is Professor of Political Science and Principal's Research Chair at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan. She is the author of two award-winning books: Internal Affairs: How the Structure of NGOs Transforms Human Rights and (with Sarah S. Stroup) The Authority Trap: Strategic Choices of International NGOs. Her latest book is We, the Data: Human Rights in the Digital Age.

"Meta reaches between three and four billion people every day through their platforms, right? That's way more people than any government legitimately can claim to govern. And yet this one company with four major platforms that many of us use is able to reach so many people and make decisions about content and access that have real consequences. It's been shown they fueled genocide in multiple places like in Ethiopia and Myanmar. And I think that's exactly why human rights matter because human rights are obligations that states have signed on for, and they're supposed to protect human values. And I think from a human rights perspective, it's important to argue that we shouldn't be collecting certain types of data because it's excessive. It's violating autonomy. It starts violating dignity. And when you start violating autonomy and dignity through the collection of data, you can't just go back and fix that by making it private.”

www.wendyhwong.com
https://mitpress.mit.edu/author/wendy-h-wong-38397

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

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The more the science of intelligence (both human and artificial) advances, the more it holds the potential for great benefits and dangers to society.

Max Bennett is the cofounder and CEO of Alby, a start-up that helps companies integrate large language models into their websites to create guided shopping and search experiences. Previously, Bennett was the cofounder and chief product offi­cer of Bluecore, one of the fastest growing companies in the U.S., providing AI technologies to some of the largest companies in the world. Bluecore has been featured in the annual Inc. 500 fastest growing com­panies, as well as Glassdoor’s 50 best places to work in the U.S. Bluecore was recently valued at over $1 bil­lion. Bennett holds several patents for AI technologies and has published numerous scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals on the topics of evolutionary neuro­science and the neocortex. He has been featured on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list as well as the Built In NYC’s 30 Tech Leaders Under 30. He is the author of A Brief History of Intelligence: Evolution, AI, and the Five Breakthroughs That Made Our Brains.

"One of the crowning achievements of humanity is self-delusion. We like to convince ourselves that the thing that's best for us is also the best for everyone else. So it doesn't mean that people are inherently being bad, but whenever someone comes and says you should regulate thing ABC, and it just so turns out that if you do ABC, it will enrich that individual and their company.

We should just be somewhat skeptical to make sure that is in fact the best way to regulate it. So in terms of the regulations themselves, I think a lot of them are really good ideas. I think Yann LeCun has some of my favorite philosophies on this at Meta. Where I do think we should not be regulating is research. And I think we should absolutely be supporting open source. And I do think it's much more reasonable to regulate products. So this is a very important distinction. Regulating research is effectively telling scientists they're not allowed to look into certain forms of AI. They're not allowed to test certain forms of AI. I think this is. Or at least, if we do regulate research, we should have a higher burden of proof for restraining research."

www.abriefhistoryofintelligence.com/
www.alby.com
www.bluecore.com

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

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How can we resolve conflicts without compromising our ethics and moral vision? Each year, wars are being fought in our name or with our support that citizens never get an opportunity to vote on. How can we make our voices heard?

“Warism, taking war for granted as morally acceptable, even morally required, is the primary obstacle to peace.” Duane L. Cady is a philosopher and Professor Emeritus at Hamline University. He was nominated for the 1991 Grawemeyer World Order Award, was named Outstanding Educator of the Year by the United Methodist Foundation for Higher Education, and a festschiff in his honor was published in 2012. Cady is best known for his works on pacifism, including Moral Vision: How Everyday Life Shapes Ethical Thinking, and From Warism to Pacifism: A Moral Continuum.

https://duanelcady.com

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

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"We live on the one hand in very exciting times with technological development, but on the other hand, we should also be careful. And I've seen studies showing the effects of screen time on brain development that are worrisome, in my opinion.

So as a mother, I continuously engaged in a battle to minimize screen time for my children. Not always successfully because I also understand that the world that we live in requires a lot of screen time. I think that social media in particular and again, I can't take this interview out of context, I am continuously exposed to hatred in social media from all sides. People are scared. People are afraid. People are angry and that finds its way into social media. And I read things on (now it's called X) Twitter. and I'm horrified and disappointed and saddened. So did I disconnect? No, I'm also a part of the system, but I also want to raise a critical voice concerning that."

How we think, feel, and experience the world is a mystery. What distinguishes our consciousness from AI and machine learning?

Liad Mudrik studies high level cognition and its neural substrates, focusing on conscious experience. She teaches at the School of Psychological Sciences at Tel Aviv University. At her research lab, her team is currently investigating the functionality of consciousness, trying to unravel the depth and limits of unconscious processing, and also researching the ways semantic relations between concepts and objects are formed and detected.

https://people.socsci.tau.ac.il/mu/mudriklab
https://people.socsci.tau.ac.il/mu/mudriklab/people/#gkit-popup

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

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How we think, feel, and experience the world is a mystery. What distinguishes our consciousness from AI and machine learning?

Liad Mudrik studies high level cognition and its neural substrates, focusing on conscious experience. She teaches at the School of Psychological Sciences at Tel Aviv University. At her research lab, her team is currently investigating the functionality of consciousness, trying to unravel the depth and limits of unconscious processing, and also researching the ways semantic relations between concepts and objects are formed and detected.

"We live on the one hand in very exciting times with technological development, but on the other hand, we should also be careful. And I've seen studies showing the effects of screen time on brain development that are worrisome, in my opinion.

So as a mother, I continuously engaged in a battle to minimize screen time for my children. Not always successfully because I also understand that the world that we live in requires a lot of screen time. I think that social media in particular and again, I can't take this interview out of context, I am continuously exposed to hatred in social media from all sides. People are scared. People are afraid. People are angry and that finds its way into social media. And I read things on (now it's called X) Twitter. and I'm horrified and disappointed and saddened. So did I disconnect? No, I'm also a part of the system, but I also want to raise a critical voice concerning that."

https://people.socsci.tau.ac.il/mu/mudriklab
https://people.socsci.tau.ac.il/mu/mudriklab/people/#gkit-popup

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

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“Coral reefs are the most biodiverse habitat on the planet, despite covering less than 1 percent of the ocean area, over a quarter of all marine life exists in these rainforests of the sea. And if you think of a coral reef as a rainforest, the trees are the coral themselves. Which are incredible organisms, so, magic is really the right word to describe them. They're these animals that are one of the original forms of animal life, the second branch of the animal kingdom is actually Cnidaria, which includes coral and jellyfish. So, an ancient animal, but they have a symbiotic relationship with algae, and so inside the animal tissue are these zooxanthellae, these algae that do photosynthesis, like algae do, like plants do. It's able to capture sunlight and convert it into sugars and energy. And so, it's an animal, but it's got plants that live inside it, this algae, and then even more wild - it grows a skeleton that is rock!

So coral skeleton is actually calcium carbonate, which is limestone. And most of the limestone that exists on the earth was grown by these organisms. And so they're animals with plants inside of them that grow rock as skeleton. And the rock skeletons form these incredibly intricate structures that are coral reefs that can grow for thousands of miles and the corals can live for thousands of years to be seen from space and to create these essential ecosystems that are really the cornerstone of all of life in the ocean and, and therefore much of life on Earth.”

Coral reefs are the most biodiverse habitat on the planet, despite covering less than 1 percent of the ocean. Over a quarter of all marine life exists in these rain forests of the sea.

Gator Halpern is the Co-founder and President of Coral Vita, a mission-driven company working to restore our world’s dying coral reefs. He is a lifelong entrepreneur who is passionate about starting projects that can help create a better harmony between society and nature. His work has earned him a number of awards including being named a United Nation’s Young Champion of the Earth, a Forbes 30 Under 30 social entrepreneur, and an Echoing Green fellow. Before founding Coral Vita, he worked on development projects in Brazil, Peru, and South Africa. During his career, he has helped distribute millions of baby fish for aquaculture to remote villages in the Amazon, he’s analyzed the environmental effects of land-use change projects on three different continents, and worked for the World Wildlife Fund Global Marine Program. Gator founded Coral Vita during his graduate studies at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, and he lives and works in the Bahamas where Coral Vita operates the world’s first commercial land-based coral farm for reef restoration.

https://coralvita.co

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

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Coral reefs are the most biodiverse habitat on the planet, despite covering less than 1 percent of the ocean. Over a quarter of all marine life exists in these rain forests of the sea.

Gator Halpern is the Co-founder and President of Coral Vita, a mission-driven company working to restore our world’s dying coral reefs. He is a lifelong entrepreneur who is passionate about starting projects that can help create a better harmony between society and nature. His work has earned him a number of awards including being named a United Nation’s Young Champion of the Earth, a Forbes 30 Under 30 social entrepreneur, and an Echoing Green fellow. Before founding Coral Vita, he worked on development projects in Brazil, Peru, and South Africa. During his career, he has helped distribute millions of baby fish for aquaculture to remote villages in the Amazon, he’s analyzed the environmental effects of land-use change projects on three different continents, and worked for the World Wildlife Fund Global Marine Program. Gator founded Coral Vita during his graduate studies at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, and he lives and works in the Bahamas where Coral Vita operates the world’s first commercial land-based coral farm for reef restoration.

“Coral reefs are the most biodiverse habitat on the planet, despite covering less than 1 percent of the ocean area, over a quarter of all marine life exists in these rainforests of the sea. And if you think of a coral reef as a rainforest, the trees are the coral themselves. Which are incredible organisms, so, magic is really the right word to describe them. They're these animals that are one of the original forms of animal life, the second branch of the animal kingdom is actually Cnidaria, which includes coral and jellyfish. So, an ancient animal, but they have a symbiotic relationship with algae, and so inside the animal tissue are these zooxanthellae, these algae that do photosynthesis, like algae do, like plants do. It's able to capture sunlight and convert it into sugars and energy. And so, it's an animal, but it's got plants that live inside it, this algae, and then even more wild - it grows a skeleton that is rock!

So coral skeleton is actually calcium carbonate, which is limestone. And most of the limestone that exists on the earth was grown by these organisms. And so they're animals with plants inside of them that grow rock as skeleton. And the rock skeletons form these incredibly intricate structures that are coral reefs that can grow for thousands of miles and the corals can live for thousands of years to be seen from space and to create these essential ecosystems that are really the cornerstone of all of life in the ocean and, and therefore much of life on Earth.”

https://coralvita.co

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

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"I think, oftentimes, what'll happen as a trap when we talk about technology. People say, 'Well, what do you think is the future of artificial intelligence? Or what is the future of neural interfaces? Or what is the future of this?' And I always pause them and say, 'Wait a minute. If you're just talking about the technology, you're having the wrong conversation because it's not about the technology.'

So when people talk about what's the future of AI? I say, I don't know. What do we want the future of AI to be? And I think that's a shift that sounds quite subtle to some people, but it's really important because if you look at any piece of news or anything like that, they talk about AI as if it was a thing that was fully formed, that sprang out of the Earth and is now walking around doing things. And what will AI do in the future and how will it affect our jobs? It's not AI that's doing it. These are people. These are companies. These are organizations that are doing it. And that's where we need to keep our focus. What are those organizations doing. And also what do we want from it as humans?"

Brian David Johnson is Futurist in Residence at Arizona State University’s Center for Science and the Imagination, a professor in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society, and the Director of the ASU Threatcasting Lab. He is Author of The Future You: How to Create the Life You Always Wanted, Science Fiction Prototyping: Designing the Future with Science Fiction, 21st Century Robot: The Dr. Simon Egerton Stories, Humanity in the Machine: What Comes After Greed?, Screen Future: The Future of Entertainment, Computing, and the Devices We Love.

https://csi.asu.edu/people/brian-david-johnson/

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Brian David Johnson is Futurist in Residence at Arizona State University’s Center for Science and the Imagination, a professor in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society, and the Director of the ASU Threatcasting Lab. He is Author of The Future You: How to Create the Life You Always Wanted, Science Fiction Prototyping: Designing the Future with Science Fiction, 21st Century Robot: The Dr. Simon Egerton Stories, Humanity in the Machine: What Comes After Greed?, Screen Future: The Future of Entertainment, Computing, and the Devices We Love.

"I think, oftentimes, what'll happen as a trap when we talk about technology. People say, 'Well, what do you think is the future of artificial intelligence? Or what is the future of neural interfaces? Or what is the future of this?' And I always pause them and say, 'Wait a minute. If you're just talking about the technology, you're having the wrong conversation because it's not about the technology.'

So when people talk about what's the future of AI? I say, I don't know. What do we want the future of AI to be? And I think that's a shift that sounds quite subtle to some people, but it's really important because if you look at any piece of news or anything like that, they talk about AI as if it was a thing that was fully formed, that sprang out of the Earth and is now walking around doing things. And what will AI do in the future and how will it affect our jobs? It's not AI that's doing it. These are people. These are companies. These are organizations that are doing it. And that's where we need to keep our focus. What are those organizations doing. And also what do we want from it as humans?"

https://csi.asu.edu/people/brian-david-johnson/

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"I am the type of person who's endlessly interested in different topics, and that can lead to really fun things. I'm also very worried about the future of humanity. Maybe that's an outgrowth of being a parent. I have three teenagers, and I worry about where AI is headed. We are at a really interesting point in technology, and it's sort of an honor to be alive right now to witness all this. But to go back to consciousness, this is a key aspect of my sense of life, and it always bothers me when people haven't thought about it. Like I asked my husband the other day: how can people go through life without really thinking about or appreciating the fact that they are conscious beings?"

Will AI become conscious? President Biden has just unveiled a new executive order on AI — the U.S. government’s first action of its kind — requiring new safety assessments, equity and civil rights guidance, and research on AI’s impact on the labor market. With this governance in place, can tech companies be counted on to do the right thing for humanity?

Susan Schneider is a philosopher, artificial intelligence expert, and founding director of the Center for the Future Mind at Florida Atlantic University. She is author of Artificial You: AI and the Future of Your Mind, Science Fiction and Philosophy: From Time Travel to Superintelligence, and The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness. She held the NASA Chair with NASA and the Distinguished Scholar Chair at the Library of Congress. She is now working on projects related to advancements in AI policy and technology, drawing from neuroscience research and philosophical developments and writing a new book on the shape of intelligent systems.

www.fau.edu/artsandletters/philosophy/susan-schneider/index
www.fau.edu/future-mind/

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Will AI become conscious? President Biden has just unveiled a new executive order on AI — the U.S. government’s first action of its kind — requiring new safety assessments, equity and civil rights guidance, and research on AI’s impact on the labor market. With this governance in place, can tech companies be counted on to do the right thing for humanity?

Susan Schneider is a philosopher, artificial intelligence expert, and founding director of the Center for the Future Mind at Florida Atlantic University. She is author of Artificial You: AI and the Future of Your Mind, Science Fiction and Philosophy: From Time Travel to Superintelligence, and The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness. She held the NASA Chair with NASA and the Distinguished Scholar Chair at the Library of Congress. She is now working on projects related to advancements in AI policy and technology, drawing from neuroscience research and philosophical developments and writing a new book on the shape of intelligent systems.

"I am the type of person who's endlessly interested in different topics, and that can lead to really fun things. I'm also very worried about the future of humanity. Maybe that's an outgrowth of being a parent. I have three teenagers, and I worry about where AI is headed. We are at a really interesting point in technology, and it's sort of an honor to be alive right now to witness all this. But to go back to consciousness, this is a key aspect of my sense of life, and it always bothers me when people haven't thought about it. Like I asked my husband the other day: how can people go through life without really thinking about or appreciating the fact that they are conscious beings?"

www.fau.edu/artsandletters/philosophy/susan-schneider/index
www.fau.edu/future-mind/

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www.oneplanetpodcast.org
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What will the future look like? What are the risks and opportunities of AI? What role can we play in designing the future we want to live in?

Voices of philosophers, futurists, AI experts, science fiction authors, activists, and lawyers reflecting on AI, technology, and the Future of Humanity. All voices in this episode are from our interviews for The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast.

Voices on this episode are:

DR. SUSAN SCHNEIDER
American philosopher and artificial intelligence expert. She is the founding director of the Center for the Future Mind at Florida Atlantic University. Author of Artificial You: AI and the Future of Your Mind, Science Fiction and Philosophy: From Time Travel to Superintelligence, and The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness.www.fau.edu/artsandletters/philosophy/susan-schneider/index

NICK BOSTROM
Founder and Director of the Future of Humanity Institute, University of Oxford, Philosopher, Author of NYTimes Bestseller Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies. Bostrom’s academic work has been translated into more than 30 languages. He is a repeat main TED speaker and has been on Foreign Policy’s Top 100 Global Thinkers list twice and was included in Prospect’s World Thinkers list, the youngest person in the top 15.
https://nickbostrom.com
https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk

BRIAN DAVID JOHNSON

Futurist in residence at Arizona State University’s Center for Science and the Imagination, a professor in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and the Director of the ASU Threatcasting Lab. He is Author of The Future You: How to Create the Life You Always Wanted, Science Fiction Prototyping: Designing the Future with Science Fiction, 21st Century Robot: The Dr. Simon Egerton Stories, Humanity in the Machine: What Comes After Greed?, Screen Future: The Future of Entertainment, Computing, and the Devices We Love.

https://csi.asu.edu/people/brian-david-johnson

DEAN SPADE
Professor at SeattleU’s School of Law, Author of Mutual Aid, Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next), and Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law.

www.deanspade.net

ALLEN STEELE
Science Fiction Author. He has been awarded a number of Hugos, Asimov's Readers, and Locus Awards. of the Coyote Trilogy, Arkwright, and other books. His books include Coyote Trilogy and Arkwright. He is a former member of the Board of Directors and Board of Advisors for the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. He has also served as an advisor for the Space Frontier Foundation. In 2001, he testified before the Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics of the U.S. House of Representatives in hearings regarding space exploration in the 21st century.

www.allensteele.com

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"It's such a difficult and huge, huge, huge issue. And for me, it's absolutely not one-sided. And it's not a simple answer. Anybody who thinks that AI is going to completely save us is fooling themselves. And anybody who thinks that AI is just evil or harmful is also overlooking the very obvious benefits from drug and cancer research and other illnesses. And there are so many things that AI can help us solve very quickly that we don't yet have solutions to. That said, AI is made by us and it is filled with our own biases. And when you enable an incredibly smart, but biased and flawed thing to rule your life, that's never going to end up with a good outcome.

So I think we need a lot of regulations and that we should be very scared of what happens when we allow AI to become too smart because at that point regulations aren't going to help. I honestly don't know if we've crossed that threshold. If we haven't, we're very close to crossing the threshold, in my opinion, of not being able to control what we've created, and that does scare me.

For the creative process in particular, beyond the fact that it wouldn't make any sense for people to use AI because you can't copyright it, so studios and networks wouldn't own their own material, I can't even begin to tell you how many problems I see with using AI in the writing or directing process.

I think science fiction is its own animal. This is why it has always been my first love. And it really allows you to think about our connection to the universe, to kind of be a futurist and think about what society could look like or has looked like. And I think there's no other genre for me, at least, where I feel like action and consequence and forecasting and imagination, all of those things can kind of come together in one story. Stories are inherently subjective. There's only one way to tell a great story and that is for the subject and the storyteller to have an authentic and strong point of view."

Lindsey Anderson Beer wrote and executive produced the hit Netflix original dramedy Sierra Burgess is a Loser before making the jump to direct the horror genre with Pet Sematary: Bloodlines, starring Jackson White and Natalie Alyn Lind. The story is based on an untold chapter of Stephen King's self-proclaimed, scariest property of all time. Up next, she will helm Paramount’s Sleepy Hollow reboot as the writer, director, and producer. She also has several projects in various phases of development and production, including Disney's live action remake of Bambi, New Line's Hello Kitty, and Universal's Fast and Furious spinoff, which she wrote with Geneva Robertson-Dworet. Under her production banner Lab Brew, Lord of the Flies will be directed by Luca Guadagnino and written by Patrick Ness for Warner Bros.

www.imdb.com/name/nm5170222/

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Lindsey Anderson Beer wrote and executive produced the hit Netflix original dramedy Sierra Burgess is a Loser before making the jump to direct the horror genre with Pet Sematary: Bloodlines, starring Jackson White and Natalie Alyn Lind. The story is based on an untold chapter of Stephen King's self-proclaimed, scariest property of all time. Up next, she will helm Paramount’s Sleepy Hollow reboot as the writer, director, and producer. She also has several projects in various phases of development and production, including Disney's live action remake of Bambi, New Line's Hello Kitty, and Universal's Fast and Furious spinoff, which she wrote with Geneva Robertson-Dworet. Under her production banner Lab Brew, Lord of the Flies will be directed by Luca Guadagnino and written by Patrick Ness for Warner Bros.

"It's such a difficult and huge, huge, huge issue. And for me, it's absolutely not one-sided. And it's not a simple answer. Anybody who thinks that AI is going to completely save us is fooling themselves. And anybody who thinks that AI is just evil or harmful is also overlooking the very obvious benefits from drug and cancer research and other illnesses. And there are so many things that AI can help us solve very quickly that we don't yet have solutions to. That said, AI is made by us and it is filled with our own biases. And when you enable an incredibly smart, but biased and flawed thing to rule your life, that's never going to end up with a good outcome.

So I think we need a lot of regulations and that we should be very scared of what happens when we allow AI to become too smart because at that point regulations aren't going to help. I honestly don't know if we've crossed that threshold. If we haven't, we're very close to crossing the threshold, in my opinion, of not being able to control what we've created, and that does scare me.

For the creative process in particular, beyond the fact that it wouldn't make any sense for people to use AI because you can't copyright it, so studios and networks wouldn't own their own material, I can't even begin to tell you how many problems I see with using AI in the writing or directing process.

I think science fiction is its own animal. This is why it has always been my first love. And it really allows you to think about our connection to the universe, to kind of be a futurist and think about what society could look like or has looked like. And I think there's no other genre for me, at least, where I feel like action and consequence and forecasting and imagination, all of those things can kind of come together in one story. Stories are inherently subjective. There's only one way to tell a great story and that is for the subject and the storyteller to have an authentic and strong point of view."

www.imdb.com/name/nm5170222/

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But at the same time, the world is building new megacities that are going to house tens of millions of people, and we now have the opportunity to build them for the 21st century. We don't have to follow the same design patterns of the past. So, this now opens up enormous creativity, experimentation, and innovation. One study has found that the single thing that makes people most unhappy in America is commuting time, being stuck in traffic. That makes people more frustrated and depressed than anything.”

Anthony Leiserowitz, Ph.D. is the founder and Director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and a Senior Research Scientist at the Yale School of the Environment. He is an internationally recognized expert on public climate change beliefs, attitudes, policy support, and behavior, and the psychological, cultural, and political factors that shape them and conducts research globally, including in the United States, China, India, and Brazil. He has published more than 250 scientific articles, chapters, and reports and has worked with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the National Academy of Sciences, the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, the Harvard Kennedy School, the United Nations Development Program, the Gallup World Poll, and the World Economic Forum, among others. He is a recipient of the Friend of the Planet Award from the National Center for Science Education, the Mitofsky Innovator Award from the American Association of Public Opinion Research, the Stephen H. Schneider Award for Outstanding Climate Science Communication from Climate One, and an Environmental Innovator award from the Environmental Protection Agency. In 2020, he was named the second-most influential climate scientist in the world (of 1,000) by Reuters. He is also the host of Climate Connections, a radio program broadcast each day on more than 700 stations nationwide.

"Cities are going to be core to solving this problem. However, the whole world is vulnerable to climate change in different ways. So cities are going to be critical. Let's not forget we already have 8 billion people on the planet, and it's growing.

And so there is a lot that we need to do to both retrofit our existing cities, which is expensive and hard because they were laid down, sometimes, hundreds of years ago with different assumptions about how one should live. For example, L.A. was built on the highway and based on the automobile, so it's very difficult for L.A. as a city to now go, okay, we want to get back to providing rail transit for everybody. And they're doing it, but it's expensive, and it's hard to retrofit but essential work that has to be done.

https://environment.yale.edu/profile/leiserowitz
https://climatecommunication.yale.edu
www.yaleclimateconnections.org

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Anthony Leiserowitz, Ph.D. is the founder and Director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and a Senior Research Scientist at the Yale School of the Environment. He is an internationally recognized expert on public climate change beliefs, attitudes, policy support, and behavior, and the psychological, cultural, and political factors that shape them and conducts research globally, including in the United States, China, India, and Brazil. He has published more than 250 scientific articles, chapters, and reports and has worked with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the National Academy of Sciences, the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, the Harvard Kennedy School, the United Nations Development Program, the Gallup World Poll, and the World Economic Forum, among others. He is a recipient of the Friend of the Planet Award from the National Center for Science Education, the Mitofsky Innovator Award from the American Association of Public Opinion Research, the Stephen H. Schneider Award for Outstanding Climate Science Communication from Climate One, and an Environmental Innovator award from the Environmental Protection Agency. In 2020, he was named the second-most influential climate scientist in the world (of 1,000) by Reuters. He is also the host of Climate Connections, a radio program broadcast each day on more than 700 stations nationwide.

"Cities are going to be core to solving this problem. However, the whole world is vulnerable to climate change in different ways. So cities are going to be critical. Let's not forget we already have 8 billion people on the planet, and it's growing.

And so there is a lot that we need to do to both retrofit our existing cities, which is expensive and hard because they were laid down, sometimes, hundreds of years ago with different assumptions about how one should live. For example, L.A. was built on the highway and based on the automobile, so it's very difficult for L.A. as a city to now go, okay, we want to get back to providing rail transit for everybody. And they're doing it, but it's expensive, and it's hard to retrofit but essential work that has to be done.

But at the same time, the world is building new megacities that are going to house tens of millions of people, and we now have the opportunity to build them for the 21st century. We don't have to follow the same design patterns of the past. So, this now opens up enormous creativity, experimentation, and innovation. One study has found that the single thing that makes people most unhappy in America is commuting time, being stuck in traffic. That makes people more frustrated and depressed than anything.”

https://environment.yale.edu/profile/leiserowitz
https://climatecommunication.yale.edu
www.yaleclimateconnections.org

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www.oneplanetpodcast.org
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In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu speaks with Professor Veena Dubal about how such companies have exported globally a technique of algorithmic wage discrimination that pays workers based on data to which they have no access. Owners dangle bonuses before workers but take away work from them as they draw close to achieving their targets; they use psychological tricks derived from video games to create a casino-like environment where the house always wins. Dubal urges us not to fall into the trap of competing against the house, but back to “good old-fashioned organizing.” This is one of the most powerful and significant episodes of Speaking Out of Place.

Professor Veena Dubal’s research focuses broadly on law, technology, and precarious workers, combining legal and empirical analysis to explore issues of labor and inequality. Her work encompasses a range of topics, including the impact of digital technologies and emerging legal frameworks on workers' lives, the interplay between law, work, and identity, and the role of law and lawyers in solidarity movements.

Dubal has written numerous articles in top law and social science journals and publishes essays in the popular press. Her research has been cited internationally in legal decisions, including by the California Supreme Court, and her research and commentary are regularly featured in media outlets, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, NPR, CNN, etc. TechCrunch has called Prof. Dubal an “unlikely star in the tech world,” and her expertise is frequently sought by regulatory bodies, legislators, judges, workers, and unions in the U.S. and Europe. Professor Dubal is completing a book manuscript that presents a theoretical reappraisal of how low-income immigrant and racial minority workers experience and respond to shifting technologies and regulatory regimes. The manuscript draws upon a decade of interdisciplinary ethnographic research on taxi and ride-hail regulations and worker organizing and advocacy in San Francisco.

Prof. Dubal received a B.A. from Stanford University and holds J.D. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California, Berkeley, where she conducted an ethnography of the San Francisco taxi industry. The subject of her doctoral research arose from her work as a public interest attorney and Berkeley Law Foundation Fellow at the Asian Law Caucus where she founded a taxi worker project and represented Muslim Americans in civil rights cases. Prof. Dubal completed a post-doctoral fellowship at her alma mater, Stanford University. She returned to Stanford again in 2022 as a Residential Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. Prof. Dubal is the recipient of numerous awards and grants, including the Fulbright, for her scholarship and previous work as a public interest lawyer.

www.palumbo-liu.com
https://speakingoutofplace.com
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"I'm really very glad. I was happy to see that within my lifetime that the prospects of not just Mars, but in fact interstellar space is being taken seriously. I've been at two conferences where we were talking about building the first starship within this century. One of my later books, Arkwright, is about such a project. I saw that Elon Musk is building Starship One, I wish him all the best. And I envy anybody who goes.

I wish I were a younger person and in better health. Somebody asked me some time ago, would you go to Mars? And I said, 'I can't do it now. I've got a bum pancreas, and I'm 65 years old, and I'm not exactly the prime prospect for doing this. If you asked me 40 years ago would I go, I would have said: in a heartbeat!' I would gladly leave behind almost everything. I don't think I'd be glad about leaving my wife and family behind, but I'd be glad to go live on another planet, perhaps for the rest of my life, just for the chance to explore a new world, to be one of the settlers in a new world.

And I think this is something that's being taken seriously. It is very possible. We've got to be careful about how we do this. And we've got to be careful, particularly about the rationale of the people who are doing this. It bothers me that Elon Musk has lately taken a shift to the Far Right. I don't know why that is. But I'd love to be able to sit down and talk with him about these things and try to understand why he has done such a right thing, but for what seems to be wrong reasons."

What does the future of space exploration look like? How can we unlock the opportunities of outer space without repeating the mistakes of colonization and exploitation committed on Earth? How can we ensure AI and new technologies reflect our values and the world we want to live in?

Allen Steele is a science fiction author and journalist. He has written novels, short stories, and essays and been awarded a number of Hugos, Asimov's Readers, and Locus Awards. He’s known for his Coyote Trilogy and Arkwright. He is a former member of the Board of Directors and Board of Advisors for the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. He has also served as an advisor for the Space Frontier Foundation. In 2001, he testified before the Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics of the U.S. House of Representatives in hearings regarding space exploration in the 21st century.

www.allensteele.com

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Photo from a field trip to Pease Air Force Base in Portsmouth NH, now closed. Photo credit: Chuck Peterson

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What does the future of space exploration look like? How can we unlock the opportunities of outer space without repeating the mistakes of colonization and exploitation committed on Earth? How can we ensure AI and new technologies reflect our values and the world we want to live in?

Allen Steele is a science fiction author and journalist. He has written novels, short stories, and essays and been awarded a number of Hugos, Asimov's Readers, and Locus Awards. He’s known for his Coyote Trilogy and Arkwright. He is a former member of the Board of Directors and Board of Advisors for the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. He has also served as an advisor for the Space Frontier Foundation. In 2001, he testified before the Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics of the U.S. House of Representatives in hearings regarding space exploration in the 21st century.

"I'm really very glad. I was happy to see that within my lifetime that the prospects of not just Mars, but in fact interstellar space is being taken seriously. I've been at two conferences where we were talking about building the first starship within this century. One of my later books, Arkwright, is about such a project. I saw that Elon Musk is building Starship One, I wish him all the best. And I envy anybody who goes.

I wish I were a younger person and in better health. Somebody asked me some time ago, would you go to Mars? And I said, 'I can't do it now. I've got a bum pancreas, and I'm 65 years old, and I'm not exactly the prime prospect for doing this. If you asked me 40 years ago would I go, I would have said: in a heartbeat!' I would gladly leave behind almost everything. I don't think I'd be glad about leaving my wife and family behind, but I'd be glad to go live on another planet, perhaps for the rest of my life, just for the chance to explore a new world, to be one of the settlers in a new world.

And I think this is something that's being taken seriously. It is very possible. We've got to be careful about how we do this. And we've got to be careful, particularly about the rationale of the people who are doing this. It bothers me that Elon Musk has lately taken a shift to the Far Right. I don't know why that is. But I'd love to be able to sit down and talk with him about these things and try to understand why he has done such a right thing, but for what seems to be wrong reasons."

www.allensteele.com

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www.oneplanetpodcast.org
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"I believe that AI will be an incredibly useful tool. Humanity has endured primarily because of its inherent characteristics. I see things like NFTs and AI and Spotify and file sharing, and there was a time when I moved to New York where I could drift through the empty museum galleries of the moment, and have my epiphanies. Now you go to the same museum, it's like the Tokyo subway. You're, you know, it's a bunch of sardines. That's what's happening because there are too many people in the world for the delivery system to any longer be affected. Museums are delivery systems. We're moving into a world of the private museum now because the great collectors are building their own museums.

I am happy to report since I've seen you, I have a museum in South Korea in my name. So, you know, I'm funneling, channeling, putting hundreds and hundreds of prints into this museum in Busan in an attempt to personalize the situation, but by the time you've got eight billion people living on the planet Earth for a hundred years, which I plan to do. There's a lot of people like me. We know that people are living longer now thanks to medicine and nutrition.

I do tend to think that with file sharing, more people are listening to more music than ever before. You would have previously had to put a Tower Records on every street corner in order to effectively distribute that much music. Now, with NFTs, obviously, I, as the artist, as the audience spreads for a work of art quite often the content goes down. You could have a photograph and sell the original print and have 100 percent of your attention, or it could be reproduced on the cover of the New York Times at 72 dpi, 3 by 4 inches, and you'd get some of it, but you wouldn't get the whole thing, but a million people would see it. Now with the digital situation, working digitally, if the image stays in that digital space permanently, the only real shortcoming is the excessively bright, heavy saturated screen on your computer that tends to exaggerate things a bit."

How does the mind influence the mind? The mind cannot function without memory. And memory is just the mind aware of itself. So how do images tell us how we see and who we are?

Ralph Gibson is one of the most interesting American photographers of our time. His international renown is based on his work, which is shown and collected by some of the world’s leading museums, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the J.P. Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Creative Center for Photography in Tucson, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris, and the Fotomuseum Winterthur in Switzerland.

Gibson’s works reveal a meticulous aesthetic and visual territory edging on the surreal. His recent books include his memoir Self Exposure, Sacred Land: Israel before and after Time, and Secret of Light, which accompanied his exhibition at the Deichtorhallen House of Photography in Hamburg. He is a Leica Hall of Fame Inductee and has been awarded the French Legion of Honor. In 2022, The Gibson | Goeun Museum of Photography devoted to his work opened in Busan, South Korea.

www.ralphgibson.com
www.deichtorhallen.de/en/ausstellung/ralph-gibson
www.gibsongoeunmuseum.com

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How does the mind influence the mind? The mind cannot function without memory. And memory is just the mind aware of itself. So how do images tell us how we see and who we are?

Ralph Gibson is one of the most interesting American photographers of our time. His international renown is based on his work, which is shown and collected by some of the world’s leading museums, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the J.P. Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Creative Center for Photography in Tucson, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris, and the Fotomuseum Winterthur in Switzerland.

Gibson’s works reveal a meticulous aesthetic and visual territory edging on the surreal. His recent books include his memoir Self Exposure, Sacred Land: Israel before and after Time, and Secret of Light, which accompanied his exhibition at the Deichtorhallen House of Photography in Hamburg. He is a Leica Hall of Fame Inductee and has been awarded the French Legion of Honor. In 2022, The Gibson | Goeun Museum of Photography devoted to his work opened in Busan, South Korea.

"I believe that AI will be an incredibly useful tool. Humanity has endured primarily because of its inherent characteristics. I see things like NFTs and AI and Spotify and file sharing, and there was a time when I moved to New York where I could drift through the empty museum galleries of the moment, and have my epiphanies. Now you go to the same museum, it's like the Tokyo subway. You're, you know, it's a bunch of sardines. That's what's happening because there are too many people in the world for the delivery system to any longer be affected. Museums are delivery systems. We're moving into a world of the private museum now because the great collectors are building their own museums.

I am happy to report since I've seen you, I have a museum in South Korea in my name. So, you know, I'm funneling, channeling, putting hundreds and hundreds of prints into this museum in Busan in an attempt to personalize the situation, but by the time you've got eight billion people living on the planet Earth for a hundred years, which I plan to do. There's a lot of people like me. We know that people are living longer now thanks to medicine and nutrition.

I do tend to think that with file sharing, more people are listening to more music than ever before. You would have previously had to put a Tower Records on every street corner in order to effectively distribute that much music. Now, with NFTs, obviously, I, as the artist, as the audience spreads for a work of art quite often the content goes down. You could have a photograph and sell the original print and have 100 percent of your attention, or it could be reproduced on the cover of the New York Times at 72 dpi, 3 by 4 inches, and you'd get some of it, but you wouldn't get the whole thing, but a million people would see it. Now with the digital situation, working digitally, if the image stays in that digital space permanently, the only real shortcoming is the excessively bright, heavy saturated screen on your computer that tends to exaggerate things a bit."

www.ralphgibson.com
www.deichtorhallen.de/en/ausstellung/ralph-gibson
www.gibsongoeunmuseum.com

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Rob Verchick is one of the nation’s leading scholars in disaster and climate change law and a former EPA official in the Obama administration. He holds the Gauthier-St. Martin Eminent Scholar Chair in Environmental Law at Loyola University New Orleans. Professor Verchick is also a Senior Fellow in Disaster Resilience at Tulane University and the President of the Center for Progressive Reform, a research and advocacy organization that advocates for solutions to our most pressing societal challenges. He is the author of numerous articles and books, including The Octopus in the Parking Garage. A Call for Climate Resilience.

“Well, there are good stories and bad stories. So the good stories are, Oh my gosh, renewable energy is just a wonderful technology story with solar panels getting as cheap as almost anything. Wind turbine technology. We're working on offshore wind farm planning in the Gulf right now, and we're going to build wind turbines that can survive hurricanes. So there's a lot of technology going on in energy storage that involves batteries. And I'm hoping that at some point we're going to get to batteries that don't use things like lithium so much, so that we don't have to be involved so much in the mining of those kinds of things.

There's a lot of really interesting technology going on with using natural landscapes to protect against flooding and storms. So we have a coastal restoration effort in Louisiana, one of the largest in the world. And what we're experimenting with is diverting water from the Mississippi River to replenish sediment and grow new wetlands on our tattered shores. And that's technology, too. I mean, we've got some of the best engineering firms in the world down here, and NASA trying to figure out exactly how to do that. And if we can do it, we'll export that technology all over the place and help rebuild coastlines. So those are some really bright spots in terms of the technology that I see.”
https://robverchick.com
https://works.bepress.com/robert_verchick
www.progressivereform.org/

Twitter/X/Instagram/Facebook: @robverchick @robsoctopusbook

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But I would also like to see the government really start to restrict new fossil fuel developments because it's been made very clear by the IPCC, by the International Energy Agency, by every scientific paper you could read that promoting new developments is completely incompatible with a safe climate."

Now in the 21st century, with an abundance of renewable technologies, why is the world still using 18th-century energy technology? How can each of us harness our unique skills to help solve the climate crisis?

Lesley Hughes is a Distinguished Professor of Biology and Interim Executive Dean of the Faculty of Science & Engineering at Macquarie University. She is an ecologist whose main research interest has been the impacts of climate change on species and ecosystems, and the implications of climate change for conservation. She was a Lead Author of the IPCC’s 4th and 5th Assessment Report, Director for the WWF Australia and federal Climate Commissioner and is now a Councillor and Director with the Climate Council of Australia. She is also a member of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists.

"We need a radical transformation of investment in emissions reduction. We need some pretty strong regulatory policies. I think we've been relying on voluntary action for so long, and it's clear that that has not been enough. So I'm an advocate of far more stringent stepping in of governments to regulate. I don't know whether we are going to achieve the 43% emissions reduction target. I hope we meet and beat that. At the moment, things are not looking all that good. But on the other hand, Australia is a country with almost unlimited renewable resources. We're the sunniest country in the world. One of the windiest. We have great engineers and great scientists. We have the means and the public concern and support to move much faster. It's going to be a matter for the government to bring in policies that accelerate the transition from using 18th-century energy technology to 21st-century energy technology.

https://researchers.mq.edu.au/en/persons/lesley-hughes
www.climatecouncil.org.au

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Now in the 21st century, with an abundance of renewable technologies, why is the world still using 18th-century energy technology? How can each of us harness our unique skills to help solve the climate crisis?

Lesley Hughes is a Distinguished Professor of Biology and Interim Executive Dean of the Faculty of Science & Engineering at Macquarie University. She is an ecologist whose main research interest has been the impacts of climate change on species and ecosystems, and the implications of climate change for conservation. She was a Lead Author of the IPCC’s 4th and 5th Assessment Report, Director for the WWF Australia and federal Climate Commissioner and is now a Councillor and Director with the Climate Council of Australia. She is also a member of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists.

"We need a radical transformation of investment in emissions reduction. We need some pretty strong regulatory policies. I think we've been relying on voluntary action for so long, and it's clear that that has not been enough. So I'm an advocate of far more stringent stepping in of governments to regulate. I don't know whether we are going to achieve the 43% emissions reduction target. I hope we meet and beat that. At the moment, things are not looking all that good. But on the other hand, Australia is a country with almost unlimited renewable resources. We're the sunniest country in the world. One of the windiest. We have great engineers and great scientists. We have the means and the public concern and support to move much faster. It's going to be a matter for the government to bring in policies that accelerate the transition from using 18th-century energy technology to 21st-century energy technology.

But I would also like to see the government really start to restrict new fossil fuel developments because it's been made very clear by the IPCC, by the International Energy Agency, by every scientific paper you could read that promoting new developments is completely incompatible with a safe climate."

https://researchers.mq.edu.au/en/persons/lesley-hughes
www.climatecouncil.org.au

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www.oneplanetpodcast.org
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What happens when we die? What happens to our memories and consciousness when our bodies cease to be?  In the end, is it the things we did and the people we loved that give our lives meaning?

Shehan Karunatilaka is the multi-award winning author. He is known for his novels dealing with the history, politics, and folklore of his home country of Sri Lanka. He won the Commonwealth Book Prize and the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature for his debut novel, Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew, and the Booker Prize 2022 for his second novel, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida. In addition to novels, he has written rock songs, screenplays and travel stories. Born in Colombo, he studied in New Zealand and has lived and worked in London, Amsterdam, and Singapore.

www.shehanwriter.com
https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324064824

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Photo credit: David Parry/Booker Prize Foundation

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What happens when we die? What happens to our memories and consciousness when our bodies cease to be? In the end, is it the things we did and the people we loved that give our lives meaning?

Shehan Karunatilaka is the multi-award winning author. He is known for his novels dealing with the history, politics, and folklore of his home country of Sri Lanka. He won the Commonwealth Book Prize and the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature for his debut novel, Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew, and the Booker Prize 2022 for his second novel, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida. In addition to novels, he has written rock songs, screenplays and travel stories. Born in Colombo, he studied in New Zealand and has lived and worked in London, Amsterdam, and Singapore.

"But I always think new ideas are what have led us forward. And new ideas, they come out of the humanities. They come out of understanding the classics, psychology, philosophy, and sociology, and being able to think.

I think I'm okay for a couple more books before the robots start writing Booker Prize-winning novels. At the moment I think we're okay because I've tried this technology, and I think it's at the level of a junior copywriter who works hard. The first draft and all of that. But who knows where it's going to go? And we're all reminded this technology is in its infancy. So it's conceivable that these things are going to be writing novels and writing pretty good novels. Perhaps AI can write a formulaic detective thriller? But I don't think it's going to produce a Margaret Atwood or a Salman Rushdie. I think the real challenge is to write stuff that hasn't been written before. And that's what we are all trying to do. So the technology can replicate what's been done before, but the real novels that are going to move us, the stories that are going to move us, are the stuff that hasn't been done before. And that's where I think writers come in. And that's where an understanding of the humanities and being able to come up with new ideas rather than just replicate or rehash new ideas...I think we're still going to need human brains. And there's still room for originality because we think everything's been done, but I think it's just a fraction. There are lots of ideas out there, so I'm hopeful. I'm not too worried. And if this ChatGPT will help me. Instead of spending seven years on a novel, if I can knock out a novel in seven weeks, I'll be happier. The more writing I can do."

www.shehanwriter.com
https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324064824

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Photo credit: David Parry/Booker Prize Foundation

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"Death is the imperfection of life. Because life is just a fleeting thing for everyone, for all of us. And so there's no way that a black box AI can know death. So AI can never, in that sense, know life, because every day you walk, you think. So AI doesn't touch us because we exist on a level of such mortal frailty and mortal cruelty, and mortal love, and hate, and jealousy, and insecurity and freedom and joy and wackiness, and being in the moment.

We used to edit film on a flatbed. And every time you would take a scissors and make a cut and if you made the wrong cut you had to put the pieces back together and it wasn't a simple little thing.

I believe Angels and Insects was the last film edited on a flatbed. Anybody who looks at that film sees the difference in the edit because when you choose to do something really thoughtfully and carefully as opposed to like, you know, I could put that scene there and I could put that scene here and what we've done today is we've made everything so fast and so easy that I think there's something to the creative process about it being a little bit more of an exploration than it is wham bam, it's done. Let's go have lunch. And I think there is something to the creative process where it's allowed to develop. It's called process because it is a process." -Catherine Curtin

Why do we make art? What can the performing arts teach us about how to engage in dialogues to overcome conflict and division?

Our guests today are actress Catherine Curtin and artistic director Kate Mueth. Curtin is known for her roles on Stranger Things, Homeland, and Insecure. She played correctional officer Wanda Bell in Orange Is the New Black, and for this role she was a joint winner of two Screen Actors Guild Awards for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series.

Mueth is the Founder and Artistic Director of the award-winning dance theater company The Neo-Political Cowgirls that seeks to deepen and challenge the ways in which audiences experience stories and awaken their human connection. Based in East Hampton, New York they have performed to audiences in America and Europe.

www.imdb.com/name/nm0193160/
www.npcowgirls.org

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Why do we make art? What can the performing arts teach us about how to engage in dialogues to overcome conflict and division?

Our guests today are actress Catherine Curtin and artistic director Kate Mueth. Curtin is known for her roles on Stranger Things, Homeland, and Insecure. She played correctional officer Wanda Bell in Orange Is the New Black, and for this role she was a joint winner of two Screen Actors Guild Awards for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series.

Mueth is the Founder and Artistic Director of the award-winning dance theater company The Neo-Political Cowgirls that seeks to deepen and challenge the ways in which audiences experience stories and awaken their human connection. Based in East Hampton, New York they have performed to audiences in America and Europe.

"Death is the imperfection of life. Because life is just a fleeting thing for everyone, for all of us. And so there's no way that a black box AI can know death. So AI can never, in that sense, know life, because every day you walk, you think. So AI doesn't touch us because we exist on a level of such mortal frailty and mortal cruelty, and mortal love, and hate, and jealousy, and insecurity and freedom and joy and wackiness, and being in the moment.

We used to edit film on a flatbed. And every time you would take a scissors and make a cut and if you made the wrong cut you had to put the pieces back together and it wasn't a simple little thing.

I believe Angels and Insects was the last film edited on a flatbed. Anybody who looks at that film sees the difference in the edit because when you choose to do something really thoughtfully and carefully as opposed to like, you know, I could put that scene there and I could put that scene here and what we've done today is we've made everything so fast and so easy that I think there's something to the creative process about it being a little bit more of an exploration than it is wham bam, it's done. Let's go have lunch. And I think there is something to the creative process where it's allowed to develop. It's called process because it is a process." -Catherine Curtin

www.imdb.com/name/nm0193160/
www.npcowgirls.org

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www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

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"One of the things we have to do is we have to increase the rate of learning. We are entering into increasingly uncharted territory and not just in terms of climate change, but in many other areas of activity, AI being one of those, of course. And I think what we need to do is we need to find ways to learn more quickly, as a society, as communities, as villagers, as professional groups. And there are advantages of using some of those technologies in terms of accelerating that learning.

We need to be discerning about the technologies we use, and we need to think about the relationships between those technology and social outcomes, environmental outcomes, how to redesign our systems, and how to redesign our governance. So I think there's going to be a need for a lot more thought and creativity in the future."

Our window to adapt to a warming world is narrowing quickly. What it will take to avert the climate crises?
Mark Howden is Director of the Climate Change Institute at The Australian National University and a Vice Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and a member of the Australian National Climate Science Advisory Committee. He has been a major contributor to the IPCC since 1991, with roles in the Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth and now Sixth Assessment Reports, sharing the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with other IPCC participants and Al Gore. He was on the US Federal Advisory Committee for the 3rd National Climate Assessment and contributes to several major national and international science and policy advisory bodies. Mark has worked on climate variability, climate change, innovation and adoption issues for over 30 years in partnership with many industry, community and policy groups via both research and science-policy roles.

https://iceds.anu.edu.au/people/academics/professor-mark-howden
https://iceds.anu.edu.au/
www.ipcc.ch

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Our window to adapt to a warming world is narrowing quickly. What it will take to avert the climate crises?
Mark Howden is Director of the Climate Change Institute at The Australian National University and a Vice Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and a member of the Australian National Climate Science Advisory Committee. He has been a major contributor to the IPCC since 1991, with roles in the Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth and now Sixth Assessment Reports, sharing the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with other IPCC participants and Al Gore. He was on the US Federal Advisory Committee for the 3rd National Climate Assessment and contributes to several major national and international science and policy advisory bodies. Mark has worked on climate variability, climate change, innovation and adoption issues for over 30 years in partnership with many industry, community and policy groups via both research and science-policy roles.

"One of the things we have to do is we have to increase the rate of learning. We are entering into increasingly uncharted territory and not just in terms of climate change, but in many other areas of activity, AI being one of those, of course. And I think what we need to do is we need to find ways to learn more quickly, as a society, as communities, as villagers, as professional groups. And there are advantages of using some of those technologies in terms of accelerating that learning.

We need to be discerning about the technologies we use, and we need to think about the relationships between those technology and social outcomes, environmental outcomes, how to redesign our systems, and how to redesign our governance. So I think there's going to be a need for a lot more thought and creativity in the future."

https://iceds.anu.edu.au/people/academics/professor-mark-howden
https://iceds.anu.edu.au/
www.ipcc.ch

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www.oneplanetpodcast.org
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Photo credit: Lannon Harley/ANU

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Wildfire season is starting earlier and lasting longer due to global warming across the world. What will we do to save the world on fire? How can we cure our addiction to fossil fuels which is verging on pyromania?

Simon Dalby is author of Pyromania: Fire and Geopolitics in a Climate-Disrupted World and Professor Emeritus at Wilfrid Laurier University. His other books are Rethinking Environmental Security, Anthropocene Geopolitics: Globalization, Security, Sustainability, and Security and Environmental Change. He’s co-editor of Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, and Reframing Climate Change: Constructing Ecological Geopolitics.

"It's crucial because of how we design cities so we can live better together. If we are going to be sustainable: less personal car ownership, a lot more public transport, a lot more bicycles or scooters - they dramatically reduce pollution and they allow everybody to breathe easier because there's much less pollution from internal combustion engines actually in cities. All of this suggests that we need to reimagine cities as public spaces that are not dependent on the individual use of cars."

https://experts.wlu.ca/simon-dalby-1www.agendapub.com/page/detail/pyromania/?k=9781788216500

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"And what's very interesting is that at the moment there is this mass movement of people to our cities, making them megacities. And so we are actually depopulating the rural areas. So the very strange thing is that the Earth, it's becoming a wilder place. And therefore there are so many opportunities where people are leaving to go to the big cities where we can rewild, we can reforest, and we can bring back nature to actually keep those services that we absolutely rely on.

We are so powerful as a planetary species, not individually, but collectively, that we have had that impact, that we have changed the geological destiny of the planet through changing the environment, changing the climate, and changing the evolutionary destiny - because we're already causing lots of extinctions - but also lots of new organisms to be evolving. And we are creating them in labs as well."

Can we imagine a world where we leave half the earth to the natural environment and use the other half for ourselves? Can we change history and protect the Indigenous, the vulnerable, and the very poorest in society?

Mark Maslin is a Professor of Earth System Science at University College London. Maslin is a leading expert in understanding the anthropocene and how it relates to the major challenges facing humanity in the 21st century. He has written a number of books on the issue of climate change, his most book is How to Save Our Planet: The Facts.

www.geog.ucl.ac.uk/people/academic-staff/mark-maslin
www.penguin.co.uk/books/320155/how-to-save-our-planet-by-maslin-mark/9780241472521

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Can we imagine a world where we leave half the earth to the natural environment and use the other half for ourselves? Can we change history and protect the Indigenous, the vulnerable, and the very poorest in society?

Mark Maslin is a Professor of Earth System Science at University College London. Maslin is a leading expert in understanding the anthropocene and how it relates to the major challenges facing humanity in the 21st century. He has written a number of books on the issue of climate change, his most book is How to Save Our Planet: The Facts.

www.geog.ucl.ac.uk/people/academic-staff/mark-maslin
www.penguin.co.uk/books/320155/how-to-save-our-planet-by-maslin-mark/9780241472521

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

All images courtesy of Mark Maslin

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“One of our great British artists is Brian Eno, and he spoke a lot about limitations. I had the great joy of having a conversation. We ended up chatting for a couple of hours and he said, 'Oh, I want to show you something. I want to show you my library, and this tool I've created!' His Sonic Library, which is decades of audio material. (I have something similar. I call it an orphanage of sound. These files and folders that will eventually find a home.) But he's created a piece of software using algorithms that will at random pull out sounds and play them. And he can set certain parameters: I want a string sound to be here. And I'd like some bass sounds to come in. And I'd like some drum sounds, but it's just choosing these layers and playing them all at the same time. Again, a bit like the cacophony of birdsong. It's a bit of a mess initially, but then you can edit, and you start to refine. And in those limitations that have come out of this tool - and this is the point I guess I'm trying to make - is that it can be used as a tool to set limits or to burst limits. Or to mix things up. Out of that editing process, you can output something that to your ear sounds good to somebody else's ear."

How has music transported you? Where do you find inspiration from the natural world? Where do you find moments of every day magic?
Erland Cooper is a Scottish composer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist from Stromness, Orkney. He has released three acclaimed studio albums, four additional companion albums, and multiple EPs, including a trilogy of work inspired by his childhood home. His work combines field recordings with traditional orchestration and contemporary electronic elements. Through music words and cinematography, he explores landscape, memory, and identity. Cooper also works across mixed media projects, including installation, art, theater, and film. He is widely known for burying the only existing copy of the master tape of his first classical album in Scotland, deleting all digital files, and leaving only a treasure hunt of clues for fans and his record label alike to search for it. The tape has recently been found.

www.erlandcooper.com

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How has music transported you? Where do you find inspiration from the natural world? Where do you find moments of every day magic?
Erland Cooper is a Scottish composer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist from Stromness, Orkney. He has released three acclaimed studio albums, four additional companion albums, and multiple EPs, including a trilogy of work inspired by his childhood home. His work combines field recordings with traditional orchestration and contemporary electronic elements. Through music words and cinematography, he explores landscape, memory, and identity. Cooper also works across mixed media projects, including installation, art, theater, and film. He is widely known for burying the only existing copy of the master tape of his first classical album in Scotland, deleting all digital files, and leaving only a treasure hunt of clues for fans and his record label alike to search for it. The tape has recently been found.

“One of our great British artists is Brian Eno, and he spoke a lot about limitations. I had the great joy of having a conversation. We ended up chatting for a couple of hours and he said, 'Oh, I want to show you something. I want to show you my library, and this tool I've created!' His Sonic Library, which is decades of audio material. (I have something similar. I call it an orphanage of sound. These files and folders that will eventually find a home.) But he's created a piece of software using algorithms that will at random pull out sounds and play them. And he can set certain parameters: I want a string sound to be here. And I'd like some bass sounds to come in. And I'd like some drum sounds, but it's just choosing these layers and playing them all at the same time. Again, a bit like the cacophony of birdsong. It's a bit of a mess initially, but then you can edit, and you start to refine. And in those limitations that have come out of this tool - and this is the point I guess I'm trying to make - is that it can be used as a tool to set limits or to burst limits. Or to mix things up. Out of that editing process, you can output something that to your ear sounds good to somebody else's ear."

www.erlandcooper.com

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Photo by Alex Kozobolis

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"About 15 years ago, we still didn't have 3G, 4G, 5G internet, that only started about 15 years ago. And then only 10 years ago we saw the real rise of social media with Facebook giving you a like button and becoming a dominant means of telecommunications. And we show in our work that the spread of 3g, 4G mobile, broadband internet, and social media have also contributed to the rise of populism. Why? Because a populist message travels faster and more broadly and more convincingly on social media simply because of the model of social media. Where the idea of creating the social media space is to make sure that your retention is kept, and of course, attention is more likely to be attracted by critical, negative, and outrageous messages. These are anti-elite messages. These are actually quite often also false messages, but they travel faster on social media. And so social media has also contributed to the rise of populism."

What is a spin dictator? What does tyranny look like in the 21st century? Why is populism on the rise? And how do we reinvent democracy?

Sergei Guriev is the co-author of Spin Dictators: The Changing Face of Tyranny in the 21st Century. Guriev is Provost and a professor of economics and at Sciences Po in Paris. He is a former Chief Economist of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, London, and a former Rector of the New Economic School in Moscow in 2004-13.

https://sites.google.com/site/sguriev/
https://spindictators.com/
www.sciencespo.fr/department-economics/en/researcher/sergei-guriev.html

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What is a spin dictator? What does tyranny look like in the 21st century? Why is populism on the rise? And how do we reinvent democracy?

Sergei Guriev is the co-author of Spin Dictators: The Changing Face of Tyranny in the 21st Century. Guriev is Provost and a professor of economics and at Sciences Po in Paris. He is a former Chief Economist of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, London, and a former Rector of the New Economic School in Moscow in 2004-13.

"About 15 years ago, we still didn't have 3G, 4G, 5G internet, that only started about 15 years ago. And then only 10 years ago we saw the real rise of social media with Facebook giving you a like button and becoming a dominant means of telecommunications. And we show in our work that the spread of 3g, 4G mobile, broadband internet, and social media have also contributed to the rise of populism. Why? Because a populist message travels faster and more broadly and more convincingly on social media simply because of the model of social media. Where the idea of creating the social media space is to make sure that your retention is kept, and of course, attention is more likely to be attracted by critical, negative, and outrageous messages. These are anti-elite messages. These are actually quite often also false messages, but they travel faster on social media. And so social media has also contributed to the rise of populism."

https://sites.google.com/site/sguriev/
https://spindictators.com/
www.sciencespo.fr/department-economics/en/researcher/sergei-guriev.html

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www.oneplanetpodcast.org
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"We actually have some new works which have scientific monitoring devices in them. They actually have little sensors in them that monitor temperature and salinity and other factors. And one of the main pieces there is this piece called The Ocean Siren. And it is a young indigenous woman who is standing on the coastline, and she's actually attached to a weather station connected via a satellite link to a weather station out on the Great Barrier Reef. And that feeds data back to her. And then there's a solar array that changes a series of LEDs on her skin. So she changes red and orange color when there are prolonged spikes in temperature that could indicate coral bleaching. And then when the water is cooler, she obviously comes back down to a cooler blue or green color.

From the beginning, it's always been one of my major concerns that I don't always like human intervention in natural landscapes. And it was something that I was really conscious of when I first started. So, first and foremost, I made attention to the fact that it needed to be made from materials that didn't pollute in any way, that were sustainable, and that would last for a very long time. It takes reefs hundreds of years to fully get established. So the materials had to live up to that. They also had to not be displaced by all the strong forces and energy that are prevalent underwater. And they also had to foster marine life. I also found out that, they were very good at actually controlling how tourists interact with our marine areas. So many of the projects are actually to draw visitors away from natural areas and to bring them to an area where there's a sandy substrate where their impact is lessened."

What if museums weren’t confined to buildings but could be part of the natural world? What if sculptures could not only celebrate our oceans, but also provide habitats for marine life?

Jason deCaires Taylor is a sculptor, environmentalist, and underwater photographer. His works are constructed using materials to instigate natural growth and the subsequent changes intended to explore the aesthetics of decay, rebirth, and metamorphosis. DeCaires Taylor's pioneering public art projects are not only examples of successful marine conservation but also works of art that seek to encourage environmental awareness and lead us to appreciate the breathtaking natural beauty of the underwater world.

www.underwatersculpture.com

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

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What if museums weren’t confined to buildings but could be part of the natural world? What if sculptures could not only celebrate our oceans, but also provide habitats for marine life?

Jason deCaires Taylor is a sculptor, environmentalist, and underwater photographer. His works are constructed using materials to instigate natural growth and the subsequent changes intended to explore the aesthetics of decay, rebirth, and metamorphosis. DeCaires Taylor's pioneering public art projects are not only examples of successful marine conservation but also works of art that seek to encourage environmental awareness and lead us to appreciate the breathtaking natural beauty of the underwater world.

"We actually have some new works which have scientific monitoring devices in them. They actually have little sensors in them that monitor temperature and salinity and other factors. And one of the main pieces there is this piece called The Ocean Siren. And it is a young indigenous woman who is standing on the coastline, and she's actually attached to a weather station connected via a satellite link to a weather station out on the Great Barrier Reef. And that feeds data back to her. And then there's a solar array that changes a series of LEDs on her skin. So she changes red and orange color when there are prolonged spikes in temperature that could indicate coral bleaching. And then when the water is cooler, she obviously comes back down to a cooler blue or green color.

From the beginning, it's always been one of my major concerns that I don't always like human intervention in natural landscapes. And it was something that I was really conscious of when I first started. So, first and foremost, I made attention to the fact that it needed to be made from materials that didn't pollute in any way, that were sustainable, and that would last for a very long time. It takes reefs hundreds of years to fully get established. So the materials had to live up to that. They also had to not be displaced by all the strong forces and energy that are prevalent underwater. And they also had to foster marine life. I also found out that, they were very good at actually controlling how tourists interact with our marine areas. So many of the projects are actually to draw visitors away from natural areas and to bring them to an area where there's a sandy substrate where their impact is lessened."

www.underwatersculpture.com

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

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"We've lost something like 85% of oyster reefs globally. In Australia it's over 99%. We've smashed this ecosystem to smithereens. It covered something like 7,000 kilometers of coastline and the flat oyster reef, for example, the flat oysters, one type of oyster that we work with were completely removed from the Australian mainland, and about 5,000 kilometers of reef destroyed in a very short period of time. And because of the intensity with which the coastlines were modified following European settlement of Australia, they haven't been able to come back naturally.

We've been using healthy marine sounds with underwater speakers to attract oysters to these reefs. So when the historical native habitat was lost, it also lost the sound that was associated with those reefs, that sound created by the millions of animals that live in that complex habitat. Now there's recognition that anthropogenic noise, noise from shipping and motorboats, and other urban noise is masking the natural sounds of the sea and dominating the soundscape as we call it. We're hoping that we can counteract some of those negative impacts of anthropogenic noise by playing healthy marine sounds."

We have lost around 85% of oyster reefs. That’s not only the loss of oysters but also the habitat they provide other marine animals and plants. Oysters are amazing, not only do some create pearls but as sequential hermaphrodites, they can switch between male and female almost on a daily basis.

Dr. Dominic McAfee is a researcher at the University of Adelaide in Australia. His work centers around restoring lost marine ecosystems, specifically shellfish reefs. Along with employing novel technology and reef restoration projects, he seeks to understand how oysters enhance the resilience and function of coastal ecosystems. He seeks to develop conservation messaging strategies that enhance public engagement via conservation optimism.

https://researchers.adelaide.edu.au/profile/dominic.mcafee

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
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We have lost around 85% of oyster reefs. That’s not only the loss of oysters but also the habitat they provide other marine animals and plants. Oysters are amazing, not only do some create pearls but as sequential hermaphrodites, they can switch between male and female almost on a daily basis.

Dr. Dominic McAfee is a researcher at the University of Adelaide in Australia. His work centers around restoring lost marine ecosystems, specifically shellfish reefs. Along with employing novel technology and reef restoration projects, he seeks to understand how oysters enhance the resilience and function of coastal ecosystems. He seeks to develop conservation messaging strategies that enhance public engagement via conservation optimism.

"We've lost something like 85% of oyster reefs globally. In Australia it's over 99%. We've smashed this ecosystem to smithereens. It covered something like 7,000 kilometers of coastline and the flat oyster reef, for example, the flat oysters, one type of oyster that we work with were completely removed from the Australian mainland, and about 5,000 kilometers of reef destroyed in a very short period of time. And because of the intensity with which the coastlines were modified following European settlement of Australia, they haven't been able to come back naturally.

We've been using healthy marine sounds with underwater speakers to attract oysters to these reefs. So when the historical native habitat was lost, it also lost the sound that was associated with those reefs, that sound created by the millions of animals that live in that complex habitat. Now there's recognition that anthropogenic noise, noise from shipping and motorboats, and other urban noise is masking the natural sounds of the sea and dominating the soundscape as we call it. We're hoping that we can counteract some of those negative impacts of anthropogenic noise by playing healthy marine sounds."

https://researchers.adelaide.edu.au/profile/dominic.mcafee

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

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"I was talking about this with someone the other day, about how there could be AI narrating audiobooks. But what I think it really comes down to is someone with a soul. It's not just the meat and potatoes of the plot of the book, but the actual quality of storytelling, the character development, the message behind the story, things like that. You know, some of the subtle nuances that I think machines will never be able to do, because they'll never have a soul. You know, they'll never be able to fully replicate. They can get very, very close.

The Writers Strike in Hollywood. The main reason why the writers are striking, of course, is because it comes down to the bottom line, which is, you know, the dollar. The fact that studios don't want to be precluded from being able to use AI in the place of writers is what's really salting the wounds, but I don't see it, at least not in the very, very near future happening. One, because, like we talked about, no soul in the machine, but two, the technology is a predictive technology. So it's sort of like you ask it a question or you begin writing a sentence and it can predict the next five words and then kind of build upon that. And it can only draw upon what's already out there in its existing knowledge base from the internet, from whatever people ask it. It's not going to have lived experiences like you and me. And the technology is not at the point yet where I think it could be writing a novel. There are a lot of text limitations to it, but I think if it ever did come to pass... Let's imagine a world where AI is like there was a ghost in the machine and could convince almost anyone. I think you'd have a lot of pushback from readers. You'd have a lot of pushback from writers and people who work within the publishing industry."

Mark Gottlieb is a Vice President and top-selling literary agent at Trident Media Group. He represents a wide range of authors across genres, many of whom have been awarded prestigious prizes and have secured places on the New York Times bestseller list. Among other achievements, Mark has successfully optioned and sold books to film production companies where they were adapted into blockbuster hits, beloved by audiences and critics.

In addition to his work as an agent, Mark lectures on his experiences and craft at such noted venues as the Yale Writers’ Workshop, Cambridge University’s MSt in Creative Writing program, Columbia Publishing Course, and Sarah Lawrence College Writing Institute. He founded Emerson College's Wilde Press, and the Stamford Literature, Arts & Culture Salon (SLACS), where he currently serves as president.

www.tridentmediagroup.com/agents/mark-gottlieb
www.tridentmediagroup.com

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

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As we're entering a world of advanced AI, what is the future of books? What makes stories enduring? And what role do literary agents play in nurturing authors and bringing great stories to the world?

Mark Gottlieb is a Vice President and top-selling literary agent at Trident Media Group. He represents a wide range of authors across genres, many of whom have been awarded prestigious prizes and have secured places on the New York Times bestseller list. Among other achievements, Mark has successfully optioned and sold books to film production companies where they were adapted into blockbuster hits, beloved by audiences and critics.

In addition to his work as an agent, Mark lectures on his experiences and craft at such noted venues as the Yale Writers’ Workshop, Cambridge University’s MSt in Creative Writing program, Columbia Publishing Course, and Sarah Lawrence College Writing Institute. He founded Emerson College's Wilde Press, and the Stamford Literature, Arts & Culture Salon (SLACS), where he currently serves as president.

"I was talking about this with someone the other day, about how there could be AI narrating audiobooks. But what I think it really comes down to is someone with a soul. It's not just the meat and potatoes of the plot of the book, but the actual quality of storytelling, the character development, the message behind the story, things like that. You know, some of the subtle nuances that I think machines will never be able to do, because they'll never have a soul. You know, they'll never be able to fully replicate. They can get very, very close.

The Writers Strike in Hollywood. The main reason why the writers are striking, of course, is because it comes down to the bottom line, which is, you know, the dollar. The fact that studios don't want to be precluded from being able to use AI in the place of writers is what's really salting the wounds, but I don't see it, at least not in the very, very near future happening. One, because, like we talked about, no soul in the machine, but two, the technology is a predictive technology. So it's sort of like you ask it a question or you begin writing a sentence and it can predict the next five words and then kind of build upon that. And it can only draw upon what's already out there in its existing knowledge base from the internet, from whatever people ask it. It's not going to have lived experiences like you and me. And the technology is not at the point yet where I think it could be writing a novel. There are a lot of text limitations to it, but I think if it ever did come to pass... Let's imagine a world where AI is like there was a ghost in the machine and could convince almost anyone. I think you'd have a lot of pushback from readers. You'd have a lot of pushback from writers and people who work within the publishing industry."

www.tridentmediagroup.com/agents/mark-gottlieb
www.tridentmediagroup.com

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

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Richard Vevers is the Founder and CEO of The Ocean Agency. He is a fellow of The Explorers Club and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Rhode Island. He is best known for his leading role in the Emmy Award-winning documentary Chasing Coral on Netflix and his work has been featured in numerous publications and documentaries. Before diving into ocean and coral reef conservation, Vevers worked at some of the top London advertising agencies and then as an artist and underwater photographer. This background guides his unique creative and business-thinking approach to ocean conservation that includes inventing the camera that took Google Street View underwater, pioneering virtual reality ocean education, currently available to over 90 million kids, leading the most comprehensive underwater photographic survey of the world’s coral reefs, and developing a science-based global plan 50 Reefs.

"So I try to approach things in a different way to be a bit more disruptive. I think individual actions are important, but I think you need to turn it on its head so that it is very scalable, and often we focus on the negative. This is a transformative time, and we need to start thinking smarter about the solutions and how we live our lives. And so what I've tried to do is reframe climate action as something that is exciting and an opportunity. This is a transformative time when we need big ideas and there are opportunities for people doing what people do best - coming up with great ideas."

www.theoceanagency.org
www.50reefs.org

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

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Happy World Oceans Day! Today we’re streaming voices of environmentalists and artists with music courtesy of composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist Erland Cooper.

Voices on this episode are

GIULIO BOCCALETTI
Author of Water, A Biography
Natural Resource Security & Environmental Sustainability Expert
Chief Strategy Officer 2016–2020, The Nature Conservancy

PAULA PINHO
Director of Just Transition at the European Commission Directorate-General for Energy

RON GONEN
Founder & CEO of Closed Loop Partners
Fmr. Deputy Commissioner of Sanitation, Recycling & Sustainability, NYC

MARCIA DESANCTIS
Journalist, Essayist,
Author of A Hard Place to Leave: Stories from a Restless Life

JEAN WEINER
Goldman Environmental Prize Winner
Founder of Fondation pour la Protection de la Biodiversité Marine, Haiti

DERRICK EMSLEY
Co-founder & CEO of veritree - Data-driven Restorative Platform & tentree Apparel Co.

DR. FARHANA SULTANA
Co-author: Water Politics: Governance, Justice & the Right to Water
Fmr. UNDP Programme Officer, United Nations Development Programme

NEIL GRIMMER
Brand President of SOURCE Global · Innovator of the SOURCE Hydropanel: Drinking Water Made from Sunlight and Air

ALAN JACOBSEN
Director of Photography
Emmy & Sundance Special Jury Award-Winning & Oscar Nominated Documentaries

RICHARD VEVERS
Founder & CEO of The Ocean Agency

BRIAN WILCOX
Chief Engineer & Co-founder of Marine BioEnergy
Grows Kelp in the Ocean to Provide Carbon-neutral Fuels

SETH M. SIEGEL
Entrepreneur, Public Speaker & NYTimes Bestselling Author
Let There Be Water: Israel’s Solution for a Water-Starved World
Troubled Water: What's Wrong with What We Drink

JOELLE GERGIS
Lead Author of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, Author of Humanity’s Moment

JAY FAMIGLIETTI, Fmr. Senior Water Scientist at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Exec. Director, Global Institute for Water Security, Host of "What About Water?" Podcast

ROB BILOTT
Environmental Lawyer, Partner Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP
Author of Exposure: Poisoned Water, Corporate Greed, and One Lawyer’s Twenty-Year Battle Against DuPont

JILL HEINERTH
Explorer, Presenter, Author of Into The Planet: My Life as a Cave Diver

OSPREY ORIELLE LAKE
Founder & Executive Director of the Women's Earth & Climate Action Network International
Author of Uprisings for the Earth: Reconnecting Culture with Nature & Artist

JESS WILBER
International Outreach Citizens’ Climate Lobby
Coordinator, Senior Stewards Acting for the Environment

BERTRAND PICCARD
Aviator of 1st Round-the-World Solar-Powered Flight, Explorer, Founder, Solar Impulse Foundation

IBRAHIM ALHUSSEINI
Founder & CEO of FullCycle Fund

GARY GRIGGS
Global Oceans Hero Award-Winner · Distinguished Professor of Earth Sciences
Director Institute of Marine Sciences at UC Santa Cruz 1991 to 2017

Sample Credits:

BBC News Excerpt, Public broadcast, 19th July. Fair usage, courtesy Simon Gurney, BBC Studios Limited.

BBC News Excerpt, Public broadcast, 19th July. Fair usage, courtesy Simon Gurney, BBC Studios Limited.

UN Broadcast Excerpt, Greta Thunberg, Young Climate Activist at the Opening of the Climate Action Summit 2019, United Nations license 24 October 2022.

CBS News Excerpt 1970. Fair usage, archive courtesy Leah Hodge, CBS

www.erlandcooper.com

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Artworks by Mia Funk www.miafunk.com

Music from Folded Landscapes courtesy of Erland Cooper and Universal Music Enterprises.

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"Putting design first, it really enables us to shape a future that we don't yet know. But we need to be super tactile and practical about it as well. And then seeing that is something that design very much has the ability to do. And at the same time, having this growing frustration that wherever you go, wherever you talk about sustainability, it was a compromise. It was something that meant uglier, less convenient, more expensive, all these different things, but then diving into the Danish Design heritage, seeing that what set them apart was that after the World Wars, they had a social purpose of democratizing and rebuilding the welfare state, and that was not something that lessened the final result. On the contrary, it heightened the ambition, the final design, and the solutions."

Ditte Lysgaard Vind is a renowned circular economy and design expert and author of Danish Design Heritage & Global Sustainability (Routledge 2023) and A Changemakers Guide to the Future. She is the Chairwoman of the Danish Design Council and founder of The Circular Way. She is known for pioneering new materials as well as business models, while sharing the knowledge gained from practice through teaching and thought leadership, and is a member of the Executive board of The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts Schools of Architecture, Design and Conservation as well as the global SDG innovation lab UNLEASH.

www.thecircularway.com
http://danishdesigncouncil.dk/en
www.routledge.com/Danish-Design-Heritage-and-Global-Sustainability/Vind/p/book/9781032198200

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

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Happy World Environment Day! Ditte Lysgaard Vind is a renowned circular economy and design expert and author of Danish Design Heritage & Global Sustainability (Routledge 2023) and A Changemakers Guide to the Future. She is the Chairwoman of the Danish Design Council and founder of The Circular Way. She is known for pioneering new materials as well as business models, while sharing the knowledge gained from practice through teaching and thought leadership, and is a member of the Executive board of The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts Schools of Architecture, Design and Conservation as well as the global SDG innovation lab UNLEASH.

"Putting design first, it really enables us to shape a future that we don't yet know. But we need to be super tactile and practical about it as well. And then seeing that is something that design very much has the ability to do. And at the same time, having this growing frustration that wherever you go, wherever you talk about sustainability, it was a compromise. It was something that meant uglier, less convenient, more expensive, all these different things, but then diving into the Danish Design heritage, seeing that what set them apart was that after the World Wars, they had a social purpose of democratizing and rebuilding the welfare state, and that was not something that lessened the final result. On the contrary, it heightened the ambition, the final design, and the solutions."

www.thecircularway.com
http://danishdesigncouncil.dk/en
www.routledge.com/Danish-Design-Heritage-and-Global-Sustainability/Vind/p/book/9781032198200

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

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"Social media is basically built around: Oh, so this is what you think of the world? Well, here are some people who think just the way you do. Listen to them and no one else. So, that is, of course, a great way to manipulate people. Tell them that they're right and have them go off in their own little bubble.

If I meet you in the street, I will put on a certain demeanor. I will smile. I say hi. I want to elicit a positive response from you. That also means that I have influenced your emotional state. Basically, you can't communicate anything to anyone without in some way influencing their thoughts or their behavior. Communication, influence, and manipulation, it's all part of the package. Our brains are hardwired to react to this. That's why marketing works so well."

Henrik Fexeus is an internationally bestselling author, lecturer, performer, and star of the TV show Mind Melt. An expert in psychology and communications, he travels the world "reading minds" and teaching others how to understand and manipulate human behavior through body language and persuasion. Henrik has studied mental skills like NLP, hypnosis, acting, and magic.

https://henrikfexeus.se/en/

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

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Henrik Fexeus is an internationally bestselling author, lecturer, performer, and star of the TV show Mind Melt. An expert in psychology and communications, he travels the world "reading minds" and teaching others how to understand and manipulate human behavior through body language and persuasion. Henrik has studied mental skills like NLP, hypnosis, acting, and magic.

"Social media is basically built around: Oh, so this is what you think of the world? Well, here are some people who think just the way you do. Listen to them and no one else. So, that is, of course, a great way to manipulate people. Tell them that they're right and have them go off in their own little bubble.

If I meet you in the street, I will put on a certain demeanor. I will smile. I say hi. I want to elicit a positive response from you. That also means that I have influenced your emotional state. Basically, you can't communicate anything to anyone without in some way influencing their thoughts or their behavior. Communication, influence, and manipulation, it's all part of the package. Our brains are hardwired to react to this. That's why marketing works so well."

https://henrikfexeus.se/en/

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

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"I think it's led to a focus on success and standing out, and I do think that the more young people can walk away with an understanding that perhaps the best thing they can do in life is actually contribute to the lives of others, that's probably where they're going to get most of their happiness from and most of their fulfillment from. And the rest is probably a little bit hollow. You know, money doesn't really buy happiness. I mean, it certainly buys comfort, and we do know some money is very important for that. But you do need to feel connected to other people, and you can't whilst consuming and even promoting ourselves on social media. Or playing the popularity game or aiming to be famous. That seems to be a value that a lot of young people have these days, but I don't think that it's going to breed happiness. And so being able to really identify what the values are that are going to make us happy, that are going to connect us to meaning and purpose in other people and that will actually contribute to a better world for all of us, I think would be great. And I think there's competition and space for young people's minds at the moment. So if we can get them on board with some of those values and approaches to life, I think the future generations would probably be better off."

Brock Bastian is author of The Other Side of Happiness: Embracing a More Fearless Approach to Living and a professor at University of Melbourne’s School of Psychological Sciences. His research and writing focus on pain, happiness, morality, and wellbeing. In his search for a new perspective on what makes for the good life, Bastian has studied why promoting happiness may have paradoxical effects; why we need negative and painful experiences in life to build meaning, purpose, resilience, and ultimately greater fulfilment in life; and why behavioural ethics is necessary for understanding how we reason about personal and social issues and resolve conflicts of interest.

www.brockbastian.com

www.abebooks.com/9780141982106/Side-Happiness-Embracing-Fearless-Approach-0141982101/plp

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

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Brock Bastian is author of The Other Side of Happiness: Embracing a More Fearless Approach to Living and a professor at University of Melbourne’s School of Psychological Sciences. His research and writing focus on pain, happiness, morality, and wellbeing. In his search for a new perspective on what makes for the good life, Bastian has studied why promoting happiness may have paradoxical effects; why we need negative and painful experiences in life to build meaning, purpose, resilience, and ultimately greater fulfilment in life; and why behavioural ethics is necessary for understanding how we reason about personal and social issues and resolve conflicts of interest.

"I think it's led to a focus on success and standing out, and I do think that the more young people can walk away with an understanding that perhaps the best thing they can do in life is actually contribute to the lives of others, that's probably where they're going to get most of their happiness from and most of their fulfillment from. And the rest is probably a little bit hollow. You know, money doesn't really buy happiness. I mean, it certainly buys comfort, and we do know some money is very important for that. But you do need to feel connected to other people, and you can't whilst consuming and even promoting ourselves on social media. Or playing the popularity game or aiming to be famous. That seems to be a value that a lot of young people have these days, but I don't think that it's going to breed happiness. And so being able to really identify what the values are that are going to make us happy, that are going to connect us to meaning and purpose in other people and that will actually contribute to a better world for all of us, I think would be great. And I think there's competition and space for young people's minds at the moment. So if we can get them on board with some of those values and approaches to life, I think the future generations would probably be better off."

www.brockbastian.com

www.abebooks.com/9780141982106/Side-Happiness-Embracing-Fearless-Approach-0141982101/plp

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

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“Those who define the world based on money, industry, and production capacity have seemingly been spared from acquiring an understanding of biology, geology, or ecology. They calculate statistics and feel optimistic. What’s fatal to the Earth and unsustainable for the future is hidden by the words ‘favorable economic outlook’. Increased oil production is positive for the economy; doubling aluminum production is positive. Economic growth doesn’t distinguish sustainability and unsustainability. Imagine making no distinction between strengthening or fattening, or between a child or a tumor growing in the womb. Growth is simply presented as an inherent good; there’s no distinction made between malignant and benign growth.”

― Andri Snær Magnason, On Time and Water

Andri Snær Magnason is an award winning author of On Time and Water, The Casket of Time, LoveStar, Dreamland and The Story of the Blue Planet. His work has been published in more than 35 languages. He has a written in most genres, novels, poetry, plays, short stories, non fiction as well as being a documentary film maker. His novel, LoveStar got a Philip K. Dick Special Citation, and the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire in France and “Novel of the year” in Iceland. The Story of the Blue Planet, was the first children’s book to receive the Icelandic Literary Award and has been published or performed in 35 countries. The Blue Planet received the Janusz Korczak Honorary Award in Poland 2000, the UKLA Award in the UK and Children's book of the Year in China. His book – Dreamland – a Self Help Manual for a Frightened Nation takes on these issues and has sold more than 20.000 copies in Iceland. He co directed Dreamland - a feature length documentary film based on the book. Footage from Dreamland and an interview with Andri can be seen in the Oscar Award-winning documentary Inside Job by Charles Ferguson. His most recent book, Tímakistan, the Time Casket has now been published in more than 10 languages, was nominated as the best fantasy book in Finland 2016 with authors like Ursula K. le Guin and David Mitchell. In English six books are currently available: Bónus Poetry, The Story of The Blue Planet, LoveStar, Dreamland and The Casket of Time, (Tímakistan) and On Time and Water.

www.andrimagnason.com

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

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Andri Snær Magnason is an award winning author of On Time and Water, The Casket of Time, LoveStar, Dreamland and The Story of the Blue Planet. His work has been published in more than 35 languages. He has a written in most genres, novels, poetry, plays, short stories, non fiction as well as being a documentary film maker. His novel, LoveStar got a Philip K. Dick Special Citation, and the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire in France and “Novel of the year” in Iceland. The Story of the Blue Planet, was the first children’s book to receive the Icelandic Literary Award and has been published or performed in 35 countries. The Blue Planet received the Janusz Korczak Honorary Award in Poland 2000, the UKLA Award in the UK and Children's book of the Year in China. His book – Dreamland – a Self Help Manual for a Frightened Nation takes on these issues and has sold more than 20.000 copies in Iceland. He co directed Dreamland - a feature length documentary film based on the book. Footage from Dreamland and an interview with Andri can be seen in the Oscar Award-winning documentary Inside Job by Charles Ferguson. His most recent book, Tímakistan, the Time Casket has now been published in more than 10 languages, was nominated as the best fantasy book in Finland 2016 with authors like Ursula K. le Guin and David Mitchell. In English six books are currently available: Bónus Poetry, The Story of The Blue Planet, LoveStar, Dreamland and The Casket of Time, (Tímakistan) and On Time and Water.

“Those who define the world based on money, industry, and production capacity have seemingly been spared from acquiring an understanding of biology, geology, or ecology. They calculate statistics and feel optimistic. What’s fatal to the Earth and unsustainable for the future is hidden by the words ‘favorable economic outlook’. Increased oil production is positive for the economy; doubling aluminum production is positive. Economic growth doesn’t distinguish sustainability and unsustainability. Imagine making no distinction between strengthening or fattening, or between a child or a tumor growing in the womb. Growth is simply presented as an inherent good; there’s no distinction made between malignant and benign growth.”

― Andri Snær Magnason, On Time and Water

www.andrimagnason.com

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
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"ChatGPT can play on our anthropomorphic tendencies and convince us that there's a mind there, even though what it's going on is just statistics under the hood. And that's dangerous if we live in a world where we feel like we're interacting with other conscious minds, even though we know we are not. And we nonetheless feel it's conscious because of the way our mind works, not because of the way its system works."

Anil Seth is a neuroscientist, author, and public speaker who has pioneered research into the brain basis of consciousness for more than twenty years. He is the author of Being You: A New Science of Consciousness, as well as the best-selling 30 Second Brain, and other books. He is a Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex, where he is Co-Director of the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science, and is Co-Director of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) Program on Brain, Mind, and Consciousness, and of the Leverhulme Doctoral Scholarship Programme: From Sensation and Perception to Awareness. He has a TED talk on consciousness and appeared in several films, including The Most Unknown and The Search. He has written for Aeon, The Guardian, Granta, New Scientist, and Scientific American. He was the 2017 President of the British Science Association (Psychology Section) and winner of the 2019 KidSpirit Perspectives award. He has published more than 180 academic papers and is listed in 2019 and 2020 Web of Science ‘highly cited researcher’ index, which recognizes the world’s most influential researchers over the past decade.

www.anilseth.com
www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/566315/being-you-by-anil-seth
https://perceptioncensus.dreamachine.world/
https://dreamachine.world/
@anilkseth

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www.oneplanetpodcast.org
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Anil Seth is a neuroscientist, author, and public speaker who has pioneered research into the brain basis of consciousness for more than twenty years. He is the author of Being You: A New Science of Consciousness, as well as the best-selling 30 Second Brain, and other books. He is a Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex, where he is Co-Director of the Sussex Centre for Consciousness Science, and is Co-Director of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) Program on Brain, Mind, and Consciousness, and of the Leverhulme Doctoral Scholarship Programme: From Sensation and Perception to Awareness. He has a TED talk on consciousness and appeared in several films, including The Most Unknown and The Search. He has written for Aeon, The Guardian, Granta, New Scientist, and Scientific American. He was the 2017 President of the British Science Association (Psychology Section) and winner of the 2019 KidSpirit Perspectives award. He has published more than 180 academic papers and is listed in 2019 and 2020 Web of Science ‘highly cited researcher’ index, which recognizes the world’s most influential researchers over the past decade.

"ChatGPT can play on our anthropomorphic tendencies and convince us that there's a mind there, even though what it's going on is just statistics under the hood. And that's dangerous if we live in a world where we feel like we're interacting with other conscious minds, even though we know we are not. And we nonetheless feel it's conscious because of the way our mind works, not because of the way its system works."

www.anilseth.com
www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/566315/being-you-by-anil-seth
https://perceptioncensus.dreamachine.world/
https://dreamachine.world/
@anilkseth

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

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Listen to Part 4 of this Special Series with music courtesy of composer Max Richter. All voices on this episode are from our interviews for The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast:

INGRID NEWKIRK, Founder & President of PETA - People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals

JEFFREY D. SACHS, President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, Director of Center for Sustainable Development, Columbia University, Economist, Author

JENNIFER MORGAN, Fmr. Executive Director of Greenpeace International, Special Envoy for International Climate Action, German Foreign Ministry

MERLIN SHELDRAKE, Biologist & Bestselling Author of “Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, and Shape Our Futures”, Winner of the Wainwright Prize 2021

WALTER STAHEL, Architect, Economist, Founding Father of Circular Economy, Founder-Director, Product-Life Institute

ARMOND COHEN, Executive Director of Clean Air Task Force

PIA MANCINI, Co-founder/CEO of Open Collective - Chair of DemocracyEarth Foundation, YGL World Economic Forum

RON GONEN, Founder & CEO of Closed Loop Partners, Former Deputy Commissioner of Sanitation, Recycling & Sustainability, NYC

AIMEE NEZHUKUMATATHIL, Poet & Author of “World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks and Other Astonishments”

ANA CASTILLO, Award-Winning Xicana Activist, Editor, Poet, Novelist & Artist

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

www.maxrichtermusic.com
https://studiorichtermahr.com

Max Richter’s music featured in this episode are “On the Nature of Daylight” from The Blue Notebooks, “Path 19: Yet Frailest” from Sleep.

Music is courtesy of Max Richter, Universal Music Enterprises, and Mute Song.

Artwork: Saudade, Mia Funk

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Listen to Part 3 of this Special Series with music courtesy of composer Max Richter.

Voices on this episode:

PAULA PINHO, Director of Just Transition at the European Commission Directorate-General for Energy

PIA MANCINI, Co-founder/CEO of Open Collective - Chair of DemocracyEarth Foundation, YGL World Economic Forum

JENNIFER MORGAN, Fmr. Executive Director of Greenpeace International, Special Envoy for International Climate Action, German Foreign Ministry

WALTER STAHEL, Architect, Economist, Founding Father of Circular Economy, Founder-Director, Product-Life Institute

MERLIN SHELDRAKE, Biologist & Bestselling Author of Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, and Shape Our Futures, Winner of the Wainwright Prize 2021

RON GONEN, Founder & CEO of Closed Loop Partners, Former Deputy Commissioner of Sanitation, Recycling & Sustainability, NYC

MANUELA LUCÁ-DAZIO, Executive Director, Pritzker Architecture Prize, Fmr. Exec. Director of Venice Biennale, Visual Arts & Architecture Dept.

NICHOLAS ROYLE, Co-author of "An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory”, Author of “Mother: A Memoir”

MARK BURGMAN, Director, Centre for Environmental Policy, Imperial College London, Editor-in-Chief, Conservation Biology

MIKE DAVIS, CEO of Global Witness

JAY FAMIGLIETTI, Fmr. Senior Water Scientist at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Exec. Director, Global Institute for Water Security, Host of "What About Water?" Podcast

BRITT WRAY, Author of “Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Crisis”, Researcher Working on Climate Change & Mental Health, Stanford University

RICHARD VEVERS, Founder & CEO of The Ocean Agency

ARMOND COHEN, Executive Director of Clean Air Task Force

BILL HARE, Founder & CEO of Climate Analytics, Physicist, Climate Scientist

DAVID PALUMBO-LIU, Activist, Professor & Author of “Speaking Out of Place: Getting Our Political Voices Back”, Host of Speaking out of Place Podcast

IBRAHIM ALHUSSEINI, Founder & CEO of FullCycle Fund

GAIA VINCE, Science Writer, Broadcaster & Author of “Transcendence” & “Adventures in the Anthropocene”

INGRID NEWKIRK, Founder & President of PETA - People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

www.maxrichtermusic.com
https://studiorichtermahr.com

Max Richter’s music featured in this episode are “On the Nature of Daylight” from The Blue Notebooks, “Path 19: Yet Frailest” from Sleep.

Music is courtesy of Max Richter, Universal Music Enterprises, and Mute Song.

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Listen to Part 2 of this Special Series with music courtesy of composer Max Richter.

Voices on this episode:

MANUELA LUCÁ-DAZIO - Executive Director, Pritzker Architecture Prize - Fmr. Exec. Director of Venice Biennale, Visual Arts & Architecture Dept.

BRITT WRAY - Author of “Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Crisis”, Researcher Working on Climate Change & Mental Health, Stanford University

WALTER STAHEL - Architect, Economist, Founding Father of Circular Economy - Founder-Director, Product-Life Institute

MATHIS WACKERNAGEL - Founder & President of the Global Footprint Network - World Sustainability Award Winner

JAY FAMIGLIETTI, Fmr. Senior Water Scientist at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Exec. Director, Global Institute for Water Security, Host of "What About Water?" Podcast

RICHARD VEVERS - Founder & CEO of The Ocean Agency

ARMOND COHEN - Executive Director of Clean Air Task Force

PAULA PINHO - Director of Just Transition at the European Commission Directorate-General for Energy

MARTIN VON HILDEBRAND - Indigenous Rights Activist - Winner of Right Livelihood & Skoll Awards - Founder of Fundacion Gaia Amazonas, named #40 NGOs of the World by The Global Journal

HAROLD P. SJURSEN - Professor of Philosophy - Science, Technology, the Arts - NYU, Beihang University, East China University

BILL HARE - Founder & CEO of Climate Analytics, Physicist, Climate Scientist

SIR ANDY HAINES - Tyler Prize Award-winner for Environmental Achievement - Professor of Environmental Change & Public Health

LISA JACKSON PULVER - Deputy Vice-Chancellor of University of Sydney's Indigenous Strategy & Services

Max Richter’s music featured in this episode:

“Spring 1” from The New Four Seasons – Vivaldi Recomposed
Vladimir’s Blues” from The Blue Notebooks
"Lullaby From The Westcoast Sleepers” from 24 Postcards in Full Colour,

Music is courtesy of Max Richter, Universal Music Enterprises, and Mute Song.

www.maxrichtermusic.com
https://studiorichtermahr.com

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

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Today we’re streaming voices of environmentalists, artists, students, and teachers. Enjoy Part 1 of this Special Series with music courtesy of composer Max Richter.

Voices on this episode are

MAX RICHTER

INGRID NEWKIRK, Founder of PETA

BERTRAND PICCARD, Aviator of 1st Round-the-World Solar-Powered Flight, Explorer, Founder, Solar Impulse Foundation

CARL SAFINA, Ecologist, Founding President of Safina Center

CLAIRE POTTER, Designer, Lecturer, Author of “Welcome to the Circular Economy”

ADA LIMÓN, U.S. Poet Laureate, Host of The Slowdown podcast

CYNTHIA DANIELS, Grammy and Emmy award-winning producer, engineer, composer

JOELLE GERGIS, Lead Author of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, Author of “Humanity’s Moment”

KATHLEEN ROGERS, President of EARTHDAY.ORG

ODED GALOR, Author of “The Journey of Humanity”, Founder of Unified Growth Theory

SIR GEOFF MULGAN, Fmr. Chief Executive of Nesta, Fmr, Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit Director & Downing Street’s Head of Policy, Author of “Another World is Possible”

ALAIN ROBERT, Rock & Urban Climber known for Free Solo Climbing 150+ of the World’s Tallest Skyscrapers using no Climbing Equipment

NOAH WILSON-RICH, Co-founder & CEO of The Best Bees Company

CHRIS FUNK, Director of the Climate Hazards Center at UC Santa Barbara, Author of Drought, Flood, Fire: How Climate Change Contributes to Recent Catastrophes

DAVID FARRIER, Author of “Footprints: In Search of Future Fossils”

DR. SUZANNE SIMARD, Professor of Forest Ecology, Author of “Finding the Mother Tree”

PETER SINGER, “Most Influential Living Philosopher”, Author, Founder of The Life You Can Save

JENNIFER MORGAN, Fmr. Executive Director of Greenpeace International, Special Envoy for International Climate Action, German Foreign Ministry

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

www.maxrichtermusic.com
https://studiorichtermahr.com

Max Richter’s music featured in this episode are “On the Nature of Daylight” from The Blue Notebooks, “Path 19: Yet Frailest” from Sleep.

Music is courtesy of Max Richter, Universal Music Enterprises, and Mute Song.

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“There are so many things that I would like to see in the future, including the outcomes of research into it. For instance, things like Tinder and the ways that young people find their partner for life. It's my impression from my broad network that very view of these digitalized friends or partner apps work simply because there are so many things that are important, in touch and smell and the direct nonverbal communication of the body also that you don't see in all these things, that's so extremely important. So I think that many of these apps will simply not survive. That's my optimistic view, again, because young people will learn that this is not the way that they get to the important things in life.

I think that from my perspective as a stress researcher, young people should engage in training themselves with meditation and think hard about what they want later in life. Not everything is about earning money. And I would like to see young people in schools be more in contact with nature. Go outside and see what nature does for you. I mean, for us. When I was younger it was so natural to go outside and play in the green. In this little village where I live, there are many places where the kids can play, but we never see them. In the last 20 years, we never see them outside. That cannot be good. They should go outside not only for their mental health, which reduces stress, but also to learn what nature does for their immune system when they play outdoors. And the other is to refrain from so much social media. It's so important. We have to get them off of their smartphones to learn to deal with the real world and find real friends.”

Dr. JF Brosschot is a professor of health psychology at Leiden University. He is one of the first to show that stress affects the immune system. Through his research of psychophysiological mechanisms of stress in daily life, while researching stress as a worldwide epidemic, Brosschot also recognizes the importance of where all this stress stems from and why this is happening. Now, his specific inquiry of how unconscious and prolonged physiological stress responses affect our mental and physical well-being has opened up the conversation to mental health and its tangible effects.

www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/staffmembers/jos-brosschot

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Dr. JF Brosschot is a professor of health psychology at Leiden University. He is one of the first to show that stress affects the immune system. Through his research of psychophysiological mechanisms of stress in daily life, while researching stress as a worldwide epidemic, Brosschot also recognizes the importance of where all this stress stems from and why this is happening. Now, his specific inquiry of how unconscious and prolonged physiological stress responses affect our mental and physical well-being has opened up the conversation to mental health and its tangible effects.

“There are so many things that I would like to see in the future, including the outcomes of research into it. For instance, things like Tinder and the ways that young people find their partner for life. It's my impression from my broad network that very view of these digitalized friends or partner apps work simply because there are so many things that are important, in touch and smell and the direct nonverbal communication of the body also that you don't see in all these things, that's so extremely important. So I think that many of these apps will simply not survive. That's my optimistic view, again, because young people will learn that this is not the way that they get to the important things in life.

I think that from my perspective as a stress researcher, young people should engage in training themselves with meditation and think hard about what they want later in life. Not everything is about earning money. And I would like to see young people in schools be more in contact with nature. Go outside and see what nature does for you. I mean, for us. When I was younger it was so natural to go outside and play in the green. In this little village where I live, there are many places where the kids can play, but we never see them. In the last 20 years, we never see them outside. That cannot be good. They should go outside not only for their mental health, which reduces stress, but also to learn what nature does for their immune system when they play outdoors. And the other is to refrain from so much social media. It's so important. We have to get them off of their smartphones to learn to deal with the real world and find real friends.”

www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/staffmembers/jos-brosschot

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“Well, it's difficult. At the height of our activism, like all of the democracy movements in the world that were happening altogether, there was this emerging moment where Tunisia, Egypt, Iran, Spain, and Chile...I think that we were kind of super in love at the time with the technology and the tools. Everything seemed very fresh and groundbreaking, but I think we were kind of naive in saying that a particular set of tools was really going to bring the change that we wanted to see without us really looking at the B side of it. All the tools that we were using are designed for virality. They're not designed for healthy public debate, not even generating consensus because that's not even the problem at this stage. We're so far away from that. They're not designed to bring out the best in us. They're designed to bring out the worst in us, and that's what pays off. So I think we missed that as a generation or as an activist group. We missed that. The tools that we were so smitten by were really producing this almost collateral damage to our civic tissue and our societies. And we are so far down that rabbit hole at the moment that I think there's so much we need to walk back in terms of the power platforms have lack of accountability these algorithms have.

So I guess as I grew older, I came to realize that most of the challenges that we face are not necessarily technological. They are in part, but they're also very human, right? They're very much human challenges. And we need to build these digital public spaces in a very different way than we have done.”

Pia Mancini is a democracy activist, political scientist, open source sustainer, co-founder & CEO at Open Collective and Chair of DemocracyEarth Foundation. She has worked in politics in Argentina as the Chief of Advisers and Deputy Secretary of Political Affairs, Government of the City of Buenos Aires and CIPPEC think tank. She has developed technology for democracy around the world and is a YC Alum, Young Global Leaders (World Economic Forum). She co-founded DemocracyOS & The Net Party (Partido de la Red).

www.piamancini.com

https://opencollective.com

https://democracy.earth

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

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Pia Mancini is a democracy activist, political scientist, open source sustainer, co-founder & CEO at Open Collective and Chair of DemocracyEarth Foundation. She has worked in politics in Argentina as the Chief of Advisers and Deputy Secretary of Political Affairs, Government of the City of Buenos Aires and CIPPEC think tank. She has developed technology for democracy around the world and is a YC Alum, Young Global Leaders (World Economic Forum). She co-founded DemocracyOS & The Net Party (Partido de la Red).

“Well, it's difficult. At the height of our activism, like all of the democracy movements in the world that were happening altogether, there was this emerging moment where Tunisia, Egypt, Iran, Spain, and Chile...I think that we were kind of super in love at the time with the technology and the tools. Everything seemed very fresh and groundbreaking, but I think we were kind of naive in saying that a particular set of tools was really going to bring the change that we wanted to see without us really looking at the B side of it. All the tools that we were using are designed for virality. They're not designed for healthy public debate, not even generating consensus because that's not even the problem at this stage. We're so far away from that. They're not designed to bring out the best in us. They're designed to bring out the worst in us, and that's what pays off. So I think we missed that as a generation or as an activist group. We missed that. The tools that we were so smitten by were really producing this almost collateral damage to our civic tissue and our societies. And we are so far down that rabbit hole at the moment that I think there's so much we need to walk back in terms of the power platforms have lack of accountability these algorithms have.

So I guess as I grew older, I came to realize that most of the challenges that we face are not necessarily technological. They are in part, but they're also very human, right? They're very much human challenges. And we need to build these digital public spaces in a very different way than we have done.”

www.piamancini.com

https://opencollective.com

https://democracy.earth

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

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“I think the Pritzker Architecture Prize has the power to foster and enhance the discussion on the one end. And on the other end, it has also the power to involve a more global discussion. So it's not just limited to architects because ultimately architecture is what we live in and we use every day of our lives. So all of us should be involved in this discussion. It's really a common responsibility where the architect, who from my point of view is the translator and the interpreter and the catalyst of all this. So we should rethink what sustainability is and combine the art of architecture and the benefits to humanity and the built environment. This, I think, is a lesson for every single architect from all over the world.”

Manuela Lucá-Dazio is the newly appointed Executive Director of the Pritzker Architecture Prize. In this capacity, she works closely with the jury, however, she does not vote in the proceedings. She is the former Executive Director, Department of Visual Arts and Architecture of La Biennale di Venezia, where she managed exhibitions with distinguished curators, architects, artists, and critics to realize the International Art Exhibition and the International Architecture Exhibition, each edition since 2009. Preceding that, she was responsible for the technical organization and production of both Exhibitions, beginning in 1999. She holds a PhD in History of Architecture from the University of Roma-Chieti, Italy and lives in Paris, France.

www.pritzkerprize.com
www.pritzkerprize.com/jury#jury-node-2236
www.labiennale.org/en

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www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

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Manuela Lucá-Dazio is the newly appointed Executive Director of the Pritzker Architecture Prize. In this capacity, she works closely with the jury, however, she does not vote in the proceedings. She is the former Executive Director, Department of Visual Arts and Architecture of La Biennale di Venezia, where she managed exhibitions with distinguished curators, architects, artists, and critics to realize the International Art Exhibition and the International Architecture Exhibition, each edition since 2009. Preceding that, she was responsible for the technical organization and production of both Exhibitions, beginning in 1999. She holds a PhD in History of Architecture from the University of Roma-Chieti, Italy and lives in Paris, France.

“I think the Pritzker Architecture Prize has the power to foster and enhance the discussion on the one end. And on the other end, it has also the power to involve a more global discussion. So it's not just limited to architects because ultimately architecture is what we live in and we use every day of our lives. So all of us should be involved in this discussion. It's really a common responsibility where the architect, who from my point of view is the translator and the interpreter and the catalyst of all this. So we should rethink what sustainability is and combine the art of architecture and the benefits to humanity and the built environment. This, I think, is a lesson for every single architect from all over the world.”

www.pritzkerprize.com
www.pritzkerprize.com/jury#jury-node-2236
www.labiennale.org/en
Photo credit: Anselm Kiefer

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

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“ ‘The Question Concerning Technology’, in which Heidegger warned that nature had become just a source of resources for us, commodities, what he called standing reserves. Something that had no value other than for our ability to exploit it and mine it and use it for our use and purposes. Whether it's utilitarianism, which is sort of consequentialist ethics, always act in a way so that the outcome of your action will produce the most benefit. Or duty ethics, which simply says there are certain things which are good and right and necessary from an ethical point of view, and we must do it regardless of the immediate or perceived consequences.”

Harold P. Sjursen is an educator and administrator having served on the faculty of both a liberal arts college and school of engineering. His background is in the history of philosophy, but since childhood has sustained an interest in science and technology. His current research interests focus on the philosophy of technology, global philosophy, and technological ethics. His engineering education projects address issues related to the internationalization of higher education, the integration of the liberal arts and engineering and ethics beyond the codes for engineers.

http://harold-sjursen.org

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Harold P. Sjursen is an educator and administrator having served on the faculty of both a liberal arts college and school of engineering. His background is in the history of philosophy, but since childhood has sustained an interest in science and technology. His current research interests focus on the philosophy of technology, global philosophy, and technological ethics. His engineering education projects address issues related to the internationalization of higher education, the integration of the liberal arts and engineering and ethics beyond the codes for engineers.

“ ‘The Question Concerning Technology’, in which Heidegger warned that nature had become just a source of resources for us, commodities, what he called standing reserves. Something that had no value other than for our ability to exploit it and mine it and use it for our use and purposes. Whether it's utilitarianism, which is sort of consequentialist ethics, always act in a way so that the outcome of your action will produce the most benefit. Or duty ethics, which simply says there are certain things which are good and right and necessary from an ethical point of view, and we must do it regardless of the immediate or perceived consequences.”

http://harold-sjursen.org

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

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Josh Kampel is the CEO of Clarim Media where he oversees the overall strategic direction of the organization as well as works closely with the management teams of the individual portfolio companies to build scalable products and services.

Prior to Clarim, Josh served as CEO of Techonomy Media, which was sold to Clarim Holdings in 2018. At Techonomy, Josh spent 8 years driving sustainable business growth through strategic partnerships and new product development. He built Techonomy to be one of the leading media companies covering technology and it’s impact on business and society. Techonomy Climate 2023 takes place March 28th. The conference surveys the booming climate tech sector and highlight companies making the most significant impact.

“Think about how do they deliver value to all of those constituents rather than just their shareholders. So they will create the more successful long-term companies, especially generationally, as Gen X and millennials care more and more about mission and purpose. This idea of greenwashing or now what we can call woke-washing and that ESG goals are typically held within PR groups, within companies. They just talk about what they're doing versus being held accountable. I think we will continue to see that paradigm shift towards accountability, transparency of companies doing the right thing. I'm impressed every day when I see next generation leaders, entrepreneurs, and educational institutions focus more on this idea of social entrepreneurship. That they're really embedding some of these core values into the next generation of leaders.”

www.clarim-media.com
https://techonomy.com/event/techonomy-climate-2023

Season 2 of Business & Society focuses on CEOs , Sustainability & Environmental Solutions
Business & Society is a limited series co-hosted by Bruce Piasecki & Mia Funk
www.oneplanetpodcast.org

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“So we use architectural scale 3D printers to construct schools, and it's a hybrid design, so there are 3D printed walls and then locally sourced materials for the rough door windows. And that was an intentional design choice. So we're blending old and new and still being able to train local workers on how they can operate the printer and doing technology transfer that way. In terms of how it works on the ground, we have a combination of teams that come together based around the world, but primarily in Madagascar itself. So we have the local construction workers and engineers, and then the architects, and then of course the technology partner. We're planning and currently in development for the Honeycomb Campus, which will be eight huts on about an acre of land on the west coast of Madagascar. The supply of teachers and the daily operations and management of the school are done by local partners.”

Maggie Grout is the founder and CEO of Thinking Huts, an international NGO that increases global access to education with innovative, humanitarian-driven technology solutions. Founded by Maggie 8 years ago, when she was15, Thinking Huts seeks to empower young people, especially girls, to achieve more opportunities by obtaining an education. Grout gave a TEDx talk in 2021 on “how we can tackle the global education crisis with 3D printing.”

Grout was born in a rural village in China and adopted at a young age, but where she came from largely shaped her outlook on life and subliminally led her to start Thinking Huts in 2015. Growing up in London and Colorado, Grout was exposed to the melting pot of cultures in British and American society, but she often wondered why so many people were unaware of how others lived an ocean away. She understood what poverty looks like firsthand and how education empowers people to attain greater opportunities.

www.thinkinghuts.org

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www.oneplanetpodcast.org
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Maggie Grout is the founder and CEO of Thinking Huts, an international NGO that increases global access to education with innovative, humanitarian-driven technology solutions. Founded by Maggie 8 years ago, when she was15, Thinking Huts seeks to empower young people, especially girls, to achieve more opportunities by obtaining an education. Grout gave a TEDx talk in 2021 on “how we can tackle the global education crisis with 3D printing.”

Grout was born in a rural village in China and adopted at a young age, but where she came from largely shaped her outlook on life and subliminally led her to start Thinking Huts in 2015. Growing up in London and Colorado, Grout was exposed to the melting pot of cultures in British and American society, but she often wondered why so many people were unaware of how others lived an ocean away. She understood what poverty looks like firsthand and how education empowers people to attain greater opportunities.

“So we use architectural scale 3D printers to construct schools, and it's a hybrid design, so there are 3D printed walls and then locally sourced materials for the rough door windows. And that was an intentional design choice. So we're blending old and new and still being able to train local workers on how they can operate the printer and doing technology transfer that way. In terms of how it works on the ground, we have a combination of teams that come together based around the world, but primarily in Madagascar itself. So we have the local construction workers and engineers, and then the architects, and then of course the technology partner. We're planning and currently in development for the Honeycomb Campus, which will be eight huts on about an acre of land on the west coast of Madagascar. The supply of teachers and the daily operations and management of the school are done by local partners.”

www.thinkinghuts.org

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

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“I definitely believe we need a Global Green New Deal which will involve massive structural de-growth of the fashion industry. But as you say, we have to make sure that we don't just repeat the sacrifice zones that we are seeing anyway with climate change, whereby we say to the 4 million garment workers in Bangladesh. ‘Okay. You know, it is been great. You've made several billion bits of clothing, but we are off now and, you know, you have no more jobs and no more no infrastructure.’ So yeah, it has to be a just transition. But I think it's in many ways a bit of an exciting opportunity whereby we could really overturn this global export economy.”

Tansy E. Hoskins is an award winning author and journalist who investigates the global fashion industry. She’s the author of The Anti-Capitalist Book Of Fashion, Foot Work, and Stitched Up. This work has taken her to Bangladesh, India, North Macedonia, and to the Topshop warehouses in Solihull.

www.plutobooks.com/9780745346618/the-anti-capitalist-book-of-fashion/

www.amazon.co.uk/Foot-Work-What-Your-Shoes-Are-Doing-to-the-World-Tansy-Hoskins/dp/1474609856/

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

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Tansy E. Hoskins is an award winning author and journalist who investigates the global fashion industry. She’s the author of The Anti-Capitalist Book Of Fashion, Foot Work, and Stitched Up. This work has taken her to Bangladesh, India, North Macedonia, and to the Topshop warehouses in Solihull.

“I definitely believe we need a Global Green New Deal which will involve massive structural de-growth of the fashion industry. But as you say, we have to make sure that we don't just repeat the sacrifice zones that we are seeing anyway with climate change, whereby we say to the 4 million garment workers in Bangladesh. ‘Okay. You know, it is been great. You've made several billion bits of clothing, but we are off now and, you know, you have no more jobs and no more no infrastructure.’ So yeah, it has to be a just transition. But I think it's in many ways a bit of an exciting opportunity whereby we could really overturn this global export economy.”

www.plutobooks.com/9780745346618/the-anti-capitalist-book-of-fashion/

www.amazon.co.uk/Foot-Work-What-Your-Shoes-Are-Doing-to-the-World-Tansy-Hoskins/dp/1474609856/

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Photo credit: Sarah Van Looy

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“You know, we have so much knowledge within our grasp. And we have so much technology that we could use. But it isn't just about technology, it's also about values. What kind of values, and what kind of society do we want to live in? What kind of values do we have collectively as a community, and as a society?”

Andy Haines was formerly a family doctor and Professor of Primary Health Care at UCL. He developed an interest in climate change and health in the 1990’s and was a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the 2nd and 3rd assessment exercises and review editor for the health chapter in the 5th assessment. He was Director (formerly Dean) of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine from 2001- October 2010. He chaired the Scientific Advisory Panel for the 2013 WHO World Health Report, the Rockefeller /Lancet Commission on Planetary Health (2014-15) and the European Academies Science Advisory Council working group on climate change and health (2018-19). He currently co-chairs the InterAcademy Partnership (140 science academies worldwide) working group on climate change and health and is also co-chairing the Lancet Pathfinder Commission on health in the zero-carbon economy. He has published many papers on topics such as the effects of environmental change on health and the health co-benefits of low carbon policies. His current research focuses on climate change mitigation, sustainable healthy food systems and complex urban systems for sustainability. He was awarded the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement in 2022.

www.lshtm.ac.uk

https://tylerprize.org
www.interacademies.org

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

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Andy Haines was formerly a family doctor and Professor of Primary Health Care at UCL. He developed an interest in climate change and health in the 1990’s and was a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the 2nd and 3rd assessment exercises and review editor for the health chapter in the 5th assessment. He was Director (formerly Dean) of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine from 2001- October 2010. He chaired the Scientific Advisory Panel for the 2013 WHO World Health Report, the Rockefeller /Lancet Commission on Planetary Health (2014-15) and the European Academies Science Advisory Council working group on climate change and health (2018-19). He currently co-chairs the InterAcademy Partnership (140 science academies worldwide) working group on climate change and health and is also co-chairing the Lancet Pathfinder Commission on health in the zero-carbon economy. He has published many papers on topics such as the effects of environmental change on health and the health co-benefits of low carbon policies. His current research focuses on climate change mitigation, sustainable healthy food systems and complex urban systems for sustainability. He was awarded the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement in 2022.

“You know, we have so much knowledge within our grasp. And we have so much technology that we could use. But it isn't just about technology, it's also about values. What kind of values, and what kind of society do we want to live in? What kind of values do we have collectively as a community, and as a society?”

www.lshtm.ac.uk

https://tylerprize.org
www.interacademies.org

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

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“I am the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Conservation Biology. It is the original journal for the Society for Conservation Biology, which was established in the United States in the 1980s. And the journal was created to provide a home with substantive scientific advances that form the basis for the underpinnings of action and conservation science. So we try and provide the techniques, the procedures, and the scientific experiments that underpin the actions we take to conserve biodiversity globally. It's been running since June 1985, and I've been the editor for 12 years. We receive between 900 and 1,000 papers a year. We publish about 150 or 200 of those. The topics are tremendously variable. They range from straight ecology through mathematical modeling to the psychology of human behavior and the ethics of trophy hunting, and everything in between. And so, it's a wonderfully diverse and interesting journal to read.”

Mark Burgman is Director of the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Conservation Biology. He is author of Trusting Judgments: How to Get the Best Out of Experts. Previously, he was Adrienne Clarke Chair of Botany at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He works on expert judgement, ecological modelling, conservation biology and risk assessment. He has written models for biosecurity, medicine regulation, marine fisheries, forestry, irrigation, electrical power utilities, mining, and national park planning. He received a BSc from the University of New South Wales, an MSc from Macquarie University, Sydney, and a PhD from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He worked as a consultant ecologist and research scientist in Australia, the United States and Switzerland during the 1980’s before joining the University of Melbourne in 1990. He joined CEP in February, 2017. He has published over two hundred and fifty refereed papers and book chapters and seven authored books. He was elected to the Australian Academy of Science in 2006.

www.imperial.ac.uk/environmental-policy
www.conbio.org

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Mark Burgman is Director of the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Conservation Biology. He is author of Trusting Judgments: How to Get the Best Out of Experts. Previously, he was Adrienne Clarke Chair of Botany at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He works on expert judgement, ecological modelling, conservation biology and risk assessment. He has written models for biosecurity, medicine regulation, marine fisheries, forestry, irrigation, electrical power utilities, mining, and national park planning. He received a BSc from the University of New South Wales, an MSc from Macquarie University, Sydney, and a PhD from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He worked as a consultant ecologist and research scientist in Australia, the United States and Switzerland during the 1980’s before joining the University of Melbourne in 1990. He joined CEP in February, 2017. He has published over two hundred and fifty refereed papers and book chapters and seven authored books. He was elected to the Australian Academy of Science in 2006.

“I am the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Conservation Biology. It is the original journal for the Society for Conservation Biology, which was established in the United States in the 1980s. And the journal was created to provide a home with substantive scientific advances that form the basis for the underpinnings of action and conservation science. So we try and provide the techniques, the procedures, and the scientific experiments that underpin the actions we take to conserve biodiversity globally. It's been running since June 1985, and I've been the editor for 12 years. We receive between 900 and 1,000 papers a year. We publish about 150 or 200 of those. The topics are tremendously variable. They range from straight ecology through mathematical modeling to the psychology of human behavior and the ethics of trophy hunting, and everything in between. And so, it's a wonderfully diverse and interesting journal to read.”

www.imperial.ac.uk/environmental-policy
www.conbio.org

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

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"Are we looking at intelligence wrong? There are an awful lot of people who have graduated from top schools who become leaders who are worse than incompetent. They make their countries worse rather than better. And the conclusion I came to is that we made a mistake, in that intelligence was originally defined by the founders of the field Alfred Binet, David Wechsler, and others, as the ability to adapt to the environment a requirement. And answering a vocabulary problem for an obscure word is not about adapting to the environment. So I began to wonder where we lost the train of thought. And the conclusion I came to is that colleges just forgot the original message of the founders of the field, and so we got immersed in these numbers that turn out not to mean that much. So I wrote about intelligence as the ability to get along in the world and hopefully make the world a little bit better. And what I argue in the book is that we not only need to develop this kind of intelligence, we need to recognize that it's important, that getting A's in school and top scores on standardized tests, that's not what intelligence is about. So there are people who make serious efforts to make the world better, who fight pollution, who try to be good at what they do, you know, as judges or lawyers or as cleaning people or car mechanics, or doctors, but those aren't the ones you hear about. The ones you hear about are often those who have prestigious degrees and can't seem to do much with them.”

Robert J. Sternberg is Professor of Human Development at Cornell University and Honorary Professor of Psychology at the University of Heidelberg, Germany. He is a past winner of the Grawemeyer Award in Psychology, and the William James and James McKeen Cattell Awards of the Association for Psychological Science. Sternberg has served as President of the American Psychological Association, and the Federation of Associations in Behavioral and Brain Sciences. His latest book is Adaptive Intelligence: Surviving and Thriving in Times of Uncertainty.

www.robertjsternberg.com

www.cambridge.org/fr/academic/subjects/psychology/cognition/adaptive-intelligence-surviving-and-thriving-times-uncertainty?format=HB&isbn=9781107154384#bookPeople

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Robert J. Sternberg is Professor of Human Development at Cornell University and Honorary Professor of Psychology at the University of Heidelberg, Germany. He is a past winner of the Grawemeyer Award in Psychology, and the William James and James McKeen Cattell Awards of the Association for Psychological Science. Sternberg has served as President of the American Psychological Association, and the Federation of Associations in Behavioral and Brain Sciences. His latest book is Adaptive Intelligence: Surviving and Thriving in Times of Uncertainty.

"Are we looking at intelligence wrong? There are an awful lot of people who have graduated from top schools who become leaders who are worse than incompetent. They make their countries worse rather than better. And the conclusion I came to is that we made a mistake, in that intelligence was originally defined by the founders of the field Alfred Binet, David Wechsler, and others, as the ability to adapt to the environment a requirement. And answering a vocabulary problem for an obscure word is not about adapting to the environment. So I began to wonder where we lost the train of thought. And the conclusion I came to is that colleges just forgot the original message of the founders of the field, and so we got immersed in these numbers that turn out not to mean that much. So I wrote about intelligence as the ability to get along in the world and hopefully make the world a little bit better. And what I argue in the book is that we not only need to develop this kind of intelligence, we need to recognize that it's important, that getting A's in school and top scores on standardized tests, that's not what intelligence is about. So there are people who make serious efforts to make the world better, who fight pollution, who try to be good at what they do, you know, as judges or lawyers or as cleaning people or car mechanics, or doctors, but those aren't the ones you hear about. The ones you hear about are often those who have prestigious degrees and can't seem to do much with them.”

www.robertjsternberg.com

www.cambridge.org/fr/academic/subjects/psychology/cognition/adaptive-intelligence-surviving-and-thriving-times-uncertainty?format=HB&isbn=9781107154384#bookPeople

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

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Today's complex problems demand a radically new way of thinking — one in which art, technology, and science converge to expand our creativity and augment our insight. Creativity must be combined with the ability to execute; the leaders and innovators of the future will have to understand this balance and manage such complexities as climate change and pandemics. The place of this convergence is THE NEXUS. In this provocative and visually striking book, Julio Mario Ottino and Bruce Mau offer a guide for navigating the intersections of art, technology, and science.

Julio Ottino is an artist, researcher, author, and educator at Northwestern University. He is the author, with Bruce Mau, of The Nexus: Augmented Thinking for a Complex World - The New Convergence of Art, Technology, and Science. He was the founding co-director of the Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems. In 2008, he was listed in the “One Hundred Engineers of the Modern Era”. In 2017, he was awarded the Bernard M. Gordon Prize for Innovation in Engineering and Technology Education from the National Academy of Engineering.

www.juliomarioottino.com
www.thenexusbook.com
www.mccormick.northwestern.edu/about/leadership/profiles/ottino-julio.html

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Julio Ottino is an artist, researcher, author, and educator at Northwestern University. He is the author, with Bruce Mau, of The Nexus: Augmented Thinking for a Complex World - The New Convergence of Art, Technology, and Science. He was the founding co-director of the Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems. In 2008, he was listed in the “One Hundred Engineers of the Modern Era”. In 2017, he was awarded the Bernard M. Gordon Prize for Innovation in Engineering and Technology Education from the National Academy of Engineering.

Today's complex problems demand a radically new way of thinking — one in which art, technology, and science converge to expand our creativity and augment our insight. Creativity must be combined with the ability to execute; the leaders and innovators of the future will have to understand this balance and manage such complexities as climate change and pandemics. The place of this convergence is THE NEXUS. In this provocative and visually striking book, Julio Mario Ottino and Bruce Mau offer a guide for navigating the intersections of art, technology, and science.

www.juliomarioottino.com
www.thenexusbook.com
www.mccormick.northwestern.edu/about/leadership/profiles/ottino-julio.html

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"Technology has very much changed the way we read and take in information and shortened it into quick bursts and attention spans. We're living in a new world, for sure. And how do we communicate in this new world? Not just in a way that gets the reach, because there are whole industries aimed at what do I do to get the most likes or the most attention, and all of that, which I don't think is very fulfilling as artists.

It's sort of a diminishing of our art form to try and play the game because then we're getting the attention and getting the hits, as opposed to what do I really want to create? How do I really want to create it? How do I want to display this? And can I do it in a way that breaks through so that if I do it my way, it's still going to get the attention, great. But if it doesn't, can I be cool with that? And can I be okay creating what I want to create, knowing that that's what it's about. It's about sharing in an honest, authentic way what I want to express without letting the tentacles of social media drip into my brain and take over why I'm literally doing the things that I'm doing."

Max Stossel is an Award-winning poet, filmmaker, and speaker, named by Forbes as one of the best storytellers of the year. His Stand-Up Poetry Special Words That Move takes the audience through a variety of different perspectives, inviting us to see the world through different eyes together. Taking on topics like heartbreak, consciousness, social media, politics, the emotional state of our world, and even how dogs probably (most certainly) talk, Max uses rhyme and rhythm to make these topics digestible and playful. Words That Move articulates the deep-seated kernels of truth that we so often struggle to find words for ourselves. Max has performed on five continents, from Lincoln Center in NY to the Hordern Pavilion in Sydney. He is also the Youth & Education Advisor for the Center for Humane Technology, an organization of former tech insiders dedicated to realigning technology with humanity’s best interests.

www.wordsthatmove.com/

www.instagram.com/maxstossel/

www.humanetech.com
https://vimeo.com/690354718/54614a2318

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

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Max Stossel is an Award-winning poet, filmmaker, and speaker, named by Forbes as one of the best storytellers of the year. His Stand-Up Poetry Special Words That Move takes the audience through a variety of different perspectives, inviting us to see the world through different eyes together. Taking on topics like heartbreak, consciousness, social media, politics, the emotional state of our world, and even how dogs probably (most certainly) talk, Max uses rhyme and rhythm to make these topics digestible and playful. Words That Move articulates the deep-seated kernels of truth that we so often struggle to find words for ourselves. Max has performed on five continents, from Lincoln Center in NY to the Hordern Pavilion in Sydney. He is also the Youth & Education Advisor for the Center for Humane Technology, an organization of former tech insiders dedicated to realigning technology with humanity’s best interests.

"Technology has very much changed the way we read and take in information and shortened it into quick bursts and attention spans. We're living in a new world, for sure. And how do we communicate in this new world? Not just in a way that gets the reach, because there are whole industries aimed at what do I do to get the most likes or the most attention, and all of that, which I don't think is very fulfilling as artists.

It's sort of a diminishing of our art form to try and play the game because then we're getting the attention and getting the hits, as opposed to what do I really want to create? How do I really want to create it? How do I want to display this? And can I do it in a way that breaks through so that if I do it my way, it's still going to get the attention, great. But if it doesn't, can I be cool with that? And can I be okay creating what I want to create, knowing that that's what it's about. It's about sharing in an honest, authentic way what I want to express without letting the tentacles of social media drip into my brain and take over why I'm literally doing the things that I'm doing."

www.wordsthatmove.com/

www.instagram.com/maxstossel/

www.humanetech.com
https://vimeo.com/690354718/54614a2318

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

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"I'm so happy that I did not grow up with a phone. I talk about this all the time. I did not have a cellphone growing up. We did not have the internet. I feel for children going through that. I think it's a really challenging time. Technology. I struggle with it now, people having so much access to us. People expecting, because I have a phone right next to me, that I'm going to respond to them.

When you're running a TV show, there's a little bit of an unwritten expectation of your availability during off hours and the weekends, and in a workplace, you really need to have your work-life boundaries. We try to be very cognizant of that within the writer's room and not working too late. We worked like 10-to-5 in season two, like maybe 5:30 with an hour-and-a-half lunch break during the Zoom room and COVID because it's just so important to not be staring at these screens all day. And even with the kids, like if someone needed some time off for a doctor's appointment, we try to really honor that and give that to them."

Debra J. Fisher is a writer, producer, and director. She currently serves as the showrunner, writer, and executive producer of the Netflix series Ginny & Georgia. Season one of the hit series was watched by over 52 million subscribers in its first month on the platform, gathering a devoted fan base. The highly anticipated second season premiered on January 5th. Ginny & Georgia is Debra’s first time in the showrunner’s seat. Through her long and varied career, she has worked her way up the ladder on numerous beloved TV shows including Alias, The O.C., Charmed, and Criminal Minds, among others. With a wealth of experience from her own professional journey, she works to pay it forward by mentoring the next generation of creatives.

www.instagram.com/debrajfisher
www.tiktok.com/@debrajfisher

www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/ginny-and-georgia-season-2-release-date

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

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Debra J. Fisher is a writer, producer, and director. She currently serves as the showrunner, writer, and executive producer of the Netflix series Ginny & Georgia. Season one of the hit series was watched by over 52 million subscribers in its first month on the platform, gathering a devoted fan base. The highly anticipated second season premiered on January 5th. Ginny & Georgia is Debra’s first time in the showrunner’s seat. Through her long and varied career, she has worked her way up the ladder on numerous beloved TV shows including Alias, The O.C., Charmed, and Criminal Minds, among others. With a wealth of experience from her own professional journey, she works to pay it forward by mentoring the next generation of creatives.

"I'm so happy that I did not grow up with a phone. I talk about this all the time. I did not have a cellphone growing up. We did not have the internet. I feel for children going through that. I think it's a really challenging time. Technology. I struggle with it now, people having so much access to us. People expecting, because I have a phone right next to me, that I'm going to respond to them.

When you're running a TV show, there's a little bit of an unwritten expectation of your availability during off hours and the weekends, and in a workplace, you really need to have your work-life boundaries. We try to be very cognizant of that within the writer's room and not working too late. We worked like 10-to-5 in season two, like maybe 5:30 with an hour-and-a-half lunch break during the Zoom room and COVID because it's just so important to not be staring at these screens all day. And even with the kids, like if someone needed some time off for a doctor's appointment, we try to really honor that and give that to them."

www.instagram.com/debrajfisher
www.tiktok.com/@debrajfisher

www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/ginny-and-georgia-season-2-release-date

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

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"So there are different parts of the brain responsible for liking and wanting. So wanting is unbelievably robust in the brain. In other words, the neural connections are very robust, and wanting is what drives most addictive behavior. It's when you really want something, like you want a cigarette, you want alcohol, a drug, whatever it is, that's your poison. And actually, screens for some people as well. The liking part. When you say to people, what does it mean to be addicted to something? A lot of people say it's, 'You really like it so much that you just keep going back to it.'

It's actually not about liking. What actually happens is that, in the beginning, liking and wanting go together. So let's pick something like a cigarette. If you start smoking in the beginning, you like the experience of smoking, and you also really want the nicotine. You want the cigarette. They go hand in hand, but eventually what happens is the liking is much more fragile, and it decays. And what's left is the wanting. And often in the absence of liking, it's kind of like a bad relationship. Like if you're in a bad romantic relationship, it starts out being about wanting and liking, but then the liking goes away, and you just kind of want to be with a person, even though you know it's undermining your welfare. That's effectively addiction. The real skill today is figuring out how to create space between you and your tech devices."

Adam Alter is a Professor of Marketing at NYU’s Stern School of Business and the Robert Stansky Teaching Excellence Faculty Fellow. Adam is the New York Times bestselling author of Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked, and Drunk Tank Pink, which investigates how hidden forces in the world around us shape our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. He has written for the New York Times, New Yorker, The Atlantic, Washington Post, and a host of TV, radio, and publications. His next book Anatomy of a Breakthrough will be published in 2023.

https://adamalterauthor.com
www.penguin.co.uk/books/431386/irresistible-by-adam-alter/9781784701659
www.simonandschuster.com/books/Anatomy-of-a-Breakthrough/Adam-Alter/9781982182960
www.stern.nyu.edu/faculty/bio/adam-alter

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

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Adam Alter is a Professor of Marketing at NYU’s Stern School of Business and the Robert Stansky Teaching Excellence Faculty Fellow. Adam is the New York Times bestselling author of Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked, and Drunk Tank Pink, which investigates how hidden forces in the world around us shape our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. He has written for the New York Times, New Yorker, The Atlantic, Washington Post, and a host of TV, radio, and publications. His next book Anatomy of a Breakthrough will be published in 2023.

"So there are different parts of the brain responsible for liking and wanting. So wanting is unbelievably robust in the brain. In other words, the neural connections are very robust, and wanting is what drives most addictive behavior. It's when you really want something, like you want a cigarette, you want alcohol, a drug, whatever it is, that's your poison. And actually, screens for some people as well. The liking part. When you say to people, what does it mean to be addicted to something? A lot of people say it's, 'You really like it so much that you just keep going back to it.'

It's actually not about liking. What actually happens is that, in the beginning, liking and wanting go together. So let's pick something like a cigarette. If you start smoking in the beginning, you like the experience of smoking, and you also really want the nicotine. You want the cigarette. They go hand in hand, but eventually what happens is the liking is much more fragile, and it decays. And what's left is the wanting. And often in the absence of liking, it's kind of like a bad relationship. Like if you're in a bad romantic relationship, it starts out being about wanting and liking, but then the liking goes away, and you just kind of want to be with a person, even though you know it's undermining your welfare. That's effectively addiction. The real skill today is figuring out how to create space between you and your tech devices."

https://adamalterauthor.com
www.penguin.co.uk/books/431386/irresistible-by-adam-alter/9781784701659
www.simonandschuster.com/books/Anatomy-of-a-Breakthrough/Adam-Alter/9781982182960
www.stern.nyu.edu/faculty/bio/adam-alter

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

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"So right now the world is fueled by the burning of oil, gas, and coal, and a lot of people are making a lot of money out of that. Whereas with things like renewable energy, you can put solar panels on your rooftop, and all of a sudden you're not paying anything in terms of an electricity price. If you happen to live in a sunny country like Australia, you end up getting your electricity for free from the sun, which is extraordinary, but actually renewable energy is the cheapest form of electricity over 60% of the Earth's surface, which again is an amazing thing to think about. And yet we haven't tapped the full potential, less than a third of global energy is generated by things like solar and wind, and other renewable energy sources. So there's a really huge potential, but it is that moment where we can transition into a low-impact, sustainable future.

So I see that as a really positive thing, but we're in this moment where we're transitioning from an old technology into a new technology. And if you stop and think about history, where we went from people who used to have a horse and cart, and then they went to automobiles. It's the same sort of thing. We're just advancing our technology. So it's inevitable that it's going to happen. It is happening right now."

Dr. Joëlle Gergis is an award-winning climate scientist and writer at the Australian National University. She served as a lead author for the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report and is the author of Humanity’s Moment: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Sunburnt Country: The History and Future of Climate Change in Australia. Joëlle has also contributed chapters to The Climate Book by Greta Thunberg, and Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility, edited by Rebecca Solnit and Thelma Young Lutunatabua.

http://joellegergis.com
https://climatehistory.com.au
www.blackincbooks.com.au/authors/jo-lle-gergis

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www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

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Dr. Joëlle Gergis is an award-winning climate scientist and writer at the Australian National University. She served as a lead author for the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report and is the author of Humanity’s Moment: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Sunburnt Country: The History and Future of Climate Change in Australia. Joëlle has also contributed chapters to The Climate Book by Greta Thunberg, and Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility, edited by Rebecca Solnit and Thelma Young Lutunatabua.

"So right now the world is fueled by the burning of oil, gas, and coal, and a lot of people are making a lot of money out of that. Whereas with things like renewable energy, you can put solar panels on your rooftop, and all of a sudden you're not paying anything in terms of an electricity price. If you happen to live in a sunny country like Australia, you end up getting your electricity for free from the sun, which is extraordinary, but actually renewable energy is the cheapest form of electricity over 60% of the Earth's surface, which again is an amazing thing to think about. And yet we haven't tapped the full potential, less than a third of global energy is generated by things like solar and wind, and other renewable energy sources. So there's a really huge potential, but it is that moment where we can transition into a low-impact, sustainable future.

So I see that as a really positive thing, but we're in this moment where we're transitioning from an old technology into a new technology. And if you stop and think about history, where we went from people who used to have a horse and cart, and then they went to automobiles. It's the same sort of thing. We're just advancing our technology. So it's inevitable that it's going to happen. It is happening right now."

http://joellegergis.com
https://climatehistory.com.au
www.blackincbooks.com.au/authors/jo-lle-gergis

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“So one of the main arguments in the book is that digital technology is important to how organizations campaign, and it's not a matter of campaigning online or offline, right? Often people hear the title of my book and they go, ‘Oh, it's all just slacktivism.’ You know, whatever you do online is slacktivism. Luckily the academic debates move past that because most advocacy groups operate both online and offline. What I argue instead is that digital technology has enabled groups to be rapid response, like you said, extremely member-driven so they can listen to their members and do something called analytic activism (that's a term coined by David Karpf) and be multi-issue generalists. The ways that works is much more than meets the eye. So when you're rapid response, that means a news story can come on one hour and two hours later a campaign can be started by the organizations. So it could be related to refugee issues. In 2015, when there was increasing concern about what was happening on Europe's borders with refugees and asylum seekers, some of these groups that had no expertise in refugee rights switched very rapidly when they saw public opinion changing."

Nina Hall is an Assistant Professor in International Relations at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (Europe). She previously worked as a Lecturer at the Hertie School of Governance, where she published her first book Displacement, Development, and Climate Change: International Organizations Moving Beyond their Mandates? Her latest book is Transnational Advocacy in the Digital Era: Think Global, Act Local. She holds a DPhil in International Relations from the University of Oxford and is the co-founder of an independent and progressive think tank, New Zealand Alternative. She has been a Senior Fellow at the Weizenbaum Institute (the German Internet Institute) and a Faculty Affiliate at the SNF Agora Institute, Johns Hopkins University.

https://ninahall.net
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/transnational-advocacy-in-the-digital-era-9780198858744?cc=fr⟨=en&
https://sais.jhu.edu/users/nhall20
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Nina Hall is an Assistant Professor in International Relations at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (Europe). She previously worked as a Lecturer at the Hertie School of Governance, where she published her first book Displacement, Development, and Climate Change: International Organizations Moving Beyond their Mandates? Her latest book is Transnational Advocacy in the Digital Era: Think Global, Act Local. She holds a DPhil in International Relations from the University of Oxford and is the co-founder of an independent and progressive think tank, New Zealand Alternative. She has been a Senior Fellow at the Weizenbaum Institute (the German Internet Institute) and a Faculty Affiliate at the SNF Agora Institute, Johns Hopkins University.

“So one of the main arguments in the book is that digital technology is important to how organizations campaign, and it's not a matter of campaigning online or offline, right? Often people hear the title of my book and they go, ‘Oh, it's all just slacktivism.’ You know, whatever you do online is slacktivism. Luckily the academic debates move past that because most advocacy groups operate both online and offline. What I argue instead is that digital technology has enabled groups to be rapid response, like you said, extremely member-driven so they can listen to their members and do something called analytic activism (that's a term coined by David Karpf) and be multi-issue generalists. The ways that works is much more than meets the eye. So when you're rapid response, that means a news story can come on one hour and two hours later a campaign can be started by the organizations. So it could be related to refugee issues. In 2015, when there was increasing concern about what was happening on Europe's borders with refugees and asylum seekers, some of these groups that had no expertise in refugee rights switched very rapidly when they saw public opinion changing."

https://ninahall.net
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/transnational-advocacy-in-the-digital-era-9780198858744?cc=fr⟨=en&
https://sais.jhu.edu/users/nhall20
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
www.creativeprocess.info
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“So, as much as I would love to take the credit, Google Ads was a big team, and I was fortunate to be brought in as a director that managed the team. And I would also like to say the idea of attaching ads to searches, anybody could have had it. In fact, it was the most obvious thing. Just like on television, if you watch a car race, then it makes sense to have ads about cars. So I think the reason it was so successful is because innovations and new ideas, they compound. They build one upon the other. So the reason why ads was so successful for Google is because search was so successful for Google. So when you have search and you have billions of people coming in every day, maybe every hour, and searching all kinds of things, you have this treasure trove of data. And more importantly, guess what? If you have billion searches per day, you know how many experiments can you run? Countless, right? And so Google is very famous for doing a lot of A/B experiments. That's how we collect the data. You think, if we make the ads, let's say short and long, they will be more effective than if we make them, tall and long.

Well, how do we know which one will work better? You can do a lot of experiments. So what actually enabled Google to be so successful and to grow is this mental attitude, which by the way, is the same one that Amazon and some of these really successful technology companies have, of doing a lot of experiments on small samples and continually refining their data based on that.

If you're dealing with a lot of people, you can do those experiments and that's why these companies are successful. The sad thing or what happens with companies that do not operate in that way, that do not try to operate on data and do all of those experiments, those are the ones that are left behind. Innovation is experimentation."

Alberto Savoia was Google’s first engineering director and is currently Innovation Agitator Emeritus, where, among other things, he led the development and launch of the original Google AdWords. He is the author of The Right It: Why So Many Ideas Fail and How to Make Sure Yours Succeed, a book that provides critical advice for rethinking how we launch a new idea, product, or business, and gives insights to help successfully beat the law of market failure: that most new products will fail, even if competently executed.

He is a successful serial entrepreneur, angel-investor and an expert practitioner in pretotyping and lean innovation. He is based in Silicon Valley where he teaches his uniquely effective approach to innovation at Google, Stanford. He has also taught and coached many Fortune 500 companies, including Nike, McDonald’s, and Walmart, as well as the US Army.

www.albertosavoia.com
https://harperone.com/9780062884671/the-right-it

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Alberto Savoia was Google’s first engineering director and is currently Innovation Agitator Emeritus, where, among other things, he led the development and launch of the original Google AdWords. He is the author of The Right It: Why So Many Ideas Fail and How to Make Sure Yours Succeed, a book that provides critical advice for rethinking how we launch a new idea, product, or business, and gives insights to help successfully beat the law of market failure: that most new products will fail, even if competently executed.

He is a successful serial entrepreneur, angel-investor and an expert practitioner in pretotyping and lean innovation. He is based in Silicon Valley where he teaches his uniquely effective approach to innovation at Google, Stanford. He has also taught and coached many Fortune 500 companies, including Nike, McDonald’s, and Walmart, as well as the US Army.

“So, as much as I would love to take the credit, Google Ads was a big team, and I was fortunate to be brought in as a director that managed the team. And I would also like to say the idea of attaching ads to searches, anybody could have had it. In fact, it was the most obvious thing. Just like on television, if you watch a car race, then it makes sense to have ads about cars. So I think the reason it was so successful is because innovations and new ideas, they compound. They build one upon the other. So the reason why ads was so successful for Google is because search was so successful for Google. So when you have search and you have billions of people coming in every day, maybe every hour, and searching all kinds of things, you have this treasure trove of data. And more importantly, guess what? If you have billion searches per day, you know how many experiments can you run? Countless, right? And so Google is very famous for doing a lot of A/B experiments. That's how we collect the data. You think, if we make the ads, let's say short and long, they will be more effective than if we make them, tall and long.

Well, how do we know which one will work better? You can do a lot of experiments. So what actually enabled Google to be so successful and to grow is this mental attitude, which by the way, is the same one that Amazon and some of these really successful technology companies have, of doing a lot of experiments on small samples and continually refining their data based on that.

If you're dealing with a lot of people, you can do those experiments and that's why these companies are successful. The sad thing or what happens with companies that do not operate in that way, that do not try to operate on data and do all of those experiments, those are the ones that are left behind. Innovation is experimentation."

www.albertosavoia.com
https://harperone.com/9780062884671/the-right-it

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
Instagram @creativeprocesspodcast

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"So shooting for one planet just means you would be totally dominant, and leave no space for other species. Ecologists say to maintain 85% of preindustrial biodiversity, it would take about at least half the planet left on its own. That would mean getting to half-planet. And now we use at least 1.75. I say at least because our assessments with about 15,000 data points per country in a year are based on UN statistics, and their demand side is probably an underestimate because not all demands are included. And also on the supply side or the regeneration side, the UN is very production oriented, so it's the FAO numbers, for example, look at agricultural production, and the depletion side or the destruction side is not factored in adequately.

So that's why it's an underestimate. And still, it shows we use about 1.75 Earths, and that's more than three times half an Earth. So that's kind of the difference. But we also know overshoot will end one way or another. The question is do we choose to end it? Do we choose it by design, or do we let nature take the lead and end overshoot by disaster? So it's really ending overshoot by design or disaster. That's the big choice we need to make.”

Mathis Wackernagel is Co-founder and President of Global Footprint Network. He created the Ecological Footprint with Professor William Rees at the University of British Columbia as part of his Ph.D. in community and regional planning. Mathis also earned a mechanical engineering degree from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. Mathis has worked on sustainability with governments, corporations and international NGOs on six continents and has lectured at more than 100 universities. Mathis has authored and contributed to more than 100 peer-reviewed papers, numerous articles, reports and various books on sustainability that focus on embracing resource limits and developing metrics for sustainability. Mathis’ awards include the 2018 World Sustainability Award, the 2015 IAIA Global Environment Award, being a 2014 ISSP Sustainability Hall of Fame Inductee, the 2013 Prix Nature Swisscanto, 2012 Blue Planet Prize, 2012 Binding Prize for Nature Conservation, the 2012 Kenneth E. Boulding Memorial Award of the International Society for Ecological Economics, the 2011 Zayed International Prize for the Environment (jointly awarded with UNEP). He was also selected as number 19 on the en(rich) list identifying the 100 top inspirational individuals whose contributions enrich paths to sustainable futures.

www.footprintnetwork.org

www.footprintnetwork.org/tools

www.overshootday.org/power-of-possibility/

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Mathis Wackernagel is Co-founder and President of Global Footprint Network. He created the Ecological Footprint with Professor William Rees at the University of British Columbia as part of his Ph.D. in community and regional planning. Mathis also earned a mechanical engineering degree from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. Mathis has worked on sustainability with governments, corporations and international NGOs on six continents and has lectured at more than 100 universities. Mathis has authored and contributed to more than 100 peer-reviewed papers, numerous articles, reports and various books on sustainability that focus on embracing resource limits and developing metrics for sustainability. Mathis’ awards include the 2018 World Sustainability Award, the 2015 IAIA Global Environment Award, being a 2014 ISSP Sustainability Hall of Fame Inductee, the 2013 Prix Nature Swisscanto, 2012 Blue Planet Prize, 2012 Binding Prize for Nature Conservation, the 2012 Kenneth E. Boulding Memorial Award of the International Society for Ecological Economics, the 2011 Zayed International Prize for the Environment (jointly awarded with UNEP). He was also selected as number 19 on the en(rich) list identifying the 100 top inspirational individuals whose contributions enrich paths to sustainable futures.

"So shooting for one planet just means you would be totally dominant, and leave no space for other species. Ecologists say to maintain 85% of preindustrial biodiversity, it would take about at least half the planet left on its own. That would mean getting to half-planet. And now we use at least 1.75. I say at least because our assessments with about 15,000 data points per country in a year are based on UN statistics, and their demand side is probably an underestimate because not all demands are included. And also on the supply side or the regeneration side, the UN is very production oriented, so it's the FAO numbers, for example, look at agricultural production, and the depletion side or the destruction side is not factored in adequately.

So that's why it's an underestimate. And still, it shows we use about 1.75 Earths, and that's more than three times half an Earth. So that's kind of the difference. But we also know overshoot will end one way or another. The question is do we choose to end it? Do we choose it by design, or do we let nature take the lead and end overshoot by disaster? So it's really ending overshoot by design or disaster. That's the big choice we need to make.”

www.footprintnetwork.org

www.footprintnetwork.org/tools

www.overshootday.org/power-of-possibility/

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org

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"We have to solve three problems. We have to create a low-waste society through incentives to change individual behavior from consumer to user through loss and waste prevention, and intelligent resource management. We also have to create a low-carbon society by preserving the water, electricity, and CO2 emissions embodied in physical assets or through innovation in green electricity and circular energy. And the third challenge, which is probably the biggest, we have to create a low anthropogenic mass society by preserving these existing stocks of infrastructure, buildings, equipment, vehicles, and objects. The only strategy I know that can fulfill these three challenges is a circular industrial economy.

Now the last point, low anthropogenic mass society is simply because some years ago, the rapidly growing anthropogenic mass has become bigger than the world's biomass. And that of course means we are destroying the biomass because we have a limited planet, and we are destroying biodiversity and replacing it with synthetic manmade materials and objects. And this in the long term means we are killing ourselves, so we have to stop producing anthropogenic mass, except in countries that don't yet have sufficient infrastructures for education, health, living, and sufficient food to feed the population."

Walter R. Stahel is the Founder-Director of the Product-Life Institute (Switzerland), the oldest established consultancy in Europe devoted to developing sustainable strategies and policies. He is Senior Research Fellow at the Circular Economy Research Centre, Ecole des Ponts Business School and Visiting Professor in the Department of Engineering and Physical Sciences, University of Surrey. He is also a full member of the Club of Rome. He was awarded degrees of Doctor honoris causa by the University of Surrey, l’Université de Montréal, and the 2020 Thornton Medal of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining. He is the author of The Circular Economy: A User’s Guide.

www.product-life.org

www.routledge.com/The-Circular-Economy-A-Users-Guide/Stahel/p/book/9780367200176

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Walter R. Stahel is the Founder-Director of the Product-Life Institute (Switzerland), the oldest established consultancy in Europe devoted to developing sustainable strategies and policies. He is Senior Research Fellow at the Circular Economy Research Centre, Ecole des Ponts Business School and Visiting Professor in the Department of Engineering and Physical Sciences, University of Surrey. He is also a full member of the Club of Rome. He was awarded degrees of Doctor honoris causa by the University of Surrey, l’Université de Montréal, and the 2020 Thornton Medal of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining. He is the author of The Circular Economy: A User’s Guide.

"We have to solve three problems. We have to create a low-waste society through incentives to change individual behavior from consumer to user through loss and waste prevention, and intelligent resource management. We also have to create a low-carbon society by preserving the water, electricity, and CO2 emissions embodied in physical assets or through innovation in green electricity and circular energy. And the third challenge, which is probably the biggest, we have to create a low anthropogenic mass society by preserving these existing stocks of infrastructure, buildings, equipment, vehicles, and objects. The only strategy I know that can fulfill these three challenges is a circular industrial economy.

Now the last point, low anthropogenic mass society is simply because some years ago, the rapidly growing anthropogenic mass has become bigger than the world's biomass. And that of course means we are destroying the biomass because we have a limited planet, and we are destroying biodiversity and replacing it with synthetic manmade materials and objects. And this in the long term means we are killing ourselves, so we have to stop producing anthropogenic mass, except in countries that don't yet have sufficient infrastructures for education, health, living, and sufficient food to feed the population."

www.product-life.org

www.routledge.com/The-Circular-Economy-A-Users-Guide/Stahel/p/book/9780367200176

www.oneplanetpodcast.org

www.creativeprocess.info

Instagram @creativeprocesspodcast

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"Better than mindfulness, curiosity and the willingness to be open to other perspectives and reveal diversion of perspectives, it's linked with more innovation, it leads to willingness for greater social support for your ideas. So you're talking about finding allies more work, family integration, less burnout, more engagement, and then a greater tendency to experience flow where you lose yourself in your work in the workplace. And there's these wide-ranging benefits that occur.

And what you find is the two dimensions of curiosity that are the most beneficial in the workplace, one is called joyous exploration. And that's really just this pure pleasurable sense of wonder that there's a lot of interesting things in the world, and I just know less than I think I do, and I want to be exposed to that novelty. The second one gets less attention. It's what we call stress tolerance. It's that when you have the lure of the novel, the divergent, and you know, the mysterious and complex, there's always a level of anxiety. You are moving away from the knowns and the own unknowns, and you are going into the face of acknowledging there's uncertainty, and you don't know how things are going to turn out. The people that can better tolerate that without trying to close and reach an answer quickly, they're the ones that are more likely to be creative, more likely to be innovative."

Todd B. Kashdan, Ph.D., is professor of psychology at George Mason University, and a leading authority on well-being, curiosity, courage, and resilience. He has published more than 220 scientific articles, his work has been cited more than 35,000 times, and he received the American Psychological Association’s Award for Distinguished Scientific Early Career Contributions to Psychology. He is the author of several books, including The Art of Insubordination: How to Dissent and Defy Effectively, Curious? and The Upside of Your Dark Side, and has been translated into more than fifteen languages. His research is featured regularly in The New York Times, The Atlantic, and Time, and his writing has appeared in the Harvard Business Review, National Geographic, and other publications. He is a keynote speaker and consultant for organizations as diverse as Microsoft, Mercedes-Benz, Prudential, General Mills, The United States Department of Defense, and World Bank Group.

https://toddkashdan.com

www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/690674/the-art-of-insubordination-by-todd-b-kashdan-phd/

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Todd B. Kashdan, Ph.D., is professor of psychology at George Mason University, and a leading authority on well-being, curiosity, courage, and resilience. He has published more than 220 scientific articles, his work has been cited more than 35,000 times, and he received the American Psychological Association’s Award for Distinguished Scientific Early Career Contributions to Psychology. He is the author of several books, including The Art of Insubordination: How to Dissent and Defy Effectively, Curious? and The Upside of Your Dark Side, and has been translated into more than fifteen languages. His research is featured regularly in The New York Times, The Atlantic, and Time, and his writing has appeared in the Harvard Business Review, National Geographic, and other publications. He is a keynote speaker and consultant for organizations as diverse as Microsoft, Mercedes-Benz, Prudential, General Mills, The United States Department of Defense, and World Bank Group.

"Better than mindfulness, curiosity and the willingness to be open to other perspectives and reveal diversion of perspectives, it's linked with more innovation, it leads to willingness for greater social support for your ideas. So you're talking about finding allies more work, family integration, less burnout, more engagement, and then a greater tendency to experience flow where you lose yourself in your work in the workplace. And there's these wide-ranging benefits that occur.

And what you find is the two dimensions of curiosity that are the most beneficial in the workplace, one is called joyous exploration. And that's really just this pure pleasurable sense of wonder that there's a lot of interesting things in the world, and I just know less than I think I do, and I want to be exposed to that novelty. The second one gets less attention. It's what we call stress tolerance. It's that when you have the lure of the novel, the divergent, and you know, the mysterious and complex, there's always a level of anxiety. You are moving away from the knowns and the own unknowns, and you are going into the face of acknowledging there's uncertainty, and you don't know how things are going to turn out. The people that can better tolerate that without trying to close and reach an answer quickly, they're the ones that are more likely to be creative, more likely to be innovative."

https://toddkashdan.com

www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/690674/the-art-of-insubordination-by-todd-b-kashdan-phd/

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
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"There's a ton of work now looking at how we can re-engineer or patch the AI that's currently sort of driving these interfaces to make it easier for people to manage their consumption. But so far there's not a lot of evidence that it's working. So the time management things, unfortunately, people just tend to override those or not want to look at the amount of time that they're spending on their devices. So I'm not seeing a lot of encouraging stuff there. And basically what you have is you have a fundamental structural problem. These technologies are engineered literally to keep us clicking and swiping. You can't ask them...in a way, it's very difficult for them to have their product that's not engaging. Now there's a big push to do this, to see, Okay, well what if we get rid of the likes, or what if we eliminate the bottomless scrolls? Or what if we get rid of the alerts and the push notifications, or what if we go to grayscale and make the images...? And I think all those can work as nudges and be helpful, but I think we also need to start looking more proactively at having time where we literally are just not touching our device. Distance from the actual device itself. And so I think there's some movement in that direction as well."

Dr. Anna Lembke is professor of psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine and chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic. A clinician scholar, she has published more than a hundred peer-reviewed papers, book chapters, and commentaries. She sits on the board of several state and national addiction-focused organizations, has testified before various committees in the United States House of Representatives and Senate, keeps an active speaking calendar, and maintains a thriving clinical practice. Dr. Lembke explores how to moderate compulsive overconsumption in a dopamine overloaded world in her NYTimes bestselling book Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence. Her previous book Drug Dealer, MD – How Doctors Were Duped, Patients Got Hooked, and Why It’s So Hard to Stop was highlighted in the New York Times as one of the top five books to read to understand the opioid epidemic.

www.annalembke.com

https://med.stanford.edu/psychiatry/patient_care/addiction.html

www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/624957/dopamine-nation-by-anna-lembke-md/

www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/11360/drug-dealer-md

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Dr. Anna Lembke is professor of psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine and chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic. A clinician scholar, she has published more than a hundred peer-reviewed papers, book chapters, and commentaries. She sits on the board of several state and national addiction-focused organizations, has testified before various committees in the United States House of Representatives and Senate, keeps an active speaking calendar, and maintains a thriving clinical practice. Dr. Lembke explores how to moderate compulsive overconsumption in a dopamine overloaded world in her NYTimes bestselling book Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence. Her previous book Drug Dealer, MD – How Doctors Were Duped, Patients Got Hooked, and Why It’s So Hard to Stop was highlighted in the New York Times as one of the top five books to read to understand the opioid epidemic.

"There's a ton of work now looking at how we can re-engineer or patch the AI that's currently sort of driving these interfaces to make it easier for people to manage their consumption. But so far there's not a lot of evidence that it's working. So the time management things, unfortunately, people just tend to override those or not want to look at the amount of time that they're spending on their devices. So I'm not seeing a lot of encouraging stuff there. And basically what you have is you have a fundamental structural problem. These technologies are engineered literally to keep us clicking and swiping. You can't ask them...in a way, it's very difficult for them to have their product that's not engaging. Now there's a big push to do this, to see, Okay, well what if we get rid of the likes, or what if we eliminate the bottomless scrolls? Or what if we get rid of the alerts and the push notifications, or what if we go to grayscale and make the images...? And I think all those can work as nudges and be helpful, but I think we also need to start looking more proactively at having time where we literally are just not touching our device. Distance from the actual device itself. And so I think there's some movement in that direction as well."

www.annalembke.com

https://med.stanford.edu/psychiatry/patient_care/addiction.html

www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/624957/dopamine-nation-by-anna-lembke-md/

www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/11360/drug-dealer-md

www.creativeprocess.info

www.oneplanetpodcast.org

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"The research that I've done with these NASA satellites - they’re called the Grace Mission, Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Mission, and they're really unusual in that they're able to weigh, using small variations in the pull of gravity that water exerts on the satellites. Satellites are like a scale. They move up and down in the sky depending on how much water there is on the ground. So we can map out these places that are gaining or losing water on a monthly basis. And you know, now the satellites have been flying for 20 years, so we can see these trends."

"So there's lots of interesting stuff that's happening out there. Technology that helps industry. There's going to be a big push and a lot of pressure on industry to do more reporting. The technology to do optimal water and nutrient delivery at the plant scale, like just using the optimal amount of water and fertilizer at the plant scale, so down to the plant scale within huge farms is being rapidly developed. So these things are all game changers. And that's without talking about financial innovations. So financial innovations are also not necessarily technology, but when we think about what innovations we need, some of those are financial, whether it's incentive packages or the need to work with investors. So just like we did with carbon that has been so successful working with investors who invest in the big agricultural companies, the big food and beverage companies, we've gotten great traction on the carbon side driving these companies, huge multinational companies to net zero carbon. We need to be doing the same thing on the water side. And so that investor push is a financial innovation."

Jay Famiglietti is a hydrologist, a professor and the Executive Director of the Global Institute for Water Security at the University of Saskatchewan, where he holds the Canada 150 Research Chair in Hydrology and Remote Sensing. He is also the Chief Scientist of the Silicon Valley tech startup, Waterplan. Before moving to Saskatchewan, he served as the Senior Water Scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology. From 2013 through 2018, he was appointed by Governor Jerry Brown to the California State Water Boards. He has appeared on CBS News 60 Minutes, on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, as a featured expert in water documentaries including Day Zero and Last Call at the Oasis, and across a host of international news media. He is the host of the podcast What About Water?

https://jayfamiglietti.com

What About Water? podcast with Jay Famiglietti

Twitter @WhatAboutWater

GIWS https://water.usask.ca

www.waterplan.com

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Jay Famiglietti is a hydrologist, a professor and the Executive Director of the Global Institute for Water Security at the University of Saskatchewan, where he holds the Canada 150 Research Chair in Hydrology and Remote Sensing. He is also the Chief Scientist of the Silicon Valley tech startup, Waterplan. Before moving to Saskatchewan, he served as the Senior Water Scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology. From 2013 through 2018, he was appointed by Governor Jerry Brown to the California State Water Boards. He has appeared on CBS News 60 Minutes, on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, as a featured expert in water documentaries including Day Zero and Last Call at the Oasis, and across a host of international news media. He is the host of the podcast What About Water?

"The research that I've done with these NASA satellites - they’re called the Grace Mission, Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Mission, and they're really unusual in that they're able to weigh, using small variations in the pull of gravity that water exerts on the satellites. Satellites are like a scale. They move up and down in the sky depending on how much water there is on the ground. So we can map out these places that are gaining or losing water on a monthly basis. And you know, now the satellites have been flying for 20 years, so we can see these trends."

"So there's lots of interesting stuff that's happening out there. Technology that helps industry. There's going to be a big push and a lot of pressure on industry to do more reporting. The technology to do optimal water and nutrient delivery at the plant scale, like just using the optimal amount of water and fertilizer at the plant scale, so down to the plant scale within huge farms is being rapidly developed. So these things are all game changers. And that's without talking about financial innovations. So financial innovations are also not necessarily technology, but when we think about what innovations we need, some of those are financial, whether it's incentive packages or the need to work with investors. So just like we did with carbon that has been so successful working with investors who invest in the big agricultural companies, the big food and beverage companies, we've gotten great traction on the carbon side driving these companies, huge multinational companies to net zero carbon. We need to be doing the same thing on the water side. And so that investor push is a financial innovation."

https://jayfamiglietti.com

What About Water? podcast with Jay Famiglietti

Twitter @WhatAboutWater

GIWS https://water.usask.ca

www.waterplan.com

www.oneplanetpodcast.org

www.creativeprocess.info

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"And you can make extremely intelligent computations and very complex computations, but you don't get a mind out of it. You don't get consciousness out of it. You get a computer, and that's what's driving my hands waving around, driving my lips and my tongue, and all that kind of stuff, it's a computer; it's our non-conscious mind. But on top of that, we have the stuff we're aware of, and that's where our creativity lies. That's where our emotions lie. We can't think of being creative without using our conscious mind. And that's where stuff comes together because the difference between what happens in our conscious mind and in our non-conscious mind – in our non-conscious mind, everything is dissected."

Johnjoe McFadden is the author of Life is Simple, How Occam’s Razor Set Science Free and Shapes the Universe. He obtained his PhD at Imperial College London and went on to work on human genetic diseases and then infectious diseases, at the University of Surrey. Professor McFadden has specialised in examining the genetics of microbes such as the agents of tuberculosis and meningitis. His other books are Quantum Evolution: Life in the Multiverse, and Life on the Edge: The Coming of Age of Quantum Biology (co-authored with Jim Al-Khalili). He has published more than 100 articles in scientific journals on a wide range of subjects and lectures around the world. His present post is Associate Dean (International) and Professor of Molecular Genetics at the University of Surrey.

www.surrey.ac.uk/people/johnjoe-mcfadden

https://johnjoemcfadden.co.uk

www.basicbooks.com/titles/johnjoe-mcfadden/life-is-simple/9781549112119

www.creativeprocess.info

www.oneplanetpodcast.org

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Johnjoe McFadden is the author of Life is Simple, How Occam’s Razor Set Science Free and Shapes the Universe. He obtained his PhD at Imperial College London and went on to work on human genetic diseases and then infectious diseases, at the University of Surrey. Professor McFadden has specialised in examining the genetics of microbes such as the agents of tuberculosis and meningitis. His other books are Quantum Evolution: Life in the Multiverse, and Life on the Edge: The Coming of Age of Quantum Biology (co-authored with Jim Al-Khalili). He has published more than 100 articles in scientific journals on a wide range of subjects and lectures around the world. His present post is Associate Dean (International) and Professor of Molecular Genetics at the University of Surrey.

"And you can make extremely intelligent computations and very complex computations, but you don't get a mind out of it. You don't get consciousness out of it. You get a computer, and that's what's driving my hands waving around, driving my lips and my tongue, and all that kind of stuff, it's a computer; it's our non-conscious mind. But on top of that, we have the stuff we're aware of, and that's where our creativity lies. That's where our emotions lie. We can't think of being creative without using our conscious mind. And that's where stuff comes together because the difference between what happens in our conscious mind and in our non-conscious mind – in our non-conscious mind, everything is dissected."

www.surrey.ac.uk/people/johnjoe-mcfadden

https://johnjoemcfadden.co.uk

www.basicbooks.com/titles/johnjoe-mcfadden/life-is-simple/9781549112119

www.creativeprocess.info

www.oneplanetpodcast.org

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"Scott [aka Kid Cudi] sees music in color, so what the visuals of music meant to him. So he wanted to create a new experience and that alongside Kenya Barris and ideating what it could be led to Entergalactic, which essentially Scott wrote an original album, which is his 10th Studio album, and pieced those songs in before the creation of this love story, which runs 90 minutes from start to finish, and essentially the two parts exist simultaneously. So you've got the album on its own, and then you've got the event, which allows you to hear beats of each piece of music in all of these key beats of Jabari (Scott's character) and Meadow’s (Jessica Williams' character) love story. Scott had tweeted out that Entergalactic was the greatest piece he's ever created. This is the thing he's most proud of. Scott feels that this was an opportunity to create that new moment for his audience where they're going to get to experience something that they'd never had the opportunity to before because it feels so new."

"Scott lives in between the notes. So the things that you would expect, he lives right in the center, which is why his music is so interesting. The nuance and creativity of his choices is so indicative of the way that he hears sound."

Karina Manashil is the President of Mad Solar Productions. She began her career in the mailroom at WME (William Morris Endeavor) where she became a talent agent. She represented notable clients including Scott Mescudi, known by his stage name, Kid Cudi, and built her career taking talent into new arenas. In 2020, she partnered with Mescudi and Dennis Cummings to launch Mad Solar, which is backed by BRON Studios. Manashil then went on to Executive Produce SXSW fan-favorite X and its sequel, Pearl, directed by Ti West. Manashil is an Executive Producer on the Netflix animated series Entergalactic directed by Fletcher Moules. Entergalactic was created by Kid Cudi and features voiceover from Jessica Williams and Timothée Chalamet. It was released alongside its album of the same name from Kid Cudi on September 30th. Manashil is a native of Los Angeles and graduated from Chapman University with a BFA in Film Production.

Manashil www.imdb.com/name/nm3556462/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0
www.kidcudi.com

Mad Solar https://www.imdb.com/search/title/?companies=co0831164

Entergalactic www.netflix.com/title/81053303

Pearl www.imdb.com/title/tt18925334/

X www.imdb.com/title/tt13560574/?ref_=tt_trv_trv

www.creativeprocess.info

www.oneplanetpodcast.org

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Karina Manashil is the President of Mad Solar Productions. She began her career in the mailroom at WME (William Morris Endeavor) where she became a talent agent. She represented notable clients including Scott Mescudi, known by his stage name, Kid Cudi, and built her career taking talent into new arenas.

In 2020, she partnered with Mescudi and Dennis Cummings to launch Mad Solar, which is backed by BRON Studios. Manashil then went on to Executive Produce SXSW fan-favorite X and its sequel, Pearl, directed by Ti West. Manashil is an Executive Producer on the Netflix animated series Entergalactic directed by Fletcher Moules. Entergalactic was created by Kid Cudi and features voiceover from Jessica Williams and Timothée Chalamet. It was released alongside its album of the same name from Kid Cudi on September 30th.

Manashil is a native of Los Angeles and graduated from Chapman University with a BFA in Film Production.

"Scott [aka Kid Cudi] sees music in color, so what the visuals of music meant to him. So he wanted to create a new experience and that alongside Kenya Barris and ideating what it could be led to Entergalactic, which essentially Scott wrote an original album, which is his 10th Studio album, and pieced those songs in before the creation of this love story, which runs 90 minutes from start to finish, and essentially the two parts exist simultaneously. So you've got the album on its own, and then you've got the event, which allows you to hear beats of each piece of music in all of these key beats of Jabari (Scott's character) and Meadow’s (Jessica Williams' character) love story. Scott had tweeted out that Entergalactic was the greatest piece he's ever created. This is the thing he's most proud of. Scott feels that this was an opportunity to create that new moment for his audience where they're going to get to experience something that they'd never had the opportunity to before because it feels so new."

"Scott lives in between the notes. So the things that you would expect, he lives right in the center, which is why his music is so interesting. The nuance and creativity of his choices is so indicative of the way that he hears sound."

Manashil www.imdb.com/name/nm3556462/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0
www.kidcudi.com

Mad Solar https://www.imdb.com/search/title/?companies=co0831164

Entergalactic www.netflix.com/title/81053303

Pearl www.imdb.com/title/tt18925334/

X www.imdb.com/title/tt13560574/?ref_=tt_trv_trv

www.creativeprocess.info

www.oneplanetpodcast.org

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"I remember in the early 2000s, we had so much hope for the internet that it was going to democratize the distribution of music, especially when file sharing started. We said, Oh, wow. This is great. At that time, there were five major record companies, and then they conspired with MTV to give MTV all this free, big production content, and you couldn't really sell a lot of records unless you were on MTV. And unless you had this big budget for this video. And it started, artists were exploited from the beginning of radio. So I thought, Oh wow, now we're going to have file sharing, and we have the internet, and there's going to be all this information. This is going to transform the world. We're going to have this incredible end of poverty. And instead, we get Fascism. We get Bolsonaro, and it's really scary. On the other hand, listening to some of your podcasts - which I've been doing a lot recently - it's really pushed me to try to be optimistic because the pessimism is very oppressive. It makes me not want to work. So I'm really pushing myself to be consciously optimistic."

Lee Jaffe, a cross-disciplinary visual artist, musician, and poet, took photos of his friend, Jean-Michel Basquiat, when they traveled abroad in 1983. As a photographer, Jaffe had a connection to Basquiat, and their time spent together resulted in an archive of imagery that captured one of the art world’s true legends through an unfiltered and authentic lens.

“For me, watching him [Jean-Michel] paint reminded me of the times I would sit and play harmonica while Bob Marley, with his acoustic guitar, would be writing songs that were eventually to become classics,” Jaffe says. “With Jean and Bob, it seemed like they were channeling inspiration coming from an otherworldly place.”

Basquiat and Jaffe connected over reggae music. It was the early 1980s in New York. Jaffe had been a member of Bob Marley’s band, producer on Peter Tosh’s first solo album. and collaborated with art world figures Helio Oiticica, Gordon Matta Clark, and Vito Acconci. Jaffe is the author of Jean-Michel Basquiat: Crossroads.

www.leejaffe.com
www.rizzoliusa.com/book/9780847871841/

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org

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Lee Jaffe, a cross-disciplinary visual artist, musician, and poet, took photos of his friend, Jean-Michel Basquiat, when they traveled abroad in 1983. As a photographer, Jaffe had a connection to Basquiat, and their time spent together resulted in an archive of imagery that captured one of the art world’s true legends through an unfiltered and authentic lens.

“For me, watching him [Jean-Michel] paint reminded me of the times I would sit and play harmonica while Bob Marley, with his acoustic guitar, would be writing songs that were eventually to become classics,” Jaffe says. “With Jean and Bob, it seemed like they were channeling inspiration coming from an otherworldly place.”

Basquiat and Jaffe connected over reggae music. It was the early 1980s in New York. Jaffe had been a member of Bob Marley’s band, producer on Peter Tosh’s first solo album. and collaborated with art world figures Helio Oiticica, Gordon Matta Clark, and Vito Acconci. Jaffe is the author of Jean-Michel Basquiat: Crossroads.

"I remember in the early 2000s, we had so much hope for the internet that it was going to democratize the distribution of music, especially when file sharing started. We said, Oh, wow. This is great. At that time, there were five major record companies, and then they conspired with MTV to give MTV all this free, big production content, and you couldn't really sell a lot of records unless you were on MTV. And unless you had this big budget for this video. And it started, artists were exploited from the beginning of radio. So I thought, Oh wow, now we're going to have file sharing, and we have the internet, and there's going to be all this information. This is going to transform the world. We're going to have this incredible end of poverty. And instead, we get Fascism. We get Bolsonaro, and it's really scary. On the other hand, listening to some of your podcasts - which I've been doing a lot recently - it's really pushed me to try to be optimistic because the pessimism is very oppressive. It makes me not want to work. So I'm really pushing myself to be consciously optimistic."

www.leejaffe.com
www.rizzoliusa.com/book/9780847871841/

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org

Photo credit: Paige Powell, Lee Jaffe and Jean-Michel Basquiat recording the installation of “Inverted Oak” : Carmel, New York

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"I admit to being just a dyed-in-the-wool kind of techno-optimist. I don't know why that is, but I'm just very hopeful and optimistic about the future. And I know people are scared of like superintelligence taking over and everything. I just don't think that we're close to anything like that yet. It's not impossible, and it's something that I think we should take very seriously, but I really see AI as being this incredibly powerful, wonderful thing that is going to unlock incredible huge amounts of economic value. Maybe an optimist bordering on idealistic, but I kind of believe in this idea of abundance. And the idea of abundance is we sort of have this zero-sum perspective about economic activity, where if some people have a lot of wealth, other people can't.

But if you look at the size of the world economy – and you can actually go on Wikipedia and look at estimations of this going back to something like 2000 BC – the size of the economy in terms of economic activity is an exponential function, and it's like a perfect exponential function.

What exponential function means, as opposed to a linear function, it grows in a percentage basis, not an absolute way over time, which means that to double from one to two is going to take a certain amount of time, but then the same amount of time, not to go from two to three, but to go much higher.

The problem is not actually the generation of economic activity. It's allocation of that activity. And I really believe we're on the cusp of that. And AI is one big reason because if you can get rid of a lot of labor, of drudgery, and jobs that people don't want to do, and you can run a factory with a bunch of robots where people don't have to intervene that makes food or makes products or extracts resources...you can unlock a huge amount of economic activity. So, that has the potential, I think, to usher in an era of great abundance."

Philip Fernbach is an Associate Professor of Marketing and Co-Director of the Center for Research on Consumer Financial Decision Making at the University of Colorado, Boulder, Leeds School of Business. He’s published widely in the top journals in cognitive science, consumer research and marketing, and received the ACR Early Career Award for Contributions to Consumer Research. He’s co-author with Steve Sloman of The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone, which was chosen as a New York Times Editor’s Pick. He’s also written for NYTimes, Harvard Business Review, and his research has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, The Washinton Post, National Public Radio, and the BBC. He received his Ph.D. in cognitive science from the Department of Cognitive, Linguistic and Psychological Sciences at Brown and his undergraduate degree in Philosophy from Williams College. He teaches data analytics and behavioral science to undergraduate and Masters students.

www.colorado.edu/business/

www.philipfernbach.com

The Knowledge Illusion

www.creativeprocess.info

www.oneplanetpodcast.org

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Philip Fernbach is an Associate Professor of Marketing and Co-Director of the Center for Research on Consumer Financial Decision Making at the University of Colorado, Boulder, Leeds School of Business. He’s published widely in the top journals in cognitive science, consumer research and marketing, and received the ACR Early Career Award for Contributions to Consumer Research. He’s co-author with Steve Sloman of The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone, which was chosen as a New York Times Editor’s Pick. He’s also written for NYTimes, Harvard Business Review, and his research has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, The Washinton Post, National Public Radio, and the BBC. He received his Ph.D. in cognitive science from the Department of Cognitive, Linguistic and Psychological Sciences at Brown and his undergraduate degree in Philosophy from Williams College. He teaches data analytics and behavioral science to undergraduate and Masters students.

"I admit to being just a dyed-in-the-wool kind of techno-optimist. I don't know why that is, but I'm just very hopeful and optimistic about the future. And I know people are scared of like superintelligence taking over and everything. I just don't think that we're close to anything like that yet. It's not impossible, and it's something that I think we should take very seriously, but I really see AI as being this incredibly powerful, wonderful thing that is going to unlock incredible huge amounts of economic value. Maybe an optimist bordering on idealistic, but I kind of believe in this idea of abundance. And the idea of abundance is we sort of have this zero-sum perspective about economic activity, where if some people have a lot of wealth, other people can't.

But if you look at the size of the world economy – and you can actually go on Wikipedia and look at estimations of this going back to something like 2000 BC – the size of the economy in terms of economic activity is an exponential function, and it's like a perfect exponential function.

What exponential function means, as opposed to a linear function, it grows in a percentage basis, not an absolute way over time, which means that to double from one to two is going to take a certain amount of time, but then the same amount of time, not to go from two to three, but to go much higher.

The problem is not actually the generation of economic activity. It's allocation of that activity. And I really believe we're on the cusp of that. And AI is one big reason because if you can get rid of a lot of labor, of drudgery, and jobs that people don't want to do, and you can run a factory with a bunch of robots where people don't have to intervene that makes food or makes products or extracts resources...you can unlock a huge amount of economic activity. So, that has the potential, I think, to usher in an era of great abundance."

www.colorado.edu/business/

www.philipfernbach.com

The Knowledge Illusion

www.creativeprocess.info

www.oneplanetpodcast.org

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"For a very long time, the tech industry was publishing their numbers year after year, and the numbers stayed very much the same. And they were throwing their hands in the air and saying, 'Well, okay, we are measuring. We are publishing the numbers, numbers look bad. There's nothing we can do about it.' So there was transparency, but there was not the accountability of yes, there is something we can do about those numbers. It might take longer, and the progress might not be as fast as we can do, but there is something we can do about it. And here is the place we would start. But when the stakeholders start to have a voice then that accountability is created for organizations to move from intention to action and from action to impact."

Aniela Unguresan is Co-founder of EDGE Certification, the leading global assessment methodology and business certification standard for gender equality. Launched at the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in 2011, EDGE Certification measures where organizations stand in terms of gender balance across their pipeline, pay equity, and effectiveness of policies and practices to ensure equitable career flows, as well as the inclusiveness of their culture. EDGE Certification has been designed to help companies not only to create an optimal workplace for women and men, but also to benefit from it. EDGE stands for Economic Dividends for Gender Equality and is distinguished by its rigor and focus on business impact. Their customer base consists of 200 large organizations in 50 countries across five continents, representing 30 different industries.

Prior to co-founding EDGE Certified Foundation, Aniela acquired extensive professional experience as a consultant with Arthur Andersen and Andersen Consulting, as a trader and project manager with TXU Europe and SIG Geneva, and as the CEO of CT Technologies.

https://edge-cert.org

www.creativeprocess.info

www.oneplanetpodcast.org

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Aniela Unguresan is Co-founder of EDGE Certification, the leading global assessment methodology and business certification standard for gender equality. Launched at the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in 2011, EDGE Certification measures where organizations stand in terms of gender balance across their pipeline, pay equity, and effectiveness of policies and practices to ensure equitable career flows, as well as the inclusiveness of their culture. EDGE Certification has been designed to help companies not only to create an optimal workplace for women and men, but also to benefit from it. EDGE stands for Economic Dividends for Gender Equality and is distinguished by its rigor and focus on business impact. Their customer base consists of 200 large organizations in 50 countries across five continents, representing 30 different industries.

Prior to co-founding EDGE Certified Foundation, Aniela acquired extensive professional experience as a consultant with Arthur Andersen and Andersen Consulting, as a trader and project manager with TXU Europe and SIG Geneva, and as the CEO of CT Technologies.

"For a very long time, the tech industry was publishing their numbers year after year, and the numbers stayed very much the same. And they were throwing their hands in the air and saying, 'Well, okay, we are measuring. We are publishing the numbers, numbers look bad. There's nothing we can do about it.' So there was transparency, but there was not the accountability of yes, there is something we can do about those numbers. It might take longer, and the progress might not be as fast as we can do, but there is something we can do about it. And here is the place we would start. But when the stakeholders start to have a voice then that accountability is created for organizations to move from intention to action and from action to impact."

https://edge-cert.org

www.creativeprocess.info

www.oneplanetpodcast.org

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"The field of synthetic biology, which is known by some as extreme genetic engineering – that's a name mostly used by people who don't like it - amounts to a set of tools that humans have developed to be able to very precisely and accurately change the genetic code, the DNA of living organisms in order to get those organisms to do things that humans want. So the applications in medicine are predominantly devoted to trying to make us healthier people, and they range from some really exciting work on tumor biology to work on the microbiome, which is all of the thousands and tens of thousands of species that live on our lips, our mouths, our guts, our skin. And in agriculture, it's primarily directed at crop genetics, trying to improve the productivity of crops, the nutritional value of crops, the ability of crops to respond to climate change, and a whole variety of other things. Some people may have heard of one of these tools called CRISPR used to very precisely alter the sequences of DNA.

This book that Bill and I wrote is about the impending intersection between synthetic biology and the field of nature conservation, not an examination of the technologies per se, but an examination of the way that we are going to end up needing to think about the intersection between our ability to change DNA, and what it means to be natural, and what it means to conserve things and whether or not we want to conserve things that we have altered."

Kent H. Redford is a conservation practitioner and Principal at Archipelago Consulting established in 2012 and based in Portland, Maine, USA. Archipelago Consulting was designed to help individuals and organizations improve their practice of conservation. Prior to Archipelago Consulting Kent spent 10 years on the faculty of University of Florida and 19 years in conservation NGOs with five years as Director of The Nature Conservancy’s Parks in Peril program and 14 years as Vice President for Conservation Science and Strategy at the Wildlife Conservation Society. For six years he was Chair of IUCN’s Task Force on Synthetic Biology and Biodiversity Conservation. In June 2021 Yale University Press published Kent’s book with W.M. Adams: Strange Natures. Conservation in the Era of Synthetic Biology.

https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300230970/strange-natures/

https://archipelagoconsulting.com

www.oneplanetpodcast.org

www.creativeprocess.info

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Kent H. Redford is a conservation practitioner and Principal at Archipelago Consulting established in 2012 and based in Portland, Maine, USA. Archipelago Consulting was designed to help individuals and organizations improve their practice of conservation. Prior to Archipelago Consulting Kent spent 10 years on the faculty of University of Florida and 19 years in conservation NGOs with five years as Director of The Nature Conservancy’s Parks in Peril program and 14 years as Vice President for Conservation Science and Strategy at the Wildlife Conservation Society. For six years he was Chair of IUCN’s Task Force on Synthetic Biology and Biodiversity Conservation. In June 2021 Yale University Press published Kent’s book with W.M. Adams: Strange Natures. Conservation in the Era of Synthetic Biology.

"The field of synthetic biology, which is known by some as extreme genetic engineering – that's a name mostly used by people who don't like it - amounts to a set of tools that humans have developed to be able to very precisely and accurately change the genetic code, the DNA of living organisms in order to get those organisms to do things that humans want. So the applications in medicine are predominantly devoted to trying to make us healthier people, and they range from some really exciting work on tumor biology to work on the microbiome, which is all of the thousands and tens of thousands of species that live on our lips, our mouths, our guts, our skin. And in agriculture, it's primarily directed at crop genetics, trying to improve the productivity of crops, the nutritional value of crops, the ability of crops to respond to climate change, and a whole variety of other things. Some people may have heard of one of these tools called CRISPR used to very precisely alter the sequences of DNA.

This book that Bill and I wrote is about the impending intersection between synthetic biology and the field of nature conservation, not an examination of the technologies per se, but an examination of the way that we are going to end up needing to think about the intersection between our ability to change DNA, and what it means to be natural, and what it means to conserve things and whether or not we want to conserve things that we have altered."

https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300230970/strange-natures/

https://archipelagoconsulting.com

www.oneplanetpodcast.org

www.creativeprocess.info

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"We are the extreme animal. We're certainly, technologically speaking, there's no comparison to what humans can do among all the animals that make some tools, even though we should keep in mind that for close to 200,000 years, humans who were essentially identical to us had no tools that were more complicated than a bow and arrow.

I think the most crucial thing is that while we are such extraordinary tinkerers that we can keep creating unbelievable kinds of technologies, we are not very smart about what we do with those things or seeing them through to the implications of what happens when we do these things. If we were wiser about it, we would conduct ourselves much more differently than the all-out charge that we conduct, where often we just follow some technology along without worrying about the implications of what will happen ultimately, or caring about what will happen ultimately, or denying what is happening as a result of the overuse of those technologies or the overpopulation of the world by human beings. And those are causing many of the problems that we have."

Carl Safina’s lyrical non-fiction writing explores how humans are changing the living world, and what the changes mean for non-human beings and for us all. His work has been recognized with MacArthur, Pew, and Guggenheim Fellowships, and his writing has won Orion, Lannan, and National Academies literary awards and the John Burroughs, James Beard, and George Rabb medals. Safina is the inaugural holder of the endowed chair for nature and humanity at Stony Brook University, where he co-chairs the steering committee of the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science and is founding president of the not-for-profit Safina Center. He hosted the 10-part PBS series Saving the Ocean with Carl Safina. His writing appears in The New York Times, National Geographic, Audubon, CNN.com, National Geographic News, and other publications. He is the author of ten books including the classic Song for the Blue Ocean, as well as New York Times Bestseller Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel. His most recent book is Becoming Wild: How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace.

www.safinacenter.org

www.carlsafina.org

www.oneplanetpodcast.org

www.creativeprocess.info

Photo: Carl Safina in Uganda

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Carl Safina’s lyrical non-fiction writing explores how humans are changing the living world, and what the changes mean for non-human beings and for us all. His work has been recognized with MacArthur, Pew, and Guggenheim Fellowships, and his writing has won Orion, Lannan, and National Academies literary awards and the John Burroughs, James Beard, and George Rabb medals. Safina is the inaugural holder of the endowed chair for nature and humanity at Stony Brook University, where he co-chairs the steering committee of the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science and is founding president of the not-for-profit Safina Center. He hosted the 10-part PBS series Saving the Ocean with Carl Safina. His writing appears in The New York Times, National Geographic, Audubon, CNN.com, National Geographic News, and other publications. He is the author of ten books including the classic Song for the Blue Ocean, as well as New York Times Bestseller Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel. His most recent book is Becoming Wild: How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace.

"We are the extreme animal. We're certainly, technologically speaking, there's no comparison to what humans can do among all the animals that make some tools, even though we should keep in mind that for close to 200,000 years, humans who were essentially identical to us had no tools that were more complicated than a bow and arrow.

I think the most crucial thing is that while we are such extraordinary tinkerers that we can keep creating unbelievable kinds of technologies, we are not very smart about what we do with those things or seeing them through to the implications of what happens when we do these things. If we were wiser about it, we would conduct ourselves much more differently than the all-out charge that we conduct, where often we just follow some technology along without worrying about the implications of what will happen ultimately, or caring about what will happen ultimately, or denying what is happening as a result of the overuse of those technologies or the overpopulation of the world by human beings. And those are causing many of the problems that we have."

www.safinacenter.org

www.carlsafina.org

www.oneplanetpodcast.org

www.creativeprocess.info

Photo: Carl Safina in Uganda

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"I think what we really face is an even more profound change into this condition where human nature becomes plastic in the sense of malleable, and we then have to think more from the ground up - What is it that ultimately brings value to the world? If you could be literally any kind of being you chose to be, what kind of being would you want to be? What constraints and limitations and flaws would you want to retain because it's part of what makes you, you. And what aspects would you want to improve? If you have like a bad knee, you probably would want to fix the knee. If you're nearsighted, and you could just snap your fingers and have perfect eyesight, that seems pretty attractive, but then if you keep going in that direction, eventually, it's not clear that you're human anymore. You become some sort of idealized ethereal being, and maybe that's a desirable ultimate destiny for humanity, but I'm not sure we would want to rush there immediately. Maybe we would want to take a kind of slower path to get to that destination."

Nick Bostrom is a Swedish-born philosopher with a background in theoretical physics, computational neuroscience, logic, and artificial intelligence, as well as philosophy. He is the most-cited professional philosopher in the world under the age of 50.

He is a Professor at Oxford University, where he heads the Future of Humanity Institute as its founding director. He is the author of some 200 publications, including Anthropic Bias, Global Catastrophic Risks, Human Enhancement, and Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, a New York Times bestseller which helped spark a global conversation about the future of AI. He has also published a series of influential papers, including ones that introduced the simulation argument and the concept of existential risk.

Bostrom’s academic work has been translated into more than 30 languages. He is a repeat main TED speaker and has been on Foreign Policy’s Top 100 Global Thinkers list twice and was included in Prospect’s World Thinkers list, the youngest person in the top 15. As a graduate student he dabbled in stand-up comedy on the London circuit, but he has since reconnected with the heavy gloom of his Swedish roots.

https://nickbostrom.com

https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk

www.creativeprocess.info

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Nick Bostrom is a Swedish-born philosopher with a background in theoretical physics, computational neuroscience, logic, and artificial intelligence, as well as philosophy. He is the most-cited professional philosopher in the world under the age of 50.

He is a Professor at Oxford University, where he heads the Future of Humanity Institute as its founding director. He is the author of some 200 publications, including Anthropic Bias, Global Catastrophic Risks, Human Enhancement, and Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, a New York Times bestseller which helped spark a global conversation about the future of AI. He has also published a series of influential papers, including ones that introduced the simulation argument and the concept of existential risk.

Bostrom’s academic work has been translated into more than 30 languages. He is a repeat main TED speaker and has been on Foreign Policy’s Top 100 Global Thinkers list twice and was included in Prospect’s World Thinkers list, the youngest person in the top 15. As a graduate student he dabbled in stand-up comedy on the London circuit, but he has since reconnected with the heavy gloom of his Swedish roots.

"I think what we really face is an even more profound change into this condition where human nature becomes plastic in the sense of malleable, and we then have to think more from the ground up - What is it that ultimately brings value to the world? If you could be literally any kind of being you chose to be, what kind of being would you want to be? What constraints and limitations and flaws would you want to retain because it's part of what makes you, you. And what aspects would you want to improve? If you have like a bad knee, you probably would want to fix the knee. If you're nearsighted, and you could just snap your fingers and have perfect eyesight, that seems pretty attractive, but then if you keep going in that direction, eventually, it's not clear that you're human anymore. You become some sort of idealized ethereal being, and maybe that's a desirable ultimate destiny for humanity, but I'm not sure we would want to rush there immediately. Maybe we would want to take a kind of slower path to get to that destination."

https://nickbostrom.com

https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk

www.creativeprocess.info

www.oneplanetpodcast.org

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“Humanity needs to do three things if it wants to continue to flourish, and it will. The three things that humanity needs to do are decarbonize the global economy, drawdown, capture, harvest much of that heat-trapping pollution that we've already pumped into the atmosphere over the past hundred years because as long as it's up in our atmosphere, we're going to have continued warming. And the third thing that humanity needs to do is become more resilient to the impacts of climate change, which unfortunately will continue for the next several generations at least, even as we succeed in decarbonizing the global economy and harvesting that heat-trapping pollution from the atmosphere.

So these are the three things that have to happen. These three things will happen. The open question is how rapidly will they happen? Any business that can play a vital role in making any one or two or all three of those things happen, those are businesses that are going to flourish going forward. And any business that's sitting on the side and not contributing to one of those three areas, I really think they will become increasingly irrelevant, if not completely antiquated and increasingly understood to be harmful.”

Dr. Mona Sarfaty is the Executive Director and Founder of the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health, comprised of societies representing 70% of all U.S. physicians. She founded the Communication in 2016 in conjunction with the George Mason University Center for Climate Change. Under her leadership, the Consortium has grown into a nationwide coalition of societies, organizations, and advocates mobilizing support for equitable policies that address the health impacts of climate change.

Edward Maibach is Director of the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication, a distinguished University Professor and communication scientist who is expert in the uses of strategic communication and social marketing to address climate change and related public health challenges. His research – funded by NSF, NASA, and private foundations – focuses on public understanding of climate change and clean energy; and the psychology underlying public engagement. In 2021, Ed was identified by Thompson Reuters as one of the world’s 10 most influential scientists working on climate change.

https://medsocietiesforclimatehealth.org

https://twitter.com/docsforclimate

www.climatechangecommunication.org/all/climate-change-american-mind-april-2022/

www.climatechangecommunication.org/all/politics-global-warming-april-2022/

www.oneplanetpodcast.org

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Dr. Mona Sarfaty is the Executive Director and Founder of the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health, comprised of societies representing 70% of all U.S. physicians. She founded the Communication in 2016 in conjunction with the George Mason University Center for Climate Change. Under her leadership, the Consortium has grown into a nationwide coalition of societies, organizations, and advocates mobilizing support for equitable policies that address the health impacts of climate change.

Edward Maibach is Director of the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication, a distinguished University Professor and communication scientist who is expert in the uses of strategic communication and social marketing to address climate change and related public health challenges. His research – funded by NSF, NASA, and private foundations – focuses on public understanding of climate change and clean energy; and the psychology underlying public engagement. In 2021, Ed was identified by Thompson Reuters as one of the world’s 10 most influential scientists working on climate change.

“Humanity needs to do three things if it wants to continue to flourish, and it will. The three things that humanity needs to do are decarbonize the global economy, drawdown, capture, harvest much of that heat-trapping pollution that we've already pumped into the atmosphere over the past hundred years because as long as it's up in our atmosphere, we're going to have continued warming. And the third thing that humanity needs to do is become more resilient to the impacts of climate change, which unfortunately will continue for the next several generations at least, even as we succeed in decarbonizing the global economy and harvesting that heat-trapping pollution from the atmosphere.

So these are the three things that have to happen. These three things will happen. The open question is how rapidly will they happen? Any business that can play a vital role in making any one or two or all three of those things happen, those are businesses that are going to flourish going forward. And any business that's sitting on the side and not contributing to one of those three areas, I really think they will become increasingly irrelevant, if not completely antiquated and increasingly understood to be harmful.”

https://medsocietiesforclimatehealth.org

https://twitter.com/docsforclimate

www.climatechangecommunication.org/all/climate-change-american-mind-april-2022/

www.climatechangecommunication.org/all/politics-global-warming-april-2022/

www.oneplanetpodcast.org

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"I'm an educator, and I'm interested in educating people about what dinosaurs were really like. One of the ways to do that is through working on exhibits for museums, working with some of these other companies that make things like exhibits, working with them to try to update their ideas of what dinosaurs were like. Modern exhibits oftentimes have a lot of VR in them and a lot of computer graphics and things like that.

So we have to work together with companies that are interested or are doing that sort of thing. We started working early on with Microsoft to make these virtual dinosaurs that you could put on a VR mask and see these dinosaurs. We also made a little VR game that kids could play and dig up dinosaurs. We're just trying to figure out ways to go beyond what we can do at universities and see if we can figure out ways of just sharing all this new information."

Jack Horner is a severely dyslexic, dinosaur paleontologist. He attended the University of Montana for 14 semesters without receiving a degree. He has since received two honorary doctorates of science and a plethora of awards including a MacArthur Fellowship. Jack was Curator and Regent’s Professor of Paleontology at Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana for 34 years. He has more than 300 publications. He was the technical advisor for all of the Jurassic Park/ Jurassic World movies. At Chapman University where he now teaches, Jack encourages his honors students and dyslexic mentorees to challenge their preconceived ideas.

https://jackhornersdinosaurs.com

Horner Science Group

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Jack Horner is a severely dyslexic, dinosaur paleontologist. He attended the University of Montana for 14 semesters without receiving a degree. He has since received two honorary doctorates of science and a plethora of awards including a MacArthur Fellowship. Jack was Curator and Regent’s Professor of Paleontology at Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana for 34 years. He has more than 300 publications. He was the technical advisor for all of the Jurassic Park/ Jurassic World movies. At Chapman University where he now teaches, Jack encourages his honors students and dyslexic mentorees to challenge their preconceived ideas.

"I'm an educator, and I'm interested in educating people about what dinosaurs were really like. One of the ways to do that is through working on exhibits for museums, working with some of these other companies that make things like exhibits, working with them to try to update their ideas of what dinosaurs were like. Modern exhibits oftentimes have a lot of VR in them and a lot of computer graphics and things like that.

So we have to work together with companies that are interested or are doing that sort of thing. We started working early on with Microsoft to make these virtual dinosaurs that you could put on a VR mask and see these dinosaurs. We also made a little VR game that kids could play and dig up dinosaurs. We're just trying to figure out ways to go beyond what we can do at universities and see if we can figure out ways of just sharing all this new information."

https://jackhornersdinosaurs.com

Horner Science Group

www.creativeprocess.info

www.oneplanetpodcast.org

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"It's one of our more popular experiences at the GRAMMY Museum. We have something called Mono to Immersive, which actually takes a Bruno Mars and Cardi B performance at the GRAMMY Awards, and we put guests/listeners into a room, and they watch this performance. And we had Grammy-winning engineers mix these performances. What would that Bruno Mars and Cardi B performance sound like if it were mono sound - so records, wax cylinder? Think about that. And then what about on cassette? And then what about on MP3? And then now on streaming? And then what we call immersive, which is surround sound? So we really try to walk visitors through the history of recorded sound and how much technology has changed, not just the recording process, but the listening experience as well."

The GRAMMY Museum believes that music is a gateway to learning. Their mission is to explore and celebrate the enduring legacies of the creative process behind all forms of music through immersive and interactive exhibits and essential music education programs. Michael Sticka serves as President/CEO. He’s responsible for the creation of the Museum's growth and sustainability as an independent nonprofit arts organization, overseeing the Museum Foundation™’s national programming, including GRAMMY In The Schools®, grants for music research and preservation and national affiliates. Their many projects include the multimillion-dollar renovation of the Museum in downtown Los Angeles, building the only gallery dedicated to Latin music in California; GRAMMY Museum at Home, a collection of virtual exhibits, artist programs and educational content available free to educators and music lovers worldwide; and their official streaming service COLLECTION:live™. An advocate for accessibility, the GRAMMY Museum became the only museum named as a Certified Autism Center™ in California.
Prior to joining the Academy, Sticka consulted for nonprofit organizations and co-founded the Zoot Theatre Company in Dayton, Ohio.

Grammymuseum.org

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The GRAMMY Museum believes that music is a gateway to learning. Their mission is to explore and celebrate the enduring legacies of the creative process behind all forms of music through immersive and interactive exhibits and essential music education programs. Michael Sticka serves as President/CEO. He’s responsible for the creation of the Museum's growth and sustainability as an independent nonprofit arts organization, overseeing the Museum Foundation™’s national programming, including GRAMMY In The Schools®, grants for music research and preservation and national affiliates. Their many projects include the multimillion-dollar renovation of the Museum in downtown Los Angeles, building the only gallery dedicated to Latin music in California; GRAMMY Museum at Home, a collection of virtual exhibits, artist programs and educational content available free to educators and music lovers worldwide; and their official streaming service COLLECTION:live™. An advocate for accessibility, the GRAMMY Museum became the only museum named as a Certified Autism Center™ in California.
Prior to joining the Academy, Sticka consulted for nonprofit organizations and co-founded the Zoot Theatre Company in Dayton, Ohio.

"It's one of our more popular experiences at the GRAMMY Museum. We have something called Mono to Immersive, which actually takes a Bruno Mars and Cardi B performance at the GRAMMY Awards, and we put guests/listeners into a room, and they watch this performance. And we had Grammy-winning engineers mix these performances. What would that Bruno Mars and Cardi B performance sound like if it were mono sound - so records, wax cylinder? Think about that. And then what about on cassette? And then what about on MP3? And then now on streaming? And then what we call immersive, which is surround sound? So we really try to walk visitors through the history of recorded sound and how much technology has changed, not just the recording process, but the listening experience as well."

Grammymuseum.org

IG, FB, TW: @grammymuseum

www.creativeprocess.info

www.oneplanetpodcast.org

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"Cities are certainly a great place to start because the way that we do them - you can see it if you go up in an airplane and look down - you can see that they're built against nature. You can see it in the color of the city. It's interesting. We reflect it in our maps. Cities are gray, and the rest of the world is green. We build them against the natural world, and the way that we do it - concrete - is one of the worst environmental materials we could use, and we have no intention, at the moment, of changing that.

And we're going to add roughly two more billion people, almost all of whom will live in cities. The scale of that problem is absolutely staggering, and we intend to put them in buildings. No one I've found is willing to say, No, actually you've got to stay outside. No, we're going to put them in buildings. And we're going to build about half the world again to accommodate it. So all of that has to change, and the good news is that there's huge effort being made, huge innovation projects all over the world."

Designer, author, educator and artist Bruce Mau is a brilliantly creative optimist whose love of thorny problems led him to create a methodology for life-centered design. Across thirty years of design innovation, he’s collaborated with global brands and companies, leading organizations, heads of state, renowned artists and fellow optimists. Mau became an international figure with the publication of his landmark S,M,L,XL, designed and co-authored with Rem Koolhaas, and his most recent books are Mau MC24: Bruce Mau’s 24 Principles for Designing Massive Change in Your Life and Work and, with co-author, Julio Ottino, dean of Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering, The Nexus: Augmented Thinking for a Complex World – The New Convergence of Art, Technology, and Science. Mau is co-founder and CEO of Massive Change Network, a holistic design collective based in the Chicago area.

www.massivechangenetwork.com

www.Brucemaustudio.com

Mau MC24

The Nexus

Image Courtesy of Massive Change Network

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Designer, author, educator and artist Bruce Mau is a brilliantly creative optimist whose love of thorny problems led him to create a methodology for life-centered design. Across thirty years of design innovation, he’s collaborated with global brands and companies, leading organizations, heads of state, renowned artists and fellow optimists. Mau became an international figure with the publication of his landmark S,M,L,XL, designed and co-authored with Rem Koolhaas, and his most recent books are Mau MC24: Bruce Mau’s 24 Principles for Designing Massive Change in Your Life and Work and, with co-author, Julio Ottino, dean of Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering, The Nexus: Augmented Thinking for a Complex World – The New Convergence of Art, Technology, and Science. Mau is co-founder and CEO of Massive Change Network, a holistic design collective based in the Chicago area.

"Cities are certainly a great place to start because the way that we do them - you can see it if you go up in an airplane and look down - you can see that they're built against nature. You can see it in the color of the city. It's interesting. We reflect it in our maps. Cities are gray, and the rest of the world is green. We build them against the natural world, and the way that we do it - concrete - is one of the worst environmental materials we could use, and we have no intention, at the moment, of changing that.

And we're going to add roughly two more billion people, almost all of whom will live in cities. The scale of that problem is absolutely staggering, and we intend to put them in buildings. No one I've found is willing to say, No, actually you've got to stay outside. No, we're going to put them in buildings. And we're going to build about half the world again to accommodate it. So all of that has to change, and the good news is that there's huge effort being made, huge innovation projects all over the world."

www.massivechangenetwork.com

www.Brucemaustudio.com

Mau MC24

The Nexus

Image Courtesy of Massive Change Network

www.creativeprocess.info

www.oneplanetpodcast.org

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"So the idea of the multiverse, as you all know, is a pretty big idea in physics right now. Many physicists are thinking about interpreting quantum theory in terms of the multiverse or many-worlds interpretation. Max Tegmark, for example, has the idea that there's what he calls a Level IV multiverse. He thinks that mathematics is fundamental. So the fundamental reality is just mathematics, and in some sense, Gödel's incompleteness theorem says that there's endless mathematics. There's no end to mathematical exploration. And so that's Tegmark's multiverse: whatever is mathematically possible is actual."

Donald D. Hoffman is a Professor of Cognitive Sciences at the University of California, Irvine. He is the author of The case against reality: Why evolution hid the truth from our eyes. His research on perception, evolution, and consciousness received the Troland Award of the US National Academy of Sciences, the Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contribution of the American Psychological Association, the Rustum Roy Award of the Chopra Foundation, and is the subject of his TED Talk, titled “Do we see reality as it is?”

http://www.cogsci.uci.edu/~ddhoff/

The Case Against Reality

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Donald D. Hoffman is a Professor of Cognitive Sciences at the University of California, Irvine. He is the author of The case against reality: Why evolution hid the truth from our eyes. His research on perception, evolution, and consciousness received the Troland Award of the US National Academy of Sciences, the Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contribution of the American Psychological Association, the Rustum Roy Award of the Chopra Foundation, and is the subject of his TED Talk, titled “Do we see reality as it is?”

"So the idea of the multiverse, as you all know, is a pretty big idea in physics right now. Many physicists are thinking about interpreting quantum theory in terms of the multiverse or many-worlds interpretation. Max Tegmark, for example, has the idea that there's what he calls a Level IV multiverse. He thinks that mathematics is fundamental. So the fundamental reality is just mathematics, and in some sense, Gödel's incompleteness theorem says that there's endless mathematics. There's no end to mathematical exploration. And so that's Tegmark's multiverse: whatever is mathematically possible is actual."

http://www.cogsci.uci.edu/~ddhoff/

The Case Against Reality

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www.oneplanetpodcast.org

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"I think certainly we're going to go through 1.5 degrees Celsius. I think the best estimate is probably somewhere around 2032 or thereabouts, the early 2030s. And at the current rate we're going, we'll go through 2 degrees Celsius in the mid to late 2050s. Now there's certainly time to slow that rate of increase down, and we could easily push the 2 degrees Celsius threshold out to 2070 or 2080. And with really strong efforts, we might be able to hold the overall global mean surface temperature increase to something maybe close to that. Although, whether it goes past it and then comes back a little bit to it, remains to be seen. So this relates to current policies and what nations are committed to doing.

Certainly, if everyone's current policies and what they're committed to doing were in place, we would be in a much better situation than we actually are because a lot of those policies have been mentioned, but there are no implementation plans in many countries. There was a recent report I saw, which said that maybe two countries in the world, out of 190 something countries, are maybe on track to meeting their obligations on the COP26 meeting in Glasgow last year.”

Kevin Trenberth is a Distinguished Scholar at the National Center of Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder and an Honorary Academic in the Department of Physics, Auckland University in Auckland, New Zealand. From New Zealand, he obtained his Sc. D. in meteorology in 1972 from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was a lead author of the 1995, 2001 and 2007 Scientific Assessment of Climate Change reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize which went to the IPCC. He served from 1999 to 2006 on the Joint Scientific Committee of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP), and chaired a number of committees for more than 20 years. He is the author of "The Changing Flow of Energy Through the Climate System".

The Changing Flow of Energy Through the Climate System

www.ipcc.ch

https://www.cgd.ucar.edu/staff/trenbert

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Kevin Trenberth is a Distinguished Scholar at the National Center of Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder and an Honorary Academic in the Department of Physics, Auckland University in Auckland, New Zealand. From New Zealand, he obtained his Sc. D. in meteorology in 1972 from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was a lead author of the 1995, 2001 and 2007 Scientific Assessment of Climate Change reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize which went to the IPCC. He served from 1999 to 2006 on the Joint Scientific Committee of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP), and chaired a number of committees for more than 20 years. He is the author of "The Changing Flow of Energy Through the Climate System".

"I think certainly we're going to go through 1.5 degrees Celsius. I think the best estimate is probably somewhere around 2032 or thereabouts, the early 2030s. And at the current rate we're going, we'll go through 2 degrees Celsius in the mid to late 2050s. Now there's certainly time to slow that rate of increase down, and we could easily push the 2 degrees Celsius threshold out to 2070 or 2080. And with really strong efforts, we might be able to hold the overall global mean surface temperature increase to something maybe close to that. Although, whether it goes past it and then comes back a little bit to it, remains to be seen. So this relates to current policies and what nations are committed to doing.

Certainly, if everyone's current policies and what they're committed to doing were in place, we would be in a much better situation than we actually are because a lot of those policies have been mentioned, but there are no implementation plans in many countries. There was a recent report I saw, which said that maybe two countries in the world, out of 190 something countries, are maybe on track to meeting their obligations on the COP26 meeting in Glasgow last year.”

The Changing Flow of Energy Through the Climate System

www.ipcc.ch

https://www.cgd.ucar.edu/staff/trenbert

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www.creativeprocess.info

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“All the holders of solutions, all the innovators could be a startup or a big company, can submit their solution to us, and the solution will be analyzed by our group of experts. We have external and independent experts, about 370 of them, and they will observe three criteria: Is it a solution that exists today and is credible today? Because we don't want to have vague ideas for the future. We want to have solutions for today. Then it needs to be economically profitable for the company who produces it and for the consumer. The people buying the solution must save money, otherwise it's not profitable. And it needs to protect the environment, either because it's much better than anything else existing today, or because it's clearly a new business opportunity to protect the environment.

If you have these criteria that are all three positive, then the experts will give a recommendation that we give the label, and then they will receive the label. The Solar Impulse Efficient Solution Label is currently the first and only label in the world that certifies the profitability of an environmentally friendly product.”

Psychiatrist, aviator and explorer, Bertrand Piccard made history in 1999 by accomplishing the first ever non-stop round-the-world balloon flight, and a number of years later the first round-the-world solar-powered flight. Piccard has dedicated his life to demonstrating sustainable development opportunities. He is Founder and Chairman of the Solar Impulse Foundation, which has assembled a verified portfolio of over 1400 actionable and profitable climate solutions. As a pioneer of new ways of thinking that reconcile ecology and economy, he uses his exploration feats to motivate governments and industries to take action. He is a United Nations Goodwill Ambassador for the Environment and Special Advisor to the European Commission. He’s author of Réaliste, Changer d’Altitude, and other books.

Solar Impulse Foundation

bertrandpiccard.com

Solar Impulse Solutions Explorer (1400+)

Réaliste

Changer d’altitude

Photo credit: Solar Impulse/ Stefatou
Abu Dhabi, UAE, March 1st, 2015, Solar Impulse 2 second test flight over Abu Dhabi

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Psychiatrist, aviator and explorer, Bertrand Piccard made history in 1999 by accomplishing the first ever non-stop round-the-world balloon flight, and a number of years later the first round-the-world solar-powered flight. Piccard has dedicated his life to demonstrating sustainable development opportunities. He is Founder and Chairman of the Solar Impulse Foundation, which has assembled a verified portfolio of over 1400 actionable and profitable climate solutions. As a pioneer of new ways of thinking that reconcile ecology and economy, he uses his exploration feats to motivate governments and industries to take action. He is a United Nations Goodwill Ambassador for the Environment, Special Advisor to the European Commission, and is author of Réaliste, Changer d’Altitude, and other books.

“All the holders of solutions, all the innovators could be a startup or a big company, can submit their solution to us, and the solution will be analyzed by our group of experts. We have external and independent experts, about 370 of them, and they will observe three criteria: Is it a solution that exists today and is credible today? Because we don't want to have vague ideas for the future. We want to have solutions for today. Then it needs to be economically profitable for the company who produces it and for the consumer. The people buying the solution must save money, otherwise it's not profitable. And it needs to protect the environment, either because it's much better than anything else existing today, or because it's clearly a new business opportunity to protect the environment.

If you have these criteria that are all three positive, then the experts will give a recommendation that we give the label, and then they will receive the label. The Solar Impulse Efficient Solution Label is currently the first and only label in the world that certifies the profitability of an environmentally friendly product.”

Solar Impulse Foundation

bertrandpiccard.com

Solar Impulse Solutions Explorer (1400+)

Réaliste

Changer d’altitude

www.oneplanetpodcast.org

www.creativeprocess.info

Photo credit: Philipp Böhlen

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"How do we actually get deployment of clean technologies everywhere around the world with the urgency that's needed, at the scale that's needed is an incredibly daunting challenge. We do have a lot of the technologies. We haven't deployed them as fast as we would hope, but that seems to be changing. Solar is the fastest growing energy source in the world right now. We are starting to see movement in terms of the replacement of our light duty passenger vehicle transport system away from gasoline-powered cars and towards electric cars. So we're starting to see important movements happening.”

Dr. Charles D. Koven is an Earth System Scientist, working in the Climate Sciences Department at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He investigates feedbacks between climate and the carbon cycle. Dr. Koven’s primary research focus is on high-latitude feedbacks to climate change, and in particular the role of soil carbon in permafrost soils, and its response to changing climate. Dr. Koven is a lead author on the IPCC report as part of Working Group I, The Physical Science Basis of Climate Change.

Charles D. Koven

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Dr. Charles D. Koven is an Earth System Scientist, working in the Climate Sciences Department at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He investigates feedbacks between climate and the carbon cycle. Dr. Koven’s primary research focus is on high-latitude feedbacks to climate change, and in particular the role of soil carbon in permafrost soils, and its response to changing climate. Dr. Koven is a lead author on the IPCC report as part of Working Group I, The Physical Science Basis of Climate Change.

"How do we actually get deployment of clean technologies everywhere around the world with the urgency that's needed, at the scale that's needed is an incredibly daunting challenge. We do have a lot of the technologies. We haven't deployed them as fast as we would hope, but that seems to be changing. Solar is the fastest growing energy source in the world right now. We are starting to see movement in terms of the replacement of our light duty passenger vehicle transport system away from gasoline-powered cars and towards electric cars. So we're starting to see important movements happening.”

Charles D. Koven

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www.oneplanetpodcast.org

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“One thing I do know is that over-compressed music is distorted music and distortion has an introduction of harmonic frequencies that absolutely create an inurement and inability to discern certain sounds and basically make people deaf. Bottom line, new music is over-compressed, ultra-distorted, and even at low levels, will create deafness. And it's a scientifically proven, and that means we've got this entire generation…Somehow I feel like with all the internet and the attention disorder that we discussed, we’re synthesizing into new human beings. ‘Something is happening here but, you don't know what it is.’ That's to quote an old Bob Dylan song. ‘...do you, Mr. Jones?’ And there's always something happening, and you don't know what it is.”

Cynthia Daniels is a Grammy and Emmy award-winning producer, engineer and composer working extensively in film, television, and music. Her career has led her around the world, initially specializing in orchestral pop from Big Band Jazz to Broadway, and then crossing over into producing records for young and seasoned artists in the rock, country, and folk-rock world. She is owner and chief engineer at The Hamptons first world-class recording studio, MonkMusic. She has hosted or engineered sessions for Chaka Khan, Beyonce, Coldplay, Paul McCartney, Nile Rogers, Alec Baldwin, Julie Andrews, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Billy Porter.

www.cynthiadaniels.net

Monk Music Radio

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Cynthia Daniels is a Grammy and Emmy award-winning producer, engineer and composer working extensively in film, television, and music. Her career has led her around the world, initially specializing in orchestral pop from Big Band Jazz to Broadway, and then crossing over into producing records for young and seasoned artists in the rock, country, and folk-rock world. She is owner and chief engineer at The Hamptons first world-class recording studio, MonkMusic. She has hosted or engineered sessions for Chaka Khan, Beyonce, Coldplay, Paul McCartney, Nile Rogers, Alec Baldwin, Julie Andrews, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Billy Porter.

“One thing I do know is that over-compressed music is distorted music and distortion has an introduction of harmonic frequencies that absolutely create an inurement and inability to discern certain sounds and basically make people deaf. Bottom line, new music is over-compressed, ultra-distorted, and even at low levels, will create deafness. And it's a scientifically proven, and that means we've got this entire generation…Somehow I feel like with all the internet and the attention disorder that we discussed, we’re synthesizing into new human beings. ‘Something is happening here but, you don't know what it is.’ That's to quote an old Bob Dylan song. ‘...do you, Mr. Jones?’ And there's always something happening, and you don't know what it is.”

www.cynthiadaniels.net

Monk Music Radio

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“So at SOURCE, we have one core technology, which is called a SOURCE Hydropanel. If you look at it, it looks like a solar panel, but what it really does is it pulls the water vapor out of the air, and then condenses it into liquid water, which we then mineralize for health and taste, and then bring to the end customer - whether that's a village in a remote part of the world or an office building or a hospital that needs water - we plumb it directly in so that people can have access to clean, safe drinking water, and it's done completely off the grid.”

Neil Grimmer is Brand President of SOURCE Global, innovator of the SOURCE Hydropanel, a renewable technology that uses the sun to transform water vapor in the air to clean, safe and perfectly mineralized drinking water. The Public Benefit Company’s mission is to bring perfect drinking water to every person, every place, and Neil leads its marketing, consumer packaged goods and last-mile water solutions for community, consumer and commercial customers in more than 50 countries.

www.source.co

How it Works

www.source.co/team/neil-grimmer

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Neil Grimmer is Brand President of SOURCE Global, innovator of the SOURCE Hydropanel, a renewable technology that uses the sun to transform water vapor in the air to clean, safe and perfectly mineralized drinking water. The Public Benefit Company’s mission is to bring perfect drinking water to every person, every place, and Neil leads its marketing, consumer packaged goods and last-mile water solutions for community, consumer and commercial customers in more than 50 countries.

“So at SOURCE, we have one core technology, which is called a SOURCE Hydropanel. If you look at it, it looks like a solar panel, but what it really does is it pulls the water vapor out of the air, and then condenses it into liquid water, which we then mineralize for health and taste, and then bring to the end customer - whether that's a village in a remote part of the world or an office building or a hospital that needs water - we plumb it directly in so that people can have access to clean, safe drinking water, and it's done completely off the grid.”

www.source.co

How it Works

www.source.co/team/neil-grimmer

www.oneplanetpodcast.org

www.creativeprocess.info

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"Capitalism and technological innovation have brought a higher standard of living and greater health to the people of the world. That's inarguable. That's absolutely true. It's a combination of capitalism, imperialism, and technological innovation that have raised all boats in their way and increased standards of living and so on. People like Stephen Pinker make this argument. There are various kinds of Just So Stories about how we're all better off now because of capitalism and technological development than humans were in 1784. The thing that all these stories ignore, however, is two things. One is that this trendline parallels various other trend lines that measure our devastation and exploitation of the earth. This trendline is real, right? In terms of human wealth and general quality of life as measured in numerical terms. The costs for that are also manifest and have largely been externalized."

Roy Scranton, is the award-winning author of five books, including Learning to Die in the Anthropocene: Reflections on the End of a Civilization, Total Mobilization: World War II and American Literature, and We’re Doomed. Now What? He has written for the NYTimes, Rolling Stone, The Nation, and other publications. He was selected for the 2015 Best American Science and Nature Writing, has been awarded a Whiting Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Fellowship, and other honors. He’s an Associate Professor of English at the University of Notre Dame, and is director of the Notre Dame Environmental Humanities Initiative.

http://royscranton.net
Notre Dame Environmental Humanities Initiative sites.nd.edu/ehum
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Roy Scranton, is the award-winning author of five books, including Learning to Die in the Anthropocene: Reflections on the End of a Civilization, Total Mobilization: World War II and American Literature, and We’re Doomed. Now What? He has written for the NYTimes, Rolling Stone, The Nation, and other publications. He was selected for the 2015 Best American Science and Nature Writing, has been awarded a Whiting Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Fellowship, and other honors. He’s an Associate Professor of English at the University of Notre Dame, and is director of the Notre Dame Environmental Humanities Initiative.

"Capitalism and technological innovation have brought a higher standard of living and greater health to the people of the world. That's inarguable. That's absolutely true. It's a combination of capitalism, imperialism, and technological innovation that have raised all boats in their way and increased standards of living and so on. People like Stephen Pinker make this argument. There are various kinds of Just So Stories about how we're all better off now because of capitalism and technological development than humans were in 1784. The thing that all these stories ignore, however, is two things. One is that this trendline parallels various other trend lines that measure our devastation and exploitation of the earth. This trendline is real, right? In terms of human wealth and general quality of life as measured in numerical terms. The costs for that are also manifest and have largely been externalized."

http://royscranton.net
Notre Dame Environmental Humanities Initiative sites.nd.edu/ehum
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
www.creativeprocess.info

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"All of the technologies necessary to solve a great deal of problems have already been done. The issue is having the political will to make them actually happen. Capital won't do that because it's more advantageous financially to have the problem continually move and then just kind of fix it here and then move it over there and then fix it over there and then move it back over here.”

David A. Banks is the Director of Globalization Studies at the University at Albany, SUNY and the author of the forthcoming book The City Authentic: How the Attention Economy Builds Urban America published by University of California Press. He is also a delegate to the Troy Area Labor Council and the co-host of the podcast Ironweeds.

www.davidabanks.org

www.e-flux.com/architecture/software/337954/where-do-you-live/ 

https://reallifemag.com/true-ish-grit/ 

www.reallifemag.com/new-haunts/ 

The attention economy of authentic cities https://doi.org/10.1080/09654313.2021.1882947

https://ironweeds.podbean.com

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David A. Banks is the Director of Globalization Studies at the University at Albany, SUNY and the author of the forthcoming book The City Authentic: How the Attention Economy Builds Urban America published by University of California Press. He is also a delegate to the Troy Area Labor Council and the co-host of the podcast Ironweeds.

"All of the technologies necessary to solve a great deal of problems have already been done. The issue is having the political will to make them actually happen. Capital won't do that because it's more advantageous financially to have the problem continually move and then just kind of fix it here and then move it over there and then fix it over there and then move it back over here.”

www.davidabanks.org

www.e-flux.com/architecture/software/337954/where-do-you-live/ 

https://reallifemag.com/true-ish-grit/ 

www.reallifemag.com/new-haunts/ 

The attention economy of authentic cities https://doi.org/10.1080/09654313.2021.1882947

https://ironweeds.podbean.com

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"There's actually an entire subfield of degrowth scholarship that's called degrowth and technology, which looks at technology's role in these sociological transformations pursued by degrowthers.

My master's research focuses on looking at social media through a degrowth lens. Specifically, I'm using concepts in the literature called "conviviality", which was first formulated by Ivan Illich, an Austrian-born priest, critic, and philosopher who wrote a number of texts in the 1970s that sharply analyzed industrial ways of life...I collected data on six social media, Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, Decidim, Mastodon, and iNaturalist, and I'm using this lens of conviviality to analyze the different components of social media.”

KC Legacion is a Master of Environmental Studies candidate at the University of Pennsylvania. His research presents a reimagined understanding of social media through the lens of degrowth—this project will culminate in a short film set to premiere in September of this year. Outside of their research, KC is a team member of the web collective degrowth.info and a member of a nascent housing cooperative in West Philadelphia.

www.degrowth.info

www.kclegacion.com

www.decidim.org

www.joinmastodon.org

www.iNaturalist.org

www.oneplanetpodcast.org

www.creativeprocess.info

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KC Legacion is a Master of Environmental Studies candidate at the University of Pennsylvania. His research presents a reimagined understanding of social media through the lens of degrowth—this project will culminate in a short film set to premiere in September of this year. Outside of their research, KC is a team member of the web collective degrowth.info and a member of a nascent housing cooperative in West Philadelphia.

"There's actually an entire subfield of degrowth scholarship that's called degrowth and technology, which looks at technology's role in these sociological transformations pursued by degrowthers.

My master's research focuses on looking at social media through a degrowth lens. Specifically, I'm using concepts in the literature called "conviviality", which was first formulated by Ivan Illich, an Austrian-born priest, critic, and philosopher who wrote a number of texts in the 1970s that sharply analyzed industrial ways of life...I collected data on six social media, Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, Decidim, Mastodon, and iNaturalist, and I'm using this lens of conviviality to analyze the different components of social media.”

www.degrowth.info

www.kclegacion.com

www.decidim.org

www.joinmastodon.org

www.iNaturalist.org

www.oneplanetpodcast.org

www.creativeprocess.info

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“I guess the work that we're doing here at the Climate Hazards Center is trying to build out the science to cope with a two-degree world. And I think that we can do that. It's not going to be easy, but I think that's definitely within our capabilities, and it is already making human beings be smarter together in very empowering ways. And these are examples of people in Boulder, Colorado getting ready for the next big flood event and having conversations between the National Weather Service and local communities, or me on a zoom call at seven in the morning with my friends in East Africa as they're getting ready to cope with the next extreme. There are great examples of radio clubs in Niger who are working with their meteorological agencies and local farming communities that are pulling data that we're producing here in Santa Barbara, precipitation estimates, but then using them to decide whether they should fertilize their millet crops or not. And so there are ways that we can counter climate hazards and weather hazards by being smarter.”

Chris Funk is the Director of the Climate Hazards Center (CHC) at UC Santa Barbara. He works with an international team of Earth scientists to inform weather and famine-related disaster responses. Chris studies climate and climate change while also developing improved data sets and monitoring/prediction systems. He’s the author of Drought, Flood, Fire: How Climate Change Contributes to Recent Catastrophes and co-author with Shrad Shukla of Drought Early Warning and Forecasting. While his research interests are quite diverse, a central theme uniting Chris’ work is developing both the technical/scientific resources and the conceptual frameworks that will help us cope with increasingly dangerous climate and weather extremes.

www.chc.ucsb.edu

www.chc.ucsb.edu/people/chris-funk

Drought, Flood, Fire: www.cambridge.org/core/books/drought-flood-fire/96E0EB1519F5175B68079D294D0B0E93

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Chris Funk is the Director of the Climate Hazards Center (CHC) at UC Santa Barbara. He works with an international team of Earth scientists to inform weather and famine-related disaster responses. Chris studies climate and climate change while also developing improved data sets and monitoring/prediction systems. He’s the author of Drought, Flood, Fire: How Climate Change Contributes to Recent Catastrophes and co-author with Shrad Shukla of Drought Early Warning and Forecasting. While his research interests are quite diverse, a central theme uniting Chris’ work is developing both the technical/scientific resources and the conceptual frameworks that will help us cope with increasingly dangerous climate and weather extremes.

“I guess the work that we're doing here at the Climate Hazards Center is trying to build out the science to cope with a two-degree world. And I think that we can do that. It's not going to be easy, but I think that's definitely within our capabilities, and it is already making human beings be smarter together in very empowering ways. And these are examples of people in Boulder, Colorado getting ready for the next big flood event and having conversations between the National Weather Service and local communities, or me on a zoom call at seven in the morning with my friends in East Africa as they're getting ready to cope with the next extreme. There are great examples of radio clubs in Niger who are working with their meteorological agencies and local farming communities that are pulling data that we're producing here in Santa Barbara, precipitation estimates, but then using them to decide whether they should fertilize their millet crops or not. And so there are ways that we can counter climate hazards and weather hazards by being smarter.”

www.chc.ucsb.edu

www.chc.ucsb.edu/people/chris-funk

Drought, Flood, Fire:
www.cambridge.org/core/books/drought-flood-fire/96E0EB1519F5175B68079D294D0B0E93

www.oneplanetpodcast.org

www.creativeprocess.info

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“We're trying to help the world's forestry organizations collectively plant a trillion trees in the next decade and cover 3 billion acres of net new forest. That's a very, very large number. Some of the very largest tree-planting organizations in the world collectively plant something like half a billion to three-quarters of a billion trees per year. And even that number sounds large, too, but then you realize that's actually three full orders of magnitude smaller than the actual number we need to hit in the next decade. So we actually need to take all of the world's largest forestry organizations as a group and multiply by a thousand their efforts. So that's a very large undertaking, and I just can't underscore enough the scale at which we as a human species seeks to operate when we talk about tree-planting and forestry operations.”

Terraformation builds and deploys tools to tackle the largest bottlenecks to mass-scale reforestation. Its technology includes off-grid seed banks that process and store millions of seeds, tracking and monitoring platforms to enable project transparency, solar-powered desalination and more. Its current partner network spans five continents, including in South America, East Africa and Central Asia, and includes public- and private-sector landowners and organizations. Terraformation’s goal in 2022 is to establish the world’s largest decentralized native seed banking network.

www.terraformation.org

Photo credit @pkworldwide

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Yee Lee was the first employee at Terraformation, dedicated to restoring the planet’s forests to solve climate change. He is a serial technology entrepreneur and angel investor from Silicon Valley, having invested in over 100 technology startups. Prior to Terraformation, Yee was an early team member at PayPal and Slide. He founded four venture-backed ecommerce and financial technology startups with M&A exits to Google and TaskRabbit (now part of IKEA). In his capacity as Chief of Growth at Terraformation, Yee supports Business Development, Sales, Capital Markets, and Terraformation Foundation teams.

Terraformation builds and deploys tools to tackle the largest bottlenecks to mass-scale reforestation. Its technology includes off-grid seed banks that process and store millions of seeds, tracking and monitoring platforms to enable project transparency, solar-powered desalination and more. Its current partner network spans five continents, including in South America, East Africa and Central Asia, and includes public- and private-sector landowners and organizations. Terraformation’s goal in 2022 is to establish the world’s largest decentralized native seed banking network.

www.terraformation.org

www.oneplanetpodcast.org

www.creativeprocess.info

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"The great thing about a complex society is there is space for lots of different kinds of people. There's space for wildly visionary poets and accountants and actuaries and engineers. And they all have a slightly different outlook, but it's the combination of this huge diversity, which makes our societies work. But what we probably do need a bit more of are the bilingual people, the trilingual people who are as at ease spending a day, a week, a year designing how a criminal justice system could look in 50 years and then getting back to perhaps working in a real court or real lawyer's office.”

Sir Geoff Mulgan is Professor of Collective Intelligence, Public Policy and Social Innovation at University College London. Formerly he was chief executive of Nesta, and held government roles (1997–2004), including as the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit director and as Downing Street’s head of policy. He is the founder or co-founder of many organisations, from Demos to Action for Happiness, and the author of Another World is Possible, Social Innovation: how societies find the power to change, Big Mind: how collective intelligence can change our world, and other books.

geoffmulgan.com

hurstpublishers.com/book/another-world-is-possible

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Sir Geoff Mulgan is Professor of Collective Intelligence, Public Policy and Social Innovation at University College London. Formerly he was chief executive of Nesta, and held government roles (1997–2004), including as the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit director and as Downing Street’s head of policy. He is the founder or co-founder of many organisations, from Demos to Action for Happiness, and the author of Another World is Possible, Social Innovation: how societies find the power to change, Big Mind: how collective intelligence can change our world, and other books.

"The great thing about a complex society is there is space for lots of different kinds of people. There's space for wildly visionary poets and accountants and actuaries and engineers. And they all have a slightly different outlook, but it's the combination of this huge diversity, which makes our societies work. But what we probably do need a bit more of are the bilingual people, the trilingual people who are as at ease spending a day, a week, a year designing how a criminal justice system could look in 50 years and then getting back to perhaps working in a real court or real lawyer's office.”

geoffmulgan.com

hurstpublishers.com/book/another-world-is-possible

www.creativeprocess.info

www.oneplanetpodcast.org

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“We're not attempting to invent super smart AI to replace human cognition. We are inventing dumb AI to supplement human interaction. Are there simple forms of artificial intelligence, simple programming of bots, such that when they are added to groups of humans – because those humans are smart or otherwise positively inclined - that help the humans to help themselves? Can we get groups of people to work better together, for instance, to confront climate change, or to reduce racism online, or to foster innovation within firms?

Can we have simple forms of AI that are added into our midst that make us work better together? And the work we're doing in that part of my lab shows that abundantly that's the case. And we published a stream of papers showing that we can do that.”
Nicholas Christakis, MD, PhD, MPH, is a social scientist and physician who conducts research in the areas of biosocial science, network science and behavioral genetics. He directs the Human Nature Lab at Yale University and is the co-director of the Yale Institute for Network Science. Dr. Christakis has authored numerous books, including Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society published in 2019 and Apollo's Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live published in 2020. In 2009, Christakis was named by TIME magazine to their annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world.

Nicholas Christakis: humannaturelab.net/people/nicholas-christakis

Human Nature Lab: humannaturelab.net

Yale Institute for Network Science: yins.yale.edu

sociology.yale.edu/people/nicholas-christakis

Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society

Apollo's Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live

TRELLIS - Suite of software tools for developing, administering, and collecting survey and social network data: trellis.yale.edu.

The Atlantic: “How AI Will Rewire Us: For better and for worse, robots will alter humans’ capacity for altruism, love, and friendship”

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www.oneplanetpodcast.org

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Nicholas Christakis, MD, PhD, MPH, is a social scientist and physician who conducts research in the areas of biosocial science, network science and behavioral genetics. He directs the Human Nature Lab at Yale University and is the co-director of the Yale Institute for Network Science. Dr. Christakis has authored numerous books, including Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society published in 2019 and Apollo's Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live published in 2020. In 2009, Christakis was named by TIME magazine to their annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world.

“We're not attempting to invent super smart AI to replace human cognition. We are inventing dumb AI to supplement human interaction. Are there simple forms of artificial intelligence, simple programming of bots, such that when they are added to groups of humans – because those humans are smart or otherwise positively inclined - that help the humans to help themselves? Can we get groups of people to work better together, for instance, to confront climate change, or to reduce racism online, or to foster innovation within firms?
Can we have simple forms of AI that are added into our midst that make us work better together? And the work we're doing in that part of my lab shows that abundantly that's the case. And we published a stream of papers showing that we can do that.”

Nicholas Christakis humannaturelab.net/people/nicholas-christakis

Human Nature Lab: humannaturelab.net

Yale Institute for Network Science yins.yale.edu

sociology.yale.edu/people/nicholas-christakis

Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society
Apollo's Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live

TRELLIS - Suite of software tools for developing, administering, and collecting survey and social network data: trellis.yale.edu.

The Atlantic: “How AI Will Rewire Us: For better and for worse, robots will alter humans’ capacity for altruism, love, and friendship”

www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/04/robots-human-relationships/583204/

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org

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From a young age, Saskatchewan born Derrick Emsley has been actively connecting people with environmental stewardship. At 16, he and his brother Kalen founded a tree planting company that sold carbon offsets to businesses, a venture that saw over $1 million dollars in contracts and 150,000 trees planted. Derrick founded tentree, the apparel company that plants trees for purchases, soon after graduating from Richard Ivey School of Business in 2012. In just under a decade, tentree has set new standards for apparel brands with environmentally progressive values. Based on its success creating a model for engagement between the brand and its consumers, Derrick co-founded veritree last year, as a platform for regeneration that other brands can use to create similar impact. Named one of Forbes 30 Under 30 for 2020, Derrick has become a voice for a modern generation—one who recognizes the necessity of a brand that's earth-first, transparent, and community-focused.

"I think what's powerful about a tree is it's tangible and it's symbolic in a lot of ways. We as humans naturally have this emotional connection, I think, to trees, and so particularly when you think of our ability to take action within the climate crisis conversation, a tree is this really powerful symbol and vehicle because it's a lot easier to understand a tree than it is to understand a pound or two of CO2

that's floating in the air.

So for us, tree planting is just the start of the communication, just the start of the impact. Really if all it was was to get a stick in the ground that wouldn't have the long-term impact, whether that be carbon, whether that be socioeconomic impact, and things like that. So really for us, veritree helps us collect all that data and create the operating system to pull in the data on everything from planting forms and field updates that are coming in, survivability analysis, and different updates on things like biodiversity. We're partnering with some groups to test underwater sensors in some of these planting sites. We're collecting socioeconomic surveys and things like that to try to attach the impact to the community and back to the planting that's happening."

· www.veritree.com

· veritree Launches Community of 30 Brand Partners to Plant 10 Million Verified Trees

veritree Partners with Samsung to Plant Millions of Trees in 2022

Mogo announces its partnership with veritree

veritree and Cardano Foundation Complete Global Impact Challenge as "Cardano Forest" Reaches Funding Target for Planting 1M Trees

www.oneplanetpodcast.org

· www.creativeprocess.info

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"I think what's powerful about a tree is it's tangible and it's symbolic in a lot of ways. We as humans naturally have this emotional connection, I think, to trees, and so particularly when you think of our ability to take action within the climate crisis conversation, a tree is this really powerful symbol and vehicle because it's a lot easier to understand a tree than it is to understand a pound or two of CO2 that's floating in the air.

So for us, tree planting is just the start of the communication, just the start of the impact. Really if all it was was to get a stick in the ground that wouldn't have the long-term impact, whether that be carbon, whether that be socioeconomic impact, and things like that. So really for us, veritree helps us collect all that data and create the operating system to pull in the data on everything from planting forms and field updates that are coming in, survivability analysis, and different updates on things like biodiversity. We're partnering with some groups to test underwater sensors in some of these planting sites. We're collecting socioeconomic surveys and things like that to try to attach the impact to the community and back to the planting that's happening.”

From a young age, Saskatchewan born Derrick Emsley has been actively connecting people with environmental stewardship. At 16, he and his brother Kalen founded a tree planting company that sold carbon offsets to businesses, a venture that saw over $1 million dollars in contracts and 150,000 trees planted. Derrick founded tentree, the apparel company that plants trees for purchases, soon after graduating from Richard Ivey School of Business in 2012. In just under a decade, tentree has set new standards for apparel brands with environmentally progressive values. Based on its success creating a model for engagement between the brand and its consumers, Derrick co-founded veritree last year, as a platform for regeneration that other brands can use to create similar impact. Named one of Forbes 30 Under 30 for 2020, Derrick has become a voice for a modern generation—one who recognizes the necessity of a brand that's earth-first, transparent, and community-focused.

· www.veritree.com

· veritree Launches Community of 30 Brand Partners to Plant 10 Million Verified Trees

veritree Partners with Samsung to Plant Millions of Trees in 2022

Mogo announces its partnership with veritree

veritree and Cardano Foundation Complete Global Impact Challenge as "Cardano Forest" Reaches Funding Target for Planting 1M Trees

www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info

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"I really didn't see the NFT thing coming. For sure, crypto. I remember when internet artists were getting into that years ago and that always seemed like it was going to develop into something substantial, but in terms of the NFTs, I've just been very surprised and charmed by people all of a sudden caring about digital images because I spent so many years literally trying to figure out a way to print them out. It just wasn't seen as serious as an oil painting or something like that.

I think I tried every single platform that there is to try. I released hundreds of them, which was fun because my practice can allow that. The gallery system is very – I have to hold back so much – and also when you're making physical things, the physical paintings they're quite expensive to produce.

We can't make endless. It's labor-intensive, and it's expensive to make physical things, but with the NFTs, it just was kind of a way to show the range and the scale that is possible with my practice."

Petra Cortrightis a Los Angeles-based digital artist known for her elaborate paintings, videography, and digital media. Crafted from massive digital files on Photoshop, her paintings are often composed of physical and digital images, simulated brushstrokes, and marks that blend both abstract and figurative elements. Petra has exhibited at the Walker Art Center, Whitechapel Gallery, and the Hammer Museum, in addition to solo exhibitions around the world. Her work is featured in permanent collections at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Miami’s Péréz Museum, and the Moderna Museeit in Stockholm–amongst many others.

· www.petracortright.com

· Show at Societé in Berlin: BALEAF GYS AKADEMIKS MAAMGIC BROKIG:
https://societeberlin.com/exhibitions/baleaf-gys-akademiks-maamgic-brokig/

· Show at Foxy production at the beginning of this year: https://www.foxyproduction.com/exhibitions/1756

Petra Cortright

BENGAL TIGER_beurteilungsschreiben Better Homes and Gardens, 2021
Digital painting on anodized aluminum
149.9 x 215.9 x 3 cm
59 1/2 x 85 x 1 1/2 in

· www.creativeprocess.info
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org

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Petra Cortrightis a Los Angeles-based digital artist known for her elaborate paintings, videography, and digital media. Crafted from massive digital files on Photoshop, her paintings are often composed of physical and digital images, simulated brushstrokes, and marks that blend both abstract and figurative elements. Petra has exhibited at the Walker Art Center, Whitechapel Gallery, and the Hammer Museum, in addition to solo exhibitions around the world. Her work is featured in permanent collections at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Miami’s Péréz Museum, and the Moderna Museeit in Stockholm–amongst many others.

"I really didn't see the NFT thing coming. For sure, crypto. I remember when internet artists were getting into that years ago and that always seemed like it was going to develop into something substantial, but in terms of the NFTs, I've just been very surprised and charmed by people all of a sudden caring about digital images because I spent so many years literally trying to figure out a way to print them out. It just wasn't seen as serious as an oil painting or something like that.

I think I tried every single platform that there is to try. I released hundreds of them, which was fun because my practice can allow that. The gallery system is very – I have to hold back so much – and also when you're making physical things, the physical paintings they're quite expensive to produce.

We can't make endless. It's labor-intensive, and it's expensive to make physical things, but with the NFTs, it just was kind of a way to show the range and the scale that is possible with my practice."

· www.petracortright.com

· Show at Societé in Berlin: BALEAF GYS AKADEMIKS MAAMGIC BROKIG:
https://societeberlin.com/exhibitions/baleaf-gys-akademiks-maamgic-brokig/

· Show at Foxy production at the beginning of this year: https://www.foxyproduction.com/exhibitions/1756

Photo by Stefan Simchowitz

· www.creativeprocess.info
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org

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Bill Novellico-founded Porter Novelli one of the first social marketing companies and now a global PR agency, he started theBusiness for Impact program at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business.He is formerly the CEO of AARP, the president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, and the COO of CARE USA. He’s the author of Good Business, The Talk, Fight, Win Way to Change the World and coauthor of Fifty Plus: Give Meaning and Purpose to the Best Time of Your Life. He served in and helped reposition and market the Peace Corps and began his career in marketing management at Unilever.

“This is one of the biggest problems that we have in this country. So, on the one hand, we know that we have to take personal responsibility for ourselves, our own health, our families – it's up to us. As some people like to say, you're on your own. And we have to balance that against the concept that we're all in this together. You know, the idea that it takes a village and both sides essentially disrespect the other side. They criticize the other side. No, we're not in this together. It's your own responsibility, and vice versa. If we're going to be good citizens, and we're going to make progress, we have to see both sides of that equation. That's not easy to do.”

· businessforimpact.georgetown.edu/
· www.billnovelli.com

Business & Society is a 10-episode limited series co-hosted by Bruce Piasecki & Mia Funk.

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“I was originally drawn to bees because they're social creatures. And as humans, I always wanted to know about ourselves and how we can be our healthiest selves and our healthiest society. Bees and wasps, and all of these organisms have been around for so long. Bees especially have been around for 100 million years.”
Noah Wilson-Rich, Ph.D., is co-founder and CEO of The Best Bees Company, the largest beekeeping service in the US. He is a 20-time published author and 3-time TEDx speaker. He’s on a mission to improve pollinator health worldwide as a means to support our global food system and support the transformation of urban areas from gray to green. He is the author of The Bee: A Natural History.

· Book: The Bee: A Natural History
tinyurl.com/beenoah

· Their blog offers many resources:
https://bestbees.com/blog/

· National Pollinator Week June 20 - 26
www.pollinator.org
Many events all week

· Green roof company
Columbia Green Technologies columbia-green.com

· Noah-Wilson Rich’s website:
https://www.noahwilsonrich.com

Image courtesy of The Best Bees Company

· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info

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Noah Wilson-Rich, Ph.D., is co-founder and CEO of The Best Bees Company, the largest beekeeping service in the US. He is a 20-time published author and 3-time TEDx speaker. He’s on a mission to improve pollinator health worldwide as a means to support our global food system and support the transformation of urban areas from gray to green. He is the author of The Bee: A Natural History.

“I was originally drawn to bees because they're social creatures. And as humans, I always wanted to know about ourselves and how we can be our healthiest selves and our healthiest society. Bees and wasps, and all of these organisms have been around for so long. Bees especially have been around for 100 million years.”

Book: The Bee: A Natural History
tinyurl.com/beenoah

Their blog offers many resources:
https://bestbees.com/blog/

National Pollinator Week June 20 - 26

www.pollinator.org
Many events all week

Green roof company
Columbia Green Technologies columbia-green.com

· Noah-Wilson Rich’s website:
https://www.noahwilsonrich.com

· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info

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"I am very concerned that the future seems to be consolidated among the 10 wealthiest, most powerful people in the world who are all white guys. And they're great. I know most of them personally. I have mad respect for them, but it's really concerning when a private individual can buy Twitter. It's very concerning when a billionaire can own one of the most important news organizations in the United States. When Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post, at first I was very excited about it because we all know that journalism and journalistic integrity are an essential part of modern democracy.

And that was very much threatened and dismantled by technology because their revenue structure was destroyed with the internet. So they had to reinvent themselves. So at first, when he bought it, I thought, Oh good, he's going to give them new lifeblood. And now I'm like, Oh, no. When we have major billionaires controlling the dialogue, the discussions, the flow of information–whether that's Facebook or Twitter or news organizations, that's really concerning. So my major deliverable and really the motivation behind writing Bet on Yourself was to democratize success, democratize entrepreneurism, and to wake up inside all of us, realizing that whether you're an intrepreneur working in another company, or if you're a more traditional quote, unquote entrepreneur - it doesn't have to be in a garage or getting funding from traditional VC companies. I wanted to wake that up in as many minds as possible that we can make a huge difference. No matter your expertise, your industry, your risk tolerance, there are ways that we can all participate in this, and what we need most, especially now when core algorithms of artificial intelligence are being written, is more participation from more perspectives.

Whether that's cultural...every possible definition of diversity. I want more people participating because what concerns me most about globalization is it's being controlled by about 10 people."

Ann Hiatt is a best selling author, executive consultant, speaker, and investor. She is a Silicon Valley veteran with 15 years experience reporting directly to CEOs Jeff Bezos (Amazon) and Eric Schmidt (Google/Alphabet). Ann consults with CEOs and their leadership teams across the globe on c-suite optimization.

Ann has published articles in publications such as Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and CNBC. She has also contributed to articles in The New York Times, Economic Times, The Financial Times and Forbes. Her bestselling book, Bet On Yourself, was published by HarperCollins in 2021.

· https://annhiatt.co
· www.BetOnYourselfBook.com
· Bet on Yourself book
· Season 5 of Bet on Yourself podcast launch on May 25th

· www.creativeprocess.info
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org

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Ann Hiatt is a best selling author, executive consultant, speaker, and investor. She is a Silicon Valley veteran with 15 years experience reporting directly to CEOs Jeff Bezos (Amazon) and Eric Schmidt (Google/Alphabet). Ann consults with CEOs and their leadership teams across the globe on c-suite optimization.

Ann has published articles in publications such as Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and CNBC. She has also contributed to articles in The New York Times, Economic Times, The Financial Times and Forbes. Her bestselling book, Bet On Yourself, was published by HarperCollins in 2021.

· https://annhiatt.co
· www.BetOnYourselfBook.com 
· Bet on Yourself book
· Season 5 of Bet on Yourself podcast  launch on May 25th

· www.creativeprocess.info
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org

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"The heart also reports to the brain and receives from the brain. So our bodies are in dialogue with the brain. And we don't really know where consciousness is, we sort of imagine it's somewhere in the head. We have no real reason to suppose that it's just we identify it with our sight and we, therefore, think it must be somewhere up there behind the eyes, but it's something that takes in the whole of us and to which the whole of us contributes.”

“We think in the west of resistance as something negative but it's actually part of the creative process. Without resistance nothing new can come into being, so the very things that we think of as perhaps obstructing or negating are the very things that will lead to something new and greater. We need to get over this idea. For example, we're only able to move in space because there is friction. Friction is a force that stops you moving but without a degree of friction, you cannot actually move. You wouldn't have anything to move in relation to. So perfection is itself an imperfection. And in a number of traditions, this is memorialized by the idea that when you create something there should deliberately be some imperfection in it.”
Dr. Iain McGilchrist is a psychiatrist, neuroscience researcher, philosopher and literary scholar. He is a Quondam Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, an Associate Fellow of Green Templeton College, Oxford, a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, and former Consultant Psychiatrist and Clinical Director at the Bethlem Royal & Maudsley Hospital, London.

He has been a Research Fellow in neuroimaging at Johns Hopkins Hospital and a Fellow of the Institute of Advanced Studies in Stellenbosch. He has published original articles and research papers in a wide range of publications on topics in literature, philosophy, medicine and psychiatry.

He is the author of a number of books, including The Matter with Things, and The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World.

· https://channelmcgilchrist.com
· www.creativeprocess.info
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org

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Dr. Iain McGilchrist is a psychiatrist, neuroscience researcher, philosopher and literary scholar. He is a Quondam Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, an Associate Fellow of Green Templeton College, Oxford, a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, and former Consultant Psychiatrist and Clinical Director at the Bethlem Royal & Maudsley Hospital, London. 

He has been a Research Fellow in neuroimaging at Johns Hopkins Hospital and a Fellow of the Institute of Advanced Studies in Stellenbosch.  He has published original articles and research papers in a wide range of publications on topics in literature, philosophy, medicine and psychiatry.  

He is the author of a number of books, including The Matter with Things, and The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World.

· https://channelmcgilchrist.com
· www.creativeprocess.info
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org

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“I think believing in something is also part of the responsibility of the believer to sift through these things. So there are a lot of people saying I'm green because they do something less badly. So for me, it’s not green yet, it's just less bad. It's not really good yet. It's not really fabulous, but that just means there's an opportunity to keep going to share information and help each other because in the end, I think what we're dealing with now is the recognition that the world has a very serious issue with climate, that's very clear now. So how can we help each other? The question is no longer what is wrong with the way you're doing it. The real question now is how can I help you?”

McDonough advises leaders on ESG strategies through McDonough Innovation, is an architect with William McDonough + Partners, and provides product assessments through MBDC, the creators of the Cradle to Cradle Certified™ Products Program.
He has been active with the World Economic Forum for 25 years and served as the inaugural chair of their Meta-Council on the Circular Economy. He recently articulated the Circular Carbon Economy, a framework for carbon management, and presented the concept at COP25 and at 2020 G20 workshops.

William McDonough is a globally recognized leader in sustainable design and development. He has written and lectured extensively on design as the first signal of human intention. He co-authored Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year.

McDonough advises leaders on ESG strategies through McDonough Innovation, is an architect with William McDonough + Partners, and provides product assessments through MBDC, the creators of the Cradle to Cradle Certified™ Products Program.
He has been active with the World Economic Forum for 25 years and served as the inaugural chair of their Meta-Council on the Circular Economy. He recently articulated the Circular Carbon Economy, a framework for carbon management, and presented the concept at COP25 and at 2020 G20 workshops.

McDonough has co-founded not-for-profit organizations, including Fashion for Good, GreenBlue, Sustainable Packaging Coalition, and the Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute. He has been on the faculty of Stanford University (2004-present) and is a Distinguished Research Professor at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) focused on Circular Carbon Economy.

Time magazine recognized him as a “Hero for the Planet,” noting: “His utopianism is grounded in a unified philosophy that—in demonstrable and practical ways—is changing the design of the world," and in 2019 Fortune magazine named him #24 of the World's 50 Greatest Leaders.

· https://mcdonough.com

· mcdonoughpartners.com

· https://mcdonoughpartners.com/projects
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info

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William McDonough is a globally recognized leader in sustainable design and development. He has written and lectured extensively on design as the first signal of human intention. He co-authored Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year.

McDonough advises leaders on ESG strategies through McDonough Innovation, is an architect with William McDonough + Partners, and provides product assessments through MBDC, the creators of the Cradle to Cradle Certified™ Products Program.
He has been active with the World Economic Forum for 25 years and served as the inaugural chair of their Meta-Council on the Circular Economy. He recently articulated the Circular Carbon Economy, a framework for carbon management, and presented the concept at COP25 and at 2020 G20 workshops.

McDonough has co-founded not-for-profit organizations, including Fashion for Good, GreenBlue, Sustainable Packaging Coalition, and the Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute. He has been on the faculty of Stanford University (2004-present) and is a Distinguished Research Professor at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) focused on Circular Carbon Economy.

Time magazine recognized him as a “Hero for the Planet,” noting: “His utopianism is grounded in a unified philosophy that—in demonstrable and practical ways—is changing the design of the world," and in 2019 Fortune magazine named him #24 of the World's 50 Greatest Leaders.

· https://mcdonough.com

· mcdonoughpartners.com

· https://mcdonoughpartners.com/projects
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info

©DuHun Photography

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“It's always difficult to avoid charges of being nostalgic if we talk about going back to things. Back to the past or forward to the past, but there are principles that existed in preindustrial/early industrial cities and which were overturned by key technological inventions of the late 19th and early 20th century, particularly the railway, the motorcar, of course, the internal combustion engine on which it’s based and which led to the vast expansion of towns and cities and, crucially, suburbanization where people who could afford it moved out of the more polluted densely populated inner areas into low density, better lifestyle-oriented suburbs and even beyond the suburbs into surrounding rural areas and were able to commute in by fast means to their workplace in the city, but the result of that is what we now face as the challenge of unsustainability. And as you rightly say, the key feature that still characterizes many European cities today–London, Paris, Berlin, many others, is the idea that they are composed ultimately of a series of–in London they like to call them villages–neighborhoods and areas that have multiple land uses and dense social networks of interaction within a small area. That principle, what is now called by Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, and being popularized more widely by the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Network and others as the 15 or 20 Minute City or 15 or 20 Minute Neighbourhood. The idea underpinning it is that a higher proportion of the goods and services, the activities, the social interactions that we need are obtainable within a 1 1/2 to 2 km radius of one's home, which means a far higher proportion of one's individual trips or multiple purpose journeys can be done on foot and by bicycle, therefore, you use your vehicle if you have one more sparingly. You use the bus or minibusses to reach slightly more distant places, and then you have transport interchanges is where you connect with the metro system or the best rapid transit or the railway to reach other parts of large cities or indeed for inner-city journeys. And that is what is now becoming the new best practice in terms of urban planning redesign both of existing urban areas to try to revitalize inner-city areas, other areas that are depressed and in need of economic regeneration and principles on the basis of which we need to design new areas, whether they are on the outskirts of bigger cities or in the context of middle and low-income countries designing entirely new cities which are going to be built over the coming 20 or 30 years and which, in terms of the number of people who live in them and the number of hectares or square kilometers that they will cover of the earth’s surface, will be equivalent to that built between the beginning of urbanization and the present day. It's a staggering thought, but if you think about it that way, it highlights the importance of new build, new design, according to our latest understanding of sound sustainability principles.”

David Simon is Professor of Development Geography and Director for External Engagement in the School of Life Sciences and the Environment, Royal Holloway, University of London. He was also Director of Mistra Urban Futures, Gothenburg, Sweden from 2014–2019. A former Rhodes Scholar, he specialises in cities, climate change and sustainability, and the relationships between theory, policy and practice, on all of which he has published extensively. At Mistra Urban Futures, he led the pioneering methodological research on comparative transdisciplinary co-production. His extensive experience includes sub-Saharan Africa, South and Southeast Asia, the UK, Sweden and USA. From 2020-21, served as a Commissioner on the international Commission on Sustainable Agricultural Intensification (CoSAI), 2020-21. His most recent books as author, editor or co-editor are Rethinking Sustainable Cities: Accessible, green and fair (Policy Press, 2016), Urban Planet (Cambridge Univ Press, 2018), Holocaust Escapees and Global Development: Hidden histories (Zed Books, 2019), Key Thinkers on Development (2nd edn, Routledge, 2019), Comparative Urban Research from Theory to Practice: Co-production for sustainability (Policy Press, 2020), and Transdisciplinary Knowledge Co-production for Sustainable Cities: a Guide (Practical Action Publishing, 2021).

· pure.royalholloway.ac.uk/portal/en/persons/david-simon(69b08a6c-d133-4157-b1f2-eb0036b4d6e6).html
· bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/journals/global-social-challenges-journal
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info

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David Simon is Professor of Development Geography and Director for External Engagement in the School of Life Sciences and the Environment, Royal Holloway, University of London. He was also Director of Mistra Urban Futures, Gothenburg, Sweden from 2014–2019. A former Rhodes Scholar, he specialises in cities, climate change and sustainability, and the relationships between theory, policy and practice, on all of which he has published extensively. At Mistra Urban Futures, he led the pioneering methodological research on comparative transdisciplinary co-production. His extensive experience includes sub-Saharan Africa, South and Southeast Asia, the UK, Sweden and USA. From 2020-21, served as a Commissioner on the international Commission on Sustainable Agricultural Intensification (CoSAI), 2020-21. His most recent books as author, editor or co-editor are Rethinking Sustainable Cities: Accessible, green and fair (Policy Press, 2016), Urban Planet (Cambridge Univ Press, 2018), Holocaust Escapees and Global Development: Hidden histories (Zed Books, 2019), Key Thinkers on Development (2nd edn, Routledge, 2019), Comparative Urban Research from Theory to Practice: Co-production for sustainability (Policy Press, 2020), and Transdisciplinary Knowledge Co-production for Sustainable Cities: a Guide (Practical Action Publishing, 2021).

· pure.royalholloway.ac.uk/portal/en/persons/david-simon(69b08a6c-d133-4157-b1f2-eb0036b4d6e6).html
· bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/journals/global-social-challenges-journal
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info

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“What is societal progress? I think the last 70 years, clearly, in the post World War II period, we have been thinking of economic growth and have been equating that with societal progress. To an extent of course that's right. To an extent, we need this economic growth to lift people out of poverty. We’ve kind of lost the reasoning. We have been following only this economic growth paradigm measured by the GDP, the Gross domestic product and we have forgotten that it measures many things, but it doesn't actually measure progress. It doesn't measure how healthy people are, how educated they are, how clean the environment is, how safe it is, how secure it is. Interestingly, even Simon Kuznets who conceptualized GDP knew this, but it somehow happened. I’m not saying the GDP is a measure we shouldn't be using, it has its values clearly, but it shouldn't be the only measure that we are focusing on. There are some countries and some cities also who have set alternative or additional goals.

I feel that there was a time around 5 to 10 years ago when a lot of people were talking about this. There were a lot of initiatives and I feel that it's still there. Bhutan is mentioned a lot as a country with an alternative framework to measure progress, namely the gross national happiness, which is very much built on these indicators that cover what I've just said. Education, healthcare, housing, security, and community. So it's clearly also about making people understand that we're not asking anyone to lead a life that's worse than the life that they've been leading before. It’s just changing to a much fuller realization of what is actually good for you. And it's a difficult position because who are we to tell people what's good for them, but to the extent, we can measure that. We can measure burnout rates. We can measure mental health issues. We can measure addictions to mobile phones. It’s something where we really need to do a lot to transform those mindsets and, in the end, understand that sustainability is about making their lives better and not worse.”

Alice Schmidtis a global sustainability advisor who has worked in 30 countries on 4 continents with 70+ organisations of all shapes and sizes. She has a deep passion for creating opportunities and win-wins across the social, environmental and economic spheres. Many of her experiences are highlighted in the new book “The Sustainability Puzzle: How Systems Thinking, Climate Action, Circularity and Social Transformation Can Improve Health, Wealth and Wellbeing for All”.
·www.aliceschmidt.at
· www.sustainability-puzzle.org
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info

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Alice Schmidtis a global sustainability advisor who has worked in 30 countries on 4 continents with 70+ organisations of all shapes and sizes. She has a deep passion for creating opportunities and win-wins across the social, environmental and economic spheres. Many of her experiences are highlighted in the new book “The Sustainability Puzzle: How Systems Thinking, Climate Action, Circularity and Social Transformation Can Improve Health, Wealth and Wellbeing for All”.
·www.aliceschmidt.at
· www.sustainability-puzzle.org
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info

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“What we deal with more in the second season is how your online persona and your real-life persona sometimes can't help but be at odds with one another. In the first episode back we get into how women are treated, how women in relationships are treated online. In a later episode, we deal with how women are or are not allowed to express their anger online as content creators. So it’s something we talked a lot about in the room. That fracturing of self, that even in a goofy show that's very lighthearted and entertaining, it’s something that we do discuss and try to sneak little tidbits in there.”

Schouten currently serves as the showrunner and executive producer of the wildly successful iCarly revival for Paramount+, which set 10 years later, features Miranda Cosgrove reprising her iconic role. The series was renewed for a second season and will return on April 8th after swiftly becoming one of the streaming service’s top acquisition drivers, ranking among their most streamed titles since the series’ debut. The series, which holds an impressive rating of 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, continues to receive praise for its modernized and inclusive approach from audiences and critics alike, with Variety applauding its ability to “straddl[e] the line between childhood nostalgia and newfound maturity”.

This follows her role as co-executive producer on the Latinx-led family series from Disney+, Diary of a Future President, created by Ilana Peña and executive produced by Gina Rodriguez. Schouten also served as a supervising producer on the Netflix holiday miniseries, MERRY HAPPY WHATEVER, starring Dennis Quaid, Bridgit Mendler, Brent Morin, and Ashley Tisdale.

Additional credits include serving as consulting producer and writer on the CBS All Access series NO ACTIVITY, supervising producer and writer on the Hulu series ALL NIGHT, and co-producer and writer on the NBC series CHAMPIONS from Mindy Kaling and Charlie Grandy. Schouten also served as an executive story editor and writer on the hit ABC Family series, YOUNG AND HUNGRY, in addition to the Verizon go90's series, RELATIONSHIP STATUS, for which she received a Daytime Emmy Award nomination for ‘Outstanding Writing in a Digital Drama Series’.

· www.paramountplus.com/shows/icarly-2021

· www.creativeprocess.info

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Ali Schouten is a showrunner, executive producer, and writer who is quickly establishing herself as a creative on the rise as her formidable talent and artistic versatility continue to make waves.

Schouten currently serves as the showrunner and executive producer of the wildly successful iCarly revival for Paramount+, which set 10 years later, features Miranda Cosgrove reprising her iconic role. The series was renewed for a second season and will return on April 8th after swiftly becoming one of the streaming service’s top acquisition drivers, ranking among their most streamed titles since the series’ debut. The series, which holds an impressive rating of 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, continues to receive praise for its modernized and inclusive approach from audiences and critics alike, with Variety applauding its ability to “straddl[e] the line between childhood nostalgia and newfound maturity”.

This follows her role as co-executive producer on the Latinx-led family series from Disney+, Diary of a Future President, created by Ilana Peña and executive produced by Gina Rodriguez. Schouten also served as a supervising producer on the Netflix holiday miniseries, MERRY HAPPY WHATEVER, starring Dennis Quaid, Bridgit Mendler, Brent Morin, and Ashley Tisdale.

Additional credits include serving as consulting producer and writer on the CBS All Access series NO ACTIVITY, supervising producer and writer on the Hulu series ALL NIGHT, and co-producer and writer on the NBC series CHAMPIONS from Mindy Kaling and Charlie Grandy. Schouten also served as an executive story editor and writer on the hit ABC Family series, YOUNG AND HUNGRY, in addition to the Verizon go90's series, RELATIONSHIP STATUS, for which she received a Daytime Emmy Award nomination for ‘Outstanding Writing in a Digital Drama Series’.

· www.paramountplus.com/shows/icarly-2021

· www.creativeprocess.info

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“Net-zero is a big idea. It’s a big theme. And, unfortunately, what's going up are many ways to look like you're doing net-zero when you're not. So in the ideal world, getting to net-zero means essentially reducing your emissions, and then, where you have residual emissions left, that means you might need to have negative emissions. For example, it's relatively easy to decarbonize the power sector completely, and you can do it quickly and cheaply in most places, but you’re always going to be left with some levels of emissions from agriculture.”

Bill Hare is a physicist and climate scientist with 30 years of experience in science, impacts and policy responses to climate change and stratospheric ozone depletion. He is a founder and CEO of Climate Analytics, which was established to synthesize and advance scientific knowledge on climate change and provide state-of-the-art solutions to global and national climate change policy challenges.

He was a Lead Author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report, for which the IPCC was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. Hare has contributed actively to the development of the international climate regime since 1989, including the negotiation of the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement in 2015.

Hare is a graduate of Murdoch University in Western Australia and a visiting scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

· https://climateanalytics.org
· https://climateactiontracker.org
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org

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Bill Hare is a physicist and climate scientist with 30 years of experience in science, impacts and policy responses to climate change and stratospheric ozone depletion. He is a founder and CEO of Climate Analytics, which was established to synthesize and advance scientific knowledge on climate change and provide state-of-the-art solutions to global and national climate change policy challenges.

He was a Lead Author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report, for which the IPCC was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. Hare has contributed actively to the development of the international climate regime since 1989, including the negotiation of the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement in 2015.

Hare is a graduate of Murdoch University in Western Australia and a visiting scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

· https://climateanalytics.org
· https://climateactiontracker.org
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info

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“So, if we study transportation, then we need to study urban development and infrastructure. Suddenly, we need to think about housing. We need to think about the co-location of jobs and shops, and you realize it's all connected.

That might be one of the challenges of urban sustainability. It's all connected. So the way we move around is connected to the way we built the city. And I think the intrinsic sustainability or non-sustainability in urban areas seems to be designed in. Especially in the United States where there are just so many places where, if you don't have a car, you're basically stranded. You can't go anywhere. The European model is to have co-located things, and I miss that. I think it has some intrinsic sustainability built-in.”

Roland Geyeris a Professor at the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, University of California at Santa Barbara, and the author of The Business of Less. Since 2000, he has worked with a wide range of governmental organizations, trade associations, and companies on environmental sustainability issues. His overarching goal is to help develop the knowledge, tools, and methods necessary to reduce the environmental impact from industrial production and consumption.

· www.rolandgeyer.com
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info

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Roland Geyeris a Professor at the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, University of California at Santa Barbara, and the author of The Business of Less. Since 2000 he has worked with a wide range of governmental organizations, trade associations, and companies on environmental sustainability issues. His overarching goal is to help develop the knowledge, tools, and methods necessary to reduce the environmental impact from industrial production and consumption.

· www.rolandgeyer.com
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info

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“In Edo Japan, basically life was pretty good, and they recycled everything. Everything was reused, upcycled. Waste was considered taboo. A person who was wasting was considered an ugly person. So there is a lot that we could talk about: design, the layout, scale. Buildings were rarely taller than two stories. Very good use of environmental features, microclimates, use of wind for cooling, passive solar heating. Good use of planting, gardens, etc. But regarding cities of the future, I think the main thing is it needs to be a place where people feel like they belong and want to take responsibility.

I'm from New Orleans, and I am very interested in the fact that cities and the places we live in teach us. They shape us, as much as we shape them. And New Orleans was a wonderful place to grow up in because you wouldn't have said it was sustainable, but the vernacular traditional architecture was naturally cooler in summers because of the way it was built with high ceilings with deep eaves from the roof, with verandas shaded with lots of breezes and lots of gardens, plus it is full of older buildings. And things become gentle over time.”

Azby Brown is a leading authority on Japanese architecture, design, and environmentalism and the author of several groundbreaking books, including Just Enough, Small Spaces, The Japanese Dream House, The Very Small Home, and The Genius of Japanese Carpentry. He is lead researcher for Safecast, a global citizen-science organization that pioneered crowdsourced environmental monitoring. Azby Brown has lived in Japan since 1985.

· azbybrown.com
· www.safecast.org
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info

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Azby Brown is a leading authority on Japanese architecture, design, and environmentalism and the author of several groundbreaking books, including Just Enough, Small Spaces, The Japanese Dream House, The Very Small Home, and The Genius of Japanese Carpentry. He is lead researcher for Safecast, a global citizen-science organization that pioneered crowdsourced environmental monitoring. Azby Brown has lived in Japan since 1985.

· azbybrown.com
· www.safecast.org
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info

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“I mentioned before that one of the reasons why we haven't been able to overcome many of the climate crisis factors is because people don't understand what it means. What is it about? What can I do? Usually, when we hear these experts speak about the climate crisis, at least me, I don't understand 9/10ths of the speech or the document. Simplifying the message, allowing that difficult scientific knowledge to become popular language that I can use when explaining to a child, to a rural person, to someone who has a different type of education, that knows much more about the planet but not necessarily about university, explaining those difficult issues will make a difference. And we have to invest much more in that. Speaking difficult scientific language is not helpful to the majority of society.

Few are producers, all of us are consumers. So we all have to participate in how we produce, what we produce and that means from infrastructure for a city to the way that a road is designed or that a marketplace builds its operations. To do it in a responsible way, in a sustainable way, you need the contribution of all.
I would say that it's one of the most difficult challenges that humanity has–addressing the urban problems. Basically, because you cannot change a city from one day to the other, but I think that the starting point has to be change the citizen. And being a citizen has a lot of implications because the moment you realize you are a citizen you also need to accept that you have to be active, that you have to be an agent of change. We cannot expect this city to change, if the citizens don't want to mobilize an agenda to push for something, to request changes, to participate. I think the word participation is absolutely key. And we find in Latin America and in all continents that very often we have governments that curtail the capacity of citizens to be active, that tell the population to wait for a change, to be passive, to let the government do their job. And that's absolutely wrong because government is the one that defines court, the game that the citizens are going to play. And that game is called defining the rules of the game and allowing the citizens to be active participants of change.”

Yolanda Kakabadse’s work with the environmental conservation movement officially began in 1979, when she was appointed Executive Director of Fundación Natura in Quito, where she worked until 1990. In 1993, she created Fundacion Futuro Latinoamericano, an organization dedicated to promote the sustainable development of Latin America through conflict prevention and management. She was the Executive President until 2006 and remains as Chair of the Advisory Board. From 1990 until 1992, Yolanda Kakabadse coordinated the participation of civil society organizations for the United Nations Conference for Environment and Development (Earth Summit). From 1996 to 2004 she was President of the World Conservation Union (IUCN), President of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) 2010-17, and Member of the Board of the World Resources Institute (WRI) during the same period. Yolanda was appointed Minister of Environment for the Republic of Ecuador, position she held from 1998 until 2000. She is a Member of the Board of Arabesque, and Chairs the Independent Science and Technology Panel of Fundacion Renova in Brazil. Yolanda is also a Member of the Board of Sistema B and the B Team.

· World Conservation Union: www.iucn.org

· WWF International: worldwildlife.org
· Fundacion Futuro Latinoamericano: www.ffla.net/en/

· Sistema B: sistemab.org

· B Team: bteam.org
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org

· www.creativeprocess.info

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Yolanda Kakabadse’s work with the environmental conservation movement officially began in 1979, when she was appointed Executive Director of Fundación Natura in Quito, where she worked until 1990. In 1993, she created Fundacion Futuro Latinoamericano, an organization dedicated to promote the sustainable development of Latin America through conflict prevention and management. She was the Executive President until 2006 and remains as Chair of the Advisory Board. From 1990 until 1992, Yolanda Kakabadse coordinated the participation of civil society organizations for the United Nations Conference for Environment and Development (Earth Summit). From 1996 to 2004 she was President of the World Conservation Union (IUCN), President of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) 2010-17, and Member of the Board of the World Resources Institute (WRI) during the same period. Yolanda was appointed Minister of Environment for the Republic of Ecuador, position she held from 1998 until 2000. She is a Member of the Board of Arabesque, and Chairs the Independent Science and Technology Panel of Fundacion Renova in Brazil. Yolanda is also a Member of the Board of Sistema B and the B Team.
· World Conservation Union: www.iucn.org
· WWF International: worldwildlife.org
· Fundacion Futuro Latinoamericano: www.ffla.net/en/
· Sistema B: sistemab.org
· B Team: bteam.org
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info

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“This is a very important question because cities are really living labs of everything that we're doing in terms of energy policy, and it’s extremely important that whatever we are putting forward in terms of policy, if it is not embraced by the citizens in cities on the local level, the best policies will not serve any purpose if they not really taken up by citizens.

Of all of the Sustainable Development Goals, I think quality education is really the basis, I would call it really the foundation for practically all the Sustainable Development Goals. If you ensure quality education, all the rest will be easier.

I think we could do much more from much earlier on in a structured manner to raise awareness, bring it into school programs, how important it is to care for the planet. How it can be done by every single one of us in the way we consume not just energy, but our choices, of what we buy in the supermarket. There's much more that can be done.”

Paula Pinho is Director of Just Transition at the European Commission Directorate-General for Energy. She was responsible for Energy Strategy and Policy coordination and then for Renewables and Energy System Integration Policy and Decarbonisation and Sustainability of Energy Sources. She was Acting Director for Energy Policy where she has overseen notably the work of international energy relations, financial instruments and inter-institutional relations.

Paula has also been Member of Cabinet of EU Commissioners, including Commissioner for Energy Günther Oettinger both in his quality of Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society and during his mandate as EU Commissioner for Energy. She was then responsible for energy security and infrastructure and the overall coordination of the international dimension of energy policy.

As a member of the Cabinet, she has been involved in the trilateral gas talks between the EU, Russia and Ukraine. While Head of Unit responsible for Energy Strategy and Policy Coordination, Paula has coordinated the preparation and adoption of the “Clean Energy for all Europeans” package. Paula represented the Commission in the negotiations of the Commission Proposal for a Regulation on the Governance of the Energy Union and was responsible notably for the overall coordination of the assessment of the national Energy and Climate Plans. Paula speaks fluently Portuguese, German, English and French, as well as Spanish and Italian.
· https://energy.ec.europa.eu/index_en
· https://energy.ec.europa.eu
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info

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Paula Pinho is Director of Just Transition at the European Commission Directorate-General for Energy. She was responsible for Energy Strategy and Policy coordination and then for Renewables and Energy System Integration Policy and Decarbonisation and Sustainability of Energy Sources. She was Acting Director for Energy Policy where she has overseen notably the work of international energy relations, financial instruments and inter-institutional relations.

Paula has also been Member of Cabinet of EU Commissioners, including Commissioner for Energy Günther Oettinger both in his quality of Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society and during his mandate as EU Commissioner for Energy. She was then responsible for energy security and infrastructure and the overall coordination of the international dimension of energy policy.

As a member of the Cabinet, she has been involved in the trilateral gas talks between the EU, Russia and Ukraine. While Head of Unit responsible for Energy Strategy and Policy Coordination, Paula has coordinated the preparation and adoption of the “Clean Energy for all Europeans” package. Paula represented the Commission in the negotiations of the Commission Proposal for a Regulation on the Governance of the Energy Union and was responsible notably for the overall coordination of the assessment of the national Energy and Climate Plans. Paula speaks fluently Portuguese, German, English and French, as well as Spanish and Italian.
· https://energy.ec.europa.eu/index_en
· https://energy.ec.europa.eu
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info

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“There are a lot of distractions in cities. So it's always good to maybe take some time out, be in a quieter place with no distractions so you can let your thoughts run. And that leads into the creative process because new ideas, new thoughts and where they come from. They come from following the garden path of associations in your mind. One thought leads to another, leads to another until your mind is in a new place it's never been before. Or you put two thoughts together that were never together before, but now they are because you managed to somehow follow this garden path of thoughts from one thought to the other. That's where creativity comes from, that's where your ideas come from, seeing things in a new way, seeing things that were never together before. And if you have constant distractions that interferes with that process.”

Earl K. Miller is the Picower Professor of Neuroscience in the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Miller studies the neural basis of executive control, the ability to carry out goal-directed behavior using complex mental processes and cognitive abilities. This work has established a foundation upon which to construct more detailed, mechanistic accounts of cognition and its dysfunction in diseases such as autism, schizophrenia and attention deficit disorder. He’s the recipient of a variety of awards and his paper with Jonathan Cohen which presented a new framework for understanding the prefrontal cortex, ranks fifth all-time in citations in neuroscience.

· ekmillerlab.mit.edu
· www.creativeprocess.info

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Earl K. Miller is the Picower Professor of Neuroscience in the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Miller studies the neural basis of executive control, the ability to carry out goal-directed behavior using complex mental processes and cognitive abilities. This work has established a foundation upon which to construct more detailed, mechanistic accounts of cognition and its dysfunction in diseases such as autism, schizophrenia and attention deficit disorder. He’s the recipient of a variety of awards and his paper with Jonathan Cohen which presented a new framework for understanding the prefrontal cortex, ranks fifth all-time in citations in neuroscience.

· ekmillerlab.mit.edu 
· www.creativeprocess.info

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“We are getting further and further away from the way of life that people had 150, 200 let alone 500 years ago. And it's odd that in some ways, certainly for the middle class, it could be that people had a more satisfactory lifestyle in the 19th century than we have today with all the love the luxuries and comforts we have which they do not have. Of course, there is less poverty, that's a good thing, but we need a revolution of sorts, a mental revolution, a revolution in our expectations of life. I am mostly concerned with analyzing the structure of the change.
Lots of people have written books both optimistic and pessimistic about the Internet. It's a wonderful thing, it gives an opportunity to broaden our experience. I think in many ways the Internet is the only hope if you want to eliminate racism and want to raise the bar across the world, but at the same time, the inequalities are completely ridiculous. They've reached a point of insanity, and we have a moral issue. Is one person ever worth twice as much as another person? Can you justify one human being owning 10 times as much as another person? I don't think you can. I don't think that the president of the biggest cooperation in the world is worth 10 times the poorest person in the world, but that's not what we have. Sometimes he may be “worth” a million times more, a hundred thousand times more. That’s crazy.”

Merlin Donald was born and raised in Montreal and received his Master’s in Psychology from the University of Ottawa, and his doctorate in Neuropsychology from McGill University in 1968. He is a Fellow of the Canadian Psychological Association, the World Academy of Arts & Science, and the Royal Society of Canada, he is the author of two influential books: Origins of the Modern Mind and A Mind So Rare His early work on human cognitive evolution was unique in its incorporation of both technology and culture into a theory grounded in brain function and brain evolution. He is currently working on an issue that concerns us all: the potentially radical effect of high technology on human cognitive evolution.

· www.queensu.ca/psychology/merlin-donald
· www.creativeprocess.info

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Merlin Donald was born and raised in Montreal and received his Master’s in Psychology from the University of Ottawa, and his doctorate in Neuropsychology from McGill University in 1968. He is a Fellow of the Canadian Psychological Association, the World Academy of Arts & Science, and the Royal Society of Canada, he is the author of two influential books: Origins of the Modern Mind  and A Mind So Rare His early work on human cognitive evolution was unique in its incorporation of both technology and culture into a theory grounded in brain function and brain evolution. He is currently working on an issue that concerns us all: the potentially radical effect of high technology on human cognitive evolution. 

· www.queensu.ca/psychology/merlin-donald
· www.creativeprocess.info

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“I like the idea that your actions in the world can be motivated by both idealism and realism about how to achieve those ideals. I like the idea that morality is not simple. There is this idea that there are the heroes and there's the villains and you can easily tell who's who, and that's not so true as it used to be in comics and that's meaningful. One thing that is interesting about the Marvel story is there’s basically nobody who's just a bad guy to be a bad guy. Everyone has their reasons. Almost everyone is capable of redemption in some way, even the worst of the worst are capable of tremendous heroism and tremendous idealism and genuinely wanting to heal the world make it a better place.

I think communicating what those ideals are and how they can change and need to change as time passes is really special, and I think that addressing those through stories, through things where there’s not necessarily a one-to-one meaning, where this is not a parable, where this is not something where character X stands for concept Y in always exactly the same way. That’s important that things can shift, that things can be different, that a better world is possible and that you can make it so, that your abilities may be things that you work very hard for for a very long time or they may come to you. Your body may be transformed in ways that are wonderful or horrible, and you can make something of it.”

Douglas Wolk is the author of the NYTimes bestseller All of the Marvels, and the Eisner Award–winning Reading Comics and the host of the podcast Voice of Latveria. A National Arts Journalism Program fellow, Wolk has written about comic books, graphic novels, pop music, and technology for The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Believer, Slate, and Pitchfork. He has lectured and moderated panels at Comic-Con International, the Experience Music Project Pop Conference, the Center for Cartoon Studies and other events.
· douglaswolk.com
· www.creativeprocess.info

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Douglas Wolk is the author of the NYTimes bestseller All of the Marvels, and the Eisner Award–winning Reading Comics and the host of the podcast Voice of Latveria. A National Arts Journalism Program fellow, Wolk has written about comic books, graphic novels, pop music, and technology for The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Believer, Slate, and Pitchfork. He has lectured and moderated panels at Comic-Con International, the Experience Music Project Pop Conference, the Center for Cartoon Studies and other events.
· douglaswolk.com
· www.creativeprocess.info

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Jeffrey D. Sachs is University Professor and Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University. He is President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, Chair of the Lancet COVID-19 Commission, Co-Chair of the UN Council of Engineers for the Energy Transition, Commissioner of the UN Broadband Commission for Development, academician of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, and Tan Sri Jeffrey Cheah Honorary Distinguished Professor of Sustainable Development at Sunway University. Sachs has been Special Advisor to three United Nations Secretaries-General, and currently serves as an SDG Advocate under Secretary-General António Guterres. Sachs was twice named among Time magazine’s 100 most influential world leaders, and has received 38 honorary doctorates. He received the Legion of Honor from France in 2021 and the Order of the Cross from Estonia in 2019.
Jeffrey Sachs hosts “The Book Club with Jeffrey Sachs” podcast featuring renowned authors of scintillating, inspiring and remarkably important books about history, social justice, and the challenges of building a decent world. Previous conversations feature Mariana Mazzucato, author of “Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism,” and Robert Lustig, author of “Metabolical: The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern Medicine” among others.To learn more, visit

· www.bookclubwithjeffreysachs.org/

· www.jeffsachs.org

· sdgacademy.org/

· www.unsdsn.org/

· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info

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“If we’re badly educated, we’re not going to make it on this planet. If I had to put my finger on one Sustainable Development Goal above all else, it is let’s empower young people so that they know the future. They know the world that they’re going to be leading soon. They can do something about it…Specifically, target 4.7 which says that everybody should learn about sustainable development. Everybody should learn about global citizenship.

If you’re in elementary school up to university, you should be learning–What is climate change? What is biodiversity? What can we do about it? And this kind of learning is not only book learning, but is also experiential learning.”

Jeffrey D. Sachs · President of UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network · Director of Center for Sustainable Development, Columbia University (35 mins)
Interviewed by Mia Funk & Eveline Mol · Associate Podcast Producer Eveline Mol

Jeffrey D. Sachs is University Professor and Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University. He is President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, Chair of the Lancet COVID-19 Commission, Co-Chair of the UN Council of Engineers for the Energy Transition, Commissioner of the UN Broadband Commission for Development, academician of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, and Tan Sri Jeffrey Cheah Honorary Distinguished Professor of Sustainable Development at Sunway University. Sachs has been Special Advisor to three United Nations Secretaries-General, and currently serves as an SDG Advocate under Secretary-General António Guterres. Sachs was twice named among Time magazine’s 100 most influential world leaders, and has received 38 honorary doctorates. He received the Legion of Honor from France in 2021 and the Order of the Cross from Estonia in 2019.
Jeffrey Sachs hosts “The Book Club with Jeffrey Sachs” podcast featuring renowned authors of scintillating, inspiring and remarkably important books about history, social justice, and the challenges of building a decent world. Previous conversations feature Mariana Mazzucato, author of “Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism,” and Robert Lustig, author of “Metabolical: The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern Medicine” among others.To learn more, visit

· www.bookclubwithjeffreysachs.org/

· www.jeffsachs.org

· sdgacademy.org/

· www.unsdsn.org/

· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info

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“How do you get people to have a sense of urgency to actually take action and do something different? What we're finding is the learnings from business very much do apply to other spheres and also more generally to challenges like climate change. We’re facing the question of how do you get more people to actually be willing to take real meaningful action.”

Gaurav Gupta is Director of Kotter International · Change Management & Strategy Execution and co-author of Change: How Organizations Achieve Hard to Imagine Results in Uncertain & Volatile Times. He translates strategy into implementation and develops learning-focused teams. Gaurav has worked with clients in industries as diverse as food and beverage, oil and energy, healthcare, chemicals, and finance. Gaurav draws on his extensive global (having worked in over 10 countries) and diverse functional experience in collaborating with business leaders to develop and implement effective transformation efforts. Gaurav lead the operations for the European office of Stroud International, a management and operations consulting firm. He combines his passion for international development and education in serving as an executive board member for a non-profit, Medic to Medic, that sponsors medical students in Uganda and Malawi. Gaurav holds a Bachelor of Arts in Physics from Middlebury College and a Master of Science in Aerospace Engineering from Cornell University.

· https://www.kotterinc.com/team/gaurav-gupta/

· www.kotterinc.com

· www.creativeprocess.info

· www.oneplanetpodcast.org

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Gaurav Gupta is Director of Kotter International · Change Management & Strategy Execution and co-author of Change: How Organizations Achieve Hard to Imagine Results in Uncertain & Volatile Times. He translates strategy into implementation and develops learning-focused teams. Gaurav has worked with clients in industries as diverse as food and beverage, oil and energy, healthcare, chemicals, and finance. Gaurav draws on his extensive global (having worked in over 10 countries) and diverse functional experience in collaborating with business leaders to develop and implement effective transformation efforts. Gaurav lead the operations for the European office of Stroud International, a management and operations consulting firm. He combines his passion for international development and education in serving as an executive board member for a non-profit, Medic to Medic, that sponsors medical students in Uganda and Malawi. Gaurav holds a Bachelor of Arts in Physics from Middlebury College and a Master of Science in Aerospace Engineering from Cornell University.

· https://www.kotterinc.com/team/gaurav-gupta/

· www.kotterinc.com

· www.creativeprocess.info

· www.oneplanetpodcast.org

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“On average in advanced societies, about 70% of freshwater that’s consumed is consumed by agriculture. In less developed countries, sometimes as high as 95% of the freshwater goes to agriculture, which means that you’re depleting the amount of water available for the environment. You’re depleting amount of groundwater to preserve for the future, especially in dry times, and it creates a stress for the future…What are you going to do when you have hundreds of millions of water refugees coming from places where there used to be enough water where there’s now just not enough water? What is the world going to do then?”

Seth is a lawyer, activist, entrepreneur, public speaker and New York Times Bestselling Author. He is an expert in water management and conservation. His first book Let There Be Water: Israel’s Solution for a Water-Starved World talks about how a government in one of the driest regions in the world revolutionised water managed. His second book Troubled Water: What's Wrong with What We Drink, presented an ambitious agenda for a fundamental rethinking of America’s drinking water system. Seth’s most recent book, Other People's Words: Wisdom for an Inspired and Productive Life.

His essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and in leading publications in Europe and Asia. Seth is a Senior Fellow at the University of Wisconsin’s Center for Water Policy, and is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Seth is a widely sought-after speaker, having spoken hundreds of times on water and other issues throughout the US and around the world. Among the places he has spoken include the US Congress, the United Nations, the World Bank, Davos and at Google’s headquarters, and on more than 40 college campuses, including Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Yale, and Stanford.

Seth is the co-founder of several companies, including Beanstalk, the world’s leading trademark brand extension company, which he sold to Ford Motor Company. He was also a Producer of the Tony Award-nominated Broadway revival of Man of La Mancha. Seth sits on the board of several not-for-profit organizations. All of the royalties from sales of Seth’s books are donated to charity.

· http://sethmsiegel.com

· www.oneplanetpodcast.org

· www.creativeprocess.info

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Seth is a lawyer, activist, entrepreneur, public speaker and New York Times Bestselling Author. He is an expert in water management and conservation. His first book Let There Be Water: Israel’s Solution for a Water-Starved World talks about how a government in one of the driest regions in the world revolutionised water managed. His second book Troubled Water: What's Wrong with What We Drink, presented an ambitious agenda for a fundamental rethinking of America’s drinking water system. Seth’s most recent book, Other People's Words: Wisdom for an Inspired and Productive Life.

His essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and in leading publications in Europe and Asia. Seth is a Senior Fellow at the University of Wisconsin’s Center for Water Policy, and is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Seth is a widely sought-after speaker, having spoken hundreds of times on water and other issues throughout the US and around the world. Among the places he has spoken include the US Congress, the United Nations, the World Bank, Davos and at Google’s headquarters, and on more than 40 college campuses, including Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Yale, and Stanford.

Seth is the co-founder of several companies, including Beanstalk, the world’s leading trademark brand extension company, which he sold to Ford Motor Company. He was also a Producer of the Tony Award-nominated Broadway revival of Man of La Mancha. Seth sits on the board of several not-for-profit organizations. All of the royalties from sales of Seth’s books are donated to charity.

· http://sethmsiegel.com
· www.creativeprocess.info
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org

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“The kelp plant itself can grow to 30 meters easily, and sometimes 40 meters, so it’s a huge plant…When people look around the world today, seeing the news, making the world a better place is getting increasingly important. People have to pay attention to what they can do as individuals to make the world a better place. The world is not going to become a good place on its own. If there weren’t for thousands and millions of people, phenomenal sacrifices that people make. When you see what some people do and the risks they take. I have basically found my job for the remaining years that I have on the earth to try to make the world a better place.”

Brian Wilcox is the chief engineer and co-founder of Marine BioEnergy, Inc. Marine BioEnergy was founded to grow plants in the open ocean to provide carbon-neutral fuels so that eventually fossil fuel use can be eliminated. Previously, Brian spent 38 years at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory working on robots for planetary exploration and other extreme environments. At NASA, he was the Supervisor of the Robotic Vehicles Group for over 20 years, and Manager of the Space Robotics Technology Program for another nearly 15 years.
· www.marinebiomass.com
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info

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Brian Wilcox is the chief engineer and co-founder of Marine BioEnergy, Inc.  Marine BioEnergy was founded to grow plants in the open ocean to provide carbon-neutral fuels so that eventually fossil fuel use can be eliminated. Previously, Brian spent 38 years at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory working on robots for planetary exploration and other extreme environments. At NASA, he was the Supervisor of the Robotic Vehicles Group for over 20 years, and Manager of the Space Robotics Technology Program for another nearly 15 years.
· www.marinebiomass.com
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info

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“One of the things I’ve noticed is that a lot of those younger people are actually much nicer than they need to be. And they have to realize that this is going to be your world. It turns out the way you want to make it and so you should be thinking now about what you want out of this. What do you want that world to be? Do not wait around until the two generations beyond you have gone ahead and done it the way they want it because, by the time they get done, you’re not going to have the chance to shift it to where you want it. So start thinking now about where do you want to be? What is the future you want? And don’t be nice about it, just go ahead and start planning it now.”

Mike Pondsmith is an accomplished roleplaying, tabletop, and video game designer. He is best known for his work with the publisher R. Talsorian Games where he developed the majority of the company’s roleplaying games since its founding in 1982. He is credited as the author of several tabletop roleplaying games such as Mekton, Cyberpunk, and Castle Falkenstein and was recently involved with creating the universe of CD Projekt RED’s Cyberpunk 2077.

· rtalsoriangames.com
· www.cyberpunk.net
· www.creativeprocess.info

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Mike Pondsmith is an accomplished roleplaying, tabletop, and video game designer. He is best known for his work with the publisher R. Talsorian Games where he developed the majority of the company’s roleplaying games since its founding in 1982. He is credited as the author of several tabletop roleplaying games such as Mekton, Cyberpunk, and Castle Falkenstein and was recently involved with creating the universe of CD Projekt RED’s Cyberpunk 2077.

· rtalsoriangames.com
· www.cyberpunk.net
· www.creativeprocess.info

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“They’re single-purpose engines doing one thing in extraordinary ways, and they’ve been encouraged in that by the ecosystem around them, by the funding that’s being pumped into them by people whose only motivation is simply to make more money–and you can see the results of that in the world as this technology has grown from a little acorn to now being the biggest Sequoia in the forest. And it’s shading every other tree, it’s taking all the light, it’s taking all the energy from the forest, and it’s distorting so much in the world.”

Ben Pring is the director of Cognizant’s Center for the Future of Work. In 2018 he was a Bilderberg Meeting participant and in 2020 was named one of world’s top management thinkers by Thinkers 50.

He co-authored Monster: A Tough Love Letter On Taming the Machines that Rule Our Jobs, Lives and Code Halos with Paul Roehrig, and Future, What To Do When Machines Do Everything with Roehrig & Malcolm Frank

· www.cognizant.com/futureofwork/author/details/benjamin-pring

· www.oneplanetpodcast.org

· www.creativeprocess.info

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Ben Pring is the director of Cognizant’s Center for the Future of Work. In 2018 he was a Bilderberg Meeting participant and in 2020 was named one of world’s top management thinkers by Thinkers 50. 

He co-authored Monster: A Tough Love Letter On Taming the Machines that Rule Our Jobs, Lives and Code Halos with Paul Roehrig, and Future, What To Do When Machines Do Everything with Roehrig & Malcolm Frank

· www.cognizant.com/futureofwork/author/details/benjamin-pring

· www.oneplanetpodcast.org

· www.creativeprocess.info

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“Is it okay that you benefit at the expense of everyone and everything else? Is that a way that you really feel like you are winning at life? If not, then reconsider what you’re doing and just realize that we all live in this inextricably connected closed sphere in the middle of space. Anything that harms one area harms every area. There is nobody who can escape dirty air, dirty water, dirty food, economic political disruptions, etc. We’re all in this together. So don’t fool yourself by thinking somehow you’re going to come out this unscathed and having ‘won’ while everybody else loses.”

Ibrahim AlHusseini was born in Jordan and raised in Saudi Arabia by parents who are Palestinian refugees. He emigrated to the United States in the 1990s to attend college at the University of Washington and he currently resides in Los Angeles.

AlHusseini is a venture capitalist, sustainability-focused entrepreneur, and environmentalist. He is the founder and CEO of FullCycle, an investment company accelerating the deployment of climate-restoring technologies. AlHusseini is also the founder and managing partner of The Husseini Group.

· fullcycle.com

· www.oneplanetpodcast.org

· www.creativeprocess.info

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Ibrahim AlHusseini was born in Jordan and raised in Saudi Arabia by parents who are Palestinian refugees. He emigrated to the United States in the 1990s to attend college at the University of Washington and he currently resides in Los Angeles. 

AlHusseini is a venture capitalist, sustainability-focused entrepreneur, and environmentalist. He is the founder and CEO of FullCycle, an investment company accelerating the deployment of climate-restoring technologies. AlHusseini is also the founder and managing partner of The Husseini Group.

· fullcycle.com

· www.oneplanetpodcast.org

· www.creativeprocess.info

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“I’m grateful for the fact that through my work I’ve had a lot of opportunities to go to places that a lot of people just simply won’t ever get a chance to go. I like having those opportunities to try to share with people what that’s like. I honestly had no idea I would ever be here. I’m from a working-class background, didn’t have a huge amount of opportunities but now I can and that’s one thing that I particularly enjoy.”

Antonella Wilby is a PhD Candidate and National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow at the Contextual Robotics Institute, UC San Diego, and a National Geographic Explorer. Her current research focuses on the development of autonomous underwater robots and vision-based algorithms for mapping and exploration of ocean environments, with the ultimate goal of better understanding and protecting our blue planet. She holds Master of Science and Bachelor of Science degrees in Computer Science from the University of California, San Diego.

· antonellawilby.com
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org

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Antonella Wilby is a PhD Candidate and National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow at the Contextual Robotics Institute, UC San Diego, and a National Geographic Explorer. Her current research focuses on the development of autonomous underwater robots and vision-based algorithms for mapping and exploration of ocean environments, with the ultimate goal of better understanding and protecting our blue planet. She holds Master of Science and Bachelor of Science degrees in Computer Science from the University of California, San Diego.

· antonellawilby.com

· www.oneplanetpodcast.org

· www.creativeprocess.info

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Martin Ruhe is the internationally-acclaimed German cinematographer behind the Netflix film The Midnight Sky directed by and starring George Clooney. Previously, Ruhe worked on Catch-22, also directed by Clooney, as well as the critically acclaimed Counterpart, Run All Night with Liam Neeson, and the British Independent film award winner Control. Ruhe photographed the dark spy thriller Page Eight for BBC Films, directed by David Hare. The film earned him an American Society of Cinematographers Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography in Motion Picture/Miniseries Television Award for his work on the film.

Working closely with director Anton Corbijn, Ruhe photographed The American. Starring Clooney as an aging assassin on an assignment to create a specialized weapon, Ruhe’s meticulously arranged shots helped to build the tone of The American, while reviews applauded the film’s beauty. Ruhe lensed Harry Brown, a Michael Caine-starring vigilante thriller which premiered at 2009’s Toronto International Film Festival. His photography on Harry Brown received critical acclaim; Joe Leydon of Variety saying, “The moody lensing by Martin Ruhe vividly conveys the no-hope squalor of a contemporary urban wasteland.” Combining the best cultural influences from the U.S. and Europe, Ruhe is fluent in English, German and Spanish. He loves stills photography and travel.
· www.ruhe.net

· www.creativeprocess.info

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Martin Ruhe is the internationally-acclaimed German cinematographer behind the Netflix film The Midnight Sky directed by and starring George Clooney. Previously, Ruhe worked on Catch-22, also directed by Clooney, as well as the critically acclaimed Counterpart, Run All Night with Liam Neeson, and the British Independent film award winner Control. Ruhe photographed the dark spy thriller Page Eight for BBC Films, directed by David Hare. The film earned him an American Society of Cinematographers Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography in Motion Picture/Miniseries Television Award for his work on the film.

Working closely with director Anton Corbijn, Ruhe photographed The American. Starring Clooney as an aging assassin on an assignment to create a specialized weapon, Ruhe’s meticulously arranged shots helped to build the tone of The American, while reviews applauded the film’s beauty. Ruhe lensed Harry Brown, a Michael Caine-starring vigilante thriller which premiered at 2009’s Toronto International Film Festival. His photography on Harry Brown received critical acclaim; Joe Leydon of Variety saying, “The moody lensing by Martin Ruhe vividly conveys the no-hope squalor of a contemporary urban wasteland.” Combining the best cultural influences from the U.S. and Europe, Ruhe is fluent in English, German and Spanish. He loves stills photography and travel.
· www.ruhe.net

· www.creativeprocess.info

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Avi Loeb is a Professor of Science at Harvard University and a bestselling author with lists of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Publishers Weekly and more. Loeb wrote 8 books and over 800 papers on a wide range of topics, including black holes, the first stars, the search for extraterrestrial life, and the future of the universe. He had been the longest serving Chair of Harvard's Department of Astronomy (2011-2020), and Founding Director of Harvard's Black Hole Initiative. In 2012, TIME magazine selected Loeb as one of the 25 most influential people in space.

Website: lweb.cfa.harvard.edu/~loeb/

Essays in Scientific American: lweb.cfa.harvard.edu/~loeb/Opinion.html

· www.oneplanetpodcast.org

· www.creativeprocess.info

Photo: Lotem Loeb

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Avi Loeb is a Professor of Science at Harvard University and a bestselling author with lists of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Publishers Weekly and more. Loeb wrote 8 books and over 800 papers on a wide range of topics, including black holes, the first stars, the search for extraterrestrial life, and the future of the universe. He had been the longest serving Chair of Harvard's Department of Astronomy (2011-2020), and Founding Director of Harvard's Black Hole Initiative. In 2012, TIME magazine selected Loeb as one of the 25 most influential people in space.

Website: lweb.cfa.harvard.edu/~loeb/

Essays in Scientific American: lweb.cfa.harvard.edu/~loeb/Opinion.html

· www.oneplanetpodcast.org

· www.creativeprocess.info

Photo: Lotem Loeb

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“In origami design, historically people have always used their intuition. They probably started by folding traditional shapes or folding designs by others, developed an intuitive understanding of how the paper behaves and then from there they can explore that intuition to create new shapes. That was the way design worked for years and years, that was the way it worked for me, but I eventually hit a limit to what I could do with my intuition and so part of my motivation for exploring mathematical methods was to externalise some of the design process. If I could get some of the design process on paper in a meaningful way, then I could handle more complicated goals than I could just fit in my brain.”

Robert J. Lang has been working with origami for over fifty years and is now recognized as one of the world’s leading masters of the art and one of the pioneers of the marriage of origami with mathematics and technology. He has consulted on applications of origami to medical devices, airbag design, and space telescopes, is the author or co-author of twenty-one books and numerous technical articles, and lectures and consults on the connections between origami, science, and technology.

· langorigami.com

· www.creativeprocess.info

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Robert J. Lang has been working with origami for over fifty years and is now recognized as one of the world’s leading masters of the art and one of the pioneers of the marriage of origami with mathematics and technology. He has consulted on applications of origami to medical devices, airbag design, and space telescopes, is the author or co-author of twenty-one books and numerous technical articles, and lectures and consults on the connections between origami, science, and technology.

· langorigami.com

· www.creativeprocess.info

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“Find a balance. Use technology. And connect with nature. I think that’s really critical. There is big hope for your generation because you have better environmental education. I can see this. You are more aware of these issues. In terms of the environmental issues that we face now, we need to connect more with nature, to open up your heart for that. You have this amazing opportunity to reach out information to explore technologies through the Internet. What you choose now what we’re going to focus on, it’s really critical.”

Spatial analyst specialist Carlos Souza Jr. is a senior research associate at the Institute of People and the Environment of the Amazon, otherwise known as Imazon. He’s also a technical and scientific coordinator for MapBiomas, a collaborative network of co-creators, NGOs, universities, and technology companies, among others. He received his Ph.D. in Geography at University of California in Santa Barbara, and his work is focused on using current data and technology to increase understanding and awareness of the impact of human activity in the Brazilian Amazon.

· imazon.org.br/en/

· mapbiomas.org/en

· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info

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Spatial analyst specialist Carlos Souza Jr. is a senior research associate at the Institute of People and the Environment of the Amazon, otherwise known as Imazon. He’s also a technical and scientific coordinator for MapBiomas, a collaborative network of co-creators, NGOs, universities, and technology companies, among others. He received his Ph.D. in Geography at University of California in Santa Barbara, and his work is focused on using current data and technology to increase understanding and awareness of the impact of human activity in the Brazilian Amazon.

· imazon.org.br/en/

· mapbiomas.org/en

· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info

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Tanner Woodford is founder and executive director of the Design Museum of Chicago. He teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and paints large scale typographic murals across public spaces. As a designer, educator, and entrepreneur, he has taught, lectured, and led workshops on design issues, social change, and design history in classrooms and at conferences. He is happy to be scrappy, irrepressibly optimistic, and believes design has the capacity to fundamentally improve the human condition. He lives and works in Chicago, Ill. designchicago.org · tannerwoodford.com www.creativeprocess.info

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Tanner Woodford is founder and executive director of the Design Museum of Chicago. He teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and paints large scale typographic murals across public spaces. As a designer, educator, and entrepreneur, he has taught, lectured, and led workshops on design issues, social change, and design history in classrooms and at conferences. He is happy to be scrappy, irrepressibly optimistic, and believes design has the capacity to fundamentally improve the human condition. He lives and works in Chicago, Ill. designchicago.org · tannerwoodford.com

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“We live in buildings and cities because that’s what generates a living for a lot of people, but where we’re most comfortable as humans is when we’re in nature. Your generation owns this. Don’t let anybody take it from you or damage it because you own it. The next generation is the one that owns it and view it with a sense of ownership and a sense of pride and a sense of protection because there are a lot of benefits you get from nature.”

Ron Gonen is the Founder and CEO of Closed Loop Partners, a New York Based investment firm that focuses on building the circular economy. In his fulfilling career, Ron has been recognized as the “Champion of Earth” by the United Nations Environment Program. Serving as the Deputy Commissioner of Sanitation, Recycling and Sustainability in New York City under the Bloomberg Administration, Ron Gonen is a visionary and his idea of the circular economy is certainly the way of the future.

In 2021, he released his first book with Penguin Random House, The Waste Free World: How the Circular Economy Will Take Less, Make More, and Save the Planet, highlighting how companies that utilize circular economy business models will generate the most value and lead their industries.

Earlier in his career, Ron was the Co-Founder and CEO of RecycleBank from 2003-2010. He started his career at Deloitte Consulting. Ron was a Henry Catto Fellow at the Aspen Institute and past term member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He holds a number of technology and business method patents in the recycling industry.

· www.closedlooppartners.com
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info

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Ron Gonen is the Founder and CEO of Closed Loop Partners, a New York Based investment firm that focuses on building the circular economy. In his fulfilling career, Ron has been recognized as the “Champion of Earth” by the United Nations Environment Program. Serving as the Deputy Commissioner of Sanitation, Recycling and Sustainability in New York City under the Bloomberg Administration, Ron Gonen is a visionary and his idea of the circular economy is certainly the way of the future.

In 2021, he released his first book with Penguin Random House, The Waste Free World: How the Circular Economy Will Take Less, Make More, and Save the Planet, highlighting how companies that utilize circular economy business models will generate the most value and lead their industries.

Earlier in his career, Ron was the Co-Founder and CEO of RecycleBank from 2003-2010. He started his career at Deloitte Consulting. Ron was a Henry Catto Fellow at the Aspen Institute and past term member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He holds a number of technology and business method patents in the recycling industry.

· www.closedlooppartners.com
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info

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“The history of Earth Day is pretty remarkable. The net result is 20 million people came out on the streets. It remains the largest civic day of action in human history. There’s no other country, no other world that ever had 20 million people coming out on the streets around a single issue. That was on April 22, 1970, and right after that, it became apparent with that many people that Congress and State legislators had to do something about it because, frankly, they were afraid of that many people all speaking in one voice.

The philosophy of Earth Day is very much about building a big movement, making sure it’s diverse, constantly improving the ways that people access information, and have access to mechanisms for legal relief.

Over the course of the next couple of decades it became year-round, it went international. This organization now works 365 days a year. At this point, we’re in 192 countries with about a billion people participating, so we take advantage of that bully pulpit to really educate people about critical issues.”

Kathleen Rogers is the President of EARTHDAY.ORG. Under her leadership, it has grown into a global year-round policy and activist organization with an international staff. She has been at the vanguard of developing campaigns and programs focused on diversifying the environmental movement, highlighted by Campaign for Communities and Billion Acts of Green. Prior to her work at EARTHDAY.ORG, Kathleen held senior positions with the National Audubon Society, the Environmental Law Institute, and two U.S. Olympic Organizing Committees. She’s a graduate of the University of California at Davis School of Law, where she served as editor-in-chief of the law review and clerked in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.

· www.oneplanetpodcast.org

"Rebirth" by Juan Sánchez is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

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Kathleen Rogers is the President of EARTHDAY.ORG. Under her leadership, it has grown into a global year-round policy and activist organization with an international staff. She has been at the vanguard of developing campaigns and programs focused on diversifying the environmental movement, highlighted by Campaign for Communities and Billion Acts of Green. Prior to her work at EARTHDAY.ORG, Kathleen held senior positions with the National Audubon Society, the Environmental Law Institute, and two U.S. Olympic Organizing Committees. She’s a graduate of the University of California at Davis School of Law, where she served as editor-in-chief of the law review and clerked in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.

· www.oneplanetpodcast.org








This interview is the first in our new One Planet Podcast series, which is available both on The Creative Process and on its own channel from the end of March. The podcast features environmental groups and notable changemakers from around the world, including European Environment Agency, Citizens’ Climate Lobby, EarthLife Africa, One Tree Planted, Global Witness, Earth System Governance Project, Marine Stewardship Council, National Council for Climate Change, Sustainable Development and Public Leadership, Association des Amis de la Nature, Forest Stewardship Council, Polar Bears International, and many others.

Episodes feature a host of ways you can take action and get involved in local or international environmental movements so that we can work together for a better tomorrow.

· "Rebirth" by Juan Sánchez is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

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“I think the next crisis is going to be a materials crisis. The whole point of moving from a zero-sum game–like who makes the best cheapest product at the lowest price and can find lowest labor somewhere around the world so someone can be happy with a new laundry machine and buy another one in five years–that’s not going to work for us.”

Tiemen ter Hoeven is founder and CEO of Roetz, a manufacturer of circular bicycles and e-bikes. In the Netherlands alone, about 1 million bicycles are discarded every year - whilst many parts can still be used perfectly well. In the Roetz Fair Factory, the parts are cleaned, repaired, and reassembled into new bicycles by people with poor job prospects. Roetz’ mission is to bring circular design and innovation to the bike industry and beyond.
· roetz-bikes.com

· www.oneplanetpodcast.org

· www.creativeprocess.info

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Tiemen ter Hoeven is founder and CEO of Roetz, a manufacturer of circular bicycles and e-bikes. In the Netherlands alone, about 1 million bicycles are discarded every year - whilst many parts can still be used perfectly well. In the Roetz Fair Factory, the parts are cleaned, repaired, and reassembled into new bicycles by people with poor job prospects. Roetz’ mission is to bring circular design and innovation to the bike industry and beyond.
· roetz-bikes.com

· www.oneplanetpodcast.org

· www.creativeprocess.info

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“I hope that film and the story can help people get their heads around these huge ideas that are pretty terrifying and almost hopeless to think about. What can we do? Are we on this track? What have we done to the earth? I think scientists are very much starting to agree that it’s getting to the point where it’s almost too late. So can humans see that far ahead? Can we understand the track we’re on in time? I don’t know, but I’m willing to use whatever tools possible to try to help that conversation happen.”

Director of photography Alan Jacobsen photographs narrative and documentary projects with an authentic, natural eye and sensitive curiosity. His camerawork is masterful, intuitive and intimate, capturing the sensory story in each powerful frame.

Most recently, he wrapped the upcoming The Loneliest Whale: The Search for 52, a feature length documentary about the loneliest whale in the world, with director Joshua Zeman.

Other films lensed by Jacobsen have earned film festival honors: two-time Oscar-nominated director Marshall Curry’s Racing Dreams and Point and Shoot, both of which received the Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary at the Tribeca Film Festival; Toe to Toe with director Emily Abt, which won him the Best Cinematography Award nomination at Sundance Film Festival; and The Trials of Darryl Hunt, nominated for the Sundance Grand Jury, Independent Spirit, International Documentary Association and Emmy awards.

· www.alanjax.com
· www.creativeprocess.info

· www.oneplanetpodcast.org

Image Courtesy of Bleecker Street

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Director of photography Alan Jacobsen photographs narrative and documentary projects with an authentic, natural eye and sensitive curiosity. His camerawork is masterful, intuitive and intimate, capturing the sensory story in each powerful frame.

Most recently, he wrapped the upcoming The Loneliest Whale: The Search for 52, a feature length documentary about the loneliest whale in the world, with director Joshua Zeman. 

Other films lensed by Jacobsen have earned film festival honors: two-time Oscar-nominated director Marshall Curry’s Racing Dreams and Point and Shoot, both of which received the Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary at the Tribeca Film Festival; Toe to Toe with director Emily Abt, which won him the Best Cinematography Award nomination at Sundance Film Festival; and The Trials of Darryl Hunt, nominated for the Sundance Grand Jury, Independent Spirit, International Documentary Association and Emmy awards.

· www.alanjax.com
· www.creativeprocess.info

· www.oneplanetpodcast.org

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“The story behind The Weather Makers and the whole intention is that five years by accident, I was working in a dredging company and one of the commercial people from Egypt approached me on a question about a lagoon where the fish were disappearing. So we started with this very small thing and set up a whole flow modelling approach, so really from the hydraulics, we could determine what would happen with the fish. And that really was the regretting the Sinai could have a very big impact on the world.”
Ties van der Hoeven is Creative Director and Co-founder of The Weather Makers, a company which uses holistic engineering to create Watershed Wide Ecosystem Regeneration at the broken continental divide regions to restore hydrological cycles. They influence the vegetation to increase fresh water availability through land-atmospheric processes.As a hydraulic engineer and entrepreneur, Ties has worked on international projects in Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia. His main focus is innovation, sustainability, visualization, virtual reality and 3D gaming After working on several big construction projects, his interest shifted to working with nature and implementing a pro-active adaptive engineering approach.

· theweathermakers.nl

· www.oneplanetpodcast.org

· www.creativeprocess.info

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Ties van der Hoeven is Creative Director and Co-founder of The Weather Makers, a company which uses holistic engineering to create Watershed Wide Ecosystem Regeneration at the broken continental divide regions to restore hydrological cycles. They influence the vegetation to increase fresh water availability through land-atmospheric processes.As a hydraulic engineer and entrepreneur, Ties has worked on international projects in Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia. His main focus is innovation, sustainability, visualization, virtual reality and 3D gaming After working on several big construction projects, his interest shifted to working with nature and implementing a pro-active adaptive engineering approach.

· theweathermakers.nl

· www.oneplanetpodcast.org

· www.creativeprocess.info

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"I'm a deep believer in the values of democracy, human rights, and the system where civil society and people play a key role in the discussions about society and also assuming responsibility, whether it's through labor unions, youth organizations…I think one key solution at the level of society is more equality. More equal societies bring a lot of advantages. I think that is a critical component to building a sustainable society. We cannot pretend that the current distribution of wealth on this planet between countries and within countries is a fertile ground for longterm sustainability. It isn’t."

Hans Bruyninckx is the Executive Director of the European Environment Agency. He is a political scientist and international relations scholar specializing in global environmental governance, climate change, and sustainable development. Previous to his work at EEA, he was head of the HIVA Research Institute and of the Political Science department at KU Leuven, senior member of the interdisciplinary Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies and promoter-coordinator of the Flemish Policy Research Centre on Transitions for Sustainable Development.

· https://www.eea.europa.eu/about-us/governance/executive-director


· https://www.eea.europa.eu/

· www.oneplanetpodcast.org






This interview is the first in our new One Planet Podcast series, which is available both on The Creative Process and on its own channel from the end of March. The podcast features environmental groups and notable changemakers from around the world, including European Environment Agency, Citizens’ Climate Lobby, EarthLife Africa, One Tree Planted, Global Witness, Earth System Governance Project, Marine Stewardship Council, National Council for Climate Change, Sustainable Development and Public Leadership, Association des Amis de la Nature, Forest Stewardship Council, Polar Bears International, and many others.

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Hans Bruyninckx is the Executive Director of the European Environment Agency. He is a political scientist and international relations scholar specializing in global environmental governance, climate change, and sustainable development. Previous to his work at EEA, he was head of the HIVA Research Institute and of the Political Science department at KU Leuven, senior member of the interdisciplinary Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies and promoter-coordinator of the Flemish Policy Research Centre on Transitions for Sustainable Development.

· https://www.eea.europa.eu/about-us/governance/executive-director
· https://www.eea.europa.eu/
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org

"Rebirth" by Juan Sánchez is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

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“Climate scientists forecast that we will see more pandemics, more sickness in people. We have about 8 million people from air pollution every year around the world. So if we want to save their lives so that they do not become ill, we have to stop air pollution. Climate protection is the best contribution to healthcare for humankind.”

Hans-Josef Fell was a member of German Parliament from 1998 to 2013 where he drafted the 2000 Renewable Energy Sources Act. This law has since been replicated over 100 times and can be seen as the legal prototype for the rollout of renewables. 
In 2006, with a group of other parliamentarians and scientists, Fell created the Energy Watch Group, wherein as president, he utilizes his vast expertise in energy and climate politics to foster political dialogue and public discourse.
Fell has received many accolades for his work including the Lui Che Woo Prize for his lifetime achievement in environmental and climate policy, the order of merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Nuclear-Free Future Award.


· www.energywatchgroup.org

· hans-josef-fell.de/en/


· www.creativeprocess.info

· www.oneplanetpodcast.org

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Hans-Josef Fell was a member of German Parliament from 1998 to 2013 where he drafted the 2000 Renewable Energy Sources Act. This law has since been replicated over 100 times and can be seen as the legal prototype for the rollout of renewables. 
In 2006, with a group of other parliamentarians and scientists, Fell created the Energy Watch Group, wherein as president, he utilizes his vast expertise in energy and climate politics to foster political dialogue and public discourse.
Fell has received many accolades for his work including the Lui Che Woo Prize for his lifetime achievement in environmental and climate policy, the order of merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Nuclear-Free Future Award.


· www.energywatchgroup.org

· hans-josef-fell.de/en/

· www.creativeprocess.info


· www.oneplanetpodcast.org

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“As an administrator for 15 years, I still tried to do science and it was difficult because being a dean, every day there is a problem. Every day you have to solve some personal issues, so it’s difficult to concentrate and what I would do was, whenever there was an opportunity to go to a conference away from the university, particularly in a different country, I would sit in the conference room listening to these lectures. You know how it is with meetings, maybe 10% of the speakers are exciting and interesting. What I found is even when I was not listening because I was in this atmosphere of people talking about physics, my mind was set free and would just start percolating. And all of a sudden ideas would come completely unrelated to what the speaker was talking about, except that they were scientific ideas. And I would jot them down and I found that this was really quite an interesting process because it was kind of an immersion process where you actually are not concentrating on what is exactly in front of you, but it puts you in this mood. The brain turns on a different lode and I think by association other ideas come up.”

Pierre Sokolsky is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Physics and Astronomy and Dean Emeritus of the College of Science at the University of Utah. He has been a leader in the field of Particle Astrophysics, with a specific interest in the highest energy particles produced by natural processes in the universe. Born in France, he was educated at the University of Chicago and University of Illinois. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, past Guggenheim Fellow, and recipient of the Panofsky Prize of the American Physical Society.

· faculty.utah.edu/u0029107-PIERRE_SOKOLSKY/hm/index.hml
· www.creativeprocess.info

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Pierre Sokolsky is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Physics and Astronomy and Dean Emeritus of the College of Science at the University of Utah. He has been a leader in the field of Particle Astrophysics, with a specific interest in the highest energy particles produced by natural processes in the universe. Born in France, he was educated at the University of Chicago and University of Illinois. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, past Guggenheim Fellow, and recipient of the Panofsky Prize of the American Physical Society.

· faculty.utah.edu/u0029107-PIERRE_SOKOLSKY/hm/index.hml
· www.creativeprocess.info

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“Cybernetics is the Greek word for governor, that’s where it came from. It was introduced into the contemporary discussion with a book by Norbert Wiener in 1948 called Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. These were the very early days of computers and they were looking for a theory to guide the creation of computers.”
Stuart Umpleby is Professor Emeritus of Management at George Washington University School of Business. He has served as President of the American Society of Cybernetics and is currently an Associate Editor of the Journal of Cybernetics and Systems. His studies in cybernetics, systems and management has led him to consult with the World Bank, US and Canadian government agencies as well as numerous corporate institutions throughout America, Europe, and Asia.

· https://blogs.gwu.edu/umpleby

· www.creativeprocess.info

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Stuart Umpleby is Professor Emeritus of Management at George Washington University School of Business. He has served as President of the American Society of Cybernetics and is currently an Associate Editor of the Journal of Cybernetics and Systems. His studies in cybernetics, systems and management has led him to consult with the World Bank, US and Canadian government agencies as well as numerous corporate institutions throughout America, Europe, and Asia.

· https://blogs.gwu.edu/umpleby
· www.creativeprocess.info