Palestinian American Physician · Poet · Translator
What is enough childhood for a people to stay alive? What is enough childhood for a people to stay alive? What image of childhood is enough for a people to stay alive?
By pretending like science is neutral or apolitical, we're really feeding a particular discourse which serves whatever political structures are in place right now, whatever status quo is in place right now. Science can never be apolitical because it's a human activity, it's practiced in society with others, with human and more-than-human beings.
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.
As a psychotherapist, I've worked with thousands of people over my 53 years of practice, and I have had to learn to love each and every one of them. There is something about opening your heart and stopping judging and arguing, and listening again, inquiring until you find what is most lovable about another person, and that is a very difficult thing to do. We're all inclined to reject one another, even the people we love. It is very difficult to systematically seek to accord the other respect, your attention, your care, your capacity for appreciating and valuing what is good in them and what is possible for them in the future.
I think first of all that in order to have disillusion, you need to have illusion and I really want to sort of take a stand in the name of being a delusional person, you know? I do think illusions are necessary to our sense of creativity, and we need to fall in love with extreme projects, and we need to have ideas that are sometimes unsustainable. We need to dream big in order to be creative and feel alive. The illusions that are a part of Aqua are larger illusions. They're illusions that have to do with my adult life. They're connected to nature and the presence or absence of water, the illusion that we can keep sustaining a city even though the water has run out.
I think first of all that in order to have disillusion, you need to have illusion and I really want to sort of take a stand in the name of being a delusional person, you know? I do think illusions are necessary to our sense of creativity, and we need to fall in love with extreme projects, and we need to have ideas that are sometimes unsustainable. We need to dream big in order to be creative and feel alive. The illusions that are a part of Aqua are larger illusions. They're illusions that have to do with my adult life. They're connected to nature and the presence or absence of water, the illusion that we can keep sustaining a city even though the water has run out.
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.
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.
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 and the way that the world was changing, but maybe not with such a sort of dirgey approach or funereal approach. Something that actually explored the wonder of the world as it is and as we experience it around our communities in our cities and towns. And I had come across this word synanthrope in the research for my last book, The Invisible Siege, which was about the rise of coronaviruses and the long scientific journey to find cures for COVID-19, and it just kind of stuck with me. There is this connection, of course, between wild animals and viruses and lots of questions about the origin of SARS-2, the virus that spread COVID-19 and caused the pandemic. And while that's touched on in the book a little bit, the vast majority of what I was excited to write about was just what these animals are doing in our cities. How is it that wild animals, raccoons, coyotes, all kinds of birds and animals as fragile as bats… 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.
Why do we write? Today we explore the practice of writing as an awakening and a bridge to memory. We hear from poets and novelists, musicians, dancers, and science writers. Hala Alyan, Andre Dubus III, Jericho Brown, Ada Limón, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Max Stossel, Sy Montgomery, Tiokasin Ghosthorse, Julian Lennon, Julia Christensen, and Erland Cooper discuss how to hold onto hope in a changing world.
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 and the way that the world was changing, but maybe not with such a sort of dirgey approach or funereal approach. Something that actually explored the wonder of the world as it is and as we experience it around our communities in our cities and towns. And I had come across this word synanthrope in the research for my last book, The Invisible Siege, which was about the rise of coronaviruses and the long scientific journey to find cures for COVID-19, and it just kind of stuck with me. There is this connection, of course, between wild animals and viruses and lots of questions about the origin of SARS-2, the virus that spread COVID-19 and caused the pandemic. And while that's touched on in the book a little bit, the vast majority of what I was excited to write about was just what these animals are doing in our cities. How is it that wild animals, raccoons, coyotes, all kinds of birds and animals as fragile as bats… 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.
I want to be wowed by the world. I want to gaze at it in awe and wonder.
Clayton Page Aldern, David George Haskell, Yann Martel, Carl Safina, Martín von Hildebrand, Richard Black, Tom Chi, Paula Pinho, Osprey Orielle Lake, Bill Hare, Fred Pearce reflect on Climate Change & The Rights of Nature
For at least 150 years biological sciences emphasized individuality and aloneness. So individual species, individual genes, individual organisms. And that's a useful view, up to a point. I mean, it is true that I am an individual organism. I've got a skin, and then the air begins and there's a gap between me and the next person over. But that view is also utterly false in many ways, in that the human body is not just comprised of human cells. There are bacteria, fungi, and viruses, all these other creatures that we now know are essential to our health. Our minds are not solitary. They're formed in relation to other beings. Ecosystems work only through relationship. So relationship and interconnection, not separation. And atomism is in fact the fundamental nature of life. Even from the very, very first fossils that we have of living organisms way back more than 3 billion years ago, these little cells are sitting next to one another.
For at least 150 years biological sciences emphasized individuality and aloneness. So individual species, individual genes, individual organisms. And that's a useful view, up to a point. I mean, it is true that I am an individual organism. I've got a skin, and then the air begins and there's a gap between me and the next person over. But that view is also utterly false in many ways, in that the human body is not just comprised of human cells. There are bacteria, fungi, and viruses, all these other creatures that we now know are essential to our health. Our minds are not solitary. They're formed in relation to other beings. Ecosystems work only through relationship. So relationship and interconnection, not separation. And atomism is in fact the fundamental nature of life. Even from the very, very first fossils that we have of living organisms way back more than 3 billion years ago, these little cells are sitting next to one another.
In the book I spend a bunch of time basically teaching skills and 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. 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.
In the book I spend a bunch of time basically teaching skills and 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. 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.
HELEN WHYBROW
Writer · Shepherd · Organic Farmer
There are two ways that I measure diminishment in the natural world, a world we all have the ability to see and sense no matter where we live. The first is ecological: a loss of vitality, complexity and stability. This can be studied and measured, but it can also be perceived by simply listening and noticing. Nature has a voice that sings in different registers and in those registers you can hear health or struggle, presence or absence. The second way I measured diminishment is in the human experience-- loss of beauty, of meaning, of pattern language these also become more available to us as we watch and listen take in what surrounds us.
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.
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.
Author · Activist · Stand-Up Comedian AL KENNEDY · Author of Alive in the Merciful Country
The thing that puzzled him was why people don't agree to be fully expressed while they're alive. Why does it only happen in their last moment? Why wouldn't you live being fully expressed? 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.”
The Creative Process: Podcast 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, Etgar Keret, Douglas Kennedy, Sam Lipsyte, and Yiyun Li, among others. Artist and interviewer: Mia Funk.
