DR. JOERI ROGELJ

DR. JOERI ROGELJ

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Director of Research at Grantham Institute, Imperial College
Author on UN Environment Programme & Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

A key part of how I go about doing my research is being involved in policy discussions, policy conversations, and also by following the international climate negotiations very closely. Actually, I started my research career as a part of the Presidency of the International Climate Negotiations in 2009. After that I remained an advisor to country delegations in the international negotiations, particularly small island development states or least developed countries. That really helped me to get a sense of what the real questions are that they are struggling with.

OSPREY ORIELLE LAKE

OSPREY ORIELLE LAKE

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Founder & Executive Director of the Women's Earth & Climate Action Network International

Author of Uprisings for the Earth: Reconnecting Culture with Nature & Artist

There’s a wide range of reasons that we really need to understand the root causes of a lot of our social ills and environmental ills. I think we need to continue to come back to this question of how we heal this imposed divide between the natural world and human social constructs. And that healing is key to how we’re going to really unwind the perilous moment that we face right now. How do we reconnect with the natural world? Not just intellectually, but in a very embodied way.

MERLIN SHELDRAKE

MERLIN SHELDRAKE

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Merlin Sheldrake is a biologist and bestselling author of Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, and Shape Our Futures. Merlin received a Ph.D. in tropical ecology from Cambridge University for his work on underground fungal networks in tropical forests in Panama, where he was a predoctoral research fellow of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. Entangled Life won the Wainwright Prize 2021, and has been nominated for a number of other prizes. Merlin is a research associate of the Vrije University Amsterdam, Head of Science and Communications Strategy for the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks, and sits on the advisory board of the Fungi Foundation.

MERLIN SHELDRAKE

Humans have been partnering with fungi for an unknowably long time, no doubt for longer than we’ve been humans. Whether as foods, eating mushrooms, as medicines, dosing ourselves with moulds and other mushrooms that might help, parasites or others helpers with infection, mushrooms as tinder or ways to carry a spark, this very important thing that humans needed to do for a very long time, and as agents of fermentation, as in yeasts creating alcohol. So humans have partnered with fungi to solve all sorts of problems and so fungi have found themselves enveloped within human societies and cultures for a long time.

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk & Cooper Berkoff with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this podcast was Cooper Berkoff. Digital Media Coordinator is Phoebe Brous.

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions).

DR. FARHANA SULTANA

DR. FARHANA SULTANA

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Dr. Farhana Sultana is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and the Environment at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs of Syracuse University, where she is also the Research Director for Environmental Collaboration and Conflicts at the Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflicts and Collaboration (PARCC).

Dr. Sultana is an internationally recognized interdisciplinary scholar of political ecology, water governance, post‐colonial development, social and environmental justice, climate change, and feminism. Her research and scholar-activism draw from her experiences of having lived and worked on three continents as well as from her backgrounds in the natural sciences, social sciences, and policy experience.

Prior to joining Syracuse, she taught at King’s College London and worked at United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Author of several dozen publications, her recent books are “The Right to Water: Politics, Governance and Social Struggles” (2012), “Eating, Drinking: Surviving” (2016) and “Water Politics: Governance, Justice, and the Right to Water” (2020). Dr. Sultana graduated Cum Laude from Princeton University (in Geosciences and Environmental Studies) and obtained her Masters and PhD (in Geography) from the University of Minnesota, where she was a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellow.

She was awarded the Glenda Laws Award from the American Association of Geographers for “outstanding contributions to geographic research on social issues” in 2019.

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk & Mariana Monahan Negron with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this podcast was Mariana Monahan Negron. Digital Media Coordinator is Phoebe Brous.

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions).

ANTE CHENG & MATTHEW CHUANG

ANTE CHENG & MATTHEW CHUANG

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Cinematographers Ante Cheng & Matthew Chuang
Blue Bayou starring Justin Chon & Alicia Vikander

The search for identity is something I think everyone goes through in their lives. It’s a constantly evolving answer. I think all of us can relate to the sense of belonging and what is home. Alicia Vikander’s scene was memorable to me. One of the rare times I cried while operating the camera.

There’s not really many stories about people who look like me in Australia, so I was just making films. How do I be invisible in a way and transcend whatever I’m shooting? It wasn’t until I came to the U.S…it was the first time I had to think about me being Asian and my experiences and how does that relate to what we’re telling in this film.

HARRIS YULIN

HARRIS YULIN

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Emmy & SAG Award Nominated Actor & Director with roles in Ozark, Billions & Scarface

I really know theater because that's where I started. I went at it in a very haphazard way. It was not orderly at all. I didn't go to a proper school or anything like that. I did a little bit of studying here or there...Jeff Corey (and at one class in New York) someone said something that helped me a great deal. And then I just learned by doing it.

TIEMEN TER HOEVEN

TIEMEN TER HOEVEN

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Founder & CEO of Roetz · Manufacturer of Circular Bicycles & e-Bikes

I think the next crisis is going to be a materials crisis. The whole point of moving from a zero-sum game–like who makes the best cheapest product at the lowest price and can find lowest labor somewhere around the world so someone can be happy with a new laundry machine and buy another one in five years–that’s not going to work for us.

MASTER SHI HENG YI

MASTER SHI HENG YI

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35th Generation of Shaolin Masters
Headmaster of the Shaolin Temple Europe

Just getting to know what is Buddhism, which is the foundation of every monastery. The Shaolin Temple is in the core, first of all, it’s a Buddhist monastery and when you are starting to read about Buddhism, one of the key sentences, in the beginning, is: With your thoughts, you are creating the world…So it’s very rarely clearly stated that it is the thoughts that are creating the world. Nevertheless, if you are now looking at the practices that the Shaolin Temple offers, that is quite physical. There is a lot of physicality in there, so you might think but why are you saying with thoughts you create the world, but you have so many different physical activities. It is because if you want to have mental freedom. If you want to approach freedom, you cannot just approach freedom by doing things or trying to chase freedom. The freedom that we are looking for is the type of freedom that is derived and that is very closely related to its counterpart, which is very hard restriction or very hard structure. So if you want to experience what freedom is, look at the restrictions of your life.

GARY GRIGGS

GARY GRIGGS

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Gary Griggs received his B.A. in Geological Sciences from the University of California Santa Barbara and a Ph.D. in Oceanography from Oregon State University. He has been a Professor of Earth Sciences at the University of California Santa Cruz since 1968 and was Director of the Institute of Marine Sciences from 1991 to 2017. His research and teaching have been focused on the coast of California and include coastal processes, hazards and engineering, and sea-level rise. Dr. Griggs has written over 185 articles for professional journals as well as authored or co-authored eleven books.

In 1998 he was given the Outstanding Faculty Award at UC Santa Cruz and the Alumni Association honored him with a Distinguished Teaching Award in 2006. The California Coastal Commission and Sunset Magazine named him one of California’s Coastal Heroes in 2009. He has served on three National Academy of Sciences Committees. He has served on the Science Advisory Team to the Governor’s Ocean Protection Council since 2008 and in 2015 was appointed to the California Ocean Sciences Trust.

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk & Hannah Besly with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this podcast was Hannah Besly. Digital Media Coordinator is Phoebe Brous.

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions).

JERICHO BROWN

JERICHO BROWN

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Pulitzer Prize-winning Poet
Author of The Tradition & The New Testament

I just want to make the poems like a living being…There are moments that I’m not at the desk, but I’m living life. And living life is actually what leads to writing. You have to have experiences to write about. Whether or not you are aware of those experiences as you are writing them down because if you’re doing music first, maybe you’re not aware of what you’re writing. And yet, those experiences are what come to fruition in your writing. You become aware. Oh, I did come on that roller coaster that time that I haven’t thought about in twenty years. Oh I did make love to that cute person that I haven’t thought about in ten years, but you’ve got to make love, you’ve got to get on roller coasters, you’ve got to get your heart broken. You’ve got to dance. You gotta get out and do things and that, too, is a part of writing. You have to trust you’re a writer by identity. And if you can trust that you’re a writer by identity, then you don’t have to be at a desk.

ANA CASTILLO

ANA CASTILLO

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Award-winning Xicana Activist, Editor, Poet, Novelist, Artist
Author of My Book of the Dead
One of the things of the things that is dying is our planet. We hear these sirens every single day. We’re being warned daily by experts and concerned people how vast that squandering is going. It’s a case of urgency and it’s astounding and a very sad, a very pathetic comment on modern life that most people are ignoring those signs. As a poet, it seems to me that one of the tasks that the poet takes on, it’s a vocation that’s born with it, it’s this consciousness, this serving as witness.

AMY ANIOBI

AMY ANIOBI

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Amy Aniobi is a writer, director and Executive Producer on HBO’s Emmy-nominated comedy, “Insecure,” starring Issa Rae. “Insecure” will premiere its fifth and final season on October 24th with Aniobi behind the camera as director of the seventh episode (#507) to be broadcast on December 5th. She also served as showrunner/head writer/EP for season one of the HBO stand-up special “2 Dope Queens.” Under her new production shingle “SuperSpecial” and overall deal with HBO, Aniobi already is in development on several projects, as well as two features set up at Universal. Amy recently directed the award-winning short film, "Honeymoon," which explores a modern-day Nigerian couple's arranged marriage. She also co-created, co-directed and starred in the web series, “Lisa and Amy Are Black,” created the web series, “The Slutty Years” and wrote for both seasons of “Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl.” Amy is Nigerian, hails from North Texas, graduated from Stanford University and UCLA, and has lived both in the US (New York, the Bay Area) and abroad (France, Morocco).

AMY ANIOBI

Literally during the last week of production, we kept having this conversation. We are part of a cultural moment and we know we are, which is a very out of body experience… Any iconic black show, did they know? Because a lot of those when you look back at their history they were one the bubble, and I always think about Girlfriends and Living Single––did they know that people would still be talking about them?

Photo Credit: Merie W. Wallace/HBO



This interview was conducted by Mia Funk & Iyabo Lawal with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this podcast was Iyabo Lawal. Digital Media Coordinator is Phoebe Brous.

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions).

REBECCA WALKER

REBECCA WALKER

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Award-Winning Writer, Producer & Co-founder of Third Wave Fund

The idea of writing memoir is about listening carefully. The way to find a story or, at least the story that needs to be told is that moment that you’re writing is the emerges from a deep kind of inner listening and finding the memories that are charged that don’t want to leave that have a certain kind of energy to them and, if you listen to them, and you allow them to be born in the writing, you discover your own story because your story is basically made up of all the memories that continue to hold the charge for you. All the memories that are lodged in your mind that you’ve secreted away and when you can excavate that story and you can write it down, then you can make sense of it and you can understand why you’re living the way you’re living and why you feel the way you feel. And you can also decide to to release those memories so that you can have new memories that can define and can shape your life.

SAMUEL MYERS MD, MPH

SAMUEL MYERS MD, MPH

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Founding Director of Planetary Health Alliance
Principal Research Scientist at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

I think the environmental community has been guilty of a lot of catastrophism, a lot of statements like ‘Game Over for the Planet’, and we’ve painted a lot of very dark pictures about where we’re going, but when you look across these different sectors and all the solutions that are out there, there’s no reason to believe that our grandchildren couldn’t live in an incredibly exciting world.

DR. EBEN ALEXANDER

DR. EBEN ALEXANDER

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Neurosurgeon
Author of NYTimes #1 Bestseller Proof of Heaven, Seeking Heaven, The Map of Heaven & Living in a Mindful Universe.

Take care of yourself. Bring that love and kindness and compassion into your dealings with self and others. And this world will change dramatically. I think you’ll find great reason for optimism and hope and viewing the way our world can go, but it absolutely involves a change from the status quo from our current direction.

JOHN MATYŚIAK

JOHN MATYŚIAK

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Director of Photography of Old Henry
Best Cinematographer Award-Winner · LA Asian Pacific Film Festival

What frame, what scene, ultimately what story is going to capture the most emotion to make you feel something? Because those are the films that have always resonated the most with me. Those films that actually make you feel. They stop you and they make you feel and make you think. They really jar you.

JEAN WEINER

JEAN WEINER

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Goldman Environmental Prize Winner
Founder of Fondation pour la Protection de la Biodiversité Marine in Haiti

We’re coming out of one of the worst times for resource exploitation, waste and everything related to that waste of resources, so trying to set the example, especially for my kids, recycling, trying to be reasonable about purchasing things, about where things end up after you’re done using them, just in general being careful about what you do, what impacts there are down the line. Even for them already, they’re 18 and 20 now–What are you going to do to try to protect the planet for your kids? Already trying to put that mindset for them because it’s very difficult for our generation to change the way it has done things for so long, but trying to at least bring that change. Be responsible, be reasonable, think about the impacts.


MARTIN VON HILDEBRAND

MARTIN VON HILDEBRAND

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Indigenous Rights Activist
Winner of Right Livelihood & Skoll Awards
His Fundacion Gaia Amazonas has been named #40 NGOs of the World

I went to the Amazon and I got a canoe and I started rowing into the forest. It was absolutely like going back into the 17th century! I went around for six months on my own and that was fantastic because in this part of the Colombian rainforest there were absolutely no roads, no towns, no electricity, no flowing water. You are with the indigenous group. They are all still in their loincloths. They speak different languages. I went through about eight different ethnic groups. They all spoke different languages. I couldn’t understand what they said. They couldn’t understand what I said, but we got along well.

JIM JERMANOK

JIM JERMANOK

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Award-Winning Writer, Director, Producer, Speaker
& Author of Beyond The Craft: What You Need to Know to Make A Living Creatively!

I like uncovering truth about behaviour, about history. I think all artists are attracted to unveiling truth. I think it’s a mirror of our society, of our world. It’s the soul of our world.

AIMEE NEZHUKUMATATHIL

AIMEE NEZHUKUMATATHIL

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Poet & Author of World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks & Other Astonishments

I think something happened in 2016, where I just snapped. There was a lot of a hateful news going around with American politics, and I didn’t know how to answer a lot of my kids questions then. Something I know I can do is to tell them things that I loved about this planet or things that I loved in other people because all they saw or heard about was just this weird ugliness, school shootings, leaders who were saying ‘build that wall’ to anybody who looked different than them, and so I remember the night I shut myself up in my office after the kids went to bed and just started writing about plants and animals that I loved from my childhood.