Social Justice & Activism · The Creative Process: Recent Episodes
Activists, Environmental & Indigenous Groups, Artists & Writers Talk Activism · Creative Process Original Series
Social Justice & Activism episodes of the popular The Creative Process podcast. We speak to activists, environmental organizations, indigenous groups, artists, writers & others who have devoted their life to making a difference. To listen to ALL arts, activism & environmental episodes of “The Creative Process · Arts, Culture & Society”, you’ll find our main podcast on Apple: tinyurl.com/thecreativepod, Spotify: tinyurl.com/thecreativespotify, or wherever you get your podcasts!
Exploring the fascinating minds of creative people. Conversations with writers, artists & creative thinkers across the Arts & STEM. We discuss their life, work & artistic practice. Winners of Oscar, Emmy, Tony, Pulitzer, leaders & public figures share real experiences & offer valuable insights. Notable guests and participating museums and organizations include: Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, Neil Patrick Harris, Smithsonian, Roxane Gay, Musée Picasso, EARTHDAY.ORG, Neil Gaiman, UNESCO, Joyce Carol Oates, Mark Seliger, Acropolis Museum, Hilary Mantel, Songwriters Hall of Fame, George Saunders, The New Museum, Lemony Snicket, Pritzker Architecture Prize, Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Serpentine Galleries, Joe Mantegna, PETA, Greenpeace, EPA, Morgan Library & Museum, and many others.
The interviews are hosted by founder and creative educator Mia Funk with the participation of students, universities, and collaborators from around the world. These conversations are also part of our traveling exhibition. www.creativeprocess.info
For The Creative Process podcasts from Seasons 1 & 2, visit: tinyurl.com/creativepod or creativeprocess.info/interviews-page-1, which has our complete directory of interviews, transcripts, artworks, and details about ways to get involved. INSTAGRAM @creativeprocesspodcast
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
“We are in the middle of a labyrinth which suggests to us many fake corridors. What's the superpower of literature? Literature is like an antidote against propaganda. Propaganda explains the world easily in a two-dimensional way. Literature gives you a more complex explanation. Literature tells personal stories.”
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
(2:13) The Art of Translation
(5:44) The Pandemic of the Past
(11:30) Reading from ‘Time Shelter’
(14:28) Death and the Gardener
(19:34) The Translator's Calling
(26:05) Cultural Rhythms of the Bulgarian Language
(30:00) The Nonlinear Approach to Storytelling
(34:30) Separating Personal and Historical Pasts
(42:55) Storytelling vs Propaganda
(47:19) Bodies, Animals and the Loneliness of the Minotaur
(56:00) Reading ' Eight Minutes and 19 Seconds’
(1:00:28) What makes a good life? What has given your life meaning?
(1:04:18) Childhood, Memory and Imagination
(1:10:38) Reflections on God and the Stories His Grandmother Told Him
(1:17:20) Education and the Empathic Imagination
(1:23:25) The Museum of Memory
(1:26:15) The Importance of Hugging and Empathy
(1:28:02) AI and the Future of Humanity
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
Today, we examine how we will adapt to a changing climate and learn to listen to the Earth.(0:00) Abrahm Lustgarten(Reporter, ProPublica) (3:00) Jon Gertner (Author, The Ice at the End of the World) (5:32) Bill Hare (CEO, Climate Analytics) (6:35) Rob Nixon (Prof. Environmental Humanities, Princeton) (8:12) Louis de Jaeger (Co-founder, Food Forest Institute) (10:06) Kathleen Rogers (Pres., EarthDay.org) (11:31) Rebecca Tickell (Filmmaker, Groundswell) (13:42) Ben Goldfarb (Author, Crossings) (14:56) Jane Madgwick (CEO, Plantlife International) (19:23) Jason deCaires Taylor (Sculptor, Underwater Museums) (21:02) William McDonough (Architect, Cradle to Cradle) (23:19) Euan Nisbet(Scientist, Royal Holloway) (26:06) Roland Geyer (Author, The Business of Less) (28:15) Ron Gonen (CEO, Closed Loop Partners) (29:34) Paul Shrivastava (Co-President, Club of Rome) (30:14) Carlo Ratti (Architect, Dir., MIT Senseable City Lab) (31:24) Osprey Orielle Lake (Founder, WECAN) (32:38) Liza Featherstone (Journalist) (33:41) Yolanda Kakabadse (Fmr. President, WWF)
For more, listen to their full interviews
Episode Site: https://www.creativeprocess.info/interviews-featured/anth-regen
Today, we hear from writers Yann Martel, Carl Safina and David George Haskell on the practice of listening to the living world. Tom Chi discusses the dangerous volatility of a one-degree shift. Clayton Aldern explores how climate change alters brain health and behavior, while Ami Vitale,Osprey Orielle Lake and Martín Von Hildebrand remind us of the kinship we share with nature. Fred Pearce discusses 40 years as a journalist reporting on climate from around the world, while Richard Black of the environmental think tank Ember and Paula Pinho, European Commission’s Chief Spokesperson, talk about policy, hope and the radical empathy required to protect the planet for future generations.
(0:00) Clayton Page Aldern – Finding awe and beauty in the world
(0:40) David George Haskell – On consequences of humans tuning out the sounds of the living world
(2:11) Yann Martel – How animals ask us to step out of our humanity
(3:12) Carl Safina – The interior lives of non-human animals
(5:08) Ami Vitale – Environmental collapse and human conflict
(6:37) Martín von Hildebrand – Indigenous views of nature
(8:00) Richard Black – Transition to clean energy vs. massive fossil fuel subsidies
(10:01) Tom Chi – Climate destabilization
(11:07) Paula Pinho – Europe’s vision for energy independence
(14:04) Osprey Orielle Lake – Māori concept of "I am the river and the river is me”
(16:08) Bill Hare – On limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees
(17:19) Fred Pearce – Finding hope in nature’s resilience
To hear more from each guest, listen to their full interviews.
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
@creativeprocesspodcast
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
“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
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.
(0:03) Architecture as a Living Transformation
(1:42) The Intuitive Knowledge of Living Art
(2:20) Preserving the Human Core of Expression
(3:14) The Medina and the Geometry of Childhood
(6:35) The Social Spaces of Rooftops
(8:27) The Twin Dynamic and Confrontation with 'l'autre'
(10:21) Contextual Echoes & Traces of the Site
(12:12) The Temples of Water
(13:15) The Mosque as Pure Spatiality
(15:49) Building Culture with Yves Saint Laurent & Pierre Bergé
(16:57) The Wast ed-dar (وسط الدار) and the Heart of a Building
(18:31) The Smells and Sounds of Home
(19:44) Balance, Nature, and Sisterhood
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
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
Two weeks away from filming her most ambitious film to date, Cherien Dabis and her crew were forced to evacuate Palestine as the devastating events of October 2023 began. Instead of abandoning the project, they adapted, filming across Cyprus, Jordan, and Greece, creating a cinematic love letter to the resilience, joy, and humanity of the Palestinian people.
My guest today is Cherien Dabis. She’s a filmmaker and actress who has spent much of her career trying to fill the silences in the American narrative. In 2022, she became the first Palestinian to receive an Emmy nomination. She has worked on everything from The L Word to Ozark, Only Murders in the Building to the hit Netflix series Mo, always with an eye toward breaking the one-dimensional mold that has historically defined Arab representation in the West. But her latest project is perhaps her most ambitious yet. It’s a film called All That’s Left of You. It follows one Palestinian family across three generations, beginning in 1948 and ending in 2022. It is a story of exile and memory, and it’s Jordan’s official submission for this year’s Academy Awards.
(0:00) The Inheritance of Trauma
Cherien Dabis discusses how collective trauma is passed down and the importance of showing Palestinian resilience and humanity
(1:50) Inherited Trauma: Identity And History The passage of trauma requires a multi-generational lens to truly understand how history and political events shape people
(2:37) The Bakri Acting Dynasty: Collaborative Lineage Collaborating with four generations of the Bakri Family brought immense authenticity to the screen
(4:02) Filming The Nakba: Art Imitating Crisis Evacuating Palestine weeks before shooting forced the crew to adapt amidst devastating, ongoing events
(7:09) The Moment Of Activation: Racism In Ohio Experiencing severe racism during the first Gulf War ignited a lifelong drive to challenge dangerous media stereotypes
(9:34) Psychological Violence: Impact Of Humiliation The film explores how non-physical harassment and humiliation leave devastating, long-term relational scars
(10:48) Broken Distribution: Industry Gatekeepers Navigating systemic fear and gatekeeping in Hollywood distribution remains a profound challenge for Palestinian cinema
(11:37) Previous Films, Television And Craft Directing television hones the craft and expands the creative capacity needed for ambitious feature films
(12:28) Truth Seekers: The Next Generation Hope lies with young people who refuse to accept the broken systems and hidden truths of previous generations
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
“These oppressive structures are built to strip us of our humanity. One of the ways they do that is by filling us with anger and hatred. If we allow ourselves to stay there, we're doing the job of the oppressor for them by slowly killing ourselves. I wanted to make a movie that would remind people that we can't allow them to win by giving up our humanity. We have to hold onto our humanity and try in these impossible circumstances.”
My guest today is Cherien Dabis. She’s a filmmaker and actress who has spent much of her career trying to fill the silences in the American narrative. In 2022, she became the first Palestinian to receive an Emmy nomination. She has worked on everything from The L Word to Ozark, Only Murders in the Building to the hit Netflix series Mo, always with an eye toward breaking the one-dimensional mold that has historically defined Arab representation in the West. But her latest project is perhaps her most ambitious yet. It’s a film called All That’s Left of You. It follows one Palestinian family across three generations, beginning in 1948 and ending in 2022. It is a story of exile and memory, and it’s Jordan’s official submission for this year’s Academy Awards.
(0:00) The Inheritance of Trauma
Cherien Dabis discusses showing the multifaceted humanity of Palestinians beyond just pain and suffering
(3:41) Inherited Trauma: Identity And History The film explores how collective trauma is passed down across generations and shapes individual identities
(5:52) The Bakri Dynasty: Collaborative Lineage Working with the legendary Bakri Family brought deep, authentic relational dynamics to the screen
(9:25) Filming The Nakba: Art Imitating Crisis The crew faced severe challenges and had to evacuate Palestine during the October 2023 escalation
(16:10) Representation Gap: Dehumanization In Media Growing up in Ohio, Cherien Dabis witnessed the dangerous misrepresentation of Arabs in Western media
(21:24) The Moment Of Activation: Racism In Ohio The stark racism experienced during the first Gulf War ignited her passion to become a filmmaker
(33:40) Psychological Violence: Impact Of Humiliation The film depicts how psychological harassment under occupation leaves devastating, long-term impacts on families
(38:23) Broken Distribution: Industry Gatekeepers Despite international success, systemic fear and gatekeeping in the US distribution market remain significant obstacles
(45:28) Previous Films, Television And Craft Directing television shows like Only Murders in the Building expanded her creative capacity and adaptability
(51:45) Truth Seekers: The Next Generation
Cherien Dabis shares her profound hope for young people who refuse to accept the broken systems of the past
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
"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
What happens when the state infiltrates your most intimate relationships? How do we protect the innocence and imagination of children in an increasingly authoritarian world? “"If you have love, eventually you're going to win. It's not that people aren't going to die. It's not terrible things aren't going to happen. But if you stay with that and you stay centered in that, you'll get through and you will not have turned into a monster in order to overcome monsters.”
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 VoiceOn the Alfred Wolfsohn voice method and the power of being fully expressed
(2:17) Education and the Foundation of Democracy
The dangers of dismantling education and how critical thinking protects us from fascism.
(5:14) The Myth of Shrinking Attention SpansChallenging the narrative that modern audiences cannot focus, and the importance of engaging storytelling.
(8:23) Reading from Alive in the Merciful CountryKennedy shares a passage from her latest novel, exploring hope and resilience in dark times.
(17:45) The Spy Cop Scandal and State SurveillanceUnpacking the reality of undercover police infiltrating peaceful protests and intimate lives.
(22:07) AI, Digital Slop, and the Loss of TrustReflections on artificial intelligence as an unstable plagiarism machine and its impact on truth.
(28:29) The Power of the Powerless: Radical WhimsyHow absurdity, humor, and inflatable costumes can disrupt authoritarian mindsets and potential violence.
(33:13) Lockdown: A Global Pause and the Inrush of EmpathyThe fleeting moment of unified humanity during the pandemic and how it was ultimately betrayed.
(42:53) Writing Without Theft: The Ethics of Character CreationKennedy explains her imaginative process and why she refuses to steal details from real people's lives.
(1:29:40) Nature, Spirituality, and the Merciful CountryFinding healing in the natural world and navigating the future with love and awareness.
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
“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
Can curiosity and empathy be taught? How can we expand our sense of solidarity through stories? In this episode, we explore the internal dialogues of artists, actors and writers to ask what it means to step into someone else's shoes.
(0:00) Novelist Jim Shepard discusses Literature as a Tool for Emotional Education and Exploring History
(2:05) Tony Award-winning Actor Neil Patrick Harris on Being Moved by Theater and its Ability to Bridge Worlds
(3:55) Novelist Katie Kitamura on How a Book is Made in Collaboration with the Reader
(5:00) Screenwriter, Playwright Laura Eason on Inhabiting the Hearts of Characters Different from Ourselves
(6:03) Academy Award-winning Director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy on the Art of Visual Storytelling
(6:37) Cinematographer, Director Benoit Delhomme on the Freedom of Handheld Cinematography
(7:19) Author Etgar Keret on Looking for Humanity through Shared Intention
(8:18) Viet Thanh Nguyen – Opposing Power through Expansive Solidarity
(9:27) Adam Moss – Author, Fmr. Editor New York magazine on “The Work of Art”
(10:29) John Patrick Shanley – Tony & Academy Award-winning Writer, Director on Finding Value in Ordinary Experiences and the Creative Power of Daydreaming
(11:56) Pulitzer Prize-winning Journalist Nicholas Kristof on Why Individual Stories are Necessary to Generate Connection
To hear more from each guest, listen to their full interviews.
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
In this special edition, we hear from our guests from across the arts and sciences. From composers and poets to forest ecologists and climate envoys, they tell the story of our planet. Moving beyond the data of destruction, we explore the intelligence of nature, the ethics of what we eat, and the empathy required to save our future.
MAX RICHTER, Composer, Sleep, The Blue Notebooks
CARL SAFINA, Author, Becoming Wild
ADA LIMÓN, 24th US Poet Laureate
CYNTHIA DANIELS, Grammy Award-winning Sound Eng.
SUZANNE SIMARD, Finding the Mother Tree
JOELLE GERGIS, Lead Author, IPCC 6th Assessment Rpt
NOAH WILSON-RICH, CEO, Best Bees Company
INGRID NEWKIRK, PETA Founder
BERTRAND PICCARD, Solar Impulse Foundation
DAVID FARRIER, Author, Footprints
KATHLEEN ROGERS, Pres, Earth Day Network
ODED GALOR, Unified Growth Theory
PETER SINGER, Philosopher
GEOFF MULGAN, Another World Is Possible
CLAIRE POTTER, Welcome to the Circular Economy
CHRIS FUNK, Dir. Climate Hazards Car.
JENNIFER MORGAN, Special Envoy, International Climate Action
To hear more from each guest, listen to their full interviews.
Episode Website
On Music, Trust and Connection with the Animal World
“Mostly I’ll play in a minor key, something sad, which I think can work for an animal because they can sense the sadness, and they try to reassure me and comfort me. I chose love songs because I'm convinced they are very intuitive and they can sense what I am trying to say to them, and profess my love in a way. I think there's always a way to connect, and if you're being cautious and don't threaten the animals, something beautiful can happen.”
Musician Plumestakes his guitar to the world's most unlikely concert halls—farms, sanctuaries, and wild habitats. A passionate advocate for veganism and animal welfare, we discuss what animals hear, how trust forms, and what music can reveal when it enters a world not made for humans alone.
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
How is music a pathway to understanding animals?
Musician Plumes takes his guitar to the world's most unlikely concert halls—farms, sanctuaries, and wild habitats. A passionate advocate for veganism and animal welfare, we discuss what animals hear, how trust forms, and what music can reveal when it enters a world not made for humans alone.
“Mostly I’ll play in a minor key, something sad, which I think can work for an animal because they can sense the sadness, and they try to reassure me and comfort me. I chose love songs because I'm convinced they are very intuitive and they can sense what I am trying to say to them, and profess my love in a way. I think there's always a way to connect, and if you're being cautious and don't threaten the animals, something beautiful can happen.”
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
On the urgent need to reclaim our political voices, the forces that silence dissent, and how art and poetry are crucial tools for survival
Our guest today is an activist scholar who believes the classroom is inseparable from the public square. David Palumbo-Liu is the Louise Hewlett Nixon Professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford University and a founding faculty member of Stanford’s Program in Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity. But his work has long reached beyond the academy. Through his book, Speaking Out of Place: Getting Our Political Voices Back, and his podcast of the same name, he insists that the great global crises of our time—from escalating wars and democratic failures to environmental collapse—are fundamentally crises of value and voice. His recent work has put him on the front lines of campus activism, challenging institutions, resigning his membership from the MLA, a move that highlights the ethical cost of speaking truth to power. We’ll talk about what he calls the "carceral logic" of the modern university, why art and poetry are crucial tools for survival in times of war, and what he tells his students about preparing for a future defined by uncertainty. His perspective is rooted in literature, but his urgency is all about the world we live in now. We will discuss the forces that silence dissent, the "imperial logic" of AI, and what it means to be a moral, active citizen when the systems we rely on are failing.
“There is a dispute about what the American Dream is or how it would play out in different circumstances. The American dream has essentially been narrowed into a white Christian nationalist notion of things so that everything that falls outside what they imagine that to be is not only undesirable, but should be the subject of extermination, deportation, and detention. I am heartened by the fact that more of our 'better angels' are emerging with a more capacious and expansive notion of what the American dream could be.”
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
On the urgent need to reclaim our political voices, the forces that silence dissent, and how art and poetry are crucial tools for survival
“There is a dispute about what the American Dream is or how it would play out in different circumstances. The American dream has essentially been narrowed into a white Christian nationalist notion of things so that everything that falls outside what they imagine that to be is not only undesirable, but should be the subject of extermination, deportation, and detention. I am heartened by the fact that more of our 'better angels' are emerging with a more capacious and expansive notion of what the American dream could be.”
Our guest today is an activist scholar who believes the classroom is inseparable from the public square. David Palumbo-Liu is the Louise Hewlett Nixon Professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford University and a founding faculty member of Stanford’s Program in Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity. But his work has long reached beyond the academy. Through his book, Speaking Out of Place: Getting Our Political Voices Back, and his podcast of the same name, he insists that the great global crises of our time—from escalating wars and democratic failures to environmental collapse—are fundamentally crises of value and voice.
His recent work has put him on the front lines of campus activism, challenging institutions, resigning his membership from the MLA, a move that highlights the ethical cost of speaking truth to power. We’ll talk about what he calls the "carceral logic" of the modern university, why art and poetry are crucial tools for survival in times of war, and what he tells his students about preparing for a future defined by uncertainty. His perspective is rooted in literature, but his urgency is all about the world we live in now. We will discuss the forces that silence dissent, the "imperial logic" of AI, and what it means to be a moral, active citizen when the systems we rely on are failing.
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
How do writers develop their voice, showing us what is important in life?
ADA LIMÓN(24th U.S. Poet Laureate, Startlement, The Carrying) explains that her poetry begins with a bodily sensation or curiosity, not an idea. She values the space and breath poetry offers for unknowing and mystery, finding solace in the making and the mess, not in answers. She discusses being free on the page to be her whole, authentic, complicated self.
JAY PARINI (Author, Filmmaker, Borges and Me) calls poetry the prince of literary arts—language refined to its apex of memorability. He recounts how his road trip with Borges around Scotland restored him from depression and anxiety following the Vietnam War death of his friend.
JERICHO BROWN (Pulitzer Prize-winning Poet, The Tradition, How We Do It: Black Writers on Craft, Practice, and Skill) discusses the rhythm of black vernacular and capturing "symphonic complexity of black life". He shares how he’s found a way not to think about personal risk as he’s writing.
ADAM MOSS (Fmr. Editor, New York Magazine; Author, The Work of Art) relates David Simon’s concept of the bounce, in which creativity gains momentum as it is passed between people.
VIET THANH NGUYEN (Pulitzer Prize-winning Author, The Sympathizer; To Save and to Destroy) discusses his path to expansive solidarity and capacious grief and how it works against the state's power to divide and conquer. He emphasizes that literature is crucial because authoritarian regimes abuse language; a commitment to the beauty of language is a commitment to truth, and fear is often an indicator of a truth that needs to be spoken.
To hear more from each guest, listen to their full interviews.
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
“People today are so used to Basquiat's prices being extraordinarily high and rising that it's almost hard for people to understand that wasn't always the case. In the year he died, 1988, a terrific painting by Basquiat might have sold for $30,000. Relative to his other artistic peers, like a great Julian Schnabel painting that cost $800,000. After Basquiat died, some speculative capital entered his market, and his prices did pop, but in the early 1990s, his prices fell apart, and for much of the first half of the 1990s, his work was selling for 80% off what it had been selling before. Auction houses didn't want to include him in their auctions. There was a really good chance he was going to be remembered, but certainly not become a great star. Three key figures believed in him and proceeded to buy almost every available Basquiat in the first half of the 1990s. They were also just passionate believers in his work. But for those three people, it would have taken much longer for Basquiat to achieve acclaim, if ever.”
Today, we’re joined by someone uniquely positioned to unpack the art world’s inner workings and to help us understand one of its most mythic figures — Jean-Michel Basquiat. Doug Woodham is the author of the new biography, Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Making of an Icon, the first major life study of Basquiat in over twenty-five years. Drawing on more than a hundred interviews — from family and friends to collectors and curators — Doug traces the rise, fall, and resurrection of an artist who redefined what it means to be a cultural icon. Before turning to writing, Doug served as President of the Americas for Christie’s, one of the world’s leading auction houses. That role gave him an insider’s perspective on how value is created — and mythologized — in the modern art market. In this conversation, we’ll explore not just the man behind the legend, but the powerful machinery that turned Jean-Michel Basquiat into one of the most recognized and commercially successful artists in the world.
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
Images courtesy of Doug Woodham and Thames & Hudson. For image credits, see Episode Website.
“All of the great artists are there for a reason: because they rebelled in some way. They created a visual vocabulary that felt fresh and new, which excited people. So, the great artists are not built on sort of anthills of sand. They're built on things of substance and of meaning. Though this is not a sufficient condition to become an icon, it's a necessary but not sufficient condition. I think you have to have an interesting and vivid personality or personal narrative that makes you interesting for people to talk about and want to learn about. I think you also have to have a support network of galleries, curators, and collectors who are excited about your work and want to push it forward, not wanting it to be forgotten. Basquiat's visual vocabulary is distinctive and stands out relative to what was being done in the 1980s. That's the sort of strong hill on which his reputation is built. Basquiat benefited from being the first black artist of note who got pushed forward. As in many things, the first benefits.”
Today, we’re joined by someone uniquely positioned to unpack the art world’s inner workings and to help us understand one of its most mythic figures — Jean-Michel Basquiat. Doug Woodham is the author of the new biography, Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Making of an Icon, the first major life study of Basquiat in over twenty-five years. Drawing on more than a hundred interviews — from family and friends to collectors and curators — Doug traces the rise, fall, and resurrection of an artist who redefined what it means to be a cultural icon. Before turning to writing, Doug served as President of the Americas for Christie’s, one of the world’s leading auction houses. That role gave him an insider’s perspective on how value is created — and mythologized — in the modern art market. In this conversation, we’ll explore not just the man behind the legend, but the powerful machinery that turned Jean-Michel Basquiat into one of the most recognized and commercially successful artists in the world.
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
“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.
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
“ 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.
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
“So when we decided to do a documentary to follow Ai Weiwei, we knew, of course, it wouldn't be just a simple opera, and we knew he would bring his own very special and original vision. Because, of course, he is not an opera director. From his point of view, it's a challenge, but from another perspective, it’s probably an enrichment for the opera audience because he doesn't follow the rules of opera. And, of course, once you decide to do a documentary about Ai Weiwei, it's in his DNA to be political. Once I started to follow him, the political issues and topics came into the documentary by themselves.”
The renowned artist and activist Ai Weiwei has used sculpture, photography, documentaries, and large-scale installations to challenge authoritarian power for decades. But his project at the Rome Opera House, directing Puccini’s final opera, Turandot, may be his most powerful fusion of art and politics yet. Puccini’s original is a fairy tale set in ancient China about a princess whose riddle game costs failed suitors their lives. But Ai Weiwei transformed this story into a stark reflection of the present, weaving in footage of refugee crises, COVID hospitals, and the Ukraine war—a production that became an urgent act of resistance for its Ukrainian conductor and cast. The opera and documentary are a living document of our turbulent times, embodying Ai Weiwei’s belief that 'Everything is Art. Everything is Politics.'
The new documentary, Ai Weiwei's Turandot, goes behind the curtain to capture the artistic struggle and emotional weight of making this work—a process that began with one vision and was fundamentally changed by a global pandemic and a major war.
My guest is the documentary’s director, Maxim Derevianko. He grew up in a family with deep ties to the Rome Opera House, and he offers a deeply personal, intimate look at how in Ai Weiwei’s words, “art competes with reality, but art will have the last word.”
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
“Everything is Art. Everything is Politics.
I think art competes with reality. And art will give you the last words.” –Ai Weiwei
The renowned artist and activist Ai Weiwei has used sculpture, photography, documentaries, and large-scale installations to challenge authoritarian power for decades. But his project at the Rome Opera House, directing Puccini’s final opera, Turandot, may be his most powerful fusion of art and politics yet. Puccini’s original is a fairy tale set in ancient China about a princess whose riddle game costs failed suitors their lives. But Ai Weiwei transformed this story into a stark reflection of the present, weaving in footage of refugee crises, COVID hospitals, and the Ukraine war—a production that became an urgent act of resistance for its Ukrainian conductor and cast. The opera and documentary are a living document of our turbulent times, embodying Ai Weiwei’s belief that 'Everything is Art. Everything is Politics.'
The new documentary, Ai Weiwei's Turandot, goes behind the curtain to capture the artistic struggle and emotional weight of making this work—a process that began with one vision and was fundamentally changed by a global pandemic and a major war.
My guest is the documentary’s director, Maxim Derevianko. He grew up in a family with deep ties to the Rome Opera House, and he offers a deeply personal, intimate look at how in Ai Weiwei’s words, “art competes with reality, but art will have the last word.”
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
How do our environments shape who we are and how we care for the world and each other? There are many solutions to climate change, inequality, and poverty around the world. How can we learn from them and transform our society?
Eiren Caffall (All the Water in the World) discusses the importance of embracing complexity and emotional flexibility in facing ecological grief.
Irvin Weathersby Jr. (In Open Contempt) discusses the transformative power of meditation and nature, drawing inspiration from Emerson and Thoreau.
Jay Parini (Biographies of Steinbeck, Frost, Faulkner…) on the significance of place in literature and life.
Natasha Hakimi Zapata (Another World Is Possible) explores the generosity and hope in people’s efforts to build better societies.
Audrea Lim (Free The Land) on how personal experiences with public lands influence our views on conservation.
Katie Kitamura (Audition, Intimacies) reflects on the role of landscape and memory in her novels.
Dr. Bayo Akomolafe (Philosopher, Founder of Emergence Network) discusses his awe for mountains, using them as a metaphor for humility and the search for meaning beyond oneself.
For more from each guest, listen to their full interviews.
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
IG @creativeprocesspodcast
“There are many ways in which I think human exceptionalism has seeped into the sciences, but one of the many ways is through the methodologies we use when we compare the intelligence of humans and other species. In particular, in my field, I’m a primatologist by training, comparing the cognitive abilities of humans with the abilities of our closest living relatives, the great apes. Many times, those studies compare the intelligence of captive chimpanzees who are living in highly restricted, manmade environments. Often, these chimpanzees have been separated from their biological mothers at birth. They're often separated from the group during testing. They're subjected to very human-centric experimental paradigms, like playing with plastic puzzle boxes or computer touchscreens, and we're measuring how they perform on these tasks.”
In this episode of Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with primatologist Christine Webb about her new book, The Arrogant Ape: The Myth of Human Exceptionalism and Why it Matters. The title of the book itself is a concise and precise description of its two constituent halves. First, Webb tells us how science itself, from premodern times onward, has operated with an assumption it keeps reconfirming constantly--that humans are not only exceptional, but also superior to other forms of life. Webb convincingly debunks this science over and over again. And most importantly, she explains how this myth has devastating political, cultural, and environmental consequences. Combining scientific and humanistic studies, we go into some detail about what this arrogance produces, and why we desperately need a much more humble sense of ourselves.
Christine Webb is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental Studies at New York University, where she is part of the Animal Studies program. Her research is driven by growing awareness that the ecological crisis demands a profound shift in how we understand other animals and our place among them, leading to two intersecting lines of inquiry. First, her work seeks to elucidate the complex dynamics of animal social life and to apply this knowledge to foundational questions in animal ethics and conservation. Second, she is interested in how prevailing societal norms, values, and institutions shape contemporary scientific knowledge of other animals and the environment, with a critical emphasis on human exceptionalism. Her debut book, The Arrogant Ape: The Myth of Human Exceptionalism and Why it Matters, was recently published with Avery (Penguin Random House) and is being translated into 17 languages.
www.palumbo-liu.comhttps://speakingoutofplace.com Bluesky @palumboliu.bsky.social
Instagram @speaking_out_of_place
“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.
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
“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
Instagram @speaking_out_of_place
“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
Instagram @speaking_out_of_place
“When one looks at the relative power imbalance between the Palestinian people on one hand, including the paramilitaries that are clearly existing in Gaza, and the Israeli armed forces, they have been bombarded from land, sea, and air. They have been starved and are being starved. They have been chased from pillar to post by the hundreds of thousands, up and down this very small strip of land.
All of it can be attributed to a scorched-earth policy of these Israelis to destroy every aspect of civilian life that we are all familiar with: schools, homes, roads, religious buildings, governmental offices, hospitals, medical centers, and so on. The idea is not new by any means. Anyone familiar with Israel's settler colonial endeavor in Palestine, particularly around 1947, 1948, and 1949, will know that scorched earth tactics are a policy.”
In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liuspeaks with Ardi Imseis and Chris Gunness for an urgent discussion of Israel’s accelerated genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the West Bank. These eminent international human rights scholars discuss Israel’s longstanding violations of international law and the complicity of the US. They also discuss at length the responsibility of states to immediately halt their direct and indirect support for the genocide. Our conversation includes an in-depth discussion of the UN and both the usefulness and shortcomings of international law. They end with a call to international civil society to use the information, rules, and judgments of law to do what too many states fail to do—protect the rights and lives of Palestinians and bring forth justice.
www.palumbo-liu.comhttps://speakingoutofplace.com Bluesky @palumboliu.bsky.social
Instagram @speaking_out_of_place
“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.”
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
“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.
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
“I'm Lebanese. I grew up in Lebanon during the Civil War, and I came to the United States as a graduate student with the intention of going back. I never wanted to stay here. I really thought that my life would happen in Beirut, in a city that I loved and hated in the healthiest of ways. My investments, both literary and intellectual, were rooted there. I came here as a graduate student and joined the PhD program, and then the events continued to unfold there, making life more and more of a risk, building a life in a place like Lebanon. The most important counterpoint in my life was meeting my partner, Ahmad Almallah, who is Palestinian. So immediately, my life became the life of a Palestinian by association.
Of course, the past two years—almost two years—have been surreal. I sometimes don't believe that we're going through what we're going through because, as security concerns have become something we think about at home, when we walk from home to campus or my office, I'm constantly anxious to open my mail because often there are things that will require a lot of energy, time, emotion, and are emotionally taxing. There’s a lot of rage now in many aspects of my life, but all that aside, my personal experience—both professional and personal, and at home, familial—are not exceptional. Many other people are experiencing intimidation, silencing, and feeling cornered, censored, and oppressed just because they took a stand—a very decent, normal, basic human stand against genocide.”
In this episode on Speaking Out of Place podcast Professor David Palumbo-Liutalks with Huda Fakhreddine, writer, translator, and scholar of Arabic literature. Among the many topics they touch upon are the challenges of teaching Arabic literature, especially Palestinian literature, in a time of genocide, when universities, professional organizations, and political groups militate against any honest discussion of these topics, and punish those who do. They talk about the notion of belonging and the importance of being able to choose what to belong to, and what not to. Huda speaks of the freedom found in living in Arabic, and explains what that means to her. She also reads in Arabic and English Nima Hasan’s stunning and wrenchingly beautiful poem, “Old Song.”
Huda J. Fakhreddine is a writer, translator, and Associate Professor of Arabic Literature at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of Metapoesis in the Arabic Tradition (Brill, 2015) and The Arabic Prose Poem: Poetic Theory and Practice (Edinburgh University Press, 2021), and the co-editor of The Routledge Handbook of Arabic Poetry (Routledge, 2023). Among her translations are The Sky That Denied Me: Selections from Jawdat Fakhreddine (University of Texas Press, 2020), The Universe, All at Once: Selections from Salim Barakat (Seagull Books, 2024), and Palestinian: Four Poems by Ibrahim Nasrallah (World Poetry Books, 2024). Her creative work includes a book of creative non-fiction titled Zaman saghīr taḥt shams thāniya (A Brief Time under a Different Sun), Dar al-Nahda, Beirut, 2019 and the forthcoming Wa min thamma al-ālam (And then the World), Manshūrāt Marfa’, Beirut, 2025. Her translations of Arabic poems have appeared in Protean, Lithub, Words Without Borders, Nimrod, ArabLit Quarterly, Asymptote, and Middle Eastern Literatures, among many others. She is co-editor of Middle Eastern Literatures and section editor of the Encyclopedia of Islam.
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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.
Episode Website
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Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
“As I was reading Hooks and Freire, a colleague recommended Adrian Rich's essay "Teaching Language in Open Admissions." It was in that essay that I first read about her experiences teaching at CUNY during open admissions, learning that she taught alongside June Jordan, Audre Lorde, and Toni Cade Bambara. Eventually, that essay led me to their archival teaching materials. I was really excited because I found in those materials concrete teaching methods, things they were doing in their own classrooms that I then started trying in my classrooms as well. I also really liked their educational philosophies, thinking about what it means for college to be free and the fact that they were teaching during this revolutionary era. What would that look like today? What would it mean? What could free college bring to our society? What does free college make possible? All of those things coming together led me to the project.”In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with Danica Savonick about her marvelous book entitled Open Admissions: The Poetics and Pedagogy of Toni Cade Bambara, June Jordan, Audre Lorde, and Adrienne Rich in the Era of Free College. This is a riveting and deeply inspiring story of how each of these luminaries in the fields of literature and feminism found their way into the City University of New York in the 1960s, when community activists had forced open what was called the Harvard for the proletariat to admit new classes of Black, brown, and other people of color. Savonick shows through copious archival research how Bambara, Jordan, Lorde, and Rich each came to find radical teaching methods in collaboration with these new students, and how their experiences with this new pedagogy affected their creative and other writing in profound and lasting ways. This is a critical history we can and must learn from today, when federal and state governments have added to the damage and violence done by the neoliberal university. We find exactly the tools and models we need to create spaces for education for liberation both within, but also outside, the Academy.
Danica Savonick is an Associate Professor of English at SUNY Cortland. Her current project focuses on the radical writers and artists who taught at the experimental Livingston College (part of Rutgers University) in the 1970s. Her research has appeared in MELUS, American Literature, Modern Fiction Studies, Radical Teacher, Keywords for Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities, Public Books, and The Chronicle of Higher Ed.
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“I want people to understand South Asian art as broader than a single gallery or a single artist, but as a larger cultural movement. I want people to encounter art in all parts of their lives, and I’m constantly thinking about new ways to achieve that. I was very aware, as someone launching a South Asia-focused gallery, that this was the cultural dynamic that undergirded the way that most people in the West were thinking about art from the region. Taking that on directly and inviting artists to work with that theme was a really important ground for setting the ethos of the gallery and the types of critical questions we wanted to tackle with the work we were doing.”
My guest today is Rajiv Menon, a gallerist and curator who is carving out a distinctive space in the contemporary art world. Based in Los Angeles, Rajiv Menon holds a PhD from NYU, where he studied global media and visual culture, and he's also a passionate collector of South Asian art. He founded Rajiv Menon Contemporary with a clear mission: to bring artists from South Asia and its diaspora to a wider audience, and to cultivate a new generation of art collectors within these communities. His exhibitions have tackled fascinating themes, from the exuberant and sometimes overwhelming world of the Indian wedding through Viraj Khanna's intricate textile art in Why Did I Say Yes?, to a deep dive into the creativity of Kerala in Three Steps of Land, and a compelling look at how artists transform nostalgia into an aesthetic movement in The Past Is a Country. His work resonates far beyond the gallery walls, aiming to shift our collective culture. He's also recently been honored by the City of Los Angeles for his contributions to the arts. @rajivmenoncontemporary
Episode Website
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Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
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.
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
“I work in between archeology and anthropology in this field called either historical archeology or contemporary archeology. At the heart of that is the relationship between objects and humans. How do we write about the past or the present in terms of listening to human voices or evidence from things where maybe human voices have been erased or haven't left as much of a mark on the written records as others? Wrapped up with that, though, is always the risk of dehumanization, of the treatment of human lives as if the boundary between a subject and an object is one that is permeable, not in a sort of positive way, but in a more sinister way. There is a long history of people being treated as things.”
In this episode of Speaking Out of Place podcast Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with Dan Hicks about the present’s responsibility to itself. How do not only monuments, but also the very idea of monumentality, serve to mystify and perpetuate beliefs that maintain social orders that deserve to be strenuously re-evaluated? Archaeologist and anthropologist Dan Hicks traces the development of a particularly virulent strain of monument-worship, that which emerges out of what he calls “militarist realism,” which harnesses technologies of war, particularly colonial, white supremacist war, to build institutions, disciplines, museums in its image in order to permanently maintain a border between those deemed human subjects and the object-worlds of the non-human—which includes racial others. Rather than grant the past immunity, Hicks argues that we need to decide for ourselves what we chose to remember, and what deserves to be forgotten.
Dan Hicks is Professor of Contemporary Archaeology at Oxford University, Curator at the Pitt Rivers Museum, and a Fellow of St Cross College. He has written widely on art, heritage, museums, colonialism, and the material culture of the recent past and the near-present. Dan's books include The Brutish Museums: the Benin Bronzes, colonial violence and cultural restitution (Pluto 2020) and Every Monument Will Fall: a story of remembering and forgetting (Hutchinson Heinemann 2025). Bluesky/Insta: @ProfDanHicks
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"For the last two decades, I've made over 20 films about the environment, starting with oil and carbon emissions. Those films, Kiss the Ground and now Common Ground, talk about how we can stabilize the climate, reverse climate change, grow nutrient-dense food, and help farmers make a profit through biodiversity and regenerative practices and principles.
There's incredible intelligence in nature; it knows how to be resilient. We thought we could do it better, and in trying to mechanize and industrialize the entire system, we created a linear system that doesn’t make sense. We’re growing animals to produce food that we can’t eat so that we can ship it halfway around the world. It’s a system that doesn’t work.
The way to heal, regenerate, stabilize the climate, and reverse climate change is literally one inch and one acre at a time—through communities waking up to the power of soil and biodiversity to sequester carbon for all of us. The oceans can’t handle any more carbon absorption; they’re acidifying and heating up. We need to take the carbon we’ve emitted and put it back into the soil. When we do that, we create thriving ecosystems, biodiversity, and water infiltration, which massively reduces the risks from flooding.
It helps reverse desertification and staves off droughts by retaining water like a sponge. Resiliency comes from having genetic diversity rather than just one of everything."
Today, we explore the work of a filmmaker whose lens is consistently turned toward the most critical issues facing our planet. Rebecca Tickell, in collaboration with her husband Josh Tickell, has created a powerful cinematic catalog of films that are not merely observations, but catalysts for change. They've taken on the complexities of our energy systems, the deep-seated problems within our food supply, and now, with her latest work, Bee: Wild, they explore the essential, fragile, and often unseen world of pollinators.
Their film Kiss the Ground sparked a global conversation about regenerative agriculture, leading to tangible shifts in policy and public understanding. Common Ground continued this exploration, unraveling the intricate web of our food systems. Now, with Bee: Wild, narrated by Ellie Goulding and executive produced by Angelina Jolie,Rebecca brings her characteristic blend of journalistic rigor, personal narrative, and solutions-driven storytelling to the urgent plight of bees, asking us to reconsider our relationship with the natural world.
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
“I think the community came together more when we started getting those notices about people being swept up by these supposedly ICE agents who are just covered up. So that was the thing that made us come out there and start defending everyone who doesn't want to come out to defend themselves.”
In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liuspeaks with Daniela Navin and Jeanette de La Riva, two members of Grupo Auto Defensa a community organization based in Pasadena CA, which has come about in response to attacks by ICE, which have violently disrupted everyday life and led people to form new relations of mutual support and care. We hear their stories of how Trump lieutenant Stephen Miller's demand that ICE arrest 3000 people every day has put unbelievable constraints on hard-working people's lives. Nevertheless, we also hear how they have invented tactics to challenge these repressive measures. We are joined by journalist-activist Maxmillian Alvarez of The Real News Network who grew up in Los Angeles and comments on the broad networks of resistance cropping up organically to fight fascism.
Maximillian Alvarez is an award-winning journalist and the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Executive Director of The Real News Network (TRNN) in Baltimore. He is the founder and host of Working People, "a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today," and the author of "The Work of Living," a collection of interviews with US workers recorded during Year One of the COVID-19 pandemic. Prior to joining TRNN, he was an Associate Editor at the Chronicle Review. His writing has been featured in outlets like The Nation, In These Times, Poynter, Boston Review, The Baffler, Current Affairs, and The Chronicle of Higher Education; as an analyst and commentator, he has appeared on programs like PBS NewsHour, Breaking Points, Democracy Now!, The New Republic, NPR’s 1A, The Hill’s Rising, and more.
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“I didn't really appreciate bees until I became a farmer, and then I started to understand how essential bees are for our food. They pollinate 70% of our food, and that feeds 90% of the world. There's a whole world of insects that creates the color in our food; it's what creates the flavor in our food. It's part of our biodiversity, and it's essential for human life on Earth to protect and understand how to protect these bees and pollinators.
If you look at the COP, the Conference of the Parties, they haven't even been talking about soil regeneration at all, and they've been holding these conferences in oil-rich countries, then talking about reducing carbon emissions. Soil has the power, through photosynthesis, to draw down carbon from the atmosphere. It's called biosequestration. It takes that carbon down into the roots, and then it turns it into healthy humus. That is the food for life in the soil. It needs that carbon. And so that is the purpose of plants. They breathe in the carbon and breathe out the oxygen. As we've been watching carbon levels increase in our atmosphere, we've been watching the ocean try to absorb as much of it as it can and become acidified as a result, leading to great losses to our ocean habitat and coral reefs.
We've forgotten that simple tool of the solution that's right beneath our feet called soil health and soil regeneration. Not only does it draw down carbon, it's the only place we can put that teraton of carbon that we've emitted. There's only one place for it, and it's in the soil. So why isn't that the main conversation of every climate conversation? You not only bring the soil back to life, but you are creating nutrient-dense food. You're giving plants the ability to work in symbiosis with the soil that it co-evolved with. That then allows for it not only to be resilient and have a strong immune system, but also to absorb nutrition, which, in turn, we eat and absorb that nutrition. Like I said, we're a reflection of the soil.”
Today, we explore the work of a filmmaker whose lens is consistently turned toward the most critical issues facing our planet. Rebecca Tickell, in collaboration with her husband Josh Tickell, has created a powerful cinematic catalog of films that are not merely observations, but catalysts for change. They've taken on the complexities of our energy systems, the deep-seated problems within our food supply, and now, with her latest work, Bee: Wild, they explore the essential, fragile, and often unseen world of pollinators.
Their film Kiss the Ground sparked a global conversation about regenerative agriculture, leading to tangible shifts in policy and public understanding. Common Ground continued this exploration, unraveling the intricate web of our food systems. Now, with Bee: Wild, narrated by Ellie Goulding and executive produced by Angelina Jolie,Rebecca brings her characteristic blend of journalistic rigor, personal narrative, and solutions-driven storytelling to the urgent plight of bees, asking us to reconsider our relationship with the natural world.
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
“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.
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
“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.
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
“We as humans can destroy things in a couple of years that have taken thousands or even millions of years to form. So in the snap of a finger, we can destroy so much work. That's an observation I’ve seen in all biomes, and it's pretty scary. On the other hand, nature regenerates pretty fast. It heals itself. If humans help this healing process, it can go even faster.”
Louis De Jaeger has spent years traveling the world, witnessing firsthand the decline of nature. He is an eco-entrepreneur, a landscape designer, co-founder of the Food Forest Institute, and a leading voice in the regenerative agriculture and food forest movements. He’s founded numerous ventures aimed at creating positive impact and has created over 100 food forest sites around the world. His new book, SOS: Save Our Soils: How regenerative food and farming will save your health and the planet, asks us to consider every meal as a vote for either destruction or regeneration.
Episode Website
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“The Earth started as one big rock, and soil did not exist. Without soil, you can't really grow trees or any crops whatsoever. We are depleting soils super fast, and it is predicted that in less than 25 years, 90% of our soils will be degraded. We as humans, we can destroy things in a couple of years that have taken thousands or even millions of years to form. On the other hand, nature regenerates pretty fast. It heals itself. If humans help this healing process, it can go even faster.”
Louis De Jaeger has spent years traveling the world, witnessing firsthand the decline of nature. He is an eco-entrepreneur, a landscape designer, co-founder of the Food Forest Institute, and a leading voice in the regenerative agriculture and food forest movements. He’s founded numerous ventures aimed at creating positive impact and has created over 100 food forest sites around the world. His new book, SOS: Save Our Soils: How regenerative food and farming will save your health and the planet, asks us to consider every meal as a vote for either destruction or regeneration.
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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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“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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“I guess the book was about giving hope because I realized how much we could do together. I believe that ordinary people are the ones bringing changes here. I believe that the communities gathering together – for example, I am seeing that in this country around the protection of rivers – are the ones that will mark the change. It's not going to come from above; it's going to come from below, up. We all have a role. Working for the protection of what we love the most will make you happy. So get into a positive mindset. Learn all you can. Be part of things that make you feel positive. You will see how you will find your way, and there is no place for feeling disempowered. This is the moment where you should feel very powerful because it is us who are going to make the future of this Earth.”
Monica Feria-Tinta is a British-Peruvian barrister specialising in Public International Law. She has been called one of ‘the most daring, innovative and creative lawyers’ in the United Kingdom, and was shortlisted for “Barrister of the Year” at The Lawyers’ Awards 2020 and at Chambers and Partners UK Bar Awards 2023 for her work in addressing climate change and environmental degradation. In 2020, she acted before the Constitutional Court of Ecuador in Los Cedros case, the first ‘Rights of Nature’ case in the world. In September 2022 her work as Counsel secured a win in the Torres Strait Islanders case, a landmark moment in which the UN Human Rights Committee found a Sovereign state responsible, for the first time in history, for lack of action in addressing climate change. She is the author of A Barrister for the Earth: Ten Cases of Hope for Our Future.
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“From my perspective, it just seemed like a way to terrorize a neighborhood and intimidate the people living there, and intimidate the city in a way that they've been trying to accomplish for the last six weeks, and it wasn't fun. So were there orders? There were no orders to disperse.”
Last week, over 100 agents from nine federal agencies stormed a bucolic public park in Los Angeles, claiming it was a hotbed of terrorism and lawlessness. In fact, heavily armed soldiers in camouflage found a group of young children attending a summer camp. This was a show of force meant to intimidate, shock, and awe, but just like Trump’s military parade in Washington, DC, it ended up pathetic and farcical. In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liuspeaks with longtime journalist Mel Buer, who was at MacArthur Park and witnessed this sad spectacle. We talk about what she saw and how is simply part of a recent history of attacks on mostly brown people. We get Mel’s thoughts on both the broader national context, and how local people and longstanding immigrant’s rights groups are resisting and fighting back.
Mel Buer is an LA-based independent journalist covering labor, social movements, and community organizing.
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“So I think that part of colonialism for Indigenous peoples has been this idea that Indigenous peoples aren't thinking peoples and that we don't have thought on a kind of systemic level. One of the things that I was interested in doing is intervening in that because I think Indigenous people have a lot of beautiful, very intellectual, theoretical contributions to make to the world. A lot of our theory is encoded in story, but a lot of our theory is also encoded in land-based practice. You can't learn about it from reading books or from going to lectures. You have to really be out on the land with elders for long periods of time.”
In this episode on Speaking Out of Place podcast Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with Leanne Betasamosake Simpson about her new book,Theory of Water. Theory of Water is a rich, complex, and deeply personal reflection on world-making and life-giving processes best captured in the fluidity of water as it circulates through all our bodies and the planet. It is a largely collective project that enlists our listening and love, and helps us face the violence of all forms of dominance, enclosure, and containment. We are especially gifted to have the chance to listen to one of the songs from Leanne’s album, Theory of Ice, and have her comment on it and the relation of her music to her writing. This is a particularly special episode of Speaking Out of Place.
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is a Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, writer, and musician. She is the author of eight previous books, including the novel Noopiming: A Cure for White Ladies, which was short listed for the Dublin Literary prize and the Governor General’s award for fiction. Leanne’s album, Theory of Ice, released by You’ve Changed Records in 2021 and short-listed for the Polaris Prize and she was the 2021 winner of the Prism Prize’s Willie Dunn Award. Her latest project Theory of Water was published by Knopf Canada/Haymarket books in the spring of 2025. Leanne is a member of Alderville First Nation.
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“I think one must frame what happened in Iran recently in the context of what is happening in the larger Middle East, which is that Israel and the United States principally are orchestrating a kind of regional shift in their power that can only be seen in light of what happened, and it continues to happen in Gaza and the wider Palestinian Territories, which is that Israel is, by virtue of signaling an aggressive move towards Iran, suggesting that it will continue unabated to exercise its will throughout the region, and that it also is interested in destroying Iranian support for Palestinian rights in the region.”
Today on Speaking Out of Place with David Palumbo-Liu, we have a special episode on Israeli attacks on Iran that resulted in 12 days of bombings and culminated with the US dropping bunker bombs on Iran's nuclear facilities. Scholars and activists Persis Karim and Manijeh Moradian discuss both the Iranian national issues involved as well as the regional context, connecting this war with the genocide in Gaza and Israel’s extensive wars elsewhere. At stake is both Iranian sovereignty and the calls for so-called “regime change.” We question the use of that term, delve into how the struggle for liberation in Iran rejects both the repressive Islamic state and the US/Israeli war machine. Our discussion draws the frightening parallels between Iran’s stifling of dissent and imprisonment of political enemies and others with our own government’s. Finally, we recall the Woman, Life, Freedom movement and build hope for international solidarity with groups working for liberation in Iran, Palestine, and elsewhere, and insist liberation will never be achieved by dropping bombs.
Persis Karim is the director emeritus of the Center for Iranian Diaspora Studies and a professor in the Department of Humanities and Comparative and World Literature at San Francisco State University. Since 1999, she has been actively working to expand the field of Iranian Diaspora Studies, beginning with the first anthology of Iranian writing she co-edited, A World Between: Poems, Short Stories and Essays by Iranian-Americans. She is the editor of two other anthologies of Iranian diaspora literature: Let Me Tell You Where I’ve Been: New Writing by Women of the Iranian Diaspora, and Tremors: New Fiction by Iranian-American Writers.
Manijeh Moradian is assistant professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Barnard College, Columbia University. Her book, This Flame Within: Iranian Revolutionaries in the United States, was published by Duke University Press in December 2022.
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“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. Those processes of being an other for me in the United States were obviously very fundamental to shaping who I am as a person and as a writer. It was very difficult to undergo, but to become a writer who could talk about those issues was also a lot of fun. Writing The Sympathizer was a lot of fun, and I hope that the novel was enjoyable and humorous to read as well, despite its very serious politics. When I wrote The Committed, I also had a lot of fun as an outsider to France. In writing the novel itself, The Committed, there was a lot of humor, satire, and these kinds of tools to confront the tragedy of othering. This is very important to me as literary and political devices. I think I could do that in both The Sympathizer and The Committed because I had a lot of distance from the time periods that those novels described. My challenge right now is to try to find my sense of humor in describing what the United States is undergoing and doing to other countries, its own immigrants, and its own people of color, and minorities in the present. That's proving to be a little more challenging at this moment.
The whole power of the state is geared towards dividing and conquering, whether it's domestically within a state or whether it's exercising power overseas, including things like colonization, which is all about dividing and conquering. In the face of that, to engage in expansive solidarity and capacious grief is to work against the mechanisms of colonialism, militarism, and the state. It's enormously difficult, which is why it has to be rebuilt from every generation, as every generation is subject to the power of the state and its ideologies and mythologies. I think the lessons that I've extracted from this book, To Save and to Destroy, where I talk about expansive solidarity and capacious grief, are lessons that have been learned by other people before me, but lessons that I had to learn for myself and to put into my own words how I came to those lessons.”
Viet Thanh Nguyenhas 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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In this episode on Speaking Out of Place podcast Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with M. E. O’Brien and Eman Abdelhadi about their dazzling and challenging book, Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052 to 2072. They imagine a world haunted by genocide, ecocide, disease, fascism, and viral capitalism, but rather than writing a dystopian novel, O’Brien and Abdelhadi create a complex mosaic of oral histories, in which they each play the part of interviewer. The result is a story that far exceeds New York, and the twenty years noted in the title. The histories cover generations across the globe, and reach into the deep sources of trauma, and the kinds of mutual care we will need to not only survive, but also to thrive in these frightening times.
Eman Abdelhadiis an academic, organizer and writer based in Chicago. She is co-author of "Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052-2072," a revolutionary sci-fi novel published in 2022 with Common Notions Press. She is an assistant professor and sociologist at the University of Chicago, where she researches American Muslim communities, and she is a columnist at In These Times magazine where she writes on the Palestine Liberation movement and American politics. Eman organizes with the Salon Kawakib collective, Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine at the University of Chicago, Scholars for Social Justice, and other formations.
M. E. O’Brien writes and speaks on gender freedom and capitalism. She has written two books: Family Abolition: Capitalism and the Communizing of Care (Pluto Press, 2023) and a co-authored speculative novel, Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052–2072 (Common Notions, 2022). She is a member of the editorial collective of Pinko, a magazine of gay communism. Her work on family abolition has been translated into Chinese, German, Greek, French, Spanish, Catalan, and Turkish. Previously, she coordinated the New York City Trans Oral History Project, and worked in HIV and AIDS activism and services. She completed a PhD at NYU, where she wrote on how capitalism shaped New York City LGBTQ social movements. She currently works a psychotherapist in private practice and is a psychoanalyst in formation.
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“I like young people to know that they're extremely powerful. So I'm one person, but I think I always had this positive idea about my role. You cannot let anyone tell you what limitations are there, so you shouldn't feel limited by anyone telling you this is as far as you can go, or this is what you can do. I think only you know about that, and I think you start step by step. When I did the first case, I learned some things. Then was the next case. When the time to learn comes, learn with all your might because that's gold. It's a moment in life when you have the time to actually do that. Get informed. People who are into Googling everything should open up their searches, go out there, and learn in a different way. Don't hold back.
I guess the book was about giving hope because I realized how much we could do together. If a person can manage to argue and make a major impact in the way we are understanding treaties in human rights or other things, imagine what could be if every single person is in their own place in some field, with that alertness and synced in the same way. I believe that ordinary people are the ones bringing changes here. I believe that the communities gathering together – for example, I am seeing that in this country around the protection of rivers – are the ones that will mark the change. It's not going to come from above; it's going to come from below, up. And that means all of us. We all have a role.
To the young people, I would say you have the right to joy, and you have the right to be happy. Working for the protection of what we love the most will make you happy. So get into a positive mindset. Learn all you can. Be part of things that make you feel positive. You will see how you will find your way, and there is no place for feeling disempowered. This is the moment where you should feel very powerful because it is us who are going to make the future of this Earth.”
Monica Feria-Tinta is a British-Peruvian barrister specialising in Public International Law. She has been called one of ‘the most daring, innovative and creative lawyers’ in the United Kingdom, and was shortlisted for “Barrister of the Year” at The Lawyers’ Awards 2020 and at Chambers and Partners UK Bar Awards 2023 for her work in addressing climate change and environmental degradation. In 2020, she acted before the Constitutional Court of Ecuador in Los Cedros case, the first ‘Rights of Nature’ case in the world. In September 2022 her work as Counsel secured a win in the Torres Strait Islanders case, a landmark moment in which the UN Human Rights Committee found a Sovereign state responsible, for the first time in history, for lack of action in addressing climate change. She is the author of A Barrister for the Earth: Ten Cases of Hope for Our Future.
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In this episode on Speaking Out of Place podcast Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with Aziz Rana about his brilliant and bracing article recently published in New Left Review, “Constitutional Collapse.” They talk about how the Trump administration and its enablers are shredding a liberal “compact” which was established in in the 1930s through the Sixties and extending an imperial presidency abroad to an authoritarian one domestically. They discuss the current constitutional crisis, but also the need for, and manifestations of, a politics which is at once a genuine membership organization and social community. As Aziz Rana powerfully argues, “its aim should be to transform the world people organically experience.” This is exactly the analysis and message so many of us need in these dark times.
“In the US, we have this idea that exists as a kind of popular cultural sense. The country has basically had the same constitution—a document ratified in the 1780s, and it has really been in effect since then. However, one of the things that's distinctive about the US Constitution is that it is perhaps the hardest in the world to formally amend. It is incredibly difficult to change the actual terms of the text, even during times when we've had pretty profound changes to the language. Here, we can think about the Reconstruction period with the passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments.”
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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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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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“I'm hopeful for revolution. I'm optimistic. I want radical change. I think there's such a disinterest in education in America that it is sickening. I think we are repeating history. We are going through a cycle of fascism and greed, and I think we're going to see a lot of states collapse. As a result of that, I think people are going to be forced back to their primal needs and concerns, but I think they're going to be forced to think about what makes us human. How do we become more human? Because we've lost that. We've given it up to technology. How can we figure out what makes us a really powerful species again?”
Irvin Weathersby Jr. is a Brooklyn-based writer and professor from New Orleans. He is the author of In Open Contempt: Confronting White Supremacy in Art and Public Space. His writing has been featured in LitHub, Guernica, Esquire, The Atlantic, EBONY, and elsewhere. He has earned an MFA from The New School, an MA from Morgan State University, and a BA from Morehouse College. He has received fellowships and awards from the Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation, the Research Foundation of CUNY, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Mellon Foundation.
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“One of the biggest symbols of America is Mount Rushmore. This monument, right? But I think most people fail to realize where it's located and why it's located there. Even more importantly, who did it? It's on a sacred Native American mountain, a place that was central to their creation stories. But then you think about who did it, and it was a Klansman. The guy who sculpted Mount Rushmore was a Klansman. People were like, "Wait, really?" Like, how is that a thing? But it seeps into our understanding and our embrace of white supremacy. This whole notion of us using Mount Rushmore as a metric of excellence is really sad. We are honoring slave owners and people who viciously killed natives, and those who pillage other lands in the name of capitalism. That's what America is, I guess.
I think there's such a disinterest in education in America that it is sickening. We can't even agree on facts. It's up to states' rights to decide. Really? States can say that this is true in one state, but it's not true in another? Although these states are united, it's very bizarre. I'm hopeful for revolution. I'm optimistic. I want radical change. I think we are repeating history. We are going through a cycle of fascism and greed, and I think we're going to see a lot of states collapse. As a result of that, I think people are going to be forced back to their primal needs and concerns, but I think they're going to be forced to think about what makes us human. How do we become more human? Because we've lost that. We've given it up to technology. How can we figure out what makes us a really powerful species again?”
Irvin Weathersby Jr. is a Brooklyn-based writer and professor from New Orleans. He is the author of In Open Contempt: Confronting White Supremacy in Art and Public Space. His writing has been featured in LitHub, Guernica, Esquire, The Atlantic, EBONY, and elsewhere. He has earned an MFA from The New School, an MA from Morgan State University, and a BA from Morehouse College. He has received fellowships and awards from the Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation, the Research Foundation of CUNY, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Mellon Foundation.
Episode Website
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“The more that you have that evolving relationship with the natural world, that's dynamic and alive to the moment you're in, and that's not afraid of the feelings of fear, hopelessness, grief, or pain that attend paying close attention to the world as it is evolving around you, the better we are able to be flexible in the relationship we need to form with fixing what we can and holding onto what we have. The more we rely on that black-and-white thinking of either being in grief or being out of it, where we have a loss and we have to move on, or we don't and we're fine. The more that happens, the more difficult it is to flow into what we really need in terms of emotional flexibility to get through the staggering changes that are starting to happen regarding climate issues.”
Eiren Caffall is a writer and musician. Her work on loss, oceans, and extinction has appeared in Orion,Guernica, The LA Review of Books, Al Jazeera, and the anthology Elementals. She has received a 2023 Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant, a Social Justice News Nexus fellowship, and a 3Arts Make a Wave grant. Her work includes her memoir The Mourner’s Bestiary, the short film Becoming Oceanthatshe made with Scott Foley, and her novel All the Water in the World.
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“We are in a complex and delicately balanced relationship of connection to everything else on the planet. We begin to recognize, write into, and speak into the complex interdependence and interconnection of every gesture that we make on the planet. Most storytelling that I really respond to, whether it's from my own culture or from previous civilizations, acknowledges that we are in this complex relationship where every gesture we make is connected to the lives of every other creature on the planet. The more narratives we allow to be complex in that way and interconnected, the more we begin to change our brain chemistry around how we protect ourselves and everything that is in relation to us. The more that you have that evolving relationship with it, that's dynamic and alive to the moment you're in, and that's not afraid of the feelings of fear, hopelessness, grief, or pain that attend paying close attention to the world as it is evolving around you, the better we are able to be flexible in the relationship we need to form with fixing what we can and holding onto what we have.”
Eiren Caffall is a writer and musician. Her work on loss, oceans, and extinction has appeared in Orion, Guernica, The LA Review of Books, Al Jazeera, and the anthology Elementals. She has received a 2023 Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant, a Social Justice News Nexus fellowship, and a 3Arts Make a Wave grant. Her work includes her memoir The Mourner’s Bestiary, the short film Becoming Oceanthatshe made with Scott Foley, and her novel All the Water in the World.
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“I think that it's almost like in some ways the specificity of Palestine also becomes kind of a universality, where you can stay in this specific example because there is something about this experience that makes it specific, right? It's happening because it's been sanctioned to happen in this way. Right? Because you can't slaughter tens of thousands of people without consequence unless you have made those people less than people. Unless there has been a very effective project of dehumanization that's been carried out against the people that are being killed.
I think, in some ways, this memoir was a project of sifting through and excavating the darkest hours, both for me and for the lineage and ancestry that I came from. I think the darkest hours were experienced by so many people I come from who have had to leave places they didn't want to leave. I live in exile and have been forced to leave behind houses, land, cities, and people. Oftentimes, this has happened more than once in a lifetime, so they have carried that trauma. Of course, it plays out intergenerationally in many different ways.”
Hala Alyan is the author of the memoir I'll Tell You When I'm Home, the novels Salt Houses—winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Arab American Book Award, and a finalist for the Chautauqua Prize—and The Arsonists’ City, a finalist for the Aspen Words Literary Prize. She is also the author of five highly acclaimed collections of poetry, including The Twenty-Ninth Year and The Moon That Turns You Back. Her work has been published by The New Yorker, The Academy of American Poets, The New York Times, The Guardian, and Guernica. She lives in Brooklyn with her family, where she works as a clinical psychologist and professor at New York University.
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
“I want to live a life of consequence, and I want to live a life that has stakes in it because that means that things matter to you. I think, in some ways, this memoir was a project of sifting through and excavating the darkest hours, both for me and for the lineage and ancestry that I came from. I think the darkest hours were experienced by so many people I come from who have had to leave places they didn't want to leave. I live in exile and have been forced to leave behind houses, land, cities, and people. Oftentimes, this has happened more than once in a lifetime, so they have carried that trauma. Of course, it plays out intergenerationally in many different ways.
I think it's a time of fear. I don't think I'm alone in that. I am scared for people that I love. I am scared for people who are quite vulnerable. I worry for my students. I am concerned for the places that I feel are engaging in complicity because that will be such a heavy legacy to endure later on, how people, places, and entities comport themselves in moments like this. They will be remembered. There will always be people who remember it.”
Hala Alyan is the author of the memoir I'll Tell You When I'm Home, the novels Salt Houses—winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Arab American Book Award, and a finalist for the Chautauqua Prize—and The Arsonists’ City, a finalist for the Aspen Words Literary Prize. She is also the author of five highly acclaimed collections of poetry, including The Twenty-Ninth Year and The Moon That Turns You Back. Her work has been published by The New Yorker, The Academy of American Poets, The New York Times, The Guardian, and Guernica. She lives in Brooklyn with her family, where she works as a clinical psychologist and professor at New York University.
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
How do our personal relationships affect political movements and activism? What can we learn from Native American tradition to restore ecological balance? How can transforming capitalism help address global inequality and the environmental crisis?
DEAN SPADE (Author of Love in a Fcked-Up World: How to Build Relationships, Hook Up, and Raise Hell Together)* shares his reflections on the importance of understanding common relational patterns within activist movements. He emphasizes the need for solidarity and collective action in response to global crises like the conflict in Gaza and ecological disasters. Spade argues for resilience and mutual support within activist communities as essential for sustained efforts toward systemic change.
TIOKASIN GHOSTHORSE (Founder · Host · Exec. Director of First Voices Radio · Founder of Akantu Intelligence · Master Musician of the Ancient Lakota Flute) discusses the often-overlooked Native history and the Western historical domination that has shaped contemporary educational perspectives. He highlights the need for reconnection to Native perspectives and calls for an acknowledgment of the spiritual and cultural richness lost through historical and ongoing colonial practices.
ALEXI HAWLEY (Showrunner · Writer · Creator of The Rookie · The Recruit) explores the complexities and challenges of depicting policing on television. Reflecting on the creation of his show "The Rookie" in the aftermath of Philando Castile's murder, Hawley discusses the show's evolution in addressing injustice in the justice system and the effort to portray an aspirational version of policing that acknowledges real-world issues.
JERICHO BROWN (Pulitzer Prize-winning Poet · Director of Creative Writing Program · Emory University · Editor of How We Do It: Black Writers on Craft, Practice, and Skill) delves into the complexities of being a Black writer, emphasizing the importance of embracing one's identity rather than trying to transcend it. He discusses how blackness enriches his craft and argues that the power of writing comes from its capacity to create new ways of seeing and understanding the world.
PAUL SHRIVASTAVA (Co-President of THE CLUB OF ROME) analyzes the need for collaborative efforts across various sectors—businesses, governments, and individuals—to address global inequalities and environmental challenges. He underscores the imperative to reshape capitalist principles to reduce extreme inequalities and to foster a sustainable and equitable global system.
To hear more from each guest, listen to their full interviews.
Episode Website
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Instagram: @creativeprocesspodcast
“I think income inequality really greatly contributes to the rage that people might feel, even as some Americans won't. What don't recognize that a more communal society might benefit them. What they see instead is, why don't I have what that person has? Something's getting in my way. And it's not a lack of, of community, it's: somebody else is keeping me down, you know? And that's, I think that's a theme that emerges in The God of the Woods.
I think there's a certain thread in American history of, like, individualism at all costs. The Van Laars named their house Self-reliance, which is a testament to the idea that they, I think, falsely believe themselves to have, have created their own power, their own capital, their own wealth, and ignore the fact that it's really the labor of the working class community around them- that, and of the people of Albany who've invested their money in the Van Laars Bank - that that really contributed to the acquisition of this enormous wealth that they now have and this enormous power that they now have.”
Liz Moore is the author of the New York Times bestselling novel Long Bright River, which was one of Barack Obama’s favorite books of the year, and has been made into a Peacock series starring Amanda Seyfried. Set against the opioid crisis and a string of mysterious murders, it’s a love story between two very different sisters and their path to recovery. Moore is winner of the 2014-2015 Rome Prize in Literature. Her other books include The God of the Woods, Heft, and The Unseen World.
Episode Website
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Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
“ I've lived in Philadelphia for about 16 years. The book itself was inspired by my time spent in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia interviewing a lot of the people that I met there, both longtime residents of the neighborhood and also people who were transient, a lot of people struggling with addiction and a lot of women doing sex work to fund their physical addiction to opioids. You find out about their past, their road into addiction, their aspirations, their fears. I began to lead free writing workshops at an organization named St. Francis Inn, which is a longstanding food service organization in the community. They had a women's day shelter where I taught. I was really able to connect with people within the community on a quite personal level and loved my experiences in Kensington. And I still go, I'm still quite close with a number of the community workers, people who run free healthcare clinics. All of it ultimately informed the writing of Long Bright River.”
Liz Moore is the author of the New York Times bestselling novel Long Bright River, which was one of Barack Obama’s favorite books of the year, and has been made into a Peacock series starring Amanda Seyfried. Set against the opioid crisis and a string of mysterious murders, it’s a love story between two very different sisters and their path to recovery. Moore is winner of the 2014-2015 Rome Prize in Literature. Her other books include The God of the Woods, Heft, and The Unseen World.
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
"The country spoke Irish largely before it spoke English. Grammatically, the structure of Irish is different from English. As Ireland adopted the English language, this sort of hybridization started to occur, where the English language was placed on top of Irish grammatical constructions. You get this slipperiness, this ability to move sentences, to place words in interesting places, and to use constructions that you just wouldn't find in England, for example. The thing about being an Irish writer is there isn't a reverence. There’s a sort of implicit freedom to use the language however we like. So long as you have mastery and command of the language, you can push it to the edges."
Paul Lynch is the author of five novels. His most recent novel, Prophet Song, won the 2023 Booker Prize and the Dayton Literary Peace Peace Prize for Fiction, and other prizes. Prophet Song presents a dystopian vision of Ireland and a mother’s determination to protect her family as her country slides towards totalitarianism. The Booker Prize Jury said, “It’s a remarkable accomplishment for a novelist to capture the social and political anxieties of our moment so compellingly.“ In 2024, Lynch was elected to Aosdána, the Irish academy for the arts, honoring distinguished artists. He was the chief film critic of Ireland’s Sunday Tribune newspaper. His novels have been translated into 35 languages.
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
Paul Lynch is the author of five novels. His most recent novel, Prophet Song, won the 2023 Booker Prize and the Dayton Literary Peace Peace Prize for Fiction, and other prizes. Prophet Song presents a dystopian vision of Ireland and a mother’s determination to protect her family as her country slides towards totalitarianism. The Booker Prize Jury said, “It’s a remarkable accomplishment for a novelist to capture the social and political anxieties of our moment so compellingly.“ In 2024, Lynch was elected to Aosdána, the Irish academy for the arts, honoring distinguished artists. He was the chief film critic of Ireland’s Sunday Tribune newspaper. His novels have been translated into 35 languages.
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
“We narrate the story of our lives to ourselves. We narrate it in linear fashion. And I know many writers have played with time in all sorts of amazing ways, but we're storytellers. This is what we do. And if you give the brain a story, a prepackaged story, you're giving a cheesecake. That's what it wants. That's why it loves stories. That's why our society is just built on stories. Politics is nothing but stories. Everything you do in the evenings – we sit down, we're watching Netflix – just stories. We consume them all the time. We are just machines for belief.”
Paul Lynch is the author of five novels. His most recent novel, Prophet Song, won the 2023 Booker Prize and the Dayton Literary Peace Peace Prize for Fiction, and other prizes. Prophet Song presents a dystopian vision of Ireland and a mother’s determination to protect her family as her country slides towards totalitarianism. The Booker Prize Jury said, “It’s a remarkable accomplishment for a novelist to capture the social and political anxieties of our moment so compellingly.“ In 2024, Lynch was elected to Aosdána, the Irish academy for the arts, honoring distinguished artists. He was the chief film critic of Ireland’s Sunday Tribune newspaper. His novels have been translated into 35 languages.
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
We are privileged to present the voices of individuals dedicated to effecting change and mitigating the harm inflicted upon our precious planet. These are individuals deeply committed to the core values that drive positive transformation. Thank you for tuning in to our episodes and for your ongoing dedication to stewarding our planet, not just on Earth Day but throughout the year. We can’t save the planet overnight, but by acting mindfully, we can create a better future. Let’s make Every Day, Earth Day!
Composer MAX RICHTER on Nature's Sonic Landscape
Founder of PETA INGRID NEWKIRK on the Shared Traits between Humans and Animals
JULIAN LENNON (Musician and Founder of White Feather Foundation) on Balancing Our Relationship with Mother Earth
BERTRAND PICCARD (Explorer, Aviator of 1st Round-the-World Solar-Powered Flight) discusses his adventures and how climate change will change our quality of life
CARL SAFINA (Author and environmentalist) on the Miracle of Life on Earth
NAN HAUSER (Whale Researcher, President, Center for Cetacean Research & Conservation) on How a Whale Saved her Life
U.S. Poet Laureate ADA LIMÓN on Embracing Hope Amid Environmental Uncertainty
Environmental Writer DAVID FARRIER on Evaluating Our Environmental Legacy
Grammy & Emmy Award-winning Sound Engineer CYNTHIA DANIELS on The Role of Art and Compassion in Transforming Society
Economist ODED GALOR on Education's Role in Addressing Climate Change
President of EarthDay.ORG KATHLEEN ROGERS on Advocating for Global Environmental Education
Lead Author of IPCC 6th Assessment Report JOELLE GERGIS on Learning from Historical Climate Data
Fmr. Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit Director SIR GEOFF MULGAN on Imagining a Circular Future for Society
Free Solo Climber of 200+ of the World’s Tallest Skyscrapers ALAIN ROBERT on The Consequences of Overproduction on the Planet
Director of Climate Hazards Center, UC Santa Barbara CHRIS FUNK on Adapting to a Two-Degree World
Environmental Writer DAVID FARRIER Stretching Time and Empathy for Future Generations
Author of Finding the Mother Tree DR. SUZANNE SIMARD on Trees: Advanced Communicators of the Natural World
“Most Influential Living Philosopher” PETER SINGER on the Ethical Imperative to Respect Animal Life
Fmr. Exec. Director, Greenpeace Int'l, Special Envoy for Int'l Climate Action, German Foreign Ministry JENNIFER MORGAN on the Importance of Resilience in Advocacy
To hear more from each guest, listen to their full interviews.
Episode Website
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“So, post-activism is not ‘post-activism’ in the sense of being after activism. It is not supposed to be a through line to results or resolutions or solutions.”
Dr. Bayo Akomolafe is a philosopher, psychologist, writer, public intellectual, and the founder of the Emergence Network. His work, which he names post-activism, marks an earth-wide effort to sensitize bodies towards new response-abilities and other places of power – a project framed within a material feminist/post-humanist/post-activist ethos and inspired by Yoruba indigenous cosmologies. He is the author of These Wilds Beyond Our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home.
“Post-activism is instead a noticing that the ways we care for ourselves and our causes and our worlds could actually be incarcerated. Another way to put that is to notice that care can often become carceral. I often suggest that we like to embrace things, but sometimes in the squeeze of embrace, it could quickly become asphyxiation, where we choke the air out of each other in trying to care for each other.”
Episode Website
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“I learn more than anything else from my children. My son, he's seven, he's autistic, and I call him my prophet for a reason. He teaches me to meet myself in ways that are usually very stunning. I can get information from other people; I can read a book here and there, but it's very rare to come across such an embodiment of grace, possibility, and futurity, all wrapped up in a tiny seven-year-old boy's body. My son has given me lots of gifts.”
Dr. Bayo Akomolafe is a philosopher, psychologist, writer, public intellectual, and the founder of the Emergence Network. His work, which he names post-activism, marks an earth-wide effort to sensitize bodies towards new response-abilities and other places of power – a project framed within a material feminist/post-humanist/post-activist ethos and inspired by Yoruba indigenous cosmologies. He is the author of These Wilds Beyond Our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home.
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
“When I first started writing this book, it really foregrounded the problems within our land ownership system, which treats land as a commodity. The way we talk about land and issues like racial and food justice reflects this. We tend to focus on the problems, attaching big concepts to them, such as racial justice or environmental justice. I realized that my job primarily consists of going around and talking to activists and community groups about their work. I’m interested not just in the very big problems we face as a society, economy, and political system, but also in how people are trying to think through solutions or approaches to those problems.
Audrea Lim is a Brooklyn-based freelance writer and journalist whose work focuses on land, energy, and the environment. Her writing has appeared in TheNew Yorker, Harper’s, Rolling Stone, the New York Times, the Guardian, the New Republic, and The Nation. Lim is the editor of The World We Need and the author of Free The Land: How We Can Fight Poverty and Climate Chaos. She is a visiting scholar at the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at New York University and was a 2022 Macdowell fellow.
Episode Website
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Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
@audrea_lim
The music on this episode is “Snowball” from the album Sunken Cities, performed by Audrea Lim and her band Odd Rumblings.
Why is there so much conflict over people, land, and resources? How can we rethink capitalism and land ownership to create a fairer, more equitable society?
Audrea Lim is a Brooklyn-based freelance writer and journalist whose work focuses on land, energy, and the environment. Her writing has appeared in TheNew Yorker, Harper’s, Rolling Stone, the New York Times, the Guardian, the New Republic, and The Nation. Lim is the editor of The World We Need and the author of Free The Land: How We Can Fight Poverty and Climate Chaos. She is a visiting scholar at the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at New York University and was a 2022 Macdowell fellow.
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
@audrea_lim
The music on this episode is “Snowball” from the album Sunken Cities, performed by Audrea Lim and her band Odd Rumblings.
“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.”
Episode Website
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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?”
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
In this episode on Speaking Out of Place podcast Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with activist and educator Jesse Hagopian about his new book, Teach Truth: The Struggle for Antiracist Education. They talk about the assault on public education that takes the form of criminalizing the truth itself. They note both the powerful corporate forces behind this movement and what they are afraid of, and also discuss the many instances of people fighting back to name, amplify, and mobilize the truth together.
Jesse Hagopian’s African ancestors survived the middle passage and enslavement on plantations in Mississippi and Louisiana. Jesse is a Seattle educator and author of the new book, Teach Truth: The Attack on Critical Race Theory and the Struggle for Antiracist Education. He is editor for Rethinking Schools magazine, a founding steering committee member of Black Lives Matter at School, and is the Director the Teaching for Black Lives Campaign of the Zinn Education Project. Jesse is the editor of of the book, More Than a Score: The New Uprising Against High Stakes Testing, and the co-editor of the books, Teaching Palestine, Teaching for Black Lives, Black Lives Matter at School, and Teachers Unions and Social Justice.
Jesse’s writing has appeared in The Seattle Times, The Nation, The Progressive, Truthout, and The Washington Post. You can connect with Jesse on IG (@jessehagopian), Bluesky (@jessehagopian.bsky.social) or his website, www.IAmAnEductor.com.
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How has feminism changed in light of the way we live now?
DEAN SPADE (Author of Love in a Fcked Up World: How to Build Relationships, Hook Up & Raise Hell Together*) on recognizing political conditions in personal relationships.
MARILYN MINTER (Artist, Feminist) on sexual agency, beauty & her creative process.
TEY MEADOW (Author of Trans Kids: Being Gendered in the Twenty-First Century) on the necessity of creating an inclusive environment & argues that diverse storytelling is crucial for healthy development.
ELLEN RAPOPORT (Creator, Exec. Producer of Minx) on the evolution of feminism, the divides that emerged in the 70s over pornography & sex work.
LAURA EASON (Emmy-nominated Producer, Screenwriter · Three Women, House of Cards) on the significance of representing ordinary women’s experiences.
SHARMEEN OBAID-CHINOY (Oscar & Emmy-winning Director of Diane von Furstenberg: Woman in Charge · Forthcoming Star Wars film) on the legacy of von Furstenberg.
SARA AHMED (Author, The Feminist Killjoy Handbook) reclaims the stereotypes, calling for solidarity among feminists.
INTAN PARAMADITHA (Author, The Wandering) reflects on the importance of intergenerational knowledge among women.
DIAN HANSON (Editor) on participating in the sex-positive movements of the 1960s to creating niche fetish magazines.
KATE MUETH (Neo-Political Cowgirls Founder) on the importance of finding meaning in creative work, community & storytelling in human experience.
Listen to full interviews
Episode Website
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IG:@creativeprocesspodcast
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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Photo of Elon Musk: Debbie Rowe
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported
“We've lost over 70 percent, 73 percent, I think the latest data indicates, of wildlife and mammals in the last 50 years. That’s just shocking when you get that data, but then you ask, what can I do? What can I do? I wanted to move away from any guilt or compulsion because it doesn't work to talk to people that way. After 50 years of climate being in the news, in science, and in our schools, less than a fraction of 1 percent of people in the world do anything about it on a daily basis. How could that be? This is a civilizational crisis. For less than 1 percent to be engaged and do something means that our communication is flawed. I’m not saying the people are wrong, or the science is wrong, or the facts are wrong, but the narrative as a whole is not one that truly entices people or draws them in with a shared understanding of what we face and what to do about it. “
Paul Hawken is a renowned environmentalist, entrepreneur, author, and activist committed to sustainability and transforming the business-environment relationship. He starts ecological businesses, writes about nature and commerce, and consults with heads of state and CEOs on climactic economic and ecological regeneration. He has appeared on the Today Show, Talk of the Nation, Real Time with Bill Maher, CBS This Morning, and his work has been profiled or featured in hundreds of articles, including The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Newsweek, Washington Post, Forbes, and Businessweek. He has written nine books, including six national and New York Times bestsellers. He's published in 30 languages, and his books are available in over 90 countries. He is the founder of Project Drawdown and Project Regeneration, which is creating the world's largest, most complete listing and network of solutions to the climate crisis. His latest book is Carbon: The Book of Life.
Episode Website
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Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
“We have 1.2 trillion carbon molecules in every cell. We have around 30 trillion cells, and that’s us. So carbon is really a flow that animates everything we love, enjoy, eat, and all plant life, all sea life—everything that's alive on this planet—is animated by the flow of carbon. “
Paul Hawken is a renowned environmentalist, entrepreneur, author, and activist committed to sustainability and transforming the business-environment relationship. He starts ecological businesses, writes about nature and commerce, and consults with heads of state and CEOs on climactic economic and ecological regeneration. He has appeared on the Today Show, Talk of the Nation, Real Time with Bill Maher, CBS This Morning, and his work has been profiled or featured in hundreds of articles, including The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Newsweek, Washington Post, Forbes, and Businessweek. He has written nine books, including six national and New York Times bestsellers. He's published in 30 languages, and his books are available in over 90 countries. He is the founder of Project Drawdown and Project Regeneration, which is creating the world's largest, most complete listing and network of solutions to the climate crisis. His latest book is Carbon: The Book of Life.
“We want to see the situation we're in as that, as a flow. Where are the flows coming from, and why are we interfering with them? Why are we crushing them? Why are we killing them? For sure. But also, we need to see the wonder, the awe, the astonishment of life itself and to have that sensibility as the overriding narrative of how we act in the world, how we live, and how we talk to each other. Unless we change the conversation about climate into something that's a conversation about more life—better conditions for people in terms of social justice, restoring so much of what we've lost—then we won’t get anywhere.”
Episode Website
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In this episode on Speaking Out of Place podcast Professor David Palumbo-Liut talks with Professor Adrian Daub about the recent elections in Germany, where we saw a surge in votes for the Far Right AfD party, which is now the second most powerful party in the country. They discuss the significance of this rise in popularity and the ways the elections reveal a number of shifts in German politics as the various parties stake out positions that align with not just a center-right orientation but, more dangerously, a far-right one. They speak of the parallels to the recent election of Donald Trump to the US presidency, and what it says about the entrenchment of both neoliberalism and a faux populism based on xenophobia and not serving the actual material interests of everyday people.
Adrian Daub teaches German and Comparative Literature at Stanford, where he directs the Clayman Institute for Gender Research. He is the author most recently of The Cancel Culture Panic (2024), and co-hosts the podcast In Bed With the Right.
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In this episode on the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with Evyn Le Espiritu Gandhi about two pathbreaking studies that create new ways of thinking about populations bound by complex and contradictory notions of loyalty and psychological investment. Based on meticulous archival research and oral histories amongst disparate populations in South Vietnam, Guam, and Israel-Palestine, in Archipelago of Resettlement: Vietnamese Refugee Settlers and Decolonization across Guam and Israel-Palestine Gandhi is able to probe deeply into fascinating personal stories of refugees that have moved between these spaces, disclosing complex and often contradictory notions of belonging and loyalty. They also talk about her current book project, which tackles the idea of southern regions such as South Korea, South Vietnam, and the American South, as each mourning lost images of the nation.
Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi is an associate professor of Asian American Studies at UCLA (Tovaangar). She is the author of Archipelago of Resettlement: Vietnamese Refugee Settlers and Decolonization across Guam and Israel-Palestine (University of California Press, 2022) and co-editor with Vinh Nguyen of The Routledge Handbook of Refugee Narratives (Routledge, 2023). She is the lead curator of a public history exhibit, “Remembering Saigon: Journeys through and from Guam,” which opened this month at UC Irvine’s Southeast Asian Archive. She is currently working on a second book project which revisits Gramsci’s “southern question” by constellating the southern spaces of South Korea, South Vietnam, and the US South.
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In this episode on Speaking Out of Place podcast Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with Omar El Akkad about his new book, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This. The title of the book comes from a tweet he posted three weeks after the bombardment of Gaza began. Since then, the tweet has been viewed more than 10 million times. Horrified at what has transpired since that moment, Omar El Akkad wrote this full-throated indictment of the “principal concern” of the modern American liberal. It is “not what one does or believes or supports or opposes, but what one is seen to be.” Moving from the scale of the individual to that of entire industries and political parties, they talk about the terrible consequences of this attitude with regard to Palestine, and beyond.
Omar El Akkad is an author and journalist. He was born in Egypt, grew up in Qatar, moved to Canada as a teenager, and now lives in the United States. He is a two-time winner of both the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award and the Oregon Book Award for fiction. His books have been translated into thirteen languages. His debut novel, American War, was named by the BBC as one of one hundred novels that shaped our world.
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In this episode on the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liutalks with Tao Leigh Goffe about her new, magisterial Dark Laboratory: On Columbus, the Caribbean, and the Origins of the Climate Crisis. Spanning many fields and disciplines in the natural sciences, social sciences, the humanities, and the arts, Professor Goffe weaves together a historically rich and geographically complex picture of how capitalism and racism undergird the climate crisis in ways made invisible or benign via the work of the west’s “dark laboratory.” Writing back through accounts of indigenous bird watching and Black provisional grounds, we talk about things as seemingly different as the massive guano industry built on Chinese and Indian labor in the 19th century to Malcolm X’s boyhood vegetable garden in Michigan. We talk in particular about one of the key passages of Dark Laboratory, where Tao writes:
“Still, we manage to create a poetics out of that which wishes to destroy us and the planet. How else will we be able to live in ‘the after’? We must reassess what a problem is. Living is not a problem, as Audrey Lorde reminds us. I would add that dying is not a problem either. Decomposing is essential to the natural order and cycle of life. Living at the expense of others is a problem.”
Tao Leigh Goffe is a writer, theorist, and interdisciplinary artist who grew up between the UK and New York City. For the past fifteen years she has specialized in colonial histories of race, geology, climate, and media technologies. Dr. Goffe lives and works in Manhattan where she is an Associate Professor at CUNY in Black Studies. She teaches classes on literary theory and cultural history. Dr. Goffe’s book on how the climate crisis is a racial crisis is called DARK LABORATORY (Doubleday and Hamish Hamilton (Penguin UK, 2025). Her second book BLACK CAPITAL, CHINESE DEBT, under contract with Duke University Press, presents a long history of racialization, modern finance, and indebtedness. It brings together subjects of the Atlantic and Pacific markets from 1806 to the present under European colonialism. Dr. Goffe is a fellow at the Harvard University Kennedy School in racial justice. Her research explores Black diasporic intellectual histories, political, and ecological life. She studied English literature at Princeton University before earning her PhD at Yale University.
Dr. Goffe’s research and curatorial work is rooted in literatures and theories of labor that center Black feminist engagements with Indigeneity and Asian diasporic racial formations. Committed to building intellectual communities beyond institutions, she is the founder of the Dark Laboratory, an engine for the study of race, technology, and ecology through digital storytelling. Dr. Goffe is also the Executive Director of the Afro-Asia Group, an organization that centers the intersections of African and Asian diasporas, futurity, and radical coalition towards sovereignty.
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In this episode on Speaking Out of Place podcast Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with Professors Maha Nasser and Karam Dana. Dr. Nasser is the author of Brothers Apart: Palestinian Citizens of Israel and the Arab World; Professor Dana’s new book is entitled To Stand with Palestine: Transnational Resistance and Political Evolution in the United States. Together, these two studies offer a fascinating account of the historical and present-day formation of transnational Palestinian identities and the way that these complex histories inform today’s struggles for Palestinian liberation and rights by both Palestinians and non-Palestinians. They talk about the importance of language, the arts, and especially poetry, as well as contemporary cultural forms. They take on the violence of settler colonialism, neoliberalism, and capitalism and the importance of finding paths of solidarity while never losing sight of what is distinct about Palestine and Palestinians.
Dr Karam Dana is a Palestinian American Professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Washington Bothell. He is the Alyson McGregor Distinguished Professor of Excellence and Transformative Research and the founding director of the American Muslim Research Institute. His research examines the evolution of transnational political identities and their impact on civic engagement and political participation, with a focus on Palestinians and American Muslims. As an interdisciplinary scholar, Dr Dana explores the intersections of religion, identity, and politics, addressing persistent theoretical and policy issues affecting marginalized communities. His work is centered on understanding how ethno-political, socio-cultural, and religious identities are formed, evolve, and adapt under shifting socio-economic and political conditions. He recently published book is titled To Stand With Palestine: Transnational Resistance and Political Evolution in the United States, which examines the evolution of discourse on Palestine and Israel in the United States in recent years. Dr Dana is the recipient of the 2018 Distinguished Teaching Award at the University of Washington and the 2023 Distinguished Scholarship, Research, and Creative Activities Award. In 2024, the Arab American Community of the Pacific Northwest presented him with the Leadership and Outstanding Service Award.
Dr. Maha Nassar is an associate professor in the School of Middle Eastern and North African Studies at the University of Arizona, where she specializes in the cultural and intellectual history of Palestine and the 20th-century Arab world. Her award-winning book, Brothers Apart: Palestinian Citizens of Israel and the Arab World (Stanford University Press, 2017), examines how Palestinian intellectuals inside the Green Line connected to global decolonization movements through literary and journalistic writings. Her scholarly articles have appeared in the Journal of Palestine Studies,Arab Studies Journal, and elsewhere. A 2018 Public Voices Fellow with the OpEd Project, Dr. Nassar’s analysis pieces have appeared widely, including in The Washington Post,The Conversation, +972 Magazine.As a 2022 non-resident fellow at the Foundation for Middle East Peace, she joined FMEP in developing public programming for their Occupied Thoughts podcast. Dr. Nassar’s current book project examines the global history of Palestine’s people.
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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.
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
Why are we filled with so many contradictions? How does writing help us make sense of the absurdity and of the absurdity and chaos of the world?
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.
“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.”
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
Photo credit: Spencer Boyle in Santa Barbara, CA
In this episode of Speaking Out of Place podcast Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with Maya Schenwar and Kim Wilson on their new book, We Grow the World Together: Parenting Toward Abolition. They talk about what inspired them to commission a wide range of amazing activists, artists, scholars, and organizers to write whatever came to their minds about the topic of parenting and abolition. The result is a rich mosaic of unique insights expressed in diverse forms, but each one touching deeply on the interdependency of living beings and the importance of caregiving in all its forms. It is this commitment that leads us always to imagine an abolitionist future for ourselves, and all children.
Maya Schenwar is Truthout's editor-in-chief, author of Locked Down, Locked Out: Why Prison Doesn’t Work and How We Can Do Better, and co-editor of Who Do You Serve, Who Do you Protect? Police Violence and Resistance in the United States.
Kim Wilson is an artist, educator, writer, and organizer. She is the co-founder, cohost, and producer of Beyond Prisons, a podcast on incarceration and prison abolition. A social scientist by training, Dr. Wilson has a PhD in Urban Affairs and Public Policy, and her work focuses on examining the interconnected functioning of systems, including poverty, racism, ableism, and heteropatriarchy, within a carceral structure. Her work delves into the extension and expansion of these systems beyond their physical manifestations of cages and fences, to reveal how carcerality is imbued in policy and practice. She explores how these systems synergize to exacerbate the challenges faced by under-resourced communities, revealing a deliberate intention to undermine and further marginalize vulnerable populations.
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In this episode on Speaking Out of Place podcast Professor David Palumbo-Liutalks with Peter Beinart to discuss his new book, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza. We ask what led him to write this intense and intensely provocative book, which declares that Jews “need a new story” other than the current one. Beinart argues, Jews see themselves as innocent with regard to the genocide in Gaza. I ask Peter to fully unpack this claim, among others:
“Many Jews treat a Jewish state the way the Bible feared Jewish monarchs would treat themselves: as a higher power, beholden to no external standard. Again and again, we are ordered to accept a Jewish state’s ‘right to exist.’ But the language is perverse. In Jewish tradition, states have no inherent value. States are not created in the image of God; human beings are. States are mere instruments… The legitimacy of a Jewish state—like the holiness of the Jewish people—is conditional on how it behaves. It is subject to law, not a law in and of itself.”
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“We always try to discuss things during the show, like unfair sentencing laws and how cops deal with them. Obviously, after the murder of George Floyd, we had some serious internal discussions about the show. I actually asked a few writers to give us a report card on how we had done in the first two seasons in terms of policing issues.
I created the show in the shadow of the murder of Philando Castile, who was a Black man pulled over. If you remember that horrible video, you never actually saw the cop that came up to his car, but you heard the fear in his voice. That fear had nothing to do with the man in the car; it had to do with what he brought with him on that traffic stop. My sort of idealistic vision coming into The Rookie was to create a show where we can be aspirational; where cops can do the job the right way.”
Alexi Hawley is the creator of ABC’s The Rookie, starring Nathan Fillion, and Netflix's The Recruit, an espionage drama starring Noah Centineo that, in season two, explores the legal defense tactic 'graymail'. The Rookie, now in its seventh season, takes a look at aspects of policing often overlooked by TV procedurals. Hawley discusses the positive role police can play in communities and how he found his own autodidactic path to becoming a television showrunner. He was previously the executive producer and co-showrunner of Castle and The Following, and recently created the upcoming Hulu drama The Envoy which is inspired by journalist and producer Adam Ciralsky’s June 2024 Vanity Fair story about Roger Carstens and his team at the State Department who have brought home 70 American hostages during the past four years.
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
How can we improve the way we train and recruit police officers? Can TV dramas serve as positive models for policing and help foster community?
Alexi Hawley is the creator of ABC’s The Rookie, starring Nathan Fillion, and Netflix's The Recruit, an espionage drama starring Noah Centineo that, in season two, explores the legal defense tactic 'graymail'. The Rookie, now in its seventh season, takes a look at aspects of policing often overlooked by TV procedurals. Hawley discusses the positive role police can play in communities and how he found his own autodidactic path to becoming a television showrunner. He was previously the executive producer and co-showrunner of Castle and The Following, and recently created the upcoming Hulu drama The Envoy which is inspired by journalist and producer Adam Ciralsky’s June 2024 Vanity Fair story about Roger Carstens and his team at the State Department who have brought home 70 American hostages during the past four years.
“We always try to discuss things during the show, like unfair sentencing laws and how cops deal with them. Obviously, after the murder of George Floyd, we had some serious internal discussions about the show. I actually asked a few writers to give us a report card on how we had done in the first two seasons in terms of policing issues.
I created the show in the shadow of the murder of Philando Castile, who was a Black man pulled over. If you remember that horrible video, you never actually saw the cop that came up to his car, but you heard the fear in his voice. That fear had nothing to do with the man in the car; it had to do with what he brought with him on that traffic stop. My sort of idealistic vision coming into The Rookie was to create a show where we can be aspirational; where cops can do the job the right way.”
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
Photo credit: Jesse Grant/Getty for Netflix
“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.
Episode Website
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Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
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.”
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
“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.
Episode Website
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Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
Who Defends the Defenders? In many countries, the state response to peaceful environmental protest is increasingly to repress rather than to enable and protect those who wish to speak up for the environment.
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.
“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.”
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
“Climate change is here. It's already causing devastation to the most vulnerable populations. We are living with an extractive mindset, where we are extracting one way out of the life system of the Earth. We need to change from that extractive mindset to a regenerative mindset. And we need to change from the North Star of economic growth to a vision of eco civilizations. Those are the two main principles that I want to propose and that the Club of Rome suggests that we try to transform our current organization towards regenerative living and eco civilization.”
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.
Episode Website
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Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
Less than two weeks into the new year and the world’s wealthiest 1% have already used their fair share of the global carbon budget allocated for 2025. 2024 was hottest year on record. How can we change our extractive mindset to a regenerative mindset? How can we evolve our systems from economic growth to a vision of regenerative living and eco-civilization?
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.
“Climate change is here. It's already causing devastation to the most vulnerable populations. We are living with an extractive mindset, where we are extracting one way out of the life system of the Earth. We need to change from that extractive mindset to a regenerative mindset. And we need to change from the North Star of economic growth to a vision of eco civilizations. Those are the two main principles that I want to propose and that the Club of Rome suggests that we try to transform our current organization towards regenerative living and eco civilization.”
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
Photo credit: Penn State. Creative Commons
“This book has a lot of the wisdom of things that feminists and queers have learned in the community about sexuality, but the book is really for anybody who is political, even those just starting out and beginning to realize that there is something wrong with the systems they live under. I want to be in movements. Our movements are made of relationships. So, if you're just getting into our movements, or if you've been here for years and have been watching the ways we hurt each other and fall apart relationally, this book is about identifying these common patterns.”
Dean Spade is an organizer, speaker, author, and professor at Seattle University's School of Law, where he teaches courses on policing, imprisonment, gender, race, and social movements. He is the 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. His latest book is Love in a Fcked-Up World: How to Build Relationships, Hook Up, and Raise Hell Together*.
Episode Website
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Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
Why is it that we find the courage to boldly confront mainstream societal norms and structures, yet are so often unable to treat romantic partners with care and generosity? Why do we lose our principles when we become insecure, disappointed, or jealous? Why do we act our worst in sexual and romantic relationships? And why do we prioritize romantic connection above other types of relationships, like friendship?
Dean Spade is an organizer, speaker, author, and professor at Seattle University's School of Law, where he teaches courses on policing, imprisonment, gender, race, and social movements. He is the 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. His latest book is Love in a Fcked-Up World: How to Build Relationships, Hook Up, and Raise Hell Together*.
“This book has a lot of the wisdom of things that feminists and queers have learned in the community about sexuality, but the book is really for anybody who is political, even those just starting out and beginning to realize that there is something wrong with the systems they live under. I want to be in movements. Our movements are made of relationships. So, if you're just getting into our movements, or if you've been here for years and have been watching the ways we hurt each other and fall apart relationally, this book is about identifying these common patterns.”
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
In this episode on Speaking Out of Place podcast Professor David Palumbo-Liu is delighted and privileged to be in conversation with Azucena Castro and Malcom Ferdinand. They start with a discussion of what Ferdinand calls the “double fracture”—the environmental division of humans from their connection to the biosphere, and the colonial division instantiated by white supremacism and patriarchy. He insists that we not see these two phenomena as separate, rather as intimately connected. This double fracture makes any attempts to solve either environmental violence or colonial violence ineffective. In her foreword to Ferdinand’s Decolonial Ecologies, Angela Y. Davis writes that as she read the book, she “recognized how perfectly his conceptualizations illuminate the frameworks we need for both philosophical and popular understandings of our planetary conditions today.” The conversation covers how art, film, and poetry can manifest some of those frameworks, and Azucena takes us into a deep discussion of this and reads two poems in Spanish and then in English translation and has Malcom gloss them for us.
Azucena Castro is assistant professor at Rice University in Houston. Currently, she is a Swedish Research Council Postdoctoral Researcher at the Stockholm Resilience Center, Faculty of Science, Stockholm University. She held positions as a Postdoctoral Researcher in Latin American and Caribbean cultures at Stanford University and cultural geography at the Institute of Geography, University of Buenos Aires. Her scholarly work focuses on 20th and 21st-century Latin American cultural products through the lens of climate and energy justice, multispecies resistance, and anti-extractivist critique in the artivist scenes of South America, particularly, Southern Cone and Brazil. Azucena is the author of the book Poetic Postnatures. Ecological Thinking and Politics of Strangeness in Contemporary Latin American Poetry, Series SubAtlantic at De Gruyter (2025). She has edited the volume Futuros multiespecie. Prácticas vinculantes para un planeta en emergencia (Bartlebooth. Critical Spaces, 2023), and co-edited the Essay Cluster “GeoSemantics: Earthly Memories and Inhuman Becomings in the Global South” at ASAP/Journal. As part of her engagement with community-based research and collaborative filmmaking, she has co-developed the energy justice project “No aire, no te vendas” (Penn Environmental Humanities, University of Pennsylvania) focusing on winds in ancient cosmologies and human communities in the Afro-Wayúu territories of La Guajira, Colombia in the intersection of old and green extractivism.
Malcom Ferdinand is an environmental engineer from University College London and doctor in political philosophy from Université Paris Diderot. He is now a researcher at the CNRS (IRISSO/University Paris Dauphine). At the crossroad of political philosophy, postcolonial theory and political ecology, his research focuses on the Black Atlantic and particularly the Caribbean. He explores the relations between current ecological crises and the colonial history of modernity. He published a book based on his PhD dissertation entitled Decolonial Ecology: Thinking of Ecology from the Caribbean World.( Polity 2021) that challenges classical environmental thoughts. He recently published an in-depth study of the pesticide contamination of martinique and Guadeloupe entitled S'aimer la Terre: défaire l'habiter colonial ( Seuil 2024).
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In this episode on Speaking Out of Place podcast Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with Professor Persis Karim, co-producer and co-director of a new documentary film, The Dawn is Too Far: Stories of Iranian-American Life. She is joined by Roya Ahmadi, a student at Stanford who interned at the Center for Iranian Diaspora Studies at San Francisco State University and was part of the production team for the film. The film captures the lives of young Iranian-Americans who come to the San Francisco Bay Area around the time of the Iranian Revolution, and find themselves involved with, and helping to shape, a vibrant, international culture of politics and art. We talk about both the similarities and differences between those days and today—especially with regard to diasporic identity formation in different historical times, and the persistent need to resist racism and bigotry and act in solidarity with others.
Persis Karim is the director of the Center for Iranian Diaspora Studies at San Francisco State University, where she also teaches in the Department of Humanities and Comparative and World Literature. Since 1999, she has been actively working to expand the field of Iranian Diaspora Studies, beginning with the first anthology of Iranian writing she co-edited, A World Between: Poems, Short Stories and Essays by Iranian-Americans. She is the editor of two other anthologies of Iranian diaspora literature: Let Me Tell You Where I’ve Been: New Writing by Women of the Iranian Diaspora, and Tremors: New Fiction by Iranian-American Writers. Before coming to San Francisco State, she was a professor of English & Comparative Literature at San Jose State where she was the founder and director of the Persian Studies program, and coordinator of the Middle East Studies Minor. She has published numerous articles about Iranian diaspora literature and culture for academic publications including Iranian Studies, Comparative Studies of South Asian, African and Middle East Studies (CSSAMES), and MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the United States. “The Dawn is Too Far: Stories of Iranian-American Life,” is her first film project (co-directed and co-produced with Soumyaa Behrens). She received her Master’s in Middle East Studies and her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from UT Austin. She is also a poet.
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In this episode on Speaking Out of Place podcast Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with Professor Christen A Smith on a new book she has co-edited entitled, The Dialectic is in the Sea: The Black Radical Thought of Beatrix Nascimento. Smith explains that “Beatriz Nascimento was a critical figure in Brazil’s Black Movement until her untimely death in 1995. Although she published only a handful of articles before she died and left only a few other recorded thoughts, her ideas about the symbolic relationship between quilombos (Afro-Brazilian maroon societies) and black subjectivity encourage us to re-imagine the meaning of Black liberation from a transnational, Black feminist perspective.”
The conversation delves into Nascimento’s rich and complex cultural and intellectual productions, taking in everything from her films and essays to her student papers, which Smith and her co-editors include in their volume. Nascimento was also a poet, and we are grateful that Christen graces us with reading two poems in Portuguese and then in English translation.
Christen A. Smith is Associate Professor of African American Studies and of Anthropology a Yale University. Before arriving at Yale, Smith was Associate Professor of Anthropology and African and African Diaspora Studies and Director of the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of the book, Afro-Paradise: Blackness, Violence and Performance in Brazil (University of Illinois Press, 2016), co-author of the book The Dialectic is in the Sea: The Black Radical Thought of Beatriz Nascimento (Princeton University Press, 2023) and co-editor of Black Feminist Constellations: Black Women in Dialogue and Translation (University of Texas Press, 2023). In 2017, she started Cite Black Women.—a transnational initiative that brings awareness to society’s gross tendency to ignore Black women’s intellectual contributions and not to cite Black women inside and outside of the academy.
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What can we learn from whales, the ways they communicate, and how their life cycle affects whole ecosystems, absorbing carbon and helping cool the planet? How have we contributed to the ecological degradation of the environment? How does language influence perception and our relationship to the more than human world?
NAN HAUSER (Whale Researcher; President, Center for Cetacean Research & Conservation; Director, Cook Islands Whale Research) describes how a whale protected her from a tiger shark during an underwater filming session and reflects on their emotional connection.
DAVID FARRIER (Author of Footprints: In Search of Future Fossils · Professor of the University of Edinburgh) explores the long-term impacts humans have on the environment, emphasizing the material legacies we leave behind for future generations.
DANA FISHER (Director of the Center for Environment, Community, & Equity; Author of Saving Ourselves: From Climate Shocks to Climate Action) discusses her "apocalyptic optimism," arguing that significant social and environmental change is likely to occur in response to extreme risk events, which will drive mass mobilization.
SIR GEOFF MULGAN Author of Another World is Possible: How to Reignite Social & Political Imagination; Professor of Collective Intelligence, Public Policy & Social Innovation at University College London) on the evolution and potential of the circular economy. He elaborates on how adopting practices that promote reusing and recycling can drastically reduce waste and resource consumption.
LEAH THOMAS (Author of The Intersectional Environmentalist: How to Dismantle Systems of Oppression to Protect People + Planet; Founder of @greengirlleah & The Intersectional Environmentalist platform) advocates for an inclusive approach that addresses the specific environmental injustices faced by marginalized communities and encourages incorporating social justice into environmental advocacy.
MAYA VAN ROSSUM (Founder of Green Amendments For The Generations; Leader of Delaware Riverkeeper Network; Author of The Green Amendment: The People's Fight for a Clean, Safe, and Healthy Environment) underscores the profound impact of pollution and environmental degradation on human lives and stresses the significance of storytelling that address these deep-rooted issues.
MICHAEL CRONIN (Author of Eco-Travel: Journeying in the Age of the Anthropocene; Senior Researcher at the Trinity Centre for Literary & Cultural Translation) argues for horizontal relationships with the environment, moving away from hierarchical views, and emphasizes the need to recognize the non-human world.
To hear more from each guest, listen to their full interviews.
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How can we be more engaged global citizens? How do we fight for truth and protect democracy in a post-truth world? What influence do billionaires have on politics, journalism, and the technology that shapes our lives?
Lee McIntyre (Philosopher · Author of On Disinformation: How To Fight For Truth and Protect Democracy) examines democracy, and science denial. He delves into how continuous disinformation campaigns not only promote falsehoods but ultimately aim to demoralize the public by making them doubtful about the existence of truth.
Darryl Cunningham (Cartoonist · Author of Elon Musk: Investigation into a New Master of the World) on the problematic nature of extreme wealth concentration among billionaires and the political power they wield.
Debora Cahn (Television creator, writer, and Emmy-nominated showrunner of Netflix’s The Diplomat) on how being a child of Holocaust survivors sparked her interest in moral questions and complex characters.
Julian Lennon (Singer-songwriter and documentary filmmaker, founder of The White Feather Foundation) on the need for supporting education and safety for girls in Kenya.
Arash Abizadeh (Philosopher · Assoc. Editor of Free & Equal) on wealth inequality and how economic disparities create social unrest and political manipulation, suggesting that tackling inequality is essential for the healthy functioning of democratic societies.
Daniel Susskind (Economist · Author of Growth: A Reckoning) explores how involving ordinary citizens in deliberation processes in mini-publics and citizen assemblies can help resolve complex political issues like nuclear policy and climate change.
Carlos Moreno (Originator of the 15-Minute City concept) emphasizes the importance of proximity and social interaction in urban design, highlighting how it counteracts social isolation, reduces radicalization, and helps foster more inclusive, tolerant communities.
To hear more from each guest, listen to their full interviews.
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In this episode on Speaking Out of Place podcast Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with Huda Fakhreddine and Anthony Alessandrini about the unique manners in which literature can disclose the human significance of the historical and ongoing genocide in Palestine. Such revelation has to fight at least two things—the sheer brutality and inhumanity of this violence, and the active silencing of Palestinian voices by institutions that, ironically, profess to champion the humanities. Here, once again, we find a pernicious instantiation of the Palestine Exception. Despite these efforts to censor and silence, Huda and Tony delve deeply into the power of Palestinian poetry through translations and readings of some of the most remarkable literature in the world.
Anthony Alessandrini teaches English at Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn and Middle Eastern Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center, where he is also a member of the Committee on Globalization and Social Change. He is the author of Decolonize Multiculturalism and of Frantz Fanon and the Future of Cultural Politics; the editor of Frantz Fanon: Critical Perspectives; and the co-editor of “Resistance Everywhere”: The Gezi Protests and Dissident Visions of Turkey. He has also published a poetry chapbook, Children Imitating Cormorants. He is a Co-Editor of Jadaliyya, is on the Board of Directors of the Middle East Studies Association, is on the faculty of the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, is a co-convener of the International Solidarity Action Research Network, serves as chair of his union’s Academic Freedom Committee, and is a proud member of CUNY Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine.
Huda J. Fakhreddine is a writer, translator, and Associate Professor of Arabic Literature at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of Metapoesis in the Arabic Tradition (Brill, 2015) and The Arabic Prose Poem: Poetic Theory and Practice (Edinburgh University Press, 2021), as well as the co-editor of The Routledge Handbook of Arabic Poetry (Routledge, 2023). Her creative writings include a work of creative nonfiction, Zaman Ṣaghīr Taḥt Shams Thāniya (A Brief Time Under a Different Sun), published by Dar al-Nahda, Beirut, in 2019, and a forthcoming collection Wa Min Thammata al-‘Ālam… (And Then, the World…), to be published by Manshurat Marfa’, Beirut, in 2025. She serves as co-editor of Middle Eastern Literatures and as an editor for the Library of Arabic Literature.
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Where does our intuition come from? How are lifelong creative partnerships formed and what role do friendship and personal connection play? How do our personal lives influence the art we make?
Erland Cooper (Scottish composer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist) explores the emotional and transformative effects of music and visual arts. He underscores how music can transport individuals to different places and evoke emotional responses and relates his personal experiences of homesickness for his native Orkney.
Debora Cahn (television creator, writer, and Emmy-nominated showrunner and executive producer of Netflix’s The Diplomat) discusses the craft of long-form storytelling in television. She highlights the process of building immersive worlds and the challenge of integrating ideas into narratives that resonate with audiences on a universal level.
Julian Lennon (singer-songwriter and documentary filmmaker, founder of The White Feather Foundation, and photographer/author of Life’s Fragile Moments) reflects on the influence of his heroes and teachers and remembers the thing his mother taught him. He speaks about the importance of empathy, respect, and positivity, and how these values shape his creative and humanitarian efforts.
Ed Zwick (Academy-Award-winning writer, director, and producer, and author of Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions) analyzes the elusive nature of talent and the magical moments in casting where undeniable potential shines through. Zwick shares insights into the subtle and unspoken aspects of directing that elevate a performance and bring a story to life.
Chris Blackwell (Founder of Island Records and inductee of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame) highlights the importance of instinct in recognizing and nurturing talent. He recounts his initial hesitation before signing Cat Stevens to Island Records. He shares how artistic partnerships grow out of personal connections and friendship.
Joy Gorman Wettels (Executive producer of UnPrisoned and the founder of Joy Coalition) highlights stigmatized social issues through her storytelling. She emphasizes that humanizing these issues by creating relatable, empathetic characters can lead to real-world change and understanding.
Rick Carnes (Songwriter and President of the Songwriters Guild of America) discusses the fundamental elements of songwriting and how music marks significant moments in people’s lives. He elaborates on his creative process and the importance of mindfulness and emotional awareness in writing meaningful songs.
To hear more from each guest, listen to their full interviews.
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How can we learn to speak the language of the Earth and cultivate our intuitive intelligence? What lessons can we learn from non-human animals about living in greater harmony with nature? How have we contributed to making our planet a more dangerous place, and how can we work to save it?
COLIN STEEN (CEO of Legacy Agripartners) reflects on his upbringing on a farm in Weldon, Saskatchewan. He highlights the rewarding yet challenging nature of farm life, emphasizing the importance of agriculture and its impact on shaping one's responsibilities and successes in life.
JILL HEINERTH (Canadian cave diver, underwater explorer, writer, photographer, and filmmaker) discusses her experiences exploring underwater caves. She talks about the collaborative nature of her work and her reflections on our connected planet.
NOAH WILSON-RICH (Co-Founder and CEO of The Best Bees Company, Author of The Bee: A Natural History) explores his fascination with bees and their significance to human society. He shares the broader lessons humans can learn from these pollinators.
INGRID NEWKIRK (Founder and President of PETA) discusses the fascinating world of animal communication. She explores the ways animals interact and communicate with each other, the complexity of animal languages and their significance in the animal kingdom.
NEIL GRIMMER (Brand President of SOURCE Global, innovator of the SOURCE Hydropanel) highlights the critical issue of water insecurity and scarcity facing the global population. He underscores the urgent need for innovation and technology deployment to address the increasing water stress and ensure sustainable water resources.
CARL SAFINA (Ecologist, Founding President of Safina Center) offers a critical perspective on human impact on the environment. He emphasizes that while humans are technologically advanced, we are often reckless in our use of these capabilities, leading to severe planetary problems that we struggle to solve.
RICHARD VEVERS (Founder and CEO of The Ocean Agency) stresses the importance of coral reefs as foundational species that support diverse marine ecosystems. He warns of the dire consequences of coral reef destruction and advocates for the protection and conservation of these essential habitats.
WALTER STAHEL (Founding Father of the Circular Economy, Founder-Director of the Product-Life Institute) discusses the necessity of adopting a circular economy to tackle environmental challenges. He argues that creating a low-waste, low-carbon, and low-anthropogenic mass society is essential for preserving natural resources and reducing environmental impacts.
JOELLE GERGIS (IPCC Lead Author, Award-winning climate scientist and writer, Author of Humanity’s Moment: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope) shares insights on coping with the emotional burden of climate change. She highlights the importance of maintaining hope, connecting with like-minded individuals, and finding meaning amidst the ongoing environmental crisis.
JAMES BROWNING (Founder of advocacy group F Minus) explains the insidious nature of fossil fuel lobbying. He reveals how lobbyists representing both harmful industries and beneficial causes can complicate efforts to raise awareness and address the climate crisis effectively.
PAULA PINHO (Director of the European Commission’s DG for Energy) encourages active participation in nurturing values such as peace, democracy, and sustainability. She advocates for using social media and other means to speak out and engage in meaningful discussions to promote these values.
To hear more from each guest, listen to their full interviews.
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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.
“No one should be a billionaire because it's damaging. There's a certain level of wealth that's damaging to a country. Billionaires have so much wealth that they have enormous political power, which is undemocratic. There should be a ceiling on wealth. I have nothing against people becoming millionaires or even multi-millionaires. But multi-billionaires are incredibly bad for all of us. If you have so much money that you can buy an entire political party, that's a thing that shouldn't exist.”
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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
What is the power of photography? How do images and songs bookmark our lives, reminding us of what we care about, who we love, and what it means to be alive?
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.
“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.”
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Photo credit: © 2021 Marilyn Clark
What does it mean to live a good life? How can the arts help us learn to speak the language of the Earth and cultivate our intuitive intelligence? What is the power of mentorship for forging character and creative vision? How can we hold onto our cultural heritage and traditions, while preparing students for the needs of the 21st century?
Alan Poul (Emmy & Golden Globe-winning Executive Producer · Director · Six Feet Under · Tales of the City · Tokyo Vice · My So-Called Life) shares his personal journey and the importance of mentorship in shaping one's creative path. He discusses his experiences with influential figures such as Stephen Sondheim, Paul Schrader, and Robert Wilson, emphasizing the value of learning from those you admire.
Rupert Sheldrake (Biologist · Author of The Science Delusion · The Presence of the Past · Ways to Go Beyond and Why They Work) explores the significance of cultural and religious traditions in education. He argues that knowing the open questions in science, integrating arts, and learning by heart are crucial for a well-rounded education.
Jericho Brown (Pulitzer Prize-winning Poet · Director of Creative Writing Program at Emory University · Author of The Tradition · The New Testament) emphasizes the power and agency that young writers have to create change. He encourages persistence and the importance of trying, despite the fear of failure.
Sy Montgomery (Naturalist · Author of The Soul of an Octopus · The Hawk’s Way · Of Time and Turtles: Mending the World, Shell by Shattered Shell) reflects on how animals have been her mentors and teachers. From her Scottish Terrier, Molly, to wild emus in Australia, she shares how her interactions with animals have guided her career and life choices.
Manuela Lucá-Dazio (Exec. Director of the Pritzker Architecture Prize · Fmr. Exec. Director of Venice Biennale · Dept. of Visual Arts & Architecture) discusses the necessity of reconnecting with cultural heritage and expanding educational tools. She advocates for a more imaginative approach to integrating different fields of knowledge and teaching methods.
Jeffrey D. Sachs (Economist · President of UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network · Director of Center for Sustainable Development · Columbia University) highlights the global consensus on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the critical importance of education. He specifically advocates for SDG 4, which focuses on inclusive and equitable quality education for all.
Todd B. Kashdan (Psychologist · APA Award-winning Author of The Art of Insubordination: How to Dissent and Defy Effectively · Curious? · The Upside of Your Dark Side · Leading Authority on Well-being, Curiosity, Courage & Resilience) analyzes the shortcomings of the current education system. He stresses the need to teach critical thinking and develop superior information-gathering strategies.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse (Founder · Host · Exec. Director of First Voices Radio · Founder of Akantu Intelligence · Master Musician of the Ancient Lakota Flute) offers a unique perspective on our connection to the Earth. He delves into Indigenous wisdom about living in harmony with nature, our ancestors, and recognizing the timeless energy around us.
Erland Cooper (Songwriter · Producer · Multi-instrumentalist · Composer of Folded Landscapes) reminisces about his upbringing surrounded by nature and traditional folk music. He shares how these elements have influenced his work and creative process.
Peter Singer (Philosopher · Author of Animal Liberation · Founder of The Life You Can Save) examines the core philosophical questions about living a good life. He discusses the principles of Effective Altruism and the importance of using our resources wisely to make the world a better place.
To hear more from each guest, listen to their full interviews.
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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.
To hear more from each guest, listen to their full interviews.
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In this episode on Speaking Out of Place podcast Professor David Palumbo-Liutalks with Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins and Jess Ghannam, who comment on a devastating new report authored by Stamatopoulou-Robbins. This report, “Costs of War,” reviews data gathered in Palestine since October 7, 2023. In that year alone, the report finds that the US has spent at least $22.76 billion on military aid to Israel and related US operations in the region. The number of direct deaths, but also so-called “indirect deaths” (and such a term forces us to project such deaths well into the future due to Israel’s massive destruction of the infrastructure and environment necessary to sustain even the barest forms of life), leads this report to claim that “the scale and rapidity of Gaza’s destruction … is unprecedented, not only in Palestinian history, but in recent global history.” Today we review but a small portion of the information that supports this terrible claim.
Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins is an anthropologist and film-maker with research interests in infrastructure, waste, the environment, platform capitalism, the home, food, disability, and neurodivergence. Her first book, Waste Siege: The Life of Infrastructure in Palestine (Stanford University Press, 2019), won five major book awards and explores what happens when, as Palestinians are increasingly forced into proximity with their own wastes and with those of their occupiers, waste is transformed from “matter out of place,” per prevailing anthropological wisdom, into matter with no place to go--or its own ecology. Her second book, which explores the impacts of Airbnb on property ownership in Athens, Greece, is under contract with Duke University Press. And she is currently beginning work on a next project on the rise of "demand avoidance" as diagnosis and lived experience for autistic people. She serves on the editorial teams of Cultural Anthropology and Critical AI.
Dr. Jess Ghannam is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Global Health Sciences in the School of Medicine at UCSF. His research areas include evaluating the long-term health consequences of war on displaced communities and the psychological and psychiatric effects of armed conflict on children. Dr. Ghannam has developed community health clinics in the Middle East that focus on developing community-based treatment programs for families in crisis.
He is also a consultant with the Center for Constitutional Rights, Reprieve and other international NGO's that work with torture survivors. Locally he works to promote and enhance the health and wellness of refugee, displaced, and immigrant populations from the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia and has established a community-based Mental Health Treatment Programs to support these communities.
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This episode explores the enduring power of storytelling to shape our world and illuminate the human experience. Writers Neil Gaiman, Ada Limón, Jericho Brown, E.J. Koh, Marge Piercy, and Max Stossel discuss creativity, resilience, and the power of words to heal and bring people together.
Neil Gaiman (Writer, Producer, Showrunner · The Sandman, American Gods, Good Omens, Coraline) explores the secret lives of writers, reflecting on the masks they wear in the pursuit of truth and beauty.
Jericho Brown (Pulitzer Prize-winning Poet: The Tradition · Editor of How We Do It: Black Writers on Craft, Practice, and Skill) shares “Foreday in the Morning”, highlighting the hard work and resilience in Black America. He examines the vernacular of his poetry and how it intertwines themes of race, nationality, and familial love.
Ada Limón (U.S. Poet Laureate · The Hurting Kind, The Carrying) presents an "apocalyptic love poem" that questions the intersection of despair and hope in today's changing world. She reflects deeply on the personal and universal struggles of finding beauty amidst environmental and existential crises.
Marge Piercy (Award-winning Novelist, Poet & Activist) delves into the emotional weight of words and memories, the terror of child separation, and the impending doom facing our world due to environmental destruction and political negligence.
E.J. Koh (Award-Winning Memoirist & Poet · The Magical Language of Others · A Lesser Love) recounts a haunting family history from Jeju Island in Korea, emphasizing the lasting impacts of trauma and the collective memory of ancestral sufferings.
Max Stossel (Award-winning Poet, Filmmaker, Speaker, Creator of Words That Move) uses the metaphor of a boxing ring to discuss the complexities of human conflict and connection, encouraging a shift from adversarial relationships to collaborative problem-solving.
To hear more from each guest, listen to their full interviews.
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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.
To hear more from each guest, listen to their full interviews.
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In this episode on Speaking Out of Place podcast Professor David Palumbo-Liutalks with Shourideh Molavi, who discusses the ways in which Israel has waged a protracted war on both the people and environment of Gaza. Linking this war to its colonial precedents, Molavi explains that, as a researcher for the Forensic Architecture project, she combines technologies like satellite imaging with on-the-ground stories from Palestinian farmers to produce a powerful form of witnessing and testimony to Israel’s war. She connects the trauma felt by the environment and the trauma felt by the people. She also tells of the new and powerful forms of resistance and resilience that take place at the nexus of nature, landscape, and the Palestinian people.
Shourideh Molavi is the lead Israel/Palestine researcher for Forensic Architecture, linking their investigations to the work and research of civil society, grassroots groups and human rights defenders in the country. She is a scholar in political science and human rights and trained with a background in International Humanitarian Law. She is also Senior Lecturer in the Institute for the Study of Human Rights at Columbia University in NYC.
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In this episode on Speaking Out of Place podcast Professor David Palumbo-Liuand Azeezah Kanji talk with scholar-activists Naomi Paik and Ashley Dawson about the close connection between abolition and environmental activism from below. How are the twin projects raising profound questions about borders, carcerality, enclosures, and the separation of humans from each other and all other forms of life, including supposedly “inanimate” objects? How can we create “sanctuary for all” in a radical rethinking of notions like “the commons”?
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Today, Sunday morning, October 20, former general Prabowo Subianto is being sworn in as Indonesia’s new president. In this episode on Speaking Out of Place podcast Professor David Palumbo-Liuand Azeezah Kanji talk with Intan Paramaditha and Michael Vann about the road leading up to this inauguration, beginning in the 1960s with the Suharto regime. Prabowo is a strong-arm authoritarian figure with a bloody record of human rights violations, yet he has remade his image as a cuddly, elder populist figure. We spend some time talking about how his regime is likely to continue, if not accelerate, aggressive and brutal economic development policies that have wrecked the environment and displaced Indigenous peoples. We talk a lot about how both the Indonesian media and some of its art world has been enlisted to promote this regime, and how decolonial feminists and others have taken on the task to both resist and present, and embody, other ways of being through listening to and engaging with voices from outside Jakarta and the liberal elites.
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“There is a tremendous tension between healthy democracy and deep economic inequalities. I don't think that, in the long run, democracies can survive in a healthy way unless we address the problem of economic inequalities. If we have individuals who are living day to day, on the one hand, and we have other individuals who are billionaires in our societies, on the other hand, it will be very difficult for us to have a genuine democracy.”
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.
https://abizadeh.wixsite.com/arash
www.cambridge.org/core/books/hobbes-and-the-two-faces-of-ethics/B565348CE9B53945F4F962784A5842C2
https://freeandequaljournal.org
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
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 is a tremendous tension between healthy democracy and deep economic inequalities. I don't think that, in the long run, democracies can survive in a healthy way unless we address the problem of economic inequalities. If we have individuals who are living day to day, on the one hand, and we have other individuals who are billionaires in our societies, on the other hand, it will be very difficult for us to have a genuine democracy.”
https://abizadeh.wixsite.com/arash
www.cambridge.org/core/books/hobbes-and-the-two-faces-of-ethics/B565348CE9B53945F4F962784A5842C2
https://freeandequaljournal.org
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
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 Susskindis 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 CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
I've been enjoying Growth: A Reckoning. It's not something that I learned in school—this whole historical context of growth and GDP. These concepts were relatively recently introduced, as you outline in your book that until the Cold War, almost no economist was focusing on economic growth in the way that we do now. So, how did the emphasis on GDP emerge, and how did it inspire you to write Growth: A Reckoning?
DANIEL SUSSKIND
The history of growth is fascinating. This idea that we ought to pursue economic growth sits at the center of our common life together. And yet the amazing thing is, before the 1950s, no economists, policymakers, or politicians were talking about the idea of economic growth. Before the 1950s, there was no reliable way to know how big the economy was—whether it was growing, and if it was growing, by how much. Growth is actually a product of war more than anything else. In the 1940s, the British government was at war, and a basic question when you're waging war is: how much of the economy can you slice up and dedicate to the war effort, and how much do you have to keep behind for civilian needs? So, British economist John Maynard Keynes and American Simon Kuznets developed what became known—actually not until the 1990s—as GDP, a static snapshot of how big the economy is at a particular moment in time. What put growth on the map and this relentless pursuit of getting ever-larger GDP numbers was the Cold War. Since there were no traditional measures of who was winning—territory won and lost, soldiers killed, equipment destroyed, and so on—the size of the economies of the United States and the Soviet Union became a kind of proxy measure of who was winning that Cold War, because the view is that the country with a larger economy will be able to fund a larger military in the event there's ever a sort of mad decision is taken to turn this cold war into a hot one. As the 20th century unfolds and as the demands of war fall away, the pursuit of growth stubbornly remains behind.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
Yes, you also kind of hint there that GDP almost measures all the metrics for human flourishing, but there are a lot of things that it doesn't measure or doesn't measure accurately. It's really a call to action towards the third section of your book: how can we be more engaged global citizens? How can we improve these metrics to imagine new futures that are based not just on those limitations of GDP? How do we develop those other metrics? I know it's not all about propositions, but how do you propose we develop new metrics to capture those aspects of social value that are overlooked?
SUSSKIND
Growth: A Reckoning really is a book of two halves—the first part of the book is on the intellectual history of the idea of growth and how little we know about the idea of growth despite its immense importance; the second half of the book turns to look at what we should do about the growth dilemma—this tension between the extraordinary promise of growth and the immense price of growth, this feeling of being wrenched in two directions at the same time. There are two big problems with the GDP measure. One is the technical limitations of GDP—it actually does quite a bad job measuring the amount of economic activity that takes place in the market in an economy. For instance, there are many things that are tremendously valuable but don't come with a price tag attached, such as a search engine or email. There are also lots of things that do have a price, but their quality changes very dramatically over time, such as an iPhone today might have a similar price to an iPhone five years ago, but it's in so many different dimensions, dramatically improved in terms of quality. Then there's a set of worries about the moral limits of the GDP measure—that there are many socially valuable things we don't include in the GDP statistics, such as the health of the environment and the level of inequality. There is a very strong intellectual current of thought that believes the way to deal with this tension between the promise and the price of growth is to capture the value of those other things that we do care about and bundle them into a more perfect GDP statistic—rather than pursue the morally flawed GDP measure we pursue today, we ought to instead pursue this morally enriched GDP measure which better reflects what we really value and care about as a society. The argument I make in the book is that it's probably a mistake: these questions about what we really value are fundamentally moral questions, and the place to answer them is not in treasuries and central government statistical offices—it's not for technocrats, economists and statisticians to answer these questions as they're trying to do today, but for citizens.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
Yes, I think that that's really interesting. The average person, as you addressed, would like to find those statistics in one area so that we can have them at our fingertips because we’re drowning in data—the amount of data that's being stored is doubling every two years. I know you have practical knowledge, having worked in Downing Street, about navigating the societal trade-offs when we're pursuing growth. How do you propose we navigate those trade-offs, particularly with regard to the environment, equality, and globalization, without compromising long-term sustainability?
SUSSKIND
I think the starting point is that—and it might sound counterintuitive given what I said about the growth dilemma and immense price of growth—but we desperately need more growth. Of course, if we were to only pursue more economic growth, we would be committing the same mistake—relentlessly pursuing more growth, but neglecting the extraordinary price of doing so. We should instead imagine that politicians and policymakers are sailors on a boat, and they can put up the sails and go faster or pull them down and go slower, but they can also choose whatever direction they want on the open sea. What I set up in my book is how we can have growth that is more respectful of place—doesn't cause as much damage to the environment, doesn't lead to as large inequalities in society, doesn’t disrupt politics, doesn't undermine the availability of good work. You have politicians like Caroline Lucas, environmentalists like David Attenborough, activists like Greta Thunberg, all appealing to the idea of degrowth, but when you actually look at what is meant by degrowth—it is extraordinarily confusing. At one end of the extreme is very strong degrowth, which says we should even reverse shrink certain economies around the world, which would be the greatest act of harm humanity could inflict on itself. There is the other end of the spectrum, where I sit, where it’s not about pursuing less growth or no growth, but recognizing there might be a price paid in terms of growth, and that price is worth paying to demote growth in the hierarchy of things that we collectively care about as a society. I see this as an opportunity for moral renewal—to pay more attention to the valuable ends that we have neglected until now through our dogmatic focus on growth. People often have an old-fashioned conception of growth—that growth comes from using more and more of our finite resources. But that isn't where growth comes from. It comes from discovering new ideas about how to make use of those finite resources. Those finite resources are finite, but the world of ideas is unimaginably vast—as good as infinite. The degrowth movement is wrong in its understanding of how growth works, and once we recognize it's wrong—new possibilities emerge for how we might resolve the growth dilemma.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
I like the idea that we have this potential infinite resource of good ideas. I know you also serve on the Institute for Ethics In AI at Oxford, and there’s also the book you’ve co-authored with your father The Future of the Professions: How Technology Will Transform the Work of Human Experts, where you discussed the impact of automation and how technology should assist rather than replace workers.
SUSSKIND
Yes, 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.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
That's interesting—using AI as a collaborative tool. I would hope then in the end, they would say, “Well, that wasn't exactly the story I wanted, but let me add to that now.” But speaking of co-authoring with your father—and you also referenced your brother Jamie in your book—as you reflect on some of those mentors that have been especially important in your life and writing, what did they pass on, and what do you pass on to your students?
SUSSKIND
My dad’s entire career has been thinking about technology and artificial intelligence—he wrote his doctorate in the 1980s on artificial intelligence and law, so almost 40 years ago, he was already trying to build systems that could solve legal problems. He was really part of the vanguard. And my brother writes about the impact of technology on politics, so it's a sort of funny family preoccupation. But beyond that, the biggest thing I got from my parents was a love of books and ideas. I was very lucky that my parents were very generous and always bought me books growing up. I spent a lot of time teaching mathematics and economics at the start of my career, and because of my parents, I always try to get students excited and interested in ideas. Economics has taken an extraordinarily sharp mathematical turn in the last few decades—it's almost indistinguishable from some of the most complex branches of mathematics, which is a complete contrast to how people did economics in the first half of the 20th century. Economics has gone from being a literary tradition to a mathematical tradition, so I always try to make sure my students understand intuition and see mathematics as a sort of language. I've always been slightly jealous of the great storytellers in science, particularly physicists who are able to tell these extraordinary stories about the world and the universe. So what I try to do in my work is take these relatively obscure, technical, dry, academic, difficult economic ideas and tell stories that make them far more accessible, engaging, and interesting.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
Yes, and in Growth: A Reckoning, you share this lovely quote from Nietzsche: “The sea, our sea, lies open again; maybe there has never been such an open sea.” You know, getting us to dream about this vast and endless sea, talking about reconnecting with the earth and maybe a more sustainable level of growth. I know you're a gardener, and as you think about planting trees for future generations, what are those ways that you reconnect with the earth and the beauty and wonder of the natural world? And ultimately, as you think about the future and the kind of world we're leaving the next generation, what would you like young people to know, preserve, and remember?
SUSSKIND
Recently, I have become a very enthusiastic gardener—borderline obsessive—and it was sort of inevitable. I remember, even when I was very young, my mom knew the RHS Royal Horticultural Society Encyclopedia of Gardening almost by heart—there wasn't a flower she couldn't identify, and it was completely brilliant. So it was always a matter of time until I became a gardener myself. It was a consequence of the lockdown, of all those walks that all of us did during the pandemic, and just paying more attention to the natural environment—the trees, the plants, and the animals on walks and in my own garden. Now, I am completely obsessed. At the moment, I am collecting seeds with my children. As a team, the three of us are collecting seeds, and getting ready to sow them. Right now, there are a lot of labeled jars and trays of seeds drying out. And we'll get planting in a few months.
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 Producer and Associate Text Editor on this episode was Nadia Lam. Additional production support by Sophie Garnier. The Creative Process is produced by Mia Funk.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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Have we entered what Earth scientists call a “termination event,” and what can we do to avoid the worst outcomes? How can a spiritual connection to nature guide us toward better environmental stewardship? What can ancient wisdom teach us about living harmoniously with the Earth? How have wetlands become both crucial carbon sinks and colossal methane emitters in a warming world?
Euan Nisbet is an Emeritus Professor of Earth Sciences at the Royal Holloway University of London. Specializing in methane and its impact on climate change, his research spans Arctic and Tropical Atmospheric Methane budgets. Nisbet led the MOYA project, focusing on global methane emissions using aircraft and ground-based field campaigns in Africa and South America. Born in Germany and raised in Africa, his field work has taken him around the world. He is the author of The Young Earth and Leaving Eden: To Protect and Manage the Earth.
Audio Block Double-click here to upload or link to a .mp3. Learn more I am a Christian and I have strong Muslim and Jewish friends as well as great respect for Hindu beliefs. I grew up in Southern Africa and I am well aware of the depth of some Indigenous beliefs. I think that having belief systems does give you a very different perspective sometimes. Now, in Christianity, the concept of the shepherd, human beings are here and this is our garden, our garden of Eden, but we have a responsibility. And if we choose to kick ourselves out of the garden, there are consequences. And that's precisely what we are doing. The garden is there, it's lovely, and we can manage it, and it's our job to manage it. We can manage it properly. We can respect it. It's for all creation, and it's very explicit that it involves all Creation. And that's a very fundamental biblical law that you have to respect all Creation. And if you don't do that, then the consequences—you’re basically throwing yourself out of the Garden of Eden.
Papyrus swamp, Kajjansi, Uganda (Copy) (Copy) Equatorial swamps are major methane emitters
Canadian wetland, near Fraserdale, Ontario (Copy) (Copy) Boreal wetlands like this, often made or enhanced by beaver dams, are very extensive and emit much methane in summer
The methane kill zone, in the moist tropical mid-troposphere, where the main sink, OH, destroys methane. (Copy) (Copy) Photo Credit: Euan Nisbet Associate Interview Producer and Associate Text Editor for this episode was Sophie Garnier. 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.
How can journalism make people care and bring about solutions? What role does storytelling play in shining a light on injustice and crises and creating a catalyst for change?
Nicholas D. Kristof is a two-time Pulitzer-winning journalist and Op-ed columnist for The New York Times, where he was previously bureau chief in Hong Kong, Beijing, and Tokyo. Kristof is a regular CNN contributor and has covered, among many other events and crises, the Tiananmen Square protests, the Darfur genocide, the Yemeni civil war, and the U.S. opioid crisis. He is the author of the memoir Chasing Hope, A Reporter's Life, and coauthor, with his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, of five previous books: Tightrope, A Path Appears, Half the Sky, Thunder from the East, and China Wakes.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
You've been to 170 countries, and in your book Chasing Hope, you've written on the value of witnessing the world's atrocities, neglected conflicts, human rights abuses, and how you then turn these into stories that will call on people to act. How do you find your way into a story?
NICHOLAS KRISTOF
So the backdrop of Chasing Hope came when I was trying to cover the Darfur genocide in the early 2000s. I was making these trips and reporting on the horrific massacres, and it just felt as if these columns were just disappearing without a ripple. At the same time in New York City, all of Manhattan was up in arms about these two hawks that had been pushed out of an apartment building where they had a nest because the building didn't like their bird droppings. And I thought, “how is it that I can't generate the same outrage people feel for these two homeless hawks for hundreds of thousands of people? What's wrong with my writing? Why can't I connect with people on these issues?” So that led me to the work of what makes us care. And one of those lessons is that it's an emotional process—an emotional connection not a rational one—you have to tell stories about individuals. I'm always going out to find not just an individual story, but the most compelling story—somebody that people can relate to.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
And I wonder what role growing up in a small town (Yamhill, Oregon) played in the kind of journalist you’ve become? You get to know almost everyone in the town, I imagine, and you can see behind their stories in a way and all sectors of society that we might not get in big cities where we have this tunnel vision and stick with our groups?
KRISTOF
Growing up in a tiny town very much affected my journalism and how I see the world, in the sense that it always felt to me that national media establishments neglect small towns like mine, people like those around me, and the issues that concern us. An example is addiction—we've got more than 100,000 people a year dying from overdoses, including many of my old friends, and I don't think that America has come to terms with that adequately. When we try to cover what is happening in other countries, we go to the capital, talk to officials, and typically talk to university educated men who speak English, but that's a pretty tiny slice. That has encouraged me to talk to other people to understand what is happening more broadly.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
And you talk about the personal emotional stories, and I wonder how do you protect yourself emotionally—how do you keep your empathy in check, skepticism, critical thinking or neutrality, in these emotionally charged situations when you might be meeting warlords or covering human trafficking and witnessing these terrors? You begin Chasing Hope going down in a small plane in the heart of the Congo Civil War. With so much going on, how do you remain clear minded in those situations and also, journalistically, how do you develop that courage and strength?
KRISTOF
In writing Chasing Hope, I self diagnosed myself with a mild case of PTSD. It's probably parallel to an emergency room physician who is surrounded by trauma victims, but you have to create some distance from that pain just to get through the day. Where my armor breaks down is in particular where children are involved or where somebody that I am close to, such as my interpreter, has been in jeopardy and I fear that I’ll put somebody at risk. Every now and then unexpectedly, I’ll interview somebody and find myself completely tearing up.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
And I'm just wondering about all the places that you've been. What are some of those things that still haunt you?
KRISTOF
June 4th, 1989 Tiananmen Square in China is certainly high on that list. I was the Beijing bureau chief of The New York Times and had covered the Tiananmen democracy movement. It had seemed so full of hope, but that terrible night, I heard that the troops were busting through student lines and headed toward Tiananmen. I rode my bike and got to Tiananmen Square a little bit before the troops did. And then they arrived and opened fire on the crowd that I was in. I was terrified. To watch a modern army turn weapons of war on unarmed protesters—that changes you. Frankly, at first, I was a little bit disdainful of some of the less educated protesters at Tiananmen, and I wrote periodically that although they say they're for democracy, they can't define the kind of democracy they're in favor of. That night, though, it was those uneducated workers and peasants who were driving their rickshaws out whenever there was a pause in the firing to pick up bodies of kids who'd been killed or injured, who blocked the troops. One bus driver saw troops coming in trucks, so he parked his bus across the road to keep the trucks away and turned off the engine. Then when the officer pointed his firearm at him and demanded he move the bus, he just hurled the keys into the high grass. People like that might not have been able to define democracy, but they were willing to risk their lives for it. And I think there's a lot we can learn from the courage and commitment of people like that whom I witnessed in June 1989.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
Yes, that coverage was so moving, and so were those other books that you've co-authored with your wife, Sheryl WuDunn, China Wakes, Thunder from the East, Half the Sky, among others. And you were the first married couple to jointly receive a Pulitzer for journalism. How do you work together to jointly tell a story?
KRISTOF
It's funny because people always ask that question, and there's a little bit of a hint of how do you guys write books together and stay married? We also have three kids, and the truth is that if you can raise kids together and stay married, a book is a piece of cake. It really is. And you know, you put a manuscript down at night. It stays down. A manuscript can't play you off each other. At the end of the day, if you screw up on a manuscript, it's only a manuscript. It's not like screwing up on a kid. More seriously, it helped to have Sheryl and me working on these things together.
China, after Tiananmen, was a somewhat dispiriting time. We were tailed a lot. We dealt with really tough ethical decisions, and it really helped to have somebody who was engaged in this business who understood the risks. We could talk through some of these questions about what our moral responsibilities were to our sources and to our readers.
When we wrote Half the Sky about empowering women around the world, if it had been just a woman writing that book, it would have been marginalized as just a woman's issue. And it would have been weird if it had been just a man writing it, but I think a man and a woman addressing gender inequity together underscores that this is an issue that affects all of us, whatever our sex. And that we all have to get to work to try to address it. So, it's been a wonderful partnership.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
You also describe your early posting as New York Times bureau chief in Hong Kong during a kind of golden age of print journalism where you had more time to explore, whereas now, with the attention economy and clickbait, so much has changed. What are your reflections on the future of journalism?
KRISTOF
Traditionally, newspapers were often monopolies or oligopolies, and so they were making money and perfectly fine being committed to covering important things that readers weren't terribly interested in. That business model has collapsed for local journalism around the country. We're losing an average of two and a half newspapers each week around the country, and we've lost more newspaper journalists than we have coal miners over the last decade. In terms of national,international coverage, The New York Times still has a good business model. The Washington Post has a business model in the sense that Jeff Bezos has a large checkbook. The Wall Street Journal is doing okay, but the news weeklies are collapsing, and television is struggling. There are still reporters covering the war in Ukraine and the war in Gaza, but you don't have many reporters covering what's probably the world's biggest humanitarian crisis right now—the famine in Sudan. It's just like how Yemen wasn't getting much coverage when it was the biggest crisis. I think that's fundamentally because it's expensive and dangerous to cover those kinds of international stories, and there's not much of an audience for it. Once, I did back-to-back columns about the Yemen humanitarian crisis and Brett Kavanaugh when he was nominated for the Supreme Court. The Kavanaugh piece—I could whip off in a few hours, while the Yemen piece resulted from an expensive, dangerous trip to Yemen. But the Kavanaugh piece got seven times as many page views, so you can understand why an executive producer wouldn't want to send a camera crew to Yemen when they can just put a Democrat and a Republican in a studio together and have them yell at each other.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
Your writing has inspired Bill and Melinda Gates to focus their philanthropy on global health. Robert DeVecchi, the former president of the International Rescue Committee, said your coverage of the genocide in Darfur saved hundreds of thousands of lives. Considering the changing face of journalism, how can we continue to be a catalyst for positive change?
KRISTOF
I hope that we come up with a solid business model for journalism. I'm actually planning a trip to Sudan right now and it will probably lose money for The Times, but they're willing to send me to cover pieces that maybe only my mother and wife will read. We need a better business model for journalism as a whole. I think that there may be ways for journalists to partner with aid groups and think tanks around the world to cover crises.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
Your parents were educators, and you've also created mentorship programs where you've taken young journalists on the road with you to help bring them along that pathway toward journalism. You've been an outspoken advocate for education reform. What are your reflections on education, and how can we improve our education models to prepare people not just for the jobs of the 21st but to be more engaged global citizens?
KRISTOF
If you look over the last 500 years or so, the best metric to predict where society will be in 30 or 50 years, the best metric is simply education today. One reason I think the U.S. is the world's largest and most successful economy today is that, beginning in the 19th century and through about 1970, the U.S. led the world in mass education. And what matters is not so much elite education. Britain had Eton, Oxford, and Cambridge, and it had better elite education, but it wasn't great at mass education. And the U.S. really was. We were the first country to have almost universal literacy, male and female. We were the first country to have widespread high school attendance and the first country to have significant college attendance. And then, beginning in about the 1970s, we lost that lead. And now, there are many countries that are way ahead of us. I think back to my old classmates who are now dead, and I think: What were adults thinking in the 1970s that they let them drop out? And yet, I think today: What are adults thinking in 2024 when they let one in seven American kids today drop out of high school and let so many emerge from the school system not literate, not numerate, completely unprepared for the 21st century?
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
Yes. And for somebody who's always gone out into the world, who's derived their knowledge from one-on-one to understanding what it is in the world, what are your reflections on how AI is changing the way we communicate with ourselves, our imagination, and journalism itself? How can we prepare everyone, especially young people, for these uncertain futures?
KRISTOF
There have been some alarming experiments that show AI arguments are better at persuading people than humans are at persuading people. I think that's partly because humans tend to make the arguments that we ourselves find most persuasive. For example, a liberal will make the arguments that will appeal to liberals, but the person you're probably trying to persuade is somebody in the center. We're just not good at putting ourselves in other people's shoes. That's something I try very hard to do in the column, but I often fall short. And with AI, I think people are going to become more vulnerable to being manipulated. I think we're at risk of being manipulated by our own cognitive biases and the tendency to reach out for information sources that will confirm our prejudices. Years ago, the theorist Nicholas Negroponte wrote that the internet was going to bring a product he called the Daily Me—basically information perfectly targeted to our own brains—and that's kind of what we've gotten now. A conservative will get conservative sources that show how awful Democrats are and will have information that buttresses that point of view, while liberals will get the liberal version of that. So, I think we have to try to understand those cognitive biases and understand the degree to which we are all vulnerable to being fooled by selection bias. I'd like to see high schools, in particular, have more information training and media literacy programs so that younger people can learn that there are some news sources that are a little better than others and that just because you see something on Facebook doesn't make it true.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
Exactly. There's checks and balances, so it is important to understand fake news, misinformation, and disinformation. You said your experience in China helped you have a certain respect for the mechanisms of capitalism, even though it doesn't work perfectly, and it hasn't worked perfectly in terms of how we are stewards of the planet. This you've seen from your travels around the world, these decisions that cause ecological degradation because we're not seeing further down the line to the future. I know that maintaining ecological balance is important for you. You have practical working knowledge since you were raised on a farm and to this day you and your family run a 25-acre farm in Yamhill, Oregon. What, in your view, is holding us back from moving forward on environmental issues?
KRISTOF
I think that the problem is a classic economic problem of tragedy of the commons—the fact that any one country is going to benefit if other countries reduce carbon emissions but is going to suffer when it itself does means there's always a tendency to want other countries to lead the way. Since the industrial revolution began, the US point of view is that we can't get anywhere unless India and China reduce carbon emissions, while India and China say if you look over the last one hundred years, the US is the one who put out all the carbon, and we're just finally getting a little bit richer and you want to cut us off at the knees.
There are arguments to be made on both sides, but the fundamental impediment is that 10 years ago, it just seemed really hard to see how we were going to get out of climate change and disastrous consequences, but right now, if you squint a little bit, you can maybe see a path through this period where we reduce carbon emissions enough to figure out how to navigate our way to a future in which things work and we pay a price, but one that is manageable. Green energy is becoming much cheaper because of a revolution in battery technology, and now there are possibilities for a field-like energy generated by waves or fusion nuclear power to remove carbon from the air with direct air capture. We're not sure that these will work, but they may, and they would really be revolutionary. China is an interesting example of a country that has made remarkable progress on electrification and battery technology. It is still pushing out a ton of carbon, but it has done this for practical reasons—it understands that those are key technologies for the future and whoever figures out how to get electric vehicles done right, whoever figures out how to get battery technology right, the world is going to benefit from their progress in battery technology, just as the world has benefited by having solar panels made in China go up all over the world.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
You know, we're so glad that Chasing Hope allows us to understand some of these backstories that make or don't make the cut when you're writing an article, but how do you narrow that down when there's so many fascinating details to what would be the most poignant to bring across the essence of the story?
KRISTOF
That's the perpetual challenge of storytelling. It's what Homer was wrestling with 800 years ago and what we wrestle with today. But I think one of the lessons of storytelling is that you pick the elements that will move a reader. In my case, I'm trying to get people to care about a crisis in ways that may bring solutions to it. And that's also how I deal with the terror and the fear to find a sense of purpose in what I do. It's incredibly heartbreaking to see some of the things and hear some of the stories, but at the end of the day, it feels like–inconsistently here and there–you can shine a light on problems, and by shining that light, you actually make a difference.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
And as you think about the future, those teachers who have been important to you, and the importance of storytelling, what would you like young people to know, preserve, and remember?
KRISTOF
I think a lot of young people today are focused on what might be called résumé qualities. I was proud to be the youngest foreign correspondent at the Times and then youngest national correspondent, winning a Pulitzer, these kinds of things, but overtime, I came to see more importance and reward in finding a purpose, finding meaning, paying it forward, and giving back—the eulogy qualities, the kind of things people say when they remember you, not the résumé qualities. It's the importance of finding friends, emphasizing family, and doing things that give you that sense of fulfillment and meaning, keep you going, and give you a cause larger than yourself to hold on to. I, too, am not sure I got it at the beginning of my career, so I think it's maybe hard for young people to grasp, but that is the advice I would offer.
Photo credit: David Hume KennerlyThis interview was conducted by Mia Funk with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producers on this episode were Katie Foster and Henie Zhang. The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast is produced by Mia Funk. Associate Text Editor was Nadia Lam. 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.
How can journalism make people care and bring about solutions? What role does storytelling play in shining a light on injustice and crises and creating a catalyst for change?
Nicholas D. Kristof is a two-time Pulitzer-winning journalist and Op-ed columnist for The New York Times, where he was previously bureau chief in Hong Kong, Beijing, and Tokyo. Kristof is a regular CNN contributor and has covered, among many other events and crises, the Tiananmen Square protests, the Darfur genocide, the Yemeni civil war, and the U.S. opioid crisis. He is the author of the memoir Chasing Hope, A Reporter's Life, and coauthor, with his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, of five previous books: Tightrope, A Path Appears, Half the Sky, Thunder from the East, and China Wakes.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
You've been to 170 countries, and in your book Chasing Hope, you've written on the value of witnessing the world's atrocities, neglected conflicts, human rights abuses, and how you then turn these into stories that will call on people to act. How do you find your way into a story?
NICHOLAS KRISTOF
So the backdrop of Chasing Hope came when I was trying to cover the Darfur genocide in the early 2000s. I was making these trips and reporting on the horrific massacres, and it just felt as if these columns were just disappearing without a ripple. At the same time in New York City, all of Manhattan was up in arms about these two hawks that had been pushed out of an apartment building where they had a nest because the building didn't like their bird droppings. And I thought, “how is it that I can't generate the same outrage people feel for these two homeless hawks for hundreds of thousands of people? What's wrong with my writing? Why can't I connect with people on these issues?” So that led me to the work of what makes us care. And one of those lessons is that it's an emotional process—an emotional connection not a rational one—you have to tell stories about individuals. I'm always going out to find not just an individual story, but the most compelling story—somebody that people can relate to.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
And I wonder what role growing up in a small town (Yamhill, Oregon) played in the kind of journalist you’ve become? You get to know almost everyone in the town, I imagine, and you can see behind their stories in a way and all sectors of society that we might not get in big cities where we have this tunnel vision and stick with our groups?
KRISTOF
Growing up in a tiny town very much affected my journalism and how I see the world, in the sense that it always felt to me that national media establishments neglect small towns like mine, people like those around me, and the issues that concern us. An example is addiction—we've got more than 100,000 people a year dying from overdoses, including many of my old friends, and I don't think that America has come to terms with that adequately. When we try to cover what is happening in other countries, we go to the capital, talk to officials, and typically talk to university educated men who speak English, but that's a pretty tiny slice. That has encouraged me to talk to other people to understand what is happening more broadly.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
And you talk about the personal emotional stories, and I wonder how do you protect yourself emotionally—how do you keep your empathy in check, skepticism, critical thinking or neutrality, in these emotionally charged situations when you might be meeting warlords or covering human trafficking and witnessing these terrors? You begin Chasing Hope going down in a small plane in the heart of the Congo Civil War. With so much going on, how do you remain clear minded in those situations and also, journalistically, how do you develop that courage and strength?
KRISTOF
In writing Chasing Hope, I self diagnosed myself with a mild case of PTSD. It's probably parallel to an emergency room physician who is surrounded by trauma victims, but you have to create some distance from that pain just to get through the day. Where my armor breaks down is in particular where children are involved or where somebody that I am close to, such as my interpreter, has been in jeopardy and I fear that I’ll put somebody at risk. Every now and then unexpectedly, I’ll interview somebody and find myself completely tearing up.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
And I'm just wondering about all the places that you've been. What are some of those things that still haunt you?
KRISTOF
June 4th, 1989 Tiananmen Square in China is certainly high on that list. I was the Beijing bureau chief of The New York Times and had covered the Tiananmen democracy movement. It had seemed so full of hope, but that terrible night, I heard that the troops were busting through student lines and headed toward Tiananmen. I rode my bike and got to Tiananmen Square a little bit before the troops did. And then they arrived and opened fire on the crowd that I was in. I was terrified. To watch a modern army turn weapons of war on unarmed protesters—that changes you. Frankly, at first, I was a little bit disdainful of some of the less educated protesters at Tiananmen, and I wrote periodically that although they say they're for democracy, they can't define the kind of democracy they're in favor of. That night, though, it was those uneducated workers and peasants who were driving their rickshaws out whenever there was a pause in the firing to pick up bodies of kids who'd been killed or injured, who blocked the troops. One bus driver saw troops coming in trucks, so he parked his bus across the road to keep the trucks away and turned off the engine. Then when the officer pointed his firearm at him and demanded he move the bus, he just hurled the keys into the high grass. People like that might not have been able to define democracy, but they were willing to risk their lives for it. And I think there's a lot we can learn from the courage and commitment of people like that whom I witnessed in June 1989.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
Yes, that coverage was so moving, and so were those other books that you've co-authored with your wife, Sheryl WuDunn, China Wakes, Thunder from the East, Half the Sky, among others. And you were the first married couple to jointly receive a Pulitzer for journalism. How do you work together to jointly tell a story?
KRISTOF
It's funny because people always ask that question, and there's a little bit of a hint of how do you guys write books together and stay married? We also have three kids, and the truth is that if you can raise kids together and stay married, a book is a piece of cake. It really is. And you know, you put a manuscript down at night. It stays down. A manuscript can't play you off each other. At the end of the day, if you screw up on a manuscript, it's only a manuscript. It's not like screwing up on a kid. More seriously, it helped to have Sheryl and me working on these things together.
China, after Tiananmen, was a somewhat dispiriting time. We were tailed a lot. We dealt with really tough ethical decisions, and it really helped to have somebody who was engaged in this business who understood the risks. We could talk through some of these questions about what our moral responsibilities were to our sources and to our readers.
When we wrote Half the Sky about empowering women around the world, if it had been just a woman writing that book, it would have been marginalized as just a woman's issue. And it would have been weird if it had been just a man writing it, but I think a man and a woman addressing gender inequity together underscores that this is an issue that affects all of us, whatever our sex. And that we all have to get to work to try to address it. So, it's been a wonderful partnership.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
You also describe your early posting as New York Times bureau chief in Hong Kong during a kind of golden age of print journalism where you had more time to explore, whereas now, with the attention economy and clickbait, so much has changed. What are your reflections on the future of journalism?
KRISTOF
Traditionally, newspapers were often monopolies or oligopolies, and so they were making money and perfectly fine being committed to covering important things that readers weren't terribly interested in. That business model has collapsed for local journalism around the country. We're losing an average of two and a half newspapers each week around the country, and we've lost more newspaper journalists than we have coal miners over the last decade. In terms of national,international coverage, The New York Times still has a good business model. The Washington Post has a business model in the sense that Jeff Bezos has a large checkbook. The Wall Street Journal is doing okay, but the news weeklies are collapsing, and television is struggling. There are still reporters covering the war in Ukraine and the war in Gaza, but you don't have many reporters covering what's probably the world's biggest humanitarian crisis right now—the famine in Sudan. It's just like how Yemen wasn't getting much coverage when it was the biggest crisis. I think that's fundamentally because it's expensive and dangerous to cover those kinds of international stories, and there's not much of an audience for it. Once, I did back-to-back columns about the Yemen humanitarian crisis and Brett Kavanaugh when he was nominated for the Supreme Court. The Kavanaugh piece—I could whip off in a few hours, while the Yemen piece resulted from an expensive, dangerous trip to Yemen. But the Kavanaugh piece got seven times as many page views, so you can understand why an executive producer wouldn't want to send a camera crew to Yemen when they can just put a Democrat and a Republican in a studio together and have them yell at each other.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
Your writing has inspired Bill and Melinda Gates to focus their philanthropy on global health. Robert DeVecchi, the former president of the International Rescue Committee, said your coverage of the genocide in Darfur saved hundreds of thousands of lives. Considering the changing face of journalism, how can we continue to be a catalyst for positive change?
KRISTOF
I hope that we come up with a solid business model for journalism. I'm actually planning a trip to Sudan right now and it will probably lose money for The Times, but they're willing to send me to cover pieces that maybe only my mother and wife will read. We need a better business model for journalism as a whole. I think that there may be ways for journalists to partner with aid groups and think tanks around the world to cover crises.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
Your parents were educators, and you've also created mentorship programs where you've taken young journalists on the road with you to help bring them along that pathway toward journalism. You've been an outspoken advocate for education reform. What are your reflections on education, and how can we improve our education models to prepare people not just for the jobs of the 21st but to be more engaged global citizens?
KRISTOF
If you look over the last 500 years or so, the best metric to predict where society will be in 30 or 50 years, the best metric is simply education today. One reason I think the U.S. is the world's largest and most successful economy today is that, beginning in the 19th century and through about 1970, the U.S. led the world in mass education. And what matters is not so much elite education. Britain had Eton, Oxford, and Cambridge, and it had better elite education, but it wasn't great at mass education. And the U.S. really was. We were the first country to have almost universal literacy, male and female. We were the first country to have widespread high school attendance and the first country to have significant college attendance. And then, beginning in about the 1970s, we lost that lead. And now, there are many countries that are way ahead of us. I think back to my old classmates who are now dead, and I think: What were adults thinking in the 1970s that they let them drop out? And yet, I think today: What are adults thinking in 2024 when they let one in seven American kids today drop out of high school and let so many emerge from the school system not literate, not numerate, completely unprepared for the 21st century?
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
Yes. And for somebody who's always gone out into the world, who's derived their knowledge from one-on-one to understanding what it is in the world, what are your reflections on how AI is changing the way we communicate with ourselves, our imagination, and journalism itself? How can we prepare everyone, especially young people, for these uncertain futures?
KRISTOF
There have been some alarming experiments that show AI arguments are better at persuading people than humans are at persuading people. I think that's partly because humans tend to make the arguments that we ourselves find most persuasive. For example, a liberal will make the arguments that will appeal to liberals, but the person you're probably trying to persuade is somebody in the center. We're just not good at putting ourselves in other people's shoes. That's something I try very hard to do in the column, but I often fall short. And with AI, I think people are going to become more vulnerable to being manipulated. I think we're at risk of being manipulated by our own cognitive biases and the tendency to reach out for information sources that will confirm our prejudices. Years ago, the theorist Nicholas Negroponte wrote that the internet was going to bring a product he called the Daily Me—basically information perfectly targeted to our own brains—and that's kind of what we've gotten now. A conservative will get conservative sources that show how awful Democrats are and will have information that buttresses that point of view, while liberals will get the liberal version of that. So, I think we have to try to understand those cognitive biases and understand the degree to which we are all vulnerable to being fooled by selection bias. I'd like to see high schools, in particular, have more information training and media literacy programs so that younger people can learn that there are some news sources that are a little better than others and that just because you see something on Facebook doesn't make it true.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
Exactly. There's checks and balances, so it is important to understand fake news, misinformation, and disinformation. You said your experience in China helped you have a certain respect for the mechanisms of capitalism, even though it doesn't work perfectly, and it hasn't worked perfectly in terms of how we are stewards of the planet. This you've seen from your travels around the world, these decisions that cause ecological degradation because we're not seeing further down the line to the future. I know that maintaining ecological balance is important for you. You have practical working knowledge since you were raised on a farm and to this day you and your family run a 25-acre farm in Yamhill, Oregon. What, in your view, is holding us back from moving forward on environmental issues?
KRISTOF
I think that the problem is a classic economic problem of tragedy of the commons—the fact that any one country is going to benefit if other countries reduce carbon emissions but is going to suffer when it itself does means there's always a tendency to want other countries to lead the way. Since the industrial revolution began, the US point of view is that we can't get anywhere unless India and China reduce carbon emissions, while India and China say if you look over the last one hundred years, the US is the one who put out all the carbon, and we're just finally getting a little bit richer and you want to cut us off at the knees.
There are arguments to be made on both sides, but the fundamental impediment is that 10 years ago, it just seemed really hard to see how we were going to get out of climate change and disastrous consequences, but right now, if you squint a little bit, you can maybe see a path through this period where we reduce carbon emissions enough to figure out how to navigate our way to a future in which things work and we pay a price, but one that is manageable. Green energy is becoming much cheaper because of a revolution in battery technology, and now there are possibilities for a field-like energy generated by waves or fusion nuclear power to remove carbon from the air with direct air capture. We're not sure that these will work, but they may, and they would really be revolutionary. China is an interesting example of a country that has made remarkable progress on electrification and battery technology. It is still pushing out a ton of carbon, but it has done this for practical reasons—it understands that those are key technologies for the future and whoever figures out how to get electric vehicles done right, whoever figures out how to get battery technology right, the world is going to benefit from their progress in battery technology, just as the world has benefited by having solar panels made in China go up all over the world.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
You know, we're so glad that Chasing Hope allows us to understand some of these backstories that make or don't make the cut when you're writing an article, but how do you narrow that down when there's so many fascinating details to what would be the most poignant to bring across the essence of the story?
KRISTOF
That's the perpetual challenge of storytelling. It's what Homer was wrestling with 800 years ago and what we wrestle with today. But I think one of the lessons of storytelling is that you pick the elements that will move a reader. In my case, I'm trying to get people to care about a crisis in ways that may bring solutions to it. And that's also how I deal with the terror and the fear to find a sense of purpose in what I do. It's incredibly heartbreaking to see some of the things and hear some of the stories, but at the end of the day, it feels like–inconsistently here and there–you can shine a light on problems, and by shining that light, you actually make a difference.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
And as you think about the future, those teachers who have been important to you, and the importance of storytelling, what would you like young people to know, preserve, and remember?
KRISTOF
I think a lot of young people today are focused on what might be called résumé qualities. I was proud to be the youngest foreign correspondent at the Times and then youngest national correspondent, winning a Pulitzer, these kinds of things, but overtime, I came to see more importance and reward in finding a purpose, finding meaning, paying it forward, and giving back—the eulogy qualities, the kind of things people say when they remember you, not the résumé qualities. It's the importance of finding friends, emphasizing family, and doing things that give you that sense of fulfillment and meaning, keep you going, and give you a cause larger than yourself to hold on to. I, too, am not sure I got it at the beginning of my career, so I think it's maybe hard for young people to grasp, but that is the advice I would offer.
Photo credit: David Hume KennerlyThis interview was conducted by Mia Funk with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producers on this episode were Katie Foster and Henie Zhang. The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast is produced by Mia Funk. Associate Text Editor was Nadia Lam. 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.
How do the works of Emily Dickinson and Charles Darwin continue to influence our understanding of nature, ecological interdependence, and the human experience? How does understanding history help us address current social and environmental issues. How can dialogues between the arts and sciences foster holistic, sustainable solutions to global crises?
Renée Bergland is a literary critic, historian of science, and educator. As a storyteller, Bergland connects the lives of historical figures to the problems of the present day. As an educator, she emphasizes the interdisciplinary connections between the sciences and humanities. A longtime professor at Simmons University, where she is the Program director of Literature and writing, Bergland has also researched and taught at institutions such as Dartmouth College, Harvard University, and MIT. Bergland’s past published titles include Maria Mitchell and the Sexing of Science: An Astronomer Among the American Romantics and The National Uncanny: Indian Ghosts and American Subjects. Her most recent book, Natural Magic: Emily Dickinson, Charles Darwin, and the Dawn of Modern Science, was published in April of 2024. It explores Dickinson and Darwin’s shared enchanted view of the natural world in a time when poetry and natural philosophy, once freely intertwined, began to grow apart.
Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in December 1859. In the years that followed, he would often be at the center of public debate, subjected to bitter denunciations and passionate advocacy. At times, his allies' misguided defenses of his ideas would be as excruciating as the condemnations. Darwin would try again and again to explain that the adaptation and change at the heart of natural selection could offer consolation and inspire hope. Darwin had hoped his ideas would be important in scientific circles, but he had never dreamed that they would have such a widespread impact. Indeed, he was startled by his sudden scientific fame. As it turned out, Few aspects of life or death remain untouched by Darwin's thought. His ideas were quickly woven into the fabric of the modern world. Across the Atlantic, Emily Dickinson's response to Darwin helped her to write the poetry that speaks to us today. Emily Dickinson loved a wild experiment just as much as Darwin, who was one generation ahead of her. Darwin's remarkable ideas about the natural world would influence her thought profoundly. She did not have the same impact on Darwin as he had on her. In fact, since she published almost nothing during her lifetime, her circle of influence was very small until after her death. But being in the next generation also conferred some benefits. Able to read Darwin, consider his ideas at leisure, and record her responses for posterity, Dickinson usually got the last word. In this account, I have taken the liberty of giving her the first word, too. For me, this book started with the puzzling realization that many of Dickinson's poems seemed profoundly Darwinian. Although she never mentioned Darwin by name in her poems. She rarely mentioned anyone by name in her poetry, so this absence did not rule him out of her important influences. She did name Darwin in two letters, which confirmed that she knew about his work. Still, there was not much to go on. She returned again and again to the topics that fascinated Darwin, but was that enough to demonstrate that she was responding to his thoughts? Did Dickinson write about Darwinian ideas simply because she was his contemporary? Did her writing seem to apply to Darwin merely because she was a great poet whose writings were almost universally applicable? Both explanations are valid as far as they go, but neither goes far enough. There is a stronger connection between Dickinson and Darwin than the proximity of history. Or the universality of literature. They both understood natural science and the natural world in ways that seem strange and somewhat surprising in the 21st century. Their 19th century attitudes to nature and the study of it are so different from ours that when we trace their stories, a vanished world begins to emerge. The more I consider these figures together, the more I feel their world and my world. come alive. Darwin and Dickinson illuminate each other. By reading them together, we can start to understand the interconnected relationships that animated 19th century poetry and science.
– Natural Magic: Emily Dickinson, Charles Darwin, and the Dawn of Modern Scienceby Renée Bergland, Preface, pp. xiv–xvi.THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
Many of us only think of Darwin’s work as being about survival of the fittest, and nature competing for limited resources, but you open this view up. You write about how Dickinson and Darwin refused to accept the separation of art and science. As you go through their writings, they're both talking about the awesome possibilities of the new sciences and at the same time striving to preserve the magic of nature. And today more than ever, we too need to reclaim these two discipline’s connections, and our shared sense of ecological wonder, especially as we're on the crest of the Anthropocene.
RENÉE BERGLAND
Yes, absolutely. Probably many geologists and stratigraphers would say that even Darwin and Dickinson both lived during the Anthropocene, that they lived during a time when human activity had really started to change the planet. But I don't know that they lived during the self-conscious Anthropocene as we do now, where we're suddenly aware of it and we're like, “Oh, no, what have we done?” But they were fascinated, both of them, by human beings in the whole biosphere.
The reason that people responded to Darwin as if he were theologically radical was because his vision of the great tree of life was not a ladder. It was not hierarchical at all. His metaphor of the tree has lots of intertwined branches and roots. There's not a single apex to a tree, and the way that Darwin described humans, they were not the top of the whole chain, the whole ladder. That was an insight that was upsetting to many people. It seemed humiliating for humans not to be the very best living creature. And that was one of the reasons that many people reacted negatively to Darwin. But for Dickinson, that idea was just liberating and exciting and fascinating, such that in many of her poems about the natural world, she blurs the human and the animal and the plant. One of the poems of Dickinson's that I think explains Darwin the best starts out, “There is a flower that bees prefer / and butterflies desire.” She's talking about the clover, and in that poem she describes the clover and the grass as kinsmen. They're related to each other, but they're contending, she says, for sod and sun. They are competing to see who can get the most soil, the most nutrients, but she calls them “sweet litigants for life.” And that interpretation of Darwinism, where they're sweet and they're struggling, but they're both actually litigants for life, they're both arguing for the biosphere and advocates—that takes us back to the first lines of the poem. “There's a flower that bees prefer / and butterflies desire.” The way that the clover and the grass compete is by trying to see who can be more beautiful, who can be more brightly colored, who can smell better, who can lure more pollinators, more insects and birds and collaborate better with them, and have a better chance of surviving. That is certainly a version of survival of the fittest, but it's not a dog eat dog violent version. It's a version where the way you get a generational advantage, and perhaps have more little clovers following in your footsteps, is by collaborating better, by making yourself more beautiful, more alluring, and more inviting, inviting pollinators to work with you. That's straight from Darwin. Darwin's very clear in On the Origin of Species that when he talks about the struggle for life, he's primarily talking about co-adaptation and collaboration between species that can learn to work together. He's the one who actually, as he explains the struggle for life, says it's nothing like two dogs fighting over a bone. That's not what it is. But unfortunately, a lot of that co-adaptation language got lost in the popular imagination. And that's one of the reasons that turning to Dickinson can help us understand—because she so beautifully depicts a Darwinian world where, yes, there's death, but there's more than anything, there's life.
This interview was conducted by Mia Funk with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interview Producer and Associate Text Editor for this episode was Sofia Reecer. 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.
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.
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.
Audio Block Double-click here to upload or link to a .mp3. Learn more 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.
How can music challenge systemic oppression and bring about social change? How can we envision alternative paths while avoiding the pitfalls of past paradigms?
Jake Fergusonis an award-winning musician known for his work with The Heliocentrics and as a solo artist under the name The Brkn Record. Alongside legendary drummer Malcolm Catto, Ferguson has composed two film scores and over 10 albums, collaborating with icons like Archie Shepp, Mulatu Astatke, and Melvin Van Peebles. His latest album is The Architecture of Oppression Part 2. The album also features singer and political activist Jermain Jackman, a former winner of The Voice (2014) and the T.S. Eliot Prize winning poet and musician, Anthony Joseph.
JAKE FERGUSON
I think as humans, we forget. We are often limited by our own stereotypes, and we don't see that in everyone there's the potential for beauty and love and all these things. And I think The Architecture of Oppression, both parts one and two, are really a reflection of all the community and civil rights work that I've been doing for the same amount of time, really – 25 years. And I wanted to try and mix my day job and my music side, so bringing those two sides of my life together, but because I'm not a spoken word person...well, I can write a good story. I can write a good essay, but my ability to write stories or write lyrics is very limited, hence why I was so keen to get Anthony and Jermain involved.
And Jermain is somebody I've worked with for probably about six, seven years now. He's also in the trenches of the black civil rights struggle. We worked together on a number of projects, but it was very interesting to then work with Jemaine in a purely artistic capacity. And I think the bringing together those two worlds really created the album. You know, I wanted to create a platform for black artists, black singers, and poets who I really admire. And it was a no-brainer to give Anthony a call for this second album because I know of his pedigree, and he's much more able to put ideas and thoughts on paper than I would be able to.
JERMAIN JACKMAN
There's something raw about The Architecture of Oppression, both part one and part two. There's a raw realness and authenticity in those songs that AI can't create. There's a lived experience that AI won't understand, and there's a feeling in those songs. And it's not just in the words from the spoken word artists, if it's not in the instruments that are being played. It's in the voice that you hear. You hear the pain, you hear the struggle, you hear the joy, you hear all of those emotions in all of those songs. And that's something that AI can't make up or create.
ANTHONY JOSEPH
I've known Jake for many, many, many years, probably since the nineties. Yeah, it's going all the way back. There's a lot of spillover between me and Jake in that way, both personal and music – which is the same thing, I think. So, I'm coming from that context. And in terms of the sort of political underpinnings, you know, you can't be a Black British artist and escape the sort of stuff that Jake is talking about because that's the kind of the mess that we work in. It's the mess that we sort of inherit and the mess that we try to push through to make art. We can't escape the sort of political ramifications of colonialism or racism.
They are the things that sort of underpin a lot of our lived experience, and I think Jake says it quite eloquently. I mean, he says he's not a writer, but he's definitely a thinker, and he knows what he's talking about. So, exactly as he said, "We're still dealing with these things in 2024." We shouldn't be, but I think records like the two volumes actually of this record are quite important because a lot of Black art, you know, there's hardly any sort of black artists are sort of directly addressing these issues in a very concentrated, focused way. You know, at the beginning you said, Mia, that it's not something you want to listen to before bed. And yeah, they're difficult records. I think the new one is a lot more accessible in a way than the first one was. The first one was...is a scary listen. You know, absolutely. It's not easy. It's not easy listening, but then the experience is not easy.
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 Lyle Hutchins. The Creative Process is produced by Mia Funk. Associate Text Editor was Nadia Lam. 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.
How can music challenge systemic oppression and bring about social change? How can we envision alternative paths while avoiding the pitfalls of past paradigms?
Jake Fergusonis an award-winning musician known for his work with The Heliocentrics and as a solo artist under the name The Brkn Record. Alongside legendary drummer Malcolm Catto, Ferguson has composed two film scores and over 10 albums, collaborating with icons like Archie Shepp, Mulatu Astatke, and Melvin Van Peebles. His latest album is The Architecture of Oppression Part 2. The album also features singer and political activist Jermain Jackman, a former winner of The Voice (2014) and the T.S. Eliot Prize winning poet and musician, Anthony Joseph.
JAKE FERGUSON
I think as humans, we forget. We are often limited by our own stereotypes, and we don't see that in everyone there's the potential for beauty and love and all these things. And I think The Architecture of Oppression, both parts one and two, are really a reflection of all the community and civil rights work that I've been doing for the same amount of time, really – 25 years. And I wanted to try and mix my day job and my music side, so bringing those two sides of my life together, but because I'm not a spoken word person...well, I can write a good story. I can write a good essay, but my ability to write stories or write lyrics is very limited, hence why I was so keen to get Anthony and Jermain involved.
And Jermain is somebody I've worked with for probably about six, seven years now. He's also in the trenches of the black civil rights struggle. We worked together on a number of projects, but it was very interesting to then work with Jemaine in a purely artistic capacity. And I think the bringing together those two worlds really created the album. You know, I wanted to create a platform for black artists, black singers, and poets who I really admire. And it was a no-brainer to give Anthony a call for this second album because I know of his pedigree, and he's much more able to put ideas and thoughts on paper than I would be able to.
JERMAIN JACKMAN
There's something raw about The Architecture of Oppression, both part one and part two. There's a raw realness and authenticity in those songs that AI can't create. There's a lived experience that AI won't understand, and there's a feeling in those songs. And it's not just in the words from the spoken word artists, if it's not in the instruments that are being played. It's in the voice that you hear. You hear the pain, you hear the struggle, you hear the joy, you hear all of those emotions in all of those songs. And that's something that AI can't make up or create.
ANTHONY JOSEPH
I've known Jake for many, many, many years, probably since the nineties. Yeah, it's going all the way back. There's a lot of spillover between me and Jake in that way, both personal and music – which is the same thing, I think. So, I'm coming from that context. And in terms of the sort of political underpinnings, you know, you can't be a Black British artist and escape the sort of stuff that Jake is talking about because that's the kind of the mess that we work in. It's the mess that we sort of inherit and the mess that we try to push through to make art. We can't escape the sort of political ramifications of colonialism or racism.
They are the things that sort of underpin a lot of our lived experience, and I think Jake says it quite eloquently. I mean, he says he's not a writer, but he's definitely a thinker, and he knows what he's talking about. So, exactly as he said, "We're still dealing with these things in 2024." We shouldn't be, but I think records like the two volumes actually of this record are quite important because a lot of Black art, you know, there's hardly any sort of black artists are sort of directly addressing these issues in a very concentrated, focused way. You know, at the beginning you said, Mia, that it's not something you want to listen to before bed. And yeah, they're difficult records. I think the new one is a lot more accessible in a way than the first one was. The first one was...is a scary listen. You know, absolutely. It's not easy. It's not easy listening, but then the experience is not easy.
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 Lyle Hutchins. The Creative Process is produced by Mia Funk. Associate Text Editor was Nadia Lam. 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.
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.
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.
For our snap episode on the snap elections in the UK and France, Professor David Palumbo-Liuand Azeezah Kanji talk with eminent decolonial scholar activists, Françoise Vergès in France and Priyamvala Gopal in the UK. Following the defeat of right wing parties in both countries in the polls, we discuss what's changed with the elections, what hasn't changed, and what should movements, activists, and organizers be focusing on.
FRANÇOISE VERGÈS
I would say what we can celebrate is the incredible mobilization of the young people. They went everywhere, they knocked on the door, they mobilized. It was an incredible movement, so that they will go first to vote, but second that they will understand why it was important to vote. This was an incredible, incredible mobilization. So that was extraordinary because it showed real mobilization and an understanding that the National Rally was a real threat. We knew that if they came to power, the first people who would be targeted would be people of color, and that was absolutely clear.
PRIYAMVADA GOPAL
France is perhaps the more interesting election, but in terms of the UK, I think really one can only celebrate the smashing of conservative rule after 13, 14 years. That said, I think we are effectively celebrating a negative, that a government that has been shambolic now for at least six, seven years, much of it very harsh on the poor, on people of color, on migrants, that, that regime has come to an end.
I'm not that sure that I would celebrate what has come in its place. Now, I understand that we are in the so-called honeymoon period and that we should give the current dispensation time to prove itself. But by its own admission, it doesn't plan to change a whole lot in policy terms. It doesn't plan a radical break from what we've had. Cliché though it is, we really have just shifted from Team A to Team B of the neoliberal dispensation. It's not going to be hard to be more competent than the government of the last few years.
Priyamvada Gopal is Professor of Postcolonial Studies at the Faculty of English, University of Cambridge and Professorial Fellow, Churchill College. Her present interests are in the literatures, politics, and cultures of empire, colonialism and decolonisation. She has related interests in the novel, South Asian literature, and postcolonial cultures. Her published work includes Literary Radicalism in India: Gender, Nation and the Transition to Independence (Routledge, 2005), After Iraq: Reframing Postcolonial Studies (Special issue of New Formations co-edited with Neil Lazarus), The Indian English Novel: Nation, History and Narration (Oxford University Press, 2009) and, most recently, Insurgent Empire: Anticolonial Resistance and British Dissent (Verso, 2019) which was shortlisted for the British Academy Prize for Global Cultural Understanding and the Bread and Roses Prize. Her writing has also appeared in The Hindu, Outlook India, India Today, The Independent, Prospect Magazine, The New Statesman, The Guardian, Al-Jazeera English (AJE) and The Nation (USA). She is working on a new project called Decolonization: the Life and Times of an Idea which examines a range of thinkers, contexts and struggles across the Global South.
Françoise Vergès is a writer and decolonial antiracist feminist activist. A Reunionnese, she received an education that ran counter to the French hegemonic school from her anticolonial communist and feminist parents and the members of their organisations. She received her Ph.D in Political Theory from Berkeley University in 1995. She remained an activist during these years, collaborated on Isaac Julien’s film "Black Skin, White Masks » and published in feminist and theory journals. She has taught at Sussex University and Goldsmiths College and has been a visiting professor at different universities. She has never held a teaching position in France but created the Chair Global South(s) at Collège d’études mondiales where she held workshops on different topics (2014-2018). She was president of the National Committee for the History and Remembrance of Slavery (2009-2012), was a co-founder of Decolonize the Arts (2015-2020), the director of the scientific and cultural programme for a museum project in Reunion Island (2004-2010, a project killed by the State and the local conservatives). She is the convener and curator of L’Atelier a collective and collaborative seminar/public performance with activist and artists of color. Recent publications include: Programme de désordre absolu. Décoloniser le musée (2023), A Feminist Theory of Violence (2021), De la violence coloniale dans l’espace public (2021), The Wombs of Women. Capital, Race, Feminism (2021), A Decolonial Feminism (2020).
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Speaking Out of Place, which carries on the spirit of Palumbo-Liu’s book of the same title, argues against the notion that we are voiceless and powerless, and that we need politicians and pundits and experts to speak for us.
Judith Butler on Speaking Out of Place:
“In this work we see how every critical analysis of homelessness, displacement, internment, violence, and exploitation is countered by emergent and intensifying social movements that move beyond national borders to the ideal of a planetary alliance. As an activist and a scholar, Palumbo-Liu shows us what vigilance means in these times. This book takes us through the wretched landscape of our world to the ideals of social transformation, calling for a place, the planet, where collective passions can bring about a true and radical democracy.”
David Palumbo-Liu is the Louise Hewlett Nixon Professor and Professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford University. He has written widely on issues of literary criticism and theory, culture and society, race, ethnicity and indigeneity, human rights, and environmental justice. His books include The Deliverance of Others: Reading Literature in a Global Age, and Speaking Out of Place: Getting Our Political Voices Back. His writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Nation, Al Jazeera, Jacobin, Truthout, and other venues.
Twitter/X @palumboliuApple Podcasts · Spotify · Website · Instagram
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.
S. D. CHROSTOWSKA
Utopia and the Age of Survival was really an axiological intervention, a reminder of certain values that unite the left. In the book, I focus on two things: Utopia as a myth -- not as a political myth, but as a social myth, in the sense that it goes beyond politics -- and I also communicate my preference for utopias that are not state-based. I use the term “body utopias,” because they’re really anchored in the individual rather than the collective. They arise from individual bodily needs, desires, and how the two interact. From there, they also take into account our individual differences.
Utopias really began as and are anchored in myths; of the golden age, of paradise, and, more recently, of revolution. Utopia is a speculative myth of where society is headed. I think that left-wing thought and socialism -- within which we find anarchism -- can be united around this idea. On the other hand, of course, capitalism also uses utopia, and refers back to ulterior myths to put our critical capacity to sleep. In our capitalistic culture, utopia is used to sell a vision of a better body, a better society, and a better future for the “techno-utopian” crowd. The earlier myth is Thomas More’s city of Utopia; More is the originator of modern Utopianism as we know it, this idea of a utopian island reserved for just some. With my book, I try to take back the term of utopia, and to also rehabilitate a bit this idea of myth, which has been tarnished by 20th century ideologies. I try to do this in order to find the broadest possible common ground for left-wing thinking.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
We as a society have been talking about utopia for a long time, but what does it actually look like to put that into action?
CHROSTOWSKA
I like to think of utopianism as “effective social daydreaming” -- the expression “effective dreaming” comes from Ursula Le Guin's novel The Lathe of Heaven. My novella, The Eyelid, is where I first put some of these ideas into images -- ideas which later I developed in Utopia and the Age of Survival. I like the definition of effective social daydreaming because utopia is associated with consciously imagining societies, but I also want to bring daydreaming back to dreaming, because our night dreams are wish fulfillments. In The Eyelid, I explored night dreams and their utopian potential. But going back to effective social daydreaming -- utopian ideas are embodied in our actions. The 19th century French liberal Lamartine said utopias are often only premature truths. Another way of putting it is that what is imaginary tends to become real -- that’s a quote from the founder of Surrealism, André Breton. We daydream of a better world, and this could be a very vague daydream. The idea of utopianism that I'm putting forward in the book is not a detailed, orderly, rational model of the city utopia. It’s this free floating, desirous model of the body utopia, which is unfinished and imperfect. It's always in transformation. These dreams and daydreams that we have are guiding our actions, influencing our day-to-day behavior if we let them. Our imagination is always involved in creating reality. The opposition between the two, reality and the imaginary, is not a stark one; they're porous.
The Techno-utopian Dream of AI
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.
Surrealism as a Framework for Utopia
In recent years, I’ve turned to Surrealism. I found in it something like a mirror of aspects of my sensibility, and a history with which I remain in dialogue. Most people mistake Surrealism for an aesthetic movement, but Surrealism's emphasis is on the unconscious workings of thought. I find it a very important piece of the puzzle of what attitude we should take in order to live in a more “utopianizing” fashion, as I call it in my book. We can daydream of a better society, one that includes not just us or our family, but everyone, because a utopia worthy of the name today is universal, it's all-inclusive. So surrealism is not just an aesthetics, it's also an ethics, and that ethics is utopian. It's an impulse to refashion one’s life, to create a world, and to transform the world into a desirable one. We want the imagination to be empowered. I talk about Surrealism in the book, but it has since taken on even greater importance in my day to day life. I am actively involved in the French Surrealist Movement in an effort to keep it alive, and to remind the public that it is still very much an international movement staying true to its principles. I've co-curated a major exhibition of Surrealism, reflecting on the 100 years since the Manifesto of Surrealism, so I'm very much in this moment where I'm trying to explain to the public the value of this movement.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
Tell us a little bit about your upbringing in Poland at the end of the Cold War, and how that shaped your visions of utopia in the modern age.
CHROSTOWSKA
I grew up in Poland in the 80s and the very early 90s. I left when I was 19, and I also spent a couple of years in the States. As a child and adolescent, I had a taste of both worlds; I experienced the cultural contrast between the West and the Soviet bloc in Eastern Europe. I was in the US when Chernobyl happened, and the West left an indelible impression on me. I was first amazed by the sheer abundance of commodity culture; that constant stimulation of the desire for the bigger and the better contributed in more ways than I can even name to the education of my sensibility. There also was the freedom of expression that, even though I was very young, I felt to be different from what I was used to in Poland. This was a brief period [of my life], but it was very important. And then, in 1989, we had the first parliamentary elections in Poland, and we were the first country to do so in the Eastern Bloc. It was the end of the so-called communist era, and my family rejoiced because they supported the Solidarity movement and they distributed samizdat literature. My aunt was a librarian, and she would show me this clandestine literature. I understood the fear of surveillance, the regime of fear that the adults around me lived through, and the breath of fresh air when the elections happened and the transition began. And in 1990, my father took me to Berlin, and this was as the Wall was coming down, demolished with bulldozers and hammers and pickaxes by ordinary people in the street. I thought this was very symbolic. Witnessing these two very rapid transitions made me think that change, even in apparently prohibitive circumstances, remained a real possibility. Maybe that's what made me a natural candidate for utopian thinking, for embracing utopian thought.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
How do you reconcile visions of utopia with living in harmony with our planet, especially considering that the concept of utopia implies a man-made design or a return to an original equilibrium with a pristine nature that may no longer exist?
CHROSTOWSKA
I think that we should not be under any illusion that we can return to some pristine Earth. We have to do the best we can with the Earth that we have inherited for our generation and for those of our children, but we should not, therefore, say, well, it's all lost. Species are becoming extinct as never before. We should not become pessimists because there is no other alternative, because we've been robbed of this idea of pristine nature.
I think nature has not been pristine. People speak about the Anthropocene. I don't quite like this term, but the idea that humans have been transforming nature and have been altering it, adulterating it, something to put into perspective this nostalgia for pristine nature. And utopianism actually goes hand in hand with nostalgia, in the sense that nostalgic longings have long fed into utopian imaginaries, right? I mentioned the myth of the Golden Age. This was something that used to exist, the Golden Age, right? Or paradise, an idea of nature, again, pure nature in harmony with human beings. These nostalgic imaginaries that feed into and can reactivate utopian thinking in our day. We should by no means let go of an idea of pristine nature. And I also don't think – just to return to this idea of species extinction – I don't think that the de-extinction efforts are particularly utopian, even though they may seem this way. How do we compensate for the material loss of biodiversity? I think no amount of technological ingenuity will actually fulfill this desire for a return to the pristine nature that we have lost.
Reflections for the Next Generation
I'd like young people not to limit their world to content they can find on the internet. I think that's a real danger. Many of my students say, “well, I haven't thought about this. I haven't read this because I didn't find it online for free.” I want them to remember that not all knowledge is digitized, that much remains elusive to the nets of the internet even in its effort to make knowledge accessible on one platform, to create this kind of enormous encyclopedia. And in this quest, we also reduce the past to the present. The past is more virtually present in our lives than for any other generation, because it's available online in the form of textual and audiovisual archives. This proximity actually affects the past's pastness. The appearance of distance is lost in the digital reproduction, whether it's paintings, or archival documents, or photographs. I think it's erroneous to think that everything that is extant from the past is at our fingertips and that we don't have to go out and look for it. So what I would like to pass on is curiosity; curiosity about the past shouldn't stop at the digital. It's tempting to think that all the answers are already there online because it's so vast, this web we are spinning, but that’s not the case.
This interview was conducted by Mia Funk and Devon Mullins with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producers on this episode were Sophie Garnier and Devon Mullins. The Creative Process is produced by Mia Funk. Associate Text Editor was Sofia Reecer. Additional production support by Sophie GarnierMia 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.
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.
S. D. CHROSTOWSKA
Utopia and the Age of Survival was really an axiological intervention, a reminder of certain values that unite the left. In the book, I focus on two things: Utopia as a myth -- not as a political myth, but as a social myth, in the sense that it goes beyond politics -- and I also communicate my preference for utopias that are not state-based. I use the term “body utopias,” because they’re really anchored in the individual rather than the collective. They arise from individual bodily needs, desires, and how the two interact. From there, they also take into account our individual differences.
Utopias really began as and are anchored in myths; of the golden age, of paradise, and, more recently, of revolution. Utopia is a speculative myth of where society is headed. I think that left-wing thought and socialism -- within which we find anarchism -- can be united around this idea. On the other hand, of course, capitalism also uses utopia, and refers back to ulterior myths to put our critical capacity to sleep. In our capitalistic culture, utopia is used to sell a vision of a better body, a better society, and a better future for the “techno-utopian” crowd. The earlier myth is Thomas More’s city of Utopia; More is the originator of modern Utopianism as we know it, this idea of a utopian island reserved for just some. With my book, I try to take back the term of utopia, and to also rehabilitate a bit this idea of myth, which has been tarnished by 20th century ideologies. I try to do this in order to find the broadest possible common ground for left-wing thinking.
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We as a society have been talking about utopia for a long time, but what does it actually look like to put that into action?
CHROSTOWSKA
I like to think of utopianism as “effective social daydreaming” -- the expression “effective dreaming” comes from Ursula Le Guin's novel The Lathe of Heaven. My novella, The Eyelid, is where I first put some of these ideas into images -- ideas which later I developed in Utopia and the Age of Survival. I like the definition of effective social daydreaming because utopia is associated with consciously imagining societies, but I also want to bring daydreaming back to dreaming, because our night dreams are wish fulfillments. In The Eyelid, I explored night dreams and their utopian potential. But going back to effective social daydreaming -- utopian ideas are embodied in our actions. The 19th century French liberal Lamartine said utopias are often only premature truths. Another way of putting it is that what is imaginary tends to become real -- that’s a quote from the founder of Surrealism, André Breton. We daydream of a better world, and this could be a very vague daydream. The idea of utopianism that I'm putting forward in the book is not a detailed, orderly, rational model of the city utopia. It’s this free floating, desirous model of the body utopia, which is unfinished and imperfect. It's always in transformation. These dreams and daydreams that we have are guiding our actions, influencing our day-to-day behavior if we let them. Our imagination is always involved in creating reality. The opposition between the two, reality and the imaginary, is not a stark one; they're porous.
The Techno-utopian Dream of AI
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.
Surrealism as a Framework for Utopia
In recent years, I’ve turned to Surrealism. I found in it something like a mirror of aspects of my sensibility, and a history with which I remain in dialogue. Most people mistake Surrealism for an aesthetic movement, but Surrealism's emphasis is on the unconscious workings of thought. I find it a very important piece of the puzzle of what attitude we should take in order to live in a more “utopianizing” fashion, as I call it in my book. We can daydream of a better society, one that includes not just us or our family, but everyone, because a utopia worthy of the name today is universal, it's all-inclusive. So surrealism is not just an aesthetics, it's also an ethics, and that ethics is utopian. It's an impulse to refashion one’s life, to create a world, and to transform the world into a desirable one. We want the imagination to be empowered. I talk about Surrealism in the book, but it has since taken on even greater importance in my day to day life. I am actively involved in the French Surrealist Movement in an effort to keep it alive, and to remind the public that it is still very much an international movement staying true to its principles. I've co-curated a major exhibition of Surrealism, reflecting on the 100 years since the Manifesto of Surrealism, so I'm very much in this moment where I'm trying to explain to the public the value of this movement.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
Tell us a little bit about your upbringing in Poland at the end of the Cold War, and how that shaped your visions of utopia in the modern age.
CHROSTOWSKA
I grew up in Poland in the 80s and the very early 90s. I left when I was 19, and I also spent a couple of years in the States. As a child and adolescent, I had a taste of both worlds; I experienced the cultural contrast between the West and the Soviet bloc in Eastern Europe. I was in the US when Chernobyl happened, and the West left an indelible impression on me. I was first amazed by the sheer abundance of commodity culture; that constant stimulation of the desire for the bigger and the better contributed in more ways than I can even name to the education of my sensibility. There also was the freedom of expression that, even though I was very young, I felt to be different from what I was used to in Poland. This was a brief period [of my life], but it was very important. And then, in 1989, we had the first parliamentary elections in Poland, and we were the first country to do so in the Eastern Bloc. It was the end of the so-called communist era, and my family rejoiced because they supported the Solidarity movement and they distributed samizdat literature. My aunt was a librarian, and she would show me this clandestine literature. I understood the fear of surveillance, the regime of fear that the adults around me lived through, and the breath of fresh air when the elections happened and the transition began. And in 1990, my father took me to Berlin, and this was as the Wall was coming down, demolished with bulldozers and hammers and pickaxes by ordinary people in the street. I thought this was very symbolic. Witnessing these two very rapid transitions made me think that change, even in apparently prohibitive circumstances, remained a real possibility. Maybe that's what made me a natural candidate for utopian thinking, for embracing utopian thought.
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How do you reconcile visions of utopia with living in harmony with our planet, especially considering that the concept of utopia implies a man-made design or a return to an original equilibrium with a pristine nature that may no longer exist?
CHROSTOWSKA
I think that we should not be under any illusion that we can return to some pristine Earth. We have to do the best we can with the Earth that we have inherited for our generation and for those of our children, but we should not, therefore, say, well, it's all lost. Species are becoming extinct as never before. We should not become pessimists because there is no other alternative, because we've been robbed of this idea of pristine nature.
I think nature has not been pristine. People speak about the Anthropocene. I don't quite like this term, but the idea that humans have been transforming nature and have been altering it, adulterating it, something to put into perspective this nostalgia for pristine nature. And utopianism actually goes hand in hand with nostalgia, in the sense that nostalgic longings have long fed into utopian imaginaries, right? I mentioned the myth of the Golden Age. This was something that used to exist, the Golden Age, right? Or paradise, an idea of nature, again, pure nature in harmony with human beings. These nostalgic imaginaries that feed into and can reactivate utopian thinking in our day. We should by no means let go of an idea of pristine nature. And I also don't think – just to return to this idea of species extinction – I don't think that the de-extinction efforts are particularly utopian, even though they may seem this way. How do we compensate for the material loss of biodiversity? I think no amount of technological ingenuity will actually fulfill this desire for a return to the pristine nature that we have lost.
Reflections for the Next Generation
I'd like young people not to limit their world to content they can find on the internet. I think that's a real danger. Many of my students say, “well, I haven't thought about this. I haven't read this because I didn't find it online for free.” I want them to remember that not all knowledge is digitized, that much remains elusive to the nets of the internet even in its effort to make knowledge accessible on one platform, to create this kind of enormous encyclopedia. And in this quest, we also reduce the past to the present. The past is more virtually present in our lives than for any other generation, because it's available online in the form of textual and audiovisual archives. This proximity actually affects the past's pastness. The appearance of distance is lost in the digital reproduction, whether it's paintings, or archival documents, or photographs. I think it's erroneous to think that everything that is extant from the past is at our fingertips and that we don't have to go out and look for it. So what I would like to pass on is curiosity; curiosity about the past shouldn't stop at the digital. It's tempting to think that all the answers are already there online because it's so vast, this web we are spinning, but that’s not the case.
This interview was conducted by Mia Funk and Devon Mullins with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producers on this episode were Sophie Garnier and Devon Mullins. The Creative Process is produced by Mia Funk. Associate Text Editor was Sofia Reecer. Additional production support by Sophie GarnierMia 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.
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.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
Your book Spinning Out is a beautiful exploration and elucidation of the links between the climate crisis, mental health and social change. Reading your book is an uplifting experience and one I'd recommend to anyone interested in finding agency. As a young, leading climate change activist, you emerged from, as you describe in your book, a month long coma with some powerful realizations about the way climate chaos fuels mental health problems and why our information culture isn't adequately set up to support people in the distress which you write about so eloquently in your book. Can you take us back to that day in 2019 when you were consumed by anxiety and despair and things became too much to bear?
CHARLIE HERTZOG YOUNG
I've been a climate activist since I was about 12 years old. It began with a deep passion for wildlife. I started taking up litter and telling off my schoolmates, eventually I set up a green council when I was about 13 or 14. As I learned more and more about the climate crisis and how sprawling and interconnected it was, not just with nature, but with the oppression that exists within human society, I started getting more involved and impassioned, getting involved in protests, marches. When I was about 15 years old, I helped shut down an airport for a night. I eventually started going to the UN climate talks. I went to Davos and it started to become my everything. I felt like I was doing something meaningful about the crisis, but also felt a sense of deep despair and loss, both from the perspective of the impending collapse of the biosphere and also a deep dislocation from the dominant culture and the consensus reality. I felt like no one else was feeling the sense of urgency and emergency that I felt. I started to get incredibly anxious. In 2019, when I was 27, I jumped off a six storey building. My memory has blacked it out, but I spent a month in a coma and woke up having lost both of my legs. The five years since have been one of not just physical and mental recovery, but also trying to untangle the messy web of causality as to how and why it was that I lost my mind in the way I did. I try to find some of the gifts in that madness, what it was pointing towards in terms of the unbalance of the ecosphere and how human civilization has begun to operate completely out of step with the ecosphere.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
Yes, it’s really important to hear those ways that you connect. I wanted to go back a little bit too, because there are gifts that come with a heightened sense of awareness of impending danger that is almost primal. As you say, madness can be visionary. And when you write about those visions, of being stalked by a wolf, it’s a foreboding, almost like a warning of impending danger. As you know, many Indigenous societies have dream theories and interpretations that reveal a philosophical order about the nature of the universe, and visions within many cultures are taken very seriously. Visions are seen as actually real. There's a reason for them. And, it made me reflect a lot about, if you pull back, to that time you saw a wild wolf stalking you in the street. This is a kind of metaphor for how we're treating the ecosphere, and the rest of the creatures that we share this planet with. It really calls into question who is more mad. Is it the kind of collective blindness that refuses to see the way we are behaving towards rest of the creatures we share the world with and pretending that our disrespect for the very planet that provides us with food, water, and shelter can go on being abused and sucked dry. Like the 300 million years it took for fossil fuels to form in the Earth has been depleted by humans in under 200 years.
HERTZOG YOUNG
Yeah, I mean there's that old saying, “blessed are the cracked for they shall let in the light.” For a lot of people like myself, I think it's true that losing your mind can be a proportionate response to the climate crisis. Those of us with mental health issues are often branded as being in our own world. But paradoxically, being in our own world can actually be a result of being more connected to the outside world rather than less. And in the context of climate change, it may be fairer to describe people who fail to develop psychological symptoms as being in their own separate anthropocentric world, inattentive to the experiences of the billions of other human and nonhuman beings on the planet, unaffected by looming existential catastrophe. There are layers and layers of insulation made up of civilizational narratives that dislocate many people from climate chaos and those whose psyches buckle upon contact with this reality are the ones deemed mad. But this pathologizing is a defense mechanism employed by the civilized or by the dominant culture, which ends up subjugating those of us whose minds stray from accepted norms. There are lots of studies that show that certain forms of psychosis are actually a form of meaning-making for communities that feel like they have no sense of purpose. We've had generations and generations of trauma visited upon the human species by picking apart communities and our intimate relationships with nature. Especially since the 80s, picking apart our inability to even consider ourselves as part of society in a meaningful sense. That kind of pulling apart means that we're locked in quite individual and atomized spaces, where when something as massive as climate change starts to happen, people feel both responsible for it, and completely unable to do anything about it. That's not me saying that being depressed is the only objective kind of indicator for reality, but it's quite easy for the human species to underestimate or discount quite how significantly dangerous our situation is and people with depression are more able to see that with eyes unclouded by biases.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
We do deny reality and the climate emergency, justifying our bad behavior by telling ourselves, “Oh, we survived this and that, so we'll survive this, too.” Of course, with climate change, it's completely non-linear. It goes up to a certain point and then, out of nowhere, a year's worth of rain falls in a day bringing flooding to your front door. Wildfires break out suddenly. These extreme climate events are a wake-up call, but it's often too late to do anything if you lose your home. So it’s really about rethinking capitalism and our extractivist relationship to the planet.
I spend a long time, as you do, I know, talking with students and teachers and unlike in the past where we'd talk about career paths or being anxious about exams and job choices or the future of work, students today are concerned about this underlying fear of the future because they can see that it's just overshadowing everything. The storms and the heat waves and the flooding and all these things you've described. I think that all young people would benefit from reading your book because you have been at the front lines since your early teens. But how do you feel we can overcome the apathy and inaction that is going on today?
HERTZOG YOUNG
I think it's very easy for this stuff to be paralyzing. I used to be in a space where I felt that as soon as I wasn't devastatingly ill, I had to hurl myself back at the problem of climate change or something to do with new economics or a new kind of politics. I would end up very quickly burning out. While I do think that it's deeply important for us to engage with these issues, it's really important that we engage with them in a way that isn't trying to approach them with an internal sense of emergency. I often get letters from people who have read my book or one of my articles saying, thank you for naming not just the phenomenon of eco anxiety, but some of the interiority of it, and saying that they feel seen. It's quite upsetting that it's not something people tend to feel safe just having as a normal topic of conversation. People are worried that they'll bring down the mood and so that puts us in these silos and that's a real problem. Only by opening up can we start to build a deeper sense of connection and potentially collective action. Another problem is that eco anxiety is often considered to be a predominantly Global North issue. In researching my book and speaking to people in the Global South, I did a lot of my work in Pakistan looking at the impacts of the floods. The WHO estimated that one in five people affected by things like massive flooding, hurricanes, heat waves, or droughts, are likely to experience some kind of severe mental health impact. Speaking to doctors in Pakistan, that number is often far higher. It's just not seen as a mental health issue because it's often interpreted as inevitable suffering. It's an extension of the kind of othering that is already visited upon the Global South that people's psychological distress doesn't count, because obviously people will be having a hard time if they've experienced a natural disaster. So organizations like the WHO fly in to deliver medication and then helicopter out again. And local doctors say it's no solution at all. You've got to be working with communities, asking people what their needs are, what their pillars of care were prior to a natural disaster, and how to try and restore those again.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
Yeah. It’s terrible the way that is. Some people are expected to just take that burden of suffering like it's an act of God, when it's an act of our abuse of this planet. I've had conversations with people like Bertrand Piccard who has said we have to put it aside. He's not denying the eco anxiety, but says you have to work within the capitalist systems to give people the solutions so that then they don't have that despair too. So I think we have to not deny that it's there, but then also provide those solutions. And I hope that all these solutions come up at the speed they need to take place.
HERTZOG YOUNG
One of the most promising and surprisingly effective on the first try solutions that I came across while looking at this stuff was from a doctor Dr. Asma Humayun who works in Pakistan. Prior to the flooding, she was already working on a massive nested mental health and psychosocial support program. What they were doing was, within a month, they managed to train a thousand people in psychological first aid in the community. People who were not just doctors and nurses, but also teachers, social workers, people who had high contact with people in the community. They trained people to look out for psychological distress, learn how to respond with mental health first aid, and also look after their own mental health. That network of a thousand people then linked in through an app that was very low bandwidth so it could work even when there wasn't good internet so they could link in with people who were slightly more trained to provide people with the care that they needed. So an area of 1 million people that previously only had one psychiatrist was fully networked with a nested system where people were not only able to get support, but also able to build their own networks of support and new practices of support. That has now been taken on by the Pakistani government and is potentially going to be mapped out across the nation as some kind of iterative feedback response for communities to build on that already existing resilience and that already existing knowledge, rather than just relying on these very brittle old systems of having one specialized person with a massive, massive population of people who have really high needs and usually never even go to a psychiatrist because they wouldn't think that they get help or that their condition is something that could be alleviated. One of the really surprising outputs is that 50 percent of people who are referred to services and use them came back, which is an astronomically high proportion in this field. So it's one example of how you can work within a capitalist system, but also start to bake in community resilience and empower communities to do things together.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
I think that that's so important to hear. Often in these moments of crisis, we’re lucky to be around this community of friends, but sometimes they don't occur when we're close to those that we trust and we feel safe with. Maybe the racing thoughts come at an unexpected moment. What are some of those ways that you can pull back from that, so you can be gentle on your mind and not focus on what lies ahead?
HERTZOG YOUNG
There's a whole section in my book about tips and advice. Not just of mine, but of many people who are similar to me and have been doing this stuff for a long time. One of the ways that I try to maintain a feeling of safety while also not collapsing into a state of passivity, and it's taken a very long time for me to learn this, but it’s being forgiving with myself. One of the people who I write about a lot in the book is Jennifer Uchandu, a Nigerian climate activist and mental health activist who sets up an organization called The Eco-Anxiety in Africa Project. She talks about needing to remind herself constantly. Her test is not whether she's doing enough, it's whether she's doing her best. And doing her best doesn't mean doing as much as she possibly can, it means having the right balance of self care and action. Recently I've been really struggling with insomnia because I've still got quite bad nerve pain from my surgeries. And it sounds so simple and I used to get annoyed at these things, but just breathing. You know, deep breathing and kind of breathing into my back. Spending time in nature is also helpful. It can be quite hard for me because my mobility isn't always great on my prosthetics or if I'm in a wheelchair, but I swim a lot. And I draw a lot. One of the things that's been really amazing is that over the last few years, me and my friends have gotten into the habit of calling one another as first points of contact, not just in crisis, but if we've had a tricky day.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
I don't believe in the silver bullet of AI or technology that will solve all these problems, but I have mixed feelings and perhaps you do too. I just wonder about your reflections on AI in terms of helping us balance the energy grid or solve the climate crisis. We also know that it consumes a lot of energy, so how do we navigate those risks and potential benefits?
HERTZOG YOUNG
I think that certain kinds of AI can be really helpful for, as you say, balancing the grid or by relieving humans of certain kinds of manual repetitive labor arduous labor, so long as that actually transfers into people having more time. The economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that we've had enough of a rise in productivity that we could be working 15 hour weeks and have the same amount as people had decades ago. However, because of the structure of the economic system, that productivity rise has not transferred into more free time. I'm slightly scared about utopian visions about AI freeing humans from work, because I don't think we have enough of a social and political infrastructure to actually reap most of the gains if that were to happen. I think deeper down, I'm concerned because we call it “artificial intelligence,” but we don't even know what organic intelligence is. We have a very limited and very brittle understanding of what intelligence is, what the mind is, and we see this first hand over and over again in medical circles. There's a very circuit-based treatment of the human mind, and mental health issues are often treated as a glitch. When we've got a deeply flawed and frankly quite infantile understanding of what intelligence is, we're going to build something that is not in any way linked in healthfully with the ecosystem. I do think that there are some useful, utilitarian, appropriate uses of it, but they should be really kept limited. I'm worried that AI will serve those interests that have already subjugated and dominated because of the kinds of intelligence it chooses to put central to its way of operating. There's also a certain amount of arrogance implicit in the way that AI is talked about, that it is somehow, not just superior to any single human mind, but it's come from a superior kind of human mind. I think it's the same kind of human mind that has got us into the problems that we've already experienced. And the same kind of thinking is unlikely to be able to solve those issues.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
Exactly. Let's not duplicate our mistakes through another hyper-industrialized system. And just so in closing, on a optimistic note, as you think about the future, the future of education, the importance of the arts, what would you like young people to know, preserve, and remember?
HERTZOG YOUNG
I think I'll answer it from a slightly different tack, which is the thing that was most important to me as a young person in learning about these issues, but also feeling a modicum of safety and direction, helping me really pursue the things I was curious about, and have a more intimate relationship with my values. The thing that was important to me was having mentors. And I would really recommend that young people take a bit of a risk and ask people they want to learn from whether they can spend time with them and listen to their stories to learn from their experiences. I think one of the most promising things is rebuilding intergenerational relationships. This fight is one that has been going on for generations upon generations. It is a fight that is as old as human civilization. And so one of the main things I'd like young people to know is that they don't have to reinvent the wheel. They can reach out to those that they want to emulate and trust those relationships.
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 Daniela Cordovez Flores. 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).
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.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
Your book Spinning Out is a beautiful exploration and elucidation of the links between the climate crisis, mental health and social change. Reading your book is an uplifting experience and one I'd recommend to anyone interested in finding agency. As a young, leading climate change activist, you emerged from, as you describe in your book, a month long coma with some powerful realizations about the way climate chaos fuels mental health problems and why our information culture isn't adequately set up to support people in the distress which you write about so eloquently in your book. Can you take us back to that day in 2019 when you were consumed by anxiety and despair and things became too much to bear?
CHARLIE HERTZOG YOUNG
I've been a climate activist since I was about 12 years old. It began with a deep passion for wildlife. I started taking up litter and telling off my schoolmates, eventually I set up a green council when I was about 13 or 14. As I learned more and more about the climate crisis and how sprawling and interconnected it was, not just with nature, but with the oppression that exists within human society, I started getting more involved and impassioned, getting involved in protests, marches. When I was about 15 years old, I helped shut down an airport for a night. I eventually started going to the UN climate talks. I went to Davos and it started to become my everything. I felt like I was doing something meaningful about the crisis, but also felt a sense of deep despair and loss, both from the perspective of the impending collapse of the biosphere and also a deep dislocation from the dominant culture and the consensus reality. I felt like no one else was feeling the sense of urgency and emergency that I felt. I started to get incredibly anxious. In 2019, when I was 27, I jumped off a six storey building. My memory has blacked it out, but I spent a month in a coma and woke up having lost both of my legs. The five years since have been one of not just physical and mental recovery, but also trying to untangle the messy web of causality as to how and why it was that I lost my mind in the way I did. I try to find some of the gifts in that madness, what it was pointing towards in terms of the unbalance of the ecosphere and how human civilization has begun to operate completely out of step with the ecosphere.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
Yes, it’s really important to hear those ways that you connect. I wanted to go back a little bit too, because there are gifts that come with a heightened sense of awareness of impending danger that is almost primal. As you say, madness can be visionary. And when you write about those visions, of being stalked by a wolf, it’s a foreboding, almost like a warning of impending danger. As you know, many Indigenous societies have dream theories and interpretations that reveal a philosophical order about the nature of the universe, and visions within many cultures are taken very seriously. Visions are seen as actually real. There's a reason for them. And, it made me reflect a lot about, if you pull back, to that time you saw a wild wolf stalking you in the street. This is a kind of metaphor for how we're treating the ecosphere, and the rest of the creatures that we share this planet with. It really calls into question who is more mad. Is it the kind of collective blindness that refuses to see the way we are behaving towards rest of the creatures we share the world with and pretending that our disrespect for the very planet that provides us with food, water, and shelter can go on being abused and sucked dry. Like the 300 million years it took for fossil fuels to form in the Earth has been depleted by humans in under 200 years.
HERTZOG YOUNG
Yeah, I mean there's that old saying, “blessed are the cracked for they shall let in the light.” For a lot of people like myself, I think it's true that losing your mind can be a proportionate response to the climate crisis. Those of us with mental health issues are often branded as being in our own world. But paradoxically, being in our own world can actually be a result of being more connected to the outside world rather than less. And in the context of climate change, it may be fairer to describe people who fail to develop psychological symptoms as being in their own separate anthropocentric world, inattentive to the experiences of the billions of other human and nonhuman beings on the planet, unaffected by looming existential catastrophe. There are layers and layers of insulation made up of civilizational narratives that dislocate many people from climate chaos and those whose psyches buckle upon contact with this reality are the ones deemed mad. But this pathologizing is a defense mechanism employed by the civilized or by the dominant culture, which ends up subjugating those of us whose minds stray from accepted norms. There are lots of studies that show that certain forms of psychosis are actually a form of meaning-making for communities that feel like they have no sense of purpose. We've had generations and generations of trauma visited upon the human species by picking apart communities and our intimate relationships with nature. Especially since the 80s, picking apart our inability to even consider ourselves as part of society in a meaningful sense. That kind of pulling apart means that we're locked in quite individual and atomized spaces, where when something as massive as climate change starts to happen, people feel both responsible for it, and completely unable to do anything about it. That's not me saying that being depressed is the only objective kind of indicator for reality, but it's quite easy for the human species to underestimate or discount quite how significantly dangerous our situation is and people with depression are more able to see that with eyes unclouded by biases.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
We do deny reality and the climate emergency, justifying our bad behavior by telling ourselves, “Oh, we survived this and that, so we'll survive this, too.” Of course, with climate change, it's completely non-linear. It goes up to a certain point and then, out of nowhere, a year's worth of rain falls in a day bringing flooding to your front door. Wildfires break out suddenly. These extreme climate events are a wake-up call, but it's often too late to do anything if you lose your home. So it’s really about rethinking capitalism and our extractivist relationship to the planet.
I spend a long time, as you do, I know, talking with students and teachers and unlike in the past where we'd talk about career paths or being anxious about exams and job choices or the future of work, students today are concerned about this underlying fear of the future because they can see that it's just overshadowing everything. The storms and the heat waves and the flooding and all these things you've described. I think that all young people would benefit from reading your book because you have been at the front lines since your early teens. But how do you feel we can overcome the apathy and inaction that is going on today?
HERTZOG YOUNG
I think it's very easy for this stuff to be paralyzing. I used to be in a space where I felt that as soon as I wasn't devastatingly ill, I had to hurl myself back at the problem of climate change or something to do with new economics or a new kind of politics. I would end up very quickly burning out. While I do think that it's deeply important for us to engage with these issues, it's really important that we engage with them in a way that isn't trying to approach them with an internal sense of emergency. I often get letters from people who have read my book or one of my articles saying, thank you for naming not just the phenomenon of eco anxiety, but some of the interiority of it, and saying that they feel seen. It's quite upsetting that it's not something people tend to feel safe just having as a normal topic of conversation. People are worried that they'll bring down the mood and so that puts us in these silos and that's a real problem. Only by opening up can we start to build a deeper sense of connection and potentially collective action. Another problem is that eco anxiety is often considered to be a predominantly Global North issue. In researching my book and speaking to people in the Global South, I did a lot of my work in Pakistan looking at the impacts of the floods. The WHO estimated that one in five people affected by things like massive flooding, hurricanes, heat waves, or droughts, are likely to experience some kind of severe mental health impact. Speaking to doctors in Pakistan, that number is often far higher. It's just not seen as a mental health issue because it's often interpreted as inevitable suffering. It's an extension of the kind of othering that is already visited upon the Global South that people's psychological distress doesn't count, because obviously people will be having a hard time if they've experienced a natural disaster. So organizations like the WHO fly in to deliver medication and then helicopter out again. And local doctors say it's no solution at all. You've got to be working with communities, asking people what their needs are, what their pillars of care were prior to a natural disaster, and how to try and restore those again.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
Yeah. It’s terrible the way that is. Some people are expected to just take that burden of suffering like it's an act of God, when it's an act of our abuse of this planet. I've had conversations with people like Bertrand Piccard who has said we have to put it aside. He's not denying the eco anxiety, but says you have to work within the capitalist systems to give people the solutions so that then they don't have that despair too. So I think we have to not deny that it's there, but then also provide those solutions. And I hope that all these solutions come up at the speed they need to take place.
HERTZOG YOUNG
One of the most promising and surprisingly effective on the first try solutions that I came across while looking at this stuff was from a doctor Dr. Asma Humayun who works in Pakistan. Prior to the flooding, she was already working on a massive nested mental health and psychosocial support program. What they were doing was, within a month, they managed to train a thousand people in psychological first aid in the community. People who were not just doctors and nurses, but also teachers, social workers, people who had high contact with people in the community. They trained people to look out for psychological distress, learn how to respond with mental health first aid, and also look after their own mental health. That network of a thousand people then linked in through an app that was very low bandwidth so it could work even when there wasn't good internet so they could link in with people who were slightly more trained to provide people with the care that they needed. So an area of 1 million people that previously only had one psychiatrist was fully networked with a nested system where people were not only able to get support, but also able to build their own networks of support and new practices of support. That has now been taken on by the Pakistani government and is potentially going to be mapped out across the nation as some kind of iterative feedback response for communities to build on that already existing resilience and that already existing knowledge, rather than just relying on these very brittle old systems of having one specialized person with a massive, massive population of people who have really high needs and usually never even go to a psychiatrist because they wouldn't think that they get help or that their condition is something that could be alleviated. One of the really surprising outputs is that 50 percent of people who are referred to services and use them came back, which is an astronomically high proportion in this field. So it's one example of how you can work within a capitalist system, but also start to bake in community resilience and empower communities to do things together.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
I think that that's so important to hear. Often in these moments of crisis, we’re lucky to be around this community of friends, but sometimes they don't occur when we're close to those that we trust and we feel safe with. Maybe the racing thoughts come at an unexpected moment. What are some of those ways that you can pull back from that, so you can be gentle on your mind and not focus on what lies ahead?
HERTZOG YOUNG
There's a whole section in my book about tips and advice. Not just of mine, but of many people who are similar to me and have been doing this stuff for a long time. One of the ways that I try to maintain a feeling of safety while also not collapsing into a state of passivity, and it's taken a very long time for me to learn this, but it’s being forgiving with myself. One of the people who I write about a lot in the book is Jennifer Uchandu, a Nigerian climate activist and mental health activist who sets up an organization called The Eco-Anxiety in Africa Project. She talks about needing to remind herself constantly. Her test is not whether she's doing enough, it's whether she's doing her best. And doing her best doesn't mean doing as much as she possibly can, it means having the right balance of self care and action. Recently I've been really struggling with insomnia because I've still got quite bad nerve pain from my surgeries. And it sounds so simple and I used to get annoyed at these things, but just breathing. You know, deep breathing and kind of breathing into my back. Spending time in nature is also helpful. It can be quite hard for me because my mobility isn't always great on my prosthetics or if I'm in a wheelchair, but I swim a lot. And I draw a lot. One of the things that's been really amazing is that over the last few years, me and my friends have gotten into the habit of calling one another as first points of contact, not just in crisis, but if we've had a tricky day.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
I don't believe in the silver bullet of AI or technology that will solve all these problems, but I have mixed feelings and perhaps you do too. I just wonder about your reflections on AI in terms of helping us balance the energy grid or solve the climate crisis. We also know that it consumes a lot of energy, so how do we navigate those risks and potential benefits?
HERTZOG YOUNG
I think that certain kinds of AI can be really helpful for, as you say, balancing the grid or by relieving humans of certain kinds of manual repetitive labor arduous labor, so long as that actually transfers into people having more time. The economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that we've had enough of a rise in productivity that we could be working 15 hour weeks and have the same amount as people had decades ago. However, because of the structure of the economic system, that productivity rise has not transferred into more free time. I'm slightly scared about utopian visions about AI freeing humans from work, because I don't think we have enough of a social and political infrastructure to actually reap most of the gains if that were to happen. I think deeper down, I'm concerned because we call it “artificial intelligence,” but we don't even know what organic intelligence is. We have a very limited and very brittle understanding of what intelligence is, what the mind is, and we see this first hand over and over again in medical circles. There's a very circuit-based treatment of the human mind, and mental health issues are often treated as a glitch. When we've got a deeply flawed and frankly quite infantile understanding of what intelligence is, we're going to build something that is not in any way linked in healthfully with the ecosystem. I do think that there are some useful, utilitarian, appropriate uses of it, but they should be really kept limited. I'm worried that AI will serve those interests that have already subjugated and dominated because of the kinds of intelligence it chooses to put central to its way of operating. There's also a certain amount of arrogance implicit in the way that AI is talked about, that it is somehow, not just superior to any single human mind, but it's come from a superior kind of human mind. I think it's the same kind of human mind that has got us into the problems that we've already experienced. And the same kind of thinking is unlikely to be able to solve those issues.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
Exactly. Let's not duplicate our mistakes through another hyper-industrialized system. And just so in closing, on a optimistic note, as you think about the future, the future of education, the importance of the arts, what would you like young people to know, preserve, and remember?
HERTZOG YOUNG
I think I'll answer it from a slightly different tack, which is the thing that was most important to me as a young person in learning about these issues, but also feeling a modicum of safety and direction, helping me really pursue the things I was curious about, and have a more intimate relationship with my values. The thing that was important to me was having mentors. And I would really recommend that young people take a bit of a risk and ask people they want to learn from whether they can spend time with them and listen to their stories to learn from their experiences. I think one of the most promising things is rebuilding intergenerational relationships. This fight is one that has been going on for generations upon generations. It is a fight that is as old as human civilization. And so one of the main things I'd like young people to know is that they don't have to reinvent the wheel. They can reach out to those that they want to emulate and trust those relationships.
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 Daniela Cordovez Flores. 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).
How can we show more kindness, respect, and love to the animals we share this planet with? What lessons can we learn from non-human animals about living in greater harmony with nature?
Ingrid Newkirk is the Founder and President of PETA, actively leading the organization and advocating for animal rights. PETA is the largest animal rights organization in the world with more than 9 million members and supporters globally. Under her leadership, PETA has achieved significant victories, such as ending car-crash tests on animals, pushing major fashion brands to go fur-free, influencing Ringling Bros. to become an animal-free circus, and helping pass a law that allows the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to approve new medications without conducting cruel tests on animals. Ingrid has written 14 books and has been featured in major publications like The New Yorker and The Guardian, and was the subject of HBO's documentary I Am an Animal and was named one of Forbes’ “100 Most Powerful Women.” She joined One Planet Podcast to reflect on her 75 years as animal rights advocate.
“I think things do change because of agitation. So agitation is vital. I mean, nobody who is in a cause should be there to win a popularity contest, whether you're working for children or the elderly or working for peace animals, it's all against nonviolence, aggression, domination, and needless cruelty and suffering. It's all for respect. So you have to be vigorous. You have to use your voice. You can use it politely, but if people don't listen, at PETA, we escalate. So we always start off with a polite letter, a polite entreaty. We always try to, as I say, do the homework. So we have the options that we put out on the table to say, look, instead of doing this, you could do that, and we will help you transition to that.
They’re not human traits. They’re all shared traits because, of course, we all love. We all love our families, or not. We all grieve if somebody we love disappears or dies. A family dog, perhaps. A grandfather. We all feel loneliness, we all feel joy. We all really value our freedom. And so I think, if anything, looking into the eyes of the animal, even online, you see a person in there. There’s a someone in whatever the shape or the physical properties of that individual are. And that lesson is that I am you. You are me, only different. We are all the same in all the ways that count…Any living being teaches you– Look into my eyes. And there you are, the reflection of yourself. So we need to learn from the animals how to live more gently and consume less and be more thoughtful and look out for each other in this great circle of life.”
www.peta.org
www.ingridnewkirk.com
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
“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
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
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
“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
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
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
“So for me, it just kind of removing a lot of the shame and then a lot of the energy that I was wasting trying to fit myself into a neurotypical process or framework or way of thinking or being. So, you know, some people call that unmasking, just kind of removing. I was wasting a lot of energy, basically trying to be someone else and function in a different way. And then just beating myself up internally for not being able to do that. And throughout my healing journey, as I really realized, Oh, that's actually what's happening. Like there's not actually anything wrong with me being able to...That's why it's called Love Your Brain. It's not just, you know, tolerate your brain. Or, fine, you can work with this brain that you have. It's like, no, I genuinely love the weird experiences that my brain can give me and the incredibly rich, deep experience I have of the world. Like I experience nature so deeply and so intensely. I have really strong connections with animals. I have really great intuition, which I think is just from picking up all this sensory data and putting it together. All these experiences that I get to have, but I don't get to have those experiences if I'm just trying to make myself be something else, which I think is most people who are late diagnosed, I feel like that's their experience. It's just like I've been trying to be someone else for so long. It's exhausting. And then you don't have the energy then to be creative, the carving out the time, making the time to actually create.”
Mattia Maurée is an interdisciplinary composer whose work centers around themes of perception, body, sensation, trauma, and resilience. Their scores for critically acclaimed films have been played in 13 countries. Their poems have been featured in Boston City Hall as part of the Mayor's Poetry Program, Guerrilla Opera, and Arc Poetry Magazine. Mattia composes and performs on violin, voice, and piano, and has taught music for over 20 years. They have received a Master's of Music in Composition at New England Conservatory and a Bachelor's of Music from St. Olaf College. They also are an AUDHD coach, host the AuDHD Flourishing podcast and help other neurodivergent folks heal and find their creative flow in their course Love Your Brain.
http://mattiamauree.com
https://studio.com/mattia
https://mattiamauree.com/love-your-brain
https://www.audhdflourishing.com/hello
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
How can we learn to flourish because of who we are, not in spite of it? What is the sensory experience of the world for people with autism and ADHD? How can music help heal trauma and foster identity?
Mattia Maurée is an interdisciplinary composer whose work centers around themes of perception, body, sensation, trauma, and resilience. Their scores for critically acclaimed films have been played in 13 countries. Their poems have been featured in Boston City Hall as part of the Mayor's Poetry Program, Guerrilla Opera, and Arc Poetry Magazine. Mattia composes and performs on violin, voice, and piano, and has taught music for over 20 years. They have received a Master's of Music in Composition at New England Conservatory and a Bachelor's of Music from St. Olaf College. They also are an AUDHD coach, host the AuDHD Flourishing podcast and help other neurodivergent folks heal and find their creative flow in their course Love Your Brain.
“So for me, it just kind of removing a lot of the shame and then a lot of the energy that I was wasting trying to fit myself into a neurotypical process or framework or way of thinking or being. So, you know, some people call that unmasking, just kind of removing. I was wasting a lot of energy, basically trying to be someone else and function in a different way. And then just beating myself up internally for not being able to do that. And throughout my healing journey, as I really realized, Oh, that's actually what's happening. Like there's not actually anything wrong with me being able to...That's why it's called Love Your Brain. It's not just, you know, tolerate your brain. Or, fine, you can work with this brain that you have. It's like, no, I genuinely love the weird experiences that my brain can give me and the incredibly rich, deep experience I have of the world. Like I experience nature so deeply and so intensely. I have really strong connections with animals. I have really great intuition, which I think is just from picking up all this sensory data and putting it together. All these experiences that I get to have, but I don't get to have those experiences if I'm just trying to make myself be something else, which I think is most people who are late diagnosed, I feel like that's their experience. It's just like I've been trying to be someone else for so long. It's exhausting. And then you don't have the energy then to be creative, the carving out the time, making the time to actually create.”
http://mattiamauree.com
https://studio.com/mattia
https://mattiamauree.com/love-your-brain
https://www.audhdflourishing.com/hello
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
“The American Climate Corps builds on the legacy of the Civilian Conservation Corps, which came out of the New Deal after the Great Depression in the United States when the country was getting very close to there being a toppling of the government because there was such a crisis here after the Depression. There were Dust Bowls. People were migrating all over the country to try to find work. And it was a really dark time in the United States. So part of the New Deal included establishing this Conservation Corps, where–and it was only men at the time–young men could go to work, earn a liveable wage, work on teams, and help to build things in the United States. And some of them planted trees. So some of it was conservation, some of them planted trees. They helped with the railroads. They built all sorts of things with the Army Corps of Engineers. So there has been a call for a while now to build an American Climate Corps, which is building off of this legacy.
The Biden administration finally announced the American Climate Corps last September during Climate Week. In fact, the announcement came out, and one of the unfortunate things about the Climate Corps is that it builds on this amazing legacy, but it didn't receive much funding because the funding was originally going to be part of the Build Back Better Act, which the Biden administration proposed early on. The climate-related policy that ended up being reformulated and repackaged as the Inflation Reduction Act. the Climate Corps was not funded as part of that. So it's coming out in a much more limited manner, but what it basically is doing is merging a number of preexisting programs that are designed to help train young people to do work around climate change broadly defined across different agencies in the U. S. government to train them so that they have experience working on addressing climate change in a variety of ways, and also have a pathway into doing green jobs. Be they in the federal government, for nonprofits, or elsewhere in the government. And so it's a wonderful opportunity. The hope is that it will expand out to be thousands, if not more than thousands, tens of thousands of jobs.”
Dana R. Fisher is the Director of the Center for Environment, Community, & Equity and Professor in the School of International Service at American University. Fisher’s research focuses on questions related to democracy, civic engagement, activism, and climate politics. Current projects include studying political elites’ responses to climate change, and the ways federal service corps programs in the US are integrating climate into their work. She is a self-described climate-apocalyptic optimist and co-developed the framework of AnthroShift to explain how social actors are reconfigured in the aftermath of widespread perceptions and experiences of risk. Her seventh book is Saving Ourselves: From Climate Shocks to Climate Action.
https://danarfisher.com
https://cece.american.edu
www.acc.gov
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
How can we make the radical social changes needed to address the climate crisis? What kind of large ecological disaster or mass mobilization in the streets needs to take place before we take meaningful climate action?
Dana R. Fisher is the Director of the Center for Environment, Community, & Equity and Professor in the School of International Service at American University. Fisher’s research focuses on questions related to democracy, civic engagement, activism, and climate politics. Current projects include studying political elites’ responses to climate change, and the ways federal service corps programs in the US are integrating climate into their work. She is a self-described climate-apocalyptic optimist and co-developed the framework of AnthroShift to explain how social actors are reconfigured in the aftermath of widespread perceptions and experiences of risk. Her seventh book is Saving Ourselves: From Climate Shocks to Climate Action.
“The American Climate Corps builds on the legacy of the Civilian Conservation Corps, which came out of the New Deal after the Great Depression in the United States when the country was getting very close to there being a toppling of the government because there was such a crisis here after the Depression. There were Dust Bowls. People were migrating all over the country to try to find work. And it was a really dark time in the United States. So part of the New Deal included establishing this Conservation Corps, where–and it was only men at the time–young men could go to work, earn a liveable wage, work on teams, and help to build things in the United States. And some of them planted trees. So some of it was conservation, some of them planted trees. They helped with the railroads. They built all sorts of things with the Army Corps of Engineers. So there has been a call for a while now to build an American Climate Corps, which is building off of this legacy.
The Biden administration finally announced the American Climate Corps last September during Climate Week. In fact, the announcement came out, and one of the unfortunate things about the Climate Corps is that it builds on this amazing legacy, but it didn't receive much funding because the funding was originally going to be part of the Build Back Better Act, which the Biden administration proposed early on. The climate-related policy that ended up being reformulated and repackaged as the Inflation Reduction Act. the Climate Corps was not funded as part of that. So it's coming out in a much more limited manner, but what it basically is doing is merging a number of preexisting programs that are designed to help train young people to do work around climate change broadly defined across different agencies in the U. S. government to train them so that they have experience working on addressing climate change in a variety of ways, and also have a pathway into doing green jobs. Be they in the federal government, for nonprofits, or elsewhere in the government. And so it's a wonderful opportunity. The hope is that it will expand out to be thousands, if not more than thousands, tens of thousands of jobs.”
https://danarfisher.com
https://cece.american.edu
www.acc.gov
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Credit Sarah Fillman from FillmanFoto, 2023
“I'm inspired by a lot of young people who are in their early twenties. They're very interested in these topics. They love thrifting because it is trendy, cool, and affordable. And it's also really good for the environment. I hope that they continue to fight for what is right. I think that what's needed in today's world is that we do create more equitable models, whether it's in business or elsewhere. And that we do have some kind of respect for the planet because the reality is, if we don't, we're the ones that are going to suffer at the end of the day. It's only going to become harder for us, whether it's getting food to eat, whether it's having an environment that's comfortable and hospitable, whether it's having the supply chains we need for all the products in the world. I hope that there is a business model and a path forward, and I hope they're the trailblazers who sort of make it happen. We need to encourage that. We need to create policies that also allow for some of this stuff to flourish.”
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
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
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.
“I'm inspired by a lot of young people who are in their early twenties. They're very interested in these topics. They love thrifting because it is trendy, cool, and affordable. And it's also really good for the environment. I hope that they continue to fight for what is right. I think that what's needed in today's world is that we do create more equitable models, whether it's in business or elsewhere. And that we do have some kind of respect for the planet because the reality is, if we don't, we're the ones that are going to suffer at the end of the day. It's only going to become harder for us, whether it's getting food to eat, whether it's having an environment that's comfortable and hospitable, whether it's having the supply chains we need for all the products in the world. I hope that there is a business model and a path forward, and I hope they're the trailblazers who sort of make it happen. We need to encourage that. We need to create policies that also allow for some of this stuff to flourish.”
www.eshachhabra.comwww.beacon.org/Working-to-Restore-P2081.aspx
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
“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
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
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.
“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
“We actually do need these animals on the landscape, and we're going to protect them and restore them and help their populations increase. And so, to me, beavers are proof that what we're doing as conservationists is not futile, right? That there really is reason for hope and optimism, which beavers demonstrate. I think that's a really important lesson for young people to hear is that you're not just entering this world of eco-anxiety and climate change and depression. There are some really hopeful wildlife stories out there, and you can be part of that future.”
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
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Every year, humanity's footprint casts a deadly shadow over our skies and landscapes, claiming the lives of billions of birds and other wildlife. 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.
“We actually do need these animals on the landscape, and we're going to protect them and restore them and help their populations increase. And so, to me, beavers are proof that what we're doing as conservationists is not futile, right? That there really is reason for hope and optimism, which beavers demonstrate. I think that's a really important lesson for young people to hear is that you're not just entering this world of eco-anxiety and climate change and depression. There are some really hopeful wildlife stories out there, and you can be part of that future.”
www.bengoldfarb.com
https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324005896
www.chelseagreen.com/product/eager-paperback
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
“It's important to imagine, to keep imagining, a world that is free from colonialism, from oppression, from exploitation, also expropriation of nature. And unfortunately this world is not sustainable—we are not living in that kind of world today. But if we want to see the world for our next generation for the future, we need to pass the torch and ask them to imagine, and then perhaps that way the struggle will continue.”
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
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
How are writing and travel vehicles for understanding? How can we expand the literary canon to include other voices, other cultures, other experiences of the world?
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.
“It's important to imagine, to keep imagining, a world that is free from colonialism, from oppression, from exploitation, also expropriation of nature. And unfortunately this world is not sustainable—we are not living in that kind of world today. But if we want to see the world for our next generation for the future, we need to pass the torch and ask them to imagine, and then perhaps that way the struggle will continue.”
https://intanparamaditha.com
www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/626055/the-wandering-by-intan-paramaditha/9781787301184
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Environmentalists, writers, artists, activists, and public policy makers explore the interconnectedness of living beings and ecosystems. They highlight the importance of conservation, promote climate education, advocate for sustainable development, and underscore the vital role of creative and educational communities in driving positive change.
00:00 "The Conditional" by U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón
01:27 The Secret Language of Animals: Ingrid Newkirk, President of PETA
03:03 A Love Letter to the Living World: Carl Safina, Ecologist & Author
04:11 Exploring the Mysteries of Soil and Coral Reefs: Merlin Sheldrake, Biologist, Author of Entangled Life
04:47 Exploring Coral Reefs: Richard Vevers, Founder of The Ocean Agency
05:56 The Importance of Climate Education: Kathleen Rogers, President of EarthDay.org
07:02 The Timeless Wisdom of Turtles: Sy Montomery, Naturalist & Author
07:38 Optimism in the Face of Environmental Challenges: Richard Vevers
08:32 Urban Solutions for a Sustainable Future: Paula Pinho, Director, Just Transition, Consumers, Energy Efficiency & Innovation, European Commission
08:57 The Circular Economy: Walter Stahel, Founder & Director of the Product-Life Institute
09:39 The Power of Speaking Out for Sustainability: Paula Pinho
10:16 Empowering the Next Generation Through Education: Jeffrey Sachs, President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network
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.
"We are self-conscious selves who are coming to understand the fact that we are not somehow walled off from the rest of the world. And so if we can begin to reframe some of these frightening relationships as profoundly intimate relationships that certainly require addressing. It's that kind of a reference frame shift that I think is going to help us move out of some of the darkness."
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
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
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.
"We are self-conscious selves who are coming to understand the fact that we are not somehow walled off from the rest of the world. And so if we can begin to reframe some of these frightening relationships as profoundly intimate relationships that certainly require addressing. It's that kind of a reference frame shift that I think is going to help us move out of some of the darkness."
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
“Doubling is kind of a big theme, and maybe it always is in spy literature, but maybe I think that that's why Viet chose to write a spy novel in a way and play with those sort of tropes because it's central and I think it's central to the message of the show and of the book. This idea that there's another side to every question. I mean, that's the central quandary. There's this problem with the whole Vietnam War. It's saying to Americans, at least put yourself on the other side, the Vietnamese side, and then recognize that that side also has two sides and then within that, there are further divisions. And if you do that, I think what it's proposing is that you have to step back. It forces a sort of objectivity and humility, and it asks you to step back and allow the bigger human questions to resonate."
Don McKellar is a highly accomplished writer, director, and actor. He has written films including Roadkill, Highway 61, Dance Me Outside, The Red Violin, and Blindness. He won the Prix de la Jeunesse at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival for his directorial debut, Last Night, which he also wrote and starred in. He is an eight-time Genie Award nominee and a two-time winner.
He wrote the book for the acclaimed musical The Drowsy Chaperone, for which he received a Tony Award. Most recently, Don served as writer, executive producer, and co-showrunner on The Sympathizer, a television adaptation of Viet Thanh Nguyen's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name. The series was co-created with Park Chan-wook.
www.imdb.com/name/nm0001528/mediaviewer/rm2411273728/?ref_=nm_ov_ph
www.imdb.com/title/tt14404618/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8_nm_0_q_the%20sympa
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Photo courtesy of HBO
What are the stories we tell ourselves to justify our actions in times of war? How can the arts convey complexity and foster understanding?
Don McKellar is a highly accomplished writer, director, and actor. He has written films including Roadkill, Highway 61, Dance Me Outside, The Red Violin, and Blindness. He won the Prix de la Jeunesse at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival for his directorial debut, Last Night, which he also wrote and starred in. He is an eight-time Genie Award nominee and a two-time winner.
He wrote the book for the acclaimed musical The Drowsy Chaperone, for which he received a Tony Award. Most recently, Don served as writer, executive producer, and co-showrunner on The Sympathizer, a television adaptation of Viet Thanh Nguyen's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name. The series was co-created with Park Chan-wook.
“Doubling is kind of a big theme, and maybe it always is in spy literature, but maybe I think that that's why Viet chose to write a spy novel in a way and play with those sort of tropes because it's central and I think it's central to the message of the show and of the book. This idea that there's another side to every question. I mean, that's the central quandary. There's this problem with the whole Vietnam War. It's saying to Americans, at least put yourself on the other side, the Vietnamese side, and then recognize that that side also has two sides and then within that, there are further divisions. And if you do that, I think what it's proposing is that you have to step back. It forces a sort of objectivity and humility, and it asks you to step back and allow the bigger human questions to resonate."
www.imdb.com/name/nm0001528/mediaviewer/rm2411273728/?ref_=nm_ov_ph
www.imdb.com/title/tt14404618/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8_nm_0_q_the%20sympa
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Photos courtesy of HBO
Susan Downey, Robert Downey Jr., Don McKellar
Robert Downey Jr. in The Sympathizer, photo by Beth Dubber/HBO
Hoa Xuande in The Sympathizer, photo by Hopper Stone/HBO
In this episode on Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu and Azeezah Kanji have a conversation with critical political theorists Adom Getachew and Ayça Çubukçu on the colonial construction of the international system and its organization around the institution of the nation state. The conversation covers and uncovers so many aspects of the hidden colonial history behind the constitution of this system, but also the resistance and creative appropriations by Black, Indigenous, and colonized peoples, allowing us to imagine possible liberatory futures beyond the forms and strictures of the colonial present.
Ayça Çubukçu is associate professor in human rights at the London School of Economics and Political Science and Co-Director of LSE Human Rights. She is the author of For the Love of Humanity: The World Tribunal on Iraq (2018). Her work has appeared in Law and Critique; Polity; London Review of International Law; Thesis 11; Contemporary Political Theory; parallax; Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies; boundary 2; Law, Culture and the Humanities; Journal of Human Rights; and the Los Angeles Review of Books; the Guardian; Al Jazeera; Truthout; Africa Is a Country; Jadaliyya, and Red Pepper magazine, among other publications. She coedits the journal Humanity and the LSE International Studies Series at Cambridge University Press.
Adom Getachew is Professor of Political Science and Race, Diaspora & Indigeneity at the University of Chicago. She is the author of Worldmaking after Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination (2019) and co-editor, with Jennifer Pitts, of W. E. B. Du Bois: International Thought (2022). She is currently working on a second book on the intellectual origins and political practices of Garveyism—the black nationalist/pan-African movement, which had its height in the 1920s. Her public writing has appeared in Dissent, Foreign Affairs, the London Review of Books, the Nation, the New York Review of Books, and the New York Times.
www.lse.ac.uk/sociology/people/ayca-cubukcu
www.pennpress.org/9780812225235/for-the-love-of-humanity/
https://political-science.uchicago.edu/directory/Adom-Getachew
https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691179155/worldmaking-after-empire
www.cambridge.org/core/books/w-e-b-du-bois-international-thought/1A9DBFF90AAC53D27EA63C19E3268BE1
www.palumbo-liu.com
https://speakingoutofplace.com
https://twitter.com/palumboliu?s=20
www.instagram.com/speaking_out_of_place
"Midway Island, one of the most remote islands in the world, lies at the centre of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a huge concentration of plastic litter covering a surface that is almost three times the size of France. Islands that formerly offered visions of unexampled environmental plenty are now witness to unparalleled ecological devastation."
Michael Cronin is an Irish academic specialist in culture, travel literature, translation studies, and the Irish language. He has taught in universities in France and Ireland and has held visiting research fellowships to universities in Canada, Belgium, Peru, France, and Egypt. He's a fellow of Trinity College Dublin, an elected member of the Royal Irish Academy, and a senior researcher in the Trinity Centre for Literary and Cultural Translation. He is the current holder of the Chair of French (est. 1776) at TCD. He is the author of Eco-Travel: Journeying in the Age of the Anthropocene, Eco-Translation: Translation and Ecology in the Age of the Anthropocene, and other books.
www.tcd.ie/French/people/michaelcronin.php
www.cambridge.org/core/books/ecotravel/24263DF8E2E021915FEF4F937F146D25
www.routledge.com/Eco-Translation-Translation-and-Ecology-in-the-Age-of-the-Anthropocene/Cronin/p/book/9781138916845
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
How has tourism and writing about travel contributed to the ecological degradation of the planet?How does language influence perception and our relationship to the more-than-human world?
Michael Cronin is an Irish academic specialist in culture, travel literature, translation studies, and the Irish language. He has taught in universities in France and Ireland and has held visiting research fellowships to universities in Canada, Belgium, Peru, France, and Egypt. He's a fellow of Trinity College Dublin, an elected member of the Royal Irish Academy, and a senior researcher in the Trinity Centre for Literary and Cultural Translation. He is the current holder of the Chair of French (est. 1776) at TCD. He is the author of Eco-Travel: Journeying in the Age of the Anthropocene, Eco-Translation: Translation and Ecology in the Age of the Anthropocene, and other books.
"Midway Island, one of the most remote islands in the world, lies at the centre of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a huge concentration of plastic litter covering a surface that is almost three times the size of France. Islands that formerly offered visions of unexampled environmental plenty are now witness to unparalleled ecological devastation."
www.tcd.ie/French/people/michaelcronin.php
www.cambridge.org/core/books/ecotravel/24263DF8E2E021915FEF4F937F146D25
www.routledge.com/Eco-Translation-Translation-and-Ecology-in-the-Age-of-the-Anthropocene/Cronin/p/book/9781138916845
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
In this episode on Speaking Out of Place podcast Professor David Palumbo-Liu and Azeezah Kanji talk we talk with Camilla Hawthorne about her recent edited collection, The Black Geographic: Praxis, Resistance, Futurity, and its relation to her prior monograph, Contesting Race and Citizenship: Youth Politics in the Black Mediterranean. She explains and elaborates on how Blackness is not singular, but involved in “taking place” in imaginative, resistant, and across many different political terrains, whether it be citizenship, the right to the city, the imagining of futures after environmental collapse, and diverse linguistic, cultural, and musical affiliations across diasporic communities.
Camilla Hawthorne is Associate Professor of Sociology and Critical Race & Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and also serves as program director and faculty member for the Black Europe Summer School in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Her work addresses the racial politics of migration and citizenship and the insurgent geographies of the Black Mediterranean. Camilla is co-editor of the The Black Mediterranean: Bodies, Borders, and Citizenship (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021) and The Black Geographic: Praxis, Resistance, Futurity (Duke University Press, 2023), and is author of Contesting Race and Citizenship: Youth Politics in the Black Mediterranean (Cornell University Press, 2022). In 2020, she was named as one of the national Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera‘s 110 "Women of the Year" for her work on the Black diaspora in Italy. Camilla received her PhD in Geography from the University of California, Berkeley in 2018.
“A Black geographic perspective for me was really helpful in trying to clarify how we can simultaneously understand Blackness as a global project, that is anti-national, that transcends borders, but that also takes on really specific meanings and practices in different places…engagements with Black geographies that are looking just beyond the framework of North America.”
www.camillahawthorne.com
www.palumbo-liu.com
https://speakingoutofplace.com
https://twitter.com/palumboliu?s=20
www.instagram.com/speaking_out_of_place
"Slavery is the most glaring, notorious, and important hypocrisy to discuss. How was it possible that these Founders, all of whom acknowledge that slavery violated natural rights and natural justice, themselves owned slaves? And it was striking to discover that they didn't even try. That Patrick Henry quote is so significant. He said: is it not amazing that I myself who believe that slavery is immoral, myself own slaves? I will not justify it. I won't attempt to. It's simple avarice or greed. I can't do with the inconvenience of living without them."
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
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
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.
"Slavery is the most glaring, notorious, and important hypocrisy to discuss. How was it possible that these Founders, all of whom acknowledge that slavery violated natural rights and natural justice, themselves owned slaves? And it was striking to discover that they didn't even try. That Patrick Henry quote is so significant. He said: is it not amazing that I myself who believe that slavery is immoral, myself own slaves? I will not justify it. I won't attempt to. It's simple avarice or greed. I can't do with the inconvenience of living without them."
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
Working with Michaela Coel on I May Destroy You
"That was such a privilege and a joy to work with Michaela Coel, just to be witness and to support her amazing creative process as a writer, as it being part of her life story, as executive producer, as co director, and then finally as actor. Those kinds of storytellings are really important in that they're told with full-on emotional content that has been intended. We don't want to have to pull back from really showing the ugly side of our humanity if there are really challenging, intimate scenes. How do we make sure, as Michaela said, that we can create a story about abuse without anybody being abused in the process?"
Ita O’Brien is the UK’s leading Intimacy Coordinator, founder of Intimacy on Set (and author of the Intimacy On Set Guidelines). Her company, set up in 2018 provides services to TV, film, and theatre when dealing with intimacy, and is a SAG-Aftra accredited training provider of Intimacy Practitioners. Intimacy on Set has supported numerous high-profile film and TV productions including Normal People & Conversations With Friends (BBC3/Hulu), Sex Education 1&2 (Netflix), I May Destroy You (BBC/HBO), It’s A Sin (Channel 4), (Neal Street Prods / Searchlight Pictures).
https://www.itaobrien.com/
https://www.itaobrien.com/intimacy-on-set-guidelines.html
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1357677/
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
How can intimate scenes be brought to the screen in ways that respect the emotional well-being and privacy of the artists themselves? How do we make sure that we can create a story about abuse without anyone being abused in the process?
Ita O’Brien is the UK’s leading Intimacy Coordinator, founder of Intimacy on Set (and author of the Intimacy On Set Guidelines). Her company, set up in 2018 provides services to TV, film, and theatre when dealing with intimacy, and is a SAG-Aftra accredited training provider of Intimacy Practitioners. Intimacy on Set has supported numerous high-profile film and TV productions including Normal People & Conversations With Friends (BBC3/Hulu), Sex Education 1&2 (Netflix), I May Destroy You (BBC/HBO), It’s A Sin (Channel 4), (Neal Street Prods / Searchlight Pictures).
Working with Michaela Coel on I May Destroy You:
"That was such a privilege and a joy to work with Michaela Coel, just to be witness and to support her amazing creative process as a writer, as it being part of her life story, as executive producer, as co director, and then finally as actor. Those kinds of storytellings are really important in that they're told with full-on emotional content that has been intended. We don't want to have to pull back from really showing the ugly side of our humanity if there are really challenging, intimate scenes. How do we make sure, as Michaela said, that we can create a story about abuse without anybody being abused in the process?"
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
"I was the boy whose hatred for bullies had become a hatred for injustice of all kinds–for imperialism and colonialism, for racism and poverty, for a world where cruelty and violence and oppression were rewarded with power and vast sums of money for the brutal for the brutal few at the expense of many."
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
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 was the boy whose hatred for bullies had become a hatred for injustice of all kinds–for imperialism and colonialism, for racism and poverty, for a world where cruelty and violence and oppression were rewarded with power and vast sums of money for the brutal for the brutal few at the expense of many."
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
"In a lot of regions of the world, ecology has started to be a hostage of political parties. You have the left wing, which takes ecology as its flagship. You have the right wing, which is fighting against ecology because they want to fight against the left wing, and they use all the arguments of ecology to destroy ecology. It's very strange that the people who want to protect the environment are not able to make their cause much more appealing. This is what I try to do with the new narrative of the Solar Impulse Foundation: to show the opportunities more than the risks. To show the solutions more than the problems."
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.
"In a lot of regions of the world, ecology has started to be a hostage of political parties. You have the left wing, which takes ecology as its flagship. You have the right wing, which is fighting against ecology because they want to fight against the left wing, and they use all the arguments of ecology to destroy ecology. It's very strange that the people who want to protect the environment are not able to make their cause much more appealing. This is what I try to do with the new narrative of the Solar Impulse Foundation: to show the opportunities more than the risks. To show the solutions more than the problems."
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
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.
"In a lot of regions of the world, ecology has started to be a hostage of political parties. You have the left wing, which takes ecology as its flagship. You have the right wing, which is fighting against ecology because they want to fight against the left wing, and they use all the arguments of ecology to destroy ecology. It's very strange that the people who want to protect the environment are not able to make their cause much more appealing. This is what I try to do with the new narrative of the Solar Impulse Foundation: to show the opportunities more than the risks. To show the solutions more than the problems."
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
“This book is not just about Neanderthals. It's a book about us. I wanted to warn humans, to say there is something in us that is so efficient and dangerous. We've effectively collapsed many things and are now inducing the collapse of natural environments on the planet. And after that, we might even cause the collapse of ourselves as Homo sapiens.”
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
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
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.
“This book is not just about Neanderthals. It's a book about us. I wanted to warn humans, to say there is something in us that is so efficient and dangerous. We've effectively collapsed many things and are now inducing the collapse of natural environments on the planet. And after that, we might even cause the collapse of ourselves as Homo sapiens.”
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
How would the life of Jesus be told through the eyes of his mother? How can literature help us understand history and the nature of identity?
Maciej Hen was born in 1955 in Warsaw. He graduated from the Cinematography Department at the Film School in Łódź. For years he has been trying his hand at diverse activities, from music to all fields of journalism and television lighting design. As a prose writer, Hen has published four novels so far: Według niej (2004, DUE; the English translation, According to Her, published in 2022 by Holland House Books, was shortlisted to the EBRD Literary Prize in 2023), Solfatara (2015, W.A.B., 2016 Gombrowicz Prize and shortlisted for the Norwid Prize and the Angelus Prize), Deutsch dla średnio zaawansowanych, Segretario and one non-fiction book, Beatlesi w Polsce (The Beatles in Poland).
"I can tell you the story of my parents. They both lost most of their families during World War II, and they survived because they were quick enough to escape to the East, where there was no paradise either, but at least there was a chance to survive. So my father lost his father, one of his sisters, the sister's husband, and his brother. But the brother disappeared in Soviet Union, nobody knows how, but the others were murdered by Nazis. And as for my mother, she lost almost everybody. She had six siblings, and she managed only to take one of her sisters while evacuating to the East. So five of her siblings, both parents, and grandmother, all died in the death camp in Belzec."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maciej_Hen
www.hhousebooks.com/shortlisted-ebrd-according-to-her
www.wydawnictwoliterackie.pl/autor/1271/maciej-hen
https://www.instagram.com/maciej.hen/
www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064871385361
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
"The Canadian Indian Residential School system was a network of boarding schools for Indigenous peoples funded by the Canadian government's Department of Indian Affairs and administered by Christian churches. Over 150,000 Indigenous children were forcibly taken from their homes and placed in residential schools nationally. From the 1960s until the 90s, the Canadian government was trying to resolve the problem that the residential schools, run by the Catholic Church, were based on the idea that said: you save the child and kill the Indian. So they removed thousands of Indigenous children from their homes and families and erased their culture so they could become 'regular normal people' in the world."
From her role as Dr. Lisa Cuddy on the hit Fox series House M.D, to her starring role as Abby McCarthy in Bravo's first scripted series Girlfriend's Guide to Divorce, Lisa Edelstein's range of roles are as diverse talent. Some of Edelstein's feature credits include Keeping the Faith, What Women Want, Daddy Daycare, As Good as It Gets, and Fathers and Sons. She played a Holocaust survivor and adopted mother in the drama television series Little Bird. The story centres on a First Nations woman who was adopted into a Jewish family during the Sixties Scoop, as she attempts to reconnect with her birth family and heritage.
Lisa’s career began by writing, composing, and performing an original AIDS awareness musical Positive Me at the renowned La Mama Experimental Theater Club in New York City. In the wake of COVID, Lisa began to paint using old family photographs as starting points. Her incredibly detailed paintings capture intimate relationships and spontaneous moments with honesty and compassion.
https://lisaedelstein.komi.io/
www.lisaedelsteinpaintings.com/
www.imdb.com/name/nm0249046
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Artworks:
“Beach Day”, “Marsha”, “Karen” Courtesy of the Artist
Lisa Edelstein in the Studio
Photo credit: Holland Clement, Courtesy of the artist
How can the arts help us examine and engage with social issues? How do our families shape our views, memories, and experience of the world?
From her role as Dr. Lisa Cuddy on the hit Fox series House, to her starring role as Abby McCarthy in Bravo's first scripted series Girlfriend's Guide to Divorce, Lisa Edelstein's range of roles are as diverse talent. Some of Edelstein's feature credits include Keeping the Faith, What Women Want, Daddy Daycare, As Good as It Gets, and Fathers and Sons. She played a Holocaust survivor and adopted mother in the drama television series Little Bird. The story centres on a First Nations woman who was adopted into a Jewish family during the Sixties Scoop, as she attempts to reconnect with her birth family and heritage.
Lisa’s career began by writing, composing, and performing an original AIDS awareness musical Positive Me at the renowned La Mama Experimental Theater Club in New York City. In the wake of COVID, Lisa began to paint using old family photographs as starting points. Her incredibly detailed paintings capture intimate relationships and spontaneous moments with honesty and compassion.
"The Canadian Indian Residential School system was a network of boarding schools for Indigenous peoples funded by the Canadian government's Department of Indian Affairs and administered by Christian churches. Over 150,000 Indigenous children were forcibly taken from their homes and placed in residential schools nationally. From the 1960s until the 90s, the Canadian government was trying to resolve the problem that the residential schools, run by the Catholic Church, were based on the idea that said: you save the child and kill the Indian. So they removed thousands of Indigenous children from their homes and families and erased their culture so they could become 'regular normal people' in the world."
https://lisaedelstein.komi.io/
www.lisaedelsteinpaintings.com/
www.imdb.com/name/nm0249046
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Photo credit: Mitch Stone
Courtesy of the artist
“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)
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)
"Climate change gives us a chance to re-imagine the world in a way that every single human being can participate in. And so whether you're in a remote part of the United States or some other country, when you learn about climate change, it shouldn't just be the science. It should be the opportunity." –Kathleen Rogers
Excerpts of interviews from One Planet Podcast & The Creative Process.
Voices on this episode are:
KATHLEEN ROGERS
President of EarthDay.ORG
POORVA JOSHIPURA
Senior VP, PETA UK - Author of Survival at Stake: How Our Treatment of Animals is Key to Human Existence
DAVID FENTON
Founder of Fenton Communications - Author of The Activist’s Media Handbook: Lessons From 50 Years as a Progressive Agitator
BRITT WRAY
Author of Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Crisis
Researcher Working on Climate Change & Mental Health, Stanford University
DR. FARHANA SULTANA
Co-author: Water Politics: Governance, Justice & the Right to Water
Fmr. UNDP Programme Officer, United Nations Development Programme
ANDRI SNÆR MAGNASON
Icelandic Writer & Documentary Filmmaker
Author of On Time and Water, The Casket of Time, LoveStar, Not Ok
THOMAS CROWTHER
Ecologist - Co-chair of the Board for UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration - Founder of Restor
DR. SHIV SOMESHWAR
Fmr. European Chair for Sustainable Development & Climate Transition - Sciences Po
PAULA PINHO
Director of Just Transition at the European Commission Directorate-General for Energy
ARMOND COHEN
Executive Director of Clean Air Task Force
MAYA K. VAN ROSSUM
Founder of Green Amendments For The Generations - Delaware Riverkeeper
Author of The Green Amendment: The People's Fight for a Clean, Safe, and Healthy Environment
Max Richter’s music featured in this episode:
“Spring 1” from The New Four Seasons – Vivaldi Recomposed
“Vladimir’s Blues” from The Blue NotebooksMusic is courtesy of Max Richter, Universal Music Enterprises,
and Mute Song.
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Photo courtesy of Unsplash
Photo credit: Valdemaras D.
“The natural world has its own sonic language. Its own fingerprints. And that's one of the beautiful things about being out here. There is another acoustic environment, another sort of sonic fingerprint, and it is always changing. Every day is a sort of a different sound picture. I walk out the door and you do hear it changing over time. The leaves are coming in now, different kinds of bird song. The wind sounds different. It's a wonderful thing to be around and experience.” —Max Richter
Excerpts of interviews from One Planet Podcast & The Creative Process
SY MONTGOMERY
NYTimes Bestselling Author of Of Time and Turtles: Mending the World, Shell by Shattered Shell, Secrets of the Octopus, The Hawk’s Way: Encounters with Fierce Beauty, and other books
MAX RICHTER
Award-winning Composer, Pianist & Environmentalist (The Blue Notebooks, Waltz with Bashir, Arrival, Ad Astra) His album SLEEP is the most streamed classical record of all time. Cofounder of Studio Richter Mahr
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
THOMAS CROWTHER
Ecologist - Co-chair of the Board for UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration - Founder of Restor
TIOKASIN GHOSTHORSE
Founder/Host of First Voices Radio - Master Musician of the Ancient Lakota Flute
ERLAND COOPER
Nature’s Songwriter - Composer of “Folded Landscapes”
RICK BASS
Environmentalist & Story Prize Award-winning Author of “Why I Came West”, “For a Little While” - Fmr. Geologist - Organizer of Climate Aid: The Voice of the Forest
PETER SINGER
“Most Influential Living Philosopher” - Author, Founder of The Life You Can Save
KATHLEEN ROGERS
President of EarthDay.ORG
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.
Photos courtesy of Unsplash
Photo credit: Kyle Johnson, Sebastian Unrau, Abner abiu Castillo diaz, Deepak Nautiyal
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
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Photos courtesy of EARTHDAY.ORG
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
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
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
“I was fortunate to be able to be out in Hollywood in the 90s and to be able to work early on seminal LGBT-presenting shows like Tales of the City series, and Six Feet Under with Alan Ball. When it comes to Tokyo Vice, I did push hard for there to be a queer storyline because in the late 90s, in Japan, there was a huge thriving gay subculture. But it wasn't on the table to come out because your sexual orientation was considered irrelevant to your obligations to society.”
Alan Poul is an Emmy, Golden Globe, DGA, and Peabody Award-winning producer and director of film and television. He is Executive Producer and Director on the Max Original drama series Tokyo Vice, written by Tony Award-winning playwright J.T. Rogers and starring Ansel Elgort and Ken Watanabe, as an American journalist in Japan and his police detective mentor. Poul is perhaps best known for producing all five seasons of HBO's Six Feet Under, all four of Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City miniseries, My So-Called Life, The Newsroom, Swingtown, and The Eddy, which he developed with director Damien Chazelle. His feature film producing credits include Paul Schrader's Mishima and Light of Day, and Ridley Scott's Black Rain.
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0693561
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2887954/
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
What does learning another language and living in another culture do for your humanity and creative process?
Alan Poul is an Emmy, Golden Globe, DGA, and Peabody Award-winning producer and director of film and television. He is Executive Producer and Director on the Max Original drama series Tokyo Vice, written by Tony Award-winning playwright J.T. Rogers and starring Ansel Elgort and Ken Watanabe, as an American journalist in Japan and his police detective mentor. Poul is perhaps best known for producing all five seasons of HBO's Six Feet Under, all four of Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City miniseries, My So-Called Life, The Newsroom, Swingtown, and The Eddy, which he developed with director Damien Chazelle. His feature film producing credits include Paul Schrader's Mishima and Light of Day, and Ridley Scott's Black Rain.
“I was fortunate to be able to be out in Hollywood in the 90s and to be able to work early on seminal LGBT-presenting shows like Tales of the City series, and Six Feet Under with Alan Ball. When it comes to Tokyo Vice, I did push hard for there to be a queer storyline because in the late 90s, in Japan, there was a huge thriving gay subculture. But it wasn't on the table to come out because your sexual orientation was considered irrelevant to your obligations to society.”
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0693561
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2887954/
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
“I would go back to that very simple thing of treating animals the way that you would like to be treated. And I know that humane education is becoming a more welcome subject or way of teaching in schools. And I definitely think we need more of that where it's not just you go to school and learn about maths and science and history and so on, but you learn about those subjects within the realm of real-life issues and real-life problems.
I wrote Survival at Stake because I've been working in animal rights for nearly the past 25 years. Throughout that time, one common question has been asked: Well, shouldn't we deal with human issues first. But animal rights are human rights. Animal rights is environmentalism. These things are not distinct. And that's the point I was really trying to make in my book. I was inspired to write it because of the COVID-19 crisis. It just brings us back to the point of why it is so important to teach people, young people, and young men the importance of being kind to everyone, animals included. If you teach them that, I think the other lessons start to much more automatically transfer over.”
Poorva Joshipura is PETA U.K. Senior Vice President. She is the Author of Survival at Stake: How Our Treatment of Animals is Key to Human Existence and For a Moment of Taste: How What You Eat Impacts Animals, the Planet and Your Health.
https://usw2.nyl.as/t1/24/2jdwp5ogezjqb5wxg76eqfqeq/0/14474d94f4e832cd573ffc39be471e57616314b12314a26ca7dd9c2bbf559ac0
www.harpercollins.com/products/for-a-moment-of-taste-poorva-joshipura?variant=39399505592354
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
How can we improve animal-human relationships? How can we increase our sensitivity to the other animals who share this planet with us?
Poorva Joshipura is PETA U.K. Senior Vice President. She is the Author of Survival at Stake: How Our Treatment of Animals is Key to Human Existence and For a Moment of Taste: How What You Eat Impacts Animals, the Planet and Your Health.
“I would go back to that very simple thing of treating animals the way that you would like to be treated. And I know that humane education is becoming a more welcome subject or way of teaching in schools. And I definitely think we need more of that where it's not just you go to school and learn about maths and science and history and so on, but you learn about those subjects within the realm of real-life issues and real-life problems.
I wrote Survival at Stake because I've been working in animal rights for nearly the past 25 years. Throughout that time, one common question has been asked: Well, shouldn't we deal with human issues first. But animal rights are human rights. Animal rights is environmentalism. These things are not distinct. And that's the point I was really trying to make in my book. I was inspired to write it because of the COVID-19 crisis. It just brings us back to the point of why it is so important to teach people, young people, and young men the importance of being kind to everyone, animals included. If you teach them that, I think the other lessons start to much more automatically transfer over.”
https://usw2.nyl.as/t1/24/2jdwp5ogezjqb5wxg76eqfqeq/0/14474d94f4e832cd573ffc39be471e57616314b12314a26ca7dd9c2bbf559ac0
www.harpercollins.com/products/for-a-moment-of-taste-poorva-joshipura?variant=39399505592354
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
“When people say, oh, yeah, AI is going to help everyone or change humanity or all these claims, they don't realize people don't have access to the Internet in some places or cell phones or the fact that the data used by AI models is not representative of many parts of the world. It's mostly in English, and the data generated on the Internet and AI is mostly by educated, white, male users who post on forums. So there are whole generations and whole regions of the world that are not represented in this data. And so I think that all these claims of the universality of AI or how it's going to help everyone are techno-optimistic. I think it's really important to stay, once again, skeptical of AI, but also learn about it and see it not as some magical thing, but more as a technology. A technology that works but also doesn't work. A technology that comes with costs and benefits.”
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
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.
“When people say, oh, yeah, AI is going to help everyone or change humanity or all these claims, they don't realize people don't have access to the Internet in some places or cell phones or the fact that the data used by AI models is not representative of many parts of the world. It's mostly in English, and the data generated on the Internet and AI is mostly by educated, white, male users who post on forums. So there are whole generations and whole regions of the world that are not represented in this data. And so I think that all these claims of the universality of AI or how it's going to help everyone are techno-optimistic. I think it's really important to stay, once again, skeptical of AI, but also learn about it and see it not as some magical thing, but more as a technology. A technology that works but also doesn't work. A technology that comes with costs and benefits.”
https://www.sashaluccioni.com
https://huggingface.co/
http://www.climatechange.ai
https://wimlworkshop.org
"My area of work is sustainable development with a focus on climate. And you can ask what does sustainable development mean? To put it very simply, it means how do you have economic growth that is socially equitable and environmentally sustainable? It's not just that you have ecological sustainability; hence, that is sustainable development. Because lots of examples of economic, ecological, and ecologically sensitive growth need not be socially equitable. That's why this whole emphasis on just transition is not just about climate, but it's also about justice. It's about social equity in economic growth. Unlike in Europe, where there is now the call for degrowth or a circular economy, most parts of the world would look at you blankly if you talked about degrowth because they are hungry for growth.
And so sustainable development is about managing these trade-offs, which is what I've been working on. My work is really focused on institutions, and how do you bring the best of science into development. And for me, development is also spatially informed. It's not just the statistical averages, but it's spatially informed because you have people living in cities, villages, and homesteads. So, how do you become geographically sensitive in your policymaking? And that comes from my own background in planning and architecture."
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
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
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.
"My area of work is sustainable development with a focus on climate. And you can ask what does sustainable development mean? To put it very simply, it means how do you have economic growth that is socially equitable and environmentally sustainable? It's not just that you have ecological sustainability; hence, that is sustainable development. Because lots of examples of economic, ecological, and ecologically sensitive growth need not be socially equitable. That's why this whole emphasis on just transition is not just about climate, but it's also about justice. It's about social equity in economic growth. Unlike in Europe, where there is now the call for degrowth or a circular economy, most parts of the world would look at you blankly if you talked about degrowth because they are hungry for growth.
And so sustainable development is about managing these trade-offs, which is what I've been working on. My work is really focused on institutions, and how do you bring the best of science into development. And for me, development is also spatially informed. It's not just the statistical averages, but it's spatially informed because you have people living in cities, villages, and homesteads. So, how do you become geographically sensitive in your policymaking? And that comes from my own background in planning and architecture."
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
In this episode on Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu and Azeezah Kanji talk with artists and activists Isabella Frémaux and Jay Jordan about their book, We are ‘Nature’ Defending Itself: Entangling Art, Activism and Autonomous Zones Vagabonds/Pluto/Journal of Aesthetics & Protest, 2021. They tell the story of a 40-year struggle to preserve 4,000 acres of wetlands from being destroyed to make way for an airport, but the book is also a profound and beautiful meditation on what it means to live together and struggle together outside the logic of capitalist extraction and violence.
Jay (formerly John) Jordan (they/them) is labelled a "Domestic Extremist" by the police, and “a magician of rebellion” by the press. Part-time author, sex worker and full time trouble maker, Jay is a lover of edges, especially between art and activism. They co-founded Reclaim the streets and the clown army.
Isabelle Fremeaux (she/her) is a popular educator, facilitator, action researcher and deserter of the neoliberal academy where for a decade she was Senior Lecturer at Birkbeck College London. Co-author (with Jay) of the film/book Les Sentiers de L’utopie (2011, La Découverte), together they coordinate The Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination, bringing artists and activists together to co-design and deploy tools of disobedience. They live on the zad of Notre-dame-des-landes, a territory “lost to the Republic,” according to the French government.
https://labo.zone/index.php/we-are-nature-defending-itself-entangling-art-activism-autonomous-zones/?lang=en
www.labo.zone
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/oct/27/police-spotter-card-john-jordan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reclaim_the_Streets
www.palumbo-liu.com
https://speakingoutofplace.com
https://twitter.com/palumboliu?s=20
www.instagram.com/speaking_out_of_place
"Global restoration really means finding and empowering the millions of local communities, indigenous populations, and farmers who are promoting biodiversity. Restor is a digital platform, sort of like Google Maps, but for restoration. So rather than seeing coffee shops and supermarkets, you will see conservation projects and Indigenous-led restoration initiatives. And that means you can find a currently on Restor - I think we have around 140, 000 - so you can go on there for free right now and find thousands and thousands of these amazing heroes of nature. And you can zoom in and you can see every single tree on the ground. You can see every bush and you can fund them or you can buy their coffee or you can go visit their projects and do ecotourism. There's a myriad of ways that we can all support their efforts by also improving our own lives.
We need to be cutting our emissions so that we can allow nature to thrive and help us along the way. For far too long people have been squabbling about emissions. We should do this or we should do that. Climate change is way too big for us to be squabbling about things. We need to do everything now. When we grow the same crops every year, the soil gets more depleted and all the nutrients are lost. I've heard quotes that if we cannot find agricultural systems that rejuvenate the soil instead of depleting it, we are signing our death warrant. It's like we need to be promoting healthy soils if we're going to have any agriculture in the future."
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
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
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.
"Global restoration really means finding and empowering the millions of local communities, indigenous populations, and farmers who are promoting biodiversity. Restor is a digital platform, sort of like Google Maps, but for restoration. So rather than seeing coffee shops and supermarkets, you will see conservation projects and Indigenous-led restoration initiatives. And that means you can find a currently on Restor - I think we have around 140, 000 - so you can go on there for free right now and find thousands and thousands of these amazing heroes of nature. And you can zoom in and you can see every single tree on the ground. You can see every bush and you can fund them or you can buy their coffee or you can go visit their projects and do ecotourism. There's a myriad of ways that we can all support their efforts by also improving our own lives.
We need to be cutting our emissions so that we can allow nature to thrive and help us along the way. For far too long people have been squabbling about emissions. We should do this or we should do that. Climate change is way too big for us to be squabbling about things. We need to do everything now. When we grow the same crops every year, the soil gets more depleted and all the nutrients are lost. I've heard quotes that if we cannot find agricultural systems that rejuvenate the soil instead of depleting it, we are signing our death warrant. It's like we need to be promoting healthy soils if we're going to have any agriculture in the future."
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
As we reach the tipping points of climate change, how will our world change? Greenland has already lost 4,700 billion metric tons of ice, an amount that is enough to flood the entire United States in 1.5 feet of water.
Peter D. Ditlevsen is an Associate Professor at the Niels Bohr Institute at Copenhagen University. The institute was founded in 1921 as the Institute for Theoretical Physics. Ditlevsen is a Professor in Physics of Ice, Climate, and Earth. His fields of interest include climate research, turbulence, meteorology, complex systems, time series analysis, and statistical physics.
"The Sahara, which is not really desert, more like savannah, you might be able to change that [through geoengineering], but that's also connected with the monsoon system and all these chaotic systems are very hard to do. But the way we've deforested, the way we've made agriculture, the way we have messed with this planet. I mean, if you look at the biomass in mammals (it's us, it's cows, it's sheep, rhinoceroses, giraffes, whales...it's everything) 96 percent of that mass is human or livestock. That is, to me, an extremely scary number, that wild nature has so little room in our world."
https://nbi.ku.dk/english/staff/?pure=en/persons/peter-ditlevsen(77e9801a-6b31-4488-a282-6c99a406a5f1)/cv.html
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
"Capitalism when it first developed was a very significant part of life, but it wasn't all of life. In other words, it had its place, but that place wasn't every place. And what's happened over the years, what some people call economic imperialism, is that the incredible efficiencies of the market started being exported to other aspects of life. And so the classroom, the educational institution is just another market. The students are customers, the professors are the retailers, and you operate to keep the customers happy. It wouldn't have occurred to anyone to think about education in those terms, but it's increasingly become a market. And that influence is so pervasive that I think it can exert itself without our even realizing. It doesn't occur to people growing up now that they've got a kind of market capitalist lens through which they look at everything. When they're trying to decide whether to form a friendship, they ask themselves: is it worth it to me to invest my time in this relationship? Notice the language. Is it worth it to invest my time? And it doesn't occur to people that this is a sort of distorted way to be thinking about developing close relations to other people. It's just become the language of our time. So you get influenced by being awash in markets and consumerism without realizing that that's what's happening to you. So that's a hard influence to overcome because you don't even realize its presence. That's what makes it so difficult for people to change."
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
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.
"Capitalism when it first developed was a very significant part of life, but it wasn't all of life. In other words, it had its place, but that place wasn't every place. And what's happened over the years, what some people call economic imperialism, is that the incredible efficiencies of the market started being exported to other aspects of life. And so the classroom, the educational institution is just another market. The students are customers, the professors are the retailers, and you operate to keep the customers happy. It wouldn't have occurred to anyone to think about education in those terms, but it's increasingly become a market. And that influence is so pervasive that I think it can exert itself without our even realizing. It doesn't occur to people growing up now that they've got a kind of market capitalist lens through which they look at everything. When they're trying to decide whether to form a friendship, they ask themselves: is it worth it to me to invest my time in this relationship? Notice the language. Is it worth it to invest my time? And it doesn't occur to people that this is a sort of distorted way to be thinking about developing close relations to other people. It's just become the language of our time. So you get influenced by being awash in markets and consumerism without realizing that that's what's happening to you. So that's a hard influence to overcome because you don't even realize its presence. That's what makes it so difficult for people to change."
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
Can we stop talking about growth and mediate an environmental crisis through the structures of capitalism?
In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu speaks with Japanese scholar Kohei Saito, whose book, Marx in the Anthropocene sold over half a million copies. In it, Saito shows how late in life Marx came to a richer sense of production when he released that there was a law above the economic as he had conceived it—it was the law of Nature. Marx saw how disturbing Nature’s metabolism could bring about a “rift” that sent destructive ripples across human life. Today we make the connection between that scholarly book and Kohei’s new book, Slow Down!!, which has just come out in English translation. Here he offers a sharp critique of liberal and socialist attempts to “sustain”—like the Green New Deal, and argues for a radical form of degrowth communism that de-celerates our compulsion to add more stuff into the world, in whatever form, and derails our compulsion to sustain, rather than revolutionize. Saito argues that we can lead much happier, and more healthy lives, if we emphasize use value, and revitalize democracy so we all have a hand in deciding what is valuable.
“The Green New Deal presents itself as a kind of radical policy. If you look at the content, it's just simply the continuation of what capitalism wants to do. It's a massive investment in new, allegedly green industries, with the creation of more jobs with higher wages, but these are not the things that socialists or any environmentalists should be actually seeking because we recognize that capitalism is basically the root cause of the climate crisis and the misery of the workers. If so, I think it is high time to imagine something radically very different from business-as-usual capitalism.”
Kohei Saito as an Associate Professor at the University of Tokyo. He completed his doctorate at the Humboldt University in Berlin. In 2018 he won the prestigious Deutscher Memorial Prize for Marxist research—becoming the first Japanese, and the youngest person, ever to win that prize. His books include: Slow Down! How Degrowth Communism Can Save the World (2023); Marx in the Anthropocene: Towards the Idea of Degrowth Communism (2022), Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism: Capital, Nature, and the Unfinished Critique of Political Economy (2017).
https://researchmap.jp/7000022985?lang=en
https://www.hachette.com.au/kohei-saito/slow-down-how-degrowth-communism-can-save-the-earth
www.palumbo-liu.com
https://speakingoutofplace.com
https://twitter.com/palumboliu?s=20
In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu speaks with noted researcher and scholar Ben Franta about two new articles he has written that add to his growing archive of seminal work on climate change. Ben tells us now the fossil fuel industry paid economists to join scientists in denying the true nature of the fossil fuel industry’s destruction of the environment. Economists argued that even if some science were correct, implementing change would be too costly. This became a powerful tool to stall and kill climate change legislation. Ben also talks about how communities have tried to sue fossil fuel companies for damages incurred by such misinformation and disinformation. In sum, we learn about what the industry has done, and how ordinary people and municipalities can fight back.
Benjamin Franta is the founding head of the Climate Litigation Lab and a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford Sustainable Law Programme. The Climate Litigation Lab is a multidisciplinary research initiative to inform, enable, and accelerate climate change litigation globally. Ben is also an Associate at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School and an Associate Member of Nuffield College, Oxford, and a former research fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He is the recipient of numerous academic and research fellowships including the Stanford Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellowship and the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. His research and writing have appeared in 10 languages, been featured in the Paramount+ documentary Black Gold, been cited in the U.S. Congressional Record, and been published in numerous scholarly and popular venues including Nature Climate Change, Global Environmental Change, The Guardian, Project Syndicate, and more.
“For 40 years, the American Petroleum Institute has hired economists to argue it would be too expensive to try and control fossil fuels and that climate change wasn't that bad. The same go-to consultancy firm has been involved in every major climate policy fight from the very beginning and hired by the fossil fuel industry, but what are the courts going to do? It's not just the historical deception. It's an ongoing deception.”
www.inet.ox.ac.uk/people/benjamin-franta
www.smithschool.ox.ac.uk/oxford-sustainable-law-programme/research/climate-litigation-lab
www.palumbo-liu.com
https://speakingoutofplace.com
https://twitter.com/palumboliu?s=20
“I drove for like a half an hour into absolute nothingness, and I left the car. It was three o'clock in the morning. It was minus 17 degrees and it was absolutely still. I've never experienced stillness such as that. I mean, it's like you feel like you can feel your atoms move or not move because it's so cold. And the sky is full of the Northern Lights. So you are already in a remote place, but you want to go further. And I think maybe those themes of going out into the wilderness are motivated by the urge to connect. And I think Issa López has really incorporated it beautifully into the script. And the show tells of this great disconnect between people. So not only are we disconnected from our environment, but we are disconnected from each other.
When we were shooting I sometimes thought, there is this beauty about collaboration between a director, cinematographer, and production designer, and all these key people. And I'm more and more convinced there's some kind of conscious thing happening. And there's also something subconscious happening.”
How does the place we’re born influence our beliefs? What would it be like to live in a world run by women, where it’s perpetually night, and the dead can speak to the living? In this episode, we discuss the new season of HBO’s True Detective: Night Country with award-winning cinematographer Florian Hoffmeister.
Known for his work on Tár, Pachinko, Great Expectations, and most recently, the new season of True Detective, he's also known for his collaboration with director Terence Davies on the films The Deep Blue Sea and A Quiet Passion. His work on Great Expectations earned him an Primetime Emmy and a BAFTA in cinematography, and in 2022, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Cinematography for his work on Tár.
http://florianhoffmeister.de/
www.hbo.com/true-detective
www.imdb.com/title/tt2356777/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Photo: Jodie Foster, Kali Reis · Photograph by Michele K. Short/HBO
How does the place we’re born influence our beliefs? What would it be like to live in a world run by women, where it’s perpetually night, and the dead can speak to the living? In this episode, we discuss the new season of HBO’s True Detective: Night Country with award-winning cinematographer Florian Hoffmeister.
Known for his work on Tár, Pachinko, Great Expectations, and most recently, the new season of True Detective, he's also known for his collaboration with director Terence Davies on the films The Deep Blue Sea and A Quiet Passion. His work on Great Expectations earned him an Primetime Emmy and a BAFTA in cinematography, and in 2022, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Cinematography for his work on Tár.
“I drove for like a half an hour into absolute nothingness, and I left the car. It was three o'clock in the morning. It was minus 17 degrees and it was absolutely still. I've never experienced stillness such as that. I mean, it's like you feel like you can feel your atoms move or not move because it's so cold. And the sky is full of the Northern Lights. So you are already in a remote place, but you want to go further. And I think maybe those themes of going out into the wilderness are motivated by the urge to connect. And I think Issa López has really incorporated it beautifully into the script. And the show tells of this great disconnect between people. So not only are we disconnected from our environment, but we are disconnected from each other.
When we were shooting I sometimes thought, there is this beauty about collaboration between a director, cinematographer, and production designer, and all these key people. And I'm more and more convinced there's some kind of conscious thing happening. And there's also something subconscious happening.”
http://florianhoffmeister.de/
www.hbo.com/true-detective
www.imdb.com/title/tt2356777/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Photo credits: Michele K. Short / HBO
“I tried to go through the history that I know of and the studies that I have researched from where educational processes started. And usually, when I say young, we're talking college age or more. And so I find I just finished a semester at Union Theological Seminary in New York and graduate and postgrad students, they either were angry or sad or just, you know, in shock that they have never heard through the whole semester, after years of study, that they've never heard the Native history as we know it. We've always been overrun with Western historical domination as they see it, that they came here for benevolence, they were brought a civilization, they brought us cars and tech, you know, all these things. It was the ships that came while we stood on the shore, watching the ships come, welcoming, abundance, giving. And then they came and they took what we offered, but they took more. And that's where we're at. And now we're seeing a whole abandonment of spirit and put into the ideas of a dogmatic soul. Where in Native is that we are shown the possibilities, and we're able to choose freely about what we're shown. We're never told to do this or say that or we were shown because it was a living and is a living language. Learning is a living, it's not a stagnant informational data bank. So this is how education is to me.”
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.
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.
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.
“I tried to go through the history that I know of and the studies that I have researched from where educational processes started. And usually, when I say young, we're talking college age or more. And so I find I just finished a semester at Union Theological Seminary in New York and graduate and postgrad students, they either were angry or sad or just, you know, in shock that they have never heard through the whole semester, after years of study, that they've never heard the Native history as we know it. We've always been overrun with Western historical domination as they see it, that they came here for benevolence, they were brought a civilization, they brought us cars and tech, you know, all these things. It was the ships that came while we stood on the shore, watching the ships come, welcoming, abundance, giving. And then they came and they took what we offered, but they took more. And that's where we're at. And now we're seeing a whole abandonment of spirit and put into the ideas of a dogmatic soul. Where in Native is that we are shown the possibilities, and we're able to choose freely about what we're shown. We're never told to do this or say that or we were shown because it was a living and is a living language. Learning is a living, it's not a stagnant informational data bank. So this is how education is to me.”
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.
"One of the clearest things that we find in studying all of these lives is we know that every life has hardship, every life has sorrow, and nobody's happy all the time. Doesn't matter how privileged you are, how rich, how famous, nobody's happy all the time.
And that's important to name because we can sometimes give each other the mistaken impression that if you just do all the right things, you'll be happy. So if you look at somebody else's social media feeds, they're not posting their photos of when they feel miserable or hungover. They're posting their photos of when they've been at a good party or on a beautiful beach. And so we can give each other the impression that everybody else is living their best life and they're happy all the time. And it's just me who has ups and downs. And what we find and what we put in the book through these life stories...we put in life stories, not of happy endings, but of real stories of ups and downs and challenges and joys as well."
What makes a good life? How important are relationships in helping us lead happy and meaningful lives?
Dr. Robert Waldinger is a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development at Massachusetts General Hospital, and cofounder of the Lifespan Research Foundation. Dr. Waldinger received his AB from Harvard College and his MD from Harvard Medical School. He is a practicing psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, and he directs a psychotherapy teaching program for Harvard psychiatry residents. He is also a Zen master (Roshi) and teaches meditation in New England and around the world. His TED Talk about the Harvard study “What makes a good life?” has been viewed more than 42 million times and is one of the 10 most watched TED Talks ever. He is co-author of The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness.
https://www.robertwaldinger.com/
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Good-Life/Robert-Waldinger/9781982166694
https://www.adultdevelopmentstudy.org/https://www.lifespanresearch.org
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
What makes a good life? How important are relationships in helping us lead happy and meaningful lives?
Dr. Robert Waldinger is a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development at Massachusetts General Hospital, and cofounder of the Lifespan Research Foundation. Dr. Waldinger received his AB from Harvard College and his MD from Harvard Medical School. He is a practicing psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, and he directs a psychotherapy teaching program for Harvard psychiatry residents. He is also a Zen master (Roshi) and teaches meditation in New England and around the world. His TED Talk about the Harvard study “What makes a good life?” has been viewed more than 42 million times and is one of the 10 most watched TED Talks ever. He is co-author of The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness.
"One of the clearest things that we find in studying all of these lives is we know that every life has hardship, every life has sorrow, and nobody's happy all the time. Doesn't matter how privileged you are, how rich, how famous, nobody's happy all the time.
And that's important to name because we can sometimes give each other the mistaken impression that if you just do all the right things, you'll be happy. So if you look at somebody else's social media feeds, they're not posting their photos of when they feel miserable or hungover. They're posting their photos of when they've been at a good party or on a beautiful beach. And so we can give each other the impression that everybody else is living their best life and they're happy all the time. And it's just me who has ups and downs. And what we find and what we put in the book through these life stories...we put in life stories, not of happy endings, but of real stories of ups and downs and challenges and joys as well."
https://www.robertwaldinger.com/
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Good-Life/Robert-Waldinger/9781982166694
https://www.adultdevelopmentstudy.org/https://www.lifespanresearch.org
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
"One of the things that we need to remember is that we are data stakeholders and not data subjects. We're often called data subjects if you look at the way legislation is written and tech companies talk about the users of their technology as data subjects.
Being a subject casts this sort of 'you can't help but have this happen to you' effect. But we're actually data stakeholders for the reason that data cannot be created without us. If companies were incentivized to follow data minimization for example, where they only collect the data they need, that would change the way we interact with digital technologies."
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
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.
"One of the things that we need to remember is that we are data stakeholders and not data subjects. We're often called data subjects if you look at the way legislation is written and tech companies talk about the users of their technology as data subjects.
Being a subject casts this sort of 'you can't help but have this happen to you' effect. But we're actually data stakeholders for the reason that data cannot be created without us. If companies were incentivized to follow data minimization for example, where they only collect the data they need, that would change the way we interact with digital technologies."
www.wendyhwong.com
https://mitpress.mit.edu/author/wendy-h-wong-38397
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
"Everything affects everything else. So it's key that we all take part in trying to make this place a better world for everybody. And, you know, when you see the logic behind the fact that it is possible to feed the world. It really is. And it's possible to make so many positive changes. You know, I've always been an advocate for, of course, trying to protect indigenous peoples around the world because although their logic may seem simple, it works. It's real. It's respect, not only for one another, it's respect for the Earth that we live on and that can be the only way forward that this is all going to work out. I get frustrated at the fact that I don't see why so many people just don't understand this. It's key."
How can the arts inspire us to lead lives of greater meaning and connection? What kind of world are we leaving for future generations?
Julian Lennon is a Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter, photographer, documentary filmmaker, and NYTimes bestselling author of children's books. Executive Producer of Common Ground and its predecessor Kiss the Ground, which reached over 1 billion people and inspired the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) to put $20 billion toward soil health. The natural world and indigenous people are also the focus of Lennon’s other documentaries Whaledreamers, and Women of the White Buffalo. In 2007, Julian founded the global environmental and humanitarian organization The White Feather Foundation, whose key initiatives are education, health, conservation, and the protection of indigenous culture, causes he also advances through his photography, exhibited across the US and Europe. His latest album Jude spans a body of work created over the last 30 years. Julian was named a Peace Laureate by UNESCO in 2020.
https://julianlennon.com
https://commongroundfilm.org
https://kissthegroundmovie.com
https://whitefeatherfoundation.com
https://julianlennon.lnk.to/JudeWE
https://julianlennon-photography.com
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
How can the arts inspire us to lead lives of greater meaning and connection? What kind of world are we leaving for future generations?
Julian Lennon is a Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter, photographer, documentary filmmaker, and NYTimes bestselling author of children's books. Executive Producer of Common Ground and its predecessor Kiss the Ground, which reached over 1 billion people and inspired the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) to put $20 billion toward soil health. The natural world and indigenous people are also the focus of Lennon’s other documentaries Whaledreamers, and Women of the White Buffalo. In 2007, Julian founded the global environmental and humanitarian organization The White Feather Foundation, whose key initiatives are education, health, conservation, and the protection of indigenous culture, causes he also advances through his photography, exhibited across the US and Europe. His latest album Jude spans a body of work created over the last 30 years. Julian was named a Peace Laureate by UNESCO in 2020.
"Everything affects everything else. So it's key that we all take part in trying to make this place a better world for everybody. And, you know, when you see the logic behind the fact that it is possible to feed the world. It really is. And it's possible to make so many positive changes. You know, I've always been an advocate for, of course, trying to protect indigenous peoples around the world because although their logic may seem simple, it works. It's real. It's respect, not only for one another, it's respect for the Earth that we live on and that can be the only way forward that this is all going to work out. I get frustrated at the fact that I don't see why so many people just don't understand this. It's key."
https://julianlennon.com
https://commongroundfilm.org
https://kissthegroundmovie.com
https://whitefeatherfoundation.com
https://julianlennon.lnk.to/JudeWE
https://julianlennon-photography.com
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
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.
"The task for us is to understand how we can get moral visions and then consider the ethics of negotiating between and among them, including collisions between moral visions. So my interest is in the extent to which various forms of reason take part in these different projects. I argue that contemporary technical philosophers tend to avoid this kind of problem. They tend to think of reason as much more narrow, whereas I want to include things like ordinary experience, the arts, theater, and reading a book. All those things can have an effect. Or as the case, we can consider now with current events experiencing moral horror, even if it's at a bit of a distance, even on TV or reading about it in the newspaper, have an effect on helping shape our moral vision. And so it's not necessarily a matter of neuro-technical reasoning. That probably is enough to get an idea of what I might do."
https://duanelcady.com
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
How do we define intelligence? What is the point of creativity and intelligence if we are not creating good in the world? In this age of AI, what is the importance of a synthesizing mind?
Howard Gardner, Research Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, an author of over 30 books, translated into 32 languages, and several hundred articles, is best known for his theory of multiple intelligences, a critique of the notion that there exists but a single human intelligence that can be assessed by standard psychometric instruments. He has twice been selected by Foreign Policy and Prospect magazines as one of the 100 most influential public intellectuals in the world. In the last few years, Gardner has been studying the nature of human synthesizing, a topic introduced in his 2020 memoir, A Synthesizing Mind.
For 28 years, with David Perkins, he was Co-Director of Harvard Project Zero, and in more recent years has served in a variety of leadership positions. Since the middle 1990s, Gardner has directed The Good Project, a group of initiatives, founded in collaboration with psychologists Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and William Damon. The project promotes excellence, engagement, and ethics in education, preparing students to become good workers and good citizens who contribute to the overall well-being of society. Through research-based concepts, frameworks, and resources, The Good Project seeks to help students reflect upon the ethical dilemmas that arise in everyday life and give them the tools to make thoughtful decisions.
"And what scholars my age do is we write about these things. We talk about these things, but we hope our students will carry it through. So I've been trying to organize a network on synthesizing, which now has people from several different countries involved. And my team on The Good Project is working with schools and dozens of countries. And the curriculum has been translated into Portuguese, Chinese, and it's about to be translated into Japanese. And that's how we hope these ideas will make a difference. Now, if you are a pessimist by nature, as I am. You're going to say, 'Well, what can a bunch of scholars in Cambridge, Massachusetts, possibly do that's going to change the way the world is?' And the answer is we can't do it ourselves. We have to find partners and like-minded people all over the world and do blogs and podcasts and write. And I don't do social media, but my colleagues do and try to come out with more positive ways of thinking about things. Because there's plenty of depressing news and examples in the world. And I like to say, I'm a pessimist by nature, but I try to live my life as an optimist.”
www.howardgardner.com
http://thegoodproject.org
https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262542838/a-synthesizing-mind
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with legendary climate activist Bill McKibben and scholar Caroline Levine. McKibben relates his long struggle to get companies to divest from fossil fuels and for the world in general to act immediately to seriously and substantially address this existential crisis. Levine tells of her efforts to get the giant pension fund, TIAA-CREF, to divest. She also talks about her new book, The Activist Humanist, and its relation to both her teaching and her activism.
Bill McKibben is founder of Third Act, which organizes people over the age of 60 for action on climate and justice. His 1989 book The End of Nature is regarded as the first book for a general audience about climate change, and has appeared in 24 languages. He’s gone on to write 20 books, and his work appears regularly in periodicals from the New Yorker to Rolling Stone. He serves as the Schumann Distinguished Scholar in Environmental Studies at Middlebury College, as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he has won the Gandhi Peace Prize as well as honorary degrees from 20 colleges and universities. He was awarded the Right Livelihood Award, sometimes called the alternative Nobel, in the Swedish Parliament. Foreign Policy named him to its inaugural list of the world’s 100 most important global thinkers.
McKibben helped found 350.org, the first global grassroots climate campaign, which has organized protests on every continent, including Antarctica, for climate action. He played a leading role in launching the opposition to big oil pipeline projects like Keystone XL, and the fossil fuel divestment campaign, which has become the biggest anti-corporate campaign in history, with endowments worth more than $40 trillion stepping back from oil, gas and coal. He stepped down as board chair of 350 in 2015, and left the board and stepped down from his volunteer role as senior adviser in 2020, accepting emeritus status. He lives in the mountains above Lake Champlain with his wife, the writer Sue Halpern, where he spends as much time as possible outdoors. In 2014, biologists credited his career by naming a new species of woodland gnat—Megophthalmidia mckibbeni–in his honor.
Caroline Levine has spent her career asking how and why the humanities and the arts matter, especially in democratic societies. She argues for an understanding of forms and structures as essential both to understanding links between art and society and to the challenge of taking meaningful political action. She is the author of four books. The most recent, The Activist Humanist: Form and Method in the Climate Crisis (Princeton University Press 2023), grows out of the theoretical work of Forms: Whole, Rhythm, Hierarchy, Network (2015, winner of the James Russell Lowell Prize from the MLA, and named one of Flavorwire’s “10 Must-Read Academic Books of 2015”). Levine has also published The Serious Pleasures of Suspense: Victorian Realism and Narrative Doubt (2003, winner of the Perkins Prize for the best book in narrative studies) and Provoking Democracy: Why We Need the Arts (2007).
"Viewed one way, we live in a very hopeful moment. Thanks to in large part the work of university scientists and engineers, we now live on a planet where the cheapest way to produce power is to point a sheet of glass at the sun. That is to say, we could run our Earth on energy from heaven instead of hell, and we could do it fast. The fast is the hard part here. The only difference between all the examples of the long victories of social justice activism that we're in now is that this one is a time-limited problem. If we don't solve it fast, then no one's got a plan for how you refreeze the Arctic once you've melted it. And so we have to move very quickly. Our systems are not designed to move quickly. It's the easiest thing in the world to slow down and delay change, which is all that the fossil fuel industry at this point is trying to do, and that means that it's time for maximum effort from all of us. The story to tell is that the planet is outside its comfort zone, so we need to be outside ours."
https://billmckibben.com
https://350.org
https://thirdact.org
https://english.cornell.edu/caroline-levine
https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691250588/the-activist-humanist
https://tiaa-divest.org
www.palumbo-liu.com
https://speakingoutofplace.com
https://twitter.com/palumboliu?s=20
How do some people face incredible tragedies and find within these experiences inspiration to improve the lives of others? Our guest today lost her grandfather, who was the assassinated Prime Minister of the Buganda Kingdom, and her father, who was disappeared by Idi Amin, and yet she went on to become a leading conservationist.
Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka is Uganda's first full-time wildlife veterinarian and the Founder and CEO of Conservation Through Public Health. Interested in animals from a young age, she pursued her studies at the Royal Veterinary College at the University of London before returning to Uganda. In the time since, she's worked tirelessly to preserve the animals of Uganda, being awarded the Whitley Gold Award, Sierra Club Earth Care Award, Edinburgh Medal, National Geographic Explorer, and most recently an appointment to become a United Nations Champion of the Earth for Science and Innovation. She is author of Walking with Gorillas: The Journey of an African Wildlife Vet.
"I have always wanted to be around animals and growing up, I cannot remember a time when there were no pets at home. My elder brother Apollo Katerega, who was 10 years older than me, also liked animals, especially dogs and was always bringing stray dogs and cats home. I was the last born of six children. My sister, Veronica Nakibule, who I followed, was five years older than me so were just outside each other's age bracket for playing. Thus the pets at home became my main companions, and we developed a strong bond.
Along the way, I eventually fulfilled my lifelong dream to not only become a veterinarian, but a wildlife veterinarian. In 1996, I began to take care of the critically endangered mountain gorillas of Uganda. Since then, they've increased in number from six hundred and fifty to 1,063 individuals in Uganda, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo(DRC). There are no mountain gorillas surviving in zoos outside their range countries, and their only hope is to keep the population thriving where they are naturally found.
The gorillas have shaped my life's calling since I first studied them as a student at the Royal Veterinary College, University of London. I've treated them as the first full-time wildlife veterinarian in Uganda and supported them as Founder and Chief Executive Officer of a grassroots NGO and nonprofit, Conservation Through Public Health, more commonly known as 'CTPH,' that promotes biodiversity conservation through not only improving the health of gorillas and other wildlife, but also the health and wellbeing of the people and livestock with whom they share their fragile habitats."
www.ctph.org
https://www.skyhorsepublishing.com/9781950994267/walking-with-gorillas/
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
A recent UN report shows that women are underrepresented at all levels of decision-making worldwide. They say that women in executive government positions and gender equality in the highest positions of power will not be reached for another 130 years. How can we close the gender gap and achieve true representation?
With a distinguished career in public service, Mary Hayashi has spearheaded substantial reforms in mental health services, championed gender equality, and forged powerful, unprecedented partnerships for social causes that previously had no financial or public backing. Recognized as “Legislator of the Year” by the American Red Cross and the California Medical Association, Mary has also been featured on Redbook’s “Mothers and Shakers” list and Ladies’ Home Journal ’s “Women to Watch.” Mary remains a steadfast proponent of social justice expansion and the rights of underrepresented communities. She is author of Far From Home: Shattering the Myth of the Model Minority, and Women in Politics: Breaking Down the Barriers to Achieve True Representation.
"One of the studies I mentioned in the book is people don't see women as leaders and the barriers you experience as a candidate during a campaign. And even after you win and you're serving inside the government, there are still challenges to overcome. Last year, we had a record number of women elected and becoming leaders in government positions, but it doesn't mean their path is easy or it's set. Because of gender bias, women are supposed to be coalition builders and not supposed to be ambitious. One of the things that I talk a lot about is the ambition gap. When women show ambition, we're penalized. People are often suspicious of our motivation. It's like, why is she running? What is she about? And being an Asian American woman, I was perceived by my colleagues after I won and chaired one of the most powerful policy committees in the legislature, I often felt like people didn't know how to engage with me as a peer. They'd never seen an Asian American woman in that role before and so they would criticize me for being too ambitious or too aggressive, or too opinionated. And that really takes a toll on you just emotionally. I wasn't raised that way, but when you have an opinion, people are just not used to seeing Asian women as peers in that role and that really needs to change. And I think it will over time as they see more people like us serving in leadership roles."
www.maryhayashi.com
https://womeninpoliticsbook.org
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu and Azeezah Kanji talk with Hedi Viterbo and Dr. Jess Ghannam. This episode was recorded on Saturday the 18th of November, 2023, as Israel’s massive attack on Gaza passed the 40-day mark. Almost immediately after the deadly October 7 Hamas attack, the image of the child, both Israeli and Palestinian, began to dominate the media’s coverage, and appeals to international humanitarian law were made to “save the children.” Azeezah Kanji and I decided to create this podcast to coincide with November 20, International Children’s Day, in order to take a deeper look at why such appeals to the law must be contextualized both historically and politically.
Hedi Viterbo is an associate professor of law at Queen Mary University of London in the UK. His research examines legal issues concerning childhood, state violence, and sexuality from an interdisciplinary and global perspective. His latest book is Problematizing Law, Rights, and Childhood in Israel/Palestine (Cambridge University Press, 2021).
Dr. Jess Ghannam is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Global Health Sciences in the School of Medicine at UCSF. His research areas include evaluating the long-term health consequences of war on displaced communities and the psychological and psychiatric effects of armed conflict on children. Dr. Ghannam has developed community health clinics in the Middle East that focus on developing community-based treatment programs for families in crisis.
He is also a consultant with the Center for Constitutional Rights, Reprieve and other international NGO's that work with torture survivors. Locally he works to promote and enhance the health and wellness of refugee, displaced, and immigrant populations from the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia and has established a community-based Mental Health Treatment Programs to support these communities.
https://www.qmul.ac.uk/law/people/academic-staff/items/viterbo.html
https://www.cambridge.org/us/universitypress/subjects/law/human-rights/problematizing-law-rights-and-childhood-israelpalestine
www.palumbo-liu.com
https://speakingoutofplace.com
https://twitter.com/palumboliu?s=20
“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
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
"Learning about environmentalism in school, you look at specific figures like John Muir, etc. And I wanted people to also have that association when it came to the environmental justice movement because I think sometimes that really is a helpful learning tool for students.
So in particular, Hazel M. Johnson, I'm so fascinated by her because she's often not really written about in environmental textbooks at all. She was just a woman in Chicago who had no environmental experience, but she started realizing that a lot of people in her community, including her husband, were getting all sorts of forms of cancers and other heart diseases and things like that at what she suspected were alarming rates. So when she investigated, she found that her neighborhood was built on top of toxic waste and other things, and she defined this term called a toxic doughnut that her community and so many other communities that were similar to hers that were lower income and primarily Black neighborhoods that were formerly redlined were surrounded by a toxic doughnut of waste, of landfills, highways running through their neighborhoods, and sometimes even buried radioactive waste, etc.
So she was one of the first people who really made a stir about this, and I think something that's really cool in her work, and then also Dr. Robert Bullard, to formalize that research or that hunch that she had and produced the first study on toxic waste and race and really made the field of environmental justice is that they also were really just faith-based people that spoke about this amongst their churches.
And I think again, that's something that's really cool because in the environmental or scientific community, sometimes people do try to separate faith advocacy from science. However, these are people who were mobilizing in their churches and talking about it in their sermons and seeing how they could transform their communities to be better for people and the planet.
So I think it's just a great story, and I really want people to know the names of people like Hazel Johnson and Dr. Robert Bullard just like they know the names of people like John Muir because they've done such a beautiful job, and I want their legacies to be remembered."
Leah Thomas is an intersectional environmental activist and eco-communicator based in Southern California. She’s passionate about advocating for and exploring the relationship between social justice and environmentalism and was the first to define the term “Intersectional Environmentalism.” She is the founder of @greengirlleah and The Intersectional Environmentalist platform. Her articles on this topic have appeared in Vogue, Elle, The Good Trade, and Youth to the People and she has been featured in Harper’s Bazaar, W Magazine, Domino, GOOP, Fashionista, BuzzFeed, and numerous podcasts. She has a B.S. in Environmental Science and Policy from Chapman University and worked for the National Park Service and Patagonia headquarters before pursuing activism full time. She lives in Carpinteria, California. She is the author of The Intersectional Environmentalist: How to Dismantle Systems of Oppression to Protect People + Planet, and Winner of the Creative Force Foundation Award 2023.
www.intersectionalenvironmentalist.com
www.instagram.com/greengirlleah
www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/leah-thomas/the-intersectional-environmentalist/9780316281935/?lens=voracious
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
Leah Thomas is an intersectional environmental activist and eco-communicator based in Southern California. She’s passionate about advocating for and exploring the relationship between social justice and environmentalism and was the first to define the term “Intersectional Environmentalism.” She is the founder of @greengirlleah and The Intersectional Environmentalist platform. Her articles on this topic have appeared in Vogue, Elle, The Good Trade, and Youth to the People and she has been featured in Harper’s Bazaar, W Magazine, Domino, GOOP, Fashionista, BuzzFeed, and numerous podcasts. She has a B.S. in Environmental Science and Policy from Chapman University and worked for the National Park Service and Patagonia headquarters before pursuing activism full time. She lives in Carpinteria, California. She is the author of The Intersectional Environmentalist: How to Dismantle Systems of Oppression to Protect People + Planet, and Winner of the Creative Force Foundation Award 2023.
"Learning about environmentalism in school, you look at specific figures like John Muir, etc. And I wanted people to also have that association when it came to the environmental justice movement because I think sometimes that really is a helpful learning tool for students.
So in particular, Hazel M. Johnson, I'm so fascinated by her because she's often not really written about in environmental textbooks at all. She was just a woman in Chicago who had no environmental experience, but she started realizing that a lot of people in her community, including her husband, were getting all sorts of forms of cancers and other heart diseases and things like that at what she suspected were alarming rates. So when she investigated, she found that her neighborhood was built on top of toxic waste and other things, and she defined this term called a toxic doughnut that her community and so many other communities that were similar to hers that were lower income and primarily Black neighborhoods that were formerly redlined were surrounded by a toxic doughnut of waste, of landfills, highways running through their neighborhoods, and sometimes even buried radioactive waste, etc.
So she was one of the first people who really made a stir about this, and I think something that's really cool in her work, and then also Dr. Robert Bullard, to formalize that research or that hunch that she had and produced the first study on toxic waste and race and really made the field of environmental justice is that they also were really just faith-based people that spoke about this amongst their churches.
And I think again, that's something that's really cool because in the environmental or scientific community, sometimes people do try to separate faith advocacy from science. However, these are people who were mobilizing in their churches and talking about it in their sermons and seeing how they could transform their communities to be better for people and the planet.
So I think it's just a great story, and I really want people to know the names of people like Hazel Johnson and Dr. Robert Bullard just like they know the names of people like John Muir because they've done such a beautiful job, and I want their legacies to be remembered."
www.intersectionalenvironmentalist.com
www.instagram.com/greengirlleah
www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/leah-thomas/the-intersectional-environmentalist/9780316281935/?lens=voracious
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
“So I wrote this book and it was a lot of fun because I had to learn so much. The book examines three iconic teachers: Confucius, Socrates, and Jesus. And I look at how each of those teachers encourage a certain kind of student. The student as follower, someone who will take on the path that you've developed. In the case of Socrates, the student as critical interlocutor or critical conversation partner, someone who will, in dialogue with you, learn what they don't know, how to take things apart. And in the case of Jesus and the apostles, I look at trying to imitate a way of life to transform themselves to strive towards being the kind of person that Jesus incarnated. And so that's the beginning of the book, these models of studenthood, if I could use that word, and being a teacher. And then I look at the way in which these ideas reverberate in the West across a long period of time. So I'm interested in the idea of the student before there were schools. What did we expect young people to learn even when they weren't going to school?”
What is the purpose of education? How are we educating students for the future? What is the importance of the humanities in this age of AI and the rapidly changing workplace?
Michael S. Roth is President of Wesleyan University. His books include Beyond the University: Why Liberal Education Matters and Safe Enough Spaces: A Pragmatist’s Approach to Inclusion, Free Speech, and Political Correctness on College Campuses. He's been a Professor of History and the Humanities since 1983, was the Founding Director of the Scripps College Humanities Institute, and was the Associate Director of the Getty Research Institute. His scholarly interests center on how people make sense of the past, and he has authored eight books around this topic, including his latest, The Student: A Short History.
https://www.wesleyan.edu/academics/faculty/mroth/profile.html
https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300250039/the-student/
www.wesleyan.edu
https://twitter.com/mroth78
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
What is the purpose of education? How are we educating students for the future? What is the importance of the humanities in this age of AI and the rapidly changing workplace?
Michael S. Roth is President of Wesleyan University. His books include Beyond the University: Why Liberal Education Matters and Safe Enough Spaces: A Pragmatist’s Approach to Inclusion, Free Speech, and Political Correctness on College Campuses. He's been a Professor of History and the Humanities since 1983, was the Founding Director of the Scripps College Humanities Institute, and was the Associate Director of the Getty Research Institute. His scholarly interests center on how people make sense of the past, and he has authored eight books around this topic, including his latest, The Student: A Short History.
“There's definitely a shift that occurs in the West from education is really giving you the ability to take your place in society, to education as being able to create your space in society. And so for most of human history in the West, education was to show you where you would fit in, and you may have had a couple of options or not, but you were going to fit in, and you were educated in such a way as to enable that fitting. In the modern period that changes. It's less about fitting in than it is about opening a space for flourishing or for creativity or freedom. And I spend a fair amount of time in the book on college students and those privileged folks who get to extend their formal education in ways that are supposed to open themselves up to creativity, transformation, and eventually participation in the system. That creates their schools in the first place.”
https://www.wesleyan.edu/academics/faculty/mroth/profile.html
https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300250039/the-student/
www.wesleyan.edu
https://twitter.com/mroth78
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
“So it's hard to tell exactly what the dangers are, but that's certainly one thing that we need to track that beings that are vastly intellectually superior to other beings may not respect the weaker beings, given our own past. It's really hard to tell exactly what will happen. The first concern I have is with surveillance capitalism in this country. The constant surveillance of us because the US is a surveillance capitalist economy, and it's the same elsewhere in the world, right? With Facebook and all these social media companies, things have just been going deeply wrong. And so it leads me to worry about how the future is going to play out. These tech companies aren't going to be doing the right thing for humanity. And this gets to my second worry, which is how's all this going to work for humans exactly? It's not clear where humans will even be needed in the future.”
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/
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
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.
“So it's hard to tell exactly what the dangers are, but that's certainly one thing that we need to track that beings that are vastly intellectually superior to other beings may not respect the weaker beings, given our own past. It's really hard to tell exactly what will happen. The first concern I have is with surveillance capitalism in this country. The constant surveillance of us because the US is a surveillance capitalist economy, and it's the same elsewhere in the world, right? With Facebook and all these social media companies, things have just been going deeply wrong. And so it leads me to worry about how the future is going to play out. These tech companies aren't going to be doing the right thing for humanity. And this gets to my second worry, which is how's all this going to work for humans exactly? It's not clear where humans will even be needed in the future.”
www.fau.edu/artsandletters/philosophy/susan-schneider/index
www.fau.edu/future-mind/
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu and Azeezah Kanji talk with Joseph M. Pierce and Liza Black about the vast number of questions that are opened up when people pretend to be Native when they in fact are not. These cases take on a specific significance when such false identifications allow these people access to privilege and positions of authority. When these falsehoods are found out, they place scholars and activists who have allied themselves with these people in extremely difficult positions, and unfortunately make institutions like colleges and universities the final arbiters of how “justice” is to be served. Finally, these cases put even more pressure on Native peoples to imagine and practice inventing identities that are both rooted and at the same time open to a broader set of possibilities.
Liza Black is a citizen of Cherokee Nation. Recently on fellowship at UCLA, Black is currently completing her book manuscript: How to Get Away with Murder: A Transnational History of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, contracted with Johns Hopkins University Press for an anticipated publication date of 2026. How to Get Away with Murder provides six case studies of women, girls, and two spirits disappeared or murdered over the course of the 20th century. Black is an Associate Professor of History and Native American and Indigenous Studies. In 2020, Black published Picturing Indians: Native Americans in Film, a deeply archival book making the argument that mid-century Native people navigated the complexities of inhabiting filmic representations of themselves as a means of survivance. Black has received several research grants including the Ford pre-, doc and post-doc fellowships; the Institute of American Cultures at UCLA fellowship; and the Cherokee Nation Higher Education Grant.
Joseph M. Pierce is Associate Professor in the Department of Hispanic Languages and Literature at Stony Brook University. His research focuses on the intersections of kinship, gender, sexuality, and race in Latin America, 19th century literature and culture, queer studies, Indigenous studies, and hemispheric approaches to citizenship and belonging. He is the author of Argentine Intimacies: Queer Kinship in an Age of Splendor, 1890-1910 (SUNY Press, 2019) and co-editor of Políticas del amor: Derechos sexuales y escrituras disidentes en el Cono Sur (Cuarto Propio, 2018) as well as the 2021 special issue of GLQ, “Queer/Cuir Américas: Translation, Decoloniality, and the Incommensurable.” His work has been published recently in Revista Hispánica Moderna, Critical Ethnic Studies, Latin American Research Review, and has also been featured in Indian Country Today. Along with S.J. Norman (Koori of Wiradjuri descent) he is co-curator of the performance series Knowledge of Wounds. He is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation.
www.lizablack.com
www.josephmpierce.com
www.palumbo-liu.com
https://speakingoutofplace.com
https://twitter.com/palumboliu?s=20
"The current climate situation is so overwhelming to people. This is a scale of problem that we have never encountered before. We talk about World War this and World War that, but this is a global catastrophe that's affecting every part of our planet. And it's, importantly, I think, bigger than anyone can actually take in. And I think everyone has the best intentions of trying to make positive change - unless it disturbs their cellphone use and their car driving too much. We have to get a little more serious about that.
I've chosen my work because I've loved the outside world. I love the things outside of myself. I love what isn't immediate to me. And I love projecting onto that as a way of kind of trying to reach the distance between my inner self and the vastness. To try to do that in a way that makes other people feel inspired by it, not be chided for not taking care of it. It's not something that I intend to be a message per se, but I think it might be a better message if it's not saying, "People, you've been bad. You have to change your evil ways!"
You know, I'd rather people look at the natural world and see the heartbreaking beauty of it and sense its fragility and its impermanence and their own impermanence and fragility and then have a response to that rather than say, you know, you have to act, you have to do something. I would hope that would inspire action rather than to cudgel them with a directive."
In this fractured world, how do the arts build community, understanding, and inspire change? How does art help us define who we are and our place in the world?
April Gornik is known for her large scale landscape paintings which embrace the vastness of sea and sky. Her imagined landscapes, built up through a series of underpaintings are meditations on light and time. Her work is included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC.
She is a director of the board of the Sag Harbor Cinema Arts Center and co-founded The Church arts, exhibition space, and creativity center, which is a sanctuary for visual, performing, literary artists, and other creatives. Together with her husband the artist Eric Fischl, they are at the center of Sag Harbour’s arts district, and in this episode, we’ll also hear from some of the talented artists they’ve brought to their stages.
www.aprilgornik.com
www.thechurchsagharbor.org
www.milesmcenery.com/exhibitions/april-gornik2
https://sagharborcinema.org/
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Kimiko Ishizaka - Bach - Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1 - 01 Prelude No. 1 in C major, BWV 846
Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain
In this fractured world, how do the arts build community, understanding, and inspire change? How does art help us define who we are and our place in the world?
April Gornik is known for her large scale landscape paintings which embrace the vastness of sea and sky. Her imagined landscapes, built up through a series of underpaintings are meditations on light and time. Her work is included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC.
She is a director of the board of the Sag Harbor Cinema Arts Center and co-founded The Church arts, exhibition space, and creativity center, which is a sanctuary for visual, performing, literary artists, and other creatives. Together with her husband the artist Eric Fischl, they are at the center of Sag Harbour’s arts district, and in this episode, we’ll also hear from some of the talented artists they’ve brought to their stages.
"The current climate situation is so overwhelming to people. This is a scale of problem that we have never encountered before. We talk about World War this and World War that, but this is a global catastrophe that's affecting every part of our planet. And it's, importantly, I think, bigger than anyone can actually take in. And I think everyone has the best intentions of trying to make positive change - unless it disturbs their cellphone use and their car driving too much. We have to get a little more serious about that.
I've chosen my work because I've loved the outside world. I love the things outside of myself. I love what isn't immediate to me. And I love projecting onto that as a way of kind of trying to reach the distance between my inner self and the vastness. To try to do that in a way that makes other people feel inspired by it, not be chided for not taking care of it. It's not something that I intend to be a message per se, but I think it might be a better message if it's not saying, "People, you've been bad. You have to change your evil ways!"
You know, I'd rather people look at the natural world and see the heartbreaking beauty of it and sense its fragility and its impermanence and their own impermanence and fragility and then have a response to that rather than say, you know, you have to act, you have to do something. I would hope that would inspire action rather than to cudgel them with a directive."
www.aprilgornik.com
www.thechurchsagharbor.org
www.milesmcenery.com/exhibitions/april-gornik2
https://sagharborcinema.org/
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Kimiko Ishizaka - Bach - Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1 - 01 Prelude No. 1 in C major, BWV 846
Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain
Additional audio courtesy of Sag Harbor Cinema Arts Center.
“I want to see movements that embolden our tactics. Like people blocking oil pipelines all over the world. That's what's required now. Asking endlessly from the dominant system to treat us fairly doesn't work. And this frustrating kind of endless appeal and hoping maybe we can get it to work this time doesn't work. And the clock is ticking, especially on ecological collapse. We need to save each other's lives and act.”
Dean Spade is an organizer, speaker, author, and professor at Seattle University's School of Law, where he teaches courses on policing, imprisonment, gender, race, and social movements. Spade has been organizing racial and economic movements for queer and trans liberation for the past 20 years. Spade's books include Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law and Mutual Aid, Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next). In 2002, Dean founded the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, a non-profit law collective that provides free legal services to transgender, intersex and gender non-conforming people who are low-income and/or people of color, and which operates on a collective governance model. His writing has appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Out, In These Times, Social Text, and Signs.
www.deanspade.net
www.southendpress.org/2010/items/87965
www.deanspade.net/mutual-aid-building-solidarity-during-this-crisis-and-the-next/
https://srlp.org
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Dean Spade is an organizer, speaker, author, and professor at Seattle University's School of Law, where he teaches courses on policing, imprisonment, gender, race, and social movements. Spade has been organizing racial and economic movements for queer and trans liberation for the past 20 years. Spade's books include Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law and Mutual Aid, Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next). In 2002, Dean founded the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, a non-profit law collective that provides free legal services to transgender, intersex and gender non-conforming people who are low-income and/or people of color, and which operates on a collective governance model. His writing has appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Out, In These Times, Social Text, and Signs.
“I want to see movements that embolden our tactics. Like people blocking oil pipelines all over the world. That's what's required now. Asking endlessly from the dominant system to treat us fairly doesn't work. And this frustrating kind of endless appeal and hoping maybe we can get it to work this time doesn't work. And the clock is ticking, especially on ecological collapse. We need to save each other's lives and act.”
www.deanspade.net
www.southendpress.org/2010/items/87965
www.deanspade.net/mutual-aid-building-solidarity-during-this-crisis-and-the-next/
https://srlp.org
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
"So the why really depends on where you are. People are not all the same. There is no such thing as the public. There are many, many, many different publics within a state, within a country, within the world, right? So one of the first cardinal rules of effective communication is know your audience. Who are they? What do they know? What do they think they know? Who do they trust? Where do they get their information? What are their underlying values? And it's only once you know who they are that you as a communicator can go more than halfway to try to meet them where they are not where you are. Where they are. That's so easy to say, but it's actually so hard for so many of us within the climate community to do because we're steeped in this issue. We want to talk about things."
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.
https://environment.yale.edu/profile/leiserowitz
https://climatecommunication.yale.edu
www.yaleclimateconnections.org
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
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.
"So the why really depends on where you are. People are not all the same. There is no such thing as the public. There are many, many, many different publics within a state, within a country, within the world, right? So one of the first cardinal rules of effective communication is know your audience. Who are they? What do they know? What do they think they know? Who do they trust? Where do they get their information? What are their underlying values? And it's only once you know who they are that you as a communicator can go more than halfway to try to meet them where they are not where you are. Where they are. That's so easy to say, but it's actually so hard for so many of us within the climate community to do because we're steeped in this issue. We want to talk about things."
https://environment.yale.edu/profile/leiserowitz
https://climatecommunication.yale.edu
www.yaleclimateconnections.org
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
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
https://twitter.com/palumboliu?s=20
In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu and Azeezah Kanji talk with the founders of the Polis Project—Suchitra Vijayan and Francesca Recchia—about their new book, How Long Can the Moon Be Caged? Voices of Indian Political Prisoners. They are joined by the eminent Dalit intellectual, and former political prisoner Dr. Anand Teltumbde to lend his unique insight into the political situation in India and the realities of being a political prisoner there. The book combines deep historical research, documents regarding the current political situation in India, and a set of creative works from political prisoners conveying to the world their resistance and courage.
The Polis Project, Inc. is a New York-based hybrid research and journalism organization that works with communities in resistance. Through its Research, Reportage and Resistance approach, they publish and disseminate critical ideas that are excluded from mainstream media.
Their work sheds light on the rise of authoritarianism especially in democracies and focuses on issues of racial, class and caste injustice, Islamophobia and State oppression around the world.
In September 2019, the United States Library of Congress selected The Polis Project, Inc.’s website for inclusion in its web archives. They consider the “website to be an important part of their collection and the historical record.”
www.thepolisproject.com
www.palumbo-liu.com
https://speakingoutofplace.com
https://twitter.com/palumboliu?s=20
Photo credit: Sarah Franklin
In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu speaks with June Choi, Yannai Kashtan, and Belinda Ramírez from the Coalition for a True School of Sustainability. Amidst great fanfare, Stanford University created the Doerr School for Sustainability, which immediately said that it would accept funding from the fossil fuel industry. June, Yannai, and Belinda are helping lead the movement of students pushing back to dissociate from such funds. David asks what drives them and sustains them in building a True School of Sustainability.
www.truesustainabilityschool.com
www.ejstanford.com
June Choi is a PhD candidate in Earth System Science at the Doerr School of Sustainability. Her research focuses on quantifying the impacts of climate change to inform adaptation strategies. Her previous work involved tracking global climate finance flows, setting standards for green bonds and sustainable finance integrity. She holds an MA in International Relations from John Hopkins University and BA in Sociology from Amherst College.
Yannai Kashtan is a PhD candidate in Earth System Science at the Doerr School of Sustainability, where he studies health-related hazards of residential fossil-fueled appliances. His most recent project quantified benzene emissions from gas and propane stoves. He earned a BA from Pomona College, where he majored in physics and chemistry and studied organic semiconductors.
Belinda Ramírez (they/them) teaches introductory liberal education courses at Stanford as a COLLEGE Fellow, including courses on environmental sustainability, food and culture, and climate/environmental/food justice. They also organize with Stanford’s Environmental Justice Working Group and the Coalition for a True School of Sustainability. Trained in cultural anthropology, their research deals with the social, racial/ethnic, political, and economic dimensions of urban agriculture and other food movements situated within the modern industrialized and corporatized global food system. In researching these topics, Belinda has come to recognize the fulfillment found in experiential learning and working firsthand to change their local food system, receiving agricultural training through local farms and community gardens in southern San Diego. They have also engaged in statewide political advocacy for young farmers through the National Young Farmers Coalition, served as both Board and Food Justice Co-Chair for Slow Food Urban San Diego, and worked as a Soil Farmer for Food2Soil. They consider themselves a farmer-scholar, bridging the worlds between praxis and theory, academia and tangible, on-the-ground work.
www.palumbo-liu.com
https://speakingoutofplace.com
https://twitter.com/palumboliu?s=20
"So it's just a great joy to be passing this guitar made from the wood of an 800-year-old tree around to musicians and asking them to play a song of resistance or celebration. And that's what we're going to do at Climate Aid: The Voice of the Forest. We're going to have it be an annual event like Farm Aid. And we want it to be big. We want it to be Woodstock in its pivot point. The way the Children's Trust court case was pivotal, the way this Black Ram court case we had and won was pivotal.
We want Climate Aid to be a celebration. And this one guitar exploring the question: Can one tree save a forest? Can one song save a forest? And we think the answer is yes. We believe it will be. What we want to do with the forest that the guitar came from is establish it as a climate refuge, a place dedicated to storing as much carbon and long-term safekeeping as possible.
We want the climate refuge to be really big. We want it to store a ton of carbon. We want it to be a focal point for increased scientific and artistic inquiry. We've brought in the world's leading climate scientists, and they've analyzed it, and they're proposing studies that should happen there. We've brought in our country's leading artists and they have experienced it and responded to it in their own way. We've had performance artists come and play music in the forest. So we want to establish the nation's first climate refuge. There is no such designation. We want it to be in Black Ram. This forest that almost got erased, a forest that was a thousand years old and almost went away. But we're getting a second chance. We saved it. Now we want to preserve it for another thousand years to study it, but we don't want to stop there. We want the government to establish a series of climate refuges all along the northern tier of the United States. What we think of as a necklace of green, a curtain of green. And from there to go around the globe, across northern Europe and northern Asia, and back around to Alaska. The amount of carbon that can be kept safely sequestered there is extraordinary. The numbers are almost unbelievable."
Rick Bass, a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist for his memoir Why I Came West, was born and raised in Texas, worked as a petroleum geologist in Mississippi, and has lived in Montana's Yaak Valley for almost three decades. His short fiction, which has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Esquire, and The Paris Review, as well as numerous times in Best American Short Stories, has earned him The Story Prize, multiple O. Henry Awards and Pushcart Prizes in addition to NEA and Guggenheim fellowships.
He’s an organizer and speaker at Climate Aid: The Voice of the Forest, a fundraiser event to benefit the grassroots environmental movement of Protect Ancient Forests & The Montana Project. Featuring Maggie Rogers and more great performers and speakers. The evening will advance the efforts to protect the Black Ram forest by designating the region as the nation’s first Climate Refuge. Portland, Maine, on Sunday, Oct. 15 at 7 p.m. ET, at the Merrill Auditorium. Tickets available at the Merrill’s box office and online at PortTIX.com.
www.rickbass.net
www.protectancientforests.org
www.montanaproject.org
www.PortTIX.com
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Rick Bass, a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist for his memoir Why I Came West, was born and raised in Texas, worked as a petroleum geologist in Mississippi, and has lived in Montana's Yaak Valley for almost three decades. His short fiction, which has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Esquire, and The Paris Review, as well as numerous times in Best American Short Stories, has earned him The Story Prize, multiple O. Henry Awards and Pushcart Prizes in addition to NEA and Guggenheim fellowships.
He’s an organizer and speaker at Climate Aid: The Voice of the Forest, a fundraiser event to benefit the grassroots environmental movement of Protect Ancient Forests & The Montana Project. Featuring Maggie Rogers and more great performers and speakers. The evening will advance the efforts to protect the Black Ram forest by designating the region as the nation’s first Climate Refuge. Portland, Maine, on Sunday, Oct. 15 at 7 p.m. ET, at the Merrill Auditorium. Tickets available at the Merrill’s box office and online at PortTIX.com.
"So it's just a great joy to be passing this guitar made from the wood of an 800-year-old tree around to musicians and asking them to play a song of resistance or celebration. And that's what we're going to do at Climate Aid: The Voice of the Forest. We're going to have it be an annual event like Farm Aid. And we want it to be big. We want it to be Woodstock in its pivot point. The way the Children's Trust court case was pivotal, the way this Black Ram court case we had and won was pivotal.
We want Climate Aid to be a celebration. And this one guitar exploring the question: Can one tree save a forest? Can one song save a forest? And we think the answer is yes. We believe it will be. What we want to do with the forest that the guitar came from is establish it as a climate refuge, a place dedicated to storing as much carbon and long-term safekeeping as possible.
We want the climate refuge to be really big. We want it to store a ton of carbon. We want it to be a focal point for increased scientific and artistic inquiry. We've brought in the world's leading climate scientists, and they've analyzed it, and they're proposing studies that should happen there. We've brought in our country's leading artists and they have experienced it and responded to it in their own way. We've had performance artists come and play music in the forest. So we want to establish the nation's first climate refuge. There is no such designation. We want it to be in Black Ram. This forest that almost got erased, a forest that was a thousand years old and almost went away. But we're getting a second chance. We saved it. Now we want to preserve it for another thousand years to study it, but we don't want to stop there. We want the government to establish a series of climate refuges all along the northern tier of the United States. What we think of as a necklace of green, a curtain of green. And from there to go around the globe, across northern Europe and northern Asia, and back around to Alaska. The amount of carbon that can be kept safely sequestered there is extraordinary. The numbers are almost unbelievable."
www.rickbass.net
www.protectancientforests.org
www.montanaproject.org
www.PortTIX.com
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu interviews Liza Featherstone about Build Public Renewables Act. It’s a huge victory for ecosocialists, and for everybody in New York, that came with the passage of a bold piece of legislation, the Build Public Renewables Act, or BPRA. Featherstone explains the genesis of the bill, and the specific wrk that activists put into its passage. What obstacles did they confront, how did they work together to overcome those obstacles, and what can other environmental activists learn from this historic moment?
Liza Featherstone is the author of Divining Desire: Focus Groups and the Culture of Consultation, published by O/R Books in 2018, as well as Selling Women Short: the Landmark Battle for Workers’ Rights at Walmart (Basic Books, 2004). She co-authored Students Against Sweatshops (Verso, 2002) and is editor of False Choices: the Faux Feminism of Hillary Rodham Clinton (Verso, 2016). She's currently editing a collection of Alexandra Kollontai 's work for O/R Books and International Publishers and writing the introduction to that volume.
Featherstone's work has been published in Lux, TV Guide, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Ms., the American Prospect, Columbia Journalism Review, Glamour, Teen Vogue, Dissent, the Guardian, In These Times, and many other publications. Liza teaches at NYU's Literary Reportage Program as well as at Columbia University School for International and Public Affairs. She is proud to be an active member of the New York City Democratic Socialists of America and of UAW local 7902.
"We have passed the Build Public Renewables Act which mandates and requires the state's power authority the New York State Power Authority to build its own publicly funded renewables: renewable energy, wind, and solar. And this was a long, long hard hard-fought victory. And to say how it happened, we need to think back to the early Bernie days just after the Bernie Sanders' 2016 presidential campaign. Obviously, people were very disappointed that Bernie Sanders didn't win, but a lot of people were also very politicized by that campaign and by that moment. And so a lot of people were joining DSA (Democratic Socialists of America). At the same time, a lot of young people were becoming very aware and very anxious, disturbed, and deeply depressed by the climate crisis."
https://publicpowerny.org/legislation
www.orbooks.com/catalog/divining-desire-liza-featherstone
https://twitter.com/lfeatherz
www.palumbo-liu.com
https://speakingoutofplace.com
https://twitter.com/palumboliu?s=20
"I don't think a lot of people realize how absolutely important whales are, and not just because they're beautiful and they make people happy, but whales carry nutrients from the depths they feed back to the surface. And there's this liquidy plume of fecal matter, and it's called the whale pump. And they bring all these nutrients upward with their tails by swimming up and down the water column, it's like an upward biological pump. And there's an incredible amount of nitrogen that's released in these plumes. And we get this great soup of nutrients. We get more from this nitrogen than all the rivers combined. And in the past, we recognized microbes and plankton and fish and that they recycled nutrients in the ocean, yet whales and other marine mammals have largely been overlooked and that's too bad because they are bioengineers. They help the climate so much because of all this creates more plankton by circulating the nutrients and fertilizing the phytoplankton with their poo. For instance, sperm whales alone in the Southern Ocean help sequester over 19 million trees worth of carbon. They are bioengineers of their ecosystems and our ecosystems too. They promote the growth of phytoplankton, which absorbs carbon. So, if we just leave them alone, that could be an incredible solution for us to help with the mess we've made. And there's also the whole thing about the whale fall. When a whale dies and the crabs and the worms and the clams and everything start to eat it, the whale carcass itself transports about 190,000 tons of carbon. That's what is produced by about 80,000 cars every year. So when you think about saving the whales, you're thinking about saving the planet and people, whether it's your family or your grandchildren or your great-grandchildren or whatever. This is a really big issue for me because I have nine grandchildren, and I worry about what we are leaving them because we are leaving them a big mess. We need to think beyond immediate results and consider the next steps and the consequences. And I think we tend to forget to do that because otherwise, they're going to get stuck with it."
Nan Hauser is the President and Director of the Center for Cetacean Research & Conservation and the Director and Principal Investigator of Cook Islands Whale Research. Currently she's in the field studying the migration of the Southern Humpback Whale population that is currently passing through the Cook Islands, where she resides on the main island of Rarotonga. Her research includes population identity and abundance, acoustics, genetics stable isotopes behavior, and the navigation of cetaceans.
https://whaleresearch.org
https://whaleresearch.org/saved-by-a-whale
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
"Once the Columbine shooting happened, I remember thinking that discussion that we had would have been very different if that kid had had access to automatic weapons because the argument that we used to talk him out of it was you're not going to kill enough people to make it worth it. And that kind of alienation I never forgot. Because I also remembered the way adolescence is so apocalyptic. That's something that seems unendurable on Wednesday. On Thursday you sort of go, Okay, I think I can get through that."
How can literature help us extend our empathic imaginations? How can writing and reading expand our curiosity and compassion for people in situations distant from our own?
Jim Shepard is the author of seven previous novels, most recently The Book of Aron (winner of the 2016 PEN New England Award, the Sophie Brody medal for achievement in Jewish literature, the Ribalow Prize for Jewish literature, the Clark Fiction Prize, and a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award) and five story collections, including Like You’d Understand, Anyway, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and won The Story Prize. His short fiction has appeared in, among other magazines, The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, McSweeney’s, The Paris Review, The Atlantic, Esquire, Tin House, Granta, Zoetrope, Electric Literature, and Vice, and has often been selected for The Best American Short Stories and The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories. He lives in Williamstown, Massachusetts, with his wife, three children, and three beagles, and he teaches film and creative writing at Williams College. His story “The World to Come” was adapted into a feature film starring Casey Affleck, Vanessa Kirby, and Katherine Waterston.
https://jimshepard.wordpress.com
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
How can literature help us extend our empathic imaginations? How can writing and reading expand our curiosity and compassion for people in situations distant from our own?
Jim Shepard is the author of seven previous novels, most recently The Book of Aron (winner of the 2016 PEN New England Award, the Sophie Brody medal for achievement in Jewish literature, the Ribalow Prize for Jewish literature, the Clark Fiction Prize, and a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award) and five story collections, including Like You’d Understand, Anyway, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and won The Story Prize. His short fiction has appeared in, among other magazines, The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, McSweeney’s, The Paris Review, The Atlantic, Esquire, Tin House, Granta, Zoetrope, Electric Literature, and Vice, and has often been selected for The Best American Short Stories and The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories. He lives in Williamstown, Massachusetts, with his wife, three children, and three beagles, and he teaches film and creative writing at Williams College. His story “The World to Come” was adapted into a feature film starring Casey Affleck, Vanessa Kirby, and Katherine Waterston.
"Once the Columbine shooting happened, I remember thinking that discussion that we had would have been very different if that kid had had access to automatic weapons because the argument that we used to talk him out of it was you're not going to kill enough people to make it worth it. And that kind of alienation I never forgot. Because I also remembered the way adolescence is so apocalyptic. That's something that seems unendurable on Wednesday. On Thursday you sort of go, Okay, I think I can get through that."
https://jimshepard.wordpress.com
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu and Azeezah Kanji talk with Sara Ahmed about her new book, The Feminist Killjoy Handbook. How and why is it that complaining about sexism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, and other forms of bigotry, is considered impolite? How is civility uncivil, and the mandate to be “happy” a tool for silencing grievances? Sara Ahmed tackles all those questions, and gives us strength and courage to keep on killingjoy and speaking truth.
Sara Ahmed is an independent queer feminist scholar of colour. Her work is concerned with how power is experienced and challenged in everyday life and institutional cultures. Her first trade book, The Feminist Killjoy Handbook is coming out with Seal Press next month. Previous books (all published by Duke University Press) include Complaint! (2021), What's The Use? On the Uses of Use (2019), Living a Feminist Life (2017), Willful Subjects (2014), On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life (2012), The Promise of Happiness (2010) and Queer Phenomenology: Objects, Orientations, Others (2006). She is currently writing A Complainer’s Handbook: A Guide to Building Less Hostile Institutions and has begun a new project on common sense. She blogs at feministkilljoy.com.
"So the door was shut. So when she said no, she ended up with nowhere to go. And that's one of the institutional mechanisms. You're more likely to progress if you say yes. It's a reproductive mechanism, which is why feminist culture knows so much about everything. We can explain how it is that institutions keep being reproduced in the same way. So what then do you do? Where do you go if your no has nowhere to go? And I think when you say no to the world, and you're pushed out by it, you still find your people. And that there's the world-making is in the people who find in the refusal of the institution a common ground."
https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/454793/the-feminist-killjoy-handbook-by-ahmed-sara/9780241619537
www.palumbo-liu.com
https://speakingoutofplace.com
https://twitter.com/palumboliu?s=20
Photo credit: Sarah Franklin
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.
“I was an English major in college. But here's the thing. I believe that the strongest machine we have, the strongest empathy machine that we have is literature. The best way to get people to feel what someone else is feeling is through literature and stories. And I also think that feeling and emotion are an important part of reasoning and governing too. It's not the only part, but I think you have to understand how people see the world and how they feel about the world. So in my classes, I teach law classes. I teach policy classes. I often assign novels. We read in one of my classes Their Eyes Were Watching God, the case about a hypothetical hurricane in Florida written by Zora Neale Hurston. We read Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood, which is a kind of dystopian novel that involves climate change. We've read The Handmaid's Tale in my classes. But I think what these books do is they, number one, certain books that are speculative, like Margaret Atwood's work, Joyce Carol Oates has written some things like this too. What's interesting about them is that they make us, they open up our imaginations and say, Oh, I never thought something like that could happen. We hope it doesn't, but it could, right? And so how do we change the way we look at the future? And it also changes, I think, the way that we understand people's lives.
So even in a book like Their Eyes Were Watching God, which takes place in the early 20th century, and obviously involves race issues and a whole lot of other things. It leads us to think and see the world through a young black woman's perspective in the early 20th century. And there's something about that exercise of being able to some extent put yourself in the shoes of somebody else that I think is really important for governance. I think it's really important for policy. I think it's really important for advocates of any kind because listening and trying to understand what another person is perceiving...You can never do it completely, obviously, but I think it is really one of the most important parts of collective action of working with other people.”
https://robverchick.com
https://works.bepress.com/robert_verchick
www.progressivereform.org/
Twitter/X/Instagram/Facebook: @robverchick @robsoctopusbook
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
"Australia is generally considered one of the most vulnerable developed countries to the impacts of climate change, and I've been in the climate science space for more than 30 years, but I have to say this last month has been particularly confronting. We're seeing all sorts of tipping points that scientists have been warning about for decades and they are really real right now. I've never had such climate anxiety, and it's sort of new for me to be struggling with that because I think I've been pretty resilient to sort of eco-anxiety. Talking about averages all the time is a real problem in climate science because the temperature on any one day goes up and down a lot more than 1.5 or 2 degrees. So we have to keep working on relating those average global temperatures to the extremes that people experience in their lives on the ground where they live. We have to keep reminding people that that is the sort of thing that we are going to see more and more often. It isn't a one-off event. It's a message about the future."
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.
https://researchers.mq.edu.au/en/persons/lesley-hughes
www.climatecouncil.org.au
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
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.
"Australia is generally considered one of the most vulnerable developed countries to the impacts of climate change, and I've been in the climate science space for more than 30 years, but I have to say this last month has been particularly confronting. We're seeing all sorts of tipping points that scientists have been warning about for decades and they are really real right now. I've never had such climate anxiety, and it's sort of new for me to be struggling with that because I think I've been pretty resilient to sort of eco-anxiety. Talking about averages all the time is a real problem in climate science because the temperature on any one day goes up and down a lot more than 1.5 or 2 degrees. So we have to keep working on relating those average global temperatures to the extremes that people experience in their lives on the ground where they live. We have to keep reminding people that that is the sort of thing that we are going to see more and more often. It isn't a one-off event. It's a message about the future."
https://researchers.mq.edu.au/en/persons/lesley-hughes
www.climatecouncil.org.au
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
"The fossil fuel industry is very good at propaganda. They are also very good at targeting students and environmentalists. And they surround themselves with clients like museums, hospitals, charities, public schools, and all of these groups who are doing wonderful work at the local level and who aren't going complain about their oil and gas lobbyist work because they are bringing in money to them as well.”
Why are fossil fuel lobbyists also allowed to work for communities, schools, businesses, and nonprofit organizations being harmed by the climate crisis without declaring their conflict of interest? Why divestment from fossil fuels should include divesting from lobbyists which play for both sides.
James Browning is the founder of F Minus, a research and advocacy group that tracks the extent to which fossil fuel lobbyists also represent victims of the climate crisis. He is also a writer and game designer, and his novel The Fracking King was named one of the best 100 books of 2014 by Amazon.
https://fminus.org
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Why are fossil fuel lobbyists also allowed to work for communities, schools, businesses, and nonprofit organizations being harmed by the climate crisis without declaring their conflict of interest? Why divestment from fossil fuels should include divesting from lobbyists which play for both sides.
James Browning is the founder of F Minus, a research and advocacy group that tracks the extent to which fossil fuel lobbyists also represent victims of the climate crisis. He is also a writer and game designer, and his novel The Fracking King was named one of the best 100 books of 2014 by Amazon.
"The fossil fuel industry is very good at propaganda. They are also very good at targeting students and environmentalists. And they surround themselves with clients like museums, hospitals, charities, public schools, and all of these groups who are doing wonderful work at the local level and who aren't going complain about their oil and gas lobbyist work because they are bringing in money to them as well.”
https://fminus.org
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu and Azeezah Kanji talk with Manijeh Moradian about her book, This Flame within: Iranian Revolutionaries in the United States, which documents the formation of Iranian student activists in the US in the 1970s, and their impact on the Iranian revolution.
This Flame Within is not only a book about history, but also a book about memory and the importance of retrieving these memories of anti-imperialist pasts against the backdrop of a thoroughly imperial present for the possibilities of building anti-imperial futures.
They discuss is the cross-pollination between these groups and groups based in the US working toward Third World Liberation, supporting Palestinian rights, and protesting the Vietnam war. They also connect all these topics to today’s situation in Iran, and the Iranian diaspora.
Manijeh Moradian is assistant professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Barnard College, Columbia University. Her book, This Flame Within: Iranian Revolutionaries in the United States, was published by Duke University Press in December 2022. She has published widely including in American Quarterly, Journal of Asian American Studies, Scholar & Feminist online, and Women’s Studies Quarterly. She is a founding member of the Raha Iranian Feminist Collective and on the editorial board of the Jadaliyya.com Iran Page.
”So you start having Iranian students coming in the late 1950s. The numbers increased throughout the sixties and seventies. Tens of thousands of Iranian students, more than from any other country, come to the United States to study. At the moment, in 1979, the moment of the revolution, there were 50,000 or more students in the United States. So it's by far the largest foreign student population here. The geographic spread is really interesting. Again, this also changes over time because more and more students start coming, and also because in the 1970s, it became possible for less affluent students to come.
For the first time, there were more government scholarships available to certain groups of workers in the oil industry, for example, to their children. They were not blue-collar, but more like white-collar office workers. Before that, it had been mostly wealthy families who could afford to send their children abroad and who had access to education in the first place, but when you have less affluent students coming to less expensive, smaller colleges. By the 1970s, Iran had become so repressive that young people were trying to leave. They want to leave, and some of them want to leave intentionally to become activists and join the Iran student opposition movement.”
www.dukeupress.edu/this-flame-within
www.palumbo-liu.com
https://speakingoutofplace.com
https://twitter.com/palumboliu?s=20
In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu interviews climate activist, astrophysicist and co-founder of Scientist Rebellion Tim Hewlett.
Scientist Rebellion is a growing climate activist group with 1000+ scientists and academics across 32 countries. Members range from science students and professors to IPCC contributors and leading climate-related scientists. Through disruptive nonviolent action, Scientist Rebellion demands emergency decarbonization via economic degrowth. During acts of civil resistance, members wear lab coats, and volunteers organize the vast majority of the campaign activity.
"I believe in the UK there have been over a hundred cases in the last year, many of them ending in jail, and that's a massive escalation in recent history. And yet we had one in February that was dating back to the founding action at the Royal Society, but we were being tried for there. And we did win that case. But I think all around the world, what we're seeing is a convergence of institutions of power to try to shut out truthtellers, to try to shut out activists and people who would hold those powerful actors to account.
I suspect it's because they recognize that they are committing heinous crimes, and if there were to be true accountability, they would be the ones being prosecuted.
We've seen top-down directives from the government which are blocking activists and people in court from making legal arguments. In our case, for instance, we weren't allowed to refer to human rights legislation. We weren't allowed to argue the defense of necessity that we're trying to avoid greater harm. There's a long-established principle in case law, but you're not allowed to make those arguments anymore because activists kept on winning. And that's extremely inconvenient to the government. So the government dictated they shouldn't be able to do that. And that's not something that's meant to happen in a separation of powers. So we're seeing this convergence, coalescence of these institutions to try to protect the powerful and to protect the status quo even though that status quo inevitably leads to the breakdown of society."
http://scientistrebellion.org
www.palumbo-liu.com
https://speakingoutofplace.com
https://twitter.com/palumboliu?s=20
"We have to create alternative institutions to understand history. And to have conversations about how we can intervene because these conversations are increasingly being criminalized, and librarians are being fired and punished. Teachers are also being fired. Whole colleges are being taken over and certain courses are being labeled as not credit-worthy and being canceled. And while conversations around critical race theory and other topics are being declared illegal, there's a long history of book banning in this country. There's a long history of criminalizing dissent in this country, but I do think we all have to recognize that we're in a much more dangerous moment right now, where a new form of McCarthyism is emboldened and we have to speak out against that."
In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu and Azeezah Kanji talk with Anthony Arnove and Haley Pessin about their new volume Voices of a People’s History of the United States in the 21st Century: Documents of Hope and Resistance.
This book is not only a beautiful archive of people's struggles in the 21st century, but also a powerful tribute to and continuation of the work of professor and radical historian Howard Zinn. We speak with Anthony and Haley about the histories of struggles and the possibilities for building a more beautiful future.
Anthony Arnove is the editor of several books, including, with Howard Zinn, Voices of a People’s History of the United States and Terrorism and War. He wrote the introduction for the thirty-fifth anniversary edition of Zinn’s classic book, A People’s History of the United States. Arnove cofounded the nonprofit education and arts organization Voices of a People’s History of the United States, wrote, directed, and produced the documentary The People Speak, and has directed stage and television versions of The People Speak in Dublin with Stephen Rea, in London with Colin Firth, and across the United States with various groups including Lincoln Center, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and the Sundance Film Festival. He produced the Academy Award-nominated documentary Dirty Wars. Arnove is on the editorial boards of Haymarket Books and Tempestmag.org and is the director of Roam Agency, where he represents authors including Arundhati Roy and Noam Chomsky. He lives in Hopewell, New Jersey.
Haley Pessin is a socialist activist living in Queens, New York. They have participated in struggles against police brutality and mass incarceration, in solidarity with Palestine, in defense of abortion rights and reproductive justice, and as a legal service worker and union delegate for 119SEIU (Service Employees International Union). Pessin has spoken at conferences in Switzerland, Australia, Ireland, Quebec, and throughout the United States on the struggle for Black liberation. Their writing has appeared in New Politics and at Tempestmag.org, where they currently serve on the editorial board.
https://sevenstories.com/books/4479-voices-of-a-people-s-history-of-the-united-states-in-the-21st-century
www.palumbo-liu.com
https://speakingoutofplace.com
https://twitter.com/palumboliu?s=20
"Women's Prison Association is a fabulous organization that everybody should be aware of. And they do things in the fall like Pack your Book Bag and things like that. So there's a lot of different ways to get involved with them, and they're really wonderful. And the WPA started in like the 1860s in New York because what was happening to a lot of women is - they've kept their books from that time of the people that they helped and the stories that they helped, so this within the books of the WPA archives. What was happening were these women were coming over as immigrants, and maybe their husbands were already here, but their husbands, maybe they got a new family or maybe they just kind of disappeared, checked out for whatever reason. Quite often the husband, it's documented, would sell the children from that woman coming over to the industrial complex - real factory child labor stuff. And the woman was forced to become a prostitute, which I actually think should be legalized, but obviously, at that time it was not. And so the WPA had a lot of women who were immigrants who were prostitutes. And what they sought to do was to help these women not go to prison, get their children back, and get jobs. " -Catherine Curtin
"In America, incarcerated people are not seen by us. We act as if we know that oh, they've been tried, they deserve to be in there. And some do. Some are victims themselves. Many of them are women. I just did a month of grand jury duty a month or so ago. And that's where we go and sit with 22 other people and decide, from witnesses, if this case has enough proof for the person to be arraigned, and go to trial.
And something that I came away with was it feels like most people who got themselves in that situation were, most of the time, stupid and greedy. Or they were in abject poverty. They have had nothing but violence in their life. How we can continue to make it a practice and a policy to punish these people and then put them away, punish them some more in our brutal for-profit prison system and expect them to come out and want to be different. Or even have the capacity to be different." -Kate Mueth
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
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
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.
"Women's Prison Association is a fabulous organization that everybody should be aware of. And they do things in the fall like Pack your Book Bag and things like that. So there's a lot of different ways to get involved with them, and they're really wonderful. And the WPA started in like the 1860s in New York because what was happening to a lot of women is - they've kept their books from that time of the people that they helped and the stories that they helped, so this within the books of the WPA archives. What was happening were these women were coming over as immigrants, and maybe their husbands were already here, but their husbands, maybe they got a new family or maybe they just kind of disappeared, checked out for whatever reason. Quite often the husband, it's documented, would sell the children from that woman coming over to the industrial complex - real factory child labor stuff. And the woman was forced to become a prostitute, which I actually think should be legalized, but obviously, at that time it was not. And so the WPA had a lot of women who were immigrants who were prostitutes. And what they sought to do was to help these women not go to prison, get their children back, and get jobs. " -Catherine Curtin
"In America, incarcerated people are not seen by us. We act as if we know that oh, they've been tried, they deserve to be in there. And some do. Some are victims themselves. Many of them are women. I just did a month of grand jury duty a month or so ago. And that's where we go and sit with 22 other people and decide, from witnesses, if this case has enough proof for the person to be arraigned, and go to trial.
And something that I came away with was it feels like most people who got themselves in that situation were, most of the time, stupid and greedy. Or they were in abject poverty. They have had nothing but violence in their life. How we can continue to make it a practice and a policy to punish these people and then put them away, punish them some more in our brutal for-profit prison system and expect them to come out and want to be different. Or even have the capacity to be different." -Kate Mueth
www.imdb.com/name/nm0193160/
www.npcowgirls.org
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
"Capitalism is an inherently unsustainable system the way that it is being practiced now. It is an economy that is based on infinite growth, even though we live on a finite planet. What if we measured success based on happiness and based on the health of communities? Based on wealth equity instead of just how rich are the richest people?
So there's always going to be an end game for a growth-based economy. But, of course, that's being largely ignored right now to the detriment of the world around us. It's focused on growth and maximizing corporate profits but at the expense of people and the planet. It exploits workers. It exploits the environment. So we need to reimagine how we approach our economy."
How can we take inspiration from our love for animals to protect wildlife and change the world? How can we take action and start making changes in our lives? What if we measured success based on happiness and on the health of communities?
Stephanie Feldstein leads the Center for Biological Diversity's work to highlight and address threats to endangered species and wild places from runaway human population growth and overconsumption. Previously Stephanie worked for Change.org, where she helped hundreds of people start and win online campaigns to protect wildlife. She has years of experience in organizing, outreach and communications. She is the author of The Animal Lover’s Guide to Changing the World, and the series aimed at young adults Take Action: Save Life on Earth.
https://biologicaldiversity.org/about/staff/#sfeldstein
https://biologicaldiversity.org
www.abebooks.com/9781250153258/Animal-Lovers-Guide-Changing-World-1250153255/plp
https://cherrylakepublishing.com/series/445-take-action-save-life-on-earth
https://takeextinctionoffyourplate.com/
https://endangeredspeciescondoms.com/
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
How can we take inspiration from our love for animals to protect wildlife and change the world? How can we take action and start making changes in our lives? What if we measured success based on happiness and on the health of communities?
Stephanie Feldstein leads the Center for Biological Diversity's work to highlight and address threats to endangered species and wild places from runaway human population growth and overconsumption. Previously Stephanie worked for Change.org, where she helped hundreds of people start and win online campaigns to protect wildlife. She has years of experience in organizing, outreach and communications. She is the author of The Animal Lover’s Guide to Changing the World, and the series aimed at young adults Take Action: Save Life on Earth.
"Capitalism is an inherently unsustainable system the way that it is being practiced now. It is an economy that is based on infinite growth, even though we live on a finite planet. What if we measured success based on happiness and based on the health of communities? Based on wealth equity instead of just how rich are the richest people?
So there's always going to be an end game for a growth-based economy. But, of course, that's being largely ignored right now to the detriment of the world around us. It's focused on growth and maximizing corporate profits but at the expense of people and the planet. It exploits workers. It exploits the environment. So we need to reimagine how we approach our economy."
https://biologicaldiversity.org/about/staff/#sfeldstein
https://biologicaldiversity.org
www.abebooks.com/9781250153258/Animal-Lovers-Guide-Changing-World-1250153255/plp
https://cherrylakepublishing.com/series/445-take-action-save-life-on-earth
https://takeextinctionoffyourplate.com/
https://endangeredspeciescondoms.com/
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu and Azeezah Kanji interview renown scholar, activist, and writer Silvia Federici about her powerful and inspiring collection of essays, Re-enchanting the World: Feminism and the Politics of the Commons. These essays, written over the span of several decades, display her abilities to diagnose and indeed predict the most important issues facing us today.
Silvia Federici is a scholar, teacher, and feminist activist based in New York. She is a professor emerita and teaching fellow at Hofstra University in New York State, where she was a social science professor. She also taught at the University of Port Harcourt in Nigeria. In 1972, she co-founded the International Feminist Collective. In 1995, in the course of the campaign to demand the liberation of Mumia Abu-Jamal, she cofounded the Radical Philosophy Association (RPA) anti-death penalty project, an organization intended to help educators become a driving force towards its abolition.
For several decades, Federici has been working in a variety of projects with feminist organizations across the world like Women in Nigeria (WIN), Ni Una Menos, the Argentinian feminist organization; she alsohas been organizing a project with feminist collectives in Spain to reconstruct the history of the women who were persecuted as witches in early modern Europe, and raise consciousness about the contemporary witch-hunts that are taking place across the world.
Federici is considered one of the leading feminist theoreticians in Marxist feminist theory, women’s history, political philosophy, and the history and theory of the commons. Her most famous book, Caliban and the Witch, has been translated in more than 20 foreign languages, and adopted in courses across the U.S. and many other countries. Often described as a counterpoint to Marx’s and Foucault’s account of “primitive accumulation,” Caliban reconstructs the history of capitalism, highlighting the continuity between the capitalist subjugation of women, the slave trade, and the colonization of the Americas. It has been described as the first history of capitalism with women at the center.
"To me, the struggle should not ever be purely an oppositional action but should actually be something constructive. Struggle is also a moment in which you raise your consciousness. You take your consciousness, you express a vision of the world that you want to construct what is being denied. The struggle is at the same time negation and also affirmation of the possibility of another world, another vision. And because of it, the struggle is also transformative. It's not only a wall against your enemies. It is also reshaping the relationship with other people. It's a moment of collective reconstruction. It's a moment of collective solidarity. This, to me, has become a very important element. This is what I've learned from the women's movement. That there's so much of our comfort, when we left the male-dominated organization, had to do not only with the program but also the forms of organizing, the kind of relation that you have with people. It became very, very important to think of the struggle as something much different and far more creative, far more constructive, and this vision of the struggle is also what should attract people to look at the struggle as something in which they want to be, not as another burden, not as another piece of work added to the day-to-day misery and the day in day workload. But actually, something that you look forward to. Going to a meeting has to be something that you look forward to as you go to a party, in the sense that here are the people that you feel connected with. You're building something. You are discovering something."
www.pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=961
www.palumbo-liu.com
https://speakingoutofplace.com
https://twitter.com/palumboliu?s=20
"We live in a diverse world, and we're in a funny time where we sometimes see the best of humanity and the worst of humanity. And I think what we need to do is be very strong in wanting to lift the game of each other and ourselves. And so I think that's one of the sort of key things. Particularly, young people should be more demanding that we behave better towards each other and care more about each other and the world that we live in. In terms of these heatwaves, droughts, and fires that the world is seeing, which we thought were going to hit us in 2050 or 2070, are hitting us now in 2023. So, those risks are coming much faster and harder than we thought they were going to come. And so, in many cases, we're unprepared for the severity of these changes."
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
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
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.
"We live in a diverse world, and we're in a funny time where we sometimes see the best of humanity and the worst of humanity. And I think what we need to do is be very strong in wanting to lift the game of each other and ourselves. And so I think that's one of the sort of key things. Particularly, young people should be more demanding that we behave better towards each other and care more about each other and the world that we live in. In terms of these heatwaves, droughts, and fires that the world is seeing, which we thought were going to hit us in 2050 or 2070, are hitting us now in 2023. So, those risks are coming much faster and harder than we thought they were going to come. And so, in many cases, we're unprepared for the severity of these changes."
https://iceds.anu.edu.au/people/academics/professor-mark-howden
https://iceds.anu.edu.au/
www.ipcc.ch
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Photo credit: Lannon Harley/ANU
"As Arnold Schwarzenegger says, 'We don't have Republican air. We don't have Democrat water. We all breathe the same air. We all have the same water. It's happening to all of us, and it's happening all over the world. And if we just continue to ignore it so that we can put some money in our pockets, or we can get reelected, what are we leaving for the future?' And you know, his devotion to children and to helping children makes him look at it from a different perspective. He's not one of these heartless old politicians who's just like, well, as long as it doesn't happen while I'm alive, I'm going to get rich off of this. He is always thinking of the next generations. He is always thinking of what he is going to be able to hand down."
“Why I was different from all the other boys in my town I cannot tell you. I was simply born with the gift of vision.” – ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER
Is there any better example of the American Dream than Arnold Schwarzenegger? What does it take to make your vision a reality? How do you cultivate iron focus to overcome any obstacle and realize your dreams?
On the publication of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s limited edition two-volume book published by TASCHEN, we sat down with Senior Editor and Writer Dian Hansen to discuss Schwarzenegger’s life, accomplishments, and history of unforgettable performances. The book has been a decade-long collaborative process and along with portraits by leading photographers Richard Avedon, Annie Leibovitz, Robert Mapplethorpe, Herb Ritts, Francesco Scavullo, and Andy Warhol, it is also filled with photos from Arnold’s private archive and exclusive interviews. Dian’s other works include The Art of Pin-up, Masterpieces of Fantasy Art, and The Fantastic Worlds of Frank Frazetta.
www.taschen.com/en/limited-editions/film/03105/arnold-collector-s-edition
www.schwarzenegger.com
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Image courtesy of Taschen.
Photo credit: ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER IN VENICE, CALIFORNIA. PHOTO BY ALBERT BUSEK, 1980
“Why I was different from all the other boys in my town I cannot tell you. I was simply born with the gift of vision.” – ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER
Is there any better example of the American Dream than Arnold Schwarzenegger? What does it take to make your vision a reality? How do you cultivate iron focus to overcome any obstacle and realize your dreams?
On the publication of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s limited edition two-volume book published by TASCHEN, we sat down with Senior Editor and Writer Dian Hansen to discuss Schwarzenegger’s life, accomplishments, and history of unforgettable performances. The book has been a decade-long collaborative process and along with portraits by leading photographers Richard Avedon, Annie Leibovitz, Robert Mapplethorpe, Herb Ritts, Francesco Scavullo, and Andy Warhol, it is also filled with photos from Arnold’s private archive and exclusive interviews. Dian’s other works include The Art of Pin-up, Masterpieces of Fantasy Art, and The Fantastic Worlds of Frank Frazetta.
"As Arnold Schwarzenegger says, 'We don't have Republican air. We don't have Democrat water. We all breathe the same air. We all have the same water. It's happening to all of us, and it's happening all over the world. And if we just continue to ignore it so that we can put some money in our pockets, or we can get reelected, what are we leaving for the future?' And you know, his devotion to children and to helping children makes him look at it from a different perspective. He's not one of these heartless old politicians who's just like, well, as long as it doesn't happen while I'm alive, I'm going to get rich off of this. He is always thinking of the next generations. He is always thinking of what he is going to be able to hand down."
www.taschen.com/en/limited-editions/film/03105/arnold-collector-s-edition
www.schwarzenegger.com
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Images courtesy of Taschen.
Photo credits:
Cover
Arnold Schwarzenegger for the film End of Days. Sante D'Orazio, 1999
Governor Schwarzenegger with the Lincoln Memorial · Photo by Peter Grigsby, 2009
Arnold Schwarzenegger and Lulu at his Los Angeles home · Photo by Tracy Nguyen, 2021
"Our culture and the way that we carry out capitalism is that we have allowed businesses to create a mess. And then the taxpayers are the ones that pay to clean it up. Corporations need to be held accountable for the environmental harm that they cause. And that way it's not going to be left to us. Corporations are caught in a system and the way that we carry out capitalism now is that profit is above everything, including people's health. And these corporations feel that if they don't maximize profit, they could be sued by their shareholders because their shareholders are basically holding them accountable for profit only. One of them that's worked quite well in Europe, and it's just starting to emerge in America, is to require that corporations report on their environmental impact. So right alongside their financial report would be environmental risk and environmental impact reporting.”
Sue Inches is an advocate, author, and teacher. She has worked in public policy for over 25 years, serving as the Deputy Director of the State Planning Office, and as a Director at the Maine Department of Marine Resources. She is author of Advocating for the Environment: How to Gather Your Power and Take Action, and teaches college and high school workshops on same. Her consulting work focuses on strategic planning, program development, and environmental campaigns.
https://sueinches.com
www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/670609/advocating-for-the-environment-by-susan-b-inches
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Sue Inches is an advocate, author, and teacher. She has worked in public policy for over 25 years, serving as the Deputy Director of the State Planning Office, and as a Director at the Maine Department of Marine Resources. She is author of Advocating for the Environment: How to Gather Your Power and Take Action, and teaches college and high school workshops on same. Her consulting work focuses on strategic planning, program development, and environmental campaigns.
"Our culture and the way that we carry out capitalism is that we have allowed businesses to create a mess. And then the taxpayers are the ones that pay to clean it up. Corporations need to be held accountable for the environmental harm that they cause. And that way it's not going to be left to us. Corporations are caught in a system and the way that we carry out capitalism now is that profit is above everything, including people's health. And these corporations feel that if they don't maximize profit, they could be sued by their shareholders because their shareholders are basically holding them accountable for profit only. One of them that's worked quite well in Europe, and it's just starting to emerge in America, is to require that corporations report on their environmental impact. So right alongside their financial report would be environmental risk and environmental impact reporting.”
https://sueinches.com
www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/670609/advocating-for-the-environment-by-susan-b-inches
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
"The activists need to pay attention to mass awareness. Political change is a function of gaining political power through mass awareness, mass mobilization, and mass unification. And we're in a period on the left right now, which has happened in history before, where there's a lot of internal focus about the fairness of the processes within NGOs and activist organizations. And the legacy of racism in these organizations and gender and identity issues, all of which are essential and important and valid, but those are not the pathways to mass awareness and mass unity. If you overemphasize those kinds of issues, it's a kind of sectarianism, which is the opposite of how you unify people to get political power. If you don't assemble majority support - majority sentiment doesn't mean everybody - it means majority, then you can't take power. And if you can't get power, guess what? You can't help the vulnerable. You can't help the oppressed. This is, like most things in life, a question of balance. If you overfocus on the legitimate feelings and plight of subgroups of the population, by necessity, you won't establish what Reverend Jesse Jackson used to call the Rainbow Coalition. And without the Rainbow Coalition, you don't win. So, what I hope is that the scientists and the activist community can pay as much attention to cognitive science as they do to climate science. And then we'll get somewhere definitely."
How can we effectively communicate that we're moving beyond climate change to a state of climate crisis? The trapped heat energy on Earth is equal to a million Atomic bombs going off every single day. Today we talk to someone who's been mobilizing the public mind for over 50 years.
David Fenton, named “one of the 100 most influential PR people” by PR Week and “the Robin Hood of public relations” by The National Journal, founded Fenton in 1982 to create communications campaigns for the environment, public health, and human rights. For more than five decades he has pioneered the use of PR, social media, and advertising techniques for social change. Fenton started his career as a photojournalist in the late 1960s – his book Shots: An American Photographer’s Journal was published in 2005. He was formerly director of public relations at Rolling Stone magazine and co-producer of the No-Nukes concerts in 1979 at Madison Square Garden with Bruce Springsteen, Bonnie Raitt, James Taylor, Jackson Browne, and other artists. He has also helped create JStreet, Climate Nexus, the Death Penalty Information Center, and Families for a Future. He sold Fenton a few years ago to work on climate change full time. He is the author of The Activist’s Media Handbook: Lessons From 50 Years as a Progressive Agitator.
https://davidfentonactivist.com
www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Activists-Media-Handbook/David-Fenton/9781647228668
https://fenton.com
X / twitter @dfenton
IG @dfenton1
facebook.com/davidfentonactivist
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
All photographs © 1968-2022 David Fenton
How can we effectively communicate that we're moving beyond climate change to a state of climate crisis? The trapped heat energy on Earth is equal to a million Atomic bombs going off every single day. Today we talk to someone who's been mobilizing the public mind for over 50 years.
David Fenton, named “one of the 100 most influential PR people” by PR Week and “the Robin Hood of public relations” by The National Journal, founded Fenton in 1982 to create communications campaigns for the environment, public health, and human rights. For more than five decades he has pioneered the use of PR, social media, and advertising techniques for social change. Fenton started his career as a photojournalist in the late 1960s – his book Shots: An American Photographer’s Journal was published in 2005. He was formerly director of public relations at Rolling Stone magazine and co-producer of the No-Nukes concerts in 1979 at Madison Square Garden with Bruce Springsteen, Bonnie Raitt, James Taylor, Jackson Browne, and other artists. He has also helped create JStreet, Climate Nexus, the Death Penalty Information Center, and Families for a Future. He sold Fenton a few years ago to work on climate change full time. He is the author of The Activist’s Media Handbook: Lessons From 50 Years as a Progressive Agitator.
"The activists need to pay attention to mass awareness. Political change is a function of gaining political power through mass awareness, mass mobilization, and mass unification. And we're in a period on the left right now, which has happened in history before, where there's a lot of internal focus about the fairness of the processes within NGOs and activist organizations. And the legacy of racism in these organizations and gender and identity issues, all of which are essential and important and valid, but those are not the pathways to mass awareness and mass unity. If you overemphasize those kinds of issues, it's a kind of sectarianism, which is the opposite of how you unify people to get political power. If you don't assemble majority support - majority sentiment doesn't mean everybody - it means majority, then you can't take power. And if you can't get power, guess what? You can't help the vulnerable. You can't help the oppressed. This is, like most things in life, a question of balance. If you overfocus on the legitimate feelings and plight of subgroups of the population, by necessity, you won't establish what Reverend Jesse Jackson used to call the Rainbow Coalition. And without the Rainbow Coalition, you don't win. So, what I hope is that the scientists and the activist community can pay as much attention to cognitive science as they do to climate science. And then we'll get somewhere definitely."
https://davidfentonactivist.com
www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Activists-Media-Handbook/David-Fenton/9781647228668
https://fenton.com
X / twitter @dfenton
IG @dfenton1
facebook.com/davidfentonactivist
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
All photographs © 1968-2022 David Fenton
In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu interviews award-winning novelist and activist Susan Albuhawa about a major literary festival she is organizing entitled “Palestine Writes,” which will take place in Philadelphia from Sept 22 to Sept 24.
“Palestine Writes” is the only North American literature festival dedicated to celebrating and promoting cultural productions of Palestinian writers and artists. Born from the pervasive marginalization of Palestinian voices in mainstream literary institutions, the festival brings Palestinian cultural workers from all parts of historic Palestine and in exiled diaspora together with peers from other marginalized groups in the United States. Crossing multiple borders dash geographic linguistic and cultural boundaries--writers, artists, publishers, booksellers, scholars, musicians, and thinkers hold conversations about art, literature, and the intersections between culture and power, struggle, politics, climate change, sexuality, human rights, animal rights, food sovereignty, and more. Albuhawa gives us an inside look at the genesis of the festival, and its motivating ethos and politics.
Susan Albuhawa is a novelist, poet, essayist, scientist, mother, and activist. Her debut novel Mornings in Jenin, translated into 30 languages, was an international bestseller and is considered a classic in Palestinian literature. Its reach and sales has made Albuhawa the most widely-read Palestinian author. Her second novel, The Blue between Sky and Water, was likewise an international bestseller. Against the Loveless World was published in August 2020 by Simon and Schuster to much acclaim. Albuhawa is the founder of Playgrounds for Palestine, a children's organization dedicated to uplifting Palestinian children.
“Palestinians have been facing erasure for decades. There's the physical erasure of our villages, the names of our villages, the erasure of the word Palestine from the map, erasure of our identities. And now there's this kind of colonization of our narratives, of our stories, and our history.
And Palestine Writes is part of a counterforce against this new form of colonization. The Zionist colonial narrative has always shifted with shifting wind, depending on what's in vogue at the time. Initially, it was a sort of romantic ending to Europe's genocide of its own Jewish population. And there was this epic myth of "a land without people for a people without land". And of course that was unsustainable.”
https://palestinewrites.org
www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Susan-Abulhawa/165673902
www.palumbo-liu.com
https://speakingoutofplace.com
https://twitter.com/palumboliu?s=20
Photo credit: Roy VanDerVegt
In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu interviews journalist., activist, and public intellectual Jeff Chang. Jeff’s most recent book, We Gon' Be Alright: Notes On Race and Resegregation (Picador), was called by the Washington Post “the smartest book of the year,” and inspired a four-episode digital series adaptation for PBS Indie Lens Storycast. He was named to the Frederick Douglass 200, as one of “200 living individuals who best embody the work and spirit of Douglass.”
They discuss Supreme Court’s recent decision on affirmative action. The plaintiffs of that case, “Students for Fair Admission,” an organization started and led by non-student Ed Blum, made particular use of Asian Americans as a kind of stand-in for whites. Jeff and I talk about the history of that tactic, which dates back the late Sixties, and especially the 1980s, the years of the Reagan presidency.
They also talk about the ways in which many liberal and progressive Asian Americans and others took shelter under Harvard University’s defense of “diversity.” Jeff points out that such a move effectively erases the long-term bias Harvard and other elite universities have displayed toward Jews and Asian Americans, and backs away from a true and historically honest confrontation with America’s racism.
Jeff Chang's Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation won the American Book Award and the Asian American Literary Award. His most recent book, We Gon' Be Alright: Notes On Race and Resegregation, was named the Northern California Nonfiction Book Of The Year. His bylines have appeared in The Guardian, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Los Angeles Times. He was previously the Executive Director of the Institute for Diversity in the Arts at Stanford University and led the Butterfly Lab for Immigrant Narrative Strategy.
https://jeffchang.net/
www.palumbo-liu.com
https://speakingoutofplace.com
https://twitter.com/palumboliu?s=20
In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu interviews Ching-In Chen & Kate Hao about the cancellation of the Asian American Literary Festival 2023.
This August, the Asian American Literary Festival was to take place in Washington, DC.. The longstanding event had been on hiatus because of the pandemic, so this year’s event had generated a lot of buzz. Organized by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center (APAC), the event had already garnered substantial investments and expectations from both national and international groups and states.
Ching-In Chen is a poet who was curating a festival event featuring books by trans and nonbinary writers. Kate Hao is a program coordinator who was on contract with the Smithsonian for the festival. They discuss the controversy and the issues it raises about art for the community vs. art that must conform to state institutional preferences and politics. We discuss why this festival is absolutely essential for the present day, where we have Asian Americans being used to help dismantle affirmative action, and where we see persistent and deadly acts of anti-Asian violence. We also hear about possible plans to go forward without the Smithsonian, and ways we can help support the artists and organizers.
https://www.chinginchen.com
www.palumbo-liu.com
https://speakingoutofplace.com
https://twitter.com/palumboliu?s=20
In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu interviews Jennifer Jacquet, who is an Associate Professor in the Department of Environmental Studies and Director of XE: Experimental Humanities and Social Engagement at NYU. She is also deputy director of NYU's Center for Environmental and Animal Protection. Her research focuses on animals and the environment, Agnotology, and attribution and responsibility in the Anthropocene. She is author of The Playbook: How to Deny Science, Sell Lies, and Make a Killing in the Corporate World-- a work of 'epistolary non-fiction' that makes the business case for scientific denial. Among other things, we learn how corporations create an arsenal of experts and pseudo-experts at prestigious universities to create misinformation and disinformation for corporate profit, and at great cost to the public. At the end, we make the case for a partnership between the sciences and the humanities to fight such lies and violence.
Jennifer Jacquet’s research focuses on animals and the environment, Agnotology, and attribution and responsibility in the Anthropocene. She is author of The: How to Deny Science, Sell Lies, and Make a Killing in the Corporate World (Pantheon/Penguin, 2022)-- a work of 'epistolary non-fiction' that makes the business case for scientific denial. She also wrote Is Shame Necessary? (Pantheon/Penguin, 2015) about the evolution, function, and future of the use of social disapproval in a globalized, digitized world. She is the recipient of a 2015 Alfred P. Sloan research fellowship and a 2016 Pew Fellowship in Marine Conservation.
https://jenniferjacquet.com
https://as.nyu.edu/faculty/jennifer-jacquet.html
www.palumbo-liu.com
https://speakingoutofplace.com
https://twitter.com/palumboliu?s=20
How do you find your voice? As a writer, how do you take what you know and what you believe to share your stories with the world? How do we let young writers know just how powerful they are and that what they do matters?
In How We Do It: Black Writers on Craft, Practice, and Skill Pulitzer Prize winning, and National Book Award finalist author Jericho Brown brings together more than 30 acclaimed writers, including the likes of Tayari Jones, Jacqueline Woodson, Natasha Trethewey, among many others, to discuss, dissect, and offer advice and encouragement on the written word. Brown is author of The Tradition, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, and the National Endowment for the Arts, and he is the winner of the Whiting Award. Brown’s first book, Please, won the American Book Award. His second book, The New Testament, won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. His third collection, The Tradition won the Paterson Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. His poems have appeared in The Bennington Review, Buzzfeed, Fence, jubilat, The New Republic, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Paris Review TIME magazine, and several volumes of The Best American Poetry. He is the director of the Creative Writing Program and a professor at Emory University.
"This is a book for anyone who is a student of the craft. More particularly, though, this is a book for younger and newer Black writers in undergraduate and graduate workshops and in absolutely no workshop at all. We hope teachers find these words useful for their students, and we hope students who have yet to find their teachers learn from these thirty-two pieces born out of absolute generosity and hope for the future of Black writing."
www.jerichobrown.com
www.harpercollins.com/products/how-we-do-it-jericho-browndarlene-taylor?variant=40901184684066
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Have you ever experienced the feeling of being alone and not having a community? How can we build an atmosphere of inclusion and greater understanding?
Brooklyn-based artist Elliot Lee fuses dark pop melodies with edgy vocals and innovative electronic-rock soundscapes to create an unpredictable sound, acting as a voice for the voiceless. Elliot Lee holds an awareness of what music that is unhindered by norms can do for the underrepresented. Elliot’s single "Easy To Be You” is dedicated to the LGBTQIA+ community and was released during PRIDE Month. Elliot confides that the release is, "about struggling with self image and identity expression as a queer person.
"I started to feel like a person who wasn't really me, in that world of being super feminine. It's definitely a night and day difference from that and when, for a while, I was super masculine and people were gendering me. Looking at me, they'd say I was a boy. Those two different worlds are very different. And how people treated me was like night and day. I definitely got more respect when I was masculine. I'd find from people, especially men, were more willing to listen to me and willing to hang out with me and all that without making it weird.
I've always been outspoken, partially because of my autism, I think, because I just don't really have a filter and I find that in a lot of my relationships, I overshare sometimes. And I talk about things that maybe weren't the right thing to talk about to that person. And I've learned to get better at that. But music has been more of an outlet for me to be okay with saying whatever I want to say. And there aren't really boundaries, so I don't have to worry about that anymore.
So in my image, I'm just kind of me, which is nice. I get to just be me and not worry about fitting into society or fitting into what people want me to be. I can overshare and I can advocate for things that mean a lot to me, and I can be open about who I am. And since I have this community of people supporting me, then I'm safe doing so."
www.elliotlee.com
https://song.space/2nldde/song/2477503
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
"I think so much of acceptance by foreign countries as immigrants, I think, lies with this ideal of assimilation. And assimilation in one respect, it's the negation of your own heritage and your own identity. Because it requires this kind of knowing adoption of a different set of standards and cultural practices, which are alien to you. And in order to assimilate, you have to make them feel as though they're your own. And I think that as a society we're trying to move past assimilation as an ideal for acceptance and moving into a more heterogeneous understanding of a culture that is able to absorb and tolerate different cultural practices and still preserve a common sense of identity that doesn't require necessarily assimilation.
My parents used to say, 'You keep your head down, and you just try to do better than anyone else. And that'll be enough.'"
How can we retell the story of America? In the United States of Amnesia, why does the Western celebrate cowboys but not all people who built this country? What does a Chinese-American hero look like in the 21st Century?
Tom Lin is an American writer whose 2021 debut novel The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu chronicles the story of a Chinese American outlaw seeking revenge during America's railroad boom. The book won the 2022 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, making Lin the youngest Carnegie winner in the prize’s history. Tom Lin is currently pursuing an English doctorate at the University of California Davis.
https://twotreeforest.com
www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/tom-lin/the-thousand-crimes-of-ming-tsu/9780316542173/?lens=little-brown
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Image courtesy of Little, Brown and Company & Tom Lin
How can we retell the story of America? In the United States of Amnesia, why does the Western celebrate cowboys but not all people who built this country? What does a Chinese-American hero look like in the 21st Century?
Tom Lin is an American writer whose 2021 debut novel The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu chronicles the story of a Chinese American outlaw seeking revenge during America's railroad boom. The book won the 2022 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, making Lin the youngest Carnegie winner in the prize’s history. Tom Lin is currently pursuing an English doctorate at the University of California Davis.
"I think so much of acceptance by foreign countries as immigrants, I think, lies with this ideal of assimilation. And assimilation in one respect, it's the negation of your own heritage and your own identity. Because it requires this kind of knowing adoption of a different set of standards and cultural practices, which are alien to you. And in order to assimilate, you have to make them feel as though they're your own. And I think that as a society we're trying to move past assimilation as an ideal for acceptance and moving into a more heterogeneous understanding of a culture that is able to absorb and tolerate different cultural practices and still preserve a common sense of identity that doesn't require necessarily assimilation.
My parents used to say, 'You keep your head down, and you just try to do better than anyone else. And that'll be enough.'"
https://twotreeforest.com
www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/tom-lin/the-thousand-crimes-of-ming-tsu/9780316542173/?lens=little-brown
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Image courtesy of Little, Brown and Company & Tom Lin
"The Chicago School in the 1970s said: Capitalism has been doing really well. What we need to do is take their training wheels off and get rid of regulation, because they believed this would lift everybody out of poverty. That didn't happen. What happened was, if you don't regulate markets, suddenly all of that money goes to the top. So I'm going to give you an example of how skewed our global system is. There are currently eight billionaires in the world, and they're all white males who own the same wealth as the bottom 4 billion people. That suggests that neoliberalism has not worked."
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
Image courtesy of Mark Maslin
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.
"The Chicago School in the 1970s said: Capitalism has been doing really well. What we need to do is take their training wheels off and get rid of regulation, because they believed this would lift everybody out of poverty. That didn't happen. What happened was, if you don't regulate markets, suddenly all of that money goes to the top. So I'm going to give you an example of how skewed our global system is. There are currently eight billionaires in the world, and they're all white males who own the same wealth as the bottom 4 billion people. That suggests that neoliberalism has not worked."
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
In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu interviews Cynthia Franklin about her new book, Narrating Humanity: Life Writing and Movement Politics from Palestine to Mauna Kea. Taking on pivotal historical moments like the murder of George Floyd and the emergence of #BlackLivesMatter, the on-going struggle of the Palestinian people against the ethno-nationalist Zionist state, and the fight for Indigenous rights in Hawai’i, Franklin asks the question, what requirements to people have to meet in order to fit into the human narrative? And what are the possibilities of creating alternate stories of the human that can accommodate individuals who identify more as members of political collectives, and also narratives that exceed the normative category of the human? This powerful book asks fundamental questions about the relationship between art and activism.
“I posit narrated humanity as a lens through which to study how narratives participate in struggles to conceive human being beyond juridical and narrative humanity.”
Cynthia G. Franklin is Professor of English at the University of Hawai'i, and coeditor of the journal Biography. She is the author of Narrating Humanity: Life Writing and Movement Politics from Palestine to Mauna Kea (2023), Academic Lives: Memoir, Cultural Theory and the University Today and Writing Women’s Communities: The Politics and Poetics of Contemporary Multi-Genre Anthologies. She has coedited special issues of Biography including “Life in Occupied Palestine” and “Personal Effects: The Testimonial Uses of Life Writing.” For the past ten years, Cynthia has been on the Organizing Collective of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI) and she is a founding member and faculty advisor of Students and Faculty for Justice in Palestine at UH (SFJP@UH). She serves on the Editorial Collective for the newly established initiative EtCH (Essays in the Critical Humanities).
https://english.hawaii.edu/faculty/cynthia-franklin/
www.palumbo-liu.com
https://speakingoutofplace.com
https://twitter.com/palumboliu?s=20
"I think young people should not panic. I think we are in a very difficult situation. But we do have amazing technology. We do have a way to invent more technology. And as an economist, I believe that we should remain optimistic. I think there are many things we can do, both in terms of taxing dirty production, but also subsidizing clean production, and investing in infrastructure, that itself can create incentives for the green transition. And in that sense, I think we should work more together. We should learn more in order not to panic. We should also understand the exact challenges, the numbers, and the science, and listen to the experts. But what I can say as a political economist is, of course, the political system is stuck in the status quo. And in order to refocus the priorities of the current political class, you need to become politicians. You need to participate in politics. You need to talk to experts and try to come up with constructive solutions. And what I like about young people is they are very much aware of those issues. And they're very mobilized, especially regarding the issue of environmental transformation, which I think is what creates hope."
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
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
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.
"I think young people should not panic. I think we are in a very difficult situation. But we do have amazing technology. We do have a way to invent more technology. And as an economist, I believe that we should remain optimistic. I think there are many things we can do, both in terms of taxing dirty production, but also subsidizing clean production, and investing in infrastructure, that itself can create incentives for the green transition. And in that sense, I think we should work more together. We should learn more in order not to panic. We should also understand the exact challenges, the numbers, and the science, and listen to the experts. But what I can say as a political economist is, of course, the political system is stuck in the status quo. And in order to refocus the priorities of the current political class, you need to become politicians. You need to participate in politics. You need to talk to experts and try to come up with constructive solutions. And what I like about young people is they are very much aware of those issues. And they're very mobilized, especially regarding the issue of environmental transformation, which I think is what creates hope."
https://sites.google.com/site/sguriev/
https://spindictators.com/
www.sciencespo.fr/department-economics/en/researcher/sergei-guriev.html
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
"It's always difficult to generalize about my work because obviously, they're very different in each location. Sometimes I'll witness some particular species has colonized the rocks in an area or producing certain types of forms that the light looks a certain way, but then other times I wanted to represent people from the local community and that also dictates how the installations are. And then there are messages that I wanted to bring forth regarding climate change. I think we've missed an opportunity where we've had so much science and so many facts and figures and warnings and conventions, but we've forgotten a part that has motivated us for millennia, and that is our emotions. And I think that's where art and that's where often religion comes to the fore."
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
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.
"It's always difficult to generalize about my work because obviously, they're very different in each location. Sometimes I'll witness some particular species has colonized the rocks in an area or producing certain types of forms that the light looks a certain way, but then other times I wanted to represent people from the local community and that also dictates how the installations are. And then there are messages that I wanted to bring forth regarding climate change. I think we've missed an opportunity where we've had so much science and so many facts and figures and warnings and conventions, but we've forgotten a part that has motivated us for millennia, and that is our emotions. And I think that's where art and that's where often religion comes to the fore."
www.underwatersculpture.com
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
What role do the visual arts play in drawing upon history, activating democracy, and asking questions about what culture can do?
Australian artist Anthony White lives and works in Paris. White’s artistic work revolves around the notion of reclaiming the act of dissent through the production of cultural objects. His research is situated at the intersection of several fields in the social space including, politics, human rights, and postcolonialism. His practice is centered around concepts of design and its history as a form of social and political expression. He works with painting, drawing, collage, and printmaking. Through this practice, he tackles relevant questions to our time, to encourage emancipation and new ways of thinking.
Anthony White’s artwork has been exhibited in Australia, Europe, and Asia. He has received support through cultural agencies such as The Trust Company Australia, The National Association for the Visual Arts,(NAVA) and The Copyright Agency Limited (CAL). He has also received critical acclaim by recognition in the form of art prizes and reviews most notably The Marten Bequest Travelling Scholarship (2007) The Creative Art Fellowship at The National Library of Australia (2020) and acknowledgements in The Australia Financial Review, Art Collector Magazine Australia and also Elle Décor US edition. His exhibition Manifestation is on show from the 12–30 of July at Lennox Street Gallery, in Melbourne.
"So that is what I've started since 2010. I've been researching and going down the rabbit hole really of things that speak to you at certain points in time. I started noticing the rise of neo-fascism when I did a residency in Leipzig. I noticed that there was just a stronger presence of fascism that seemed to be very present where I was staying in the Lower Saxony region. It's repeated again in the British government, the rhetoric around the hostile environment and the way that asylum seekers are treated. Not just in Britain, but in Australia as well. I think it is a job for artists, not all artists, but I think it's a job for artists to acknowledge that culture can make a difference towards these things and can hold people more accountable."
www.anthonywhite.art
www.instagram.com/anthony_white_paris/
www.metrogallery.com.au/exhibitions/manifestation
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
What is the path to peace for the war in Ukraine? Is America still powerful enough to impose global order? The US has just 4.1% of the world's population, while the BRICS countries have 41.5%. In this conversation with economist Jeffrey Sachs, we discuss the origins of the conflict in Ukraine and NATO enlargement, US-China relations, and the decline of US dominance.
Jeffrey Sachs is Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University and President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, Sachs has been Special Advisor to three United Nations Secretaries-General. He was an economic adviser to Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and Former President of Ukraine, Leonid Kuchma. Sachs was twice named among Time magazine’s 100 most influential world leaders, received the Tang Prize in Sustainable Development, the Legion of Honor from France, and was co-recipient of the Blue Planet Prize. He is Co-Chair of the Council of Engineers for the Energy Transition, and academician of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences at the Vatican.
Sachs has authored and edited numerous books, including three New York Times bestsellers: The End of Poverty (2005), Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet (2008), and The Price of Civilization (2011).
"The US signed several statements in 2021 confirming that NATO would enlarge. Russia massed troops on its border and put on the table a draft US-Russia security agreement on December 17th, 2021 based on no NATO enlargement. The Biden administration formally replied that it was not willing to negotiate over that issue in a response in January. Then Russia invaded on February 24th, 2022. Four weeks later, Zelenskyy declared that Ukraine was accepting of neutrality. In other words, the initial Russian invasion brought Ukraine to the negotiating table, and during the second half of March, with the Turkish government being the mediators, Russia and Ukraine hammered out a peace agreement. Incredibly, the United States blocked it because the United States told the Ukrainian government: you fight on.
The basic point is the US has 4.1% of the world population. So how could it presume to be the world leader? You know, the US is a powerful country. It's a rich country, but it doesn't run the world, and it should not aspire to run the world. That's a kind of madness, and the US ideology for a long time has been that the US should run the world.
It's, to my mind, unbelievable. But then again, I've spent most of my career outside the US seeing the other 95.9% of the world. And I know that the other 95.9% of the world doesn't want the United States to run the world. It's not against the United States. It just says: let us have our own part of the world. We don't want you running the world. We don't want you deciding what our government is, who we are, how we rule ourselves. You know, you're just one place. And this, the United States leaders don't understand. They're very arrogant. They're very ignorant because of the two big oceans. They're very unaware of the history of other parts of the world. And we end up with this arrogant and naive and dangerous foreign policy because, there's no doubt the United States is rich and powerful, and it makes lots of weapon systems. And I'm 68 years old and the United States has been at war almost every year of my life from Vietnam and Laos and Cambodia and Nicaragua, Afghanistan and Iraq and Syria and Libya, and now Ukraine. Come on, give it a break."
www.jeffsachs.org
https://sdgacademy.org
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Marge Piercy’s 17 novels include NYTimes Bestseller Gone To Soldiers; National Bestsellers Braided Lives and The Longings of Women; the classics Woman on the Edge of Time and He, She and It, and her critically acclaimed memoir Sleeping with Cats. She’s written 20 volumes of poetry. The most recent is On the Way Out, Turn Off the Light. Born in Detroit, educated at the University of Michigan and Northwestern, she is active in antiwar, feminist and environmental causes.
www.margepiercy.com
www.miafunk.com
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Alice Notley has published over forty books of poetry, most recently For the Ride (Penguin Books) and Eurynome’s Sandals (PURH). Notley has received many awards including the Academy of American Poets’ Lenore Marshall Prize, the Poetry Society of America’s Shelley Award, the Griffin International Prize, two NEA Grants, the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Poetry, and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, a lifetime achievement award. She is also a visual artist and collagist, and a book of her poem-drawings is forthcoming from Archway Editions. Since 1992, Notley has lived and worked in Paris, France.
www.miafunk.com
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu interviews Dr. Jennifer Gómez about her new book, The Cultural Betrayal of Black Women and Girls: A Black Feminist Approach to Healing from Sexual Abuse, which takes on the particular difficulty of centering the voices and experiences of Black women and girls when confronting sexual violence in the Black community.
Jennifer M. Gómez is an Assistant Professor in the School of Social Work and a Faculty Affiliate at the Center for Innovation in Social Work & Health at Boston University, and a Board Member and Chair of the Research Advisory Committee at the Center for Institutional Courage. Her primary research focus is cultural betrayal trauma theory (CBTT), which she created as a framework for understanding the mental, behavioral, cultural, and physical health impact of violence on Black and other marginalized youth, young adults, and elders within the context of inequality.
Written while she was a 2021-22 Fellow at the Stanford University Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS), her book, The Cultural Betrayal of Black Women & Girls: A Black Feminist Approach to Healing from Sexual Abuse (American Psychological Association; 2023), provides individual, interpersonal, and structural strategies for healing.
“So many of us have experienced things along this vein, and when we know that, then the feelings of isolation can be interrupted with this understanding that many of us have been through these things. And if that person over there can experience joy, well maybe I can experience joy too, and maybe this is a different kind of harm and cultural betrayal. Sexual trauma and abuse as a collective community-level harm, that means community-level healing and personal healing. The radical hope piece for me - but it isn't hope. That's like toxic hope of like everything will be okay, everything will be fine! Instead, it's like - No, things are crappy. They're awful. And how can I still experience joy and happiness and believe that the world can be different even in the face of all the evidence suggesting otherwise? And how powerful that is. And I think the orientation that this framework has includes understanding your history, understanding your past.”
https://jmgomez.org
https://www.apa.org/pubs/books/cultural-betrayal
Twitter: @JenniferMGmez1
www.palumbo-liu.com
https://speakingoutofplace.com
https://twitter.com/palumboliu?s=20
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
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.
"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
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
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.
"So we tend to take living for granted. I think that might be the biggest limitation of human intelligence is to not understand with awe and reverence and love that we live in a miracle that we are part of and that we have the ability to either nurture or destroy.
The living world is enormously enriching to human life. I just loved animals. They're always just totally fascinating. They're not here for us. They're just here like we're just here. They are of this world as much as we are of this world. They really have the same claim to life and death and the circle of being."
www.safinacenter.org
www.carlsafina.org
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
www.creativeprocess.info
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Photo: Carl Safina in Uganda
Anthony Joseph is a poet, novelist, academic and musician who moved from Trinidad to the UK in 1989. A lecturer in creative writing at Birkbeck College, he is particularly interested in the point at which poetry becomes music.
As well as four poetry collections, a slew of albums, and three novels – most recently Kitch – Joseph has published critical work exploring the aesthetics of Caribbean Poetry among other subjects. He performs internationally as the lead vocalist for his band The Spasm Band. Sonnets for Albert is his first poetry collection since Rubber Orchestras.
“Calling England Home” and “Language (Poem for Anthony McNeill)” were released in 2021 by Anthony Joseph and appear on his album "The Rich Are Only Defeated When Running For Their Lives”.
www.anthonyjoseph.co.uk
https://open.spotify.com/artist/622cbugSJevUkEanSBCab9
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
Pablo Hoffman has always been passionate about plants and natural ecosystems, with special appreciation for research and dissemination with practical results for the production and conservation of native species. Pablo graduated in Forestry at the Federal University of Paraná (UFPR) 2002, had his Master’s in Forestry – UFPR 2014, currently he is a PhD candidate in Forestry. One of the Founders of the Sociedade Chauá, Pablo has been a board member since 2008. Currently is the Executive Director as well Coordinator of the Chauá Nursery of native species. A specialist in conservation, propagation and restoration of rare and endangered species of the Araucaria Forest, whose projects are locally and internationally recognized. As a result of Sociedade’s Chauá efforts to save endangered plant species Pablo was awarded the Marsh Award (2018), Whitley Award (2022), and Guardians of Nature (2022). As a life choice, working with conservation of rare and endangered plant species is the lifeblood of his personal and professional aspirations, to leave a positive legacy for the next generations, keeping the ecosystems alive with humans as part of it.
"I understood that the Araucaria Forest ecosystem was really degraded and needed conservation to protect the plant species, the Araucaria Forest ecosystem where I live used to cover around 40% of the land. And nowadays there's less than 1% left of good, quality remnants of forest. So it's almost nothing. So you can imagine what happens with the plant species and also animal species. But nowadays the conversion of natural areas, even grassland savannahs are forced into agribusiness areas that have the most impact, as they have the capacity of using machines, and tractors for converting these areas, using more and more fertilizers, agrichemicals, and pesticides that can destroy one hector in less than one hour with their tractors and machines. It will take like 50 years to a hundred years to recover - if it recovers. Depending on how many species we still have left the dispersers, pollinators, and the other actors of the ecosystem to aid in the recovery."
www.sociedadechaua.org
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu interviews Olivia Harrison, author of a new book entitled, Natives Against Nativism, which takes on the appropriation of the figure of the “native,” or in the French case, the “indigene” to serve progressive and indeed revolutionary causes, but also its appropriation by the alt-right both in France and internationally to drive a reactionary program against so-called anti-white racism.
The conversation covers a lot of ground, from a discussion of the basic premises of the French Republic, to unpacking the long history of anti-racist struggles in France, to the period of the late 1960s and 1970s, where we see in particular the figure of the Palestinian, and of the American Indian, play enormous roles in the radical imaginary.
Olivia discusses the ways things like the “Great Replacement Theory” signal a convergence of US and French anti-right “nativism,” and use photographs, films, and poetry to show the complexity of this terrain, perhaps best illustrated by the collaboration between French avant-garde film maker Jean-Luc Godard and the pre-eminent Palestinian poet, Mahmoud Darwish.
Olivia C. Harrison is Associate Professor of French and Comparative Literature at the University of Southern California. Her research focuses on postcolonial North African, Middle Eastern, and French literature and film, with a particular emphasis on transcolonial affiliations between writers and intellectuals from the Global South. Her publications include Natives against Nativism: Antiracism and Indigenous Critique in Postcolonial France (University of Minnesota Press, 2023), Transcolonial Maghreb: Imagining Palestine in the Era of Decolonization (Stanford University Press, 2016), and essays on Maghrebi literature, Beur and banlieue cultural production, and postcolonial theory. With Teresa Villa-Ignacio, she is the editor of Souffles-Anfas: A Critical Anthology from the Moroccan Journal of Culture and Politics (Stanford University Press, 2016) and translator of Hocine Tandjaoui’s proem, Clamor/Clameur (Litmus Press, 2021).
www.palumbo-liu.com
https://speakingoutofplace.com
https://twitter.com/palumboliu?s=20
"In On Time and Water, I was invited to interview the Dalai Lama twice. I was thinking, what do you ask a person that has been reincarnated 14 times? I also interviewed lots of scientists, and sometimes the gurus are more rational than scientists, and they talk about climate solutions. And I seek wisdom from my grandparents, and simple friendship and stories. They were both 98 years old, and I would ask them: 'Is 100 years a long time or a short time?' And they would tell me it's a very short time.
And this climate scientist encouraged me to write and said, 'People don't understand data, but they understand stories.' And it's a very strong belief that the artist does have a role in our society. Sometimes he's an entertainer. Sometimes he's just documenting, but sometimes you maybe have a role in a very fundamental shift in our history. I think I could not be a writer here and now in history and not make some effort to address this issue."
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
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.
"In On Time and Water, I was invited to interview the Dalai Lama twice. I was thinking, what do you ask a person that has been reincarnated 14 times? I also interviewed lots of scientists, and sometimes the gurus are more rational than scientists, and they talk about climate solutions. And I seek wisdom from my grandparents, and simple friendship and stories. They were both 98 years old, and I would ask them: 'Is 100 years a long time or a short time?' And they would tell me it's a very short time.
And this climate scientist encouraged me to write and said, 'People don't understand data, but they understand stories.' And it's a very strong belief that the artist does have a role in our society. Sometimes he's an entertainer. Sometimes he's just documenting, but sometimes you maybe have a role in a very fundamental shift in our history. I think I could not be a writer here and now in history and not make some effort to address this issue."
www.andrimagnason.com
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu and Azeezah Kanji interview Dr. Haley Duschinski and Mr. Imraan Mir, who are active in trying to grow global awareness of Kashmir and in working to secure human rights for the people of Kashmir. They give us important historical background on Kashmir, which is normally reduced to simply a place of struggle between India and Pakistan. To counter that image, Duschinski and Mir characterize Kashmir as a region with a deep and rich culture and history that is suffering under a brutal and anti-democratic occupation imposed and maintained by the state of India.
Dr. Haley Duschinski is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Ohio University (Ph.D. Anthropology, Harvard University, 2004). A legal and political anthropologist, she has co-edited Resisting Occupation in Kashmir (2018), The Routledge Handbook of Critical Kashmir Studies (2022), and The Palgrave Handbook of New Directions in Kashmir Studies (2023). Duschinski is a founding member of the Critical Kashmir Studies collective and an active member of the Kashmir Scholars Consultative and Advocacy Network (KSCAN).
Imraan Mir is a lawyer, entrepreneur and author. His Kashmir-related work involves research, writing and advocacy to increase understanding of historic and contemporary realities and to facilitate accountability for rights violations. He has done human rights-related work on Kashmir since the late 1990s independently and through collaborations with various organizations, including the Kashmir Law and Justice Project. He holds a J.D. from Harvard Law.
www.ohio.edu/cas/duschins
www.kljp.org
www.palumbo-liu.com
https://speakingoutofplace.com
https://twitter.com/palumboliu?s=20
To learn more about Kashmir, you can hear the unabridged 1h4min version of this episode on the Speaking Out of Place podcast & website.
"There's no question, we are in a state of conservation emergency. And we have a real situation on our hands and it's so fragile that if we take a step back, we could say goodbye to two types of chimpanzee species and the forest is also on the brink of disappearing forever. And when I started as a conservation researcher, there was kidnapping and insecurity throughout the Nile Delta region, and it was immersed in a lot of oil politics and civil conflicts. Kidnapping and insecurity ran throughout that region. Let's not forget that Nigeria is Africa's most populous nation now. We are over 200 million people in the country, and it's a growing population of young people who are looking for means of livelihood and on the lookout to find space to live. So parts of the forest within one year would suddenly become a new village."
Rachel Ashegbofeh Ikemeh is a Whitley Award-winning conservationist and Founder/Director at the Southwest Niger Delta Forest Project, a grassroots-focused conservation initiative that has been dedicated to the protection of fragile wildlife populations and habitat across her project sites in Africa’s most populous nation. Rachel won the award in 2020 for her work on chimpanzee populations in Nigeria and is aiming to secure 20% of chimpanzee habitat in Southwest Nigeria. She is also the winner of the National Geographic Society Buffet Awards for Conservaton Leadership in Africa, a Tusk Conservation Awards Finalist.
She works to protect some of the most highly threatened forest habitats and primate populations in southern Nigeria. For example, Rachel’s determined efforts has helped to bring back a species from the brink of extinction – the rare and critically endangered Niger Delta red colobus monkey, also, considered one of 25 most endangered primates in the world. She has helped to establish two protected areas and have also taken on the management of these PAs to restore habitats in these very highly threatened ecosystems which are also areas of high-security risks in the country.
Rachel is the Co-Vice Chair for the IUCN/SSC Primate Specialist Group African Section and Member of the International Primatological Society (IPS) education committee. Through her strategic positions in these networks, Rachel has been committed to championing the need to increase conservation leadership amongst Africans as she co-founded the African Primatological society in 2017. She’s trained the 55 persons that make up her team from local institutions and local communities.
https://swnigerdeltaforestproject.org.ng
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Rachel Ashegbofeh Ikemeh is a Whitley Award-winning conservationist and Founder/Director at the Southwest Niger Delta Forest Project, a grassroots-focused conservation initiative that has been dedicated to the protection of fragile wildlife populations and habitat across her project sites in Africa’s most populous nation. Rachel won the award in 2020 for her work on chimpanzee populations in Nigeria and is aiming to secure 20% of chimpanzee habitat in Southwest Nigeria. She is also the winner of the National Geographic Society Buffet Awards for Conservaton Leadership in Africa, a Tusk Conservation Awards Finalist.
She works to protect some of the most highly threatened forest habitats and primate populations in southern Nigeria. For example, Rachel’s determined efforts has helped to bring back a species from the brink of extinction – the rare and critically endangered Niger Delta red colobus monkey, also, considered one of 25 most endangered primates in the world. She has helped to establish two protected areas and have also taken on the management of these PAs to restore habitats in these very highly threatened ecosystems which are also areas of high-security risks in the country.
Rachel is the Co-Vice Chair for the IUCN/SSC Primate Specialist Group African Section and Member of the International Primatological Society (IPS) education committee. Through her strategic positions in these networks, Rachel has been committed to championing the need to increase conservation leadership amongst Africans as she co-founded the African Primatological society in 2017. She’s trained the 55 persons that make up her team from local institutions and local communities.
"There's no question, we are in a state of conservation emergency. And we have a real situation on our hands and it's so fragile that if we take a step back, we could say goodbye to two types of chimpanzee species and the forest is also on the brink of disappearing forever. And when I started as a conservation researcher, there was kidnapping and insecurity throughout the Nile Delta region, and it was immersed in a lot of oil politics and civil conflicts. Kidnapping and insecurity ran throughout that region. Let's not forget that Nigeria is Africa's most populous nation now. We are over 200 million people in the country, and it's a growing population of young people who are looking for means of livelihood and on the lookout to find space to live. So parts of the forest within one year would suddenly become a new village."
https://swnigerdeltaforestproject.org.ng
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Adam Aron is a Professor in the Psychology Dept at UC San Diego. His research and teaching focus on the social science of collective action on the climate crisis. His climate activism has been through the Green New Deal at UC San Diego where he has worked on several campaigns such as fossil fuel divestment and also campus decarbonization via ElectrifyUC and he has also produced the documentary Coming Clean. Before switching to the climate crisis, Adam had a successful career in cognitive neuroscience. He earned his PhD from the University of Cambridge, and was a postdoctoral fellow at UCLA.
“Psychology has something to tell us about why so few people are really engaged in the climate struggle. There are different components to this. First of all, there is what I call epistemic skepticism in the book, which is to say, skepticism about the facts of climate change. The second thing is threat perception, that threat levels are not as high as they should be. And the third is that people are skeptical about the response. They don't think that they can do anything, or they don't believe that groups or even countries can make a difference. Epistemic skepticism: psychologically this means that quite a lot of people, for example, the United States, don't believe in the human cause of heating. And the reason for that is very much to do in fact, with the systematic campaign of misinformation that's been fostered by the fossils industry, systematically set out to confuse people about the scientific consensus. We should be very threatened by this. In fact, the youth, generally speaking, are anxious to some extent about it. In effect, Mother Earth is saying, "I can't deal with what you're doing to me, people. I'm putting up my temperature." And if you're not feeling anxious, then you're not paying attention. That's the right way to feel on Planet Earth.”
https://aronlab.org/climate-psychology-and-action-lab
https://ucsdgreennewdeal.net
https://electrifyuc.org/
www.youtube.com/watch?v=1N_dq9J7mDY
Judith Butler on “Speaking Out of Place”: “In this work we see how every critical analysis of homelessness, displacement, internment, violence, and exploitation is countered by emergent and intensifying social movements that move beyond national borders to the ideal of a planetary alliance. As an activist and a scholar, Palumbo-Liu shows us what vigilance means in these times. This book takes us through the wretched landscape of our world to the ideals of social transformation, calling for a place, the planet, where collective passions can bring about a true and radical democracy.”
David Palumbo-Liu is the Louise Hewlett Nixon Professor and Professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford University. He has written widely on issues of literary criticism and theory, culture and society, race, ethnicity and indigeneity, human rights, and environmental justice. His books include The Deliverance of Others: Reading Literature in a Global Age, and Speaking Out of Place: Getting Our Political Voices Back. His writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Nation, Al Jazeera, Jacobin, Truthout, and other venues.
www.palumbo-liu.com
https://twitter.com/palumboliu?s=20
"I was reading ecological history and also reading about violence against women and how violence perpetuates itself over many generations. And there was something about this European sort of supremacy of ideas about nature, their ideas about rationality, all of this stuff that sort of came from the Enlightenment. John Oxley's diaries made no mention of the Indigenous Australians who were at the time subject to genocide. So I was interested in these ideas about how they tried to tame the land, which is often talked about as 'a woman' and the way that the kind of violence that comes from a particular kind of European colonial project that is enacted on the land intertwines with the way that violence is enacted upon women. And it was something that I felt growing up in Australia."
Madeleine Watts is an Australian writer based in New York. Her first novel The Inland Sea was published in 2020 and was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award and the UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing. Her essays and stories have been published in Harper’s Magazine, The Believer, The Guardian, The White Review, and The Paris Review Daily, among others. She teaches creative writing at Columbia University in New York. Her second novel, Elegy, Southwest, is forthcoming.
www.madeleinewatts.com
www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/667704/the-inland-sea-by-madeleine-watts
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Madeleine Watts is an Australian writer based in New York. Her first novel The Inland Sea was published in 2020 and was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award and the UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing. Her essays and stories have been published in Harper’s Magazine, The Believer, The Guardian, The White Review, and The Paris Review Daily, among others. She teaches creative writing at Columbia University in New York. Her second novel, Elegy, Southwest, is forthcoming.
"I was reading ecological history and also reading about violence against women and how violence perpetuates itself over many generations. And there was something about this European sort of supremacy of ideas about nature, their ideas about rationality, all of this stuff that sort of came from the Enlightenment. John Oxley's diaries made no mention of the Indigenous Australians who were at the time subject to genocide. So I was interested in these ideas about how they tried to tame the land, which is often talked about as 'a woman' and the way that the kind of violence that comes from a particular kind of European colonial project that is enacted on the land intertwines with the way that violence is enacted upon women. And it was something that I felt growing up in Australia."
www.madeleinewatts.com
www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/667704/the-inland-sea-by-madeleine-watts
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Sagarika Sriram is currently a student at Jumeirah College in Dubai. She founded the organization Kids4abetterworld when she was 10 years old with a mission to educate and encourage young children to lead a more sustainable life and reduce their carbon footprint. Children are the worst affected by the effects of climate change, yet most children do not participate in climate change discussions or take actions to live more sustainably because they do not have the awareness and capability to do so. Kids4abetterworld conducts awareness workshops on sustainability aiming to Educate, Motivate and Activate young children to conserve natural resources, protect biodiversity, and positively impact climate change. As a UN Climate Advisor, she has participated in the global consultations that will ensure children are made aware of their environmental rights and that UN member states protect and uphold these. Kids4abetterworld is a platform for young children to connect across the globe as they adopt sustainable lifestyles and drive systemic solutions to the climate crisis.
www.k4bworld.com
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
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
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.
Ashley Dawson is Professor of English at the Graduate Center / City University of New York and the College of Staten Island. Recently published books of his focus on key topics in the Environmental Humanities, and include People’s Power: Reclaiming the Energy Commons (O/R, 2020), Extreme Cities: The Peril and Promise of Urban Life in the Age of Climate Change (Verso, 2017), and Extinction: A Radical History (O/R, 2016). Dawson is the author of a forthcoming book entitled Environmentalism from Below (Haymarket) and the co-editor of Decolonize Conservation! (Common Notions, 2023).
https://ashleydawson.infowww.haymarketbooks.org/books/2101-environmentalism-from-below#:~:text=Environmentalism%20from%20Below%20takes%20readers,fight%20to%20protect%20imperiled%20worldshttps://viacampesina.org/en/www.shackdwellersnamibia.com
www.palumbo-liu.com
https://twitter.com/palumboliu?s=20
"I'm New York to the soles of my feet, and more specifically, The Bronx. I was formed in The Bronx. I lived there till I was 19. Then I went into the Marine Corps, and I came up against really something that I feel has really been lost when they stopped drafting people. I came up against everybody in the country, mostly poor people of every persuasion from Virginia to DC to wherever. And we lived together in an open barracks, like 90 of us in double-decker bunks for a year. And that is gold. It's irreplaceable. Not simply as an artist, but as a citizen of a given country, you really come to realize we're all in this together. And you see all of the prejudices play out in a kind of healthily violent way. People just punch each other in the face. So, this is back then. Now, apparently, it's much more civilized. I'm not sure I'm in favor of that, but back then, people said Marines said the most awful things to each other imaginable, of a racist nature, and of every other kind of nature. And you know, the shape of your head, anything.
And then fists were thrown and somehow the world didn't come to an end. Then everybody calmed down, and they went back to their bunks and read their comic books or whatever they were going to do, and went to bed. And we got up the next day, and we worked together. That's a big lesson in how to get along, how to live, and how to live with people you don't necessarily agree with."
John Patrick Shanley is from The Bronx. His plays include Prodigal Son, Outside Mullingar (Tony nomination), Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, Savage in Limbo, Italian-American Reconciliation, Welcome to the Moon, Four Dogs and a Bone, Dirty Story, Defiance, and Beggars in the House of Plenty. His theatrical work is performed extensively across the United States and around the world. For his play, Doubt, he received both the Tony Award and the Pulitzer Prize. In the arena of screenwriting, he has ten films to his credit, most recently Wild Mountain Thyme, with Emily Blunt, Jamie Dornan, and Christopher Walken. His film of Doubt, with Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, and Viola Davis, which he also directed, was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Adapted Screenplay. Other films include Five Corners (Special Jury Prize, Barcelona Film Festival), Alive, Joe Versus the Volcano (which he also directed), and Live From Baghdad for HBO (Emmy nomination). For his script of Moonstruck he received both the Writers Guild of America Award and an Academy Award for best original screenplay. In 2009, The Writers Guild of America awarded Mr. Shanley the Lifetime Achievement In Writing.
www.imdb.com/name/nm0788234
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
John Patrick Shanley is from The Bronx. His plays include Prodigal Son, Outside Mullingar (Tony nomination), Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, Savage in Limbo, Italian-American Reconciliation, Welcome to the Moon, Four Dogs and a Bone, Dirty Story, Defiance, and Beggars in the House of Plenty. His theatrical work is performed extensively across the United States and around the world. For his play, Doubt, he received both the Tony Award and the Pulitzer Prize. In the arena of screenwriting, he has ten films to his credit, most recently Wild Mountain Thyme, with Emily Blunt, Jamie Dornan, and Christopher Walken. His film of Doubt, with Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, and Viola Davis, which he also directed, was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Adapted Screenplay. Other films include Five Corners (Special Jury Prize, Barcelona Film Festival), Alive, Joe Versus the Volcano (which he also directed), and Live From Baghdad for HBO (Emmy nomination). For his script of Moonstruck he received both the Writers Guild of America Award and an Academy Award for best original screenplay. In 2009, The Writers Guild of America awarded Mr. Shanley the Lifetime Achievement In Writing.
"You grow up wherever you grow up. And there are things there, and there are other things that are not there, and the things that are not there, you can imagine. And I did a lot of imagining in the Bronx because there were a lot of things that I gravitated toward that just weren't there: the fantastic, The Thief of Baghdad, magic, beautiful clothes, beautiful places, the exoticism of that. And then at another later point, I thought, I am missing my whole life from my work. I am writing about all these things that are not my life. Because I think everything that I actually saw and heard and felt is so ordinary that it's not worth repeating. And I think most of us feel that way, and we're dead wrong. That in fact, those things are gold. Those are the things that we actually have to write about. And you can write about anything when you start with those things and embrace them. Embrace your own life."
www.imdb.com/name/nm0788234
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Naomi Oreskes is Henry Charles Lea professor of the History of Science and affiliated Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University. She is a world-renowned earth scientist, historian, and public speaker. Oreskes is a leading voice in the role of science in society, the reality of anthropogenic climate change, and the role of disinformation in blocking climate action.
In 2010, she and her co-author Erik Conway published Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming, where they identified something called the tobacco strategy that became paradigmatic in terms of corporate efforts to debunk science.
This discovery led them to explore more deeply and more broadly the attack on science. They found that as science was demoted, the idea of market fundamentalism or the “magic of the market” became a mantra that covered up corporate malfeasance. In today's program, we discuss Oreskes’ and Conway's new book, The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market.
https://histsci.fas.harvard.edu/people/naomi-oreskes
www.bloomsbury.com/us/big-myth-9781635573572/
Judith Butler on “Speaking Out of Place”: “In this work we see how every critical analysis of homelessness, displacement, internment, violence, and exploitation is countered by emergent and intensifying social movements that move beyond national borders to the ideal of a planetary alliance. As an activist and a scholar, Palumbo-Liu shows us what vigilance means in these times. This book takes us through the wretched landscape of our world to the ideals of social transformation, calling for a place, the planet, where collective passions can bring about a true and radical democracy.”
David Palumbo-Liu is the Louise Hewlett Nixon Professor and Professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford University. He has written widely on issues of literary criticism and theory, culture and society, race, ethnicity and indigeneity, human rights, and environmental justice. His books include The Deliverance of Others: Reading Literature in a Global Age, and Speaking Out of Place: Getting Our Political Voices Back. His writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Nation, Al Jazeera, Jacobin, Truthout, and other venues.
www.palumbo-liu.com
https://twitter.com/palumboliu?s=20
https://speakingoutofplace.com
Photo credit: Kayana Szymczak
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
"I feel like film and television are often representing corrupt power and evil in leaders. That exists. But I've been writing about people in that world for a long time and have had the privilege of talking to a lot of them. And for the most part, they're smart people with integrity and good values, and they're good at what they do, and they just want to help people in their own country and around the world.
And even with good people at the helm, it can all go to hell and that, to me, is what's most interesting. I always had a hard time reading the newspaper. I found it very overwhelming in the suffering that you're seeing described every single day. And for me, coming at it through the lens of what's a story that I can relate to that I can follow a character through that they're surviving. For me was a kind of a way to come at it and not have to turn away from the darkness."
Debora Cahn is the Emmy-nominated showrunner and executive producer of Netflix’s The Diplomat, a political thriller series starring Keri Russell and Rufus Sewell. She’s worked with television’s leading showrunners, including Shonda Rhymes, Terence Winter, Steven Levinson, and Howard Gordon. Her career began working on Aaron Sorkin’s The West Wing which has led to projects such as the hit Showtime series Homeland, ABC’s long-running medical drama Grey’s Anatomy, and HBO’s Vinyl, which was co-created by Martin Scorsese. She’s the winner of two Writers Guild of America Award for The West Wing and FX’s limited series Fosse/Verdon.
www.imdb.com/name/nm1263223
www.netflix.com/tudum/the-diplomat
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Images courtesy of Netflix/Alex Bailey
Debora Cahn is the Emmy-nominated showrunner and executive producer of Netflix’s The Diplomat, a political thriller series starring Keri Russell and Rufus Sewell. She’s worked with television’s leading showrunners, including Shonda Rhymes, Terence Winter, Steven Levinson, and Howard Gordon. Her career began working on Aaron Sorkin’s The West Wing which has led to projects such as the hit Showtime series Homeland, ABC’s long-running medical drama Grey’s Anatomy, and HBO’s Vinyl, which was co-created by Martin Scorsese. She’s the winner of two Writers Guild of America Award for The West Wing and FX’s limited series Fosse/Verdon.
"I feel like film and television are often representing corrupt power and evil in leaders. That exists. But I've been writing about people in that world for a long time and have had the privilege of talking to a lot of them. And for the most part, they're smart people with integrity and good values, and they're good at what they do, and they just want to help people in their own country and around the world.
And even with good people at the helm, it can all go to hell and that, to me, is what's most interesting. I always had a hard time reading the newspaper. I found it very overwhelming in the suffering that you're seeing described every single day. And for me, coming at it through the lens of what's a story that I can relate to that I can follow a character through that they're surviving. For me was a kind of a way to come at it and not have to turn away from the darkness."
www.imdb.com/name/nm1263223
www.netflix.com/tudum/the-diplomat
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Images courtesy of Netflix/Alex Bailey
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.
“For me, the creative process is a sort of a continuous thing in the sense that I'm writing kind of all the time, at some level. And that doesn't mean I'm sitting at my desk all the time, but it does mean that I've got a continuous thought process, a continuous engagement with the material I'm trying to shape. And it's many different kinds of processes. First of all, obviously an intention. You need to have an intention. What is it I'm trying to do? But then you get a process of making things, and then you get into a process of dialogue with the things you've made where they start to take on properties and it feels like the material has intentions of its own.
So then you are trying to - it's like herding cats, you know? - sort of corralling this material into some kind of structure, some kind of formed object. Then it becomes like a sculptural process on the large scale.”
Composer Max Richter is known for his ability to translate profound human emotions into music. Max’s record Sleep is the most streamed classical album of all time and his catalogue has surpassed 3 billion streams.
A prolific collaborator, he scored and performed for Kim Jones for the Dior shows, and the new Wayne McGregor and Margaret Atwood ballet MADDADDAM, and arts collective Random International on the Rain Room installation.
Max has collaborated with film directors Denis Villeneuve, Martin Scorsese, and Ari Folman, and scored film & TV including Ad Astra, Black Mirror, Shutter Island, The Leftovers, Arrival and his Emmy-nominated score for Taboo.
He’s the co-founder of Studio Richter Mahr, with his partner and artist Yulia Mahr in Oxfordshire, UK. Max and Yulia built the studio around an old tractor barn, and have powered it with cutting-edge solar and heat-pump technology. It’s a haven for their family and community of musicians and artists which regularly come through. Set within 31 acres of woodland, Max and Yulia have a huge passion for using the land to farm and provide a sustainable working environment as well as using creativity as an elevating force within society. Operating as a free space for artists to develop their work, the studio also works with local partners to support the local community.
www.maxrichtermusic.com
https://studiorichtermahr.com
Photo by William Waterworth
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Max Richter’s music featured in this episode is "On the Nature of Daylight” from The Blue Notebooks.
Music is courtesy of Max Richter, Universal Music Enterprises, and Mute Song.
Composer Max Richter is known for his ability to translate profound human emotions into music. Max’s record Sleep is the most streamed classical album of all time and his catalogue has surpassed 3 billion streams.
A prolific collaborator, he scored and performed for Kim Jones for the Dior shows, and the new Wayne McGregor and Margaret Atwood ballet MADDADDAM, and arts collective Random International on the Rain Room installation.
Max has collaborated with film directors Denis Villeneuve, Martin Scorsese, and Ari Folman, and scored film & TV including Ad Astra, Black Mirror, Shutter Island, The Leftovers, Arrival and his Emmy-nominated score for Taboo.
He’s the co-founder of Studio Richter Mahr, with his partner and artist Yulia Mahr in Oxfordshire, UK. Max and Yulia built the studio around an old tractor barn, and have powered it with cutting-edge solar and heat-pump technology. It’s a haven for their family and community of musicians and artists which regularly come through. Set within 31 acres of woodland, Max and Yulia have a huge passion for using the land to farm and provide a sustainable working environment as well as using creativity as an elevating force within society. Operating as a free space for artists to develop their work, the studio also works with local partners to support the local community.
“For me, the creative process is a sort of a continuous thing in the sense that I'm writing kind of all the time, at some level. And that doesn't mean I'm sitting at my desk all the time, but it does mean that I've got a continuous thought process, a continuous engagement with the material I'm trying to shape. And it's many different kinds of processes. First of all, obviously an intention. You need to have an intention. What is it I'm trying to do? But then you get a process of making things, and then you get into a process of dialogue with the things you've made where they start to take on properties and it feels like the material has intentions of its own.
So then you are trying to - it's like herding cats, you know? - sort of corralling this material into some kind of structure, some kind of formed object. Then it becomes like a sculptural process on the large scale.”
www.maxrichtermusic.com
https://studiorichtermahr.com
Photo by William Waterworth
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
"So why, for example, do lonely people show a chronic stress response when they experience hardly any stressful events? And why do people with a history of early life stress show a continued chronic stress response in their adult life? And the same question can be asked about discriminated minorities or living in an urbanized area without parks or green environments around them. Why do people in these situations fall sick earlier and die prematurely?"
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
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
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.
"So why, for example, do lonely people show a chronic stress response when they experience hardly any stressful events? And why do people with a history of early life stress show a continued chronic stress response in their adult life? And the same question can be asked about discriminated minorities or living in an urbanized area without parks or green environments around them. Why do people in these situations fall sick earlier and die prematurely?"
www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/staffmembers/jos-brosschot
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
“This distinction between subsistence emissions and luxury emissions was my main contribution to these debates. And it has recently been calculated that the richest 1% of people in the world produce more emissions than the bottom 50%. A whole lot more. And a lot of these emissions are by those of us who are in the richest 1%. And I'm probably one of those people. A lot of our emissions are from things we don't really need to do. We don't need to constantly fly for our vacations. We can walk in natural places near where we live, or at worst, we can drive in an electric car and so on. That of course means changing some of the things that we take for granted and noticing how great the emissions that they cause are and doing something to reduce our emissions.
One thing we can do and which I've tried to do is spell out the ways in which this is an ethical or moral problem. People don't need philosophers to tell them that they're facing problems. I first became interested in this problem by talking to delegates from India who said, 'You people in the rich countries keep saying we have a problem. And our question is, who are we? You industrialized countries, and it's mainly the greenhouse gas from your industrialization that's created climate change. We haven't done that much industrialization yet.' This was 25 years ago. Of course, now India is beginning to industrialize, but their point then was, and it's still largely true, that a lot of the problems are going to hit countries that haven't caused climate change. And so this strikes people just intuitively as unfair.
What a philosopher like me can do is just spell out exactly why it is unfair. It is unfair if one person causes a problem, and then someone else has to deal with it. That makes it as if the one who's dealing with it is the slave of the one who caused the problem. I make a mess. And then you have to clean it up. That's as if you worked for me. And that's really incompatible with equal respect for all human beings. And that's the sort of thing philosophers can spell out. And there is now a lot of good philosophical work being done spelling these things out.”
Henry Shue is Professor Emeritus of Politics and International Relations at University of Oxford’s Merton College. He's the author of Basic Rights, as well as The Pivotal Generation: Why We Have a Moral Responsibility to Slow Climate Change Right Now, among many other publications. In 1976, he co-founded the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy at the University of Maryland. He was a supporter of the successful campaign by Virginia's Augusta County Alliance to stop the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, and now works primarily on explanations for the urgency of far more ambitious policies to eliminate fossil fuels in order to avoid irreversible damage for future generations.
www.merton.ox.ac.uk/people/professor-henry-shue
https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691202280/basic-rights
https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691226248/the-pivotal-generation
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Henry Shue is Professor Emeritus of Politics and International Relations at University of Oxford’s Merton College. He's the author of Basic Rights, as well as The Pivotal Generation: Why We Have a Moral Responsibility to Slow Climate Change Right Now, among many other publications. In 1976, he co-founded the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy at the University of Maryland. He was a supporter of the successful campaign by Virginia's Augusta County Alliance to stop the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, and now works primarily on explanations for the urgency of far more ambitious policies to eliminate fossil fuels in order to avoid irreversible damage for future generations.
“This distinction between subsistence emissions and luxury emissions was my main contribution to these debates. And it has recently been calculated that the richest 1% of people in the world produce more emissions than the bottom 50%. A whole lot more. And a lot of these emissions are by those of us who are in the richest 1%. And I'm probably one of those people. A lot of our emissions are from things we don't really need to do. We don't need to constantly fly for our vacations. We can walk in natural places near where we live, or at worst, we can drive in an electric car and so on. That of course means changing some of the things that we take for granted and noticing how great the emissions that they cause are and doing something to reduce our emissions.
One thing we can do and which I've tried to do is spell out the ways in which this is an ethical or moral problem. People don't need philosophers to tell them that they're facing problems. I first became interested in this problem by talking to delegates from India who said, 'You people in the rich countries keep saying we have a problem. And our question is, who are we? You industrialized countries, and it's mainly the greenhouse gas from your industrialization that's created climate change. We haven't done that much industrialization yet.' This was 25 years ago. Of course, now India is beginning to industrialize, but their point then was, and it's still largely true, that a lot of the problems are going to hit countries that haven't caused climate change. And so this strikes people just intuitively as unfair.
What a philosopher like me can do is just spell out exactly why it is unfair. It is unfair if one person causes a problem, and then someone else has to deal with it. That makes it as if the one who's dealing with it is the slave of the one who caused the problem. I make a mess. And then you have to clean it up. That's as if you worked for me. And that's really incompatible with equal respect for all human beings. And that's the sort of thing philosophers can spell out. And there is now a lot of good philosophical work being done spelling these things out.”
www.merton.ox.ac.uk/people/professor-henry-shue
https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691202280/basic-rights
https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691226248/the-pivotal-generation
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
“There are hundreds of environmental film festivals, and that's not us. We are really the only pure Wildlife Conservation Film Festival. And we've elected to have these events in large urban areas simply because of the disconnect with nature. Whether we've had it in Beijing or San Paulo, or places in Europe, we find that the people living in these large urban areas are just not aware of the wildlife and the biodiversity around them.
Most people in New York City have never been to the Catskills or the Adirondacks, which is just a short drive from Manhattan. And there you can see wildlife year round, all four seasons. And that's one of the purposes of the festival. Our mission is very straightforward and simple: to inform, engage, and inspire wildlife conservation through the power of film and media.
And we continue to build our global partnerships worldwide. We'll be returning to Monterey, Mexico, probably in late May or June for our third annual event there. We'll be in Rome and Naples, Italy in late September. And we're in negotiation with the United Arab Emirates about doing a film festival there in the Middle East for very late 2023 or early 2024. And through these partnerships, we get the word out, and that is our message.
It gives me a purpose in what I do. I do not call it a job. I do not even call it a career. I call it life's mission. It's because of the hundreds of films that could be made annually, whether they're short or features from independent filmmakers that would certainly make an impact on saving a species and or an ecosystem. And when I am gone, there will be others that will run this in my place. I hope that's not for another 50 years, but we'll see. There are certain things I can and cannot control, but hopefully, it will keep me alive for a long time, and we can do quite a bit more.”
Christopher J. Gervais is an award winning producer. His animated film Dream won a 2017 Golden Lion for film and a Silver Lion for music at the 64th Annual International Festival of Creativity. He is environmental and marine scientist and has decades of experience in field work and research with multiple academic institutions and natural history museums. A former science and social studies teacher, later an administrator, he became the youngest principal of a public school in the state of Florida. While a graduate student, Christopher conducted fieldwork and research to study the Pleistocene Mega fauna and their fossils that were deposited over 10,000 years ago. His study of these extinct species informs his concerns for preserving biodiversity and was a significant factor in the founding of the WCFF. Christopher was one of the first scientists to conduct underwater vertebrate paleontology research. He is a professional, advanced scuba diver with NAUI, PADI, SSI and NASDS with over 2,500 logged dives. Christopher founded the WCFF in 2010 using his life savings to get the organization off the ground and has maintained the operations since then. He is a philanthropic supporter of conservation organizations across the globe. Christopher is President of the International Exploration Society, Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society, member of the Ocean Geographic Society, friend of American Philosophical Society.
www.wcff.org
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Christopher J. Gervais is an award winning producer. His animated film Dream won a 2017 Golden Lion for film and a Silver Lion for music at the 64th Annual International Festival of Creativity. He is environmental and marine scientist and has decades of experience in field work and research with multiple academic institutions and natural history museums. A former science and social studies teacher, later an administrator, he became the youngest principal of a public school in the state of Florida. While a graduate student, Christopher conducted fieldwork and research to study the Pleistocene Mega fauna and their fossils that were deposited over 10,000 years ago. His study of these extinct species informs his concerns for preserving biodiversity and was a significant factor in the founding of the WCFF. Christopher was one of the first scientists to conduct underwater vertebrate paleontology research. He is a professional, advanced scuba diver with NAUI, PADI, SSI and NASDS with over 2,500 logged dives. Christopher founded the WCFF in 2010 using his life savings to get the organization off the ground and has maintained the operations since then. He is a philanthropic supporter of conservation organizations across the globe. Christopher is President of the International Exploration Society, Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society, member of the Ocean Geographic Society, friend of American Philosophical Society.
“There are hundreds of environmental film festivals, and that's not us. We are really the only pure Wildlife Conservation Film Festival. And we've elected to have these events in large urban areas simply because of the disconnect with nature. Whether we've had it in Beijing or San Paulo, or places in Europe, we find that the people living in these large urban areas are just not aware of the wildlife and the biodiversity around them.
Most people in New York City have never been to the Catskills or the Adirondacks, which is just a short drive from Manhattan. And there you can see wildlife year round, all four seasons. And that's one of the purposes of the festival. Our mission is very straightforward and simple: to inform, engage, and inspire wildlife conservation through the power of film and media.
And we continue to build our global partnerships worldwide. We'll be returning to Monterey, Mexico, probably in late May or June for our third annual event there. We'll be in Rome and Naples, Italy in late September. And we're in negotiation with the United Arab Emirates about doing a film festival there in the Middle East for very late 2023 or early 2024. And through these partnerships, we get the word out, and that is our message.
It gives me a purpose in what I do. I do not call it a job. I do not even call it a career. I call it life's mission. It's because of the hundreds of films that could be made annually, whether they're short or features from independent filmmakers that would certainly make an impact on saving a species and or an ecosystem. And when I am gone, there will be others that will run this in my place. I hope that's not for another 50 years, but we'll see. There are certain things I can and cannot control, but hopefully, it will keep me alive for a long time, and we can do quite a bit more.”
www.wcff.org
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
“In the 1930s, there was this movement to rid the city and the country of the Mexican community. And what we see is really this forced deportation. I think they called it repatriation. It was taking not only people who were born in Mexico and came across the border and settled, but people who were born in the United States and, even if they didn't speak a word of Spanish, they sent them away because it was someone to blame. It was 'taking away jobs.’ And this was what they felt was the answer, which we see a lot in, again, the politics of today.”
Michael Begler is showrunner, writer, and executive producer of Perry Mason, which debuted as HBO’s most-watched series in nearly two years upon its premiere in June 2020. The critically-acclaimed show stars Emmy-winner Matthew Rhys, Juliet Rylance, Katherine Waterston, Hope Davis. In the second season of the Emmy-nominated series, the scion of a powerful oil family is brutally murdered. Power, social justice, immigration, LGBTQ rights, and what it truly means to be guilty, are among the issues raised by the series.
Begler’s previous series include the Peabody Award-winning The Knick, starring Clive Owen, directed by Steven Soderbergh, writing/producing credits also include comedy series The Tony Danza Show, The Jeff Foxworthy Show and the film Big Miracle starring Drew Barrymore and John Krasinski.
www.imdb.com/title/tt2077823
www.instagram.com/perrymasonhbo
www.imdb.com/name/nm0066764
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Michael Begler is showrunner, writer, and executive producer of Perry Mason, which debuted as HBO’s most-watched series in nearly two years upon its premiere in June 2020. The critically-acclaimed show stars Emmy-winner Matthew Rhys, Juliet Rylance, Katherine Waterston, Hope Davis. In the second season of the Emmy-nominated series, the scion of a powerful oil family is brutally murdered. Power, social justice, immigration, LGBTQ rights, and what it truly means to be guilty, are among the issues raised by the series.
Begler’s previous series include the Peabody Award-winning The Knick, starring Clive Owen, directed by Steven Soderbergh, writing/producing credits also include comedy series The Tony Danza Show, The Jeff Foxworthy Show and the film Big Miracle starring Drew Barrymore and John Krasinski.
“In the 1930s, there was this movement to rid the city and the country of the Mexican community. And what we see is really this forced deportation. I think they called it repatriation. It was taking not only people who were born in Mexico and came across the border and settled, but people who were born in the United States and, even if they didn't speak a word of Spanish, they sent them away because it was someone to blame. It was 'taking away jobs.’ And this was what they felt was the answer, which we see a lot in, again, the politics of today.”
www.imdb.com/title/tt2077823
www.instagram.com/perrymasonhbo
www.imdb.com/name/nm0066764
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
“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
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
Professor Lisa Jackson Pulver is a proud Aboriginal woman with connections to communities in southwestern New South Wales, South Australia, and beyond. She is the Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Indigenous Strategy and Services for the University of Sydney and leads the institution's strategy to advance Indigenous participation, engagement, education, and research, including the university's One Sydney, Many People 2021-2024 strategy.
She is a recognized expert and tireless advocate for health and education. Her research focuses on capacity building for healthcare workers and improved health for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. She serves her country in the Royal Australian Air Force Specialist Reserve as a Group Captain and is a member of the Australian Statistical Advisory Committee, the Australian Medical Council, and the Health Performance Council of South Australia.
“We come from the land, and we go back to the land. Aboriginal people have been on this land for at least 60,000 years in some of the most extreme conditions on Earth and survived. And over the last 230 years, the most catastrophic events have occurred to this land because people didn't listen to ancient Aboriginal cultures and knowledge. So my question is, if people were able to look after this place for 60,000 years and thrive, what have we done to ensure that we have a healthy fit world for the next 60,000 years?”
www.sydney.edu.au
www.sydney.edu.au/content/dam/corporate/documents/about-us/values-and-visions/one-sydney-many-people-digital.pdf
Season 2 of Business & Society focuses on Leaders, Sustainability & Environmental Solutions
Business & Society is a limited series co-hosted by Bruce Piasecki & Mia Funk www.oneplanetpodcast.org
“Spike Lee is an auteur. He is expressing his sentiment and his culture and the things that he's learned in his life through his craft. Filming BlacKkKlansmen was a really confusing period for me because I felt very connected to Spike, and I just moved to New York at the time, and what a welcoming hand. You know, the King of Brooklyn sort of being like, 'Welcome to New York!' and I'd just moved there, so it was like such a gift. When I reflect on the material, to be honest with you, the reason that I took the film was actually much more about a need to feel connected to my father. And when I read the part of the script where the guys in the KKK blow up in a car bomb, I just saw my dad laughing in my mind and sitting in the theater laughing because he would've found that so funny and ironic. And that's why I took the film, it was so I could give him that gift of laughter because I found meaning in that. And the challenges in the pre-production period, Spike has its way of working and it's sort of fun and it's not as serious. It's like things just made sense to him in a way that with other directors I've worked with, not so much. And then Spike has his office at 40 acres. He puts in work down there. Other times he's like on CNN or he's hosting a party with his family, or he is at the Nicks or Yankees game. Like he has sort of this other life. And he's also a persona. So even just walking around with him, he's like one of the most recognizable figures in America.”
Chase Irvin is a Canadian American cinematographer making waves in the film industry. Chayse has received immense critical acclaim for his vision and style. He has worked on features, shorts, and visual albums, most notably in his collaboration with Director Kahlil Joseph on the film Beyoncé: Lemonade. He lensed Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman, which received 6 Academy Award nominations, winning for best adapted screenplay. Chayse’s first feature film Medeas won the prestigious Best Cinematography Debut at the Camerimage Film Festival in 2013. Hannah, starring Charlotte Rampling, won a Silver Hugo from the Chicago International Film Festival. Chase is a member of the Canadian Society of Cinematographers. His latest films are Netflix’s Blonde starring Ana de Armas and A24’s God's Creatures starring Emily Watson.
www.chayseirvin.com
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Chase Irvin is a Canadian American cinematographer making waves in the film industry. Chayse has received immense critical acclaim for his vision and style. He has worked on features, shorts, and visual albums, most notably in his collaboration with Director Kahlil Joseph on the film Beyoncé: Lemonade. He lensed Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman, which received 6 Academy Award nominations, winning for best adapted screenplay. Chayse’s first feature film Medeas won the prestigious Best Cinematography Debut at the Camerimage Film Festival in 2013. Hannah, starring Charlotte Rampling, won a Silver Hugo from the Chicago International Film Festival. Chase is a member of the Canadian Society of Cinematographers. His latest films are Netflix’s Blonde starring Ana de Armas and A24’s God's Creatures starring Emily Watson.
“Spike Lee is an auteur. He is expressing his sentiment and his culture and the things that he's learned in his life through his craft. Filming BlacKkKlansmen was a really confusing period for me because I felt very connected to Spike, and I just moved to New York at the time, and what a welcoming hand. You know, the King of Brooklyn sort of being like, 'Welcome to New York!' and I'd just moved there, so it was like such a gift. When I reflect on the material, to be honest with you, the reason that I took the film was actually much more about a need to feel connected to my father. And when I read the part of the script where the guys in the KKK blow up in a car bomb, I just saw my dad laughing in my mind and sitting in the theater laughing because he would've found that so funny and ironic. And that's why I took the film, it was so I could give him that gift of laughter because I found meaning in that. And the challenges in the pre-production period, Spike has its way of working and it's sort of fun and it's not as serious. It's like things just made sense to him in a way that with other directors I've worked with, not so much. And then Spike has his office at 40 acres. He puts in work down there. Other times he's like on CNN or he's hosting a party with his family, or he is at the Nicks or Yankees game. Like he has sort of this other life. And he's also a persona. So even just walking around with him, he's like one of the most recognizable figures in America.”
www.chayseirvin.com
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
“I think history and tradition are super important, and this is the point because each generation is sort of translating to the next one. There is almost never a gap. So each generation is in a way interpreting and hopefully also adding something to what is transmitted and continued. And so this is why I think the younger generations now have tools that we didn't have at their age. They are probably able to interpret. And now we go back to the whole discussion about the necessity for sustainability and attention to social and environmental injustice. They probably have a vision or perspectives that we don't have. So in a way, in this transmission, we should be able to learn from them too.”
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
Photo credits: Anselm Kiefer, Sylviane Sarfati
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
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 history and tradition are super important, and this is the point because each generation is sort of translating to the next one. There is almost never a gap. So each generation is in a way interpreting and hopefully also adding something to what is transmitted and continued. And so this is why I think the younger generations now have tools that we didn't have at their age. They are probably able to interpret. And now we go back to the whole discussion about the necessity for sustainability and attention to social and environmental injustice. They probably have a vision or perspectives that we don't have. So in a way, in this transmission, we should be able to learn from them too.”
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
“So I do workshops on what in the industry called Diversity, Equity & Inclusion. Although I have a lot of issues about those terms, but essentially I do workshops that create spaces where folks can talk about issues of white supremacy and basically any oppression, homophobia, gender roles, things that we now call diversity, equity, and inclusion, but I like to think of as issues that are actually affecting us so much deeper than that.
I think a lot of times when people seek me out to book one of those workshops, it's because they think that they want to help their company become more diverse or help their company become more inclusive. And I guess what I'm realizing is that the issue with that framework is that it actually makes us only think about how we're helping others and not really thinking about the impact that these issues are actually having on ourselves. And what I have noticed in these workshops is that the people who do the deepest work on this and actually create the biggest changes and make the best impact are people that are wanting to learn about oppression and white supremacy and all these systems. Not just to help others and not just to make their company more diverse or more inclusive, but also because they're realizing that these systems are also making them feel less free, even at the same time that they might be benefiting from it, right? And at the same time they're noticing that even with that privilege, something about this system still does not feel good and does not feel right. That dismantling that system would not only help the people who are not benefiting from it but would also help themselves and would also free themselves. I try to teach people about how these systems work and how imbalanced power systems affect not only the people with the least amount of power but also the people with the most amount of power and how everybody is suffering under that system. And how dismantling the system, changing the system, and finding a different way to live without those imbalances in power ultimately makes everybody feel free.”
Amanda E. Machado is a writer, public speaker and facilitator whose work explores how race, gender, sexuality, and power affect the way we travel and experience the outdoors. She has written and facilitated on topics of social justice and adventure and lived in Cape Town, Havana, Mexico City, Berlin, Rio de Janeiro, and other cities. She has been published in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The Guardian, New York Times, NPR, and other publications. She is also the founder of Reclaiming Nature Writing, a multi-week online workshop that expands how we tell stories about nature in a way that considers ancestry, colonization, migration trauma, and other issues.
www.amandaemachado.com
IG www.instagram.com/amandaemachado0
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Amanda E. Machado is a writer, public speaker and facilitator whose work explores how race, gender, sexuality, and power affect the way we travel and experience the outdoors. She has written and facilitated on topics of social justice and adventure and lived in Cape Town, Havana, Mexico City, Berlin, Rio de Janeiro, and other cities. She has been published in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The Guardian, New York Times, NPR, and other publications. She is also the founder of Reclaiming Nature Writing, a multi-week online workshop that expands how we tell stories about nature in a way that considers ancestry, colonization, migration trauma, and other issues.
“So I do workshops on what in the industry called Diversity, Equity & Inclusion. Although I have a lot of issues about those terms, but essentially I do workshops that create spaces where folks can talk about issues of white supremacy and basically any oppression, homophobia, gender roles, things that we now call diversity, equity, and inclusion, but I like to think of as issues that are actually affecting us so much deeper than that.
I think a lot of times when people seek me out to book one of those workshops, it's because they think that they want to help their company become more diverse or help their company become more inclusive. And I guess what I'm realizing is that the issue with that framework is that it actually makes us only think about how we're helping others and not really thinking about the impact that these issues are actually having on ourselves. And what I have noticed in these workshops is that the people who do the deepest work on this and actually create the biggest changes and make the best impact are people that are wanting to learn about oppression and white supremacy and all these systems. Not just to help others and not just to make their company more diverse or more inclusive, but also because they're realizing that these systems are also making them feel less free, even at the same time that they might be benefiting from it, right? And at the same time they're noticing that even with that privilege, something about this system still does not feel good and does not feel right. That dismantling that system would not only help the people who are not benefiting from it but would also help themselves and would also free themselves. I try to teach people about how these systems work and how imbalanced power systems affect not only the people with the least amount of power but also the people with the most amount of power and how everybody is suffering under that system. And how dismantling the system, changing the system, and finding a different way to live without those imbalances in power ultimately makes everybody feel free.”
www.amandaemachado.com
IG www.instagram.com/amandaemachado0
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
“We're living between past and future. And we're kind of on a tightrope. And there are forces that are trying to knock us off our precarious balance. And we need to somehow see the future and remember the past in the same breath and hope that we can have the stability to chart a path that's going forward.”
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
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
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.
“We're living between past and future. And we're kind of on a tightrope. And there are forces that are trying to knock us off our precarious balance. And we need to somehow see the future and remember the past in the same breath and hope that we can have the stability to chart a path that's going forward.”
http://harold-sjursen.org
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
“And you see these kids who are put away at 12 and 13 years old. I mean, what is the path for that child, rejected by your family, rejected by your community? There's so little hope there. And so I became drawn to stories of hope of men who were in that situation.
My friend Chris Wilson, I helped him sell a book called The Master Plan. He was put away for murder when he was 16 years old. And he was in prison for life, and he wrote a bucket list. He wrote a master plan when he was 18 about what he was going to try to achieve. And he was one of those exceptional stories. And he's now a really successful artist and entrepreneur who spends most of his time giving back to the community and hiring other reentering citizens. Our friend Louis Reed, who consulted on Delroy Lindo's character, Louis is a senior director for Van Jones' Dream Corps, and he was 15 years incarcerated. And I see these people who had made one mistake, and usually it was to survive in whatever situation they were born into. And the folks who are these exceptional stories, who turn it around in such an unbelievable way that they can then coach and help 650,000 other people. With Louis, our consultant who helped Delroy with his character, he has worked on so much policy change with Van Jones with Cut50 and Reform Alliance, and you can't even quantify the amount of work that still needs to be done. But that has been done by the gentlemen who survived the system and devoted themselves to redemption and giving back to the community.”
Joy Gorman Wettels is the founder of Joy Coalition, an impact producing venture with a focus on creating purpose-driven film and television content for a global audience. She executive-produced the newly-released UnPrisoned, and is currently working on a multi-part storytelling ecosystem inspired by landmark civil rights documentary Eyes on the Prize. Her body of work includes, notably, the critically acclaimed series Home Before Dark, the influential 13 Reasons Why, created by Pulitzer and Tony Award-winning playwright Brian Yorkey and directed by Oscar-winner Tom McCarthy (Spotlight).
Other works include The Meddler, named Vanity Fair's #1 film of 2016, and the forthcoming adaptation of Little House on the Prairie. She serves on the Advisory Council for UCLA’s Center for Scholars and Storytellers and the Advisory Board for Hollywood, Health and Society at USC. As part of their commitment to social change, Joy Coalition works in collaboration with the Office of the Surgeon General in response to the youth mental health crisis. She’s accepted a Sentinel Award, Television Academy Honors for advancing social change, and the 2018 Mental Health America Media Award.
www.joycoalition.com
www.imdb.com/name/nm2229726
www.imdb.com/title/tt20228406/mediaviewer/rm1596470273/?ref_=tt_ov_i
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Joy Gorman Wettels is the founder of Joy Coalition, an impact producing venture with a focus on creating purpose-driven film and television content for a global audience. She executive-produced the newly-released UnPrisoned, and is currently working on a multi-part storytelling ecosystem inspired by landmark civil rights documentary Eyes on the Prize. Her body of work includes, notably, the critically acclaimed series Home Before Dark, the influential 13 Reasons Why, created by Pulitzer and Tony Award-winning playwright Brian Yorkey and directed by Oscar-winner Tom McCarthy (Spotlight).
Other works include The Meddler, named Vanity Fair's #1 film of 2016, and the forthcoming adaptation of Little House on the Prairie. She serves on the Advisory Council for UCLA’s Center for Scholars and Storytellers and the Advisory Board for Hollywood, Health and Society at USC. As part of their commitment to social change, Joy Coalition works in collaboration with the Office of the Surgeon General in response to the youth mental health crisis. She’s accepted a Sentinel Award, Television Academy Honors for advancing social change, and the 2018 Mental Health America Media Award.
“And you see these kids who are put away at 12 and 13 years old. I mean, what is the path for that child, rejected by your family, rejected by your community? There's so little hope there. And so I became drawn to stories of hope of men who were in that situation.
My friend Chris Wilson, I helped him sell a book called The Master Plan. He was put away for murder when he was 16 years old. And he was in prison for life, and he wrote a bucket list. He wrote a master plan when he was 18 about what he was going to try to achieve. And he was one of those exceptional stories. And he's now a really successful artist and entrepreneur who spends most of his time giving back to the community and hiring other reentering citizens. Our friend Louis Reed, who consulted on Delroy Lindo's character, Louis is a senior director for Van Jones' Dream Corps, and he was 15 years incarcerated. And I see these people who had made one mistake, and usually it was to survive in whatever situation they were born into. And the folks who are these exceptional stories, who turn it around in such an unbelievable way that they can then coach and help 650,000 other people. With Louis, our consultant who helped Delroy with his character, he has worked on so much policy change with Van Jones with Cut50 and Reform Alliance, and you can't even quantify the amount of work that still needs to be done. But that has been done by the gentlemen who survived the system and devoted themselves to redemption and giving back to the community.”
www.joycoalition.com
www.imdb.com/name/nm2229726
www.imdb.com/title/tt20228406/mediaviewer/rm1596470273/?ref_=tt_ov_i
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
“I definitely observed that in university where you see maybe multiple choice tests rather than critical thinking usage. You're exactly right. In developing countries such as Madagascar, it's a matter of not even having the basic education skills like literacy and mathematics to then be able to advance beyond their village of origin to pursue greater opportunities. So I would say, in the US people are more focused on grades and standardized test scores, and then how much money they could make after graduation.
At least from my experience going to university, I was a business major, so a lot of people wanted to go into banking, venture capital, and those type of consulting jobs where they would be guaranteed a stable income. Whereas, in Madagascar, they're just really wanting to learn English and how they can go to higher education, oftentimes in France or other European countries.”
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
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
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.
“I definitely observed that in university where you see maybe multiple choice tests rather than critical thinking usage. You're exactly right. In developing countries such as Madagascar, it's a matter of not even having the basic education skills like literacy and mathematics to then be able to advance beyond their village of origin to pursue greater opportunities. So I would say, in the US people are more focused on grades and standardized test scores, and then how much money they could make after graduation.
At least from my experience going to university, I was a business major, so a lot of people wanted to go into banking, venture capital, and those type of consulting jobs where they would be guaranteed a stable income. Whereas, in Madagascar, they're just really wanting to learn English and how they can go to higher education, oftentimes in France or other European countries.”
www.thinkinghuts.org
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
“I definitely believe at the moment that fashion brands, big fashion in particular, they just exist to exploit people. It's an excuse to exploit the poor, basically. I see fashion as part of this very extractive global economic society where 100, 150 years ago, that extraction was very obvious. You had the enslavement of people. You had taxation. You had literally armies turning up and occupying the land that they wanted and just taking resources or land. These days it's more subtle, but the brands are still following those colonial pathways.
I'm like sat here in London and, you know, there's a reason why British brands go to India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, following the same colonial trade routes. It's also a system very much based on really unfair debt and a total lack of debt justice whereby Global South economies are having to earn foreign capital by opening themselves up to these export industries, whether that's cotton or coffee or garments. 80% of everything that Bangladesh exports are garments. It is a ludicrous position for an economy to be in. And it's very deliberate exploitation as well. Brands make these sourcing decisions very, very deliberately.
They go where they think that workers' rights will be suppressed and environmental legislation will be suppressed. And if anything does happen that the government will step in and do the suppressing and just give them a sort of carte blanche to do whatever they want.
So at the moment, it's very difficult to point at any part of the fashion industry and go, that's not exploitative. You know, that's exploiting the land, that's exploiting these people, that's based on fossil fuels. Those toxic dyes are going into the river. It's a deeply exploitative, industry.”
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
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 at the moment that fashion brands, big fashion in particular, they just exist to exploit people. It's an excuse to exploit the poor, basically. I see fashion as part of this very extractive global economic society where 100, 150 years ago, that extraction was very obvious. You had the enslavement of people. You had taxation. You had literally armies turning up and occupying the land that they wanted and just taking resources or land. These days it's more subtle, but the brands are still following those colonial pathways.
I'm like sat here in London and, you know, there's a reason why British brands go to India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, following the same colonial trade routes. It's also a system very much based on really unfair debt and a total lack of debt justice whereby Global South economies are having to earn foreign capital by opening themselves up to these export industries, whether that's cotton or coffee or garments. 80% of everything that Bangladesh exports are garments. It is a ludicrous position for an economy to be in. And it's very deliberate exploitation as well. Brands make these sourcing decisions very, very deliberately.
They go where they think that workers' rights will be suppressed and environmental legislation will be suppressed. And if anything does happen that the government will step in and do the suppressing and just give them a sort of carte blanche to do whatever they want.
So at the moment, it's very difficult to point at any part of the fashion industry and go, that's not exploitative. You know, that's exploiting the land, that's exploiting these people, that's based on fossil fuels. Those toxic dyes are going into the river. It's a deeply exploitative, industry.”
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
“So in many cities, it's certainly true in many US cities, the poorer neighborhoods are much less likely to have green space, and they're much more likely to suffer exposure to extreme heat. So one issue is redesigning cities to withstand these climatic shocks, reducing the inequities in the prospects for living that many people have. And thinking about how to minimize the potential impact of climate change by increasing inequities, which could happen unless we forestall that. So that's one issue. The other is how we recreate the transport systems. Now in many industrialized countries, of course, we depend very much on the private car, and that leads to congestion, traffic, traffic injuries, and deaths on a global scale, about 1.3 million people a year die of traffic injuries. I won't call them accidents because I think many of them can actually be can be factored out with appropriate policies. So we need to think about win-win policies, which will make cities more pleasant places to live and reduce their environmental footprint. And one of the approaches, of course, is by creating more active opportunities for active travel, walking and cycling, safer walking, and cycling, but also better public transport systems. So reducing our dependence on a private car and then emphasizing more when we do need to use a car. Shared ownership, for example, is one option. So a number of things can be done. But of course, in order to change people's travel patterns, you need to make active travel, and public transport, both affordable, safe, and pleasant. And, and that's, I think a challenge for urban planners that we need to focus much more on that. And also, this has led to the rise of the concept of the 15-minute city, in which basically all basic services are within 15 minutes walking or cycling.”
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
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.
“So in many cities, it's certainly true in many US cities, the poorer neighborhoods are much less likely to have green space, and they're much more likely to suffer exposure to extreme heat. So one issue is redesigning cities to withstand these climatic shocks, reducing the inequities in the prospects for living that many people have. And thinking about how to minimize the potential impact of climate change by increasing inequities, which could happen unless we forestall that. So that's one issue. The other is how we recreate the transport systems. Now in many industrialized countries, of course, we depend very much on the private car, and that leads to congestion, traffic, traffic injuries, and deaths on a global scale, about 1.3 million people a year die of traffic injuries. I won't call them accidents because I think many of them can actually be can be factored out with appropriate policies. So we need to think about win-win policies, which will make cities more pleasant places to live and reduce their environmental footprint. And one of the approaches, of course, is by creating more active opportunities for active travel, walking and cycling, safer walking, and cycling, but also better public transport systems. So reducing our dependence on a private car and then emphasizing more when we do need to use a car. Shared ownership, for example, is one option. So a number of things can be done. But of course, in order to change people's travel patterns, you need to make active travel, and public transport, both affordable, safe, and pleasant. And, and that's, I think a challenge for urban planners that we need to focus much more on that. And also, this has led to the rise of the concept of the 15-minute city, in which basically all basic services are within 15 minutes walking or cycling.”
www.lshtm.ac.uk
https://tylerprize.org
www.interacademies.org
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
"The interesting text is Quicksand, right? Because it shows a couple of engagements with jazz, and there's a certain point in which the protagonist of Quicksand dances to music in a cabaret, and it's described as 'jungle music'. So we would think of Duke Ellington's Jungle Music Band of the 1920s, and we would also notice the kind of reactionary, racial ideas that go with labeling something as from the jungle. And so there's a way in which jazz is trying to be America's responding to jazz by containing it, thinking of it as something kind of primitive. But this is something that's codified or themetized in Nella Larsen's novel.
The protagonist goes in here, and one, she's like the music drives her with a certain kind of intensity, something like ecstasy that's really unparalleled throughout the rest of the novel. And so it's exciting, and it moves her in a certain way, but she knows that if she becomes part of this 'jungle music', she'll be figured as a certain kind of woman. And so there are all sorts of racial assumptions, including primitivism that work to kind of limit recognition of its sophistication and its brilliance and its importance."
Bruce Evan Barnhart is an associate professor of American literature and culture at the University of Oslo and co-director of the project Literature, Rights, and Imagined Communities. He is the author of Jazz in the Time of the Novel: The Temporal Politics of American Race and Culture. His work has appeared in African American Review, Callaloo, and Novel. His latest publications are Temporal Experiments: Seven Ways of Configuring Time in Art and Literature, co-edited with Marit Grøtta, and LeRoi Jones, Jazz, and the Resonance of Class. His research interests include African American literature, post-Marxist theory, jazz, and Caribbean aesthetics.
www.hf.uio.no/ilos/english/people/aca/bruceb
www.routledge.com/Temporal-Experiments-Seven-Ways-of-Configuring-Time-in-Art-and-Literature/Barnhart-Grotta/p/book/9781032350240
https://www.hf.uio.no/ilos/english/research/groups/temporal-experiments/
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Bruce Evan Barnhart is an associate professor of American literature and culture at the University of Oslo and co-director of the project Literature, Rights, and Imagined Communities. He is the author of Jazz in the Time of the Novel: The Temporal Politics of American Race and Culture. His work has appeared in African American Review, Callaloo, and Novel. His latest publications are Temporal Experiments: Seven Ways of Configuring Time in Art and Literature, co-edited with Marit Grøtta, and LeRoi Jones, Jazz, and the Resonance of Class. His research interests include African American literature, post-Marxist theory, jazz, and Caribbean aesthetics.
"The interesting text is Quicksand, right? Because it shows a couple of engagements with jazz, and there's a certain point in which the protagonist of Quicksand dances to music in a cabaret, and it's described as 'jungle music'. So we would think of Duke Ellington's Jungle Music Band of the 1920s, and we would also notice the kind of reactionary, racial ideas that go with labeling something as from the jungle. And so there's a way in which jazz is trying to be America's responding to jazz by containing it, thinking of it as something kind of primitive. But this is something that's codified or themetized in Nella Larsen's novel.
The protagonist goes in here, and one, she's like the music drives her with a certain kind of intensity, something like ecstasy that's really unparalleled throughout the rest of the novel. And so it's exciting, and it moves her in a certain way, but she knows that if she becomes part of this 'jungle music', she'll be figured as a certain kind of woman. And so there are all sorts of racial assumptions, including primitivism that work to kind of limit recognition of its sophistication and its brilliance and its importance."
www.hf.uio.no/ilos/english/people/aca/bruceb
www.routledge.com/Temporal-Experiments-Seven-Ways-of-Configuring-Time-in-Art-and-Literature/Barnhart-Grotta/p/book/9781032350240
https://www.hf.uio.no/ilos/english/research/groups/temporal-experiments/
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
“Now, we didn't purposely say let's create a diverse group, but the group is really diverse. And I find that to be enormously advantageous because it's not superficial diversity. What color is your skin? What ethnic group are you a member of? It's diversity of different cultures and different belief systems and then trying to find ideas that reflect the combination of our cultural upbringings. I think too much about diversity in the United States has become extremely superficial. The most important aspect is that people think differently, not just, you could have two people who are white who think more differently, or two people who are black, who think more differently than one who is white and one who is black. What's important is the intercultural interchange rather than just checkoffs of what ethnic group you are. What race you are. What sex you are. What gender you are.
I think the biggest problem today isn't individualism but tribalism. At least in our country, it's become extremely tribal. And you've got these almost two warring factions who view each other with disdain. Sometimes almost it seems like hate, but, you know, contempt disguised that doesn't point to a positive future. You can't live that way. You just can't go on that way and keep a country intact. And we're not, the United States, isn't keeping the country intact.”
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
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
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.
“Now, we didn't purposely say let's create a diverse group, but the group is really diverse. And I find that to be enormously advantageous because it's not superficial diversity. What color is your skin? What ethnic group are you a member of? It's diversity of different cultures and different belief systems and then trying to find ideas that reflect the combination of our cultural upbringings. I think too much about diversity in the United States has become extremely superficial. The most important aspect is that people think differently, not just, you could have two people who are white who think more differently, or two people who are black, who think more differently than one who is white and one who is black. What's important is the intercultural interchange rather than just checkoffs of what ethnic group you are. What race you are. What sex you are. What gender you are.
I think the biggest problem today isn't individualism but tribalism. At least in our country, it's become extremely tribal. And you've got these almost two warring factions who view each other with disdain. Sometimes almost it seems like hate, but, you know, contempt disguised that doesn't point to a positive future. You can't live that way. You just can't go on that way and keep a country intact. And we're not, the United States, isn't keeping the country intact.”
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
"I've felt when two boxers get too close to hit each other / they hug each other, and not because they love each other / because when two people get too close / it becomes too hard to strike each other hard / not to smell the humanity on one another.
It's confusing to see our reflection in our enemy's eyes / helps us start to recognize where our actions might be misaligned / with the identities that we've defined.
That was one where, as I started writing it, it's fun to be in an analogy, working through a phrase, unraveling and discovering all the new details of truth inside of a metaphor. And that really felt like one of them. There's nothing else to do but hug, we're like right here in the fight. And I just felt poignant for where, certainly where America was at. And I think a lot of the world is really going through, partially because of social media, these very big polarizations of political perspective. And it being harder and harder to just see the humanity in each other."
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
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.
"I've felt when two boxers get too close to hit each other / they hug each other, and not because they love each other / because when two people get too close / it becomes too hard to strike each other hard / not to smell the humanity on one another.
It's confusing to see our reflection in our enemy's eyes / helps us start to recognize where our actions might be misaligned / with the identities that we've defined.
That was one where, as I started writing it, it's fun to be in an analogy, working through a phrase, unraveling and discovering all the new details of truth inside of a metaphor. And that really felt like one of them. There's nothing else to do but hug, we're like right here in the fight. And I just felt poignant for where, certainly where America was at. And I think a lot of the world is really going through, partially because of social media, these very big polarizations of political perspective. And it being harder and harder to just see the humanity in each other."
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
"I think what we really wanted to do with this show with mental health, with self-harm, anxiety, depression, eating disorders, we wanted to show really grounded representations of a deaf family, like 'we are just are there.' It's just they do American Sign Language. They just sign to each other. We're just there. So that was always our goal is to try to be as grounded and as authentic as possible. And I think where teens and even adults are, it's through the lens. We're talking a lot more about mental health out, on social media, out in the world, how important it is. We've all just lived through a global pandemic, and I think it's really important to show grounded representations of people on screen. Diversity. These are all things that people really...it makes them feel a part of, and it's something that's so important. I think we showed that in season one with Abby with her parents going through a divorce. Everything seems great on the outside, but then when you open the door and get on the inside - struggling. Everyone's fighting a battle that you really can't see. It's like the theme always - you open the door, you pull back the curtain, and there's always something behind there. Always. And that's just the grounded representation that we really wanted to show with Ginny & Georgia."
"We really want to highlight - one of the things we talked about in season one - these systems, these establishments in place that, keep people down, things like that. What Georgia's had to go through and overcome with abuse, sexual abuse, things like that. So there is a gray area for people growing up in certain ways and capacities. "
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
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 think what we really wanted to do with this show with mental health, with self-harm, anxiety, depression, eating disorders, we wanted to show really grounded representations of a deaf family, like 'we are just are there.' It's just they do American Sign Language. They just sign to each other. We're just there. So that was always our goal is to try to be as grounded and as authentic as possible. And I think where teens and even adults are, it's through the lens. We're talking a lot more about mental health out, on social media, out in the world, how important it is. We've all just lived through a global pandemic, and I think it's really important to show grounded representations of people on screen. Diversity. These are all things that people really...it makes them feel a part of, and it's something that's so important. I think we showed that in season one with Abby with her parents going through a divorce. Everything seems great on the outside, but then when you open the door and get on the inside - struggling. Everyone's fighting a battle that you really can't see. It's like the theme always - you open the door, you pull back the curtain, and there's always something behind there. Always. And that's just the grounded representation that we really wanted to show with Ginny & Georgia."
"We really want to highlight - one of the things we talked about in season one - these systems, these establishments in place that, keep people down, things like that. What Georgia's had to go through and overcome with abuse, sexual abuse, things like that. So there is a gray area for people growing up in certain ways and capacities. "
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
“I guess removing the social license for the continued destruction of our planet has to shift. And this is where these social movements become really inspiring to think about it because it always just takes a small group of really committed people to shift a social norm. And I quote some research in the book, which basically says you only need about 25% of a population to shift a norm, and then the rest of the population goes with those progressive elements. So right now we're in this moment where we're basically saying No More Fossil Fuels. We are cooking the planet. This is what the world's scientific community - that's what we are saying. We're cooking the planet. We must stop. And I guess the challenge here is to get enough people from all over the world, from all different parts of society, not just the scientific community, because we're only just a very, very small fraction people that make up our communities, but we need to mobilize people in a huge way to vote for our politicians at every level. From the local to the federal level who are going to reflect our values around shifting to a sustainable future, and choosing to leave a legacy, which is more one of care and repair rather than just complete destruction.
And we owe it to the young people. There's a chapter in my book where I talk about intergenerational damage. I don't think it's fair to leave this burden on the shoulders of young people. We have to take that responsibility here and now for all of us in positions where we do have political power or economic power through the way we consume. We have to do what we can. It's really up to decision-makers and the people in power because they're really doing that to put pressure on our decision-makers. And I guess that's really where the rest of the community can play a role in that. And that's where I think it's quite exciting because that's how all social movements happen. That's how you get political."
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
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
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.
“I guess removing the social license for the continued destruction of our planet has to shift. And this is where these social movements become really inspiring to think about it because it always just takes a small group of really committed people to shift a social norm. And I quote some research in the book, which basically says you only need about 25% of a population to shift a norm, and then the rest of the population goes with those progressive elements. So right now we're in this moment where we're basically saying No More Fossil Fuels. We are cooking the planet. This is what the world's scientific community - that's what we are saying. We're cooking the planet. We must stop. And I guess the challenge here is to get enough people from all over the world, from all different parts of society, not just the scientific community, because we're only just a very, very small fraction people that make up our communities, but we need to mobilize people in a huge way to vote for our politicians at every level. From the local to the federal level who are going to reflect our values around shifting to a sustainable future, and choosing to leave a legacy, which is more one of care and repair rather than just complete destruction.
And we owe it to the young people. There's a chapter in my book where I talk about intergenerational damage. I don't think it's fair to leave this burden on the shoulders of young people. We have to take that responsibility here and now for all of us in positions where we do have political power or economic power through the way we consume. We have to do what we can. It's really up to decision-makers and the people in power because they're really doing that to put pressure on our decision-makers. And I guess that's really where the rest of the community can play a role in that. And that's where I think it's quite exciting because that's how all social movements happen. That's how you get political."
http://joellegergis.com
https://climatehistory.com.au
www.blackincbooks.com.au/authors/jo-lle-gergis
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
"I really feel that if there is something about art that I seek - I think people use art for many things - it's really some kind of a belief that we can transcend. I mean, if I try to kind of see it as some kind of a substitute for a religion. You know, religion tells us that there's something out there. There's somebody watching us, somebody doing something. And I think that for me, many times good art says there is something beyond our understanding that exists, and there is a way to get a step closer to it. Maybe not to unveil it, but we can get there.
"There is something about both my parents, but I think especially my mother, it's as if the horrible circumstances that they lived through being Jews in the Holocaust, my mother losing her entire family - it was horrible and traumatic, but it was almost like a very extreme human experiment. And it created something. It's like many times when you put somebody in extreme situations, and most of the time he will crush or she will crush, but sometimes, a superhero will be born. And there is something about my parents, when I came to work on the exhibition about my mother Inside Out, I realized there is something about her that was so unique that it could not have been achieved in normal times. Because the thing that happened with my mother was that, when the war started, she was five years old. When the war ended, she was 11 years old. By the time she was about 10, all the people that she had known before the war had died. Her parents, her brother, her grandfather, her friends."
Author, Screenwriter, and Director Etgar Keret is a recipient of the French Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, the Charles Bronfman Prize, and the Caméra d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival for Jellyfish, which he directed with his wife Shira Geffen. Most recently, they created the TV mini series The Middleman (L’Agent Immobilier) starring Mathieu Amalric. His books include the short story collections Fly Already, Suddenly a Knock on the Door, and his memoir The Seven Good Years. Etgar’s work has been translated into forty-five languages and has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review,The New York Times, and This American Life.
A frequent collaborator with visual and performing artists, an exhibition inspired by his mother called Inside Out is currently showing at the Jewish Museum in Berlin until February 5th, 2023.
www.etgarkeret.com
The Middleman www.imdb.com/title/tt11523800
www.jmberlin.de/en/exhibition-inside-out-etgar-keret
https://etgarkeret.substack.com
Jellyfish http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0807721
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Author, Screenwriter, and Director Etgar Keret is a recipient of the French Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, the Charles Bronfman Prize, and the Caméra d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival for Jellyfish, which he directed with his wife Shira Geffen. Most recently, they created the TV mini series The Middleman (L’Agent Immobilier) starring Mathieu Amalric. His books include the short story collections Fly Already, Suddenly a Knock on the Door, and his memoir The Seven Good Years. Etgar’s work has been translated into forty-five languages and has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review,The New York Times, and This American Life.
A frequent collaborator with visual and performing artists, an exhibition inspired by his mother called Inside Out is currently showing at the Jewish Museum in Berlin until February 5th, 2023.
"I really feel that if there is something about art that I seek - I think people use art for many things - it's really some kind of a belief that we can transcend. I mean, if I try to kind of see it as some kind of a substitute for a religion. You know, religion tells us that there's something out there. There's somebody watching us, somebody doing something. And I think that for me, many times good art says there is something beyond our understanding that exists, and there is a way to get a step closer to it. Maybe not to unveil it, but we can get there.
"There is something about both my parents, but I think especially my mother, it's as if the horrible circumstances that they lived through being Jews in the Holocaust, my mother losing her entire family - it was horrible and traumatic, but it was almost like a very extreme human experiment. And it created something. It's like many times when you put somebody in extreme situations, and most of the time he will crush or she will crush, but sometimes, a superhero will be born. And there is something about my parents, when I came to work on the exhibition about my mother Inside Out, I realized there is something about her that was so unique that it could not have been achieved in normal times. Because the thing that happened with my mother was that, when the war started, she was five years old. When the war ended, she was 11 years old. By the time she was about 10, all the people that she had known before the war had died. Her parents, her brother, her grandfather, her friends."
www.etgarkeret.com
The Middleman www.imdb.com/title/tt11523800
www.jmberlin.de/en/exhibition-inside-out-etgar-keret
https://etgarkeret.substack.com
Jellyfish http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0807721
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Photo credit: Lielle Sand
"I think Riches has all the hallmarks of the things I've worked on before in terms of complex, slightly subversive women. At the heart of it, it is negotiating power dynamics. And at the heart of it, there are two very complex and yet vulnerable black women, but I've always loved family drama shows and particularly family businesses, whether it's fictional ones or in real life. I think whether you're talking about the Hiltons, the Kardashians, or the Royal Family, the dynamics of how, where power and money and blood merge is just such a potent and combustible mix that I've always been intrigued by them. I watched them growing up, whether it was Dallas or Dynasty or Six Feet Under, so it was a space which I was really interested in, and wanted to write a black family business show.
Myself and my producers, they knew my interest, and we talked around what would a black British business be, and they were interested in cosmetics, which I thought was a really good start because obviously, that's incredibly visual, but for me, hair was the piece that kind of tied it all together. A hair and cosmetics business because black hair is often so politicized, and it's such a way in which black people are sometimes policed in terms of having dreadlocks, having relaxed hair, whether they wear wigs. So it was a way in which we would have a glamorous visual for a show and an entertaining world that's aspirational, but still have a layer in which we get to tell substantive issues about black beauty, about black ownership, about how the spoils from a very lucrative industry often don't go back into the black community. So that's why I was interested in that. It could be glamorous and fun but also have slightly more in-depth issues to talk about as well."
Abby Ajayi is a British Nigerian writer and director who serves as a show creator, executive producer, and writer on the Amazon Series Riches, which is currently on Amazon Prime and premiers on ITVX in the UK on December 22. She has previously worked on the shows Four Weddings and a Funeral, How to Get Away with Murder, Inventing Anna, The First Lady, and Eastenders. As a result, she had the opportunity to learn under the likes of Shonda Rhimes, Pete Nowalk, and Tracey Wigfield. Abby’s next project is the Onyx Collective on Hulu’s limited series The Plot with Mahershala Ali. She is adapting the eight-episode series from Jean Hanff Korelitz’s novel of the same name.
www.imdb.com/name/nm2184926
www.amazon.com/Riches-Season-1/dp/B0B8MTCYVM
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
Instagram @creativeprocesspodcast
Abby Ajayi is a British Nigerian writer and director who serves as a show creator, executive producer, and writer on the Amazon Series Riches, which is currently on Amazon Prime and premiers on ITVX in the UK on December 22. She has previously worked on the shows Four Weddings and a Funeral, How to Get Away with Murder, Inventing Anna, The First Lady, and Eastenders. As a result, she had the opportunity to learn under the likes of Shonda Rhimes, Pete Nowalk, and Tracey Wigfield. Abby’s next project is the Onyx Collective on Hulu’s limited series The Plot with Mahershala Ali. She is adapting the eight-episode series from Jean Hanff Korelitz’s novel of the same name.
"I think Riches has all the hallmarks of the things I've worked on before in terms of complex, slightly subversive women. At the heart of it, it is negotiating power dynamics. And at the heart of it, there are two very complex and yet vulnerable black women, but I've always loved family drama shows and particularly family businesses, whether it's fictional ones or in real life. I think whether you're talking about the Hiltons, the Kardashians, or the Royal Family, the dynamics of how, where power and money and blood merge is just such a potent and combustible mix that I've always been intrigued by them. I watched them growing up, whether it was Dallas or Dynasty or Six Feet Under, so it was a space which I was really interested in, and wanted to write a black family business show.
Myself and my producers, they knew my interest, and we talked around what would a black British business be, and they were interested in cosmetics, which I thought was a really good start because obviously, that's incredibly visual, but for me, hair was the piece that kind of tied it all together. A hair and cosmetics business because black hair is often so politicized, and it's such a way in which black people are sometimes policed in terms of having dreadlocks, having relaxed hair, whether they wear wigs. So it was a way in which we would have a glamorous visual for a show and an entertaining world that's aspirational, but still have a layer in which we get to tell substantive issues about black beauty, about black ownership, about how the spoils from a very lucrative industry often don't go back into the black community. So that's why I was interested in that. It could be glamorous and fun but also have slightly more in-depth issues to talk about as well."
www.imdb.com/name/nm2184926
www.amazon.com/Riches-Season-1/dp/B0B8MTCYVM
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
Instagram @creativeprocesspodcast
"Climate activists also successfully reframed debates on loss and damage as a justice issue, and lobbied alongside vulnerable states for it to be a separate article of the Paris Agreement. NGO advocacy may lead to the closure of coal plants or mines. However, scholars continue to debate how, when, and why, transnational environmental advocacy has an impact. After all, there are many different ways to understand their influence, including mobilizing people; gaining media coverage; shaping societal attitudes; changing policy outcomes; or influencing the target."
–Nina Hall
Transnational Advocacy in the Digital Era: Think Global, Act Local
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
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
www.creativeprocess.info
Instagram @creativeprocesspodcast
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.
"Climate activists also successfully reframed debates on loss and damage as a justice issue, and lobbied alongside vulnerable states for it to be a separate article of the Paris Agreement. NGO advocacy may lead to the closure of coal plants or mines. However, scholars continue to debate how, when, and why, transnational environmental advocacy has an impact. After all, there are many different ways to understand their influence, including mobilizing people; gaining media coverage; shaping societal attitudes; changing policy outcomes; or influencing the target."
–Nina Hall
Transnational Advocacy in the Digital Era: Think Global, Act Local
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
Instagram @creativeprocesspodcast
"If you can live with fewer resources, then you feel more safe. So we are talking more about resource security rather than reducing your demand, which is the same thing, but it comes with a twist. If we talk about you've got to reduce your demand, it generates resentment in society because if I put an effort into showering less or with cold water or not going somewhere, and I see my neighbor still doing it, I feel resentful about that neighbor. So it generates resentment in society. It's because you think I gave myself up for humanity and you didn't. Then it's unfair, you know? But if you think from a perspective of resource security, and you learn how to live not by depending on that many resources, you feel safe for yourself.
And if your neighbor is not able to do it and still depends on all of the resources, you can feel empathy for the neighbor. Oh my god, my neighbor is really exposed. And so it's so by empathy, it's kind of a more stable mechanism. So I think we have to find ways to build empathy for saying, Wow, it's really about preparing ourselves.
Like with COVID, if you protect yourself, that's good for society as well. And so that's kind of a win-win that we want to develop. Big shifts are needed if you want to be able to operate in the future. So it is very serious. I think in the end, only things we want to do will happen. So I think the best thing to get on that track is to. In our own speech, ban the word should because as soon as we say should, we indicate it's not going to happen, and we lose agency."
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/
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
Instagram @creativeprocesspodcast
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.
"If you can live with fewer resources, then you feel more safe. So we are talking more about resource security rather than reducing your demand, which is the same thing, but it comes with a twist. If we talk about you've got to reduce your demand, it generates resentment in society because if I put an effort into showering less or with cold water or not going somewhere, and I see my neighbor still doing it, I feel resentful about that neighbor. So it generates resentment in society. It's because you think I gave myself up for humanity and you didn't. Then it's unfair, you know? But if you think from a perspective of resource security, and you learn how to live not by depending on that many resources, you feel safe for yourself.
And if your neighbor is not able to do it and still depends on all of the resources, you can feel empathy for the neighbor. Oh my god, my neighbor is really exposed. And so it's so by empathy, it's kind of a more stable mechanism. So I think we have to find ways to build empathy for saying, Wow, it's really about preparing ourselves.
Like with COVID, if you protect yourself, that's good for society as well. And so that's kind of a win-win that we want to develop. Big shifts are needed if you want to be able to operate in the future. So it is very serious. I think in the end, only things we want to do will happen. So I think the best thing to get on that track is to. In our own speech, ban the word should because as soon as we say should, we indicate it's not going to happen, and we lose agency."
www.footprintnetwork.org
www.footprintnetwork.org/tools
www.overshootday.org/power-of-possibility/
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
Instagram @creativeprocesspodcast
"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
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
www.creativeprocess.info
Instagram @creativeprocesspodcast
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
"This is the cause that's most near and dear to me, the criminal justice system. And I think there are so many current issues right now to be considering, but one of them is people normally, they're going to reenter society. And so when you have these questions of should people who are incarcerated receive education, particularly be able to get high school degrees and college degrees, and there's actually so much friction and so much disagreement with that. The question is, in terms of the endgame, do you want people to come out who are educated and reenter society and can contribute something? Or do you want people who actually are the same person as when they came in and perhaps actually have a sense of vengeance because they feel that they were unduly and unfairly punished or punished for too long? Or don't know how to reengage with the non-criminal members of society.
And I would say, geez, how could you not root for increasing the EQ, the emotional intelligence, increasing the IQ, the analytical intelligence problem-solving ability, of people? So when they come out, and they're faced with the ambiguity of: I have no money, should I go back to the criminal life or go back to the non-criminal life? They would be able to make a good decision. What's the best way of increasing people's problem solving abilities? Reading books, talking about them, and having conversations is the best strategy for adults to increase their intelligence quotient."
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/
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
Instagram @creativeprocesspodcast
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.
"This is the cause that's most near and dear to me, the criminal justice system. And I think there are so many current issues right now to be considering, but one of them is people normally, they're going to reenter society. And so when you have these questions of should people who are incarcerated receive education, particularly be able to get high school degrees and college degrees, and there's actually so much friction and so much disagreement with that. The question is, in terms of the endgame, do you want people to come out who are educated and reenter society and can contribute something? Or do you want people who actually are the same person as when they came in and perhaps actually have a sense of vengeance because they feel that they were unduly and unfairly punished or punished for too long? Or don't know how to reengage with the non-criminal members of society.
And I would say, geez, how could you not root for increasing the EQ, the emotional intelligence, increasing the IQ, the analytical intelligence problem-solving ability, of people? So when they come out, and they're faced with the ambiguity of: I have no money, should I go back to the criminal life or go back to the non-criminal life? They would be able to make a good decision. What's the best way of increasing people's problem solving abilities? Reading books, talking about them, and having conversations is the best strategy for adults to increase their intelligence quotient."
https://toddkashdan.com
www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/690674/the-art-of-insubordination-by-todd-b-kashdan-phd/
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
Instagram @creativeprocesspodcast
"Well, I got the idea in 2013 when I was a wee young 23-year-old activist, and I had been studying history at Los Angeles City College, and I took this class on genocide that had a huge impact on me, and it also coincided, just the timing, with the Occupy Wall Street movement. So then two years later in 2013, I was reading The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, and the book is about how mass incarceration is like a modern-day racial caste system. And I just heavily related to the book. I grew up around some impacted people. I had a mentor who was formerly incarcerated named Alexander, who was actually Muhammad Ali's bodyguard.
And I just got the idea to do an album, because I was listening to a lot of concept albums like Pink Floyd, The Wall. And it started from there, just a little seed and a spark of just this idea for this one album. And then over time, it just evolved into an EP, and then a record label and a nonprofit. And here we are."
Fury Young and BL Shirelle are the powerhouse team behind Die Jim Crow Records, the first non-profit record label in United States history for currently and formerly incarcerated musicians. DJC Records’ mission is to dismantle stereotypes around race and prison in America by amplifying the voices of our artists. As a pair, Fury Young and BL Shirelle form a perhaps unlikely, but unstoppable duo. Young is a Jewish New Yorker who has not experienced incarceration. Shirelle is a queer, Black woman from Philadelphia who has been heavily impacted by police violence and incarceration. The two formed an inseparable bond. As friends, musical collaborators and now Co-Executive Directors of Die Jim Crow Records, their leadership and commitment to values of representation, fairness, passion for the cause, and a love for art, are at the core of DJC.
www.diejimcrow.com
http://www.blshirelle.com
http://www.furyyoung.com
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
Fury Young and BL Shirelle are the powerhouse team behind Die Jim Crow Records, the first non-profit record label in United States history for currently and formerly incarcerated musicians. DJC Records’ mission is to dismantle stereotypes around race and prison in America by amplifying the voices of our artists.
As a pair, Fury Young and BL Shirelle form a perhaps unlikely, but unstoppable duo. Young is a Jewish New Yorker who has not experienced incarceration. Shirelle is a queer, Black woman from Philadelphia who has been heavily impacted by police violence and incarceration. The two formed an inseparable bond. As friends, musical collaborators and now Co-Executive Directors of Die Jim Crow Records, their leadership and commitment to values of representation, fairness, passion for the cause, and a love for art, are at the core of DJC.
"Well, I got the idea in 2013 when I was a wee young 23-year-old activist, and I had been studying history at Los Angeles City College, and I took this class on genocide that had a huge impact on me, and it also coincided, just the timing, with the Occupy Wall Street movement. So then two years later in 2013, I was reading The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, and the book is about how mass incarceration is like a modern-day racial caste system. And I just heavily related to the book. I grew up around some impacted people. I had a mentor who was formerly incarcerated named Alexander, who was actually Muhammad Ali's bodyguard.
And I just got the idea to do an album, because I was listening to a lot of concept albums like Pink Floyd, The Wall. And it started from there, just a little seed and a spark of just this idea for this one album. And then over time, it just evolved into an EP, and then a record label and a nonprofit. And here we are."
www.diejimcrow.com
http://www.blshirelle.com
http://www.furyyoung.com
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
"So the first thing I learned is that you need to live what you believe. Whether it's environmental justice, social justice, environmental protection, do whatever you can, live your best life to try to advance that good objective goal and belief. We can all do better in our own personal lives. And that's really important. I think the other thing that I learned, my parents did it in a different way than I do it, but they did it every day - when they saw, just like when I see injustice, no matter how large or how small, they spoke up, and they did something about it. When, you know, it came to my opa, he stood up against the Nazis and did not allow them to take his sons to have to work in service to the Nazi movement.
And so did my Tante Truus. My great aunt is recognized with saving on the order of 10,000 children, Jewish children, from the Nazis. With my mom, she had so many beliefs in the importance of living a good life. And so she always carried that forward. Even if it was seeing somebody behaving inappropriately in the supermarket, butting in line, or being unkind to the check register person unnecessarily, my mom was always the first to speak up and say, "Hey, don't do that!" And so I just learned from them by watching them, by being supported by them, that again, you live what you believe and when you see injustice in the world, you do what you can to address it, whether it's large or whether it's small."
Maya K. van Rossum is the founder of Green Amendments For The Generations, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to inspiring passage of Green Amendments in every state constitution across our nation, and also at the federal level when the time is right. She is an environmental attorney, community organizer, and the Delaware Riverkeeper, leading the regional advocacy organization, the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, for over 30 years. The Delaware Riverkeeper Network works throughout the four states of the Delaware River watershed (NY, NJ, PA & DE) and at the national level using advocacy, science and litigation to protect the Delaware River and its tributaries. She is the Author of The Green Amendment: The People's Fight for a Clean, Safe, and Healthy Environment.
www.ForTheGenerations.org
www.delawareriverkeeper.org
https://forthegenerations.org/the-green-amendment/
https://twitter.com/MayaKvanRossum
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
Maya K. van Rossum is the founder of Green Amendments For The Generations, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to inspiring passage of Green Amendments in every state constitution across our nation, and also at the federal level when the time is right. She is an environmental attorney, community organizer, and the Delaware Riverkeeper, leading the regional advocacy organization, the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, for over 30 years. The Delaware Riverkeeper Network works throughout the four states of the Delaware River watershed (NY, NJ, PA & DE) and at the national level using advocacy, science and litigation to protect the Delaware River and its tributaries. She is the Author of The Green Amendment: The People's Fight for a Clean, Safe, and Healthy Environment.
"So the first thing I learned is that you need to live what you believe. Whether it's environmental justice, social justice, environmental protection, do whatever you can, live your best life to try to advance that good objective goal and belief. We can all do better in our own personal lives. And that's really important. I think the other thing that I learned, my parents did it in a different way than I do it, but they did it every day - when they saw, just like when I see injustice, no matter how large or how small, they spoke up, and they did something about it. When, you know, it came to my opa, he stood up against the Nazis and did not allow them to take his sons to have to work in service to the Nazi movement.
And so did my Tante Truus. My great aunt is recognized with saving on the order of 10,000 children, Jewish children, from the Nazis. With my mom, she had so many beliefs in the importance of living a good life. And so she always carried that forward. Even if it was seeing somebody behaving inappropriately in the supermarket, butting in line, or being unkind to the check register person unnecessarily, my mom was always the first to speak up and say, "Hey, don't do that!" And so I just learned from them by watching them, by being supported by them, that again, you live what you believe and when you see injustice in the world, you do what you can to address it, whether it's large or whether it's small."
www.ForTheGenerations.org
www.delawareriverkeeper.org
https://forthegenerations.org/the-green-amendment/
https://twitter.com/MayaKvanRossum
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
"In our study, we're looking at climate anxietyin 10,000 young people around the world, 16 to 25-year-olds in 10 countries across low, middle, high income settings, and 45% of the global respondents of these young people said that their climate anxiety is impairing their daily functioning. So concentrating, eating, going to school, going to work, playing, having fun, that kind of thing. They had very negative thoughts. 75% of the people around the world said that the future is frightening. 56% said that they feel humanity is doomed. And 39% said that they're hesitant to have their own kids. So, because of all that, we know - if we're talking in Nigeria, India, Philippines, Canada, UK, US, Australia, Finland, and some other countries - we're looking across really diverse scenarios in terms of the national income and what that means for their ability to adapt and respond to climate threats and also their exposure already to climate hazards and disasters that are going on.
So for that global aggregate to be that high, it's pretty striking. And then when you really dig into the most affected and underserved countries on this issue, so those with lower level economies and more climate disasters, you see the distress shooting through the roof – more around 74% of the young people saying that it's impairing functioning, for instance. So it's a severe health equity issue thinking about what it means to live with the psychological impacts of the climate crisis. And then also pointing out who's deserving who needs the most attention and support at this time, rather than just kind of foisting all the attention and resources on, in this case, it would be young people in industrialized nations who are suffering as well but not at the rates of lower income nations with more climate disasters."
Britt Wray is the author of Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Crisis. She's a writer and broadcaster researching the emotional and psychological impacts of the climate crisis. Born and raised in Toronto, Canada, she is a post-doctoral fellow at Stanford University and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, where she investigates the mental health consequences of ecological disruption. She holds a PhD in Science Communication from the University of Copenhagen. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post Guardian, and Globe and Mail, among other publications. She has hosted several podcasts, radio, and TV programs with the BBC and CBC, is a TED Resident, and writes Gan Dread, a newsletter about staying sane in the climate crisis. She is also the author of Rise of the Necrofauna: The Science, Ethics, and Risks of De-Extinction.
www.brittwray.com
www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/647141/generation-dread-by-britt-wray
https://greystonebooks.com/products/rise-of-the-necrofauna
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
www.creativeprocess.info
Britt Wray is the author of Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Crisis. She's a writer and broadcaster researching the emotional and psychological impacts of the climate crisis. Born and raised in Toronto, Canada, she is a post-doctoral fellow at Stanford University and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, where she investigates the mental health consequences of ecological disruption. She holds a PhD in Science Communication from the University of Copenhagen. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post Guardian, and Globe and Mail, among other publications. She has hosted several podcasts, radio, and TV programs with the BBC and CBC, is a TED Resident, and writes Gan Dread, a newsletter about staying sane in the climate crisis. She is also the author of Rise of the Necrofauna: The Science, Ethics, and Risks of De-Extinction.
"In our study, we're looking at climate anxietyin 10,000 young people around the world, 16 to 25-year-olds in 10 countries across low, middle, high income settings, and 45% of the global respondents of these young people said that their climate anxiety is impairing their daily functioning. So concentrating, eating, going to school, going to work, playing, having fun, that kind of thing. They had very negative thoughts. 75% of the people around the world said that the future is frightening. 56% said that they feel humanity is doomed. And 39% said that they're hesitant to have their own kids. So, because of all that, we know - if we're talking in Nigeria, India, Philippines, Canada, UK, US, Australia, Finland, and some other countries - we're looking across really diverse scenarios in terms of the national income and what that means for their ability to adapt and respond to climate threats and also their exposure already to climate hazards and disasters that are going on.
So for that global aggregate to be that high, it's pretty striking. And then when you really dig into the most affected and underserved countries on this issue, so those with lower level economies and more climate disasters, you see the distress shooting through the roof – more around 74% of the young people saying that it's impairing functioning, for instance. So it's a severe health equity issue thinking about what it means to live with the psychological impacts of the climate crisis. And then also pointing out who's deserving who needs the most attention and support at this time, rather than just kind of foisting all the attention and resources on, in this case, it would be young people in industrialized nations who are suffering as well but not at the rates of lower income nations with more climate disasters."
www.brittwray.com
www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/647141/generation-dread-by-britt-wray
https://greystonebooks.com/products/rise-of-the-necrofauna
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
www.creativeprocess.info
"I think water is taking a backseat and personally, I feel like water is the messenger that delivers the bad news of climate change to your front door. So in the work that I do, it's heavily intertwined, but it's taking a backseat. There are parts about water that are maybe separate from climate change, and that could be the quality discussions, the infrastructure discussions, although they are somewhat loosely related to climate change and they are impacted by climate change. That's sometimes part of the reason why it gets split off because it's thought of as maybe an infrastructure problem, but you know, the changing extremes, the aridification of the West, the increasing frequency, the increasing droughts, these broad global patterns that I've been talking about, that I've been looking at with my research – that's all climate change. Just 100% climate change, a hundred percent human-driven. And so it does need to be elevated in these climate change discussions.”
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
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
www.creativeprocess.info
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?
"Well, I think these days we have good cause to be a little bit wary of our tap water, given what's happening in some cities in the United States. I'm thinking about Flint and thinking about Jackson, so not everyone's water is great. But you know what, in many cities - in fact in most cities - it actually is great. There will always be the issue of industry sort of trying to game the system vs. what is the EPA monitoring for vs. what is industry releasing into the environment. So that puts the EPA, it puts the environmental community always sort of on watch to be looking for these emerging contaminants. And it's a bit of a game in one which I think again, some national policy could be really helpful. Most water districts in the United States publish their water quality. It's all available online. I always tell people if you have any concerns at all, put it through an activated charcoal filter."
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
"So oftentimes, when we talk about genocide, especially in the United States, it's something that happened in the past, but for many communities, especially outside of the United States, genocide is something that can be traced to our parents', to our grandparents' generations, so it's not necessarily that long ago. So for my father, he was a child soldier during the Central American Civil War that has been coined a genocide by the United Nations because it targeted Indigenous peoples, especially in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. So during that time, he was 11 years old when he was forced to either join the military or join the opposition, which was community-led to reclaim our land. It was like a Land Back movement because a lot of our land was being sold to international corporations that introduced these monocultural, agricultural entities, and plantations. So we have these introductions of bananas and coffees into our lands."
Dr. Jessica Hernandez (Binnizá & Maya Ch’orti’) is a transnational Indigenous scholar, scientist, and community advocate based in the Pacific Northwest. She has an interdisciplinary academic background ranging from marine sciences to environmental physics. She advocates for climate, energy, and environmental justice through her scientific and community work. Her book Fresh Banana Leaves: Healing Indigenous Landscapes through Indigenous Science breaks down why western conservationism isn’t working–and offers Indigenous models informed by case studies, personal stories, and family histories that center the voices of Latin American women and land protectors. In 2022, she was named by Forbes as one of the 100 most powerful women of Central America. She holds appointments at Sustainable Seattle, City of Seattle's Urban Forestry Commission, and the International Mayan League. Fresh Banana Leaves received the Bruce Piasecki and Andrea Masters Award on Business and Society Writing (2022).
www.jessicabhernandez.com
www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/675699/fresh-banana-leaves-by-jessica-hernandez/
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
www.creativeprocess.info
Dr. Jessica Hernandez (Binnizá & Maya Ch’orti’) is a transnational Indigenous scholar, scientist, and community advocate based in the Pacific Northwest. She has an interdisciplinary academic background ranging from marine sciences to environmental physics. She advocates for climate, energy, and environmental justice through her scientific and community work. Her book Fresh Banana Leaves: Healing Indigenous Landscapes through Indigenous Science breaks down why western conservationism isn’t working–and offers Indigenous models informed by case studies, personal stories, and family histories that center the voices of Latin American women and land protectors. In 2022, she was named by Forbes as one of the 100 most powerful women of Central America. She holds appointments at Sustainable Seattle, City of Seattle's Urban Forestry Commission, and the International Mayan League. Fresh Banana Leaves received the Bruce Piasecki and Andrea Masters Award on Business and Society Writing (2022).
"So oftentimes, when we talk about genocide, especially in the United States, it's something that happened in the past, but for many communities, especially outside of the United States, genocide is something that can be traced to our parents', to our grandparents' generations, so it's not necessarily that long ago. So for my father, he was a child soldier during the Central American Civil War that has been coined a genocide by the United Nations because it targeted Indigenous peoples, especially in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. So during that time, he was 11 years old when he was forced to either join the military or join the opposition, which was community-led to reclaim our land. It was like a Land Back movement because a lot of our land was being sold to international corporations that introduced these monocultural, agricultural entities, and plantations. So we have these introductions of bananas and coffees into our lands."
www.jessicabhernandez.com
www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/675699/fresh-banana-leaves-by-jessica-hernandez/
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
www.creativeprocess.info
"So I'm Iraqi-Iranian-Jewish. So I remember growing up where the movie that felt most reflective of our family was My Big Fat Greek Wedding, which, it's Greek. They're not the same, but it was so close, talking about the lamb, and we have Nick, Nick, Nick, Nikki, and in my family, Shuly, Shuly, Shuly, Sol, and there was just... It felt like, Oh my God, this feels like my family seeing that. And the second thing like that was seeing Ramy Youssef, who's Egyptian, New York. I'm Iraqi, L.A. Jewish.
He's Muslim. It's not a like for like, but there was so much. I was like, that feels like us. So I feel my guidance would be, go for it! Because I feel like I've had these moments within the business, but seeing Ramy, it felt like content is renewed. All of a sudden, there's a whole new world that's open simply because he was willing to tell his story. And I would love to see a million more opportunities of that. And I would love to be involved in fostering opportunities like that. And I found it to be so inspiring to see content like that. So that, and maybe it's simplistic just to say, Yes, go all in. But my pride would be, and my appreciation would be, to see more opportunities for creators that move me in the same way that those two experiences felt reflective of who I am.”
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
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.
"So I'm Iraqi-Iranian-Jewish. So I remember growing up where the movie that felt most reflective of our family was My Big Fat Greek Wedding, which, it's Greek. They're not the same, but it was so close, talking about the lamb, and we have Nick, Nick, Nick, Nikki, and in my family, Shuly, Shuly, Shuly, Sol, and there was just... It felt like, Oh my God, this feels like my family seeing that. And the second thing like that was seeing Ramy Youssef, who's Egyptian, New York. I'm Iraqi, L.A. Jewish.
He's Muslim. It's not a like for like, but there was so much. I was like, that feels like us. So I feel my guidance would be, go for it! Because I feel like I've had these moments within the business, but seeing Ramy, it felt like content is renewed. All of a sudden, there's a whole new world that's open simply because he was willing to tell his story. And I would love to see a million more opportunities of that. And I would love to be involved in fostering opportunities like that. And I found it to be so inspiring to see content like that. So that, and maybe it's simplistic just to say, Yes, go all in. But my pride would be, and my appreciation would be, to see more opportunities for creators that move me in the same way that those two experiences felt reflective of who I am.”
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
"And it was a time of great political repression. People on the left were disappearing. There was group of artists and musicians and writers who were creating things against the military government in Brazil. When I arrived in Rio in 1969, Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, they had been imprisoned. They were in exile. They were let out of prison on condition they would leave the country. They were living in England. It was dangerous to be an artist saying anything against the government. And it was the time of the Vietnam War, towards the end of the Civil Rights Movement. I mean, it's never really ended, but...there were the assassinations of all the Black Panthers and Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, and then RFK in '68, which very much pushed me into - I mean, I wanted to travel, I wanted to find out what the world was like, but - it was kind of a last straw when RFK was assassinated because then it was like, there is no law. The United States has no law. If there's political opposition, you'll just die. And then I was in Brazil, and it was very palpable. There was no disguise. There was no veneer.”
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
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.
"And it was a time of great political repression. People on the left were disappearing. There was group of artists and musicians and writers who were creating things against the military government in Brazil. When I arrived in Rio in 1969, Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, they had been imprisoned. They were in exile. They were let out of prison on condition they would leave the country. They were living in England. It was dangerous to be an artist saying anything against the government. And it was the time of the Vietnam War, towards the end of the Civil Rights Movement. I mean, it's never really ended, but...there were the assassinations of all the Black Panthers and Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, and then RFK in '68, which very much pushed me into - I mean, I wanted to travel, I wanted to find out what the world was like, but - it was kind of a last straw when RFK was assassinated because then it was like, there is no law. The United States has no law. If there's political opposition, you'll just die. And then I was in Brazil, and it was very palpable. There was no disguise. There was no veneer.”
www.leejaffe.com
www.rizzoliusa.com/book/9780847871841/
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
Photo: Bob Marley in Trenchtown, downtown Kingston, Jamaica, after football at the Boys’ Town field, 1974. At the far right is Alvin “Seeco” Patterson, the Wailers’ percussionist. Image courtesy of Lee Jaffe
"One of the things that I've tried to do in my work is demonstrate the way that laws that don't seem to be directly related to social equality, to equality of opportunity, to racial justice in fact are and that it's only through also reforming these kind of systemic and institutionalized forms of discrimination that we could truly achieve an egalitarian society. So what I've really wanted to argue against is the idea that civil rights are kind of a magic bullet and that those kinds of laws alone would be sufficient to achieve.
There are a lot of other reforms that would be useful in improving American policing. And certainly, there are biased attitudes on the part of some police officers, but again, I think the structural problems are even greater with respect to this. There's the problem of racial segregation in high-crime neighborhoods, which means that when police are using aggressive tactics in the neighborhoods with the highest levels of crime, the targets are disproportionately people of color. There's also the fact that in the United States, it's not true in most other countries, policing is decentralized. It's a local matter. And so there's a wide range of training and a wide range of different types of protocols."
Richard Thompson Ford is the George E. Osborne Professor of Law at Stanford Law School. His scholarship combines social criticism and legal analysis, and he writes for both popular readers and for academic and legal specialists. He's written for the Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Christian Science Monitor, and other publications. He’s a regular contributor for Slate and has appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show, The Colbert Report, and other programs.
His most recent book is Dress Codes: How the Laws of Fashion Made History. His books The Race Card: How Bluffing About Bias Makes Race Relations Worse and Rights Gone Wrong: How Law Corrupts the Struggle for Equality have been selected by the New York Times as Notable Books of the Year. In 2012, On Being a Black Lawyer called him one of the most influential black lawyers in the nation.
http://richardtford.law.stanford.edu
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
Richard Thompson Ford is the George E. Osborne Professor of Law at Stanford Law School. His scholarship combines social criticism and legal analysis, and he writes for both popular readers and for academic and legal specialists. He's written for the Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Christian Science Monitor, and other publications. He’s a regular contributor for Slate and has appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show, The Colbert Report, and other programs.
His most recent book is Dress Codes: How the Laws of Fashion Made History. His books The Race Card: How Bluffing About Bias Makes Race Relations Worse and Rights Gone Wrong: How Law Corrupts the Struggle for Equality have been selected by the New York Times as Notable Books of the Year. In 2012, On Being a Black Lawyer called him one of the most influential black lawyers in the nation.
"One of the things that I've tried to do in my work is demonstrate the way that laws that don't seem to be directly related to social equality, to equality of opportunity, to racial justice in fact are and that it's only through also reforming these kind of systemic and institutionalized forms of discrimination that we could truly achieve an egalitarian society. So what I've really wanted to argue against is the idea that civil rights are kind of a magic bullet and that those kinds of laws alone would be sufficient to achieve.
There are a lot of other reforms that would be useful in improving American policing. And certainly, there are biased attitudes on the part of some police officers, but again, I think the structural problems are even greater with respect to this. There's the problem of racial segregation in high-crime neighborhoods, which means that when police are using aggressive tactics in the neighborhoods with the highest levels of crime, the targets are disproportionately people of color. There's also the fact that in the United States, it's not true in most other countries, policing is decentralized. It's a local matter. And so there's a wide range of training and a wide range of different types of protocols."
http://richardtford.law.stanford.edu
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
"I think that what is really important on this journey is to understand when we talk about gender and intersectional equity - and yes, gender is that element that is the most universal across different geographies. So for organizations that are present across many different countries and many different continents, there will be one backbone which will be gender, the binary definition, to which they will be adding other aspects of the broader diversity spectrum based on the specificities of the countries of operations. For example, L'Oréal in the U.S., they look at the intersection between gender, race, and ethnicity. We have organizations in Europe that are very often looking at the intersection between age, gender, and sexual orientation. In Southeast Asia, sexual orientation and working with a disability are definitely emerging topics.
So allowing ourselves this flexibility in saying we have a solid backbone - which is the one that can be legally measured and tracked across all geographies - which is the gender binary. And on this, we will be building this intersectional view with other beautiful characteristics that compose us as individuals. Having this flexibility allowed organizations such as L'Oréal, but then also some other institutions that we are working with within the UN system or international finance institutions, such as the IMF or the World Bank, to add different intersectional lenses to their gender binary approach."
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
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.
"I think that what is really important on this journey is to understand when we talk about gender and intersectional equity - and yes, gender is that element that is the most universal across different geographies. So for organizations that are present across many different countries and many different continents, there will be one backbone which will be gender, the binary definition, to which they will be adding other aspects of the broader diversity spectrum based on the specificities of the countries of operations. For example, L'Oréal in the U.S., they look at the intersection between gender, race, and ethnicity. We have organizations in Europe that are very often looking at the intersection between age, gender, and sexual orientation. In Southeast Asia, sexual orientation and working with a disability are definitely emerging topics.
So allowing ourselves this flexibility in saying we have a solid backbone - which is the one that can be legally measured and tracked across all geographies - which is the gender binary. And on this, we will be building this intersectional view with other beautiful characteristics that compose us as individuals. Having this flexibility allowed organizations such as L'Oréal, but then also some other institutions that we are working with within the UN system or international finance institutions, such as the IMF or the World Bank, to add different intersectional lenses to their gender binary approach."
https://edge-cert.org
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
"So there are lots of different indigenous peoples who have their own world views and experiences. One of the most impressive people I know is Aroha Mead. She's a Maori, and she's a lawyer, and she has been active in this conservation organization IUCN for decades. New Zealand as a nation and the Maori as a people have engaged in very careful and systematic discussions amongst themselves about what they think about synthetic biology, and its potential use on the islands of New Zealand and in some of the areas that are sacred to them. People can read. They have written and published on some of this work. And again, the first thing to say is there is no such thing as a Maori position. There are some people who felt very strongly that this was a terrible idea, and there were other people who felt it was an essential thing to do because New Zealand has a tremendous problem with invasive species."
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
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.
"So there are lots of different indigenous peoples who have their own world views and experiences. One of the most impressive people I know is Aroha Mead. She's a Maori, and she's a lawyer, and she has been active in this conservation organization IUCN for decades. New Zealand as a nation and the Maori as a people have engaged in very careful and systematic discussions amongst themselves about what they think about synthetic biology, and its potential use on the islands of New Zealand and in some of the areas that are sacred to them. People can read. They have written and published on some of this work. And again, the first thing to say is there is no such thing as a Maori position. There are some people who felt very strongly that this was a terrible idea, and there were other people who felt it was an essential thing to do because New Zealand has a tremendous problem with invasive species."
https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300230970/strange-natures/
https://archipelagoconsulting.com
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
www.creativeprocess.info
"Sonnet’s Shakespeare itself came out of thinking about the form of erasure, what working in that form could do and mean. And at the time there were conversations about appropriative poets where there were specific instances of pretty shady power dynamics around certain poets taking certain texts and presenting them as their own and saying, 'This is just an appropriative poetics move.’ And I was looking at critical writing about it, and I couldn't find anything that talked about the role of the poet who is doing that as censorial or as somehow violencing the original text. I was thinking about my resonance with the word erasure and thinking about censoring and deleting what somebody else has already said resonates with me as an analogy for being black, being mixed race, being racialized, and non-European in spaces that are predominantly Anglo-Canadian and in rooms where, classrooms where, playgrounds where, churches where, certain signifiers of difference would make fitting in harder.
One tries very hard. At least I did as a child to just try to fit in and make my visible difference as minimal, as invisible as possible. So it's a way of thinking about erasing the self. And so I took that theme and thought, How do I show through a poetic erasure this dynamic of self-erasure and feeling erased?”
Sonnet L'Abbé is a Canadian poet, songwriter, editor and professor. They are the author of A Strange Relief, Killarnoe, and Sonnet's Shakespeare. Sonnet's Shakespeare was a Quill and Quire Book of the Year. In 2014 they edited the Best Canadian Poetry in English anthology. Their chapbook, Anima Canadensis, won the 2017 bpNichol Chapbook Award. They teach Creative Writing and English at Vancouver Island University, and are a poetry editor at Brick Books.
https://www.instagram.com/sonnetlabbe/
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet-books/2017/12/tree-i-invented-a-new-form-of-poem
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
Sonnet L'Abbé is a Canadian poet, songwriter, editor and professor. They are the author of A Strange Relief, Killarnoe, and Sonnet's Shakespeare. Sonnet's Shakespeare was a Quill and Quire Book of the Year. In 2014 they edited the Best Canadian Poetry in English anthology. Their chapbook, Anima Canadensis, won the 2017 bpNichol Chapbook Award. They teach Creative Writing and English at Vancouver Island University, and are a poetry editor at Brick Books.
"Sonnet’s Shakespeare itself came out of thinking about the form of erasure, what working in that form could do and mean. And at the time there were conversations about appropriative poets where there were specific instances of pretty shady power dynamics around certain poets taking certain texts and presenting them as their own and saying, 'This is just an appropriative poetics move.’ And I was looking at critical writing about it, and I couldn't find anything that talked about the role of the poet who is doing that as censorial or as somehow violencing the original text. I was thinking about my resonance with the word erasure and thinking about censoring and deleting what somebody else has already said resonates with me as an analogy for being black, being mixed race, being racialized, and non-European in spaces that are predominantly Anglo-Canadian and in rooms where, classrooms where, playgrounds where, churches where, certain signifiers of difference would make fitting in harder.
One tries very hard. At least I did as a child to just try to fit in and make my visible difference as minimal, as invisible as possible. So it's a way of thinking about erasing the self. And so I took that theme and thought, How do I show through a poetic erasure this dynamic of self-erasure and feeling erased?”
https://www.instagram.com/sonnetlabbe/
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet-books/2017/12/tree-i-invented-a-new-form-of-poem
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
"Certain areas of the city of Newark have a very high proportion of children with elevated levels of lead in the blood. There could be various reasons for that. It could be the paint, it could be the soil and areas where they play and because they ingest the soil, they could be exposed, or it could be the water. Water has been in the news, but it's probably less likely to be the cause than the paint and maybe the paint contaminating the soil. What we want to do is offer a service testing, so we'll do a testing using our kits, but just as importantly, we want to be in a position to certify if a home is safe. So we will say, you can use these kits as screening tools, and then we will help you access the services that are available for free from the city of Newark.
So a child plays on the ground, puts things in the mouth... Children who are exposed to these higher levels of lead have been shown to have reduced intellectual function, their lifelong earnings are affected, young boys often are more likely to have behavioral issues at school and even end up as juvenile delinquents if they had been exposed to lead as a child.”
Geochemist Lex van Geen is a research professor at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and is member of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. His research focuses on ways to reduce the impact of the environment on human health. For two decades, he coordinated earth-science on the origin and health effects of elevated levels of arsenic in groundwater. His other projects focus on fluoride in groundwater in India, bauxite dust in Guinea, or soil contaminated with lead from mine-tailings in Peru, and fallout of lead over Paris following the fire in Notre Dame. Dr. Van Geen is a firm believer in the more widespread use of field kits by non-specialists to reduce exposure to environmental toxicants.
www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~avangeen
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
www.creativeprocess.info
Geochemist Lex van Geen is a research professor at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and is member of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. His research focuses on ways to reduce the impact of the environment on human health. For two decades, he coordinated earth-science on the origin and health effects of elevated levels of arsenic in groundwater. His other projects focus on fluoride in groundwater in India, bauxite dust in Guinea, or soil contaminated with lead from mine-tailings in Peru, and fallout of lead over Paris following the fire in Notre Dame. Dr. Van Geen is a firm believer in the more widespread use of field kits by non-specialists to reduce exposure to environmental toxicants.
"Certain areas of the city of Newark have a very high proportion of children with elevated levels of lead in the blood. There could be various reasons for that. It could be the paint, it could be the soil and areas where they play and because they ingest the soil, they could be exposed, or it could be the water. Water has been in the news, but it's probably less likely to be the cause than the paint and maybe the paint contaminating the soil. What we want to do is offer a service testing, so we'll do a testing using our kits, but just as importantly, we want to be in a position to certify if a home is safe. So we will say, you can use these kits as screening tools, and then we will help you access the services that are available for free from the city of Newark.
So a child plays on the ground, puts things in the mouth... Children who are exposed to these higher levels of lead have been shown to have reduced intellectual function, their lifelong earnings are affected, young boys often are more likely to have behavioral issues at school and even end up as juvenile delinquents if they had been exposed to lead as a child.”
www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~avangeen
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
www.creativeprocess.info
"And that is, I think, a lot of the origin of the way we see the Caribbean and the way we see who we are - and music as well of that time - Calypso. So the Caribbean identity itself, I think, by the time we enter the UK in 1948 under Windrush, by the time that happens, there's a sense of a sense of what Caribbeaness means or what the Caribbean identity is. And there's a point at which it changes. So we move from being - I mean we were Commonwealth, a colonized nation, and we move from being colonized subjects or subjects of the British Empire, and we become immigrants. And there's a change there that happens in that time in the late forties where we become - because we're in the country itself - we become immigrants. And then the struggle for identity begins.”
Anthony Joseph is a poet, novelist, academic and musician who moved from Trinidad to the UK in 1989. A lecturer in creative writing at Birkbeck College, he is particularly interested in the point at which poetry becomes music.
As well as four poetry collections, a slew of albums, and three novels – most recently Kitch – Joseph has published critical work exploring the aesthetics of Caribbean Poetry among other subjects. He performs internationally as the lead vocalist for his band The Spasm Band. Sonnets for Albert is his first poetry collection since Rubber Orchestras. His most recent album is The Rich Are Only Defeated When Running for Their Lives.
www.anthonyjoseph.co.uk
https://open.spotify.com/artist/622cbugSJevUkEanSBCab9
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
Anthony Joseph is a poet, novelist, academic and musician who moved from Trinidad to the UK in 1989. A lecturer in creative writing at Birkbeck College, he is particularly interested in the point at which poetry becomes music.
As well as four poetry collections, a slew of albums, and three novels – most recently Kitch – Joseph has published critical work exploring the aesthetics of Caribbean Poetry among other subjects. He performs internationally as the lead vocalist for his band The Spasm Band. Sonnets for Albert is his first poetry collection since Rubber Orchestras. His most recent album is The Rich Are Only Defeated When Running for Their Lives.
"And that is, I think, a lot of the origin of the way we see the Caribbean and the way we see who we are - and music as well of that time - Calypso. So the Caribbean identity itself, I think, by the time we enter the UK in 1948 under Windrush, by the time that happens, there's a sense of a sense of what Caribbeaness means or what the Caribbean identity is. And there's a point at which it changes. So we move from being - I mean we were Commonwealth, a colonized nation, and we move from being colonized subjects or subjects of the British Empire, and we become immigrants. And there's a change there that happens in that time in the late forties where we become - because we're in the country itself - we become immigrants. And then the struggle for identity begins.”
www.anthonyjoseph.co.uk
https://open.spotify.com/artist/622cbugSJevUkEanSBCab9
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
"There are still plenty of obstacles towards getting stories featuring people of color specifically made in Hollywood, even though there are all those various new outlets and paths for that material to find audiences. Easter Sunday is an anomaly because it is a major studio-produced feature that centers on a Filipino-American family.
There is still what I call Asian America 101 that has to happen, which is like this very basic education that we have to impart upon the gatekeepers and decision-makers in Hollywood.
When you look at it in that respect, it is a bit of additional labor that we as creatives of color have to undertake, fairly or unfairly - probably unfairly if I'm being frank - but it is required. And is there a day where we don't have to do that additional emotional labor and creative labor to validate our own experiences and validate our own stories for the sake of financing? I hope so. We're not quite there yet."
Ken Cheng is a writer/producer who has previously written for Wilfred, Betas, and Sin City Saints. Ken’s feature comedy Easter Sunday, which he co-wrote, and executive produced for Amblin Partners, Rideback, and Universal, is inspired by the life and comedy of standup comedian Jo Koy. Forthcoming projects include writing and executive producing the half-hour comedy series, House of Chow, for HBO, co-writing – along with his creative partners at Crab Club, Inc. - a feature film adaptation of the GQ Magazine article, “The Great Chinese Art Heist”, for Warner Bros., Conde Nast, and director Jon M. Chu, and writing/producing a feature adaptation of the New York Magazine article “Chateau Sucker” for Bound Entertainment.
www.crabclubinc.com
Ken Cheng IMDB
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
Ken Cheng is a writer/producer who has previously written for Wilfred, Betas, and Sin City Saints. Ken’s feature comedy Easter Sunday, which he co-wrote, and executive produced for Amblin Partners, Rideback, and Universal, is inspired by the life and comedy of standup comedian Jo Koy. Forthcoming projects include writing and executive producing the half-hour comedy series, House of Chow, for HBO, co-writing – along with his creative partners at Crab Club, Inc. - a feature film adaptation of the GQ Magazine article, “The Great Chinese Art Heist”, for Warner Bros., Conde Nast, and director Jon M. Chu, and writing/producing a feature adaptation of the New York Magazine article “Chateau Sucker” for Bound Entertainment.
"There are still plenty of obstacles towards getting stories featuring people of color specifically made in Hollywood, even though there are all those various new outlets and paths for that material to find audiences. Easter Sunday is an anomaly because it is a major studio-produced feature that centers on a Filipino-American family.
There is still what I call Asian America 101 that has to happen, which is like this very basic education that we have to impart upon the gatekeepers and decision-makers in Hollywood.
When you look at it in that respect, it is a bit of additional labor that we as creatives of color have to undertake, fairly or unfairly - probably unfairly if I'm being frank - but it is required. And is there a day where we don't have to do that additional emotional labor and creative labor to validate our own experiences and validate our own stories for the sake of financing? I hope so. We're not quite there yet."
www.crabclubinc.com
Ken Cheng IMDB
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
“I would like them to know that, you know, in my own case, that I did as much as I possibly could have. I can't say that say the same for my generation. We made a lot of mistakes, but in a way more importantly, I would like them to know just how powerful they are, that they have the power to shape the world. At some point, I realized that the world is produced. The world is designed and produced, and since we designed and produced it, we can redesign it. And you can play a part in designing it. You can play a part in that production. It doesn't have to happen to you. And I think, for too many people, too much power and too much control is concentrated in too few hands. People need to have the power to control and design their own life.”
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
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
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.
“I would like them to know that, you know, in my own case, that I did as much as I possibly could have. I can't say that say the same for my generation. We made a lot of mistakes, but in a way more importantly, I would like them to know just how powerful they are, that they have the power to shape the world. At some point, I realized that the world is produced. The world is designed and produced, and since we designed and produced it, we can redesign it. And you can play a part in designing it. You can play a part in that production. It doesn't have to happen to you. And I think, for too many people, too much power and too much control is concentrated in too few hands. People need to have the power to control and design their own life.”
www.massivechangenetwork.com
www.Brucemaustudio.com
Mau MC24
The Nexus
Image Courtesy of Massive Change Network
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
"We're kind of carrying on a tradition of the previous owners of our farm, a wonderful woman, her name is Linda. That's who we bought our farm from. And when she had the farm, she had Grassroots Farm, that was the name. And she was heavily into grassroots organizing, organizing around social issues and seeing the farm, the act of growing your own food and sharing that food with others as kind of a solution to many of the ill-effects of capitalism and scarcity and supply and demand, all these things that drive our culture and our society. I think a lot of times people struggle with trying to find solutions."
John and Emily Beaton have created a multi-enterprise farming business in Northeastern Minnesota near Duluth and the shores of Lake Superior. They founded Fairhaven Farm with a spirit of community building, a focus on soil health, and a desire to see a thriving local food system.
They sell starter plants each spring for home gardeners, grow food for over 50 families through their CSA program, and are launching a new Pizza Farm enterprise where the couple will serve wood-fired pizzas on the farm featuring all locally sourced ingredients—including fresh tomatoes and vegetables right from their field!
www.fairhaven.farm
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
www.creativeprocess.info
John and Emily Beaton have created a multi-enterprise farming business in Northeastern Minnesota near Duluth and the shores of Lake Superior. They founded Fairhaven Farm with a spirit of community building, a focus on soil health, and a desire to see a thriving local food system.
They sell starter plants each spring for home gardeners, grow food for over 50 families through their CSA program, and are launching a new Pizza Farm enterprise where the couple will serve wood-fired pizzas on the farm featuring all locally sourced ingredients—including fresh tomatoes and vegetables right from their field!
"We're kind of carrying on a tradition of the previous owners of our farm, a wonderful woman, her name is Linda. That's who we bought our farm from. And when she had the farm, she had Grassroots Farm, that was the name. And she was heavily into grassroots organizing, organizing around social issues and seeing the farm, the act of growing your own food and sharing that food with others as kind of a solution to many of the ill-effects of capitalism and scarcity and supply and demand, all these things that drive our culture and our society. I think a lot of times people struggle with trying to find solutions."
www.fairhaven.farm
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
www.creativeprocess.info
“My mom and my dad would often go to protests. They would organize movements. They'd be part of multilateral indigenous people's movements, not only nationally, but internationally, that were operating at the grassroots level. Activism, it’s a tradition in my family for indigenous rights. I have aunts and uncles that were very involved as well. So as a kid, I was often at those protests. I was running around as a little Native kid with all the other little Native kids, when our parents would be in meetings discussing how to move forward discussing indigenous rights.”
Victor A. Lopez-Carmen is a Dakota and Yaqui writer, health advocate, and student at Harvard Medical School. He is cofounder of the Ohiyesa Premedical Program at the Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH), which supports Indigenous community and tribal college students to pursue healthcare education. He also founded Translations for our Nations, a grant funded initiation that translated accurate COVID-19 information into over 40 Indigenous languages from over 20 different countries. For his work, he has been featured on the Forbes 30 under 30 and Native American 40 under 40 lists. He is Co-Chair of the UN Global Indigenous Youth Caucus.
Forbes 30 under 30 - Healthcare 2022
Translations for our Nations
Ohiyesa Premedical Program
www.globalindigenousyouthcaucus.org
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
www.creativeprocess.info
Victor A. Lopez-Carmen is a Dakota and Yaqui writer, health advocate, and student at Harvard Medical School. He is cofounder of the Ohiyesa Premedical Program at the Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH), which supports Indigenous community and tribal college students to pursue healthcare education. He also founded Translations for our Nations, a grant funded initiation that translated accurate COVID-19 information into over 40 Indigenous languages from over 20 different countries. For his work, he has been featured on the Forbes 30 under 30 and Native American 40 under 40 lists. He is Co-Chair of the UN Global Indigenous Youth Caucus.
“My mom and my dad would often go to protests. They would organize movements. They'd be part of multilateral indigenous people's movements, not only nationally, but internationally, that were operating at the grassroots level. Activism, it’s a tradition in my family for indigenous rights. I have aunts and uncles that were very involved as well. So as a kid, I was often at those protests. I was running around as a little Native kid with all the other little Native kids, when our parents would be in meetings discussing how to move forward discussing indigenous rights.”
Forbes 30 under 30 - Healthcare 2022
Translations for our Nations
Ohiyesa Premedical Program
www.globalindigenousyouthcaucus.org
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
www.creativeprocess.info
“I kind of thought there was justice in the criminal justice system and that there was care for people, like you matter to me within the system, and in that moment it hit me. There wasn't. And in fact, it's the opposite. In order for the system to work the way it does, it needs to de-humanize the people that it puts in these cages.”
Growing up in Ferguson, Missouri, Stanley Andrisse began making poor decisions at a very young age. He started selling dope and was arrested for the first time at fourteen years old. By his early twenties, dope dealing had exponentially multiplied, and he found himself sitting in front of a judge facing twenty years to life on drug trafficking charges. The judge sentenced him to ten years in a maximum-security prison.
Upon release, and after several rejections, Stanley was accepted into a PhD program. He completed his PhD/MBA simultaneously and became an endocrinologist and impactful leader at Johns Hopkins Medicine, specializing in diabetes research.
Dr. Andrisse is Executive Director and Founder of From Prison Cells to PhD, board member on the Formerly Incarcerated College Graduates Network, founder of the Diversity Postdoctoral Alliance, member on several local and national committees aimed at community outreach, youth mentor, motivational speaker, and community activist. His book From Prison Cells to PhD: It is Never Too Late to Do Good recounts his inspiring story.
www.fromprisoncellstophd.org
From Prison Cells to PhD book
Asst. Professor, Howard University
Growing up in Ferguson, Missouri, Stanley Andrisse began making poor decisions at a very young age. He started selling dope and was arrested for the first time at fourteen years old. By his early twenties, dope dealing had exponentially multiplied, and he found himself sitting in front of a judge facing twenty years to life on drug trafficking charges. The judge sentenced him to ten years in a maximum-security prison.
Upon release, and after several rejections, Stanley was accepted into a PhD program. He completed his PhD/MBA simultaneously and became an endocrinologist and impactful leader at Johns Hopkins Medicine, specializing in diabetes research.
Dr. Andrisse is Executive Director and Founder of From Prison Cells to PhD, board member on the Formerly Incarcerated College Graduates Network, founder of the Diversity Postdoctoral Alliance, member on several local and national committees aimed at community outreach, youth mentor, motivational speaker, and community activist. His book From Prison Cells to PhD: It is Never Too Late to Do Good recounts his inspiring story.
“I kind of thought there was justice in the criminal justice system and that there was care for people, like you matter to me within the system, and in that moment it hit me. There wasn't. And in fact, it's the opposite. In order for the system to work the way it does, it needs to de-humanize the people that it puts in these cages.”
www.fromprisoncellstophd.org
From Prison Cells to PhD book
Asst. Professor, Howard University
Photo: Wesley Law/STL Mag
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
The Classical Theatre of Harlem provides theatrical productions, educational and literary programs for free or at little cost to Harlem residents, organizations, and all who seek Harlem as a cultural destination. Its productions have received a Drama Desk, OBIE, and New York Times Critics Pick Awards. From July 5th to 29th they bring an Afrofuturistic take on Twelfth Night to Marcus Garvey Park.
NAACP and OBIE Award Winner, Ty Jones is Producing Artistic Director responsible for creating the Uptown Shakespeare in the Park series and other community initiatives.
Allen Gilmore has played Othello, Iago, and created the role of James Hewlett in The African Company presents Richard The Third at the Public Theater. He makes his CTH debut in Twelfth Night.
“I believe that these plays are living arguments and that when you actually read the full text, not cut down versions of them, but the full text, you'll see that Shakespeare was commenting on the ruling class, and for some reason, he found a way to comment on the workings of folks who make decisions in society. Now, I think what's tended to happen over the years is that the ruling class has essentially taken over how we see these plays… We hope that we can move people, and we hope that these are the kind of plays that ignite discourse. I hope that at the end of seeing that piece of art, their hearts begin to beat in sync. I believe all progress begins with a conversation.”
www.cthnyc.org
www.cthnyc.org/dt_team/ty-jones-producing-artistic-director-cth-actor
www.cthnyc.org/twelfth-night
www.allengilmore.com
Twelfth Night photo credit: Richard Termine
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
The Classical Theatre of Harlem provides theatrical productions, educational and literary programs for free or at little cost to Harlem residents, organizations, and all who seek Harlem as a cultural destination. Its productions have received a Drama Desk, OBIE, and New York Times Critics Pick Awards. From July 5th to 29th they bring an Afrofuturistic take on Twelfth Night to Marcus Garvey Park.
NAACP and OBIE Award Winner, Ty Jones is Producing Artistic Director responsible for creating the Uptown Shakespeare in the Park series and other community initiatives.
Allen Gilmore has played Othello, Iago, and created the role of James Hewlett in The African Company presents Richard The Third at the Public Theater. He makes his CTH debut in Twelfth Night.
“I believe that these plays are living arguments and that when you actually read the full text, not cut down versions of them, but the full text, you'll see that Shakespeare was commenting on the ruling class, and for some reason, he found a way to comment on the workings of folks who make decisions in society. Now, I think what's tended to happen over the years is that the ruling class has essentially taken over how we see these plays… We hope that we can move people, and we hope that these are the kind of plays that ignite discourse. I hope that at the end of seeing that piece of art, their hearts begin to beat in sync. I believe all progress begins with a conversation.”
www.cthnyc.org
www.cthnyc.org/dt_team/ty-jones-producing-artistic-director-cth-actor
www.cthnyc.org/twelfth-night
www.allengilmore.com
Photo credits: Lia Chang, Jill Jones
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
“To me, America is about coexisting. It's about a million different journeys happening all at once, but really it being the same journey, which is to self-actualization to be seen, to be loved. I know that's not very capitalistic or whatever, but that's what I really see, especially in the immigrant community. It's self-actualization and not just for yourself, but to create that opportunity for your progeny, for your legacy.”
“I think challenges are part of every life, right? They're the things that help us grow. Adversity is a thing that helps us grow, and yes, adversity can be struggle, but it can also be educational. It can also be victorious. It can also lead you towards bigger and better things, if you accept the challenge. And I think that's such a huge part of both immigration and adolescence, and our family meets adversity with a smile, which is how I think both Claudia and I live our lives. And we try to pass that message on because that's something that's inevitable. In any life, there's adversity, and when you've got optimism on your side, when you have a positive outlook, when you keep trying and don't let people get to you, that's what ends up letting you push past and getting you towards your goals and your dreams.”
"When I think of America, what America is, it's the nation built by immigrants that continues to succeed in large part because of the influx of immigrants to this day. Sometimes I describe the United States as like a club, right? It's a wonderful club, so many people want to be a part of it, and you need new members. And immigrants are like the new members that are kind of like the born again Americans that come here, and they're the ones that believe in America the most because everything is new to them, and they've sacrificed so much to be here. So something that I wish people could garner from this series is the fact that immigrants built this nation, and we continue co-creating this nation with those who aren't immigrants, as well."
Claudia Forestieri and Brigitte Muñoz-Liebowitz serve as the creator and showrunner of the Latin-focused comedy series for HBO Max, Gordita Chronicles, making them the first female Latinx showrunner and creator duo. The series is executive produced by Zoe Saldana and Eva Longoria.
Inspired by Claudia’s own life experience, the show centers around a Latina reporter looking back on her childhood as a chubby, willful and reluctant Dominican immigrant growing up with her eccentric family in 1980s Miami. The lighthearted series addresses themes around immigration, xenophobia, and body positivity and stars newcomer Olivia Goncalves, Diana Maria Riva, and Juan Javier Cardenas.
Gordita Chronicles on HBO Max
IMDB
Claudia Forestieri
Brigitte Muñoz-Liebowitz
Claudia Forestieri and Brigitte Muñoz-Liebowitz serve as the creator and showrunner of the Latin-focused comedy series for HBO Max, Gordita Chronicles, making them the first female Latinx showrunner and creator duo. The series is executive produced by Zoe Saldana and Eva Longoria.
Inspired by Claudia’s own life experience, the show centers around a Latina reporter looking back on her childhood as a chubby, willful and reluctant Dominican immigrant growing up with her eccentric family in 1980s Miami. The lighthearted series addresses themes around immigration, xenophobia, and body positivity and stars newcomer Olivia Goncalves, Diana Maria Riva, and Juan Javier Cardenas.
Claudia’s previous work for Telemundo earned her five Emmys and a GLAAD Media Award. Brigitte is known for her work on Brooklyn Nine Nine, People of Earth, and Love Life.
“When I think of America, what America is, it's the nation built by immigrants that continues to succeed in large part because of the influx of immigrants to this day. Sometimes I describe the United States as like a club, right? It's a wonderful club, so many people want to be a part of it, and you need new members. And immigrants are like the new members that are kind of like the born again Americans that come here, and they're the ones that believe in America the most because everything is new to them, and they've sacrificed so much to be here. So something that I wish people could garner from this series is the fact that immigrants built this nation, and we continue co-creating this nation with those who aren't immigrants, as well.”
Gordita Chronicles on HBO Max
IMDB
Claudia Forestieri
Brigitte Muñoz-Liebowitz
“What does degrowth mean for the Global South? There are some thoughts that degrowth in the Global North would facilitate self-determination in the Global South because the Global North would no longer have this extractive relationship. There's also a critique to that, saying that degrowth in the Global North can and will have repercussions on the Global South just given the interconnected nature of our globalized realities.
Degrowth was first formulated in 1972 by French philosopher André Gorz in a public debate where he used the term décroissance to question whether planetary stability was compatible with capitalism.”
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
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.
“What does degrowth mean for the Global South? There are some thoughts that degrowth in the Global North would facilitate self-determination in the Global South because the Global North would no longer have this extractive relationship. There's also a critique to that, saying that degrowth in the Global North can and will have repercussions on the Global South just given the interconnected nature of our globalized realities.
Degrowth was first formulated in 1972 by French philosopher André Gorz in a public debate where he used the term décroissance to question whether planetary stability was compatible with capitalism.”
Degrowth was first formulated in 1972 by French philosopher André Gorz in a public debate where he used the term décroissance to question whether planetary stability was compatible with capitalism.”
www.degrowth.info
www.kclegacion.com
www.decidim.org
www.joinmastodon.org
www.iNaturalist.org
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
www.creativeprocess.info
“With Lingua Franca, I think maybe the radical idea in centering a film about this minority character, a trans Filipina immigrant...I think a lot of films or media that depict or feature that kind of character almost always emphasize their trauma and just their marginalization or being subjected to all kinds of prejudice and discrimination.
But what I set out to do in Lingua Franca was to bring out and depict her sense of selfhood and agency first, especially in the first few sequences of the film, by just observing her being and going about her daily morning rituals and routines as a caregiver to this elderly Russian lady.
And I think by training my camera at those rituals, which seem mundane and routine, I'm essentially saying as a filmmaker, that this is a person. A woman and her daily rituals are worth chronicling, are worth paying attention to anything. Just by seeing this woman go about her daily tasks, I think I was already dignifying that life and that perspective, that it's important and that it matters.”
Redefining being a multi-hyphenate for artistic control and representation, Sandoval made her television debut directing the 6th episode for the new FX limited series, Under the Banner of Heaven based on the New York Times best seller by Jon Krakauer.
Isabel Sandoval is a Filipina filmmaker who made history with the World Premiere of Lingua Franca at the 2019 Venice International Film Festival’s Giornate degli Autori section and was the first film directed by and starring a trans woman of color ever to screen in competition. In honor of her achievements with the film, Sandoval was nominated for the John Cassavetes Award at the 2021 Film Independent Spirit Awards. Her early film works debuted last summer on The Criterion Channel platform, displaying her growth and evolution as a creator, able to embrace new mediums.
www.fxnetworks.com/shows/under-the-banner-of-heaven
The Criterion Channel
www.imdb.com/name/nm4583383/
Photo credit: Michelle Faye/FX Networks
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
Redefining being a multi-hyphenate for artistic control and representation, Sandoval made her television debut directing the 6th episode for the new FX limited series, Under the Banner of Heaven based on the New York Times best seller by Jon Krakauer.
Isabel Sandoval is a Filipina filmmaker who made history with the World Premiere of Lingua Franca at the 2019 Venice International Film Festival’s Giornate degli Autori section and was the first film directed by and starring a trans woman of color ever to screen in competition. In honor of her achievements with the film, Sandoval was nominated for the John Cassavetes Award at the 2021 Film Independent Spirit Awards. Her early film works debuted last summer on The Criterion Channel platform, displaying her growth and evolution as a creator, able to embrace new mediums.
“With Lingua Franca, I think maybe the radical idea in centering a film about this minority character, a trans Filipina immigrant...I think a lot of films or media that depict or feature that kind of character almost always emphasize their trauma and just their marginalization or being subjected to all kinds of prejudice and discrimination.
But what I set out to do in Lingua Franca was to bring out and depict her sense of selfhood and agency first, especially in the first few sequences of the film, by just observing her being and going about her daily morning rituals and routines as a caregiver to this elderly Russian lady.
And I think by training my camera at those rituals, which seem mundane and routine, I'm essentially saying as a filmmaker, that this is a person. A woman and her daily rituals are worth chronicling, are worth paying attention to anything. Just by seeing this woman go about her daily tasks, I think I was already dignifying that life and that perspective, that it's important and that it matters.”
www.imdb.com/name/nm4583383/
www.fxnetworks.com/shows/under-the-banner-of-heaven
The Criterion Channel
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
“One thing that we should remember as young people is that everything allowed us is political by nature. We shouldn't be really scared of getting ourselves into different political aspects of issues around us. Be bold enough to speak out on the biggest challenges that are around you. And at the same time, it's in us to understand what kind of environment I am in? What is it that I can contribute to the problems that I am facing? That young people or people in general facing? So just go on. Be a part of that, and you'll be surprised that you will be the biggest game-changer.”
Memory Banda is a human and girls’ rights activist, and the founder and executive director of Foundation for Girls Leadership; a not-for-profit organization in Malawi working to advance and promote girl’s rights, their leadership and their active participation in driving positive change. Girls in Malawi are denied their rights to education, sexual reproductive health, and have fewer opportunities to participate in development and economic activities. They are often victims of sexual gender based violence. Memory led a campaign called “I will marry when I want” that contributed to the passing and enactment of the new law and amendment of Malawi constitution that criminalizes marriages of minors.
www.f4gl.org
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
Memory Banda is a human and girls’ rights activist, and the founder and executive director of Foundation for Girls Leadership; a not-for-profit organization in Malawi working to advance and promote girl’s rights, their leadership and their active participation in driving positive change. Girls in Malawi are denied their rights to education, sexual reproductive health, and have fewer opportunities to participate in development and economic activities. They are often victims of sexual gender based violence. Memory led a campaign called “I will marry when I want” that contributed to the passing and enactment of the new law and amendment of Malawi constitution that criminalizes marriages of minors.
www.f4gl.org
Photo credit: Young Activists Summit
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
“So while there is no kind of one size fits all story, there are plenty of times when...kind of like clusters of activity. And some kids don't come out as trans. They come out as wanting to begin a process of exploration around gender, wanting to sort of bend things a little bit or begin to present themselves in slightly different ways without a concrete cross-identification. So it's really a pretty diverse range of phenomena.”
Tey Meadow is an assistant professor of sociology at Columbia University, where she teaches courses on gender and sexuality, queer theory, qualitative methodology, law, and the analytics of risk and uncertainty. Meadow’s published work focuses on a broad range of issues, including the emergence of the transgender child as a social category, the international politics of family diversity, the creation and maintenance of legal gender classifications, and newer work on the ways individuals negotiate risk in intimate relationships.
Meadow is the author of Trans Kids: Being Gendered in the Twenty-First Century (University of California Press, 2018), and the co-editor of the volume, Other Please Specify: Queer Methods in Sociology (University of California Press, 2018). She has published essays in academic journals like Gender & Society, Politics & Society, Sexualities, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Transgender Studies Quarterly and multiple edited volumes.
· https://teymeadow.com
· https://sociology.columbia.edu/content/tey-meadow
· www.creativeprocess.info
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
Interlude music: “Di zun vet aruntergeyn”
Words by Moishe-Lieb Halpern
Melody by Ben Yomen
Performed and produced by Beila Ungar
Tey Meadow is an assistant professor of sociology at Columbia University, where she teaches courses on gender and sexuality, queer theory, qualitative methodology, law, and the analytics of risk and uncertainty. Meadow’s published work focuses on a broad range of issues, including the emergence of the transgender child as a social category, the international politics of family diversity, the creation and maintenance of legal gender classifications, and newer work on the ways individuals negotiate risk in intimate relationships.
Meadow is the author of Trans Kids: Being Gendered in the Twenty-First Century (University of California Press, 2018), and the co-editor of the volume, Other Please Specify: Queer Methods in Sociology (University of California Press, 2018). She has published essays in academic journals like Gender & Society, Politics & Society, Sexualities, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Transgender Studies Quarterly and multiple edited volumes.
“So while there is no kind of one size fits all story, there are plenty of times when...kind of like clusters of activity. And some kids don't come out as trans. They come out as wanting to begin a process of exploration around gender, wanting to sort of bend things a little bit or begin to present themselves in slightly different ways without a concrete cross-identification. So it's really a pretty diverse range of phenomena.”
· https://teymeadow.com
· https://sociology.columbia.edu/content/tey-meadow
· www.creativeprocess.info
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
Interlude music: “Di zun vet aruntergeyn”
Words by Moishe-Lieb Halpern
Melody by Ben Yomen
Performed and produced by Beila Ungar
“The struggle for a planetary future calls for a profound epistemological shift. Indigenous ancestral knowledges are now providing a foundation for our work against climate change, one based on what I refer to as Indigenous economies of abundance—as opposed to capitalist economies of scarcity. Rather than seeing climate change as apocalyptic, we can see that climate change is bringing about the demise of capital, making way for Indigenous lifeways that center familial relationships with the earth and elemental forms. Kānaka Maoli are restoring the worlds where their attunement to climatic change and their capacity for kilo adaptation, regeneration, and tranformation will enable them to survive what capital cannot.”
Candace Fujikane is an author and professor of English at the University of Hawaiʻi at Manoa, teaching aloha ʻāina and the protection of Hawaiʻi. Having grown up on the slopes of Maui’s Haleakalā, Candace has stood for the lands, waters, and political sovereignty of Hawaiʻi for over 20 years. Her newest book, Mapping Abundance for a Planetary Future, contends that “Indigenous ancestral knowledge provides a foundation for movements against climate change, one based on Indigenous economies of abundance as opposed to capitalist economies of scarcity.”
· english.hawaii.edu/faculty/candace-fujikane/
· www.dukeupress.edu/mapping-abundance-for-a-planetary-future
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info
Candace Fujikane is an author and professor of English at the University of Hawaiʻi at Manoa, teaching aloha ʻāina and the protection of Hawaiʻi. Having grown up on the slopes of Maui’s Haleakalā, Candace has stood for the lands, waters, and political sovereignty of Hawaiʻi for over 20 years. Her newest book, Mapping Abundance for a Planetary Future, contends that “Indigenous ancestral knowledge provides a foundation for movements against climate change, one based on Indigenous economies of abundance as opposed to capitalist economies of scarcity.”
“The struggle for a planetary future calls for a profound epistemological shift. Indigenous ancestral knowledges are now providing a foundation for our work against climate change, one based on what I refer to as Indigenous economies of abundance—as opposed to capitalist economies of scarcity. Rather than seeing climate change as apocalyptic, we can see that climate change is bringing about the demise of capital, making way for Indigenous lifeways that center familial relationships with the earth and elemental forms. Kānaka Maoli are restoring the worlds where their attunement to climatic change and their capacity for kilo adaptation, regeneration, and tranforma- tion will enable them to survive what capital cannot.”
· english.hawaii.edu/faculty/candace-fujikane/
· www.dukeupress.edu/mapping-abundance-for-a-planetary-future
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info
Dolen Perkins-Valdez is the New York Times bestselling author of Wench, and Balm. She was a finalist for two NAACP Image Awards and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for fiction, and she was awarded the First Novelist Award by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. She lives in Washington, DC with her family and teaches at American University. She discusses her latest novel Take My Hand, along with the importance of family, legacy, and history, particularly in regards to race.
In 2017, HarperCollins released Wench as one of eight "Olive Titles," limited edition modern classics that included books by Edward P. Jones, Louise Erdrich, and Zora Neale Hurston.
Dolen is the current Chair of the Board of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation. On behalf of the foundation, she has visited nearly every public high school in the District of Columbia to talk about the importance of reading and writing. She is currently Associate Professor in the Literature Department at American University and lives in Washington, DC with her family.
· www,dolenperkinsvaldez.com
· www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/113386/dolen-perkins-valdez/
· www.penfaulkner.org
· www.creativeprocess.info
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
Dolen Perkins-Valdez is the New York Times bestselling author of Wench, and Balm. She was a finalist for two NAACP Image Awards and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for fiction, and she was awarded the First Novelist Award by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. She lives in Washington, DC with her family and teaches at American University. She discusses her latest novel Take My Hand, along with the importance of family, legacy, and history, particularly in regards to race.
In 2017, HarperCollins released Wench as one of eight "Olive Titles," limited edition modern classics that included books by Edward P. Jones, Louise Erdrich, and Zora Neale Hurston.
Dolen is the current Chair of the Board of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation. On behalf of the foundation, she has visited nearly every public high school in the District of Columbia to talk about the importance of reading and writing. She is currently Associate Professor in the Literature Department at American University and lives in Washington, DC with her family.
· www.dolenperkinsvaldez.com
· www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/113386/dolen-perkins-valdez/
· www.penfaulkner.org
· www.creativeprocess.info
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
"When are we all going to start to care about one another? Because all of our individual choices do have impacts. And I just think the demands that we place on this planet, on the ecosystems, are what are driving conflict and human suffering. In some cases, it's really the scarcity of resources, just like water. In others, it's the changing climate and the loss of fertile lands to be able to grow food. But in the end, it's always the people living in these places that really suffer the most. All of my work today, it’s not really about wildlife, and it's not just about people either. It's about how deeply interconnected all of those things are. People and the human condition are the backdrop of every one of the stories on this planet."
Photographer and filmmaker Ami Vitale shares her personal odyssey—from documenting the heartbreaking realities of war to witnessing the inspiring power of an individual to make a difference. Her award-winning work illuminates the unsung heroes and communities working to protect our wildlife and find harmony in our natural world. Hear her awe-inspiring stories of the reintroduction of northern white rhinos and giant pandas to the wild, as well as Kenya’s first indigenous-owned and run elephant sanctuary.
Ami has traveled to more than 100 countries, bearing witness not only to violence and conflict, but also to surreal beauty and the enduring power of the human spirit. She has lived in mud huts and war zones, contracted malaria, and donned a panda suit— keeping true to her belief in the importance of “living the story.”
Ami is an Ambassador for Nikon and a contract photographer with National Geographic magazine. She has documented wildlife and poaching in Africa, covered human-wildlife conflict, and concentrated on efforts to save the northern white rhino and reintroduce pandas to the wild. She is a six-time recipient of World Press Photos and published a best-selling book, Panda Love, on the secret lives of pandas. She lectures for the National Geographic LIVEseries, and she frequently gives workshops around the world.
After more than a decade covering conflict, photographer and filmmaker Ami Vitale couldn’t help but notice that the less sensational—but equally true—stories were often not getting told: the wedding happening around the corner from the revolution, triumphs amidst seemingly endless devastation. As a result, she re-committed herself to seeking out the stories within and around “the story.” Her belief that “you can’t talk about humanity without talking about nature” led her to chronicle her journey from documenting warzones to telling some of the most compelling wildlife and environmental stories of our time, where individuals are making a profound difference in the future of their communities and this planet.
She is Executive Director of Vital Impacts whose mission is to support grassroots organizations who are protecting people, wildlife and habitats. She is also a founding member of Ripple Effect Images, a collective of scientists, writers, photographers and filmmakers who document challenges facing women and girls in developing countries. She is chair of the Photographers Advisory Board for National Geographic magazine photographers and also a member of the Executive Advisory Committee of the Alexia Foundations Photojournalism Advisory Board. · www.amivitale.com
· vitalimpacts.org
· www.rippleeffectimages.org
· Print sale for Vital Impacts: https://vitalimpacts.org/collections/impact-now
· https://newhouse.syr.edu/centers/the-alexia
· IG: @amivitale
· IG: @vital.impacts
· IG: @wild.lifeincolour
Joseph Wachira comforts Sudan, the last living northern white rhino on the planet, moments before his death on March 19, 2018 at Ol Pejeta Conservancy in northern Kenya.
Ⓒ Ami Vitale
Photographer and filmmaker Ami Vitale shares her personal odyssey—from documenting the heartbreaking realities of war to witnessing the inspiring power of an individual to make a difference. Her award-winning work illuminates the unsung heroes and communities working to protect our wildlife and find harmony in our natural world. Hear her awe-inspiring stories of the reintroduction of northern white rhinos and giant pandas to the wild, as well as Kenya’s first indigenous-owned and run elephant sanctuary.
Ami has traveled to more than 100 countries, bearing witness not only to violence and conflict, but also to surreal beauty and the enduring power of the human spirit. She has lived in mud huts and war zones, contracted malaria, and donned a panda suit— keeping true to her belief in the importance of “living the story.”
Ami is an Ambassador for Nikon and a contract photographer with National Geographic magazine. She has documented wildlife and poaching in Africa, covered human-wildlife conflict, and concentrated on efforts to save the northern white rhino and reintroduce pandas to the wild. She is a six-time recipient of World Press Photos and published a best-selling book, Panda Love, on the secret lives of pandas. She lectures for the National Geographic LIVEseries, and she frequently gives workshops around the world.
After more than a decade covering conflict, photographer and filmmaker Ami Vitale couldn’t help but notice that the less sensational—but equally true—stories were often not getting told: the wedding happening around the corner from the revolution, triumphs amidst seemingly endless devastation. As a result, she re-committed herself to seeking out the stories within and around “the story.” Her belief that “you can’t talk about humanity without talking about nature” led her to chronicle her journey from documenting warzones to telling some of the most compelling wildlife and environmental stories of our time, where individuals are making a profound difference in the future of their communities and this planet.
She is Executive Director of Vital Impacts whose mission is to support grassroots organizations who are protecting people, wildlife and habitats. She is also a founding member of Ripple Effect Images, a collective of scientists, writers, photographers and filmmakers who document challenges facing women and girls in developing countries. She is chair of the Photographers Advisory Board for National Geographic magazine photographers and also a member of the Executive Advisory Committee of the Alexia Foundations Photojournalism Advisory Board.
· www.amivitale.com
· vitalimpacts.org
· www.rippleeffectimages.org
· Print sale for Vital Impacts: https://vitalimpacts.org/collections/impact-now
· https://newhouse.syr.edu/centers/the-alexia
· IG: @amivitale
· IG: @vital.impacts
· IG: @wild.lifeincolour
Photo of Ami Vitale by Ken Lavazza
· www.creativeprocess.info
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
Daniel Sherrell is the author of Warmth: Coming of Age at the End of Our World, a memoir on the climate crisis framed as a letter to Sherrell's potential future child. He is a climate movement organizer and has led successful campaigns to phase out coal-fired power plants, divest millions of dollars from the fossil fuel industry, and pass a Green New Deal bill for New York State, legislation that the New York Times called “one of the world’s most ambitious climate plans.” He’s Campaign Director for the Climate Jobs National Resource Center, where he works with the American labor movement to tackle the climate crisis, reverse income inequality, and win millions of unionized clean energy jobs. The New Yorker and Publisher’s Weekly named Warmth one of the best books of 2021 and he’s a recipient of the Creative Force Foundation’s Award for “igniting positive social change through writing.”
· www.danielsherrell.com
· www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/670357/warmth-by-daniel-sherrell/
· Climate Jobs National Resource Center www.cjnrc.org
Photo by Giovana Schluter Nunes
“It felt to me that if I wasn't able to figure out a way to orchestrate a genuine emotional encounter for myself with the enormity of this thing I was meant to be taking action on, then something in me was going to break, and I just wouldn't be able to keep doing the work. So, there was never a point where it's like, I'm going to write a book, but I did turn to the written word, almost little diary entries, to make psychological and spiritual sense of the crisis that I was dealing with in a thin way every day."
“We have to be unwavering in our commitment to principles of justice and freedom and be harbingers of hope. So for me, this is a lifelong thing, and I think of it as ancestor work that I one day will be somebody's ancestor, and I want them to be proud of the work that we did to give them a world that’s a little better of an inheritance than the world that I was born into. And I think that is how we mark progress in more nuanced ways, in more honest ways. It doesn't need to be a straight line towards freedom, more of a journey with wins and losses, setbacks and victories.”
“It's what can feel like regression that’s happening. It’s like, okay, there is. I'm thinking about in the country right now, we’ve had these incredible moments, seeing a show like “Pose” on television with so many queer, trans, black, and brown actors. You have Laverne Cox on the cover of TIME, a really wonderful documentary “Disclosure” about trans representation, and some really positive steps made towards trans healthcare. And right now we're seeing all of these bills popping up across States criminalizing trans youth, and it is important for us to recognize at that moment part of that backlash is because certain progress was being made. Because we were starting to question gender and its fixity today and the ways that transphobia operates. Because people were becoming aware of how vulnerable trans people are in our world to violence. And, so of course, we see a response, which means we have to retool and keep fighting. That’s the charge. The struggle is at this point still in an ending one, but it doesn't mean that along the way that certain victories haven’t amassed that give us hope to propel us forward and be ready when the next attack on freedoms, on rights, on justice emerges, because it will. Right? We’re pushing in ways that are uncomfortable because we’re disrupting the center. We’re disrupting the default. We’re disrupting power. And Power it's not just going to concede because we're demanding it.”
Treva B. Lindsey, PhD is a Black feminist historian and Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at The Ohio State University. She is the recipient of several prestigious fellowships including the ACLS/Mellon Scholars and Society Fellowship, The Equity for Women and Girls of Color Fellowship at Harvard University, and The Woodrow Wilson Career Enhancement Fellowship. Lindsey is the founder of the Transformative Black Feminisms Initiative at Ohio State and the co-founder of Black Feminist Night School at Zora’s House in Columbus, Ohio. Her latest book entitled America, Goddam: Violence, Black Women, and The Struggle for Justice explores contemporary violence against Black women and girls and how they mobilize to halt violence against them.
· https://trevablindsey.com
· www.creativeprocess.info
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
Treva B. Lindsey, PhD is a Black feminist historian and Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at The Ohio State University. She is the recipient of several prestigious fellowships including the ACLS/Mellon Scholars and Society Fellowship, The Equity for Women and Girls of Color Fellowship at Harvard University, and The Woodrow Wilson Career Enhancement Fellowship. Lindsey is the founder of the Transformative Black Feminisms Initiative at Ohio State and the co-founder of Black Feminist Night School at Zora’s House in Columbus, Ohio. Her latest book entitled America, Goddam: Violence, Black Women, and The Struggle for Justice explores contemporary violence against Black women and girls and how they mobilize to halt violence against them.
· https://trevablindsey.com
· www.creativeprocess.info
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
“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
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
“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
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
“It's kind of a scary thought. We've got these PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), you hear them now referred to as forever chemicals because these chemicals–none of these existed on the planet prior to World War II–they're fairly recent invention and they have this unique chemical structure that makes them incredibly useful in a lot of different products, manufacturing operations, but also that same chemical structure makes them incredibly persistent and incredibly difficult to break down once they get out into the environment, into the natural world, into our soil, into our water. They simply, many of them, particularly the ones with eight or more carbons in their structure, don't break down under natural conditions. Or it may take thousands or millions of years for those chemicals to start breaking down. But not only that. Once they get into us, they get into people, they tend to accumulate in our blood and build up over time. They not only persist, they bioaccumulate. Unfortunately, as the science has slowly been revealed to the world about what these chemicals can do, we are seeing that they can have all kinds of toxic effects And unfortunately, we’re finding that those things can happen at lower and lower dose levels.”
“I can't speak highly enough of Mark Ruffalo and what he was able to accomplish with the film. He just did an amazing job. He reached out to me after reading the story that appeared in The New York Times Magazine back in 2016 about this situation down in West Virginia along the Ohio River and was really shocked when he read about it because it was really highlighting an environmental contamination problem that had potentially nationwide, if not worldwide implications but that he had never heard of, and you know he was active in the environmental arena and active in water issues and was surprised that he had not heard of this before and really wanted to find a way to help bring the story out to a wider audience so that we could hopefully start seeing some change in the way type of situations not only develop but how we deal with them. He was able to team up with the folks at Participant Media, who, if you go on their website, and see the types of films they've produced are just incredible filmmakers. Teamed up with Todd Haynes who is an incredible director, and just a terrific cast. Anne Hathaway, Tim Robbins and others. Really they were very dedicated to making sure they did the story and brought it to film in the right way, to show what really happened, not only legally and scientifically, but also to real people. What kind of impact these situations have on real people in real communities. What these people went through for 20 years in this community waiting for this process to unfold. So I think they did a tremendous job in taking a very complicated story that involves a lot of science and a lot of law and conveying it in a way that really impresses upon people why this is a story that matters to all of us and why this is a story that really is one that hopefully is inspiring because, as we discussed, it shows that things can be changed. Things that look impossible can be overcome.”
Rob Bilott is a partner in the Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky offices of the law firm, Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP, where he has practiced in the Environmental and Litigation Practice Groups for over 31 years. During that time, Rob has handled and led some of the most novel and complex cases in the country involving damage from exposure to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (“PFAS”), including the first individual, class action, mass tort, and multi-district litigation proceedings involving PFAS, recovering over $1 billion for clients impacted by the chemicals. In 2017, Rob received the Right Livelihood Award, known as the “Alternative Nobel Prize,” for his decades of work on behalf of those injured by PFAS chemical contamination. Rob is the author of the book, “Exposure: Poisoned Water, Corporate Greed, and One Lawyer’s Twenty-Year Battle Against DuPont,” and his story is the inspiration for the 2019 motion picture, “Dark Waters,” starring Mark Ruffalo as Rob. Rob’s story and work is also featured in the documentary, “The Devil We Know.” Rob is a 1987 graduate of New College in Sarasota, Florida and a 1990 graduate of the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. Rob also serves on the Boards of Less Cancer and Green Umbrella and is frequently invited to provide keynote lectures and talks at law schools, universities, colleges, communities and other organizations all over the world. Rob is a fellow in the Right Livelihood College, a Lecturer at the Yale School of Public Health, Department of Environmental Health Sciences, and an Honorary Professor at the National University of Cordoba in Argentina. Rob also has received Honorary Doctorate Degrees from both Ohio State University and New College.
· www.taftlaw.com
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info
Rob Bilott is a partner in the Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky offices of the law firm, Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP, where he has practiced in the Environmental and Litigation Practice Groups for over 31 years. During that time, Rob has handled and led some of the most novel and complex cases in the country involving damage from exposure to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (“PFAS”), including the first individual, class action, mass tort, and multi-district litigation proceedings involving PFAS, recovering over $1 billion for clients impacted by the chemicals. In 2017, Rob received the Right Livelihood Award, known as the “Alternative Nobel Prize,” for his decades of work on behalf of those injured by PFAS chemical contamination. Rob is the author of the book, “Exposure: Poisoned Water, Corporate Greed, and One Lawyer’s Twenty-Year Battle Against DuPont,” and his story is the inspiration for the 2019 motion picture, “Dark Waters,” starring Mark Ruffalo as Rob. Rob’s story and work is also featured in the documentary, “The Devil We Know.” Rob is a 1987 graduate of New College in Sarasota, Florida and a 1990 graduate of the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. Rob also serves on the Boards of Less Cancer and Green Umbrella and is frequently invited to provide keynote lectures and talks at law schools, universities, colleges, communities and other organizations all over the world. Rob is a fellow in the Right Livelihood College, a Lecturer at the Yale School of Public Health, Department of Environmental Health Sciences, and an Honorary Professor at the National University of Cordoba in Argentina. Rob also has received Honorary Doctorate Degrees from both Ohio State University and New College.
· www.taftlaw.com
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info
“We all have things to learn when it comes to these diversity-related issues or issues of identity. We have so much to learn. Just because, let's say, you’re a person of color, it doesn't necessarily mean that you are going to be accepting of transgender individuals. You might have some real hangups. Or you could be transgender and have some hangups around people of color, all around the spectrum. You can be a woman who doesn't support women. You can be a woman who doesn't support women trans-women. There are all of these kinds of things that I think we have to be open to, and we have to be open to learning and also open to making mistakes because sometimes people are going to make mistakes around these issues.
And this just goes back to the whole benefit of diversity. So one of the reasons why I feel that I benefit so much from the people that I work with is because they are so diverse in many ways, and they are open to talking and interacting and making sure that you're up to speed.”
Marybeth Gasman is the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Endowed Chair, a Distinguished Professor, and Associate Dean for Research at Rutgers University. Her areas of expertise include U.S. history, HBCUs, racism, philanthropy, and leadership. She is the author or editor of 30 books, including Envisioning Black Colleges (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), Educating a Diverse Nation (Harvard University Press, 2015), Making Black Scientists (Harvard University Press, 2019), and Doing the Right Thing: How to End Systemic Racism in Faculty Hiring (Princeton University, 2022). She is Executive Director of Samuel DeWitt Proctor Institute for Leadership, Equity, & Justice & Rutgers Center for Minority Serving Institutions.
· www.marybethgasman.net
· Samuel DeWitt Proctor Institute for Leadership, Equity, & Justice & Rutgers Center for Minority Serving Institutions: https://proctor.gse.rutgers.edu/
Marybeth Gasman is the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Endowed Chair, a Distinguished Professor, and Associate Dean for Research at Rutgers University. Her areas of expertise include U.S. history, HBCUs, racism, philanthropy, and leadership. She is the author or editor of 30 books, including Envisioning Black Colleges (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), Educating a Diverse Nation (Harvard University Press, 2015), Making Black Scientists (Harvard University Press, 2019), and Doing the Right Thing: How to End Systemic Racism in Faculty Hiring (Princeton University, 2022). She is Executive Director of Samuel DeWitt Proctor Institute for Leadership, Equity, & Justice & Rutgers Center for Minority Serving Institutions.
· www.marybethgasman.net
· Samuel DeWitt Proctor Institute for Leadership, Equity, & Justice & Rutgers Center for Minority Serving Institutions: https://proctor.gse.rutgers.edu/
“I think humans really need to feel valued and loved. The question is where do you get your value from? And I try to get my value from–faith plays a big part of my life, but not everyone has that way of thinking about the world, so I'm not going to major on that, but that's only part of it, the sense that I believe there's a God who thinks I'm of worth, but it's more than that. I believe that my closest friends and my family think I'm of worth. That's it. That will do. And if 100 or 1,000 people think I'm an idiot, that’s a bit annoying, but it's not totally the end of the world. And they’re not going to think about it after a week because they’re going to have other things to think about. And so I think that's probably made me more comfortable in saying that if I do stand up and it’s a disaster, it doesn't matter that much. If I start a charity and it fails, and I have started things that fell apart, it's not the end of the world.”
Jon Yates is Executive Director of the Youth Endowment Fund, a £200 million charitable fund focused on integrating young people into society. After graduating from the University of Oxford, he started his career as a community worker in the London Borough of Newham, before joining McKinsey and Company, where he advised charities, companies and government on strategy and organisational development. He has co-founded a series of charities and initiatives including The Challenge and More in Common aimed at improving life chances and understanding. These programmes now reach 1 in 6 Britons in their lifetime.
· www.youthendowmentfund.org.uk · www.creativeprocess.info · www.oneplanetpodcast.org
Jon Yates is Executive Director of the Youth Endowment Fund, a £200 million charitable fund focused on integrating young people into society. After graduating from the University of Oxford, he started his career as a community worker in the London Borough of Newham, before joining McKinsey and Company, where he advised charities, companies and government on strategy and organisational development. He has co-founded a series of charities and initiatives including The Challenge and More in Common aimed at improving life chances and understanding. These programmes now reach 1 in 6 Britons in their lifetime.
· www.youthendowmentfund.org.uk · www.creativeprocess.info · www.oneplanetpodcast.org
“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
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
“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
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
“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
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
Dr. G. Samantha Rosenthalis an Associate Professor of History and Coordinator of the Public History Concentration at Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia. Rosenthal teaches courses in public history, women’s and gender studies, and general education. She is interested in environmental studies, working-class studies, LGBTQ, queer, and trans studies, community organizing, and scholar-activism. She is the author of Living Queer History, and Beyond Hawai’i.
· gsrosenthal.com
· https://gsrosenthal.youcanbook.me
· Living Queer History: uncpress.org/book/9781469665801/living-queer-history/
· www.creativeprocess.info
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
“To explore different worlds, essentially. That’s what literature has taught me. Reading has taught me how difficult it is to write well, to do you something other than the mundane or the expected, so all those things point to a kind of human creativity and a human capacity to both create and also to learn. To learn about life in different ways and to pass on those lessons to other people. One thing I think great teachers do is to embody what they talk about, the values that they profess, the things they feel are important in their everyday lives outside of the literature. So when I become involved in politics or a cause, it’s a reflection of what I've learned through any number of things including literature. Literature doesn’t stand alone. Literature is part of the world. That’s another thing I think is very important. As much as we should enjoy those moments when we’re alone reading a book and we're isolated and just in a meditative state, we should understand that literature is always about something else besides itself.”
David Palumbo-Liu is the Louise Hewlett Nixon Professor, and Professor of Comparative Literature, at Stanford University. He has written widely on culture, literature, human rights, and politics, both in his books and also in venues such as Truthout, The Guardian, Jacobin, The Nation, Al Jazeera, and others.
· www.palumbo-liu.com
Twitter: @palumboliu
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info
David Palumbo-Liu is the Louise Hewlett Nixon Professor, and Professor of Comparative Literature, at Stanford University. He has written widely on culture, literature, human rights, and politics, both in his books and also in venues such as Truthout, The Guardian, Jacobin, The Nation, Al Jazeera, and others.
· www.palumbo-liu.com
Twitter: @palumboliu
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info
“The political struggle is really hard today and I feel like we haven't been winning, but I think it's important not to think of this as either we win it, or there's catastrophe and that's the end. We win or lose, and there’s this big tidal wave that kills us all. That's not the way the climate crisis is going to play out. It’s going to be a long, slow, attritional crisis punctuated by forms of natural disaster that will decimate populations, but it's also going to be something that people will be impacted by for generations and that people will continue to mobilize around, so I think it's important to keep that in mind.”
Ashley Dawson is currently Professor of Postcolonial Studies in the English Department at the Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY), and at the College of Staten Island/CUNY. He currently works in the fields of environmental humanities and postcolonial ecocriticism. He is the author of three recent books relating to these fields: People’s Power (O/R, 2020), Extreme Cities (Verso, 2017) andExtinction (O/R, 2016). Other areas of interest of his include the experience and literature of migration, including movement from colonial and postcolonial nations to the former imperial center (Britain in particular), and from rural areas to mega-cities of the global South such as Lagos and Mumbai.
· ashleydawson.info
· www.centerforthehumanities.org/programming/climate-action-lab
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info
Ashley Dawson is currently Professor of Postcolonial Studies in the English Department at the Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY), and at the College of Staten Island/CUNY. He currently works in the fields of environmental humanities and postcolonial ecocriticism. He is the author of three recent books relating to these fields: People’s Power (O/R, 2020), Extreme Cities (Verso, 2017) andExtinction (O/R, 2016).
Other areas of interest of his include the experience and literature of migration, including movement from colonial and postcolonial nations to the former imperial center (Britain in particular), and from rural areas to mega-cities of the global South such as Lagos and Mumbai.
· ashleydawson.info
·
www.centerforthehumanities.org/programming/climate-action-lab
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info
“We're all part of a web like a dreamcatcher. Everybody knows a dreamcatcher and whatever you do that’s wrong will eventually come back and affect you because we’re all connected. What would we like people to learn about Native Americans? I was an educator for over 21 years, so for me it's probably overcoming fear from the outside and fear from the inside to know the outside, so there needs to be more understanding.”
“What really helped me as a Shinnacock person was traveling out to different nations in the country and Canada and talking with people who went to the same things. And where they're at in their historical cycle colonization cycle. Tribes that are culturally similar to ours, that's what really helped me out was actually visiting.”
The Shinnecock are a nation of Native Americans made up of 12 Algonquian-speaking tribes. This nation occupied the territory between Long Island and Connecticut, today their descendants live on a 400-acre reservation in Southampton, where they are officially called Shinnecock. They currently have over 1,200 enrolled members. Photo by Jeremy Dennis
· www.creativeprocess.info
The Shinnecock are a nation of Native Americans made up of 12 Algonquian-speaking tribes. This nation occupied the territory between Long Island and Connecticut, today their descendants live on a 400-acre reservation in Southampton and have over 1,200 enrolled members. Mia visited the Shinnecock reservation to do this interview with photographer and founder of Ma’s House BIPOC Art Studio Jeremy Dennis; beadwork artist and dancer Tohanash Tarrant; traditional singer, dancer, and artist Standing Buffalo (Shane Weeks); and artist and educator Denise Silva Dennis.
· www.jeremynative.com
· www.thunderbirddesigns.com
· bizhiki.com
· denisesilvadennis.com
· accessgenealogy.com/new-york/shinnecock-tribe.htm
· www.creativeprocess.info
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
“Usually we just see the soundbites and the news and then there's a new one or a new story, the politics that takes away from what these families are going. These people in these towns are just glossed over, looked over. And that's not the case in real life. They live with this trauma forever…What I hope the next generation takes is just to absorb everything from our generation and our parents’ generation. There are a lot of living generations right now. The longevity of people and the young families, it’s amazing. I had five generations of my family alive at one point in my life, and it was just the most amazing I've ever been a part of.” –JP Ouellette
Born out of Boston’s public housing system, JP Ouellette moved to Los Angeles after graduating film school. He has assisted creatives such as Richard Kelly, Michael Ohoven, Gary Fleder, and James Manos, Jr., before being hired to write the horror film “Captured” and launching his own creative shingle, Circa 1888, Inc. JP has since written a true war adaptation “Qaddafi's Point Guard” for a major studio, and an unannounced Biopic centered on the music industry. JP is currently producing the feature film “Little Brother” in New Mexico.
Dylan Matlock has been on the physical production side of over 50 film and television projects, including HBO's The Wire, Live Free or Die Hard, and Project X. He worked as an associate producer for the hit Comedy Central show "Review” and writer/producer on the theatrically-released horror feature Along Came the Devil. Since producing Mass, Dylan has produced the feature Little Brother, and Do Not Watch.
JP and Dylan produced Mass, which premiered at Sundance in 2021 and was then bought by Bleecker Street. The film is currently creating Oscar buzz for the 2022 Awards season.
· www.imdb.com/name/nm1965594/
· www.imdb.com/name/nm1837175/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1
· www.creativeprocess.info
Born out of Boston’s public housing system, JP Ouellette moved to Los Angeles after graduating film school. He has assisted creatives such as Richard Kelly, Michael Ohoven, Gary Fleder, and James Manos, Jr., before being hired to write the horror film “Captured” and launching his own creative shingle, Circa 1888, Inc. JP has since written a true war adaptation “Qaddafi's Point Guard” for a major studio, and an unannounced Biopic centered on the music industry. JP is currently producing the feature film “Little Brother” in New Mexico.
Dylan Matlock has been on the physical production side of over 50 film and television projects, including HBO's The Wire, Live Free or Die Hard, and Project X. He worked as an associate producer for the hit Comedy Central show "Review” and writer/producer on the theatrically-released horror feature Along Came the Devil. Since producing Mass, Dylan has produced the feature Little Brother, and Do Not Watch.
JP and Dylan produced Mass, which premiered at Sundance in 2021 and was then bought by Bleecker Street. The film is currently creating Oscar buzz for the 2022 Awards season.
· www.imdb.com/name/nm1965594/
· www.imdb.com/name/nm1837175/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1
· www.creativeprocess.info
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
“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
'There were very many times in the past when it was rational to give up all hope for the future - to assume that the nation would decay into a racial holocaust that never happened'. He regards Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu and former President Nelson Mandela as the leading lights whose contribution to the new South Africa was phenomenal.
In this interview George Ellis reflects on society, education, and cosmology. Dr. George Ellis is a South African theoretical physicist who is considered to be a world leader in relativity theory and cosmology. He has published over 500 scientific papers and several books including The Large scale Structure of Space Time, which he co-authored with Steven Hawking in 1973. He is an active Quaker and won the Templeton Prize in 2004 for his exceptional contribution to affirming life’s spiritual dimension. He is also a past President of the International Society for Science and Religion.
· math_research.uct.ac.za/~ellis/
· www.creativeprocess.info
In this interview George Ellis reflects on society, Apartheid, education, and cosmology. Dr. George Ellis is a South African theoretical physicist who is considered to be a world leader in relativity theory and cosmology. He has published over 500 scientific papers and several books including The Large scale Structure of Space Time, which he co-authored with Steven Hawking in 1973. He is an active Quaker and won the Templeton Prize in 2004 for his exceptional contribution to affirming life’s spiritual dimension. He is also a past President of the International Society for Science and Religion.
· math_research.uct.ac.za/~ellis/
· www.creativeprocess.info
· math_research.uct.ac.za/~ellis/
· www.creativeprocess.info
“I’m not just taking beautiful pictures. I’m collecting their voices, collecting their movement, collecting different aspects, and preserving this moment because they will not always be here. I don’t just see myself as a photographer, an artist. I also see myself as an archiver. Someone who is archiving as a researcher.”
Etinosa Yvonne is a self-taught documentary photographer and videographer born and raised in Nigeria. Her work focuses on the human condition and social injustice. She has received grants from Women Photograph, National Geographic in partnership with Lagos Photo and Art X and an award from the Royal Photographic Society for her project; It’s All In My Head. In 2020, she was one of six photographers selected the World Press Photo 6*6 Global talent in Africa.
· www.etinosayvonne.me
· www.creativeprocess.info
Grammy nominated songwriter Terry Radigan mixes her gritty Brooklyn girl sensibility with a deep respect for classic American roots, country and soul. Her solo releases have been oft played and well-received. She has had her songs covered by a wide variety of artists and her songs can be heard on big and small screens alike. She is also a member of the musical group Vickikristinabarcelona.
· www.terryradigan.com
· www.creativeprocess.info
“I started writing out of a desire to counter stereotypes of the roles that women traditionally played in crime fiction, in which case they were wicked. They used their bodies to do good boys to do bad things. Or they were virgins who couldn’t tie their shoes couldn’t tie their shoes without adult supervisions. Or they were victims, most often. And so I wanted a detective who was like the women that I knew who could solve their own problems, who didn’t need to be rescued, who could have a sex life that didn’t make her a bad person…”
Sara Paretsky is the author of nineteen books, including sixteen V.I. Warshawski novels. She was named 2011 Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America and is the winner of many awards, including the Cartier Diamond Dagger Award for lifetime achievement from the British Crime Writers' Association and the CWA Gold Dagger for BLACKLIST.
· www.saraparetsky.com
· www.creativeprocess.info
Sara Paretsky is the author of nineteen books, including sixteen V.I. Warshawski novels. She was named 2011 Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America and is the winner of many awards, including the Cartier Diamond Dagger Award for lifetime achievement from the British Crime Writers' Association and the CWA Gold Dagger for BLACKLIST.
· www.saraparetsky.com
· www.creativeprocess.info
“When I first came to Britain in 1978, I was one of the first people to leave China and come to the West. I wrote about the experience in Wild Swans. And for many years I had nightmares of the horrible things I saw and experienced. Writing Wild Swans made all these nightmares disappear. It was a wonderful process. The writing process turned trauma in memory. I am now able to talk to you about my book, my life, to read it without too much pain. I think this is a luxury people in China still don’t have.”
Jung Chang is the author of the best-selling books Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China (1991), which the Asian Wall Street Journal called the most read book about China; Mao: The Unknown Story (2005, with Jon Halliday), which was described by Time magazine as “an atom bomb of a book”; and Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China (2013), a New York Times “notable book”. Her latest book, Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister: Three Women at the Heart of Twentieth-Century China (2019), is regarded as “another triumph” (Evening Standard London).
Her books have been translated into more than 40 languages and sold more than 15 million copies worldwide. She has won many awards, including The NCR Book Award (UK, 1992, the forerunner of the Samuel Johnson Prize), UK Writers’ Guild Best Non-Fiction (1992), Fawcett Society Book Award (UK, 1992), Book of the Year (UK, 1993).
She has received a number of honorary doctorates from universities in the UK and USA (Buckingham, York, Warwick, Dundee, the Open University, and Bowdoin College, USA). She is an Honorary Fellow of SOAS University of London.
Jung Chang was born in Sichuan Province, China, in 1952. During the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) she worked as a peasant, a “barefoot” doctor, a steelworker, and an electrician before becoming an English-language student at Sichuan University. She left China for Britain in 1978 and obtained a PhD in Linguistics in 1982 at the University of York – the first person from Communist China to receive a doctorate from a British university.
· www.jungchang.net
· www.creativeprocess.info
Jung Chang is the author of the best-selling books Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China (1991), which the Asian Wall Street Journal called the most read book about China; Mao: The Unknown Story (2005, with Jon Halliday), which was described by Time magazine as “an atom bomb of a book”; and Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China (2013), a New York Times “notable book”. Her latest book, Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister: Three Women at the Heart of Twentieth-Century China (2019), is regarded as “another triumph” (Evening Standard London).
Her books have been translated into more than 40 languages and sold more than 15 million copies worldwide. She has won many awards, including The NCR Book Award (UK, 1992, the forerunner of the Samuel Johnson Prize), UK Writers’ Guild Best Non-Fiction (1992), Fawcett Society Book Award (UK, 1992), Book of the Year (UK, 1993).
She has received a number of honorary doctorates from universities in the UK and USA (Buckingham, York, Warwick, Dundee, the Open University, and Bowdoin College, USA). She is an Honorary Fellow of SOAS University of London.
Jung Chang was born in Sichuan Province, China, in 1952. During the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) she worked as a peasant, a “barefoot” doctor, a steelworker, and an electrician before becoming an English-language student at Sichuan University. She left China for Britain in 1978 and obtained a PhD in Linguistics in 1982 at the University of York – the first person from Communist China to receive a doctorate from a British university.
· www.jungchang.net
· www.creativeprocess.info
"They’re not human traits. They’re all shared traits because, of course, we all love. We all love our families, or not. We all grieve if somebody we love disappears or dies. A family dog, perhaps. A grandfather. We all feel loneliness, we all feel joy. We all really value our freedom. And so I think, if anything, looking into the eyes of the animal, even online, you see a person in there. There’s a someone in whatever the shape or the physical properties of that individual are. And that lesson is that I am you. You are me, only different. We are all the same in all the ways that count…Any living being teaches you– Look into my eyes. And there you are, the reflection of yourself."
Ingrid Newkirk is the founder and president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)—the largest animal rights organization in the world, with more than 6.5 million members and supporters worldwide.
She is the author of more than a dozen books that have been translated into several languages, including her latest, Animalkind: Remarkable Discoveries About Animals and Revolutionary New Ways to Show Them Compassion.
Newkirk, a former Washingtonian of the Year, has been featured for her work for animals in The New Yorker, Time magazine, People magazine, Forbes, the Financial Times, and numerous other publications. She has appeared on TV shows and podcasts all over the world, including on Real Time With Bill Maher, The Rich Roll Podcast, and Here's the Thing With Alec Baldwin. She is the subject of a BBC special and the HBO documentary I Am an Animal.
· www.www.peta.org
· www.ingridnewkirk.com
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info
“There are some recurrent threads in indigenous cultures across the world. One of those is–We don’t own the land. The land owns us. It’s not seen as property first. It’s seen as inalienable in that sense because you don’t own it in the first place. What we’re seeing now is a kind of movement where more and more indigenous people are living kind of amphibious lives. On the one hand, they have their indigenous cosmologies. And the other hand, in order to increase the likelihood that they can keep out big corporations, mining, logging, and so forth, their presence on the land needs to be bureaucratically recognised is to have recognition that “this is your property.” So in one sense many of these communities I find are both inside and outside private property regimes.”
Rob Nixon is a nonfiction writer and the Barron Family Professor in Environmental Humanities at Princeton University. He is the author of four books, most recently Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Nixon is currently writing a book on environmental martyrs and the defense of the great tropical forests.
He writes frequently for the New York Times. His writing has also appeared in The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, The Guardian, The Nation, London Review of Books, The Village Voice, Aeon and elsewhere.
Much of his writing engages environmental justice struggles in the global South. He has a particular interest in understanding the roles that artists can play in effecting change at the interface with social movements.
· english.princeton.edu/people/rob-nixon
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info
Rob Nixon is a nonfiction writer and the Barron Family Professor in Environmental Humanities at Princeton University. He is the author of four books, most recently Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Nixon is currently writing a book on environmental martyrs and the defense of the great tropical forests.
He writes frequently for the New York Times. His writing has also appeared in The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, The Guardian, The Nation, London Review of Books, The Village Voice, Aeon and elsewhere.
Much of his writing engages environmental justice struggles in the global South. He has a particular interest in understanding the roles that artists can play in effecting change at the interface with social movements.
· english.princeton.edu/people/rob-nixon
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info
Ingrid Newkirk is the founder and president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)—the largest animal rights organization in the world, with more than 6.5 million members and supporters worldwide.
She is the author of more than a dozen books that have been translated into several languages, including her latest, Animalkind: Remarkable Discoveries About Animals and Revolutionary New Ways to Show Them Compassion.
Newkirk, a former Washingtonian of the Year, has been featured for her work for animals in The New Yorker, Time magazine, People magazine, Forbes, the Financial Times, and numerous other publications. She has appeared on TV shows and podcasts all over the world, including on Real Time With Bill Maher, The Rich Roll Podcast, and Here's the Thing With Alec Baldwin. She is the subject of a BBC special and the HBO documentary I Am an Animal.
· www.peta.org
· www.ingridnewkirk.com
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info
“This museum, this institution has a long history and actually, the idea of a museum goes back to maybe 100 years ago when Civil War veterans wanted a monument recognizing the service and the sacrifice of African Americans during the war effort. It wasn't until the mid-late 80s when congressman John Lewis with some other colleagues started to bring forth the idea that the Smithsonian needed to have a presence to recognize the significance and contributions of African Americans to the history of this country.”
Dr. Dwandalyn Reece is a storyteller, ethnomusicologist, and museum professional. Reece studied American Studies and Music at Scripps College, American Culture and Museum Practice at the University of Michigan, and Musical Performance at New York University. Her research and projects include exhibitions at the Louis Armstrong House and Archives, the Brooklyn Historical Society, the New Jersey State Museum, and the Motown Historical Museum, as well as being the former senior program officer for the National Endowment for the Humanities. Reece is currently the Curator of Music and Performing Arts at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, where she co-curated the Smithsonian Year of Music and “Freedom Sounds: A Community Celebration.” Reece also curated one of the museum’s permanent exhibitions, Musical Crossroads, and received the Secretary’s Research Prize to do so in 2017. Reece is a community-driven artist, and she uses her experience and works in the community to inspire the work she collaboratively produces.
· nmaahc.si.edu
· music.si.edu/dr-dwandalyn-reece
· www.creativeprocess.info
Dr. Dwandalyn Reece is a storyteller, ethnomusicologist, and museum professional. Reece studied American Studies and Music at Scripps College, American Culture and Museum Practice at the University of Michigan, and Musical Performance at New York University. Her research and projects include exhibitions at the Louis Armstrong House and Archives, the Brooklyn Historical Society, the New Jersey State Museum, and the Motown Historical Museum, as well as being the former senior program officer for the National Endowment for the Humanities. Reece is currently the Curator of Music and Performing Arts at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, where she co-curated the Smithsonian Year of Music and “Freedom Sounds: A Community Celebration.” Reece also curated one of the museum’s permanent exhibitions, Musical Crossroads, and received the Secretary’s Research Prize to do so in 2017. Reece is a community-driven artist, and she uses her experience and works in the community to inspire the work she collaboratively produces.
· https://nmaahc.si.edu
· https://music.si.edu/dr-dwandalyn-reece
· www.creativeprocess.info
Photo credit: AlanKarchmer
“I do want to point out–many writers don’t want to admit to it or say it–it’s just words on a page until everybody else makes it come alive. You had Idris Elba and Wood Harris acting in that scene. I had Joe Chappelle shooting it. He was the director. All the craftsmen and artists that worked on that made it what it is. And that’s actually what I like about it. It’s why I continue to work in television. I like working with all these artists. I like getting together with these people and making something together. It’s not just the writing. It’s everything that everybody contributes to make it what it is.”
George Pelecanos is an award-winning author, essayist, screenwriter and producer from Washington, D.C. He has written over 20 novels and four series in the crime and detective fiction genre. He is also a recipient of the Los Angeles Times Book prize, the Raymond Chandler award, the Hammett Prize, the Barry Award, the Gumshoe Award, and the Grand Prix Du Roman Noir award. Pelecanos worked as a screenwriter for HBO’s The Wire, where his writing earned him an Emmy nomination as well as an Edgar and Writers Guild of America Award. Other shows he has written and/or produced for are The Pacific, The Deuce, and Treme.
· www.george-pelecanos.com
· www.creativeprocess.info
George Pelecanos is an award-winning author, essayist, screenwriter and producer from Washington, D.C. He has written over 20 novels and four series in the crime and detective fiction genre. He is also a recipient of the Los Angeles Times Book prize, the Raymond Chandler award, the Hammett Prize, the Barry Award, the Gumshoe Award, and the Grand Prix Du Roman Noir award. Pelecanos worked as a screenwriter for HBO’s The Wire, where his writing earned him an Emmy nomination as well as an Edgar and Writers Guild of America Award. Other shows he has written and/or produced for are The Pacific, The Deuce, and Treme.
· www.george-pelecanos.com
· www.creativeprocess.info
"I have a strong feeling that at the moment, especially in the United States, people are much more interested in the culture and backgrounds of minorities than they are in the cultures where those minorities originally came from. I think it’s a sign of people drawing inwards more and more. That goes for the Right Wing populists and White Supremacists just as much. They’re also drawing the wagons around what they see as their identity, and I think that’s exactly not the way to go…I can only emphasize that in terms of education is that everything should be fostered to open people’s minds. Open minds to the past, to other cultures and not to have minds closed by limiting ourselves more and more to the circumstances of our birth.”
Ian Buruma is the author of many books, including A Tokyo Romance, The Churchill Complex,Their Promised Land, Year Zero, The China Lover, Murder in Amsterdam, Occidentalism and God’s Dust. He teaches at Bard College and is a columnist for Project Syndicate and contributor to The New Yorker, The New York Times, and other publications. He was awarded the 2008 Erasmus Prize for making "an especially important contribution to European culture" and was voted one of the Top 100 Public Intellectuals by the Foreign Policy magazine.
· www.bard.edu/faculty/details/?id=153
· www.creativeprocess.info
Ian Buruma is the author of many books, including A Tokyo Romance, The Churchill Complex,Their Promised Land, Year Zero, The China Lover, Murder in Amsterdam, Occidentalism and God’s Dust. He teaches at Bard College and is a columnist for Project Syndicate and contributor to The New Yorker,
The New York Times, and other publications. He was awarded the 2008 Erasmus Prize for making "an especially important contribution to European culture" and was voted one of the Top 100 Public Intellectuals
by the Foreign Policy magazine.
· www.bard.edu/faculty/details/?id=153
· www.creativeprocess.info
“You can criticize many things in the United States, but there are taboos and the number one taboo is that you cannot criticize Capitalism. That is equated with disloyalty…This story about Capitalism being wonderful. This story is fading. You can’t do that anymore. The Right Wing cannot rally its troops around Capitalism. That’s why it doesn’t do it anymore. It rallies the troops around being hateful towards immigrants. It rallies the troops around “fake elections”, around the right to buy a gun, around White Supremacists. Those issues can get some support, but “Let’s get together for Capitalism!” That is bad. They can’t do anything with that. They have to sneak the Capitalism in behind those other issues because otherwise, they have no mass political support.”
Richard D. Wolff is Founder of Democracy at Work and host of the show Economic Update. Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst where he taught economics from 1973 to 2008. He is currently a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University, New York City. Earlier he taught economics at Yale University (1967-1969) and at the City College of the City University of New York (1969-1973). In 1994, he was a Visiting Professor of Economics at the University of Paris (France), I (Sorbonne). Wolff was also regular lecturer at the Brecht Forum in New York City. He is the author of The Sickness is the System: When Capitalism Fails to Save Us from Pandemics or Itself.
· www.rdwolff.com
· www.democracyatwork.info
· www.creativeprocess.info
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
Richard D. Wolff is Founder of Democracy at Work and host of the show Economic Update. Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst where he taught economics from 1973 to 2008. He is currently a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University, New York City. Earlier he taught economics at Yale University (1967-1969) and at the City College of the City University of New York (1969-1973). In 1994, he was a Visiting Professor of Economics at the University of Paris (France), I (Sorbonne). Wolff was also regular lecturer at the Brecht Forum in New York City. He is the author of The Sickness is the System: When Capitalism Fails to Save Us from Pandemics or Itself.
· www.rdwolff.com
· www.democracyatwork.info
· www.creativeprocess.info
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
“The good thing about our species is that we create our own environment. What we’ve been doing so far is creating an environment where we’re much more successful. We live a lot longer, we’re much healthier than we have been in the past. There are many, many more of us, so we’re very successful as a species and that’s been at the expense of other ecosystems, but what’s happened is we are now dominating the planet to a dangerous degree, but we are also self-aware. We’re capable of understanding that.”
Gaia Vince is a science writer and broadcaster interested in the interplay between humans and the planetary environment. She has held senior editorial posts at Nature and New Scientist, and her writing has featured in newspapers and magazines including the Guardian, The Times and Scientific American. She also writes and presents science programmes for radio and television. Her research takes her across the world: she has visited more than 60 countries, lived in three and is currently based in London. In 2015, she became the first woman to win the Royal Society Science Book of the Year Prize solo for her debut, Adventures in the Anthropocene: A Journey to the Heart of the Planet We Made. She is author of Transcendence: How Humans Evolved Through Fire, Language, Beauty & Time.
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info
Gaia Vince is a science writer and broadcaster interested in the interplay between humans and the planetary environment. She has held senior editorial posts at Nature and New Scientist, and her writing has featured in newspapers and magazines including the Guardian, The Times and Scientific American. She also writes and presents science programmes for radio and television. Her research takes her across the world: she has visited more than 60 countries, lived in three and is currently based in London. In 2015, she became the first woman to win the Royal Society Science Book of the Year Prize solo for her debut, Adventures in the Anthropocene: A Journey to the Heart of the Planet We Made. She is author of Transcendence: How Humans Evolved Through Fire, Language, Beauty & Time.
· www.wanderinggaia.com
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info
"I think any time we are closer to the earth, we can feel the struggles of other human beings as well. I encourage young women to find whatever it is they are passionate about and invest their entire soul in it and go for it! Because you’ll be happy if you’re passionate about your work." –Mary Edna Fraser
"Southern Africa, south of the Sahara, they’re expecting within this century 200 million climate refugees. Where are they going to go? Who wants those refugees. We have the same thing happening in Central America. Where are they going to go? All over the world, we’re seeing because of climate change we’re seeing vast changes affecting all aspects of society. It’s very worrisome and that’s something that we’ve not been able to face politically. We need to do that.” – Orrin H. Pilkey
Duke University Professor Emeritus Orrin H. Pilkey is one of the rare academics who engages in public advocacy about science-related issues. His collaborator, Mary Edna Fraser, is an artist who highlights environmental concerns in large silk batiks and oils. They are the co-authors of A Celebration of the World’s Barrier Islands and Global Climate Change: A Primer. Their traveling exhibits, “Our Expanding Oceans” and “Shifting East Coast Barrier Islands” creatively merge science and art.
· www.maryedna.com
· www.deleteapathy.com
· https://sites.nicholas.duke.edu/orrinpilkey
· www.creativeprocess.info
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
Duke University Professor Emeritus Orrin H. Pilkey is one of the rare academics who engages in public advocacy about science-related issues. His collaborator, Mary Edna Fraser, is an artist who highlights environmental concerns in large silk batiks and oils. They are the co-authors of A Celebration of the World’s Barrier Islands and Global Climate Change: A Primer. Their traveling exhibits, “Our Expanding Oceans” and “Shifting East Coast Barrier Islands” creatively merge science and art.
· www.maryedna.com
· www.deleteapathy.com
· https://sites.nicholas.duke.edu/orrinpilkey
· www.creativeprocess.info
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
Wetlands naturally absorb twice the amount of carbon than all the world’s forests combined.
“I think everybody at school learns about the water cycle. That rings a bell with everybody. Maybe this is a good hook to show the place of wetlands in capturing and purifying and the story of water. And then in turn how this links to what we’re seeing every year: droughts, floods, fires, heat waves which are devastating and life-threatening. I think this may be one of the easiest routes in educating people, connecting wetlands with water and the direct impact of that.”
Jane Madgwick is an ecologist and author with 30 years of experience of working internationally on the science, policy and practice of wetlands and water management. Since 2004, she has been CEO of Wetlands International, leading a network of 20 offices operating in over 100 countries. Wetlands International works to mobilise the conservation and restoration of wetlands, connecting science, policies and practices for biodiversity, resilient communities and reduced climate risks.
· www.wetlands.org
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info
Jane Madgwick is an ecologist and author with 30 years of experience of working internationally on the science, policy and practice of wetlands and water management. Since 2004, she has been CEO of Wetlands International, leading a network of 20 offices operating in over 100 countries. Wetlands International works to mobilise the conservation and restoration of wetlands, connecting science, policies and practices for biodiversity, resilient communities and reduced climate risks.
· www.wetlands.org
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info
Photo by Pieter van Eijk
“There’s a wide range of reasons that we really need to understand the root causes of a lot of our social ills and environmental ills. I think we need to continue to come back to this question of how we heal this imposed divide between the natural world and human social constructs. And that healing is key to how we’re going to really unwind the perilous moment that we face right now. How do we reconnect with the natural world? Not just intellectually, but in a very embodied way.”
Osprey Orielle Lake is the Founder and Executive Director of the Women's Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN) International dedicated to accelerating a global women’s climate justice movement. She works nationally and internationally with grassroots and Indigenous leaders, policy-makers and scientists to promote climate justice, resilient communities, and a just transition to a decentralized, democratized energy future. She serves on the Executive Committee for the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature and Osprey is the Co-Director of the Indigenous Women's Divestment Delegations, and actively leads WECAN’s advocacy, policy and campaign work in areas such as Women for Forests, Divestment and Just Transition, Indigenous Rights, a Feminist Agenda for a Green New Deal, and UN Forums. Osprey is the author of the award-winning book,"Uprisings for the Earth: Reconnecting Culture with Nature."
· Global Women's Assembly for Climate Justice: Solutions from the Frontlines and the Protection and Defense of Human Rights and Nature https://www.wecaninternational.org/womens-assembly
· WECAN COP26 Analysis Blog: Despite Government Failures at COP26, Peoples' Movements Continue Rising to Transform our World - https://www.wecaninternational.org/post/despite-government-failures-at-cop26-peoples-movements-continue-rising-to-transform-our-world
· WECAN Programs: https://www.wecaninternational.org/our-work
- WECAN Women Speak Storytelling Database: https://womenspeak.wecaninternational.org/
· Join the WECAN Network: https://www.wecaninternational.org/join-the-network
· WECAN Social Media Handles:
Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/WECAN.Intl/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/WECAN_INTL
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wecan_intl/
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info
Osprey Orielle Lake is the Founder and Executive Director of the Women's Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN) International dedicated to accelerating a global women’s climate justice movement. She works nationally and internationally with grassroots and Indigenous leaders, policy-makers and scientists to promote climate justice, resilient communities, and a just transition to a decentralized, democratized energy future. She serves on the Executive Committee for the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature and Osprey is the Co-Director of the Indigenous Women's Divestment Delegations, and actively leads WECAN’s advocacy, policy and campaign work in areas such as Women for Forests, Divestment and Just Transition, Indigenous Rights, a Feminist Agenda for a Green New Deal, and UN Forums. Osprey is the author of the award-winning book,"Uprisings for the Earth: Reconnecting Culture with Nature."
· Global Women's Assembly for Climate Justice: Solutions from the Frontlines and the Protection and Defense of Human Rights and Nature https://www.wecaninternational.org/womens-assembly
· WECAN COP26 Analysis Blog: Despite Government Failures at COP26, Peoples' Movements Continue Rising to Transform our World - https://www.wecaninternational.org/post/despite-government-failures-at-cop26-peoples-movements-continue-rising-to-transform-our-world
· WECAN Programs: https://www.wecaninternational.org/our-work
- WECAN Women Speak Storytelling Database: https://womenspeak.wecaninternational.org/
· Join the WECAN Network: https://www.wecaninternational.org/join-the-network
· WECAN Social Media Handles:
Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/WECAN.Intl/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/WECAN_INTL
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wecan_intl/
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info
FX Harsono, one of Indonesia’s most revered contemporary artists, has been a central figure of the Indonesian art scene for over 40 years. In 1975, he was among a group of young artists who founded Indonesia’s Gerakan Seni Rupa Baru (New Art Movement), which emphasized an experimental, conceptual approach, the use of everyday materials, and engagement with social and political issues. Over the course of recent decades that have seen enormous transformations in Indonesia, Harsono has continuously explored the role of the artist in society, in particular his relationship to history. During Indonesia’s dictatorial Suharto regime (1967-98), his installation and performance works were powerfully eloquent acts of protest against an oppressive state apparatus. The fall of the regime in 1998, which triggered rioting and widespread violence, mainly against Indonesia’s ethnic Chinese minority, prompted an introspective turn in Harsono’s artistic practice. He embarked on an ongoing investigation of his own family history and the position of minorities in society, especially his own Chinese-Indonesian community. The recovery of buried or repressed histories, cultures, and identities – and the part that the artist can play in this process – have remained a significant preoccupation. Through looking into his own past, Harsono has touched on concerns that resonate globally, foregrounding fundamental issues that are central to the formation of group and personal identities in our rapidly changing world.
www.creativeprocess.info
FX Harsono, one of Indonesia’s most revered contemporary artists, has been a central figure of the Indonesian art scene for over 40 years. In 1975, he was among a group of young artists who founded Indonesia’s Gerakan Seni Rupa Baru (New Art Movement), which emphasized an experimental, conceptual approach, the use of everyday materials, and engagement with social and political issues. Over the course of recent decades that have seen enormous transformations in Indonesia, Harsono has continuously explored the role of the artist in society, in particular his relationship to history. During Indonesia’s dictatorial Suharto regime (1967-98), his installation and performance works were powerfully eloquent acts of protest against an oppressive state apparatus. The fall of the regime in 1998, which triggered rioting and widespread violence, mainly against Indonesia’s ethnic Chinese minority, prompted an introspective turn in Harsono’s artistic practice. He embarked on an ongoing investigation of his own family history and the position of minorities in society, especially his own Chinese-Indonesian community. The recovery of buried or repressed histories, cultures, and identities – and the part that the artist can play in this process – have remained a significant preoccupation. Through looking into his own past, Harsono has touched on concerns that resonate globally, foregrounding fundamental issues that are central to the formation of group and personal identities in our rapidly changing world.
www.creativeprocess.info
Latest Spirituality & Mindfulness interview from The Creative Process’ MAIN CHANNEL. To listen to more of our interviews across the arts and other disciplines, visit tinyurl.com/thecreativepod, tinyurl.com/thecreativespotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
This SOCIAL JUSTICE & ACTIVISM podcast focuses on interviews about social justice & activism, but you can find hundreds more conversations across the arts, culture, society & the environment on our main channel. We hope you’ll check it out!
For more than 30 years, Master Shi Heng Yi has been studying and practicing the interaction between mind and body. His strength is the ability to smoothly combine this knowledge with physical exercises and to practice Martial art –Kung Fu and Qi Gong. He has an academic background but he prefers to live at the Shaolin Temple Europe, Monastery located in Otterberg, Germany. Since 2010 he has been taking care of the settlement and he personifies sustainable development and spreading Shaolin culture and philosophy.
· www.shihengyi.online
· www.shaolintemple.eu
· www.creativeprocess.info
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
David Palumbo-Liu is the Louise Hewlett Nixon Professor, and Professor of Comparative Literature, at Stanford University. Founding editor of the e-journal, Occasion: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities, he writes for Truthout‘s Public Intellectual Project, and his work has also appeared in The Washington Post, The Nation, The Guardian, Jacobin, Salon, Al Jazeera, The Hill, Buzzfeed, Vox, and other venues.
www.creativeprocess.info
David Palumbo-Liu is the Louise Hewlett Nixon Professor, and Professor of Comparative Literature, at Stanford University. Founding editor of the e-journal, Occasion: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities, he writes for Truthout‘s Public Intellectual Project, and his work has also appeared in The Washington Post, The Nation, The Guardian, Jacobin, Salon, Al Jazeera, The Hill, Buzzfeed, Vox, and other venues.
www.creativeprocess.info
“It’s true. In Haiti, to a large degree more women were involved in the Revolution, in the war, in the fighting for the nation for the very simple reason that women had more opportunities. After a certain time, we became invisible. Once you’re in your 60’s, you are missing a few front teeth, in fact, some of the women used to take a stone and break up their front teeth so that they wouldn’t be noticed anymore. ‘That’s just an old lady with no front teeth. Okay, she goes about her business, nobody looks at her. She can do nothing.’And those were the fighters–the greatest fighters of our revolution.”
Professor Bayyinah Bello is a Afrodescendant Ourstorian, Educator, Writer and Humanitarian. With over 50 years of wisdom and extensive research, Professor Bello specializes in Ayitian Ourstory and linguistics.
She has taught in many parts of Africa, Ayiti, and America from the primary to the university level, including the State University of Haiti. She is the founder of Fondation Marie-Claire Heureuse Félicité Bonheur Dessalines, popularly known as FONDASYON FELICITEE (FF), named after the Empress consort of Ayiti and wife of the revolutionary leader and founder of Ayiti (Hayti, Empire of Freedom), Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Emperor 1st of Hayti. As an author she publishes in Ayitian, English and French. Her latest work, Sheroes of the Haitian Revolution, highlights the lives of ten women in the Ayitian Ourstory who played a significant role in the nation’s journey to freedom. Professor Bello is based in Ayiti and serves as advisor to key eldership councils.
· www.marugekundi.org/SHEROES · www.oneplanetpodcast.org · www.creativeprocess.info
Song credit: Jean Amédé Caze
Professor Bayyinah Bello is a Afrodescendant Ourstorian, Educator, Writer and Humanitarian. With over 50 years of wisdom and extensive research, Professor Bello specializes in Ayitian Ourstory and linguistics.
She has taught in many parts of Africa, Ayiti, and America from the primary to the university level, including the State University of Haiti. She is the founder of Fondation Marie-Claire Heureuse Félicité Bonheur Dessalines, popularly known as FONDASYON FELICITEE (FF), named after the Empress consort of Ayiti and wife of the revolutionary leader and founder of Ayiti (Hayti, Empire of Freedom), Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Emperor 1st of Hayti. As an author she publishes in Ayitian, English and French. Her latest work, Sheroes of the Haitian Revolution, highlights the lives of ten women in the Ayitian Ourstory who played a significant role in the nation’s journey to freedom. Professor Bello is based in Ayiti and serves as advisor to key eldership councils.
· www.marugekundi.org/SHEROES · www.oneplanetpodcast.org · www.creativeprocess.info
Song credit: Jean Amédé Caze
“We are always students. We are students of the earth. We need to do better and we can do better because the capacity of the human spirit is quite expansive and we owe it to future generations to do the best we can do while we can…It’s about who is at the table or rather what is the table, meaning what are the terms of the debate. Setting the terms of the debate, but how do we even know what the terms of the debate are, who is being included, who is being heeded, and part of that is, therefore, a decolonizing of knowledge and power structures because it’s centrally or fundamentally a justice issue.”
Dr. Farhana Sultana is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and the Environment at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs of Syracuse University, where she is also the Research Director for Environmental Collaboration and Conflicts at the Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflicts and Collaboration (PARCC).
Dr. Sultana is an internationally recognized interdisciplinary scholar of political ecology, water governance, post‐colonial development, social and environmental justice, climate change, and feminism. Her research and scholar-activism draw from her experiences of having lived and worked on three continents as well as from her backgrounds in the natural sciences, social sciences, and policy experience.
Prior to joining Syracuse, she taught at King’s College London and worked at United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Author of several dozen publications, her recent books are “The Right to Water: Politics, Governance and Social Struggles” (2012), “Eating, Drinking: Surviving” (2016) and “Water Politics: Governance, Justice, and the Right to Water” (2020). Dr. Sultana graduated Cum Laude from Princeton University (in Geosciences and Environmental Studies) and obtained her Masters and PhD (in Geography) from the University of Minnesota, where she was a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellow.
She was awarded the Glenda Laws Award from the American Association of Geographers for “outstanding contributions to geographic research on social issues” in 2019.
· www.farhanasultana.com
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info
Dr. Farhana Sultana is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and the Environment at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs of Syracuse University, where she is also the Research Director for Environmental Collaboration and Conflicts at the Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflicts and Collaboration (PARCC).
Dr. Sultana is an internationally recognized interdisciplinary scholar of political ecology, water governance, post‐colonial development, social and environmental justice, climate change, and feminism. Her research and scholar-activism draw from her experiences of having lived and worked on three continents as well as from her backgrounds in the natural sciences, social sciences, and policy experience.
Prior to joining Syracuse, she taught at King’s College London and worked at United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Author of several dozen publications, her recent books are “The Right to Water: Politics, Governance and Social Struggles” (2012), “Eating, Drinking: Surviving” (2016) and “Water Politics: Governance, Justice, and the Right to Water” (2020). Dr. Sultana graduated Cum Laude from Princeton University (in Geosciences and Environmental Studies) and obtained her Masters and PhD (in Geography) from the University of Minnesota, where she was a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellow.
· www.farhanasultana.com
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info
“I just want to make the poems like a living being…There are moments that I’m not at the desk, but I’m living life. And living life is actually what leads to writing. You have to have experiences to write about. Whether or not you are aware of those experiences as you are writing them down because if you’re doing music first, maybe you’re not aware of what you’re writing. And yet, those experiences are what come to fruition in your writing. You become aware. Oh, I did come on that roller coaster that time that I haven’t thought about in twenty years. Oh I did make love to that cute person that I haven’t thought about in ten years, but you’ve got to make love, you’ve got to get on roller coasters, you’ve got to get your heart broken. You’ve got to dance. You gotta get out and do things and that, too, is a part of writing. You have to trust you’re a writer by identity. And if you can trust that you’re a writer by identity, then you don’t have to be at a desk.”
Jericho Brown is author of the The Tradition (Copper Canyon 2019), for which he won the Pulitzer Prize. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, and the National Endowment for the Arts, and he is the winner of the Whiting Award. Brown’s first book, Please (New Issues 2008), won the American Book Award. His second book, The New Testament (Copper Canyon 2014), won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. His third collection, The Tradition won the Paterson Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. His poems have appeared in The Bennington Review, Buzzfeed, Fence, jubilat, The New Republic, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, TIME magazine, and several volumes of The Best American Poetry. He is the director of the Creative Writing Program and a professor at Emory University.
· www.jerichobrown.com
· www.creativeprocess.info
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
Jericho Brown is author of the The Tradition (Copper Canyon 2019), for which he won the Pulitzer Prize. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, and the National Endowment for the Arts, and he is the winner of the Whiting Award. Brown’s first book, Please (New Issues 2008), won the American Book Award. His second book, The New Testament (Copper Canyon 2014), won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. His third collection, The Tradition won the Paterson Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. His poems have appeared in The Bennington Review, Buzzfeed, Fence, jubilat, The New Republic, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, TIME magazine, and several volumes of The Best American Poetry. He is the director of the Creative Writing Program and a professor at Emory University.
· www.jerichobrown.com
· www.creativeprocess.info
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
Latest ARTS interview from The Creative Process’ MAIN CHANNEL. To listen to more of our interviews across the arts, visit tinyurl.com/thecreativepod, tinyurl.com/thecreativespotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. This SOCIAL JUSTICE & ACTIVISM podcast focuses on interviews about social justice & activism, but you can find hundreds more conversations across the arts, culture, society & the environment on our main channel. We hope you’ll check it out!
Before become a full-time writer & producer, Amy Aniobi worked in non-profits and these experiences found their way into Issa Rae's role in HBO's Insecure.
“Literally during the last week of production, we kept having this conversation. We are part of a cultural moment and we know we are, which is a very out of body experience… Any iconic black show, did they know? Because a lot of those when you look back at their history they were one the bubble, and I always think about Girlfriends and Living Single––did they know that people would still be talking about them?”
Amy Aniobi is a writer, director and Executive Producer on HBO’s Emmy-nominated comedy, “Insecure,” starring Issa Rae. “Insecure” will premiere its fifth and final season on October 24th with Aniobi behind the camera as director of the seventh episode (#507) to be broadcast on December 5th. She also served as showrunner/head writer/EP for season one of the HBO stand-up special “2 Dope Queens.” Under her new production shingle “SuperSpecial” and overall deal with HBO, Aniobi already is in development on several projects, as well as two features set up at Universal. Amy recently directed the award-winning short film, "Honeymoon," which explores a modern-day Nigerian couple's arranged marriage. She also co-created, co-directed and starred in the web series, “Lisa and Amy Are Black,” created the web series, “The Slutty Years” and wrote for both seasons of “Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl.” Amy is Nigerian, hails from North Texas, graduated from Stanford University and UCLA, and has lived both in the US (New York, the Bay Area) and abroad (France, Morocco).
· amyaniobi.com
· www.creativeprocess.info
(Photo Credit: Merie W. Wallace/HBO)
“One of the things that is dying is our planet. We hear these sirens every single day. We’re being warned daily by experts and concerned people how vast that squandering is going. It’s a case of urgency and it’s astounding and a very sad, a very pathetic comment on modern life that most people are ignoring those signs. As a poet, it seems to me that one of the tasks that the poet takes on, it’s a vocation that’s born with it, it’s this consciousness, this serving as witness.”
Xicana activist, editor, poet, novelist, and artist Ana Castillo, was born and raised in Chicago. She is known for coining the term “xicanisma” which is defined in her book the Massacre of the Dreamers as, “a sociopolitical movement in the United States that analyzes the historical, cultural, spiritual, educational, and economic intersection of Mexican American women that identify as Chicana.” The term cross bred Chicana feminism, which came to include the indigenous ancestry of Mexican Americans, unifying us with our sisters on the other side of the border.
· www.anacastillo.net
· www.creativeprocess.info
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
Xicana activist, editor, poet, novelist, and artist Ana Castillo, was born and raised in Chicago. She is known for coining the term “xicanisma” which is defined in her book the Massacre of the Dreamers as, “a sociopolitical movement in the United States that analyzes the historical, cultural, spiritual, educational, and economic intersection of Mexican American women that identify as Chicana.” The term cross bred Chicana feminism, which came to include the indigenous ancestry of Mexican Americans, unifying us with our sisters on the other side of the border.
· www.anacastillo.net
· www.creativeprocess.info
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
"The idea of writing memoir is about listening carefully. The way to find a story or, at least the story that needs to be told is that moment that you’re writing is the emerges from a deep kind of inner listening and finding the memories that are charged that don’t want to leave that have a certain kind of energy to them and, if you listen to them, and you allow them to be born in the writing, you discover your own story because your story is basically made up of all the memories that continue to hold the charge for you. All the memories that are lodged in your mind that you’ve secreted away and when you can excavate that story and you can write it down, then you can make sense of it and you can understand why you’re living the way you’re living and why you feel the way you feel. And you can also decide to to release those memories so that you can have new memories that can define and can shape your life."
Writer and producer Rebecca Walker has contributed to the global conversation about race, gender, power, and the evolution of the human family for three decades. Author and editor of seven bestselling books on multiracial identity, Black Cool and ambivalent motherhood, she has co-founded the Third Wave Fund, which makes grants to womxn and transgender youth working for social justice. For her efforts, she has been named by Time as one of the most influential leaders of her generation.
· www.rebeccawalker.com
· www.creativeprocess.info
Writer and producer Rebecca Walker has contributed to the global conversation about race, gender, power, and the evolution of the human family for three decades. Author and editor of seven bestselling books on multiracial identity, Black Cool and ambivalent motherhood, she has co-founded the Third Wave Fund, which makes grants to womxn and transgender youth working for social justice. For her efforts, she has been named by Time as one of the most influential leaders of her generation.
· www.rebeccawalker.com
· www.creativeprocess.info
INSTAGRAM @creativeprocesspodcast
www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
“I went to the Amazon and I got a canoe and I started rowing into the forest. It was absolutely like going back into the 17th century! I went around for six months on my own and that was fantastic because in this part of the Colombian rainforest there were absolutely no roads, no towns, no electricity, no flowing water. You are with the indigenous group. They are all still in their loincloths. They speak different languages. I went through about eight different ethnic groups. They all spoke different languages. I couldn’t understand what they said. They couldn’t understand what I said, but we got along well.”
Martin Von Hildebrand has dedicated the last five decades strengthening indigenous communities in the Colombian Amazon. During this time he obtained the recognition of their rights in the National Constitution, including the collective ownership of their land and the development of their governments. They now own 26 million hectares of continuous rain forest, their rights have been recognized, and they have set up many of their governments.
Currently, Martin, along with NGOs, indigenous organizations, civil society, governments, and private enterprises, is coordinating the protection of the largest stretch of rainforests on the planet (the northern part of the Amazon between the Andes and the Atlantic, 260 million hectares).
He is an ethnologist, with a doctorate from the University of Paris VII, founder, and the current president of the Gaia Amazonas Foundation. He has been awarded a dozen international awards, such as The Right Livelihood Award, the Talberg Award, The Golden Arc award, the Special Irish presidential Award for Irish Abroad, and the Colombian National Environmental Award.
Gaia Amazonas Foundation
· gaiaamazonas.org
Alianza Noramazónica website
· alianzanoramazonica.org
RAISG website
· amazoniasocioambiental.org/es/
Why is the Amazonia important?/¿Porque la Amazonia es tan importante?
· youtube.com/watch?v=_mO1bf8iTMI
Netflix: "El Sendero de la Anaconda"
Flying rivers/Los rios voladores en la Amazonia. El Corredor Andes Amazonas Atlantico
bbc.com/mundo/noticias-41038097#:~:text=Son%20%22r%C3%ADos%20voladores%22.,m%C3%A1s%20agua%20que%20el%20Amazonas
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info
Martin Von Hildebrand has dedicated the last five decades strengthening indigenous communities in the Colombian Amazon. During this time he obtained the recognition of their rights in the National Constitution, including the collective ownership of their land and the development of their governments. They now own 26 million hectares of continuous rain forest, their rights have been recognized, and they have set up many of their governments.
Currently, Martin, along with NGOs, indigenous organizations, civil society, governments, and private enterprises, is coordinating the protection of the largest stretch of rainforests on the planet (the northern part of the Amazon between the Andes and the Atlantic, 260 million hectares).
He is an ethnologist, with a doctorate from the University of Paris VII, founder, and the current president of the Gaia Amazonas Foundation. He has been awarded a dozen international awards, such as The Right Livelihood Award, the Talberg Award, The Golden Arc award, the Special Irish presidential Award for Irish Abroad, and the Colombian National Environmental Award.
Gaia Amazonas Foundation
· gaiaamazonas.org
Alianza Noramazónica website.
· alianzanoramazonica.org
RAISG website
· amazoniasocioambiental.org/es/
Why is the Amazonia important?/¿Porque la Amazonia es tan importante?
· youtube.com/watch?v=_mO1bf8iTMI
Netflix: "El Sendero de la Anaconda"
Flying rivers/Los rios voladores en la Amazonia. El Corredor Andes Amazonas Atlantico
· bbc.com/mundo/noticias-41038097#:~:text=Son%20%22r%C3%ADos%20voladores%22.,m%C3%A1s%20agua%20que%20el%20Amazonas
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info
“We’re not waiting for the disasters to happen. They have happened. They are happening, and the disasters aren’t natural. They involve climate, but the disasters are very much made by the conditions of capitalist accumulation. We are not going to be able to grapple with the challenges of planetary crisis with the thinking that created planetary crisis.”
Jason W. Moore is an environmental historian, historical geographer, and professor of sociology at Binghamton University. He is author or editor, most recently, of Capitalism in the Web of Life, Anthropocene or Capitalocene? Nature, History, and the Crisis of Capitalism, and, with Raj Patel, A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things. His books and essays on environmental history, capitalism, and social theory have been widely recognized. He also coordinates the World-Ecology Research Network.
· jasonwmoore.com
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org· www.creativeprocess.info
Jason W. Moore is an environmental historian, historical geographer, and professor of sociology at Binghamton University. He is author or editor, most recently, of Capitalism in the Web of Life, Anthropocene or Capitalocene? Nature, History, and the Crisis of Capitalism, and, with Raj Patel, A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things. His books and essays on environmental history, capitalism, and social theory have been widely recognized. He also coordinates the World-Ecology Research Network.
· jasonwmoore.com
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org· www.creativeprocess.info
“In 2003, the Pentagon commissioned a report titled something like An Abrupt Climate Scenario. They asked some independent researchers to look at what would happen in a worse case scenario. They found that the United States and Australia. They said that they would have to put up defensive fortresses ‘to stop unwanted starving immigrants’…”
Todd Miller is an author and independent journalist. He has researched and written about border issues for more than 15 years, the last eight as an independent journalist and writer. He resides in Tucson, Arizona, but also has spent many years living and working in Oaxaca, Mexico. His work has appeared in the New York Times, TomDispatch, The Nation, San Francisco Chronicle, In These Times, Guernica, and Al Jazeera English, among other places. Miller has authored four books: Build Bridges, Not Walls: A Journey to a World Without Borders (City Lights, 2021), Empire of Borders: The Expansion of the U.S. Border Around the World (Verso, 2019), Storming the Wall: Climate Change, Migration, and Homeland Security (City Lights, 2017), and Border Patrol Nation: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Homeland Security (City Lights, 2014). He’s a contributing editor on border and immigration issues for NACLA Report on the Americas and its column “Border Wars”.
· www.toddmillerwriter.com
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info
Todd Miller is an author and independent journalist. He has researched and written about border issues for more than 15 years, the last eight as an independent journalist and writer. He resides in Tucson, Arizona, but also has spent many years living and working in Oaxaca, Mexico. His work has appeared in the New York Times, TomDispatch, The Nation, San Francisco Chronicle, In These Times, Guernica, and Al Jazeera English, among other places. Miller has authored four books: Build Bridges, Not Walls: A Journey to a World Without Borders (City Lights, 2021), Empire of Borders: The Expansion of the U.S. Border Around the World (Verso, 2019), Storming the Wall: Climate Change, Migration, and Homeland Security (City Lights, 2017), and Border Patrol Nation: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Homeland Security (City Lights, 2014). He’s a contributing editor on border and immigration issues for NACLA Report on the Americas and its column “Border Wars”.
· www.toddmillerwriter.com
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info
"As a parent and especially through all this reporting, what I’ve tried to do is think through these solutions and these fixes we have for everything and make sure that we’re not forgetting…that we’re thinking about other people. Capitalism won’t do it. Self-interest isn’t going to do this for us. As silly as it is to think that empathy will do or caring about your fellow humans will do it, I don’t know what else there is to hope for. I don’t believe that people do stuff purely out of rational self-interest, this libertarian idea that I was quietly pushing against the entire time in Windfall. That we do things just for ourselves or just to make money–that’s not been the reality of my lifetime."
National Magazine Award finalist McKenzie Funk writes for Harper’s, National Geographic, Rolling Stone, Outside, The New York Times Magazine, and the London Review of Books. His first book, Windfall, won a PEN Literary Award and was named a book of the year by The New Yorker, Mother Jones, Salon, and Amazon.com. A former Knight-Wallace Fellow and Open Society Fellow, he’s a cofounder of the journalism cooperative Deca and a board member at Amplifier.
· www.mckenziefunk.com
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info
National Magazine Award finalist McKenzie Funk writes for Harper’s, National Geographic, Rolling Stone, Outside, The New York Times Magazine, and the London Review of Books. His first book, Windfall, won a PEN Literary Award and was named a book of the year by The New Yorker, Mother Jones, Salon, and Amazon.com. A former Knight-Wallace Fellow and Open Society Fellow, he’s a cofounder of the journalism cooperative Deca and a board member at Amplifier.
· www.mckenziefunk.com
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info
"I have always hoped and dreamt to work with young people because I’ve always felt that it is their future. It’s so inspiring to be working with young people all around the world. I feel that we are in the midst of transformational change and that working together around these key moments where you can see those shifts happening – unimaginable things that you never thought were going to happen can happen. That would be my other advice to young activists that just when you aren’t expecting it, something will happen and you’ll be like, “I can’t believe they just decided that! Holy cow!” And then you’ve got to celebrate."
Jennifer Morgan took the helm of Greenpeace International in April 2016. She was formerly the Global Director of the Climate Program at the World Resources Institute. A climate activist, she has been a leader of large teams at major organisations, and her other ports of call have included the Worldwide Fund for Nature, Climate Action Network, and E3G
. · www.greenpeace.org
·www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info
Jennifer Morgan took the helm ofGreenpeace International in April 2016. She was formerly the Global Director of the Climate Program at the World Resources Institute. A climate activist, she has been a leader of large teams at major organisations, and her other ports of call have included the Worldwide Fund for Nature, Climate Action Network, and E3G.
· www.greenpeace.org
·www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info
“This generation really does hold the future of the planet in its hands.”
Peter Singeris often described as the world's most influential philosopher. The author of important books such as Animal Liberation, Practical Ethics, Rethinking Life and Death, and The Life You Can Save, he helped launch the animal rights and effective altruism movements and contributed to the development of bioethics. Now, in Ethics in the Real World, Singer shows that he is also a master at dissecting important current events in a few hundred words.
· petersinger.info
· www.thelifeyoucansave.org
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info
Peter Singeris often described as the world's most influential philosopher. The author of important books such as Animal Liberation, Practical Ethics, Rethinking Life and Death, and The Life You Can Save, he helped launch the animal rights and effective altruism movements and contributed to the development of bioethics. Now, in Ethics in the Real World, Singer shows that he is also a master at dissecting important current events in a few hundred words.
· petersinger.info
· www.thelifeyoucansave.org
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info
Photo courtesy of Leif Tuxen
Jess Wilber is a graduate of Oberlin, where she double-majored in Environmental Studies & East Asian Studies. She’s been working with Citizens’ Climate Lobby since freshman year, helping to pioneer programs for students in Higher Education. Among the first members of the Campus Leaders Program, empowering students to become climate advocates and organizers, she founded Oberlin’s CCL Chapter, helping create a climate movement on campus. As the first Great Lakes Regional Fellow, she managed students and educators engaged in climate advocacy, coordinating research and projects with education, diversity, and international teams. A Coordinator for Senior Stewards Acting for the Environment, she’s also a musician, poet, certified mediator, and world-ranked equestrian.
· www.citizensclimatelobby.org · www.citizensclimatehighered.org· www.oneplanetpodcast.org· www.creativeprocess.info
Jess Wilber is a graduate of Oberlin, where she double-majored in Environmental Studies & East Asian Studies. She’s been working with Citizens’ Climate Lobby since freshman year, helping to pioneer programs for students in Higher Education. Among the first members of the Campus Leaders Program, empowering students to become climate advocates and organizers, she founded Oberlin’s CCL Chapter, helping create a climate movement on campus. As the first Great Lakes Regional Fellow, she managed students and educators engaged in climate advocacy, coordinating research and projects with education, diversity, and international teams. A Coordinator for Senior Stewards Acting for the Environment, she’s also a musician, poet, certified mediator, and world-ranked equestrian.
· www.citizensclimatelobby.org · www.citizensclimatehighered.org· www.oneplanetpodcast.org· www.creativeprocess.info
"They’re not human traits. They’re all shared traits because, of course, we all love. We all love our families, or not. We all grieve if somebody we love disappears or dies. A family dog, perhaps. A grandfather. We all feel loneliness, we all feel joy. We all really value our freedom. And so I think, if anything, looking into the eyes of the animal, even online, you see a person in there. There’s a someone in whatever the shape or the physical properties of that individual are. And that lesson is that I am you. You are me, only different. We are all the same in all the ways that count…Any living being teaches you– Look into my eyes. And there you are, the reflection of yourself."
Ingrid Newkirk is the founder and president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)—the largest animal rights organization in the world, with more than 6.5 million members and supporters worldwide.
She is the author of more than a dozen books that have been translated into several languages, including her latest, Animalkind: Remarkable Discoveries About Animals and Revolutionary New Ways to Show Them Compassion.
Newkirk, a former Washingtonian of the Year, has been featured for her work for animals in The New Yorker, Time magazine, People magazine, Forbes, the Financial Times, and numerous other publications. She has appeared on TV shows and podcasts all over the world, including on Real Time With Bill Maher, The Rich Roll Podcast, and Here's the Thing With Alec Baldwin. She is the subject of a BBC special and the HBO documentary I Am an Animal.
· www.www.peta.org
· www.ingridnewkirk.com
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info
Ingrid Newkirk is the founder and president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)—the largest animal rights organization in the world, with more than 6.5 million members and supporters worldwide.
She is the author of more than a dozen books that have been translated into several languages, including her latest, Animalkind: Remarkable Discoveries About Animals and Revolutionary New Ways to Show Them Compassion.
Newkirk, a former Washingtonian of the Year, has been featured for her work for animals in The New Yorker, Time magazine, People magazine, Forbes, the Financial Times, and numerous other publications. She has appeared on TV shows and podcasts all over the world, including on Real Time With Bill Maher, The Rich Roll Podcast, and Here's the Thing With Alec Baldwin. She is the subject of a BBC special and the HBO documentary I Am an Animal.
· www.peta.org
· www.ingridnewkirk.com
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info
"As an organization, Global Witness has to take security risks extremely seriously. We encounter quite a range of threats to our work and some of those take the form of cyberattacks, we’re regularly threatened with lawsuits by powerful companies and individuals who don’t like the scrutiny we place them under, but far and away the most serious category of threats is to those we work with in fragile and sometimes dangerous parts of the world."
Mike Davis has been the CEO of Global Witness since 2020, having previously served as Director of Campaigns, Planning and Evaluation for three years. During this time Mike has overseen the development of a new Global Witness strategy with a strong emphasis on abuses of power driving climate crisis. Mike first joined Global Witness in 2003, holding numerous roles, including exposing corruption in the Myanmar jade business and writing two ground-breaking exposes on corruption in Cambodia, both of which were banned by the Cambodian Government.
· www.globalwitness.org
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info
Mike Davis has been the CEO of Global Witness since 2020, having previously served as Director of Campaigns, Planning and Evaluation for three years. During this time Mike has overseen the development of a new Global Witness strategy with a strong emphasis on abuses of power driving climate crisis. Mike first joined Global Witness in 2003, holding numerous roles, including exposing corruption in the Myanmar jade business and writing two ground-breaking exposes on corruption in Cambodia, both of which were banned by the Cambodian Government.
· www.globalwitness.org
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info
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.
“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.
Dr. Nicole Fleetwood is an educator and author whose work explores Black cultural history, visual, media, and gender studies and mass incarceration. She earned her B.Phil from Miami University and her Ph.D. from Stanford University. Fleetwood currently serves as an Associate Professor of American Studies and Art History at Rutgers University and is a member of their press editorial committee. She has also been published in several scholarly journals, co/curated exhibitions on art and mass incarceration, and received prestigious grants and fellowships from the Whiting Foundation Public Engagement Fellowship, the Schomburg Center for Research on Black Culture, and many more. Marking Time Exhibition is at MoMA PS1, through Apr 4, 2021 www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/5208 Marking Time - Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674919228 www.creativeprocess.info
"The Constitution expresses the Enlightenment faith. All human beings are born with natural rights that come from God or nature and not from government, and that it's the purpose of government to allow us to exercise our freedom. It's so rich and striking to see how the great thinkers who inspired the Founders of the American Constitution, beginning with the Greek and Roman philosophers Plato and Aristotle and the Stoics, and then continued through The Enlightenment, really were philosophers of happiness. And they believe that we have a right and a duty to pursue happiness, not by feeling good, but by being good. It's a classical notion of happiness rooted in virtue and civic virtue. It's both an individual and a political obligation. The individual obligation to pursue happiness is to master our perturbations of the mind, as Cicero put it, channeling Aristotle–anger, jealousy, and fear so that we can be guided by reason rather than passion and serve others and the public good. And then constitutions are formed to allow us to do that at the political level and to be governed by reason rather than passion, to slow down deliberation so that hasty factions don't crystallize and threaten liberty and equality, and to ensure that the government protects our natural rights rather than threatening them."
Jeffrey Rosen is a Professor of Law at The George Washington University Law School. He is also the President and CEO of the National Constitution Center and a Contributing Editor of The Atlantic. Rosen is a graduate of Harvard College, Oxford University, and Yale Law School. His latest book, for the American Presidents Series, is William Howard Taft. His other books include: Louis D. Brandeis: American Prophet; The Supreme Court: The Personalities and Rivalries that Defined America, the best-selling companion book to the award-winning PBS series; The Most Democratic Branch: How the Courts Serve America; The Naked Crowd: Freedom and Security in an Anxious Age; and The Unwanted Gaze: The Destruction of Privacy in America. Professor Rosen is coeditor, with Benjamin Wittes, of Constitution 3.0: Freedom and Technological Change. His essays and commentaries have appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, on National Public Radio, in The New Republic, where he was the legal affairs editor, and in The New Yorker, where he has been a staff writer. He hosts the weekly "We the People" podcast. The Chicago Tribune named him one of the ten best magazine journalists in America, and the Los Angeles Times called him the nation's most widely read and influential legal commentator.
This interview was conducted before the passing of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
· constitutioncenter.org
· www.creativeprocess.info
Jeffrey Rosen is a Professor of Law at The George Washington University Law School. He is also the President and CEO of the National Constitution Center and a Contributing Editor of The Atlantic. Rosen is a graduate of Harvard College, Oxford University, and Yale Law School. His latest book, for the American Presidents Series, is William Howard Taft. His other books include: Louis D. Brandeis: American Prophet; The Supreme Court: The Personalities and Rivalries that Defined America, the best-selling companion book to the award-winning PBS series; The Most Democratic Branch: How the Courts Serve America; The Naked Crowd: Freedom and Security in an Anxious Age; and The Unwanted Gaze: The Destruction of Privacy in America. Professor Rosen is coeditor, with Benjamin Wittes, of Constitution 3.0: Freedom and Technological Change. His essays and commentaries have appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, on National Public Radio, in The New Republic, where he was the legal affairs editor, and in The New Yorker, where he has been a staff writer. He hosts the weekly "We the People" podcast. The Chicago Tribune named him one of the ten best magazine journalists in America, and the Los Angeles Times called him the nation's most widely read and influential legal commentator.
This interview was conducted before the passing of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
· constitutioncenter.org
· www.creativeprocess.info