Jane Smiley is the author of numerous novels, including A Thousand Acres, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, and most recently, The Last Hundred Years Trilogy: Some Luck, Early Warning, and Golden Age. She is also the author of several works of nonfiction and books for young adults. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she has also received the PEN Center USA Lifetime Achievement Award for Literature. She lives in Northern California.
Photo: © Derek Shapton
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.
AMITAV GHOSH · Author of Ghost-Eye · The Shadow Lines · The Hungry Tide · Sea of Poppies · The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable
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 ba- reality.
I guess that's always been something of great interest to me. How do you square these two realities and make them come together on a page? And really that is what, in some sense, the work of the imagination is. We know that we're in the grip of an intensifying planetary crisis. We can see signs of it everywhere.
How much of our consciousness is actually shaped by our bodies? We explore embodied cognition and the idea that we think with our limbs, breath and physical interactions, with Siri Hustvedt, Guy Leschziner, Daisy Fancourt, Helen Whybrow, Marie Nipper, Arash Abizadeh, David Linden, Bayo Akomolafe, Master Shi Heng Yi, Anil Seth, Robert Waldinger, Noelani Pantastico and Sean Curran
Redesigning Our Relationship with Nature
We explore our changing planet, from melting ice in Greenland to the depleted soils in our farmlands. We’re joined by writers, advocates and visionaries to discuss environmental justice and the circular economy. Abrahm Lustgarten, Jon Gertner, Rebecca Tickell, Bill Hare, Rob Nixon, Euan Nisbet, Roland Geyer, William McDonough, Carlo Ratti, Jason deCaires Taylor, Jane Madgwick, Paul Shrivastava, Liza Featherstone, Osprey Orielle Lake, Ron Gonen, Louis de Jaeger, Kathleen Rogers and Yolanda Kakabadse.
Journalists, Writers, Political Scientists, Economists, Filmmakers on Democracy & The Fight for Truth · We explore the collapse of journalism, the rise of spin dictators and how disinformation is the new censorship. As media consolidates, journalism remains an act of hope. Nicholas Kristof, Abrahm Lustgarten, Lee McIntyre, Richard Black, Richard Wolff, Jeffrey Rosen, Sergei Guriev, James Fishkin, Viet Thanh Nguyen, T.C. Boyle, George Pelecanos, Jacob Ward, Dean Spade, Debora Cahn, Daniel Susskind, Mike Davis, Michael Maren.
DR. KEITH SAWYER · Author of Learning to See: Inside the World's Leading Art and Design Schools · Explaining Creativity · Group Genius
I've discovered in my studies of creativity in general that creativity is not about starting with a brilliant idea and then following a linear path to an execution of your idea. What I see in art and design is a much more iterative, wandering, exploratory process where the ideas emerge from the act of engaging in the work.
Architect · Engineer CARLO RATTI
Director of MIT's Senseable City Lab
Curator of Venice Biennale’s 19th Int’l Architectural Exhibition
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.
QUINN SLOBODIAN & BEN TARNOFF on why understanding Elon Musk’s computational worldview is essential for protecting the public sphere and fighting back against cyborg conservatism
Musk interestingly has this way of excluding the majority of the population from consideration, what he variously calls non-playing characters or NPCs, which is a category from video games, or sometimes bots, vampires. And this is a much more stark version of insider and outsider group creation than even hierarchies of race because it takes this one step further by taking very seriously the idea that other people are not only not human, but they in some way don't even exist, which is the literal reading of Musk's adoption of Nick Bostrom's simulation theory, which is that most people are simply programmable parts of a simulation, and only a small number of people are actual players.
As artificial intelligence reshapes our visual culture and cognitive habits, we investigate the profound costs of offloading our reason to algorithms with Trevor Paglen, Jaron Lanier, Henry Ajder, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Antonella Wilby, C. Thi Nguyen, Carl Safina, Jeffrey Sachs, Etgar Keret, April Gornik and Iain McGilchrist.
Architects SALWA & SELMA MIKOU
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.
Creativity is an infinite conversation. The impulse to speak and be heard is what keeps us tethered to each other and to the world. Max Richter, Andre Dubus III, Iain McGilchrist, Ana Castillo, Albert Serra, Daisy Fancourt, David George Haskell, C. Thi Nguyen, Cherien Dabis, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Ami Vitale, April Gornik, Carter Burwell, Hala Alyan, Jericho Brown and Hans Ulrich Obrist explore creativity as a window into reality and a tool for connection.
We hear from Andre Dubus III, Etgar Keret, Paul Lynch, Megan Abbott, Katie Kitamura, Liz Moore, A.L. Kennedy, Siri Hustvedt, Yann Martel, Intan Paramaditha, T.C. Boyle and Ada Limón on finding beauty in chaos and how writing helps them make sense of the world.
FRED PEARCE · Environmental Journalist · Author of Despite It All
Observing the world and talking to people around the world, I find a huge amount of spirit and optimism and hope among communities around the world. That really helps. And it's fabulous also to see how nature recovers from almost the worst things that we are doing.
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 metabolism. We travel from the High Sierras with Paul Hawken to the glowing forests of Costa Rica with Thomas Crowther. Guided by Paul Hawken, Merlin Sheldrake and David George Haskell, we explore policy and poetry 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?
CARISSA VÉLIZ · Author of Prophecy: Prediction, Power & the Fight for the Future · Privacy is Power: Why & How You Should Take Back Control of Your Data
Algorithms are deciding whether you are eligible for a loan, a job, an apartment or insurance. They determine what you see online, who reads your social media posts and who connects with you on dating apps. They may even decide whether you get arrested or go to jail. Your very life hangs in the balance of prophecies.
If you are unlucky, a prediction will be what kills you. Forecasts can determine your place on a waiting list for an organ transplant or whether you get medical care in an emergency. Policymaking hinges on predictions. War and peace and whether someone lives or dies are decided based on forecasts about the strength of an adversary, the impact of a mission or the identity of a person. And yet no one has asked your permission to make those guesses. No governmental agency is supervising them. No one is informing you of the prophecies that shape your fate. Prophecies are the grounds on which fights over the future take place.
Writers, Philosophers & Thought Leaders Speak Out
How can we be more engaged global citizens? How do we fight for truth and protect democracy in a post-truth world? What influence do billionaires have on politics, journalism, and the technology that shapes our lives? Deborah Cahn, Daniel Susskind, Carlos Moreno, Lee McIntyre, Julian Lennon, Darryl Cunningham, and Arash Abizadeh on the future of democracy.
The Lives of Billionaires Comic Artist & Author DARRYL CUNNINGHAM on Making Complex Subjects Simple
No one should be a billionaire because it's damaging. There's a certain level of wealth that's damaging to a country. Billionaires have so much wealth that they have enormous political power, which is undemocratic. There should be a ceiling on wealth. I have nothing against people becoming millionaires or even multi-millionaires. But multi-billionaires are incredibly bad for all of us. If you have so much money that you can buy an entire political party, that's a thing that shouldn't exist.
Filmmakers, Musicians & Artists discuss their Creative Process
Where does our intuition come from? How are lifelong creative partnerships formed and what role do friendship and personal connection play? How do our personal lives influence the art we make?
Scientists, Activists, Farmers & Filmmakers Speak Out
PETA Founder Ingrid Newkirk, Cave Diver Jill Heinerth, IPCC Lead Author Joëlle Gergis, Director of the European Commission’s DG for Energy Paula Pinho, Co-Founder of The Best Bees Company Noah Wilson-Rich, Ecologist Carl Safina, Founder of The Ocean Agency Richard Vevers, Founding Father of the Circular Economy Walter Stahel, Founder of Advocacy Group F Minus, CEO of Legacy Agripartners Colin Steen, President of Source Global Neil Grimmer
Neuroscientist · Fmr. Dancer
Author of The Pathway to Flow: The New Science of Harnessing Creativity to Heal and Unwind the Body & Mind
The state of being in flow and seeking out that state, sort of disappearing from the here and now... it must have been something that has been part of human cultures for many millennia. We know that, for example, dancing can bring you into these states. And we know from many anthropological works that people dance themselves into trance, a type of flow. So, there is that flow in this scientific sense of a state of well-being. And we will speak about what that does to our brain and our broader wellbeing, but also the flow in what cues enter into our senses. So that would be a scientific field that looks at brain synchrony, physiology synchrony, these waves that we see that sort of connect with us.
Filmmakers, Writers & Artists on Connecting through Creativity
How does art change the way we see and experience the world? Art has the power to offer transformative experiences, but what about the lives of artists who give so much of themselves? How can we balance creativity and personal well-being while still making work that is true and meaningful?
This episode explores the enduring power of storytelling to shape our world and illuminate the human experience. Writers Neil Gaiman, Ada Limón, Jericho Brown, E.J. Koh, Marge Piercy, and Max Stossel discuss creativity, resilience, and the power of words to heal and bring people together.
How and when will we transition to a clean energy future? How have wetlands become both crucial carbon sinks and colossal methane emitters in a warming world? What lessons can we learn from non-human animals about living in greater harmony with nature?
Artists, Philosophers, Economists & Scientists discuss the Future
How can we shape technology’s impact on society? How do social media algorithms influence our democratic processes and personal well-being? Can AI truly emulate human creativity? And how will its pursuit of perfection change the art we create?
Artists, Writers, Visionaries & Educators Share their Stories
How can the arts help us learn to speak the language of the Earth and cultivate our intuitive intelligence? What is the power of mentorship for forging character and creative vision? How can we hold onto our cultural heritage and traditions, while preparing students for the needs of the 21st century?
Have we entered what Earth scientists call a “termination event,” and what can we do to avoid the worst outcomes? How can we look beyond GDP and develop new metrics that balance growth with human flourishing and environmental well-being? How can the 15-minute city model revolutionize urban living, enhance health, and reduce our carbon footprint?
Professor of Political Science · McGill University
Author of Hobbes and the Two Faces of Ethics · Assoc. Editor · Free & Equal
There is a tremendous tension between healthy democracy and deep economic inequalities. I don't think that, in the long run, democracies can survive in a healthy way unless we address the problem of economic inequalities. If we have individuals who are living day to day, on the one hand, and we have other individuals who are billionaires in our societies, on the other hand, it will be very difficult for us to have a genuine democracy.
Economist · Oxford & King’s College London
Author of Growth: A Reckoning · A World Without Work
We have a choice to change the nature of growth. How we can have growth that is more respectful of place, doesn’t cause as much damage to the environment, doesn't lead to as large inequalities in society, doesn’t disrupt politics, doesn't undermine the availability of good work? We ought to pursue this morally enriched GDP measure which better reflects what we really value and care about as a society.
Academy Award · Tony · Pulitzer Prize-winning Writer/Director
Doubt starring Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams
Moonstruck · Wild Mountain Thyme · Danny and the Deep Blue Sea · Joe Versus the Volcano
I knew Philip Seymour Hoffman for several years. We went on vacation together. He produced a play of mine. Before we did Doubt, we worked in the same theater company together, and he was, you know, very committed to excellence. And so he could become impatient with anybody who was not committed to excellence, and that could make him a volatile person to deal with. Phil cared. He cared a great deal. And he worked really hard. They're very committed. Like with Viola Davis. Viola had done a decent amount of big work before Doubt, but she was not recognized yet. And she was careful. You know, she certainly wasn't throwing weight around. She was, I'm the new kid on the block, and I'm just here to work and be serious and do my job, keep my head down, and get out. And pretty much that's what I was doing too, you know, because I've got Meryl Streep, I've got Philip Hoffman, who I was friends with, but Phil's not an easy guy to be friends with or was not easy to be friends with. He's a very prickly person prone to getting pissed off about things that you might not expect. And then Amy Adams was somebody who, you know, tried to get along with everybody and Phil would say like, 'You just want everybody to like you.' So, you know, you're in the middle of that group, and you just, you don't want to put yourself in a position where you're trying to prove something. You have to let them...they're very, very smart people, and they're going to figure out whatever it is that you're doing. They're going to figure out whether you are in any way trying to handle that. And that's not going to go well. And so I didn't do that.
President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences 2019-2022
Casting Director & Producer
What an academy was meant to be, going back to their founding, really is a group of people with a certain degree of passion and expertise and knowledge that want to get together and share. That's what I think academies are all about. So the fact that I've been helpful in spurring the Academy onto becoming a more international and global enterprise is a source of great satisfaction to me
Famous Rock & Urban Climber
"The French Spider-Man”
Known for Free Solo Climbing 200+ of the World’s Tallest Skyscrapers using no Climbing Equipment
First of all, yes, I need to know what I will be climbing, whether it's on rocks or whether it's on buildings. And then there is physical preparation. And regarding the mindset, it's more something that became a bit automatic over the years because I have been free soloing for almost 50 years. So it is pretty much my whole life. So that means that for me, being mentally ready, it's kind of simple. It's almost always the same mental process, meaning, I can be afraid before an ascent, but I know myself actually very well. And I know that once I am starting to climb, I feel fine. I put my fear aside, and I'm just climbing.
Functional Neurosurgeon · Professor · University of Utah
When you think about the evolution of the human brain–just like other animals that have specialized in speed or keeping warm or gathering food–I feel our brain sort of specialized being creative and flexible and being able to generate different solutions to a given problem. To me, this is probably the most fascinating thought process that happens in the human brain. And what I do in neurosurgery–and my subspecialty is called functional neurosurgery–we don't deal with disorders in which there's an anatomical abnormality inside the brain. We deal with disorders in which there is an abnormal connection or abnormal circuitry inside the brain when there's an issue with the way the brain functions. There's no tumor. There are no abnormal blood vessels or anything like that. And that gives us an amazing opportunity to really investigate how different circuits and different areas inside the brain work.
Creative & Academic Director · Stanford d.school
Co-authors of Assembling Tomorrow: A Guide to Designing a Thriving Future
Today, someone is putting the finishing touches on a machine- learning algorithm that will change the way you relate to your family. Someone is trying to design a way to communicate with animals in their own language. Someone is cleaning up the mess someone else left behind seventy years ago yesterday. Today, someone just had an idea that will end up saving one thing while it harms another.
To be a maker in this moment— to be a human today— is to collaborate with the world. It is to create and be created, to work and be worked on, to make and be made. To be human is to tinker, create, fix, care, and bring new things into the world. It is to design. You— yes, you!— might design products or policy, services or sermons, production lines or preschool programs. You might run a business, make art, or participate in passing out meals to the poor. You may write code or pour concrete, lobby for endangered species legislation or craft cocktails. Wherever you fit in, you are part of shaping the world. This is design work.
– Assembling Tomorrow: A Guide to Designing a Thriving Future
Founding Director · Remuseum
Fmr. Director · Speed Museum · Attorney · Co-Founder & CEO · IMC Licensing
The opportunity is that we have never had a public that is more passionate and obsessed with visual imagery. If the owners of the best original imagery in the world can't figure out how to take advantage of the fact that the world has now become obsessed with these treasures that we have to offer as museums, then shame on us. This is the opportunity to say, if you're spending all day scrolling on Instagram looking for amazing imagery, come and see the original source. Come and see the real work. Let us figure out how to make that connection.
A Conversation with Lecturers & Students
Recently, twenty-three lecturers in the highly successful Creative Writing program at Stanford were summoned to a Zoom meeting where they were first praised, and then summarily fired. One of the most surprising aspects of this purge is the fact that it was carried out not by top-tier university administrators, but by tenure-track faculty in the program. It was they who decided to brutally terminate their colleagues. On this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast Professor David Palumbo-Liu speaks with two of the lecturers who have been told they will leave Stanford in nine months, and one of their students, a published novelist. They explain the devastating nature of this act and share statistics and histories that show this was not at all necessary. Expediency for senior faculty trumped the survival of a carefully developed and nurtured community of creative writers.
Professor of Neuroscience & Principal Investigator at Columbia University’s Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute
I came to neuroscience from a humanistic perspective. I was very interested to find out who we are. What do we know? What do we think we know? Why do we think we know certain things? How do we see things? How do we perceive them? Ultimately, the question behind curiosity is what things we find interesting in our environment. The way I think about eye movements is that they really are trained in some largely subconscious process.
Screenwriter · Exec. Producer · Showrunner
Creator of Hulu's Tell Me Lies · Queen America
Often when people write or make movies about romances with young adults, I think they are very flippant about it and don't take it seriously. But I think that those friendships and romantic relationships are some of the most important ones because they really set the stage for the rest of our lives. If your first relationship is incredibly toxic and damaging, it can take you years to figure out that that's not normal, and that that's not actually how relationships are meant to be.
Earth Systems Scientist · Royal Holloway University of London
I am a Christian and I have strong Muslim and Jewish friends as well as great respect for Hindu beliefs. I grew up in Southern Africa and I am well aware of the depth of some Indigenous beliefs. I think that having belief systems does give you a very different perspective sometimes. Now, in Christianity, the concept of the shepherd, human beings are here and this is our garden, our garden of Eden, but we have a responsibility. And if we choose to kick ourselves out of the garden, there are consequences. And that's precisely what we are doing. The garden is there, it's lovely, and we can manage it, and it's our job to manage it. We can manage it properly. We can respect it. It's for all creation, and it's very explicit that it involves all Creation. And that's a very fundamental biblical law that you have to respect all Creation. And if you don't do that, then the consequences—you’re basically throwing yourself out of the garden of Eden.
Literary Critic · Historian of Science · Educator
Author of Natural Magic: Emily Dickinson, Charles Darwin, and the Dawn of Modern Science
There is a stronger connection between Dickinson and Darwin than the proximity of history. Or the universality of literature. They both understood natural science and the natural world in ways that seem strange and somewhat surprising in the 21st century. Their 19th century attitudes to nature and the study of it are so different from ours that when we trace their stories, a vanished world begins to emerge. The more I consider these figures together, the more I feel their world and my world. come alive. Darwin and Dickinson illuminate each other. By reading them together, we can start to understand the interconnected relationships that animated 19th century poetry and science.
Professor of History at Birkbeck, University of London · Author of Out of the Darkness: The Germans 1942 to 2022
The environmental crisis, Gaza, the war in Ukraine—all of those don't make sense if you don't have a sense of history. History and the humanities have come under huge pressure. We've seen falling student numbers, and that's a real shame because history continues to be a source of intellectual inspiration and curiosity that not only makes us wiser and more reflective but also creates the dynamism and creativity we need to confront our present and future challenges. I hope that among the young generations, there will be people inspired by history, people that have the ambition to research and write about the past.
Actress · Artist · Director · Producer · Writer
House M.D. · Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce · Little Bird · The West Wing · The Kominsky Method
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.
Artist · Environmentalist
Co-founder of The Church · Arts & Creativity Center
Co-director of Sag Harbor Cinema Board
I've chosen my work because I've loved the outside world. I love the things outside of myself. I love what isn't immediate to me. And I love projecting onto that as a way of kind of trying to reach the distance between my inner self and the vastness. To try to do that in a way that makes other people feel inspired by it, not be chided for not taking care of it. It's not something that I intend to be a message per se. I'd rather people look at the natural world and see the heartbreaking beauty of it and sense its fragility and its impermanence and their own impermanence and fragility and then have a response to that rather than say, you know, you have to act, you have to do something. I would hope that would inspire action rather than to cudgel them with a directive.
Singer-songwriter · Photographer · Documentary Filmmaker
Founder of The White Feather Foundation
Executive Producer of Common Ground
I thought, wow, how are they going to bring this across in a way that isn't shoving things down people's throats? It's presenting information in a way that is creative, but also in a way that drives your curiosity into understanding, number one, why are we in the position that we're in? And number two, how can we fix this? What can we do to change all of this? And so, I initially got involved as an executive producer on Kiss the Ground, and I was blown away by how that film came out at the end. How well rounded it was, the flow of the film, the storytelling, and really feeding me information that I didn't even know previously. And so also watching that become a platform around the world was jaw-dropping. I mean, the fact that the belief and the understanding and the wisdom that came out of that project has touched so many hearts, minds, and souls around the world, that people are really single-handedly almost making change for the better around the world. Now, when Common Ground was presented, I did love that concept because Kiss the Ground had been very much a broad approach and about America, for the majority, really, and Common Ground was a much more...I mean, we're still dealing with the same subject matter obviously, but I think it felt great to come from a more personal aspect."
Jake Ferguson · Anthony Joseph · Jermain Jackman
I think as humans, we forget. We are often limited by our own stereotypes, and we don't see that in everyone there's the potential for beauty and love and all these things. And I think The Architecture of Oppression, both parts one and two, are really a reflection of all the community and civil rights work that I've been doing for the same amount of time, really - 25 years. And I wanted to try and mix my day job and my music side, so bringing those two sides of my life together. I wanted to create a platform for black artists, black singers, and poets who I really admire. And it was a no-brainer to give Anthony a call for this second album because I know of his pedigree, and he's much more able to put ideas and thoughts on paper than I would be able to.
on the Recent Elections in Britain and France
I would say what we can celebrate is the incredible mobilization of the young people. They went everywhere, they knocked on the door, they mobilized. This was an incredible, incredible mobilization. So that was extraordinary because it showed real mobilization and an understanding that the National Rally was a real threat. We knew that if they came to power, the first people who would be targeted would be people of color, and that was absolutely clear.
Author · Historian · Curator
Utopia in the Age of Survival: Between Myth and Politics · The Eyelid · Marvellous Utopia
I like to think of utopianism as “effective social daydreaming” because utopia is associated with consciously imagining societies. Our imagination is always involved in creating reality. The opposition between the two, reality and the imaginary, is not a stark one; they're porous.
Author of The Future of Energy · Fmr. BBC Environment Correspondent · Director of Policy & Strategy · Global Clean Energy Thinktank · Ember
The fact is you've got a lot of industrial and political muscle now coming behind clean energy, especially from China, which is the leading country deploying wind energy, solar, and the leading manufacturer and user of electric vehicles. "We have petrostates in the world. China is the first electrostate." And China is on its way to becoming the world's most powerful country. So, where China leads, the rest of the world is almost certain to follow. Yes, there are massive air pollution problems in China, of course, but I think it's more than that. It's also about seeing that this is the future that the world is going to have. And if these goods are going to be made anywhere, well, the Chinese government clearly would like them to be made in China. And they've set out, you know, industrial policies and all kinds of other policies for, well, at least a decade now, in pursuit of that aim. It's interesting now to see other countries, India, for example, and the United States now sort of deploying muscle to try and carve out a slice of the pie themselves as well.
Writer · Organizer · Activist
When Shells Crumble · Shaping San Francisco · Critical Mass
The novel When Shells Crumble begins in December 2024, when the US Supreme Court nullifies the popular vote in the Presidential election and awards the presidency to an authoritarian Republican, who proceeds to demolish democracy and install a fascistic state that hastens ecological havoc. The novel is much more than your usual dystopian tale—it focuses on how to resist political cynicism and defeatism, and rebuild on planetary wreckage. It is a world-building project filled with wisdom, sadness, and joy. We specifically put this fictional text in conservation with his brilliant non-fiction work, Nowtopia, which offers a radical redefinition of “work” that restores dignity and value to their proper places.
with Dr. Osman Hamdan & Umniya Najaer
The ongoing conflict in Sudan has pushed millions to the brink of famine, threatening to devastate an entire generation. Despite the severe humanitarian crisis, global awareness remains limited. Today learn about the long history behind these events, the people and groups involved, and the roles that foreign governments and international organizations like the IMF have played. Importantly, we learn how civil society groups are bringing a form of mutual aid and support to the people of Sudan where the national government, warring factions, and international humanitarian organizations have utterly failed.
AI/Deepfakes/Synthetic Media Advisor · BBC Presenter
Adobe · Meta · European Commission · Partnership on AI · House of Lords
I would like to preserve a real sense of empathy and humility, which comes with understanding that the world is messy, that people are messy, that defects and imperfections exist, that things don't always necessarily kind of go the way you want, even as much as you wish they could. Imperfection is part of life and I guess my concern is that AI-generated content, which smooths and perfects a version of reality to precisely what you want and forces you or makes you feel pressured to represent yourself in this absolutely perfect way, fundamentally gives you no room for error and kind of detaches you from the reality of growth and life and and how people work. Empathize with other people. Everyone has their challenges. Things don't always have to be exactly perfect to how you want them to be or how other people want them to be. And that involves having some humility about yourself as a messy creature, as we all are. I hope that's retained, but I do see this kind of move towards this sort of smoothed and shaped reality that AI is enabling, potentially creating more of a disconnect between that imperfect, messy, but also quite beautiful world. This sort of polished but ultimately plastic version of reality increasingly is becoming the default for some people over the kind of fleshy, messy human side of things.
Writer · Filmmaker 1947-2024
What happens is a space is created. And maybe it’s the only space of its kind in the world in which two absolute strangers can meet each other on terms of absolute intimacy. I think this is what is at the heart of the experience and why once you become a reader that you want to repeat that experience, that very deep total communication with that invisible stranger who has written the book that you’re holding in your hands. And that’s why I think, in spite of everything, novels are not going to stop being written, no matter what the circumstances. We need stories. We’re all human beings, and it’s stories from the moment we’re able to talk.
Co-founder of the Largest Bike Share System in North America · NYC’s CitiBike
Co-founder of re:Charge-e: Wireless Bike & Scooter Docking Stations
Author of The 3rd Mode: Towards a Green Society
The key number for people to remember is one to 150 for the cost and energy that it takes to charge a single electric car, our system could charge 150 bikes or scooters in public space that then people have access to. So the question from an equity standpoint, from really achieving our climate goals standpoint is, do you invest in getting one person mobile and maintaining maybe the current lifestyle that goes along with those cars? Or do we make some changes and invest in 150 to 200 people being mobile with the same energy? Clearly, we think the answer is more people moving more often, more sustainably. And we have to make that shift or we're never going to hit the 2030 goals. They are probably not even in reach, you heard the Secretary-General say just last week. And even 2050 seems a long way to go if we're still investing in technologies that only essentially help the 1 percent that already have the resources. It's the larger population that we really need to reach.
Philosopher · Author of On Disinformation: How To Fight For Truth and Protect Democracy · How to Talk to a Science Denier
One thing people don't realize is that the goal of disinformation is not simply to get you to believe a falsehood. It's to demoralize you into giving up on the idea of truth, to polarize us around factual issues, to get us to distrust people who don't believe the same lie. And even if somebody doesn't believe the lie, it can still make them cynical. I mean, we've all had friends who don't even watch the news anymore. There's a chilling quotation from Holocaust historian Hannah Arendt about how when you always lie to someone, the consequence is not necessarily that they believe the lie, but that they begin to lose their critical faculties, that they begin to give up on the idea of truth, and so they can't judge for themselves what's true and what's false anymore. That's the scary part, the nexus between post-truth and autocracy. That's what the authoritarian wants. Not necessarily to get you to believe the lie. But to give up on truth, because when you give up on truth, then there's no blame, no accountability, and they can just assert their power. There's a connection between disinformation and denial.
Computer Scientist · Mathematician · Theoretical Physicist
Founder/CEO of Wolfram Research · Creator of Mathematica · Wolfram|Alpha
I think as there is more automation, there is more kind of emphasis on this question of our choice. The story of the development of things tends to be what do humans decide that they care about? In what direction do they want to go? What kind of art do they want to make? What kinds of things do they want to think about? There is in the computational universe of all possibilities, there is sort of infinite creativity.
Editor of Illusionism as a Theory of Consciousness · Cambridge University Press’ Elements in Philosophy of Mind
Author of Mind and Supermind · Consciousness
What I like about the sort of view I have is that it represents us as fully part of the world, fully part of the same world. We're not sealed off into little private mental bubbles, Cartesian theaters, where all the real action is happening in here, not out there. No, I think we're much more engaged with the world. It's not all happening in some private mental world. It's happening in our engagement with the shared world, and that seems to me a vision that I find much more uplifting, comforting, and rewarding.
Founder of Project Regeneration & Project Drawdown
Author of Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation
We and all living beings thrive by being actors in the planet’s regeneration, a civilizational goal that should commence and never cease. We practiced degeneration as a species and it brought us to the threshold of an unimaginable crisis. To reverse global warming, we need to reverse global degeneration.
Retired US Army Officer with a Career in Current and Crisis Intelligence and Strategic Plans and Policy at the Pentagon
We need to work together to handle the migrations that will inevitably come because of climate change and loss of human habitat and loss of agricultural lands. The wisest nation going forward will be the one that can maintain its population through allowing immigration and thinking about where you can draw folks that are coming from stressed environments and they need a place to land and you're losing population. Why should you not accept those people and encourage them to fill the roles that you need them to fill and settle in the areas where you are being depopulated because of falling fertility by choice?
Senior Reporter at ProPublica · Filmmaker · Author
On The Move: The Overheating Earth and the Uprooting of America
Living in California, I've just come to accept the unsettledness of this era we're moving into. And I think that's really how I see the future. You know, we're living in an era of disruption, and there are others I talk to and write about in the book who also muse about the possibility of a more nomadic future. That maybe home isn't a permanent place with deep roots but is a transient place with shallow roots or two places that you alternate between. In addition to a lot of other dramatic changes that the book is about, a change in our sense of home and our sense of place is a part of this story.
Interdisciplinary Composer · AuDHD Coach
Host of the AuDHD Flourishing Podcast
So for me, just removing a lot of the shame and then a lot of the energy that I was wasting trying to fit myself into a neurotypical process or framework or way of thinking or being. So, you know, some people call that unmasking, just kind of removing. I was wasting a lot of energy, basically trying to be someone else and function in a different way. And then just beating myself up internally for not being able to do that. And throughout my healing journey, as I really realized, Oh, that's actually what's happening. Like there's not actually anything wrong with me being able to...That's why it's called Love Your Brain. It's not just, you know, tolerate your brain. Or, fine, you can work with this brain that you have. It's like, no, I genuinely love the weird experiences that my brain can give me and the incredibly rich, deep experience I have of the world. Like I experience nature so deeply and so intensely. I have really strong connections with animals. I have really great intuition, which I think is just from picking up all this sensory data and putting it together. All these experiences that I get to have, but I don't get to have those experiences if I'm just trying to make myself be something else, which I think is most people who are late diagnosed, I feel like that's their experience. It's just like I've been trying to be someone else for so long. It's exhausting. And then you don't have the energy then to be creative, the carving out the time, making the time to actually create.
Director · Center for Environment, Community, & Equity
Author of Saving Ourselves: From Climate Shocks to Climate Action
I call myself an apocalyptic optimist. In other words, I do believe there is hope to save ourselves from the climate crisis that we have caused. However, I also believe that saving ourselves will only be possible with a mass mobilization that is driven by the pain and suffering of climate shocks around the world. A generalized sense of extreme risk can lead to peaceful and less-peaceful mass mobilizations at the levels needed to stimulate an AnthroShift. Only a global risk event (or numerous smaller events that are seen as threatening social and economic centers of power) will motivate the kind of massive social change that is needed. In other words, without a risk pivot—be it driven by social or environmental change—an AnthroShift that is large enough to respond adequately to the climate crisis and open a large enough window of opportunity postshock is improbable.
Author of Working to Restore: Harnessing the Power of Business to Heal the Earth
The term regenerative business started coming into the lexicon in 2017, 2018. And regenerative means to regenerate, means to bring life into something. To sustain means to keep the status quo. And regenerative looks at things from a very holistic lens. You know, it's like if you're going to run a regenerative farm, it's all the different components of the farm and the ecosystem ideally come within the ecosystem.
Asst. Professor in Philosophy of AI · Macquarie University
I'd like to focus more on the immediate harms that the kinds of AI technologies we have today might pose. With language models, the kind of technology that powers ChatGPT and other chatbots, there are harms that might result from regular use of these systems, and then there are harms that might result from malicious use. Regular use would be how you and I might use ChatGPT and other chatbots to do ordinary things. There is a concern that these systems might reproduce and amplify, for example, racist or sexist biases, or spread misinformation. These systems are known to, as researchers put it, “hallucinate” in some cases, making up facts or false citations. And then there are the harms from malicious use, which might result from some bad actors using the systems for nefarious purposes. That would include disinformation on a mass scale. You could imagine a bad actor using language models to automate the creation of fake news and propaganda to try to manipulate voters, for example. And this takes us into the medium term future, because we're not quite there, but another concern would be language models providing dangerous, potentially illegal information that is not readily available on the internet for anyone to access. As they get better over time, there is a concern that in the wrong hands, these systems might become quite powerful weapons, at least indirectly, and so people have been trying to mitigate these potential harm
Bookseller · Poet · Author of How to Protect Bookstores and Why · How to Resist Amazon and Why · Picture Window
The thing that unites my poetry and the nonfiction writing is my main obsession as a writer. It's the question of, how do you live meaningfully in late capitalism? As corporations and global capitalist forces take over the world, what does it mean to try to have a meaningful human life? Bookselling captured my imagination and my heart as soon as I started working at the bookstore because I could see the potential for this great, amazing community-oriented work.
Professor of Physics · GWU · Head of the Dynamic Online Networks Lab
It gets back to this core question: Why AI comes out with what it does. That's the burning question. It's like it's bigger than the origin of the universe to me as a scientist, and here's the reason why. The origin of the universe, it happened. That's why we're here. It's almost like a historical question asking why it happened. The AI future is not a historical question. It's a now and future question.
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.
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.
Psychiatrist, Explorer, Aviator of First Round-the-World Solar-powered Flight
Founder & Chairman · Solar Impulse Foundation: 1000+ Profitable Climate Solutions
UN Goodwill Ambassador for the Environment
So this is why I prefer to speak with a really down to earth language. So maybe the people who love nature are going to say, “Oh, Bertrand Piccard, now he is too down to earth. He's speaking about profitable solutions. He's speaking to the industries that are polluting,” but we have to speak to the industries that are polluting and bring them profitable solutions, otherwise the world will never change, or humankind will never change. And don't forget one thing, what we are damaging is not the beauty of nature. What is being damaged is the quality of life of human beings on Earth because we can still have beautiful things to see, but if we have climate change, if we have tropical disease in Europe, if we have heat waves, floods, droughts, millions of climate refugees, life will be miserable, even if nature is still beautiful.
Adjunct Lecturer in International Law, Johns Hopkins SAIS
Director of Strategy International, Corporate Sustainability Advisory Firm
My father made me think very much in terms of what kind of planet we are leaving to our children? And what should we be doing in terms of being custodians of this planet? And that we should not be using up all the resources, but actually trying to conserve them and make the world a better for the next generation.
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.
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.
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.
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.
On Imagining a New Left Internationalism Outside the Legacies of the Settler State
In this episode on Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu and Azeezah Kanji have a conversation with critical political theorists Adom Getachew and Ayça Çubukçu on the colonial construction of the international system and its organization around the institution of the nation state. The conversation covers and uncovers so many aspects of the hidden colonial history behind the constitution of this system, but also the resistance and creative appropriations by Black, Indigenous, and colonized peoples, allowing us to imagine possible liberatory futures beyond the forms and strictures of the colonial present.
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