"We're connected to the lives of every creature on the planet" EIREN CAFFALL - Highlights

"We're connected to the lives of every creature on the planet" EIREN CAFFALL - Highlights

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We are in a complex and delicately balanced relationship of connection to everything else on the planet. We begin to recognize, write into, and speak into the complex interdependence and interconnection of every gesture that we make on the planet. Most storytelling that I really respond to, whether it's from my own culture or from previous civilizations, acknowledges that we are in this complex relationship where every gesture we make is connected to the lives of every other creature on the planet. The more narratives we allow to be complex in that way and interconnected, the more we begin to change our brain chemistry around how we protect ourselves and everything that is in relation to us. The more that you have that evolving relationship with it, that's dynamic and alive to the moment you're in, and that's not afraid of the feelings of fear, hopelessness, grief, or pain that attend paying close attention to the world as it is evolving around you, the better we are able to be flexible in the relationship we need to form with fixing what we can and holding onto what we have.

All the Water in the World with Writer & Musician EIREN CAFFALL

All the Water in the World with Writer & Musician EIREN CAFFALL

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A Conversation with Writer & Musician EIREN CAFFALL

We are in a complex and delicately balanced relationship of connection to everything else on the planet. We begin to recognize, write into, and speak into the complex interdependence and interconnection of every gesture that we make on the planet. Most storytelling that I really respond to, whether it's from my own culture or from previous civilizations, acknowledges that we are in this complex relationship where every gesture we make is connected to the lives of every other creature on the planet. The more narratives we allow to be complex in that way and interconnected, the more we begin to change our brain chemistry around how we protect ourselves and everything that is in relation to us. The more that you have that evolving relationship with it, that's dynamic and alive to the moment you're in, and that's not afraid of the feelings of fear, hopelessness, grief, or pain that attend paying close attention to the world as it is evolving around you, the better we are able to be flexible in the relationship we need to form with fixing what we can and holding onto what we have.

What would it be like to live 100 milion years? Life in the Deep Subsurface Biosphere - Highlights

What would it be like to live 100 milion years? Life in the Deep Subsurface Biosphere - Highlights

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with KAREN G. LLOYD · Author of Intraterrestrials · Wrigley Chair in Environmental Studies · Professor of Earth Sciences · University of Southern California

It's really changed my view of what life is. So many of the things that we attribute to the trappings of life look like requirements, like oxygen and sunlight. All the things that humans would absolutely die without — they’re not really necessary for life. Studying these things sort of breaks down what is necessary; what are the things that life has to have?

INTRATERRESTRIALS: Discovering the Strangest Life on Earth with KAREN G. LLOYD

INTRATERRESTRIALS: Discovering the Strangest Life on Earth with KAREN G. LLOYD

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with KAREN G. LLOYD · Author of Intraterrestrials · Wrigley Chair in Environmental Studies · Professor of Earth Sciences · University of Southern California

It's really changed my view of what life is. So many of the things that we attribute to the trappings of life look like requirements, like oxygen and sunlight. All the things that humans would absolutely die without — they’re not really necessary for life. Studying these things sort of breaks down what is necessary; what are the things that life has to have?

Climate Change, Mental Health & Fighting for a Better Future - Highlights - CHARLIE HERTZOG YOUNG

Climate Change, Mental Health & Fighting for a Better Future - Highlights - CHARLIE HERTZOG YOUNG

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Award-winning Climate Activist
Author of Spinning Out: Climate Change, Mental Health and Fighting for a Better Future

There's that old saying, “blessed are the cracked for they shall let in the light.” For a lot of people like myself, I think it's true that losing your mind can be a proportionate response to the climate crisis. Those of us with mental health issues are often branded as being in our own world. But paradoxically, being in our own world can actually be a result of being more connected to the outside world rather than less. And in the context of climate change, it may be fairer to describe people who fail to develop psychological symptoms as being in their own separate anthropocentric world, inattentive to the experiences of the billions of other human and nonhuman beings on the planet, unaffected by looming existential catastrophe. There are layers and layers of insulation made up of civilizational narratives that dislocate many people from climate chaos and those whose psyches buckle upon contact with this reality are the ones deemed mad. But this pathologizing is a defense mechanism employed by the civilized or by the dominant culture, which ends up subjugating those of us whose minds stray from accepted norms. There are lots of studies that show that certain forms of psychosis are actually a form of meaning-making for communities that feel like they have no sense of purpose. We've had generations and generations of trauma visited upon the human species by picking apart communities and our intimate relationships with nature. Especially since the 80s, picking apart our inability to even consider ourselves as part of society in a meaningful sense .That kind of pulling apart means that we're locked in

The Mind, Climate Change & Community Resilience with CHARLIE HERTZOG YOUNG

The Mind, Climate Change & Community Resilience with CHARLIE HERTZOG YOUNG

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Award-winning Climate Activist
Author of Spinning Out: Climate Change, Mental Health and Fighting for a Better Future

There's that old saying, “blessed are the cracked for they shall let in the light.” For a lot of people like myself, I think it's true that losing your mind can be a proportionate response to the climate crisis. Those of us with mental health issues are often branded as being in our own world. But paradoxically, being in our own world can actually be a result of being more connected to the outside world rather than less. And in the context of climate change, it may be fairer to describe people who fail to develop psychological symptoms as being in their own separate anthropocentric world, inattentive to the experiences of the billions of other human and nonhuman beings on the planet, unaffected by looming existential catastrophe. There are layers and layers of insulation made up of civilizational narratives that dislocate many people from climate chaos and those whose psyches buckle upon contact with this reality are the ones deemed mad. But this pathologizing is a defense mechanism employed by the civilized or by the dominant culture, which ends up subjugating those of us whose minds stray from accepted norms. There are lots of studies that show that certain forms of psychosis are actually a form of meaning-making for communities that feel like they have no sense of purpose. We've had generations and generations of trauma visited upon the human species by picking apart communities and our intimate relationships with nature. Especially since the 80s, picking apart our inability to even consider ourselves as part of society in a meaningful sense .That kind of pulling apart means that we're locked in

(Highlights) CRAIG KAUFFMAN

(Highlights) CRAIG KAUFFMAN

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Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Oregon
Member of the United Nations Knowledge Network on Harmony with Nature

The term Rights of Nature tends to be applied to two different things. One is this underlying legal philosophy that is actually broader than just Rights of Nature, that’s probably better understood as ecological jurisprudence that may or may not be expressed in terms of rights, but because Rights of Nature is getting a lot of attention that term tends to be applied to represent this broader underlying philosophy. Of course, the other way it’s used it to refer to the legal provisions that explicitly recognize Rights for ecosystems.

CRAIG KAUFFMAN

CRAIG KAUFFMAN

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Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Oregon
Member of the United Nations Knowledge Network on Harmony with Nature

The term Rights of Nature tends to be applied to two different things. One is this underlying legal philosophy that is actually broader than just Rights of Nature, that’s probably better understood as ecological jurisprudence that may or may not be expressed in terms of rights, but because Rights of Nature is getting a lot of attention that term tends to be applied to represent this broader underlying philosophy. Of course, the other way it’s used it to refer to the legal provisions that explicitly recognize Rights for ecosystems.

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.

(Highlights) DR. EBEN ALEXANDER

(Highlights) 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.

(Highlights) GIULIO BOCCALETTI

(Highlights) GIULIO BOCCALETTI

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Author of Water, A Biography
Natural Resource Security & Environmental Sustainability Expert

The problem doesn’t really reside there. The problem is that people have gotten used to thinking about water as a technical issue that can be solved by somebody sitting in a room somewhere with a white coat. The reality is that the history of water shows that this is probably the most political and salient issue of society–How we share the resources that make it possible for us to live is a fundamentally political problem. And in nations that live together under a social contract is fundamentally a constitutional problem. So my hope is that we elevate water to a much higher level of political discourse.

GIULIO BOCCALETTI

GIULIO BOCCALETTI

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Author of Water, A Biography
Natural Resource Security & Environmental Sustainability Expert

The problem doesn’t really reside there. The problem is that people have gotten used to thinking about water as a technical issue that can be solved by somebody sitting in a room somewhere with a white coat. The reality is that the history of water shows that this is probably the most political and salient issue of society–How we share the resources that make it possible for us to live is a fundamentally political problem. And in nations that live together under a social contract is fundamentally a constitutional problem. So my hope is that we elevate water to a much higher level of political discourse.

(Highlights) JASON W. MOORE

(Highlights) JASON W. MOORE

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Environmental Historian, Historical Geographer & Professor of Sociology · Binghamton University

We’re not waiting for the disasters to happen. They have happened. They are happening, and the disasters aren’t natural. They involve climate, but the disasters are very much made by the conditions of capitalist accumulation. We are not going to be able to grapple with the challenges of planetary crisis with the thinking that created planetary crisis.


JASON W. MOORE

JASON W. MOORE

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Environmental Historian, Historical Geographer & Professor of Sociology · Binghamton University

We’re not waiting for the disasters to happen. They have happened. They are happening, and the disasters aren’t natural. They involve climate, but the disasters are very much made by the conditions of capitalist accumulation. We are not going to be able to grapple with the challenges of planetary crisis with the thinking that created planetary crisis.


(Highlights) AIMEE NEZHUKUMATATHIL

(Highlights) 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.

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.

(Highlights) BEN PRING

(Highlights) BEN PRING

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Director of Cognizant’s Center for the Future of Work
Author of Monster: A Tough Love Letter On Taming the Machines that Rule Our Jobs, Lives

They’re single-purpose engines doing one thing in extraordinary ways, and they’ve been encouraged in that by the ecosystem around them, by the funding that’s being pumped into them by people whose only motivation is simply to make more money–and you can see the results of that in the world as this technology has grown from a little acorn to now being the biggest Sequoia in the forest. And it’s shading every other tree, it’s taking all the light, it’s taking all the energy from the forest, and it’s distorting so much in the world.

BEN PRING

BEN PRING

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Director of Cognizant’s Center for the Future of Work
Author of Monster: A Tough Love Letter On Taming the Machines that Rule Our Jobs, Lives

They’re single-purpose engines doing one thing in extraordinary ways, and they’ve been encouraged that by the ecosystem around them, by the funding that’s being pumped into them by people whose only motivation is simply to make more money–and you can see the results of that in the world as this technology has grown from a little acorn to now being the biggest Sequoia in the forest. And it’s shading every other tree, it’s taking all the light, it’s taking all the energy from the forest, and it’s distorting so much in the world.

(Highlights) TODD MILLER

(Highlights) TODD MILLER

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Journalist & Author
Build Bridges, Not Walls · Storming the Wall: Climate Change, Migration & Homeland Security

In 2003, the Pentagon commissioned a report titled something like An Abrupt Climate Scenario. They asked some independent researchers to look at what would happen in a worse case scenario. They found that the United States and Australia. They said that they would have to put up defensive fortresses ‘to stop unwanted starving immigrants’…

(Highlights) McKENZIE FUNK

(Highlights) McKENZIE FUNK

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Journalist & PEN Literary Award-Winning Author of Windfall

As a parent and especially through all this reporting, what I’ve tried to do is think through these solutions and these fixes we have for everything and make sure that we’re not forgetting…that we’re thinking about other people. Capitalism won’t do it. Self-interest isn’t going to do this for us. As silly as it is to think that empathy will do or caring about your fellow humans will do it, I don’t know what else there is to hope for. I don’t believe that people do stuff purely out of rational self-interest, this libertarian idea that I was quietly pushing against the entire time in Windfall. That we do things just for ourselves or just to make money–that’s not been the reality of my lifetime.