Vice President · Sustainability · Trane Technologies
Managing Director · Center for Energy Efficiency & Sustainability
I have this need to stay curious. I think all of these big problems have solutions, and they're never one solution. It's always a collection of solutions. And therefore, I think we need a collection of people and ideas, so that's a great thing to keep in mind.
Author of Narrating Humanity: Life Writing and Movement Politics from Palestine to Mauna Kea
Professor of English at University of Hawai'i · Coeditor of the journal Biography
I posit narrated humanity as a lens through which to study how narratives participate in struggles to conceive human being beyond juridical and narrative humanity. What I was thinking about was just the kind of narrative codes and conventions and genres that help us to understand who counts as human in ways that people who are fighting for human rights as a thing that you have to do, even as there are all kinds of critiques that can and have been made rightly so of human rights, but that you have to do it.
Political Economist · Provost of SciencesPo
Co-author of Spin Dictators: The Changing Face of Tyranny in the 21st Century
In Russia, I ran a university, a new economic school. And as an economist and a public intellectual, I was engaged in interactions with the government, including with Vladimir Putin. And there, of course, the situation was that Russia was already a nondemocratic country, meaning that it was a country where elections were not free and fair and partial censorship was already in place. Yet in those years, we could express ourselves openly, not on national TV, but at least in newspapers and on radio. And that eventually brought me into trouble with Vladimir Putin, who at some point suggested that I talked too much and I should not be in the same country. I was also interrogated. My office was searched. And at some point, common friends told me, 'Look, you shouldn't be here.' And I bought a one-way ticket for the next day and just left Russia. The dictators in the 20th century used military or paramilitary uniforms to project brute force and fear. Today, the situation is different. Successful dictators pretend to be democrats.
Environmentalists, Artists, Students & Teachers share their Love for the Planet
Today we’re streaming voices of environmentalists, artists, students, and teachers with music courtesy of composer Max Richter.
Marine Ecologist · University of Adelaide · Restoring Lost Oyster Reefs
There's this real emergence of young people doing incredible things enabled by bio-modern technology and a more globalized and connected world and access to amazing educational resources about what the environment does and means for humanity. We've lost something like 85% of oyster reefs globally. In Australia it's over 99%. We've smashed this ecosystem to smithereens. It covered something like 7,000 kilometers of coastline and the flat oyster reef, for example, the flat oysters, one type of oyster that we work with were completely removed from the Australian mainland, and about 5,000 kilometers of reef destroyed in a very short period of time. And because of the intensity with which the coastlines were modified following European settlement of Australia, they haven't been able to come back naturally.
Composer · Songwriter · Conductor
The Land of Dreams ·The Snow Queen 3 · The Boat · Food 2050 · Green Book
I'm always trying to find my place here because, yes, I'm American. I'm an immigrant. I don't want to talk about the difficulties I face in my coming here, but it was not easy. So when I was writing the song called “Give Up”, and it's like a song that I'm singing to myself. Those are things, like there is a lot of personal experience. I was a luxury immigrant on a Fulbright grant on a J-1 Sponsor Visa, you know, with a solid family I could go back to in Italy in case anything went wrong. But at the same time, it was not easy. I want to do my job with a smile on my face, and it brought me to write the lyrics like: 'It's my turn. My time is now.' It's like something that I'm trying, we all try to get our turn to be our moment, to shine our moment. We're all waiting. We don't know if it will happen, but we need to try at least. We need to grab our life with our hands and make it work one way or another. So that's what I mean in my song “Orlando Dreams.”
Artist
I think it is a job for artists, not all artists, but I think it's a job for artists to acknowledge that culture can make a difference towards these things and can hold people more accountable. Australians, myself included, grow up in this state of amnesia because what happened is that the British stole the land from the Aboriginal people. We made up a fiction, the fiction of Terra nullius. And then we basically disclaimed any relationship that the Aboriginal people had to the land. The National Day in Australia is the day marked by colonization, which is shameful. So that's another long conversation. And I think that, whether things are better or worse in the United States, but I do know that is the conversation that has only just begun in Australia. And there's a new openness that never has been before.
Vice President & Literary Agent at Trident Media Group
There's a lot of apprenticeship in our industry because historically it had to be that way, otherwise what you would have in publishing - there's still a lot of this - is a bunch of English majors trying to make sense of how to run a business, right?Because book publishing or working at a literary agency - a talent agency for authors like I do - is at the crossroads of creative and business. And if you didn't have that kind of apprenticeship, someone to learn from at the company where you work, then we would all just be English majors just trying to feel our way in the dark.
I think that the important thing for people to really know about storytelling is that books are sort of like the oil paintings of the new media. It's a very fine art form, an old art form, and a story exists in everything, whether it's a photograph, a painting, a song, or a movie, it all began with a story. And stories have been here from the dawn of time. They're going to forever be in our existence, but I think people should just always have curious minds and seek out stories and storytelling and try to see the story in everything, not just look at things for face value.
Author of The Cultural Betrayal of Black Women and Girls: A Black Feminist Approach to Healing from Sexual Abuse
Assistant Professor in the School of Social Work · Faculty Affiliate at the Center for Innovation in Social Work & Health at Boston University,
So many of us have experienced things along this vein, and when we know that, then the feelings of isolation can be interrupted with this understanding that many of us have been through these things. And if that person over there can experience joy, well maybe I can experience joy too, and maybe this is a different kind of harm and cultural betrayal. Sexual trauma and abuse as a collective community-level harm, that means community-level healing and personal healing.
Founder & CEO of The Ocean Agency · Featured in Netflix’s Chasing Coral
People just forget the importance of the ocean. It controls the climate system and sustains life. For example, there are 20 billion carbon-capturing sea creatures for every human being. They are sucking carbon out of the system and pooping it to the ocean floor. And this is one of the solutions happening on an epic scale in the ocean. And there are so many other examples like that. And if you think about our bodies, we're 60% water. And that water was once in the ocean with fish swimming through it.
Voices of environmentalists and artists. Enjoy this Special Series with music courtesy of composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist Erland Cooper, and Universal Music Enterprises.
Artworks by Mia Funk
GIULIO BOCCALETTI
Author of Water, A Biography
Natural Resource Security & Environmental Sustainability Expert
Chief Strategy Officer 2016–2020, The Nature Conservancy
PAULA PINHO
Director of Just Transition at the European Commission Directorate-General for Energy
RON GONEN
Founder & CEO of Closed Loop Partners
Fmr. Deputy Commissioner of Sanitation, Recycling & Sustainability, NYC
MARCIA DESANCTIS
Journalist, Essayist,
Author of A Hard Place to Leave: Stories from a Restless Life
JEAN WEINER
Goldman Environmental Prize Winner
Founder of Fondation pour la Protection de la Biodiversité Marine, Haiti
DERRICK EMSLEY
Co-founder & CEO of veritree - Data-driven Restorative Platform & tentree Apparel Co.
DR. FARHANA SULTANA
Co-author: Water Politics: Governance, Justice & the Right to Water
Fmr. UNDP Programme Officer, United Nations Development Programme
NEIL GRIMMER
Brand President of SOURCE Global · Innovator of the SOURCE Hydropanel: Drinking Water Made from Sunlight and Air
ALAN JACOBSEN
Director of Photography
Emmy & Sundance Special Jury Award-Winning & Oscar Nominated Documentaries
RICHARD VEVERS
Founder & CEO of The Ocean Agency
BRIAN WILCOX
Chief Engineer & Co-founder of Marine BioEnergy
Grows Kelp in the Ocean to Provide Carbon-neutral Fuels
SETH M. SIEGEL
Entrepreneur, Public Speaker & NYTimes Bestselling Author
Let There Be Water: Israel’s Solution for a Water-Starved World
Troubled Water: What's Wrong with What We Drink
JOELLE GERGIS
Lead Author of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, Author of Humanity’s Moment
JAY FAMIGLIETTI, Fmr. Senior Water Scientist at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Exec. Director, Global Institute for Water Security, Host of "What About Water?" Podcast
ROB BILOTT
Environmental Lawyer, Partner Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP
Author of Exposure: Poisoned Water, Corporate Greed, and One Lawyer’s Twenty-Year Battle Against DuPont
JILL HEINERTH
Explorer, Presenter, Author of Into The Planet: My Life as a Cave Diver
OSPREY ORIELLE LAKE
Founder & Executive Director of the Women's Earth & Climate Action Network International
Author of Uprisings for the Earth: Reconnecting Culture with Nature & Artist
JESS WILBER
International Outreach Citizens’ Climate Lobby
Coordinator, Senior Stewards Acting for the Environment
BERTRAND PICCARD
Aviator of 1st Round-the-World Solar-Powered Flight, Explorer, Founder, Solar Impulse Foundation
IBRAHIM ALHUSSEINI
Founder & CEO of FullCycle Fund
GARY GRIGGS
Global Oceans Hero Award-Winner · Distinguished Professor of Earth Sciences
Director Institute of Marine Sciences at UC Santa Cruz 1991 to 2017
Sample Credits:
BBC News Excerpt, Public broadcast, 19th July. Fair usage, courtesy Simon Gurney, BBC Studios Limited.
BBC News Excerpt, Public broadcast, 19th July. Fair usage, courtesy Simon Gurney, BBC Studios Limited.
UN Broadcast Excerpt, Greta Thunberg, Young Climate Activist at the Opening of the Climate Action Summit 2019, United Nations license 24 October 2022.
CBS News Excerpt 1970. Fair usage, archive courtesy Leah Hodge, CBS
Circular Economy & Design Expert · Founder of The Circular Way
Author of Danish Design Heritage & Global Sustainability
Putting design first, it really enables us to shape a future that we don't yet know. But we need to be super tactile and practical about it as well. And then seeing that is something that design very much has the ability to do. And at the same time, having this growing frustration that wherever you go, wherever you talk about sustainability, it was a compromise. It was something that meant uglier, less convenient, more expensive, all these different things, but then diving into the Danish Design heritage, seeing that what set them apart was that after the World Wars, they had a social purpose of democratizing and rebuilding the welfare state, and that was not something that lessened the final result. On the contrary, it heightened the ambition, the final design, and the solutions.
Happy World Environment Day!
For this special episode we celebrate the natural world with Artpark Bridges, the Parkinson's Community, independent living adults with Parkinson's disease, and People Inc, the Arts Experience, a day habilitation program for adults with developmental disabilities.
Artpark Bridges is a year-round community engagement program led by interdisciplinary artist Cynthia Pegado, dedicated to empowering adults of diverse abilities and backgrounds through expressive arts workshops and performance opportunities. Serving the Buffalo-Niagara Falls region of New York State, Artpark Bridges connects citizens with a sense of inclusion and purpose, healing and creative expression.
President of UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network
Director of Center for Sustainable Development, Columbia University
If we’re badly educated, we’re not going to make it on this planet. If I had to put my finger on one Sustainable Development Goal above all else, it is let’s empower young people so that they know the future. They know the world that they’re going to be leading soon. They can do something about it…If you’re in elementary school up to university, you should be learning–What is climate change? What is biodiversity? What can we do about it? And this kind of learning is not only book learning, but is also experiential learning.
Mentalist, Internationally Bestselling Author & TV Host
The Art of Reading Minds · Mind Storm · Cult · BOX
A mentalist is a kind of magician, an illusionist. And a mentalist uses whatever techniques are at that person's disposal to create the illusion of being able to read minds or being able to contact a supernatural presence…The only rule is that that part is fake, but then you can use techniques for magic or from stagecraft or from psychology. A mentalist is really someone who creates this illusion of having an almost supernatural ability. Having said that, today a mentalist sort of has come to mean something else, mainly due to popular culture TV series like The Mentalist and so on. And now there's this understanding of a mentalist as someone being able to read body language and influence behavior. It sort of ties into it all. And I've had a lifelong passion for magic, and it started when I was seven. Because I was always interested in the question: what if there's a color in the sky that we can't see? What if a handkerchief actually can vanish? What does that mean in terms of how the world works?
Whitley Award-winning Conservationist of Rare & Endangered Species
Executive Director & Co-Founder of Sociedade Chauá
Most of my family are cowboys and farmers. And I was like eight or nine years old. My grandmother was getting sick, and she always had a lot of plants at home in pots, and she asked me to help her to water the plants. And it was quite a good experience because when you start to like plants, it becomes like a viral thing. After some time I was growing my own plants, and I was very interested in doing her garden. And I would go to the forest and collect plants to grow at home like orchids that were beginning my first nursery. And it's a crazy love that grows when you start to understand how plants grow, and how the ecosystem functions. And how beautiful and amazing all this is. And we as humans are part of it, and I've always loved animals as well, but plants are my passion. And, of course, my, daughter's name is Flora. My wife, she's also a botanist, and she loves plants as well. So we live in the countryside where the farm has all kinds of plants. And I think one of the things that made me love and try to preserve and conserve the ecosystems and species is when you understand how slowly a plant or tree grows, and how much it takes to keep them healthy. And the interactions between the animals and plants, the pollinators and the dispersers within the ecosystem, it's something that everybody should know and see.
Author of Natives against Nativism: Antiracism and Indigenous Critique in Postcolonial France
Associate Professor of French & Comparative Literature at University of Southern California
We know, of course, how colonized territories were settled. They were settled by the poorest, most marginal sometimes, criminal, surplus populations. There is that inbuilt fear, right? I don't want to narrate this in psychological terms, but I do think that there's a way we can understand how these discourses have worked. How is it that these discourses that don't actually make sense when you read them work? It's because they offer a solution. So it's not the fault of globalization in neoliberalism that you don't have a job. It's because of these people at the gates, right? So it just taps into these very primal kind of ways of thinking about threats to one's own well-being.
Author of The Other Side of Happiness: Embracing a More Fearless Approach to Living
Professor at University of Melbourne’s School of Psychological Sciences
In today's world, feeling happy is no longer simply a state of mind. It's become a marker of mental health and success. On the flip side, pain and sadness are viewed as signals of failure and sickness. If we're not happy, then there is something wrong with us, and we need to fix it. It is no wonder that the painkiller and antidepressant markets, already worth billions of dollars, continue their rapid expansion. We've come to treat even commonplace experiences of pain and sadness as pathological, as things that need to be medicated and eradicated.
Director of Just Transition at the European Commission Directorate-General for Energy
She is responsible for Just Transition, Consumers, Energy Efficiency, Innovation and Energy security. She has been previously Head of Unit at the Directorate-General Energy in the European Commission. She was responsible for Energy Strategy and Policy coordination and then for Renewables and Energy System Integration Policy and Decarbonisation and Sustainability of Energy Sources. She was Acting Director for Energy Policy where she has overseen notably the work of international energy relations, financial instruments and inter-institutional relations.
Activist/Author/Educators growing Global Awareness of Kashmir to Secure Human Rights for its People
It's a complex history. I think the key thing to understand about Kashmir is that it is a place that was never decolonized, and it was recolonized in what is a nominally post-colonial world. This is the 75th anniversary of the UN Security Council's recognition of Kashmir as an international dispute. And, along with Palestine, Kashmir is the longest-running unresolved dispute on the agenda of the Security Council.
The Creative Process: Interviews & Portraits of the World’s Leading Authors & Creative Thinkers
Inspiring Students – Encouraging Reading - Connecting through Stories
The Creative Process exhibition is traveling to universities and museums. The Creative Process exhibition consists of interviews with over 100 esteemed writers, including Joyce Carol Oates, Hilary Mantel, Neil Gaiman, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Tobias Wolff, Richard Ford, Junot Díaz, Marie Darrieussecq, Michel Faber, T.C. Boyle, Jay McInerney, George Saunders, Geoff Dyer, Dave Eggers, Etgar Keret, Douglas Kennedy, Sam Lipsyte, and Yiyun Li, among others. Artist and interviewer: Mia Funk.
