The Creative Process · Arts, Culture & Society: 2022-2023 (The Creative Process - Books, Film, Music, TV, Art, Writing, Education, Environment, Theatre, Dance, LGBTQ, Social Justice, Spirituality, Feminism, Technology, AI)

Seán Curran began his dance training with traditional Irish step dancing as a young boy in Boston, Massachusetts. He went on to make his mark on the dance world as a leading dancer with Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. He received a New York Dance and Performance Bessie Award for his performance in Secret Pastures. A graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, Curran was an original member of the New York City cast of the Off-Broadway percussion extravaganza Stomp, performing in the show for four years. He has performed his solo evening of dances at venues throughout the United States as well as at Sweden’s Danstation Theatre and France’s EXIT Festival.Current and recent projects for Curran include productions of Much Ado About Nothing and A Midsummer Night’s Dream for The Shakespeare Theater, the twentieth anniversary production of Nixon in China and Street Scene at Opera Theater of St. Louis; choreography for the New York City Opera productions of L’Etoile, Alcina, Turandot, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Capriccio, and Acis and Galetea; the Playwrights Horizons’ production of My Life with Albertine; Shakespeare in the Park’s As You Like It. He recently made his Metropolitan Opera debut choreographing Romeo and Juliette. Curran’s work has appeared on Broadway in James Joyce’s The Dead for Playwrights Horizons and The Rivals at Lincoln Center Theater. He has created works for Trinity Irish Dance Company, American Ballet Theatre’s studio company, Denmark’s Upper Cut Company, Sweden’s Skanes Dance Theater, Irish Modern Dance Theatre, Ririe Woodbury Dance Theater, and Dance Alloy, as well as for numerous college and university dance departments.
· www.seancurrancompany.com
· tisch.nyu.edu/about/directory/dance/109207637.html
· www.creativeprocess.info
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org

"The truth of the matter is that there are some people who are born to be creative and they're going to be artists. And the importance of fostering that is necessary, because if we each fulfill our purpose as humans, then society is better off for it. So in other words, if I had been anything else other than what I have become, I would have only been living up to half of my potential. And so that's really important to address that. I have a lot of students whose parents don't want them to be artists because it doesn't make money, but that means they're only living up to half of their potential because they're truly meant to be artists. And so society needs to shift this understanding on what is important. "

Reem Bassous received her Bachelor of Arts from The Lebanese American University in Beirut. Lebanon and her master of Fine Arts from The George Washington University in Washington DC. She started teaching drawing and painting in 2001 at The George Washington University, taught at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa for 9 years, and is currently an instructor at Leeward Community College at the University of Hawaiʻi. Bassous’ work is in permanent collections which include the Honolulu Museum of Art and Shangri La Museum for Islamic Art, Culture and Design. · www.reembassous.studio

· www.creativeprocess.info

Trish Sie is a multi-talented director whose work spans the realms of music videos, commercials, and short and feature films. After spending a decade as a professional dancer, championship ballroom competitor and choreographer, she built a successful and championed career in filmmaking. The first music video that she produced, “Here it Goes Again” for the band OK Go, won her a Grammy award. Her success expands to the world of films, where she has directed the likes of PItch Perfect 3 and Step Up: All In, using her dance and choreography experience to make magic happen on camera. Along with the Grammy, Trish has won a number of awards such as the Youtube award for most creative video, the smithsonian ingenuity award, and multiple accolades for best short film at various film festivals. www.bigbadtrish.com · www.creativeprocess.info

Trish Sie is a multi-talented director whose work spans the realms of music videos, commercials, and short and feature films. After spending a decade as a professional dancer, championship ballroom competitor and choreographer, she built a successful and championed career in filmmaking. The first music video that she produced, “Here it Goes Again” for the band OK Go, won her a Grammy award. Her success expands to the world of films, where she has directed the likes of PItch Perfect 3 and Step Up: All In, using her dance and choreography experience to make magic happen on camera. Along with the Grammy, Trish has won a number of awards such as the Youtube award for most creative video, the smithsonian ingenuity award, and multiple accolades for best short film at various film festivals. www.bigbadtrish.com · www.creativeprocess.info

Hala Alyan is the author of the novel Salt Houses, winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Arab American Book Award and a finalist for the Chautauqua Prize, as well as the forthcoming novel The Arsonists’ City, and four award-winning collections of poetry, most recently The Twenty-Ninth Year. Her work has been published by the New Yorker, the Academy of American Poets, Lit Hub, The New York Times Book Review, and Guernica. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, where she works as a clinical psychologist.

· halaalyan.com
· www.creativeprocess.info

“We become the stories we tell ourselves…I started writing around the time I learned English because we moved to the States soon after my fourth birthday, and so I was here for kindergarten into elementary school. I grasped this new language just as I was learning how to also put things onto the page. Those two things really happened at the same time for me. I entered this world where I felt very different and very other, for all intents and purposes I was set to be raised in Kuwait. And then that of course got turned upside down after the invasion by Saddam. I think that so much of my trying to make sense of the world had to do with the displacement, exile and these experiences that my parents had experienced but then that I had as well as we were fleeing the war. It’s hard to know because I think that language was being formed in my brain at the same time that these things were happening.”

Hala Alyan is the author of the novel Salt Houses, winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Arab American Book Award and a finalist for the Chautauqua Prize, as well as the forthcoming novel The Arsonists’ City, and four award-winning collections of poetry, most recently The Twenty-Ninth Year. Her work has been published by the New Yorker, the Academy of American Poets, Lit Hub, The New York Times Book Review, and Guernica. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, where she works as a clinical psychologist.

· halaalyan.com
· www.creativeprocess.info

“These were my bedtime stories stories. I remember listening to them before I could speak. I had delayed speech, and I had quite a bit of trouble with speaking at all and with learning and also just simply getting into school. I think I must have been five before I was uttering some of my first words and trying to articulate.

Simple communication was very difficult for me and my family, especially in a family where we were speaking several languages. They hoped to instill English. It’s the language of survival. Once they immigrated to the States. And my grandmother, my father’s mother, who raised me was speaking Japanese, that was her private language. It was a remnant of the past and sort of the past of the occupation with Korea being occupied by Japan. My mother and father spoke in Korean, and this was a much more intimate language that I wanted to have access to but would also keep me away from the English that they hoped me to get. And all of this was compounded by my difficulty with speech. So there was a lot of frustration and fear in my relationship to language, and the relationship these languages had to each other, that was something I felt very sensitive to since I was young. Since before I could speak.”

E. J. Koh is the author of the memoir The Magical Language of Others, winner of the Washington State Book Award and the 2021 Pacific Northwest Book Award. For her poetry collection A Lesser Love she received the Pleiades Press Editors Prize. She is the co-translator of Yi Won’s The World’s Lightest Motorcycle, forthcoming from Zephyr Press. Her poems, translations, and stories have appeared in Boston Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, and World Literature Today, among others. She earned her MFA in Literary Translation and Creative Writing from Columbia University, and is completing the PhD program at the University of Washington in Seattle. She is a recipient of MacDowell and Kundiman fellowships.

IG @thisisejkoh
· www.instagram.com/p/CRB8O69BWQJ/
· www.creativeprocess.info

John Powers was born in Chicago. He is a sculptor. After doing an apprenticeship on the West Coast with the sculptor Tom Jay, he moved to New York where he studied at Pratt and Hunter College. His artwork has been shown at MoMA PS1, the Brooklyn Museum, the Bruges Triennial, and PostMasters Gallery, among others. He was recently featured in the New York Times after injuring his hand.

· www.johnpowers.us

· www.creativeprocess.info

“The figure in my work is me. The figure in my work is you. It's me placing objects. It’s me putting things together. It’s you standing near it. It’s you in proximity moving back and forth, moving around it. It’s us. One of the reasons I make the things I do the way I make them is because I can't imagine them. I make things that I couldn't draw or even think about clearly. I can only look at them. I enjoy the complexity that I make because I'm striving to see it.”

John Powers was born in Chicago. He is a sculptor. After doing an apprenticeship on the West Coast with the sculptor Tom Jay, he moved to New York where he studied at Pratt and Hunter College. His artwork has been shown at MoMA PS1, the Brooklyn Museum, the Bruges Triennial, and PostMasters Gallery, among others. He was recently featured in the New York Times after injuring his hand.

· www.johnpowers.us

· 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) and Extinction (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

“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) and Extinction (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

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

“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

Ali Schouten is a showrunner, executive producer, and writer who is quickly establishing herself as a creative on the rise as her formidable talent and artistic versatility continue to make waves.

Schouten currently serves as the showrunner and executive producer of the wildly successful iCarly revival for Paramount+, which set 10 years later, features Miranda Cosgrove reprising her iconic role. The series was renewed for a second season and will return on April 8th after swiftly becoming one of the streaming service’s top acquisition drivers, ranking among their most streamed titles since the series’ debut. The series, which holds an impressive rating of 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, continues to receive praise for its modernized and inclusive approach from audiences and critics alike, with Variety applauding its ability to “straddl[e] the line between childhood nostalgia and newfound maturity”. 

This follows her role as co-executive producer on the Latinx-led family series from Disney+, Diary of a Future President, created by Ilana Peña and executive produced by Gina Rodriguez. Schouten also served as a supervising producer on the Netflix holiday miniseries, MERRY HAPPY WHATEVER, starring Dennis Quaid, Bridgit Mendler, Brent Morin, and Ashley Tisdale.

Additional credits include serving as consulting producer and writer on the CBS All Access series NO ACTIVITY, supervising producer and writer on the Hulu series ALL NIGHT, and co-producer and writer on the NBC series CHAMPIONS from Mindy Kaling and Charlie Grandy. Schouten also served as an executive story editor and writer on the hit ABC Family series, YOUNG AND HUNGRY, in addition to the Verizon go90's series, RELATIONSHIP STATUS, for which she received a Daytime Emmy Award nomination for ‘Outstanding Writing in a Digital Drama Series’.

· www.paramountplus.com/shows/icarly-2021

· www.creativeprocess.info

“What we deal with more in the second season is how your online persona and your real-life persona sometimes can't help but be at odds with one another. In the first episode back we get into how women are treated, how women in relationships are treated online. In a later episode, we deal with how women are or are not allowed to express their anger online as content creators. So it’s something we talked a lot about in the room. That fracturing of self, that even in a goofy show that's very lighthearted and entertaining, it’s something that we do discuss and try to sneak little tidbits in there.”

Ali Schouten is a showrunner, executive producer, and writer who is quickly establishing herself as a creative on the rise as her formidable talent and artistic versatility continue to make waves.    

Schouten currently serves as the showrunner and executive producer of the wildly successful iCarly revival for Paramount+, which set 10 years later, features Miranda Cosgrove reprising her iconic role. The series was renewed for a second season and will return on April 8th after swiftly becoming one of the streaming service’s top acquisition drivers, ranking among their most streamed titles since the series’ debut. The series, which holds an impressive rating of 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, continues to receive praise for its modernized and inclusive approach from audiences and critics alike, with Variety applauding its ability to “straddl[e] the line between childhood nostalgia and newfound maturity”. 

This follows her role as co-executive producer on the Latinx-led family series from Disney+, Diary of a Future President, created by Ilana Peña and executive produced by Gina Rodriguez. Schouten also served as a supervising producer on the Netflix holiday miniseries, MERRY HAPPY WHATEVER, starring Dennis Quaid, Bridgit Mendler, Brent Morin, and Ashley Tisdale.

Additional credits include serving as consulting producer and writer on the CBS All Access series NO ACTIVITY, supervising producer and writer on the Hulu series ALL NIGHT, and co-producer and writer on the NBC series CHAMPIONS from Mindy Kaling and Charlie Grandy. Schouten also served as an executive story editor and writer on the hit ABC Family series, YOUNG AND HUNGRY, in addition to the Verizon go90's series, RELATIONSHIP STATUS, for which she received a Daytime Emmy Award nomination for ‘Outstanding Writing in a Digital Drama Series’.

· www.paramountplus.com/shows/icarly-2021

· www.creativeprocess.info

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

“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

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/

“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/

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

“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

Alice Schmidt is 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

“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 Schmidt is 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

“I do feel that we are infinite choice makers. You make millions of choices all the time. Make the right choice and if you make the wrong choice, understand that mistakes are great teachers. Learn from that and move on. I do have this sense of responsibility of passing something on a love of dance history that really informs my process. Speaking in old language in a new way with a contemporary accent.
Something so wonderful about dance and the arts is that you never stop learning. It is like always just this long process, and I continue. Students teach me every day. It is such a gift.
It is probably the most important thing I can think of. Especially when I think of two things. In terms of history, the humanities show us how we were, why we were, and while we were...But then I also think about the future. What are we doing now? What seeds are we planting to inform the future?...And I said it earlier about making sense out of a chaotic universe where bad things happen to good people. Arts will help you figure that out.”

Seán Curran began his dance training with traditional Irish step dancing as a young boy in Boston, Massachusetts. He went on to make his mark on the dance world as a leading dancer with Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. He received a New York Dance and Performance Bessie Award for his performance in Secret Pastures. A graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, Curran was an original member of the New York City cast of the Off-Broadway percussion extravaganza Stomp, performing in the show for four years. He has performed his solo evening of dances at venues throughout the United States as well as at Sweden’s Danstation Theatre and France’s EXIT Festival. Current and recent projects for Curran include productions of Much Ado About Nothing and A Midsummer Night’s Dream for The Shakespeare Theater, the twentieth anniversary production of Nixon in China and Street Scene at Opera Theater of St. Louis; choreography for the New York City Opera productions of L’Etoile, Alcina, Turandot, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Capriccio, and Acis and Galetea; the Playwrights Horizons’ production of My Life with Albertine; Shakespeare in the Park’s As You Like It. He recently made his Metropolitan Opera debut choreographing Romeo and Juliette. Curran’s work has appeared on Broadway in James Joyce’s The Dead for Playwrights Horizons and The Rivals at Lincoln Center Theater. He has created works for Trinity Irish Dance Company, American Ballet Theatre’s studio company, Denmark’s Upper Cut Company, Sweden’s Skanes Dance Theater, Irish Modern Dance Theatre, Ririe Woodbury Dance Theater, and Dance Alloy, as well as for numerous college and university dance departments.

· www.seancurrancompany.com
· tisch.nyu.edu/about/directory/dance/109207637.html
· www.creativeprocess.info
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org

Carmen Maria Machado is the author of the bestselling memoir In the Dream House and the award-winning short story collection Her Body and Other Parties. She has been a finalist for the National Book Award and the winner of the Bard Fiction Prize, the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction, the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Nonfiction, the Brooklyn Public Library Literature Prize, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Prize. In 2018, the New York Times listed Her Body and Other Parties as a member of "The New Vanguard," one of "15 remarkable books by women that are shaping the way we read and write fiction in the 21st century."

· carmenmariamachado.com
· www.creativeprocess.info
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org

“I would say that I write liminal fantasy. I write surrealist work and literary fiction. I write horror. Horror is probably the genre that speaks to me the most. I feel horror is the genre that I feel the most affinity towards. For me, that is the sweet spot where the beautiful and the grotesque meet each other. It's very interesting to me, and I think encouraging people to look at certain ideas that are horrifying, making them beautiful and interesting, that intersection of beauty and pain, humor and darkness, it’s the most interesting place.”

Carmen Maria Machado is the author of the bestselling memoir In the Dream House and the award-winning short story collection Her Body and Other Parties. She has been a finalist for the National Book Award and the winner of the Bard Fiction Prize, the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction, the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Nonfiction, the Brooklyn Public Library Literature Prize, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Prize. In 2018, the New York Times listed Her Body and Other Parties as a member of "The New Vanguard," one of "15 remarkable books by women that are shaping the way we read and write fiction in the 21st century."

· carmenmariamachado.com
· www.creativeprocess.info
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org

Gabrielle Selz is the author of Unstill Life: A Daughter’s Memoir of Art and Love in the Age of Abstraction, published by W.W. Norton in 2014. Unstill Life received the best memoir of the year award from the American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA) and was chosen as one of the best books of the year by both the San Francisco Chronicle and Berkeleyside. Selz holds a special interest in the intersection of memory, history, cultural criticism, and art. As a child, she bounced between the bohemian art worlds of New York and Berkeley, California. Her father, Peter Selz, was the Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, before he founded the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. Her mother, Thalia Selz, was a writer and the founding editor of Story Quarterly. Gabrielle is currently writing Light on Fire: The Art and Life of Sam Francis to be published by U.C Press.
· gabrielleselz.com
· www.creativeprocess.info

Gabrielle Selz is the author of Unstill Life: A Daughter’s Memoir of Art and Love in the Age of Abstraction, published by W.W. Norton in 2014. Unstill Life received the best memoir of the year award from the American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA) and was chosen as one of the best books of the year by both the San Francisco Chronicle and Berkeleyside. She is currently writing Light on Fire: The Art and Life of Sam Francis to be published by U.C Press.

Selz holds a special interest in the intersection of memory, history, cultural criticism, and art. As a child, she bounced between the bohemian art worlds of New York and Berkeley, California. Her father, Peter Selz, was the Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, before he founded the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. Her mother, Thalia Selz, was a writer and the founding editor of Story Quarterly. In 1969, Thalia selected the original tenants for Westbeth, the largest artists housing project in the country, and the family then moved to live alongside artists like Diane Arbus and Merce Cunningham. Introduced to Sam Francis as a child, her interest in his life, career and what motivated his extraordinary contributions, expanded while she was researching and writing Unstill Life.

Selz has contributed to The New Yorker, The New York Times, More Magazine, The Rumpus and the L.A. Times. Her fiction has appeared in Fiction Magazine and her art criticism in Art Papers, Hyperallergic and Newsday and the Huffington Post. She is a past recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Nonfiction and is a Moth Story Slam Winner.
· gabrielleselz.com
· www.creativeprocess.info

Yves Winkin is Distinguished Emeritus Professor at the University of Liège and Honorary Professor at the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers. He proposed an "anthropology of communication" based on an ethnographic approach. He was deputy director of the École normale supérieure de Lyon, director of the French Institute of Education and director of the musée des Arts et Métiers. He is the author of several books, most recently Réinventer les musées?

www.arts-et-metiers.net

www.creativeprocess.info

www.cairn.info/publications-de-Yves-Winkin--37080.htm

Yves Winkin is Distinguished Emeritus Professor at the University of Liège and Honorary Professor at the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers. He proposed an "anthropology of communication" based on an ethnographic approach. He was deputy director of the École normale supérieure de Lyon, director of the French Institute of Education and director of the musée des Arts et Métiers. He is the author of several books, most recently Réinventer les musées?

www.arts-et-metiers.net

www.creativeprocess.info

www.cairn.info/publications-de-Yves-Winkin--37080.htm

Robert Nathan is an award-winning television producer, screenwriter, journalist, and novelist. Best known for his work on the Law & Order television franchise and his novel The White Tiger. He has worked in politics, broadcast and print journalism, film, and television. Nathan joined the original writing staff of Law & Order, working on three series in the franchise. Nathan’s script for the episode “Manhood,” co-written with Walon Green, holds the franchise’s only Emmy nomination for Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series. He was also on the original staff of the TV series ER and received a Peabody Award. Nathan has received four Emmy nominations, an Edgar Award nomination, the GLAAD Media Award, the Silver Gavel Award, the Shine Award, and a Humanitas Award nomination.

www.creativeprocess.info

Robert Nathan is an award-winning television producer, screenwriter, journalist, and novelist. Best known for his work on the Law & Order television franchise and his novel The White Tiger. He has worked in politics, broadcast and print journalism, film, and television. Nathan joined the original writing staff of Law & Order, working on three series in the franchise. Nathan’s script for the episode “Manhood,” co-written with Walon Green, holds the franchise’s only Emmy nomination for Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series. He was also on the original staff of the TV series ER and received a Peabody Award. Nathan has received four Emmy nominations, an Edgar Award nomination, the GLAAD Media Award, the Silver Gavel Award, the Shine Award, and a Humanitas Award nomination.

www.creativeprocess.info

Stuart Dryburgh is a British born, New York based cinematographer. His credits include ‘The Great Wall’, ‘The Secret Life of Walter Mitty’, ‘Bridget Jones’ Diary’, ‘The Piano’ (AAN 1994) and ‘An Angel at my Table’. Stuart Dryburgh was born in the UK in 1952, and migrated with his family to New Zealand in 1961, where he spent most of his childhood and young adult life. He earned a Bachelor of Architecture from Auckland University in 1977. Stuart started out working on early NZ films such as ‘Middle Age Spread’ and ‘Good-Bye Pork Pie’ and ‘Smash Palace’. He was employed as a gaffer from 1979 – 1985, working on many NZ and international feature films and commercials. From 1985 on he has worked only as a cinematographer, at first shooting short films, music videos, and tv commercials. In 1989 he shot the 3 part TV mini series ‘An Angel at my Table’ for director Jane Campion. This led to another Dryburgh/ Campion collaboration, ‘The Piano’. For this film he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Cinematography in 1994.

His next project, ultimately his last in New Zealand for many years, was ‘Once Were Warriors’ with New Zealand director Lee Tamahori. In 1994 Dryburgh shot his first US feature film, the ‘Peres Family’, for director Mira Nair,and moved permanently to the US in 1996.
· www.stuartdryburgh.com
· www.creativeprocess.info

Stuart Dryburgh is a British born, New York based cinematographer. His credits include ‘The Great Wall’, ‘The Secret Life of Walter Mitty’, ‘Bridget Jones’ Diary’, ‘The Piano’ (AAN 1994) and ‘An Angel at my Table’. Stuart Dryburgh was born in the UK in 1952, and migrated with his family to New Zealand in 1961, where he spent most of his childhood and young adult life. He earned a Bachelor of Architecture from Auckland University in 1977. Stuart started out working on early NZ films such as ‘Middle Age Spread’ and ‘Good-Bye Pork Pie’ and ‘Smash Palace’. He was employed as a gaffer from 1979 – 1985, working on many NZ and international feature films and commercials. From 1985 on he has worked only as a cinematographer, at first shooting short films, music videos, and tv commercials. In 1989 he shot the 3 part TV mini series ‘An Angel at my Table’ for director Jane Campion. This led to another Dryburgh/ Campion collaboration, ‘The Piano’. For this film he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Cinematography in 1994.

His next project, ultimately his last in New Zealand for many years, was ‘Once Were Warriors’ with New Zealand director Lee Tamahori. In 1994 Dryburgh shot his first US feature film, the ‘Peres Family’, for director Mira Nair,and moved permanently to the US in 1996. www.stuartdryburgh.com · www.creativeprocess.info

Doug Wright is an award winning playwright whose plays include I am My Own Wife, for which he won a Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize, Posterity, and Quills, for which he won an Obie Award. He has written books for the Tony-nominated musical Grey Gardens, the Drama Desk nomination “Hands on a hardbody”, The Little Mermaid, and War Paint. He adapted and directed August Strindberg’s Creditors for the La Jolla Playhouse in 2009.  Films include the screen adaptation of Quills, which won a Paul Selvin Award and WGA award, and production rewrites for director Rob Marshall, Steven Spielberg and others. He is Fmr. President of The Dramatists Guild and on the Board of The New York Theater Workshop. He has taught or guest lectured at the Yale Drama School, Princeton University, Julliard and NYU.  He lives in New York with his husband, singer-songwriter David Clement.
· www.dramatistsguild.com

· www.creativeprocess.info

Michael Maren is a journalist, filmmaker and former aid worker. He’s written scripts for HBO, Sony Pictures, and many independent producers. His film, A Short History of Decay was a funny and moving examination of a writer Bryan Greenberg visiting his ailing parents, played by Linda Lavin and Harris Yulin. His forthcoming film is an adaptation of Chris Belden’s novel Shriver. It’s a comedy set at a writers conference and stars Michael Shannon, Kate Hudson, Don Johnson, and Zach Braff. Maren has taught screenwriting at Wesleyan University, Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, Taos Summer Writers’ Workshop, and co-directs the Sirenland Writers Conference. He created the film screening/discussion series Under the Influence: Writers on Film.

· michaelmaren.com

· www.creativeprocess.info

Michael Maren is a journalist, filmmaker and former aid worker. He’s written scripts for HBO, Sony Pictures, and many independent producers. His film, A Short History of Decay was a funny and moving examination of a writer Bryan Greenberg visiting his ailing parents, played by Linda Lavin and Harris Yulin. His forthcoming film is an adaptation of Chris Belden’s novel Shriver. It’s a comedy set at a writers conference and stars Michael Shannon, Kate Hudson, Don Johnson, and Zach Braff. Maren has taught screenwriting at Wesleyan University, Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, Taos Summer Writers’ Workshop, and co-directs the Sirenland Writers Conference. He created the film screening/discussion series Under the Influence: Writers on Film.
· michaelmaren.com
· www.creativeprocess.info

Film editor Alan Edward Bell has cut three of The Hunger Games series. He also edited (500) Days of Summer, Water for Elephants, Red Sparrow, The Dark Tower, The Amazing Spiderman, and other films. A former competitive rock-climber and guide, Alan transitioned to editing after spending time around film people while taking them on climbing expeditions. That his editing often pushes the boundaries of what is technically possible is more amazing when you consider he is self-taught. After years in Hollywood, Bell now lives and edits from his studio in New Hampshire, where he also practices silversmithing.

www.creativeprocess.info

Film editor Alan Edward Bell has cut three of The Hunger Games series. He also edited (500) Days of Summer, Water for Elephants, Red Sparrow, The Dark Tower, The Amazing Spiderman, and other films. A former competitive rock-climber and guide, Alan transitioned to editing after spending time around film people while taking them on climbing expeditions. That his editing often pushes the boundaries of what is technically possible is more amazing when you consider he is self-taught. After years in Hollywood, Bell now lives and edits from his studio in New Hampshire, where he also practices silversmithing.

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

"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, it hhaccording 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

Dr. Steven Allison is a Professor of Ecology at the University of California, Irvine. He holds a PhD in Biological Sciences from Stanford University. As part of the University of California’s Carbon Neutrality Initiative, Dr. Allison was named the UC Irvine Climate Action Champion in 2016. He teaches ecosystem ecology and directs the Ridge to Reef Graduate Training Program, an interdisciplinary program focused on skills development for students pursuing careers in environmental fields. His research addresses the resilience of microbial communities to drought and the effect of rapid climate change on carbon losses from southern California ecosystems. Dr. Allison is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and Editor-in-Chief at the interdisciplinary journal Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene. Since 2021, he has served as a member of the Green Ribbon Environmental Committee for the City of Irvine and director of UC Irvine’s Newkirk Center for Science and Society.

· allisonlab.bio.uci.edu/

· newkirkcenter.uci.edu

· https://online.ucpress.edu/elementa
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info

· www.ted.com/talks/steven_allison_earth_s_original_inhabitants_and_their_role_in_combating_climate_change?language=en

“It’s basically a seed bank of genetic and metabolic diversity. The Earth’s entire microbiome is just a tremendous treasure trove of history, evolution, and diversity. So I would say we have no idea what’s in a lot of that diversity. It's like the dark matter of the universe. People call it the dark matter of the microbiome, and we're still figuring out what that matter does. We know that they're tremendously diverse. The sequencing revolution that happened over the last 20 or 30 years has made it possible to measure the diversity, but we don't know what that diversity is really doing or how to harness it if we need it. So would be wise not to disrespect it.”

Dr. Steven Allison is a Professor of Ecology at the University of California, Irvine. He holds a PhD in Biological Sciences from Stanford University. As part of the University of California’s Carbon Neutrality Initiative, Dr. Allison was named the UC Irvine Climate Action Champion in 2016. He teaches ecosystem ecology and directs the Ridge to Reef Graduate Training Program, an interdisciplinary program focused on skills development for students pursuing careers in environmental fields. His research addresses the resilience of microbial communities to drought and the effect of rapid climate change on carbon losses from southern California ecosystems. Dr. Allison is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and Editor-in-Chief at the interdisciplinary journal Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene. Since 2021, he has served as a member of the Green Ribbon Environmental Committee for the City of Irvine and director of UC Irvine’s Newkirk Center for Science and Society.

· allisonlab.bio.uci.edu/

· newkirkcenter.uci.edu

· https://online.ucpress.edu/elementa
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info

· www.ted.com/talks/steven_allison_earth_s_original_inhabitants_and_their_role_in_combating_climate_change?language=en

William McDonough is a globally recognized leader in sustainable design and development. He has written and lectured extensively on design as the first signal of human intention. He co-authored Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. 

McDonough advises leaders on ESG strategies through McDonough Innovation, is an architect with William McDonough + Partners, and provides product assessments through MBDC, the creators of the Cradle to Cradle Certified™ Products Program. 
He has been active with the World Economic Forum for 25 years and served as the inaugural chair of their Meta-Council on the Circular Economy. He recently articulated the Circular Carbon Economy, a framework for carbon management, and presented the concept at COP25 and at 2020 G20 workshops. 

McDonough has co-founded not-for-profit organizations, including Fashion for Good, GreenBlue, Sustainable Packaging Coalition, and the Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute. He has been on the faculty of Stanford University (2004-present) and is a Distinguished Research Professor at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) focused on Circular Carbon Economy. 

Time magazine recognized him as a “Hero for the Planet,” noting: “His utopianism is grounded in a unified philosophy that—in demonstrable and practical ways—is changing the design of the world," and in 2019 Fortune magazine named him #24 of the World's 50 Greatest Leaders.

· https://mcdonough.com

· mcdonoughpartners.com

· https://mcdonoughpartners.com/projects
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info

©DuHun Photography

“I think believing in something is also part of the responsibility of the believer to sift through these things. So there are a lot of people saying I'm green because they do something less badly. So for me, it’s not green yet, it's just less bad. It's not really good yet. It's not really fabulous, but that just means there's an opportunity to keep going to share information and help each other because in the end, I think what we're dealing with now is the recognition that the world has a very serious issue with climate, that's very clear now. So how can we help each other? The question is no longer what is wrong with the way you're doing it. The real question now is how can I help you?”

McDonough advises leaders on ESG strategies through McDonough Innovation, is an architect with William McDonough + Partners, and provides product assessments through MBDC, the creators of the Cradle to Cradle Certified™ Products Program. 
He has been active with the World Economic Forum for 25 years and served as the inaugural chair of their Meta-Council on the Circular Economy. He recently articulated the Circular Carbon Economy, a framework for carbon management, and presented the concept at COP25 and at 2020 G20 workshops. 

William McDonough is a globally recognized leader in sustainable design and development. He has written and lectured extensively on design as the first signal of human intention. He co-authored Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. 

McDonough advises leaders on ESG strategies through McDonough Innovation, is an architect with William McDonough + Partners, and provides product assessments through MBDC, the creators of the Cradle to Cradle Certified™ Products Program. 
He has been active with the World Economic Forum for 25 years and served as the inaugural chair of their Meta-Council on the Circular Economy. He recently articulated the Circular Carbon Economy, a framework for carbon management, and presented the concept at COP25 and at 2020 G20 workshops. 

McDonough has co-founded not-for-profit organizations, including Fashion for Good, GreenBlue, Sustainable Packaging Coalition, and the Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute. He has been on the faculty of Stanford University (2004-present) and is a Distinguished Research Professor at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) focused on Circular Carbon Economy. 

Time magazine recognized him as a “Hero for the Planet,” noting: “His utopianism is grounded in a unified philosophy that—in demonstrable and practical ways—is changing the design of the world," and in 2019 Fortune magazine named him #24 of the World's 50 Greatest Leaders.

· https://mcdonough.com

· mcdonoughpartners.com

· https://mcdonoughpartners.com/projects
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info

James McDaniel is an actor and director best known for his award winning performances on NYPD Blue, Detroit 187, and Edge of America. When he’s not acting in front of the camera you can find James on and off-Broadway starring in works like Before it Hits Home, August Wilson’s Joe Turners Come and Gone, and most recently A Soldier’s Play. James also created the role Paul, in Six Degrees of Separation, setting the stage for future Black actors like Will Smith, who reprised the role in 1993. His television credits include Orange is the New Black, Madame Secretary, and most recently, Hysteria, streaming on Amazon Prime. Other film credits include The Battle for Bunker Hill, Steel City, and Malcolm X, amongst many others.

James McDaniel is an actor and director best known for his award winning performances on NYPD Blue, Detroit 187, and Edge of America. When he’s not acting in front of the camera you can find James on and off-Broadway starring in works like Before it Hits Home, August Wilson’s Joe Turners Come and Gone, and most recently A Soldier’s Play. James also created the role Paul, in Six Degrees of Separation, setting the stage for future Black actors like Will Smith, who reprised the role in 1993. His television credits include Orange is the New Black, Madame Secretary, and most recently, Hysteria, streaming on Amazon Prime. Other film credits include The Battle for Bunker Hill, Steel City, and Malcolm X, amongst many others.

www.creativeprocess.info

Howard A. Rodman is a screenwriter, author and educator. His novels include The Great Eastern and Destiny Express. As a screenwriter, Rodman wrote Savage Grace, with Julianne Moore and Eddie Redmayne, nominated for Best Screenplay at the 2009 Spirit Awards, and AUGUST, starring Josh Hartnett and David Bowie. He also wrote Joe Gould’s Secret, the opening night film of the Sundance Film Festival, based on the memoir by iconic New Yorker writer Joseph Mitchell. He is the past president of the Writers Guild of America West; professor of screenwriting at USC's School of Cinematic Arts; a member of the National Film Preservation Board; and an artistic director of the Sundance Screenwriting Labs. howardrodman.com/

www.creativeprocess.info

Howard A. Rodman is a screenwriter, author and educator. His novels include The Great Eastern and Destiny Express. As a screenwriter, Rodman wrote Savage Grace, with Julianne Moore and Eddie Redmayne, nominated for Best Screenplay at the 2009 Spirit Awards, and AUGUST, starring Josh Hartnett and David Bowie. He also wrote Joe Gould’s Secret, the opening night film of the Sundance Film Festival, based on the memoir by iconic New Yorker writer Joseph Mitchell. He is the past president of the Writers Guild of America West; professor of screenwriting at USC's School of Cinematic Arts; a member of the National Film Preservation Board; and an artistic director of the Sundance Screenwriting Labs. howardrodman.com/

www.creativeprocess.info

Actor, producer, writer and director, Joe Mantegna began his career on the stage with the 1969 musical Hair. He later earned a Tony Award for portraying Richard Roma in the first American production of David Mamet's play Glengarry Glen Ross, the first of many collaborations with Mamet.

Mantegna has appeared in Three Amigos, The Godfather Part III, Forget Paris, and Up Close & Personal and other films. From 2007 to 2020 he starred in the CBS TV series Criminal Minds as FBI Supervisory Special Agent David Rossi. Since 1991, he’s had a recurring role on The Simpsons as mob boss Fat Tony. He earned Emmy Award nominations three miniseries: The Last Don, The Rat Pack, and The Starter Wife. He’s executive produced for various films and TV movies, including Corduroy, Hoods, and Lakeboat, which he also directed.

www.joemantegna.com · www.creativeprocess.info

Actor, producer, writer and director, Joe Mantegna began his career on the stage with the 1969 musical Hair. He later earned a Tony Award for portraying Richard Roma in the first American production of David Mamet's play Glengarry Glen Ross, the first of many collaborations with Mamet.

Mantegna has appeared in Three Amigos, The Godfather Part III, Forget Paris, and Up Close & Personal and other films. From 2007 to 2020 he starred in the CBS TV series Criminal Minds as FBI Supervisory Special Agent David Rossi. Since 1991, he’s had a recurring role on The Simpsons as mob boss Fat Tony. He earned Emmy Award nominations three miniseries: The Last Don, The Rat Pack, and The Starter Wife. He’s executive produced for various films and TV movies, including Corduroy, Hoods, and Lakeboat, which he also directed.

Peter Weller · Actor, Art Historian & Director

Peter Weller is a renowned theater and Hollywood actor. His performance in films such as Robocop and Naked Lunch garnering him much critical and commercial success over the years. Unbeknownst to most, Weller has spent much of his time over the decades, honing his appreciation for the visual and musical arts through his studies of the Renaissance era. Earning a Masters in  Roman architecture from Syracuse University before moving onto a PHD in Renaissance art from UCLA, Weller has even penned numerous academic papers covering the era’s influence on modern art. Recently, Weller has even returned to the setting of RoboCop in Detroit, Michigan to deliver a lecture on “The Crisis in Beauty”. Peter has also contributed an essay to a music anthology The Creative Process has co-curated for Routledge Press. Weller’s essay details his memories of the late Miles Davis, who was both a friend and an inspiration.

www.creativeprocess.info

Peter Weller · Actor, Art Historian & Director

Peter Weller is a renowned theater and Hollywood actor. His performance in films such as Robocop and Naked Lunch garnering him much critical and commercial success over the years. Unbeknownst to most, Weller has spent much of his time over the decades, honing his appreciation for the visual and musical arts through his studies of the Renaissance era. Earning a Masters in  Roman architecture from Syracuse University before moving onto a PHD in Renaissance art from UCLA, Weller has even penned numerous academic papers covering the era’s influence on modern art. Recently, Weller has even returned to the setting of RoboCop in Detroit, Michigan to deliver a lecture on “The Crisis in Beauty”. Peter has also contributed an essay to a music anthology The Creative Process has co-curated for Routledge Press. Weller’s essay details his memories of the late Miles Davis, who was both a friend and an inspiration.

www.creativeprocess.info

Dr. Iain McGilchrist is a psychiatrist, neuroscience researcher, philosopher and literary scholar. He is a Quondam Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, an Associate Fellow of Green Templeton College, Oxford, a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, and former Consultant Psychiatrist and Clinical Director at the Bethlem Royal & Maudsley Hospital, London. 

He has been a Research Fellow in neuroimaging at Johns Hopkins Hospital and a Fellow of the Institute of Advanced Studies in Stellenbosch.  He has published original articles and research papers in a wide range of publications on topics in literature, philosophy, medicine and psychiatry.  

He is the author of a number of books, including The Matter with Things, and The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World.

· https://channelmcgilchrist.com
· www.creativeprocess.info
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org

"The heart also reports to the brain and receives from the brain. So our bodies are in dialogue with the brain. And we don't really know where consciousness is, we sort of imagine it's somewhere in the head. We have no real reason to suppose that it's just we identify it with our sight and we, therefore, think it must be somewhere up there behind the eyes, but it's something that takes in the whole of us and to which the whole of us contributes.”

“We think in the west of resistance as something negative but it's actually part of the creative process. Without resistance nothing new can come into being, so the very things that we think of as perhaps obstructing or negating are the very things that will lead to something new and greater. We need to get over this idea. For example, we're only able to move in space because there is friction. Friction is a force that stops you moving but without a degree of friction, you cannot actually move. You wouldn't have anything to move in relation to. So perfection is itself an imperfection. And in a number of traditions, this is memorialized by the idea that when you create something there should deliberately be some imperfection in it.”
Dr. Iain McGilchrist is a psychiatrist, neuroscience researcher, philosopher and literary scholar. He is a Quondam Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, an Associate Fellow of Green Templeton College, Oxford, a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, and former Consultant Psychiatrist and Clinical Director at the Bethlem Royal & Maudsley Hospital, London. 

He has been a Research Fellow in neuroimaging at Johns Hopkins Hospital and a Fellow of the Institute of Advanced Studies in Stellenbosch.  He has published original articles and research papers in a wide range of publications on topics in literature, philosophy, medicine and psychiatry.  

He is the author of a number of books, including The Matter with Things, and The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World.

· https://channelmcgilchrist.com
· www.creativeprocess.info
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org

Born and raised in Denver, Natalie Hodges has performed as a classical violinist throughout Colorado and in New York, Boston, Paris, and the Italian Piedmont, as well as at the Aspen Music Festival and the Stowe Tango Music Festival. She graduated from Harvard University, where she studied English and music, and lives in Denver, Colorado. Uncommon Measure is her first book.

· www.nataliehodges.com
· www.creativeprocess.info
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org

Photo by Krista Mercer Buchenau

“There's a real decrease in functional connectivity between regions of the brain that modulate the ego and a sense of self for Gabriela Montero when she's improvising. That's not a region of the brain in particular, it’s the connections between a lot of them and that together as well and also our sense of self and also our conscious memory and our ability to anticipate and plan for the future. So our knowledge of ourselves in these different spheres of time, the light of that activity is dimmed during improvisation. There really is a biological reason behind her feeling that she gets out of the way and something else comes to the fore. The study asks why are her improvisations still so coherent, why did they hold together in time. They refer to it as this form of embodied creativity or embodied cognition, where it’s a deeper kind of memory. a more physical memory in her fingers in her body that know how to play and kind of takes over and allows for ego to kind of dissolve in that moment as she performs.”

Born and raised in Denver, Natalie Hodges has performed as a classical violinist throughout Colorado and in New York, Boston, Paris, and the Italian Piedmont, as well as at the Aspen Music Festival and the Stowe Tango Music Festival. She graduated from Harvard University, where she studied English and music, and lives in Denver, Colorado. Uncommon Measure is her first book.

· www.nataliehodges.com
· www.creativeprocess.info
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org

Morgan Neville is an Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker. For over twenty years he has been making films about music and cultural subjects including Troubadours, Search and Destroy and three Grammy-nominated films: Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story, Muddy Waters Can’t Be Satisfied, and Johnny Cash’s America. His non-music films include The Cool School, Steinbeck and Shotgun Freeway: Drives Thru Lost L.A.. Neville has also produced many documentaries, including Pearl Jam Twenty, Crossfire Hurricane and Beauty is Embarrassing. In 2014, 20 Feet From Stardom, won numerous awards including the Academy Award for Best Documentary. His next film, Best of Enemies, won an Emmy Award for Best Historical Documentary at the News and Documentary Emmy Awards in 2017. The film was also shortlisted for the 2016 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. Recent projects include Ugly Delicious, Abstract: The Art of Design, They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead, and Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, a documentary about Fred Rogers which was released by Focus Features in 2018 and has become one of the best reviewed and highest grossing documentaries of all time.
· tremoloproductions.com
· www.creativeprocess.info

Morgan Neville is an Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker. For over twenty years he has been making films about music and cultural subjects including Troubadours, Search and Destroy and three Grammy-nominated films: Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story, Muddy Waters Can’t Be Satisfied, and Johnny Cash’s America. His non-music films include The Cool School, Steinbeck and Shotgun Freeway: Drives Thru Lost L.A.. Neville has also produced many documentaries, including Pearl Jam Twenty, Crossfire Hurricane and Beauty is Embarrassing. In 2014, 20 Feet From Stardom, won numerous awards including the Academy Award for Best Documentary. His next film, Best of Enemies, won an Emmy Award for Best Historical Documentary at the News and Documentary Emmy Awards in 2017. The film was also shortlisted for the 2016 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. Recent projects include Ugly Delicious, Abstract: The Art of Design, They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead, and Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, a documentary about Fred Rogers which was released by Focus Features in 2018 and has become one of the best reviewed and highest grossing documentaries of all time.

· tremoloproductions.com

· www.creativeprocess.info

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

“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

Steve Biddulph (AM) is a renowned parent educator. A retired psychologist of 30 years, he continues to write and teach, authoring books such as The Secret of Happy Children, Raising Boys, The New Manhood, and 10 Things Girls Need Most, which have influenced how we view childhood development and mental health. Voted Australian Father of the Year in 2001, Steve has since been made a member of the Order of Australia for his work in youth mental health, and remains a patron of the Sanctuary Refugee Trust and Australian Religious Response to Climate Change.

· www.stevebiddulph.com

· www.creativeprocess.info

· www.oneplanetpodcast.org

“We drastically misuse our mind and have neglected a very important part of the way our mind works in the modern world. I think preindustrial people and our ancestors used this very well. And that is that we have a whole right hemisphere of our brain which doesn't think in words, which takes in the holistic picture of everything around us. Anyone who is listening to this podcast will be aware that sometimes you have got feelings about things. They are signals that are sent from the right hemisphere of the brain, picking up things that we can't consciously interpret or read. It goes through our amygdala, which is our alarm system, and straight down the vagus nerve, and we feel it down in the middle of our body. What the books argue, if you want to be able to parent effectively, and live your life effectively, is to stay in touch with that. Include those signals as part of your mental checking out. Expand your awareness because you can read that every few seconds all the time. And your life will be very different. There are feelings below your feelings. They are not always right, but they're always worth listening to.”

Steve Biddulph (AM) is a renowned parent educator. A retired psychologist of 30 years, he continues to write and teach, authoring books such as The Secret of Happy Children, Raising Boys, The New Manhood, and 10 Things Girls Need Most, which have influenced how we view childhood development and mental health. Voted Australian Father of the Year in 2001, Steve has since been made a member of the Order of Australia for his work in youth mental health, and remains a patron of the Sanctuary Refugee Trust and Australian Religious Response to Climate Change.

· www.stevebiddulph.com
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info

E. J. Koh is the author of the memoir The Magical Language of Others, winner of the Washington State Book Award and the 2021 Pacific Northwest Book Award. For her poetry collection A Lesser Love she received the Pleiades Press Editors Prize. She is the co-translator of Yi Won’s The World’s Lightest Motorcycle, forthcoming from Zephyr Press. Her poems, translations, and stories have appeared in Boston Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, and World Literature Today, among others. She earned her MFA in Literary Translation and Creative Writing from Columbia University, and is completing the PhD program at the University of Washington in Seattle. She is a recipient of MacDowell and Kundiman fellowships.
IG @thisisejkoh
· www.instagram.com/p/CRB8O69BWQJ/
· www.creativeprocess.info

Mario Alberto Zambrano is the Associate Director of Juilliard Dance. He was born in Houston, danced for Batsheva Dance Company, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Nederlands Dans Theater II, and Ballet Frankfurt between 1994 and 2005. He then returned to school and earned an MFA in English at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he received a John C. Schupes fellowship for excellence in fiction. His first novel, Lotería (Harper Collins), was a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers pick in 2013 and a finalist for the 2014 John Gardner Fiction Book Award. Zambrano, who was awarded the Alice Hoffman Prize for Fiction for his short story “Some of You,” has been a YoungArts Presidential Scholar in the Arts and a Princess Grace Award winner. He has been awarded literary fellowships to MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Scotland’s Hawthornden Castle. Before joining Juilliard, he was a lecturer in theater, dance, and media at Harvard. He serves as program director for Orsolina28’s summer program and curates The LIT Series, a library of interdisciplinary thinking consisting of series of  lectures, interviews, classes and discussions.

“In both writing a first draft and in the improvisation of a dancing body, what is so key and relevant and exposed is voice. That internal voice of the artist of what they're writing on the page or what they're writing in space. If you go to fiction workshop, you talk about plot, structure, and you talk about character development, but there are very few classes within a dance curriculum where you break down an improvisation and you talk about voice, point of view, metaphor, or musical composition within a phrase. The lifespan of a phrase. And so this realisation is helping me understand that a one minute post of improvisation or even a ten-minute span of improvisation if it’s recorded is very similar to a first draft of creative writing, where then the artist is in a position to evaluate those 10 minutes and identify what is the setting? What is the voice that has come out of my experience of writing this first draft of an improvisation? And how can I give it structure? How can I give it form?”

· IG @juilliardschool
· IG @malberto777
· IG @thelitseries
· www.thelitseries.com
· www.juilliard.edu/dance/faculty/zambrano-mario-alberto
· marioalbertozambrano.com
· www.creativeprocess.info
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org

Photo by Julien Benhamou

Artist Donald Sultan rose to prominence in the late 1970s as part of the “New Image” movement. Sultan has challenged the boundaries between painting and sculpture throughout his career. Using industrial materials such as roofing tar, aluminum, linoleum and enamel, Sultan layers, gouges, sands and constructs his paintings—sumptuous, richly textured compositions often made of the same materials as the rooms in which they are displayed. He lives and works in New York City.

“I always feel that you can never fail if you don't know what you're doing. The best work is what you do when you don’t know what you’re doing…A lot of the images that have struck me, that I get drawn to, a lot of them were from painting. Some of them were from early movies. Some of them were from places I visited, but mostly gardens or wild gardens that had things in them I’d never seen before, and then learning what that was when I'd been working on it. Generally speaking most of what I do had to do with my feelings about other artists work that I admired. A lot of the industrial materials that are use, floor tiling and things like that came from site specific artists, sculptors, people who built into the buildings, Arte Povera. Using works that were just found, the poor materials, that kind of thing. Tar I kind of got from working in my fathers tire shop with the grinding of the rubber and so on. Things come together and I wasn’t even aware of it until people start asking me about it. I remember telling them about this man, being in black room with all this rubber, smoking Camels. It was a very cool image. I’ll never forget the guy, but when I was doing it myself, that’s not what I was thinking. I was really thinking about the materials I was using and inverting them.”
· donaldsultanstudio.com
· ryanleegallery.com
· www.creativeprocess.info
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org

James Fallows has been a national correspondent for The Atlantic for more than thirty-five years, reporting from China, Japan, Southeast Asia, Europe, and across the United States. Winner of the National Book Award and National Magazine Award, he’s the author of twelve books and his work has appeared in numerous publications and on public-radio. For two years he was President Jimmy Carter’s chief speechwriter.

Deborah Fallows is a linguist and writer. The author of Dreaming in Chinese and A Mother's Work, she has written for The Atlantic, National Geographic, and The New York Times, among others and has worked at the Pew Research Center, Oxygen Media, and Georgetown University.

Following the success of their NYTimes bestselling book Our Towns and HBO documentary based on their reporting on around 50 towns around the country, they formed the Our Towns Civic Foundation to promote reporting from under-served areas across the US, connect innovators and give Americans a fuller and more realistic picture of their country’s challenges and opportunities.

Our Towns (HBO Movie):  https://www.hbo.com/documentaries/our-towns

Our Towns (book): https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/550194/our-towns-by-james-fallows-and-deborah-fallows/ 

Our Towns Civic Foundation: https://www.ourtownsfoundation.org/ 

Our Towns Civic Foundation is a new non-profit organization that promotes reporting from under-served areas across the United States, to connect innovators dealing with the problems of this era, and gives Americans a fuller and more realistic picture of their countries challenges and opportunities."

Deb Fallows, Dreaming in Chinese   https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/dreaming-in-chinese-9780802779144/

Deb Fallows, A Mother's Work   https://www.amazon.com/Mothers-Work-Deborah-Fallows/dp/0395362180

Jim Fallows, More Like Us  https://www.amazon.com/More-like-Strengths-Traditional-Challenge/dp/B0010HBVYQ

Other books https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/8383/james-fallows/
Substack: https://fallows.substack.com/

Photo © Michael Shay Polara Studio

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."

Ann Hiatt is a best selling author, executive consultant, speaker, and investor. She is a Silicon Valley veteran with 15 years experience reporting directly to CEOs Jeff Bezos (Amazon) and Eric Schmidt (Google/Alphabet). Ann consults with CEOs and their leadership teams across the globe on c-suite optimization.

Ann has published articles in publications such as Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and CNBC. She has also contributed to articles in The New York Times, Economic Times, The Financial Times and Forbes. Her bestselling book, Bet On Yourself, was published by HarperCollins in 2021.

· https://annhiatt.co
· www.BetOnYourselfBook.com 
· Bet on Yourself book
· Season 5 of Bet on Yourself podcast  launch on May 25th

· www.creativeprocess.info
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org

"I am very concerned that the future seems to be consolidated among the 10 wealthiest, most powerful people in the world who are all white guys. And they're great. I know most of them personally. I have mad respect for them, but it's really concerning when a private individual can buy Twitter. It's very concerning when a billionaire can own one of the most important news organizations in the United States. When Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post, at first I was very excited about it because we all know that journalism and journalistic integrity are an essential part of modern democracy.

And that was very much threatened and dismantled by technology because their revenue structure was destroyed with the internet. So they had to reinvent themselves. So at first, when he bought it, I thought, Oh good, he's going to give them new lifeblood. And now I'm like, Oh, no. When we have major billionaires controlling the dialogue, the discussions, the flow of information–whether that's Facebook or Twitter or news organizations, that's really concerning. So my major deliverable and really the motivation behind writing Bet on Yourself was to democratize success, democratize entrepreneurism, and to wake up inside all of us, realizing that whether you're an intrepreneur working in another company, or if you're a more traditional quote, unquote entrepreneur - it doesn't have to be in a garage or getting funding from traditional VC companies. I wanted to wake that up in as many minds as possible that we can make a huge difference. No matter your expertise, your industry, your risk tolerance, there are ways that we can all participate in this, and what we need most, especially now when core algorithms of artificial intelligence are being written, is more participation from more perspectives.

Whether that's cultural...every possible definition of diversity. I want more people participating because what concerns me most about globalization is it's being controlled by about 10 people."

Ann Hiatt is a best selling author, executive consultant, speaker, and investor. She is a Silicon Valley veteran with 15 years experience reporting directly to CEOs Jeff Bezos (Amazon) and Eric Schmidt (Google/Alphabet). Ann consults with CEOs and their leadership teams across the globe on c-suite optimization.

Ann has published articles in publications such as Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and CNBC. She has also contributed to articles in The New York Times, Economic Times, The Financial Times and Forbes. Her bestselling book, Bet On Yourself, was published by HarperCollins in 2021.

· https://annhiatt.co
· www.BetOnYourselfBook.com 
· Bet on Yourself book
· Season 5 of Bet on Yourself podcast  launch on May 25th

· www.creativeprocess.info
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org

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

"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

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

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

“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

Best-selling author Courtney Peppernell is from Sydney, Australia. Her poetry collection Pillow Thoughts was a worldwide success. Her Young Adult novels and poetry books have struck a chord with young readers and the LGBTQ+ community. Her other works include I Hope You Stay, Watering the Soul, as well as Hope in the Morning, profits of which were donated to assist relief efforts for injured wildlife affected by Australian bushfires.

“I really hope that kindness is preserved. I really think manners and being polite can go a long way. People are in such a rush these days. Everybody wants to acquire so much, and they forget to just be thankful for the little things in life. To slow down, how you move through the world and how selfless you are, holding open a door for someone, or just telling someone to have a good day. Those are all things that can have a lasting effect on another person and make them want to be better as well.”
· https://www.peppernell.com
· https://www.instagram.com/courtneypeppernell/

· WIRES, Australia’s largest wildlife rescue organisation
https://www.wires.org.au

· www.creativeprocess.info
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org

“I really hope that kindness is preserved. I really think manners and being polite can go a long way. People are in such a rush these days. Everybody wants to acquire so much, and they forget to just be thankful for the little things in life. To slow down, how you move through the world and how selfless you are, holding open a door for someone, or just telling someone to have a good day. Those are all things that can have a lasting effect on another person and make them want to be better as well.”

Best-selling author Courtney Peppernell is from Sydney, Australia. Her poetry collection Pillow Thoughts was a worldwide success. Her Young Adult novels and poetry books have struck a chord with young readers and the LGBTQ+ community. Her other works include I Hope You Stay, Watering the Soul, as well as Hope in the Morning, profits of which were donated to assist relief efforts for injured wildlife affected by Australian bushfires.
· https://www.peppernell.com
· https://www.instagram.com/courtneypeppernell/

· WIRES, Australia’s largest wildlife rescue organisation
https://www.wires.org.au

· www.creativeprocess.info
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org

Stuart Pimm is a world leader in the study of present-day extinctions and what can be done to prevent them. His research covers the reasons why species become extinct, how fast they do so, the global patterns of habitat loss and species extinction and, importantly, the management consequences of this research. Pimm received his BSc degree from Oxford University in 1971 and his Ph.D. from New Mexico State University in 1974. Pimm is the author of over 350 scientific papers and five books. He is one of the most highly cited environmental scientists. Pimm wrote the highly acclaimed assessment of the human impact to the planet: The World According to Pimm: a Scientist Audits the Earth in 2001. His commitment to the interface between science and policy has led to his testimony to both House and Senate Committees on the re-authorization of the Endangered Species Act. He was worked and taught in Africa for nearly 30 years on elephants, most recently lions — through National Geographic’s Big Cats Initiative — but always on topics that relate to the conservation of wildlife and the ecosystems on which they depend. Other research areas include the Everglades of Florida and tropical forests in South America, especially the Atlantic Coast forest of Brazil and the northern Andes — two of the world's "hotspots" for threatened species. His international honours include the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement (2010), the Dr. A.H. Heineken Prize for Environmental Sciences from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (2006), the Society for Conservation Biology’s Edward T. LaRoe III Memorial Award (2006), and the Marsh Award for Conservation Biology, from the Marsh Christian Trust (awarded by the Zoological Society of London in 2004). Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society, awarded him the William Proctor Prize for Scientific Achievement in 2007. In 2019, he won the International Cosmos Prize, which recognised his founding and directing Saving Nature, www.savingnature.org, a non-profit that uses donations for carbon emissions offsets to fund local conservation groups in areas of exceptional tropical biodiversity to restore their degraded lands. 

“It's a complicated issue. I think a lot of those bird disappearances come from the fact that we have massively intensified our agriculture. Large areas of North America and Europe are now under intense agriculture. They are sprayed with a whole variety of pesticides, which I think is also responsible for the fact that many insects have disappeared, so species that depend on farmland have clearly declined dramatically, but it isn't all birds and there is a piece of this complicated story that involves water birds. Herons and egrets and ducks. Those species both in North America and Europe, are now much more common than they were 30, or 40 years ago. That comes from active conservation of protecting wetlands, making sure we don't shoot our wetland birds. So it’s not all doom and gloom. There are some success stories. There are many things we can do. I think 50 years ago, there were only something like 300 bald eagles in the lower 48 states. Bald eagles are now nesting in every state apart from Hawaii. Our conservation efforts have done a great job.”

· https://nicholas.duke.edu/people/faculty/pimm

· https://savingnature.com

· www.inaturalist.org

· https://www.nationalgeographic.org/projects/big-cats-initiative/

· https://www.amazon.com/Scientist-Audits-Earth-Stuart-Pimm/dp/0813535409/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3A29YJYQ1JPOM&keywords=The+World+According+to+Pimm&qid=1652772158&sprefix=the+world+according+to+pimm%2Caps%2C130&sr=8-1

· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info

Photo: Stuart Pimm In the Namib desert courtesy of SavingNature.com

“It's a complicated issue. I think a lot of those bird disappearances come from the fact that we have massively intensified our agriculture. Large areas of North America and Europe are now under intense agriculture. They are sprayed with a whole variety of pesticides, which I think is also responsible for the fact that many insects have disappeared, so species that depend on farmland have clearly declined dramatically, but it isn't all birds and there is a piece of this complicated story that involves water birds. Herons and egrets and ducks. Those species both in North America and Europe, are now much more common than they were 30, or 40 years ago. That comes from active conservation of protecting wetlands, making sure we don't shoot our wetland birds. So it’s not all doom and gloom. There are some success stories. There are many things we can do. I think 50 years ago, there were only something like 300 bald eagles in the lower 48 states. Bald eagles are now nesting in every state apart from Hawaii. Our conservation efforts have done a great job.”

Stuart Pimm is a world leader in the study of present-day extinctions and what can be done to prevent them. His research covers the reasons why species become extinct, how fast they do so, the global patterns of habitat loss and species extinction and, importantly, the management consequences of this research. Pimm received his BSc degree from Oxford University in 1971 and his Ph.D. from New Mexico State University in 1974. Pimm is the author of over 350 scientific papers and five books. His commitmnt to the interface between science and policy has led to his testimony to both House and Senate Committees on the re-authorization of the Endangered Species Act. In 2019, he won the International Cosmos Prize, which recognised his founding and directing Saving Nature, a non-profit that uses donations for carbon emissions offsets to fund local conservation groups in areas of exceptional tropical biodiversity to restore their degraded lands. 

· https://nicholas.duke.edu/people/faculty/pimm

· Saving Nature: Rescue endangered habitats and vulnerable communities from environmental destruction: https://savingnature.com

· Connect with Nature - Share your Observations of the Natural World  www.inaturalist.org

· NatGeo’s Big Cats Initiative: https://www.nationalgeographic.org/projects/big-cats-initiative/

· The World According to Pimm: A https://www.amazon.com/Scientist-Audits-Earth-Stuart-Pimm/dp/0813535409/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3A29YJYQ1JPOM&keywords=The+World+According+to+Pimm&qid=1652772158&sprefix=the+world+according+to+pimm%2Caps%2C130&sr=8-1

· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info

Anthony Gardner is Professor of Contemporary Art History at the University of Oxford, where he was the Head of the Ruskin School of Art from 2017 to 2020. He has published widely on subjects including postcolonialism, postsocialism and curatorial histories. His books include Politically Unbecoming: Postsocialist Art against Democracy, and Biennials, Triennials and documenta: The exhibitions that created contemporary art, co-authored with Charles Green.

“I think art can engage with the body, the mind, and the imagination in so many different ways that can compliment modes of thinking, other modes of creating, thinking through, working through and devising.
I was thinking about this in relation to the last 18 months and how the sciences have rightly been heralded as the great way of getting ourselves out of this pandemic, but culture is the way and art is the way that we've been getting through the pandemic. So many people have been watching Netflix, reading, singing music, playing music, making images, and making art as a way of getting through very difficult times and reflecting through that process. And in that sense, science compliments the arts, and the arts compliment the sciences because you can't get out of a situation without getting through it. So in order to get to the end of this sort of crisis, we have to be able to work through them.
And so art becomes a very important means and space and time for being able to reflect, but also delve into thinking through and thinking where the situations we have at hand and the situations we find ourselves in.”

· https://www.rsa.ox.ac.uk/people/anthony-gardner

· https://www.rsa.ox.ac.uk

· https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Biennials%2C+Triennials%2C+and+Documenta%3A+The+Exhibitions+that+Created+Contemporary+Art-p-9781444336641

· www.creativeprocess.info
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org

“I think art can engage with the body, the mind, and the imagination in so many different ways that can compliment modes of thinking, other modes of creating, thinking through, working through and devising.
I was thinking about this in relation to the last 18 months and how the sciences have rightly been heralded as the great way of getting ourselves out of this pandemic, but culture is the way and art is the way that we've been getting through the pandemic. So many people have been watching Netflix, reading, singing music, playing music, making images, and making art as a way of getting through very difficult times and reflecting through that process. And in that sense, science compliments the arts, and the arts compliment the sciences because you can't get out of a situation without getting through it. So in order to get to the end of this sort of crisis, we have to be able to work through them.
And so art becomes a very important means and space and time for being able to reflect, but also delve into thinking through and thinking where the situations we have at hand and the situations we find ourselves in.”

Anthony Gardner is Professor of Contemporary Art History at the University of Oxford, where he was the Head of the Ruskin School of Art from 2017 to 2020. He has published widely on subjects including postcolonialism, postsocialism and curatorial histories. His books include Politically Unbecoming: Postsocialist Art against Democracy, and Biennials, Triennials and documenta: The exhibitions that created contemporary art, co-authored with Charles Green.

· https://www.rsa.ox.ac.uk/people/anthony-gardner

· https://www.rsa.ox.ac.uk

· https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Biennials%2C+Triennials%2C+and+Documenta%3A+The+Exhibitions+that+Created+Contemporary+Art-p-9781444336641

· www.creativeprocess.info
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org

Noah Wilson-Rich, Ph.D., is co-founder and CEO of The Best Bees Company, the largest beekeeping service in the US. He is a 20-time published author and 3-time TEDx speaker. He’s on a mission to improve pollinator health worldwide as a means to support our global food system and support the transformation of urban areas from gray to green. He is the author of The Bee: A Natural History.

“I was originally drawn to bees because they're social creatures. And as humans, I always wanted to know about ourselves and how we can be our healthiest selves and our healthiest society. Bees and wasps, and all of these organisms have been around for so long. Bees especially have been around for 100 million years.”

Book: The Bee: A Natural History
tinyurl.com/beenoah

Their blog offers many resources:
https://bestbees.com/blog/

National Pollinator Week June 20 - 26

www.pollinator.org  
Many events all week

Green roof company
Columbia Green Technologies  columbia-green.com

· Noah-Wilson Rich’s website:
https://www.noahwilsonrich.com

· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info

“I was originally drawn to bees because they're social creatures. And as humans, I always wanted to know about ourselves and how we can be our healthiest selves and our healthiest society. Bees and wasps, and all of these organisms have been around for so long. Bees especially have been around for 100 million years.”
Noah Wilson-Rich, Ph.D., is co-founder and CEO of The Best Bees Company, the largest beekeeping service in the US. He is a 20-time published author and 3-time TEDx speaker. He’s on a mission to improve pollinator health worldwide as a means to support our global food system and support the transformation of urban areas from gray to green. He is the author of The Bee: A Natural History.

· Book: The Bee: A Natural History
tinyurl.com/beenoah

· Their blog offers many resources:
https://bestbees.com/blog/

· National Pollinator Week June 20 - 26
www.pollinator.org  
Many events all week

· Green roof company
Columbia Green Technologies  columbia-green.com

· Noah-Wilson Rich’s website:
https://www.noahwilsonrich.com

Image courtesy of The Best Bees Company

· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info

Ellen Rapoport is the creator, executive producer, and showrunner of the breakout hit comedy series, Minx, for HBO Max. The series, which aired on the platform on March 17, takes place in 1970s Los Angeles and follows the story of an earnest young feminist who joins forces with a low-rent publisher to create the first erotic magazine for women. In May, it was announced that the series was renewed for a second season. Executive produced by Paul Feig and starring Ophelia Lovibond, Jake Johnson, and Lennon Parham among others, the series became an instant hit for its clever writing, evocative imagery, and its championship of feminist ideals from the 70s era. TV Guide called it “…a bouncy, feel-good show that taps into the elation of creating something new where there was nothing before.”

Previously, Ellen co-wrote the screenplay for Paramount’s feature Clifford the Big Red Dog, as well as Netflix's Desperados.

"What drew me to the time period of the 70s was the real story of these magazines Playgirl, Viva, Foxy Lady, all the magazines that existed in this period. So it was a natural outgrowth of trying to tell a story that was inspired by, to some extent, real-life events. When I started developing Minx, what struck me about the 70s, in particular, is just how similar it was to our time. It seems like the magazines were covering all the same issues that we're now talking about. Obviously, we all saw with the leaked decision in Roe vs. Wade just how close we are to that time period and how far we haven't come.”

· MINX: www.hbomax.com/minx
· Ellen Rapoport: www.imdb.com/name/nm0710784/

· www.creativeprocess.info
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org

"What drew me to the time period of the 70s was the real story of these magazines Playgirl, Viva, Foxy Lady, all the magazines that existed in this period. So it was a natural outgrowth of trying to tell a story that was inspired by, to some extent, real-life events. When I started developing Minx, what struck me about the 70s, in particular, is just how similar it was to our time. It seems like the magazines were covering all the same issues that we're now talking about. Obviously, we all saw with the leaked decision in Roe vs. Wade just how close we are to that time period and how far we haven't come.”

Ellen Rapoport is the creator, executive producer, and showrunner of the breakout hit comedy series, Minx, for HBO Max. The series, which aired on the platform on March 17, takes place in 1970s Los Angeles and follows the story of an earnest young feminist who joins forces with a low-rent publisher to create the first erotic magazine for women. In May, it was announced that the series was renewed for a second season. Executive produced by Paul Feig and starring Ophelia Lovibond, Jake Johnson, and Lennon Parham among others, the series became an instant hit for its clever writing, evocative imagery, and its championship of feminist ideals from the 70s era. TV Guide called it “…a bouncy, feel-good show that taps into the elation of creating something new where there was nothing before.”

Previously, Ellen co-wrote the screenplay for Paramount’s feature Clifford the Big Red Dog, as well as Netflix's Desperados.

· MINX: www.hbomax.com/minx
· Ellen Rapoport: www.imdb.com/name/nm0710784/

· www.creativeprocess.info
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org

Petra Cortright is a Los Angeles-based digital artist known for her elaborate paintings, videography, and digital media. Crafted from massive digital files on Photoshop, her paintings are often composed of physical and digital images, simulated brushstrokes, and marks that blend both abstract and figurative elements. Petra has exhibited at the Walker Art Center, Whitechapel Gallery, and the Hammer Museum, in addition to solo exhibitions around the world. Her work is featured in permanent collections at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Miami’s Péréz Museum, and the Moderna Museeit in Stockholm–amongst many others.

“I think to pursue mystery and beauty, these things are a bit subjective, so you can't really tell people exactly what it shouldn't be about. And also I have to preserve these things for myself. I primarily make the work for myself, so if I don't have some questions that are unanswered, even for me, then there's not really an interest to like keep going otherwise. So it's also sort of protection and a preservation mindset that I have about leaving things really open for other people and for myself.”

· www.petracortright.com

· Show at Societé in Berlin: BALEAF GYS AKADEMIKS MAAMGIC BROKIG: 
https://societeberlin.com/exhibitions/baleaf-gys-akademiks-maamgic-brokig/

· Show at Foxy production at the beginning of this year: https://www.foxyproduction.com/exhibitions/1756

Photo by Stefan Simchowitz

· www.creativeprocess.info
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org

“I think to pursue mystery and beauty, these things are a bit subjective, so you can't really tell people exactly what it shouldn't be about. And also I have to preserve these things for myself. I primarily make the work for myself, so if I don't have some questions that are unanswered, even for me, then there's not really an interest to like keep going otherwise. So it's also sort of protection and a preservation mindset that I have about leaving things really open for other people and for myself.”

Petra Cortright is a Los Angeles-based digital artist known for her elaborate paintings, videography, and digital media. Crafted from massive digital files on Photoshop, her paintings are often composed of physical and digital images, simulated brushstrokes, and marks that blend both abstract and figurative elements. Petra has exhibited at the Walker Art Center, Whitechapel Gallery, and the Hammer Museum, in addition to solo exhibitions around the world. Her work is featured in permanent collections at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Miami’s Péréz Museum, and the Moderna Museeit in Stockholm–amongst many others.

· www.petracortright.com

· Show at Societé in Berlin: BALEAF GYS AKADEMIKS MAAMGIC BROKIG: 
https://societeberlin.com/exhibitions/baleaf-gys-akademiks-maamgic-brokig/

· Show at Foxy production at the beginning of this year: https://www.foxyproduction.com/exhibitions/1756

Petra Cortright

BENGAL TIGER_beurteilungsschreiben Better Homes and Gardens, 2021
Digital painting on anodized aluminum
149.9 x 215.9 x 3 cm
59 1/2 x 85 x 1 1/2 in

· www.creativeprocess.info
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org

From a young age, Saskatchewan born Derrick Emsley has been actively connecting people with environmental stewardship. At 16, he and his brother Kalen founded a tree planting company that sold carbon offsets to businesses, a venture that saw over $1 million dollars in contracts and 150,000 trees planted. Derrick founded tentree, the apparel company that plants trees for purchases, soon after graduating from Richard Ivey School of Business in 2012. In just under a decade, tentree has set new standards for apparel brands with environmentally progressive values. Based on its success creating a model for engagement between the brand and its consumers, Derrick co-founded veritree last year, as a platform for regeneration that other brands can use to create similar impact. Named one of Forbes 30 Under 30 for 2020, Derrick has become a voice for a modern generation—one who recognizes the necessity of a brand that's earth-first, transparent, and community-focused.

"I think what's powerful about a tree is it's tangible and it's symbolic in a lot of ways. We as humans naturally have this emotional connection, I think, to trees, and so particularly when you think of our ability to take action within the climate crisis conversation, a tree is this really powerful symbol and vehicle because it's a lot easier to understand a tree than it is to understand a pound or two of CO2

that's floating in the air.

So for us, tree planting is just the start of the communication, just the start of the impact. Really if all it was was to get a stick in the ground that wouldn't have the long-term impact, whether that be carbon, whether that be socioeconomic impact, and things like that. So really for us, veritree helps us collect all that data and create the operating system to pull in the data on everything from planting forms and field updates that are coming in, survivability analysis, and different updates on things like biodiversity. We're partnering with some groups to test underwater sensors in some of these planting sites. We're collecting socioeconomic surveys and things like that to try to attach the impact to the community and back to the planting that's happening."

· www.veritree.com

· veritree Launches Community of 30 Brand Partners to Plant 10 Million Verified Trees

veritree Partners with Samsung to Plant Millions of Trees in 2022

Mogo announces its partnership with veritree

veritree and Cardano Foundation Complete Global Impact Challenge as "Cardano Forest" Reaches Funding Target for Planting 1M Trees

www.oneplanetpodcast.org

· www.creativeprocess.info

"I think what's powerful about a tree is it's tangible and it's symbolic in a lot of ways. We as humans naturally have this emotional connection, I think, to trees, and so particularly when you think of our ability to take action within the climate crisis conversation, a tree is this really powerful symbol and vehicle because it's a lot easier to understand a tree than it is to understand a pound or two of CO2 that's floating in the air.

So for us, tree planting is just the start of the communication, just the start of the impact. Really if all it was was to get a stick in the ground that wouldn't have the long-term impact, whether that be carbon, whether that be socioeconomic impact, and things like that. So really for us, veritree helps us collect all that data and create the operating system to pull in the data on everything from planting forms and field updates that are coming in, survivability analysis, and different updates on things like biodiversity. We're partnering with some groups to test underwater sensors in some of these planting sites. We're collecting socioeconomic surveys and things like that to try to attach the impact to the community and back to the planting that's happening.”

From a young age, Saskatchewan born Derrick Emsley has been actively connecting people with environmental stewardship. At 16, he and his brother Kalen founded a tree planting company that sold carbon offsets to businesses, a venture that saw over $1 million dollars in contracts and 150,000 trees planted. Derrick founded tentree, the apparel company that plants trees for purchases, soon after graduating from Richard Ivey School of Business in 2012. In just under a decade, tentree has set new standards for apparel brands with environmentally progressive values. Based on its success creating a model for engagement between the brand and its consumers, Derrick co-founded veritree last year, as a platform for regeneration that other brands can use to create similar impact. Named one of Forbes 30 Under 30 for 2020, Derrick has become a voice for a modern generation—one who recognizes the necessity of a brand that's earth-first, transparent, and community-focused.

· www.veritree.com

· veritree Launches Community of 30 Brand Partners to Plant 10 Million Verified Trees

veritree Partners with Samsung to Plant Millions of Trees in 2022

Mogo announces its partnership with veritree

veritree and Cardano Foundation Complete Global Impact Challenge as "Cardano Forest" Reaches Funding Target for Planting 1M Trees

www.oneplanetpodcast.org
· www.creativeprocess.info

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

“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