Explore every episode of the podcast Sustainability, Climate Change, Renewable Energy, Politics, Activism, Biodiversity, Carbon Footprint, Wildlife, Regenerative Agriculture, Circular Economy, Extinction, Net-Zero · One Planet Podcast

My guest today is Ada Limón. She served two historic terms as the 24th poet laureate in the United States. She has brought poetry to public parks across the US, and her words have traveled through deep space, engraved on NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft. In over 20 years of writing in celebrated collections like Bright Dead Things and The Carrying and her new book, Startlement: New and Selected Poems, Ada has brought a sincerity to American poetry rooted in connection to the natural world.

She’s written with inspiring honesty about the death of loved ones, trying to conceive and also the unexpected liberation of deciding to step away from societal expectations of motherhood and embrace a life happily childfree. Her latest book on craft, Against Breaking: On the Power of Poetry, asks how a poem can hold our heaviest grief without letting the human spirit fracture.

After years living in Kentucky and New York, she bought back her childhood home in Sonoma Valley, stepping back into the rooms where her poetic imagination first took root. We’ll talk about the discipline of paying attention and why poetry remains an essential act of human survival.

(1:45) Silence as the Music of the World

(9:17) The Deepening of Roots

(13:19) 'On Earth As It Is on Earth'

(18:08) Bearing Witness Without Surrendering to Grief

(21:02) Singing Back the Wounded World and the Case for Beauty

(28:22) Love as an Active Daily Choice

(30:38) The Practice of Loving-Kindness Meditation

(37:34) Writing Without Music, Listening to the Landscape

(40:04) Dreams as Archetypes of Consciousness

(42:51) The Creative Toll of AI

(51:29) Embracing the Liberation of a Childfree Life

(1:01:06) Listening to Trees as an Act of Reciprocity

(1:06:44) Interconnectedness of Living Beings

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

“It’s always very interesting that we have to make a case for art because we don’t have to make a case for fast food. Like, we don’t have to make a case for all of these sort of things in our lives that we do not need, and yet we have to make a case for beauty? We have to make a case for the soul? We have to make a case for humanity? We have to make a case for singing back the wounded world? That to me is fascinating”

My guest today is Ada Limón. She served two historic terms as the 24th poet laureate in the United States. She has brought poetry to public parks across the US, and her words have traveled through deep space, engraved on NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft. In over 20 years of writing in celebrated collections like Bright Dead Things and The Carrying and her new book, Startlement: New and Selected Poems, Ada has brought a sincerity to American poetry rooted in connection to the natural world.

She’s written with inspiring honesty about the death of loved ones, trying to conceive and also the unexpected liberation of deciding to step away from societal expectations of motherhood and embrace a life happily childfree. Her latest book on craft, Against Breaking: On the Power of Poetry, asks how a poem can hold our heaviest grief without letting the human spirit fracture.

After years living in Kentucky and New York, she bought back her childhood home in Sonoma Valley, stepping back into the rooms where her poetic imagination first took root. We’ll talk about the discipline of paying attention and why poetry remains an essential act of human survival.

(0:03) The Case for Beauty  

(0:39) About Ada Limón

(2:44) The Deepening of Roots

(5:01) Reading 'On Earth As It Is on Earth'

(6:08) Bearing Witness Without Surrendering to Grief

(7:50) The Definition of Beauty and the Dissolving Self

(9:41) Love as an Active Daily Choice

(11:11) The Practice of Loving-Kindness Meditation

(13:28) Reading 'Hell or High Water'

(17:01) Writing Without Music and Listening to the Landscape

(19:08) Dreams as Archetypes of Consciousness

(21:34) The Environmental and Creative Toll of Generative AI

(24:02) AI and the Future of the Arts

(25:21) Stewardship, Conservation, and Faith in the Invisible Workers

(28:14) The Childfree Daughter

(29:57) Listening to Trees as an Act of Reciprocity

(32:40) The Music of the World

(34:03) The Seed of Interconnectedness

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

"I really do believe that the arts are critical to how we move forward together, and live performance in particular, I think, is a way of us practicing how to move across our ideological boundaries and find one another and imagine these new worlds together and create together.

The point is that if we are moving through this world and we want to enjoy what it means to be fully human, I think then you have to be fully human and creation is part of that. This idea of thinking through, moving through, expressing yourself in your body and your words and your voice, through your paintbrush, those are all part of the human experience. And to imagine that we have something to offer each other, this act of generosity that creation gives us, I think is deeply important."

Shanta Thake is the Chief Artistic Officer at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts—the nation's largest performing arts complex. Before stepping into this role, she spent nineteen years at The Public Theater, shaping the city's cultural landscape through Joe's Pub and expansive community initiatives. Today, she is tearing down walls—both the literal barriers separating Lincoln Center from its neighbors, and the figurative ones that dictate who belongs in our cultural spaces. She views the arts not as a luxury, but as essential civic infrastructure. We are pleased to have Shanta Thake to discuss her journey, the power of radical curation, and the future of public performance.

(01:30) The Gift of Pause

(04:19) Art as the Oldest Technology

(07:12) Reimagining Lincoln Center

(09:35) A Collective Caretaking

(10:13) The Curiosity of Childhood

(15:19) San Juan Hill and The Wall

(17:57) globalFEST: Music and Connection

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

“We are in the middle of a labyrinth which suggests to us many fake corridors. What's the superpower of literature? Literature is like an antidote against propaganda. Propaganda explains the world easily in a two-dimensional way.  Literature gives you a more complex explanation. Literature tells personal stories.”

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

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

(0:00) The Trap of Nostalgia

(2:13) The Art of Translation

(5:44) The Pandemic of the Past

(11:30) Reading from ‘Time Shelter’

(14:28) Death and the Gardener

(19:34) The Translator's Calling

(26:05) Cultural Rhythms of the Bulgarian Language

(30:00) The Nonlinear Approach to Storytelling

(34:30) Separating Personal and Historical Pasts

(42:55) Storytelling vs Propaganda

(47:19) Bodies, Animals and the Loneliness of the Minotaur

(56:00) Reading ' Eight Minutes and 19 Seconds’

(1:00:28) What makes a good life? What has given your life meaning?

(1:04:18)   Childhood, Memory and Imagination

(1:10:38) Reflections on God and the Stories His Grandmother Told Him

(1:17:20) Education and the Empathic Imagination

(1:23:25) The Museum of Memory

(1:26:15) The Importance of Hugging and Empathy

(1:28:02) AI and the Future of Humanity

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

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

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

(0:00) The Trap of Nostalgia

(1:22) The Nonlinear Approach to Storytelling

(3:53) Translating the Atmosphere

(4:31) The Pandemic of the Past

(6:37) Death and the Gardener

(9:49) The Translators Calling

(11:00) Slowing Down Time

(13:14) Storytelling vs Propaganda

(15:54) Translating the Atmosphere

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

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

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

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

If you live in a city, you’ve probably had that moment in the middle of the night. You hear a scratching in the walls, or you catch the glowing eyes of a raccoon peering out from a dumpster, and for a second, the concrete world feels a lot less 'controlled' than we like to pretend. We’ve been taught to think of cities as 'biological deserts'—places where nature goes to die. But my guest today, Dan Werb, says that’s a myth we tell ourselves to feel safe. Dan is an award-winning epidemiologist and a musician, and in his new book, Our Wild Familiars, he explores the 'synanthropes'—the wild creatures that aren't our pets, but aren't quite strangers either. They are the coyotes, the bats, and even the octopuses that are learning to use our cities as laboratories for their own rapid evolution. He’s also the author of The Invisible Siege and City of Omens.

(0:02) The unexpected biodiversity of urban areas and wild familiars

(1:18) What is a Synanthrope?

(4:15) The Myth of the Biological Desert

(8:04) The Ancestral Bond between early humans, ravens, and foxes

(9:15) Crows and Grudges

(12:42) Stepping Stones in the Concrete

(14:20) The Epidemiological Triangle

(17:58) The Illusion of AI Connection

(19:56) The Museum of Memory

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

"So synanthropes are animals that have adapted to human-modified environments, and the Greek translation essentially is together with humans, so synanthrope. And they're a fascinating subset of wild animals that they're all around us, but we don't really notice them. And so in this new book, I was excited about writing something that had to do with the natural world. I was excited about writing something that touched on climate change. These are not just insects and earthworms and things like that. These are very large predators that have nevertheless found a way to survive among us. And that in and of itself I think is just an amazing story and what I explore in this book."

If you live in a city, you’ve probably had that moment in the middle of the night. You hear a scratching in the walls, or you catch the glowing eyes of a raccoon peering out from a dumpster, and for a second, the concrete world feels a lot less 'controlled' than we like to pretend. We’ve been taught to think of cities as 'biological deserts'—places where nature goes to die. But my guest today, Dan Werb, says that’s a myth we tell ourselves to feel safe. Dan is an award-winning epidemiologist and a musician, and in his new book, Our Wild Familiars, he explores the 'synanthropes'—the wild creatures that aren't our pets, but aren't quite strangers either. They are the coyotes, the bats, and even the octopuses that are learning to use our cities as laboratories for their own rapid evolution. He’s also the author of The Invisible Siege and City of Omens.

(0:02) The unexpected biodiversity of urban areas and wild familiars

(2:32) What are synanthropes?

(6:04) Why cities are becoming magnets for wildlife and natural biodiversity

(14:32) How our discarded garbage acts as a reliable nutrition source

(18:01) The raccoon city and highly adaptable urban mesopredators

(21:49) Redesigning cities as crucial sites for wildlife conservation and containerisation

(26:31) The impact of highways on mountain lion migration in Los Angeles

(31:03) The ancestral spiritual bond between early humans, ravens, and foxes

(38:24) Facial recognition, grudges, and the intense intelligence of urban crows

(42:40) Discovering giant Pacific octopuses living in discarded garbage near Seattle

(49:04) How translucent boardwalks helped save baby salmon afraid of the dark

(52:42) Building green corridors and ecological stepping stones in the concrete

(1:01:07) Cultural shifts in pods of orcas sinking boats off the Iberian coast

(1:05:23) Social epidemiology, vulnerable populations, and insights from City of Omens

(1:08:29) The epidemiological triangle and the environmental causes of novel viruses

(1:16:08) The rhythm shift required to observe wild animals in urban spaces

(1:25:26) Why we need more cosmological humility when studying animal biology

(1:31:06) The illusion of AI connection and why engaging with nature expands the mind

(1:34:46) Memories, Laughter, and Animal Connection

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

“Imagining with precision is a very fundamental part of my work. When I sit down to write about anything, whether it be The Hungry Tide in the Sundarbans, or let's say The Shadow Lines, or Ghost-Eye. It's very important for me to get the topography right, to get the outlay of the streets or the house exactly right so I can actually picture all of that in my head. It's very important for me to have a sort of pictorial sense of what I'm seeing and what I'm writing about. Before I can write about it, I need to see it, as it were. So that's absolutely fundamental to my craft. That's just how I go about it. Like the Sufis say—behind the apparent reality is a hidden or batin reality. “

In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liutalks with Amitav Ghosh about his new novel, Ghost-Eye. The novel is about reincarnation, but also a lot more. In our conversation we talk about the need to address the terrible set of environmental and other crises we face, and the seeming foreclosure of the imagination by the obsession with technology and the future it offers to us. Instead, we look to how we can fashion beginnings out of endings, aided by a renewed sense of wonder, curiosity, and awe. We turn to the body, to the haptic, and perhaps most important, to food as more than simply nourishment. In all this, story-telling, the revival of connections between living beings, and a deep sense of other times and places are central.

(0:56) Planetary Crisis and Accelerating Disasters

(3:50) The Lasting Impact of The Hungry Tide

(5:00) Storytelling and the Existential Crisis

(8:26) Imagining with Precision in Literature

(12:46) The Denuded Human Existence and AI

(15:37) Artisanal Intelligence vs. Artificial Intelligence

(17:57) Food, Industrial Agriculture, and Memory

(21:16) Cultural Assimilation Through Cooking

(24:12) The Sociability and Joy of Cooking

(27:57) The Failure of the Humanities

(31:38) The Role of the Narrator

(35:27) Regaining Our Sense of Wonder

(37:04) Past Life Memories and Circular Temporality

Episode Website

www.palumbo-liu.com https://speakingoutofplace.com Bluesky @palumboliu.bsky.social Instagram @speaking_out_of_place

Today, we examine how we will adapt to a changing climate and learn to listen to the Earth.(0:00) Abrahm Lustgarten (Reporter, ProPublica) (3:00) Jon Gertner (Author, The Ice at the End of the World) (5:32) Bill Hare (CEO, Climate Analytics) (6:35) Rob Nixon (Prof. Environmental Humanities, Princeton) (8:12) Louis de Jaeger (Co-founder, Food Forest Institute) (10:06) Kathleen Rogers (Pres., EarthDay.org) (11:31) Rebecca Tickell (Filmmaker, Groundswell) (13:42) Ben Goldfarb (Author, Crossings) (14:56) Jane Madgwick (CEO, Plantlife International) (19:23) Jason deCaires Taylor (Sculptor, Underwater Museums) (21:02) William McDonough (Architect, Cradle to Cradle) (23:19) Euan Nisbet (Scientist, Royal Holloway) (26:06) Roland Geyer (Author, The Business of Less) (28:15) Ron Gonen (CEO, Closed Loop Partners) (29:34) Paul Shrivastava (Co-President, Club of Rome) (30:14) Carlo Ratti (Architect, Dir., MIT Senseable City Lab) (31:24) Osprey Orielle Lake (Founder, WECAN) (32:38) Liza Featherstone (Journalist) (33:41) Yolanda Kakabadse (Fmr. President, WWF)

For more, listen to their full interviews

Episode Site: https://www.creativeprocess.info/interviews-featured/anth-regen

Why do we write? Is it to capture a memory before it vanishes or to build a bridge between the person we are and the stories we've been told? In this episode of The Creative Process, we explore the practice of writing as an awakening and tool for discovery with a group of celebrated poets, novelists, musicians and thinkers.

We hear from neuroscientist, dancer and author Julia Christensen on how literature inspires transformative aesthetic experiences. Award-winning poet and clinical psychologist Hala Alyan discusses navigating displacement through narrative, while bestselling author Andre Dubus III reflects on the honest labor of the writer and the willingness to fail.

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Jericho Brown shares how the sounds of American vernacular guide his work and Fmr. US Poet Laureate Ada Limón discusses holding hope within frightening thoughts about the future of our planet. NYT Bestseller Aimee Nezhukumatathil speaks on tenderness towards the natural world and naturalist Sy Montgomery shares how animals have been her greatest teachers.

The conversation expands with poet Max Stossel on finding humanity in conflict, Tiokasin Ghosthorse on the ancient energy of the earth and Julian Lennon on art as a collective human endeavor. Finally, composer Erland Cooper takes us to the landscape of his youth, where the sound of the sea informed his creative voice.

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

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

"What we need to do is learn from nature. If you think about how nature progresses through trial and error. I'm really a fan of how we can do open designs that citizens can respond to, and use the feedback in order to create similar systems to what happens in nature."

Our guest today is Carlo Ratti, an architect, engineer, and academic who is deeply engaged with the critical questions facing our planet and its urban spaces. He's known for his innovative work at MIT's Senseable City Lab, where he explores how digital technologies are transforming our cities and for his groundbreaking design projectsaround the world. Carlo Ratti's work has been called everything from sensory city philosophy to a driving force behind the world of design. And having recently tackled one of the biggest challenges of our time as a curator of the 19th International Architectural Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, the exhibition Intelligence, Natural, Artificial, Collective seeks to fundamentally rethink architecture's role in an altered world and rapidly changing climate.

(0:00) Learning From Nature's Trial and Error

(1:20) The Senseable City

(6:05) The Future Of Concrete and Circular Building

(9:02) Peak Population And The Century Of The City

(10:55) Transforming Architecture With Japanese Joinery and AI

(14:36) Curating the Venice Biennale As An Open Lab

(16:22) Blending The Natural And Artificial Through Data

(20:32) Breaking Down Silos and Staying Curious

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

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

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

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

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

(0:04) The Intuitive Knowledge of Living Art

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

(8:18) The Social Spaces of Rooftops

(13:46) The Intuitive Knowledge of Living Art

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

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

(26:42) The Temples of Water

(33:24) The Mosque as Pure Spatiality

(38:01) The Crisis Period and Structural Systems

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

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

(57:02) Preserving the Human Core of Expression

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

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

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

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

After 40 years of reporting on the world's most pressing ecological crises, you might expect Fred Pearce to be a cynic. Instead, he’s one of our greatest advocates for hope.

If you follow the news about the environment, it’s easy to feel a sense of impending doom. We hear about accelerating extinctions, collapsing water cycles, and climate tipping points. But my guest today, environmental journalist Fred Pearce, says that if you look at the "ground-truth"—the stories of nature and people he has encountered—there is a surprising, even radical, case for hope. His work has taken him to more than eighty countries, from the logging concessions of Borneo to the radioactive exclusion zones of Chernobyl. He is the environment consultant for New Scientist and a regular contributor to The Guardian.

In his latest work, Despite It All: A Handbook for Climate Hopefuls, he challenges the prevailing narrative of environmental collapse. He argues that the "population bomb" is being defused, that we are approaching "peak stuff" in developed nations, and that nature possesses a staggering capacity for resilience that we often ignore. He says that a "Good Anthropocene" is not only possible but is already beginning to take shape through a combination of ancient wisdom and modern technical fixes. We’ll talk today about his life as a journalist and why pessimism may be the greatest enemy of progress.

(0:00) The Radical Case for Climate Optimism

(2:46) Traveling the World to Find Environmental Resilience

(5:08) Fixing the Anthropocene and Escaping Despondency

(10:22) Indigenous Wisdom and Local Stewardship

(15:28) Rewilding and Trusting Nature's Adaptability

(21:10) The Renewable Energy Transition in China and Beyond

(23:56) Peak Stuff and Redesigning the Cities of the Future

(34:01) Defending Democracy and Environmental Protestors

(36:12) Drinking Radioactive Vodka in Chernobyl's Exclusion Zone

(41:29) When the Rivers Run Dry and Water Scarcity

(50:37) Why the Population Bomb is Defusing

(55:36) The Origins of an Environmental Journalist

(1:03:15) The Future of Journalism in the Age of AI

(1:13:27) Generational Hope and the Next Industrial Revolution

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

Today, on Earth Day, we explore the Living World—a reality where we are not merely on a planet, but are a moving part of its very metabolism. We travel from the High Sierras with Paul Hawken to the forests of Costa Rica with Thomas Crowther. Guided by Merlin Sheldrake and David George Haskell, we explore ecology, policy and music with guests Paula Pinho, Hans Bruyninckx, Bill Hare and Alice Schmidt. Alongside Tiokasin Ghosthorse, Tom Chi, Erland Cooper, Rebecca Tickell and Britt Wray, we ask what happens when we stop trying to dominate and start trying to collaborate with the Earth?

(0:04) TIOKASIN GHOSTHORSE Founder, First Voices Radio

(2:05) PAUL HAWKEN Founder, Project Regeneration, Project Drawdown, Author (24:25)

(4:57) THOMAS CROWTHER Founder, Restor, Co-chair UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration

(5:51) MERLIN SHELDRAKE Biologist, Author, Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds

(8:23) DAVID GEORGE HASKELL Biologist, Author, How Flowers Made Our World

(10:43) HANS BRUYNINCKX Fmr. Director European Environment Agency

(11:39) REBECCA TICKELL (Director, Kiss the Ground) Soil Health (26:27)

(13:32) TOM CHI Founding Partner, At One Ventures, Author, Climate Capital

(14:44) PAULA PINHO Chief Spokesperson, European Commission

(16:08) BILL HARE Founder/CEO, Climate Analytics, Physicist

(18:03) ALICE SCHMIDT Global Sustainability Advisor, Author

(19:18) ERLAND COOPER (Composer) Earth as Collaborator

(22:38) BRITT WRAY Author, Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Crisis

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

Episode Website www.creativeprocess.info/pod IG @creativeprocesspodcast

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

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

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

0:00) Build Integrity: Choosing Builders Over Talkers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(16:33) AI and Robotics in Agriculture

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

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

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

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

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

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

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

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

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

(11:54) Economics as Design

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

(26:12) Local Resilience

(31:15) Tax & Capital Misallocation

(36:52) Build Integrity

(45:32) AI and Robotics in Agriculture

(51:08) The First Honeybee Vaccine

(56:11) The Entropy Curve of Pollution

(1:15:31) Human-Centric AI

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

(1:20:59) Thinking in Pictures

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

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

Today, we hear from writers Yann Martel, Carl Safina and David George Haskell on the practice of listening to the living world. Tom Chi discusses the dangerous volatility of a one-degree shift. Clayton Aldern explores how climate change alters brain health and behavior, while Ami Vitale,Osprey Orielle Lake and Martín Von Hildebrand remind us of the kinship we share with nature. Fred Pearce discusses 40 years as a journalist reporting on climate from around the world, while Richard Black of the environmental think tank Ember and Paula Pinho, European Commission’s Chief Spokesperson, talk about policy, hope and the radical empathy required to protect the planet for future generations.

(0:00) Clayton Page Aldern – Finding awe and beauty in the world

(0:40) David George Haskell – On consequences of humans tuning out the sounds of the living world

(2:11) Yann Martel – How animals ask us to step out of our humanity

(3:12) Carl Safina – The interior lives of non-human animals

(5:08) Ami Vitale – Environmental collapse and human conflict

(6:37) Martín von Hildebrand – Indigenous views of nature

(8:00) Richard Black – Transition to clean energy vs. massive fossil fuel subsidies

(10:01) Tom Chi – Climate destabilization

(11:07) Paula Pinho – Europe’s vision for energy independence

(14:04) Osprey Orielle Lake – Māori concept of "I am the river and the river is me”

(16:08) Bill Hare – On limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees

(17:19) Fred Pearce – Finding hope in nature’s resilience

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

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

IG @creativeprocesspodcast

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

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

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

(0:00) How Flowers Made Our World

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

(2:00) Contemplating the Small

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

(4:18) We Are Grass Apes

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

(6:34) The Networked Intelligence of Forests

(7:45) The Earth in Full Song

(8:46) The Practice of Listening

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

(11:35) The True Cost of AI

(12:11) Transforming Ourselves

(14:23) Silence Without Expectation

(15:32) A Sensory Legacy for the Future

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

What if the defining revolution of Earth's history wasn't led by animals or humans, but by flowers? Are we truly individuals, or are our bodies and minds just walking ecosystems?

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

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

(0:00) How Flowers Made Our World

The incredible ancient history of flowers on Earth

(4:56) Contemplating the Small

Expanding our world by restricting our gaze

(14:30) The Illusion of Individuality

Why atomism is false and interconnectedness is the foundation of life

(26:08) We Are Grass Apes

The evolutionary origins of humans and our dietary dependence on grass

(33:32) Memories of His Childhood in Paris & Wild Orchids

(38:55) The Networked Intelligence of Forests

How trees communicate and share resources beneath the soil

(44:00) The Earth in Full Song

Tracing the sonic history of our planet

(51:08) The Practice of Listening

Why tuning in to the natural world is crucial for our survival

(1:01:21) Silence Without Expectation

Sitting with nature without demanding progress or enlightenment

(1:11:01) Transforming Ourselves

Why personal change matters in the fight for the climate

(1:15:20) Escaping the Screen

Finding real human-to-human connection away from technology

(1:16:16) The True Cost of AI

The devastating impact of data centers on our fossil fuel consumption

(1:23:18) A Sensory Legacy for the Future

What we must preserve for the generations not yet born

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

In this special environmental highlights edition, Dabis reflects on the "ecocide" occurring in Gaza—the loss of ancient orange trees, the contamination of 95% of the water supply, and the long-term chemical impact on the soil. She explores how this ecological destruction mirrors the "continuous Nakba" and the inheritance of generational trauma.

My guest today is Cherien Dabis. She’s a filmmaker and actress who has spent much of her career trying to fill the silences in the American narrative. In 2022, she became the first Palestinian to receive an Emmy nomination. She has worked on everything from The L Word to Ozark, Only Murders in the Building to the hit Netflix series Mo, always with an eye toward breaking the one-dimensional mold that has historically defined Arab representation in the West. But her latest project is perhaps her most ambitious yet. It’s a film called All That’s Left of You. It follows one Palestinian family across three generations, beginning in 1948 and ending in 2022. It is a story of exile and memory, and it’s Jordan’s official submission for this year’s Academy Awards.

(0:00) Ecological Loss in Gaza Dabis reflects on the devastating environmental impact of the conflict, from the destruction of ecosystems and food supplies to the severe contamination of water and soil

(2:14) The Inheritance of Trauma An exploration of how the Nakba remains a collective, living trauma passed down through generations, shaping Palestinian identity regardless of direct lineage

(4:01) Inherited Trauma: Identity And History The passage of trauma requires a multi-generational lens to truly understand how history and political events shape a people's humanity

(4:24) The Moment Of Activation: Racism In Ohio Experiencing severe racism and death threats during the first Gulf War ignited Dabis's lifelong drive to challenge dangerous media stereotypes through authentic storytelling

(6:49) Filming The Nakba: Art Imitating Crisis Evacuating Palestine weeks before shooting forced the crew into a state of crisis, resulting in a film where art and life merged amidst an unfolding tragedy

(9:04) The Bakri Acting Dynasty: Collaborative Lineage Collaborating with four generations of the Bakri family—including the late Mohammad Bakri—brought immense authenticity and a real-world family dynamic to the screen

(10:37) Previous Films, Television And Craft Directing episodes for acclaimed series like Ozark and Only Murders in the Building

(11:28) Psychological Violence: Impact Of Humiliation The film moves beyond physical violence to examine how non-physical harassment and the humiliation of a patriarch leave devastating, permanent relational scars

(13:50) Broken Distribution: Industry Gatekeepers Dabis addresses the systemic fear in Hollywood distribution and her decision to form an artist-driven model to bypass traditional gatekeeping

(14:39) Truth Seekers: The Next Generation

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

@creativeprocesspodcast

"All the advice is, if you start, take a walk. Be somewhere beautiful, look at something beautiful. Be in an elevated place. Be in a place that's larger than you to make yourself and your problems go back to the right scale. I always love nature, and I love ravens. I put a lot of ravens into the novel just because they're adorable. Some places that I love are New England, London, Essex, Sark and beautiful Colonsay. I was writing mainly during lockdown and unable to go to any of the places I loved, so I went back to them."

My guest today is AL Kennedy. She is not only a celebrated novelist but also an essayist, standup comedian, dedicated environmental and anti-nuclear activist, and university lecturer. She advocates strongly for the protection of education as the foundation of a healthy democracy and is one of Britain’s most acclaimed and versatile literary voices, a writer who can inhabit the internal life of a soldier in a POW camp, as she did in her Costa Book Award-winning novel Day, as easily as she can navigate the "professional lying" of a modern civil servant.

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

(0:00) Finding Your Voice

Alfred Wolfsohn voice method and the power of being fully expressed

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

Exploring hope and resilience in dark times.

(6:22) Education and the Foundation of Democracy

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

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

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

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

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

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

(33:13) Lockdown: A Global Pause and the Inrush of Empathy

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

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

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

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

What happens when the state infiltrates your most intimate relationships? How do we protect the innocence and imagination of children in an increasingly authoritarian world? "If you have love, eventually you're going to win. It's not that people aren't going to die. It's not terrible things aren't going to happen. But if you stay with that and you stay centered in that, you'll get through and you will not have turned into a monster in order to overcome monsters.”

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

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

(0:00) Finding Your Voice On the Alfred Wolfsohn voice method and the power of being fully expressed

(2:17) Education and the Foundation of Democracy The dangers of dismantling education and how critical thinking protects us from fascism.

(5:14) The Myth of Shrinking Attention Spans Challenging the narrative that modern audiences cannot focus, and the importance of engaging storytelling.

(8:23) Reading from Alive in the Merciful Country Kennedy shares a passage from her latest novel, exploring hope and resilience in dark times.

(17:45) The Spy Cop Scandal and State Surveillance Unpacking the reality of undercover police infiltrating peaceful protests and intimate lives.

(22:07) AI, Digital Slop, and the Loss of Trust Reflections on artificial intelligence as an unstable plagiarism machine and its impact on truth.

(28:29) The Power of the Powerless: Radical Whimsy How absurdity, humor, and inflatable costumes can disrupt authoritarian mindsets and potential violence.

(33:13) Lockdown: A Global Pause and the Inrush of Empathy The fleeting moment of unified humanity during the pandemic and how it was ultimately betrayed.

(42:53) Writing Without Theft: The Ethics of Character Creation Kennedy explains her imaginative process and why she refuses to steal details from real people's lives.

(1:29:40) Nature, Spirituality, and the Merciful Country Finding healing in the natural world and navigating the future with love and awareness.

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

@creativeprocesspodcast

Can curiosity and empathy be taught? How can we expand our sense of solidarity through stories? In this episode, we explore the internal dialogues of artists, actors and writers to ask what it means to step into someone else's shoes.

(0:00) Novelist Jim Shepard discusses Literature as a Tool for Emotional Education and Exploring History

(2:05) Tony Award-winning Actor Neil Patrick Harris on Being Moved by Theater and its Ability to Bridge Worlds

(3:55) Novelist Katie Kitamura on How a Book is Made in Collaboration with the Reader

(5:00) Screenwriter, Playwright Laura Eason on Inhabiting the Hearts of Characters Different from Ourselves

(6:03) Academy Award-winning Director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy on the Art of Visual Storytelling

(6:37) Cinematographer, Director Benoit Delhomme on the Freedom of Handheld Cinematography

(7:19) Author Etgar Keret on Looking for Humanity through Shared Intention

(8:18) Viet Thanh Nguyen – Opposing Power through Expansive Solidarity

(9:27) Adam Moss – Author, Fmr. Editor New York magazine on “The Work of Art”

(10:29) John Patrick Shanley – Tony & Academy Award-winning Writer, Director on Finding Value in Ordinary Experiences and the Creative Power of Daydreaming

(11:56) Pulitzer Prize-winning Journalist Nicholas Kristof on Why Individual Stories are Necessary to Generate Connection

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

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

In this special edition, we hear from our guests from across the arts and sciences. From composers and poets to forest ecologists and climate envoys, they tell the story of our planet. Moving beyond the data of destruction, we explore the intelligence of nature, the ethics of what we eat, and the empathy required to save our future.

MAX RICHTER, Composer, Sleep, The Blue Notebooks

CARL SAFINA, Author, Becoming Wild

ADA LIMÓN, 24th US Poet Laureate

CYNTHIA DANIELS, Grammy Award-winning Sound Eng.

SUZANNE SIMARD, Finding the Mother Tree

JOELLE GERGIS, Lead Author, IPCC 6th Assessment Rpt

NOAH WILSON-RICH, CEO, Best Bees Company

INGRID NEWKIRK, PETA Founder

BERTRAND PICCARD, Solar Impulse Foundation

DAVID FARRIER, Author, Footprints

KATHLEEN ROGERS, Pres, Earth Day Network

ODED GALOR, Unified Growth Theory

PETER SINGER, Philosopher

GEOFF MULGAN, Another World Is Possible

CLAIRE POTTER, Welcome to the Circular Economy

CHRIS FUNK, Dir. Climate Hazards Car.

JENNIFER MORGAN, Special Envoy, International Climate Action

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

Episode Website

On Music, Trust and Connection with the Animal World

“Mostly I’ll play in a minor key, something sad, which I think can work for an animal because they can sense the sadness, and they try to reassure me and comfort me. I chose love songs because I'm convinced they are very intuitive and they can sense what I am trying to say to them, and profess my love in a way. I think there's always a way to connect, and if you're being cautious and don't threaten the animals, something beautiful can happen.”

Musician Plumes takes his guitar to the world's most unlikely concert halls—farms, sanctuaries, and wild habitats. A passionate advocate for veganism and animal welfare, we discuss what animals hear, how trust forms, and what music can reveal when it enters a world not made for humans alone.

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

How is music a pathway to understanding animals?

Musician Plumes‍ takes his guitar to the world's most unlikely concert halls—farms, sanctuaries, and wild habitats. A passionate advocate for veganism and animal welfare, we discuss what animals hear, how trust forms, and what music can reveal when it enters a world not made for humans alone.

“Mostly I’ll play in a minor key, something sad, which I think can work for an animal because they can sense the sadness, and they try to reassure me and comfort me. I chose love songs because I'm convinced they are very intuitive and they can sense what I am trying to say to them, and profess my love in a way. I think there's always a way to connect, and if you're being cautious and don't threaten the animals, something beautiful can happen.”

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

On the urgent need to reclaim our political voices, the forces that silence dissent, and how art and poetry are crucial tools for survival

Our guest today is an activist scholar who believes the classroom is inseparable from the public square. David Palumbo-Liu is the Louise Hewlett Nixon Professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford University and a founding faculty member of Stanford’s Program in Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity. But his work has long reached beyond the academy. Through his book, Speaking Out of Place: Getting Our Political Voices Back, and his podcast of the same name, he insists that the great global crises of our time—from escalating wars and democratic failures to environmental collapse—are fundamentally crises of value and voice. His recent work has put him on the front lines of campus activism, challenging institutions, resigning his membership from the MLA, a move that highlights the ethical cost of speaking truth to power. We’ll talk about what he calls the "carceral logic" of the modern university, why art and poetry are crucial tools for survival in times of war, and what he tells his students about preparing for a future defined by uncertainty. His perspective is rooted in literature, but his urgency is all about the world we live in now. We will discuss the forces that silence dissent, the "imperial logic" of AI, and what it means to be a moral, active citizen when the systems we rely on are failing.

“There is a dispute about what the American Dream is or how it would play out in different circumstances. The American dream has essentially been narrowed into a white Christian nationalist notion of things so that everything that falls outside what they imagine that to be is not only undesirable, but should be the subject of extermination, deportation, and detention. I am heartened by the fact that more of our 'better angels' are emerging with a more capacious and expansive notion of what the American dream could be.”

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

On the urgent need to reclaim our political voices, the forces that silence dissent, and how art and poetry are crucial tools for survival

“There is a dispute about what the American Dream is or how it would play out in different circumstances. The American dream has essentially been narrowed into a white Christian nationalist notion of things so that everything that falls outside what they imagine that to be is not only undesirable, but should be the subject of extermination, deportation, and detention. I am heartened by the fact that more of our 'better angels' are emerging with a more capacious and expansive notion of what the American dream could be.”

Our guest today is an activist scholar who believes the classroom is inseparable from the public square. David Palumbo-Liu is the Louise Hewlett Nixon Professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford University and a founding faculty member of Stanford’s Program in Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity. But his work has long reached beyond the academy. Through his book, Speaking Out of Place: Getting Our Political Voices Back, and his podcast of the same name, he insists that the great global crises of our time—from escalating wars and democratic failures to environmental collapse—are fundamentally crises of value and voice.

His recent work has put him on the front lines of campus activism, challenging institutions, resigning his membership from the MLA, a move that highlights the ethical cost of speaking truth to power. We’ll talk about what he calls the "carceral logic" of the modern university, why art and poetry are crucial tools for survival in times of war, and what he tells his students about preparing for a future defined by uncertainty. His perspective is rooted in literature, but his urgency is all about the world we live in now. We will discuss the forces that silence dissent, the "imperial logic" of AI, and what it means to be a moral, active citizen when the systems we rely on are failing.

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

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

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

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

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

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

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

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

What if everything you thought you knew about protein... was wrong? We grew up believing that meat, eggs, and dairy were the champions of strength. But science—and nature—have a different story to tell. From the depths of ancient lakes comes a tiny green organism so nutrient-dense, it’s redefining what real fuel means. It’s called Spirulina—and it’s not the food of the future. It’s the food of right now. Packed with more protein per gram than beef, bursting with iron, magnesium, antioxidants, and every essential amino acid, Spirulina is fueling athletes, aiding doctors in recovery programs, and even being studied by scientists as a solution to global malnutrition. And at the heart of this revolution is a company turning nature’s most powerful superfood into clean, sustainable, life-changing nutrition.

“Spirulina does everything. If you extract protein, there's a huge booming market and human need for protein. If you extract fats, omegas, etc., if you look at the recent FDA ruling around the color transition, every food and beverage company now is looking for a natural source of color. Spirulina can provide that. It's about looking at this ancient substance and seeing how it can plug into our future food system in a way that works for people and the planet.”

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How do our environments shape who we are and how we care for the world and each other? There are many solutions to climate change, inequality, and poverty around the world. How can we learn from them and transform our society?

Eiren Caffall (All the Water in the World) discusses the importance of embracing complexity and emotional flexibility in facing ecological grief.

Irvin Weathersby Jr. (In Open Contempt) discusses the transformative power of meditation and nature, drawing inspiration from Emerson and Thoreau.

Jay Parini (Biographies of Steinbeck, Frost, Faulkner…) on the significance of place in literature and life.

Natasha Hakimi Zapata (Another World Is Possible) explores the generosity and hope in people’s efforts to build better societies.

Audrea Lim (Free The Land) on how personal experiences with public lands influence our views on conservation.

Katie Kitamura (Audition, Intimacies) reflects on the role of landscape and memory in her novels.

Dr. Bayo Akomolafe (Philosopher, Founder of Emergence Network) discusses his awe for mountains, using them as a metaphor for humility and the search for meaning beyond oneself.

For more from each guest, listen to their full interviews.

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

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

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In this time of rapid technological change, how do we hold onto our humanity? How do stories, traditions, and community help us find meaning in loss and face an uncertain future? How can science, art, and spirituality open new pathways to understanding ourselves and the human experience?

PAUL SHRIVASTAVA (Co-President, The Club of Rome) discusses the need for a holistic, eco-civilizational future, emphasizing that science, technology, and economics are important but not the whole picture. He shares the importance of embodied, emotional, and spiritual learning as essential to evolving human consciousness in a technologically dominated world.

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

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

DR. GUY LESCHZINER (Neurologist, Author of The Nocturnal Brain) on the concept of free will, suggesting that much of what we do is influenced by factors beyond our control. He discusses the importance of striving to make the world better, the role of sleep and dreams in memory and emotional processing, and the future of education.

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

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

NATASHA HAKIMI ZAPATA (Author of Another World Is Possible: Lessons for America From Around the Globe) shares her inspiration from the generosity and hope she encounters in others, and describes how she's inspired by connecting with nature.

IRVIN WEATHERSBY JR. (Author of In Open Contempt) reflects on the influence of his church upbringing, music, and his grandmother on his writing and creative expression.

"For the last two decades, I've made over 20 films about the environment, starting with oil and carbon emissions. Those films, Kiss the Ground and now Common Ground, talk about how we can stabilize the climate, reverse climate change, grow nutrient-dense food, and help farmers make a profit through biodiversity and regenerative practices and principles.

There's incredible intelligence in nature; it knows how to be resilient. We thought we could do it better, and in trying to mechanize and industrialize the entire system, we created a linear system that doesn’t make sense. We’re growing animals to produce food that we can’t eat so that we can ship it halfway around the world. It’s a system that doesn’t work.

The way to heal, regenerate, stabilize the climate, and reverse climate change is literally one inch and one acre at a time—through communities waking up to the power of soil and biodiversity to sequester carbon for all of us. The oceans can’t handle any more carbon absorption; they’re acidifying and heating up. We need to take the carbon we’ve emitted and put it back into the soil. When we do that, we create thriving ecosystems, biodiversity, and water infiltration, which massively reduces the risks from flooding.

It helps reverse desertification and staves off droughts by retaining water like a sponge. Resiliency comes from having genetic diversity rather than just one of everything."

Today, we explore the work of a filmmaker whose lens is consistently turned toward the most critical issues facing our planet. Rebecca Tickell, in collaboration with her husband Josh Tickell, has created a powerful cinematic catalog of films that are not merely observations, but catalysts for change. They've taken on the complexities of our energy systems, the deep-seated problems within our food supply, and now, with her latest work, Bee: Wild, they explore the essential, fragile, and often unseen world of pollinators.

Their film Kiss the Ground sparked a global conversation about regenerative agriculture, leading to tangible shifts in policy and public understanding. Common Ground continued this exploration, unraveling the intricate web of our food systems. Now, with Bee: Wild, narrated by Ellie Goulding and executive produced by Angelina Jolie,Rebecca brings her characteristic blend of journalistic rigor, personal narrative, and solutions-driven storytelling to the urgent plight of bees, asking us to reconsider our relationship with the natural world.

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“I didn't really appreciate bees until I became a farmer, and then I started to understand how essential bees are for our food. They pollinate 70% of our food, and that feeds 90% of the world. There's a whole world of insects that creates the color in our food; it's what creates the flavor in our food. It's part of our biodiversity, and it's essential for human life on Earth to protect and understand how to protect these bees and pollinators.

Soil has the power, through photosynthesis, to draw down carbon from the atmosphere. It's called biosequestration. It takes that carbon down into the roots, and then it turns it into healthy humus. That is the food for life in the soil. It needs that carbon. And so that is the purpose of plants. They breathe in the carbon and breathe out the oxygen.

We've forgotten that simple tool of the solution that's right beneath our feet called soil health and soil regeneration. Not only does it draw down carbon, it's the only place we can put that teraton of carbon that we've emitted. There's only one place for it, and it's in the soil. So why isn't that the main conversation of every climate conversation? You not only bring the soil back to life, but you are creating nutrient-dense food. You're giving plants the ability to work in symbiosis with the soil that it co-evolved with. That then allows for it not only to be resilient and have a strong immune system, but also to absorb nutrition, which, in turn, we eat and absorb that nutrition. We're a reflection of the soil."

Today, we explore the work of a filmmaker whose lens is consistently turned toward the most critical issues facing our planet. Rebecca Tickell, in collaboration with her husband Josh Tickell, has created a powerful cinematic catalog of films that are not merely observations, but catalysts for change. They've taken on the complexities of our energy systems, the deep-seated problems within our food supply, and now, with her latest work, Bee: Wild, they explore the essential, fragile, and often unseen world of pollinators.

Their film Kiss the Ground sparked a global conversation about regenerative agriculture, leading to tangible shifts in policy and public understanding. Common Ground continued this exploration, unraveling the intricate web of our food systems. Now, with Bee: Wild, narrated by Ellie Goulding and executive produced by Angelina Jolie,Rebecca brings her characteristic blend of journalistic rigor, personal narrative, and solutions-driven storytelling to the urgent plight of bees, asking us to reconsider our relationship with the natural world.

Episode Website

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

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

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

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

Episode Website

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“We as humans can destroy things in a couple of years that have taken thousands or even millions of years to form. So in the snap of a finger, we can destroy so much work. That's an observation I’ve seen in all biomes, and it's pretty scary. On the other hand, nature regenerates pretty fast. It heals itself. If humans help this healing process, it can go even faster.”

Louis De Jaeger has spent years traveling the world, witnessing firsthand the decline of nature. He is an eco-entrepreneur, a landscape designer, co-founder of the Food Forest Institute, and a leading voice in the regenerative agriculture and food forest movements. He’s founded numerous ventures aimed at creating positive impact and has created over 100 food forest sites around the world. His new book, SOS: Save Our Soils: How regenerative food and farming will save your health and the planet, asks us to consider every meal as a vote for either destruction or regeneration.

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“The Earth started as one big rock, and soil did not exist. Without soil, you can't really grow trees or any crops whatsoever. We are depleting soils super fast, and it is predicted that in less than 25 years, 90% of our soils will be degraded. We as humans, we can destroy things in a couple of years that have taken thousands or even millions of years to form. On the other hand, nature regenerates pretty fast. It heals itself. If humans help this healing process, it can go even faster.”

Louis De Jaeger has spent years traveling the world, witnessing firsthand the decline of nature. He is an eco-entrepreneur, a landscape designer, co-founder of the Food Forest Institute, and a leading voice in the regenerative agriculture and food forest movements. He’s founded numerous ventures aimed at creating positive impact and has created over 100 food forest sites around the world. His new book, SOS: Save Our Soils: How regenerative food and farming will save your health and the planet, asks us to consider every meal as a vote for either destruction or regeneration.

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

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

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“So I think that part of colonialism for Indigenous peoples has been this idea that Indigenous peoples aren't thinking peoples and that we don't have thought on a kind of systemic level. One of the things that I was interested in doing is intervening in that because I think Indigenous people have a lot of beautiful, very intellectual, theoretical contributions to make to the world. A lot of our theory is encoded in story, but a lot of our theory is also encoded in land-based practice. You can't learn about it from reading books or from going to lectures. You have to really be out on the land with elders for long periods of time.”

In this episode on Speaking Out of Place podcast Professor David Palumbo-Liutalks with Leanne Betasamosake Simpson about her new book,Theory of Water. Theory of Water is a rich, complex, and deeply personal reflection on world-making and life-giving processes best captured in the fluidity of water as it circulates through all our bodies and the planet. It is a largely collective project that enlists our listening and love, and helps us face the violence of all forms of dominance, enclosure, and containment. We are especially gifted to have the chance to listen to one of the songs from Leanne’s album, Theory of Ice, and have her comment on it and the relation of her music to her writing. This is a particularly special episode of Speaking Out of Place.

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is a Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, writer, and musician. She is the author of eight previous books, including the novel Noopiming: A Cure for White Ladies, which was short listed for the Dublin Literary prize and the Governor General’s award for fiction. Leanne’s album, Theory of Ice, released by You’ve Changed Records in 2021 and short-listed for the Polaris Prize and she was the 2021 winner of the Prism Prize’s Willie Dunn Award. Her latest project Theory of Water was published by Knopf Canada/Haymarket books in the spring of 2025. Leanne is a member of Alderville First Nation.

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In this episode on Speaking Out of Place podcast Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with M. E. O’Brien and Eman Abdelhadi about their dazzling and challenging book, Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052 to 2072. They imagine a world haunted by genocide, ecocide, disease, fascism, and viral capitalism, but rather than writing a dystopian novel, O’Brien and Abdelhadi create a complex mosaic of oral histories, in which they each play the part of interviewer. The result is a story that far exceeds New York, and the twenty years noted in the title. The histories cover generations across the globe, and reach into the deep sources of trauma, and the kinds of mutual care we will need to not only survive, but also to thrive in these frightening times.

Eman Abdelhadiis an academic, organizer and writer based in Chicago. She is co-author of "Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052-2072," a revolutionary sci-fi novel published in 2022 with Common Notions Press. She is an assistant professor and sociologist at the University of Chicago, where she researches American Muslim communities, and she is a columnist at In These Times magazine where she writes on the Palestine Liberation movement and American politics. Eman organizes with the Salon Kawakib collective, Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine at the University of Chicago, Scholars for Social Justice, and other formations.

M. E. O’Brien writes and speaks on gender freedom and capitalism. She has written two books: Family Abolition: Capitalism and the Communizing of Care (Pluto Press, 2023) and a co-authored speculative novel, Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052–2072 (Common Notions, 2022). She is a member of the editorial collective of Pinko, a magazine of gay communism. Her work on family abolition has been translated into Chinese, German, Greek, French, Spanish, Catalan, and Turkish. Previously, she coordinated the New York City Trans Oral History Project, and worked in HIV and AIDS activism and services. She completed a PhD at NYU, where she wrote on how capitalism shaped New York City LGBTQ social movements. She currently works a psychotherapist in private practice and is a psychoanalyst in formation.

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“I guess the book was about giving hope because I realized how much we could do together. I believe that ordinary people are the ones bringing changes here. I believe that the communities gathering together – for example, I am seeing that in this country around the protection of rivers – are the ones that will mark the change. It's not going to come from above; it's going to come from below, up. We all have a role. Working for the protection of what we love the most will make you happy. So get into a positive mindset. Learn all you can. Be part of things that make you feel positive. You will see how you will find your way, and there is no place for feeling disempowered. This is the moment where you should feel very powerful because it is us who are going to make the future of this Earth.”

Monica Feria-Tinta is a British-Peruvian barrister specialising in Public International Law. She has been called one of ‘the most daring, innovative and creative lawyers’ in the United Kingdom, and was shortlisted for “Barrister of the Year” at The Lawyers’ Awards 2020 and at Chambers and Partners UK Bar Awards 2023 for her work in addressing climate change and environmental degradation. In 2020, she acted before the Constitutional Court of Ecuador in Los Cedros case, the first ‘Rights of Nature’ case in the world. In September 2022 her work as Counsel secured a win in the Torres Strait Islanders case, a landmark moment in which the UN Human Rights Committee found a Sovereign state responsible, for the first time in history, for lack of action in addressing climate change. She is the author of A Barrister for the Earth: Ten Cases of Hope for Our Future.

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“I like young people to know that they're extremely powerful. So I'm one person, but I think I always had this positive idea about my role. You cannot let anyone tell you what limitations are there, so you shouldn't feel limited by anyone telling you this is as far as you can go, or this is what you can do. I think only you know about that, and I think you start step by step. When I did the first case, I learned some things. Then was the next case. When the time to learn comes, learn with all your might because that's gold. It's a moment in life when you have the time to actually do that. Get informed. People who are into Googling everything should open up their searches, go out there, and learn in a different way. Don't hold back.

I guess the book was about giving hope because I realized how much we could do together. If a person can manage to argue and make a major impact in the way we are understanding treaties in human rights or other things, imagine what could be if every single person is in their own place in some field, with that alertness and synced in the same way. I believe that ordinary people are the ones bringing changes here. I believe that the communities gathering together – for example, I am seeing that in this country around the protection of rivers – are the ones that will mark the change. It's not going to come from above; it's going to come from below, up. And that means all of us. We all have a role.

To the young people, I would say you have the right to joy, and you have the right to be happy. Working for the protection of what we love the most will make you happy. So get into a positive mindset. Learn all you can. Be part of things that make you feel positive. You will see how you will find your way, and there is no place for feeling disempowered. This is the moment where you should feel very powerful because it is us who are going to make the future of this Earth.”

Monica Feria-Tinta is a British-Peruvian barrister specialising in Public International Law. She has been called one of ‘the most daring, innovative and creative lawyers’ in the United Kingdom, and was shortlisted for “Barrister of the Year” at The Lawyers’ Awards 2020 and at Chambers and Partners UK Bar Awards 2023 for her work in addressing climate change and environmental degradation. In 2020, she acted before the Constitutional Court of Ecuador in Los Cedros case, the first ‘Rights of Nature’ case in the world. In September 2022 her work as Counsel secured a win in the Torres Strait Islanders case, a landmark moment in which the UN Human Rights Committee found a Sovereign state responsible, for the first time in history, for lack of action in addressing climate change. She is the author of A Barrister for the Earth: Ten Cases of Hope for Our Future.

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

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

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“The more that you have that evolving relationship with the natural world, that's dynamic and alive to the moment you're in, and that's not afraid of the feelings of fear, hopelessness, grief, or pain that attend paying close attention to the world as it is evolving around you, the better we are able to be flexible in the relationship we need to form with fixing what we can and holding onto what we have. The more we rely on that black-and-white thinking of either being in grief or being out of it, where we have a loss and we have to move on, or we don't and we're fine. The more that happens, the more difficult it is to flow into what we really need in terms of emotional flexibility to get through the staggering changes that are starting to happen regarding climate issues.”

Eiren Caffall is a writer and musician. Her work on loss, oceans, and extinction has appeared in Orion,Guernica, The LA Review of Books, Al Jazeera, and the anthology Elementals. She has received a 2023 Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant, a Social Justice News Nexus fellowship, and a 3Arts Make a Wave grant. Her work includes her memoir The Mourner’s Bestiary, the short film Becoming Oceanthatshe made with Scott Foley, and her novel All the Water in the World.

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“We are in a complex and delicately balanced relationship of connection to everything else on the planet. We begin to recognize, write into, and speak into the complex interdependence and interconnection of every gesture that we make on the planet. Most storytelling that I really respond to, whether it's from my own culture or from previous civilizations, acknowledges that we are in this complex relationship where every gesture we make is connected to the lives of every other creature on the planet. The more narratives we allow to be complex in that way and interconnected, the more we begin to change our brain chemistry around how we protect ourselves and everything that is in relation to us. The more that you have that evolving relationship with it, that's dynamic and alive to the moment you're in, and that's not afraid of the feelings of fear, hopelessness, grief, or pain that attend paying close attention to the world as it is evolving around you, the better we are able to be flexible in the relationship we need to form with fixing what we can and holding onto what we have.”

Eiren Caffall is a writer and musician. Her work on loss, oceans, and extinction has appeared in Orion,Guernica, The LA Review of Books, Al Jazeera, and the anthology Elementals. She has received a 2023 Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant, a Social Justice News Nexus fellowship, and a 3Arts Make a Wave grant. Her work includes her memoir The Mourner’s Bestiary, the short film Becoming Oceanthatshe made with Scott Foley, and her novel All the Water in the World.

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