Humanity's Deadly Shadow: The Toll on Birds and Wildlife - BEN GOLDFARB

Humanity's Deadly Shadow: The Toll on Birds and Wildlife - BEN GOLDFARB

/

PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award-winning Author

The creation of roads is this process that's sort of innate to all beings. We're all sort of inclined to create and follow trails. We just do it at a much vaster and more permanent and destructive scale. I think we need to reconceive how we think about roads. Roads aren't just symbols of movement and mobility and freedom for us. They're also preventing that mobility in basically all other life forms.

Environmental Crisis, Philosophy & the Search for Meaning - ROBERT PIPPIN

Environmental Crisis, Philosophy & the Search for Meaning - ROBERT PIPPIN

/

Author of The Culmination: Heidegger, German Idealism, and the Fate of Philosophy
Modernism as a Philosophical Problem · Hegel’s Idealism

Philosophy is both an academic discipline and also something that everybody does. Everybody has to have reflective views about what's significant. They also have to justify to themselves why it's significant or important. The nature of justice itself, and the various opinions that have been written about in philosophy about justice, can get to a very high level. So there's this unusual connection between philosophy and human life. We've inherited from the middle ages, this incredible tradition that's now developed into a chance for young people to spend four or five years, in a way, released from the pressures of life. The idea to pursue your ideas a little further in these four years you have, exempt from the pressures of social life, allows philosophy to have a kind of position unique in the academy. In confronting what the best minds in the history of the world have had to say about these issues, the hope is that they provide for the people who are privileged enough to confront philosophy a better and more thoughtful approach to these fundamental questions that everybody has to confront.

How does the brain process emotions and music? JOSEPH LEDOUX - Neuroscientist, Author, Musician

How does the brain process emotions and music? JOSEPH LEDOUX - Neuroscientist, Author, Musician

/

Neuroscientist · Musician · Author
The Emotional Brain · Anxious · The Deep History of Ourselves
The Four Realms of Existence: A New Theory of Being Human

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

Travel, Literature & Identity with INTAN PARAMADITHA - Author of The Wandering

Travel, Literature & Identity with INTAN PARAMADITHA - Author of The Wandering

/

Author of The Wandering · Apple and Knife
Editor of Deviant Disciples: Indonesian Women Poets · Co-ed. The Routledge Companion to Asian Cinemas

The Wandering is a choose your own adventure novel, and the reader is situated in the shoes of this brown woman from the Global South. She's 27 and in a way, she is stuck with her life. She aspires to be middle class, but her job doesn't allow her to achieve this social mobility. In her condition, she makes a deal with a devil, a reference to the story of Faust and Mephistopheles, finally getting a pair of red shoes that will take her anywhere. But that means she will never be able to find home—that's the curse of the shoes. The title in Indonesian is Gentayanga, which is a word used to describe ghosts who exist in a liminal state.

Voices of the Earth: Reflections on Nature, Humanity & Climate Change

Voices of the Earth: Reflections on Nature, Humanity & Climate Change

/

Environmentalists, writers, artists, activists, and public policy makers explore the interconnectedness of living beings and ecosystems. They highlight the importance of conservation, promote climate education, advocate for sustainable development, and underscore the vital role of creative and educational communities in driving positive change. Music courtesy of composer Max Richter.

Exploring Science, Music, AI & Consciousness with MAX COOPER

Exploring Science, Music, AI & Consciousness with MAX COOPER

/

Electronic Musician · Fmr. Computational Biologist

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

How climate change is making us sick, angry & anxious - CLAYTON ALDERN - Neuroscientist turned Eco-Journalist

How climate change is making us sick, angry & anxious - CLAYTON ALDERN - Neuroscientist turned Eco-Journalist

/

Neuroscientist turned Environmental Journalist
Author of The Weight of Nature: How a Changing Climate Changes Our Minds, Brains, and Bodies

I want to be wowed by the world. I want to gaze at it in awe and wonder. And I think when we take a step back and begin to appreciate the complexity of the interactions around us. We're taking note of a very porous between the self and the rest of the world. We are literally observing our enmeshment in our environment. And it's that kind of a reference frameshift that I think is going to help us move out of some of the darkness. My mother is an artist, and I think growing up surrounded by her practice exposed me to the creative process and is probably that which afforded me a certain sympathy for those tools and those modes of exploring the world later in life.

There’s another side to every war. Satire, War & Hollywood - Co-creator DON McKELLAR on The Sympathizer

There’s another side to every war. Satire, War & Hollywood - Co-creator DON McKELLAR on The Sympathizer

/

Co-writer · Executive Producer · Co-showrunner of HBO’s The Sympathizer

I think it's central to the message of the show and of the book. This idea that there's another side to every question. That's the central quandary. There's this problem with the whole Vietnam War. It's saying to Americans, at least put yourself on the other side, the Vietnamese side, and then recognize that that side also has two sides and then within that, there are further divisions. And if you do that, I think what it's proposing is that you have to step back. It forces a sort of objectivity and humility, and it asks you to step back and allow the bigger human questions to resonate.

Do good deeds offset bad deeds? How do our families shape who we become? - DAN FUTTERMAN & ADAM RAPP

Do good deeds offset bad deeds? How do our families shape who we become? - DAN FUTTERMAN & ADAM RAPP

/

Award-winning Screenwriters · Exec. Producers · Directors
American Rust · The Looming Tower
Capote · The Outsiders musical

We're all culpable in some way of being both good and bad, being virtuous and also questionable at times in our own lives. And I think when you start answering questions on either side of that too firmly, I think it allows the audience to disconnect from it. And then you just have this sort of a good and bad guy narrative that is oversimplified all too often in our culture. I think viewers will relate to this nature versus nurture versus DNA, raising all the questions of psychological and biological inheritance.

How has travel contributed to the ecological degradation of the planet? - Highlights - MICHAEL CRONIN

How has travel contributed to the ecological degradation of the planet? - Highlights - MICHAEL CRONIN

/

Author of Eco-Travel: Journeying in the Age of the Anthropocene
Snr. Researcher · Trinity Centre for Literary & Cultural Translation

The idea of a kind of inert world that is simply there for our pleasure, enjoyment, and exploitation has proved to be catastrophically mistaken because we see it with flooding, we see it with forest fires. We see it with acidification of the oceans. We see it with the continuing rise in temperatures that the world itself, the more-than-human world is fighting back. It has taken on its own agency. And therefore, the idea of a pyramid, a hierarchy, is no longer operative.

Consciousness, AI & Creativity with DUSTIN O’HALLORAN - Emmy Award-winning Composer

Consciousness, AI & Creativity with DUSTIN O’HALLORAN - Emmy Award-winning Composer

/

Emmy Award-winning · Oscar-nominated Composer · Musician
1 0 0 1 · Silfur · Transparent · Lion

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

The Pursuit of Happiness - JEFFREY ROSEN - President & CEO of the National Constitution Center

The Pursuit of Happiness - JEFFREY ROSEN - President & CEO of the National Constitution Center

/

President & CEO of the National Constitution Center
Author of The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America

That idea of planting seeds for future generations came from the Tusculan Disputations. There’s something especially empowering about Cicero. And it's very striking that Thomas Jefferson and John Adams and so many in the Founding Era viewed this manual about overcoming grief as the definition for achieving happiness. And I think it's because it's a philosophy of self-mastery, self-improvement, and self-empowerment.

Intimacy Coordinator ITA O’BRIEN on Normal People, Sex Education & Creating Safe Spaces

Intimacy Coordinator ITA O’BRIEN on Normal People, Sex Education & Creating Safe Spaces

/

Intimacy Coordinator · Founder of Intimacy on Set
Author of Intimacy On Set Guidelines

For years, people spoke about how awkward or embarrassing it was to perform the intimate content. And what they're speaking about is feeling horrible. If something's awkward, that squirm, that ring in the body, it feels embarrassing. That's actually an emotion that is not professional. That is not allowing the actor to stay feeling listened to, heard, empowered, autonomous. And so that they can just get on without any of those concerns and do their job to their best ability. And that's the awareness that we brought. So, we're saying, it is not suitable in our workplace for anybody to feel harassed or abused. 

What can turtles teach us about time, patience & wisdom? - Author SY MONTGOMERY & Illustrator MATT PATTERSON

What can turtles teach us about time, patience & wisdom? - Author SY MONTGOMERY & Illustrator MATT PATTERSON

/

Author | Illustrator

I did know that I wanted this book about turtles to also be about time. It's one of two big questions in philosophy. The one big mystery that I had tackled in a previous book, Soul of an Octopus, was the mystery of consciousness. The other big hard problem in philosophy is time. And I felt, you know, who better to lead me in this exploration than turtles, who live in some cases for centuries, who've been around...they arose with dinosaurs, yet they survived the asteroid impact. They are the embodiment of patience and wisdom.

The Transformative Power of Writing with ANDRE DUBUS III

The Transformative Power of Writing with ANDRE DUBUS III

/

NYTimes Bestselling Author
House of Sand and Fog · The Garden of Last Days · Ghost Dogs · Townie

All creative writing is that act of reaching for the pieces to put it back together again. And with the memoir, the essay, it's human memory. Your memory for your own existence. With fiction, it’s a dream world where you're reaching for the shards. Writing is a free fall into the writer's psyche, and if you want some clarity on what you believe, just write something sincere and emotionally naked and read it back to yourself, and you'll see a lot of what you believe, what you think, what you fear, regret, and desire, etc.

Revolutionizing Sustainability: BERTRAND PICCARD's Path to a Cleaner Planet

Revolutionizing Sustainability: BERTRAND PICCARD's Path to a Cleaner Planet

/

Explorer & Aviator of the First Round-the-World Solar-powered Flight
Founder of Solar Impulse Foundation & Climate Impulse
UN Goodwill Ambassador for the Environment

The goal with Climate Impulse is to revolutionize aviation and show that we can decarbonize aviation. We can make it more efficient. Of course, it's not yet a jumbo jet with hydrogen. It's a two-seater airplane. But I want to make the ultimate flight to shake a little bit the certitudes of the people. If we go around the world nonstop with two people on board, this project can become like a flagship of climate action.

Will human efficiency destroy the planet and us? - DR. LUDOVIC SLIMAK - Author of The Naked Neanderthal

Will human efficiency destroy the planet and us? - DR. LUDOVIC SLIMAK - Author of The Naked Neanderthal

/

Paleoanthropologist · Author of The Naked Neanderthal: A New Understanding of the Human Creature

This book is not just about Neanderthals. It's a book about us. I wanted to warn humans, to say there is something in us that is so efficient and dangerous. We've effectively collapsed many things and are now inducing the collapse of natural environments on the planet. And after that, we might even cause the collapse of ourselves as Homo sapiens.

What does it mean to have an ecological mind? - PAOLA SPINOZZI

What does it mean to have an ecological mind? - PAOLA SPINOZZI

/

Coordinator, Phd Programme, Environmental Sustainability & Wellbeing · University of Ferrara
Co-editor of Cultures of Sustainability and Wellbeing: Theories, Histories and Policies

The humanities are all about representing the world, while the sciences are all about knowing the world. But I believe the roles are deeply intertwined, and that literature, the humanities, philosophy, history, and the arts are all ways of knowing the world. They do exactly the same thing in our understanding of the world. And it is really important to try to put these things together to bring people closer in talking to each other.

LISA EDELSTEIN - From Acting to Directing, Writing & Visual Art

LISA EDELSTEIN - From Acting to Directing, Writing & Visual Art

/

Actress · Artist · Director · Producer · Writer
House M.D. · Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce · Little Bird

I have always thrown myself into everything, and that includes terrible things, because I want to have the whole experience. Even if I know it's going to hurt for better or for worse, that has been how I've lived my life. And so it's given me a lot of information and allowed me to play a lot of different roles and understand a lot of different points of view. I think part of the beauty of being in a long-running television show is that, in season one, you're playing the role they wrote. By season two, they're writing the person you're playing. You start to build your voice, and they start to merge, and so by the time you get to season three, you're much more like full human beings having this dialogue.

What does the future hold for our late-stage capitalist society with mega-corps controlling everything? KYLE HIGGINS, KARINA MANASHIL & KID CUDI

What does the future hold for our late-stage capitalist society with mega-corps controlling everything? KYLE HIGGINS, KARINA MANASHIL & KID CUDI

/

Eisner Award-nominated Comic Book Author KYLE HIGGINS
Emmy-nominated Producer KARINA MANASHIL & KID CUDI on the Making of Moon Man

So, as we started talking and going through what this could look like. What a new black superhero in 2024 could look like? What would the threats be? What the world might look like if it's maybe not even five minutes in the future? I would argue it's like two and a half minutes in the future. And then what kind of really complex, emotionally layered journey we could put this character through?