JERICHO BROWN - Pulitzer Prize-Winning Poet, Author of "The Tradition", "The New Testament"

JERICHO BROWN - Pulitzer Prize-Winning Poet, Author of "The Tradition", "The New Testament"

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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.

E.J. KOH - Award-Winning Memoirist & Poet - “The Magical Language of Others”, “A Lesser Love”

E.J. KOH - Award-Winning Memoirist & Poet - “The Magical Language of Others”, “A Lesser Love”

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Award-winning Memoirist & Poet
The Magical Language of Others · A Lesser Love

I had delayed speech, and I had quite a bit of trouble with speaking. I think I must have been five before I was uttering some of my first words and trying to articulate. Simple communication was very difficult for me and my family, especially in a family where we were speaking several languages. They hoped to instill English. It’s the language of survival. There was a lot of frustration and fear in my relationship to language, and the relationship these languages had to each other, that was something I felt very sensitive to since I was young. Since before I could speak.

Highlights - JILL JOHNSON - Dancer - Choreographer & Ballet Stager - Fmr. Dance Director, Harvard

Highlights - JILL JOHNSON - Dancer - Choreographer & Ballet Stager - Fmr. Dance Director, Harvard

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Dancer · Choreographer and Ballet Stager · Fmr. Director Harvard Dance

Keeping people interested in dance is exposing folks, no matter how big or small an audience, to the different ways of seeing. How can you place a value on solace, joy, or tenderness and vulnerability?

JILL JOHNSON - Dancer - Choreographer & Ballet Stager - Fmr. Dance Director, Harvard

JILL JOHNSON - Dancer - Choreographer & Ballet Stager - Fmr. Dance Director, Harvard

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Dancer · Choreographer and Ballet Stager · Fmr. Director Harvard Dance

Keeping people interested in dance is exposing folks, no matter how big or small an audience, to the different ways of seeing. How can you place a value on solace, joy, or tenderness and vulnerability?

(Highlights) Mario Alberto Zambrano · Dancer, Writer, Assoc. Dir. of Dance, The Juilliard School

(Highlights) Mario Alberto Zambrano · Dancer, Writer, Assoc. Dir. of Dance, The Juilliard School

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Dancer, Writer, Choreographer
Associate Director of Dance at The Juilliard School, NYC

In both writing a first draft and in the improvisation of a dancing body, what is so key and relevant and exposed is voice. That internal voice of the artist of what they're writing on the page or what they're writing in space. If you go to fiction workshop, you talk about plot, structure, and you talk about character development, but there are very few classes within a dance curriculum where you break down an improvisation and you talk about voice, point of view, metaphor, or musical composition within a phrase. The lifespan of a phrase. And so this realisation is helping me understand that a one minute post of improvisation or even a ten-minute span of improvisation if it’s recorded is very similar to a first draft of creative writing, where then the artist is in a position to evaluate those 10 minutes and identify what is the setting? What is the voice that has come out of my experience of writing this first draft of an improvisation? And how can I give it structure? How can I give it form?

Mario Alberto Zambrano - Dancer, Writer, Assoc. Director of Dance, The Juilliard School

Mario Alberto Zambrano - Dancer, Writer, Assoc. Director of Dance, The Juilliard School

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Dancer, Writer, Choreographer
Associate Director of Dance at The Juilliard School, NYC

In both writing a first draft and in the improvisation of a dancing body, what is so key and relevant and exposed is voice. That internal voice of the artist of what they're writing on the page or what they're writing in space. If you go to fiction workshop, you talk about plot, structure, and you talk about character development, but there are very few classes within a dance curriculum where you break down an improvisation and you talk about voice, point of view, metaphor, or musical composition within a phrase. The lifespan of a phrase. And so this realisation is helping me understand that a one minute post of improvisation or even a ten-minute span of improvisation if it’s recorded is very similar to a first draft of creative writing, where then the artist is in a position to evaluate those 10 minutes and identify what is the setting? What is the voice that has come out of my experience of writing this first draft of an improvisation? And how can I give it structure? How can I give it form?

(Highlights) Ann Hiatt · Leadership Strategist & Author of “Bet on Yourself”

(Highlights) Ann Hiatt · Leadership Strategist & Author of “Bet on Yourself”

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Leadership Strategist
Author of Bet on Yourself & Host of the Bet on Yourself podcast

I am very concerned that the future seems to be consolidated among the 10 wealthiest, most powerful people in the world who are all white guys. And they're great. I know most of them personally. I have mad respect for them, but it's really concerning when a private individual can buy Twitter. It's very concerning when a billionaire can own one of the most important news organizations in the United States…So my major deliverable and really the motivation behind writing Bet on Yourself was to democratize success. I want more people participating because what concerns me most about globalization is it's being controlled by about 10 people.

Ann Hiatt · Leadership Strategist & Author of “Bet on Yourself”

Ann Hiatt · Leadership Strategist & Author of “Bet on Yourself”

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Leadership Strategist
Author of Bet on Yourself & Host of the Bet on Yourself podcast

I am very concerned that the future seems to be consolidated among the 10 wealthiest, most powerful people in the world who are all white guys. And they're great. I know most of them personally. I have mad respect for them, but it's really concerning when a private individual can buy Twitter. It's very concerning when a billionaire can own one of the most important news organizations in the United States…So my major deliverable and really the motivation behind writing Bet on Yourself was to democratize success. I want more people participating because what concerns me most about globalization is it's being controlled by about 10 people.

Daniel Sherrell · Author of "Warmth: Coming of Age at the End of Our World”

Daniel Sherrell · Author of "Warmth: Coming of Age at the End of Our World”

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Author of Warmth: Coming of Age at the End of Our World
Organizer · Campaign Director Climate Jobs National Resource Center

It felt to me that if I wasn't able to figure out a way to orchestrate a genuine emotional encounter for myself with the enormity of this thing I was meant to be taking action on, then something in me was going to break, and I just wouldn't be able to keep doing the work. So, there was never a point where it's like, I'm going to write a book, but I did turn to the written word, almost little diary entries, to make psychological and spiritual sense of the crisis that I was dealing with in a thin way every day.

JAMES & DEBORAH FALLOWS

JAMES & DEBORAH FALLOWS

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Journalists
Co-authors of Our Towns · Founders of Our Towns Civic Foundation

It was the accumulation of a month or two of travel in South Dakota and then in rural Vermont, and rural Michigan. We thought, we're seeing things that we never read about, that just by following the newspapers, we know all about New York and D.C., but we don't know anything about Sioux Falls.

We don't know anything about Howell, Michigan, and it's so interesting. And I think what I'm building to on the timeliness, it was and is, I think, a moment in American history where people have a sort of caricatured view of the America that's not directly in their experience. They think, okay, where I am is all right, but those people out there are crazy. Those people out there are extreme. Those people out there, we don't understand them.


(Highlights) STEVE BIDDULPH

(Highlights) STEVE BIDDULPH

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Parent Educator & Bestselling Author of The Secret of Happy Children
Raising Boys, The New Manhood, and 10 Things Girls Need Most

We drastically misuse our mind and have neglected a very important part of the way our mind works in the modern world. I think preindustrial people and our ancestors used this very well. And that is that we have a whole right hemisphere of our brain which doesn't think in words, which takes in the holistic picture of everything around us. Anyone who is listening to this podcast will be aware that sometimes you have got feelings about things. They are signals that are sent from the right hemisphere of the brain, picking up things that we can't consciously interpret or read. It goes through our amygdala, which is our alarm system, and straight down the vagus nerve, and we feel it down in the middle of our body. What the books argue, if you want to be able to parent effectively, and live your life effectively, is to stay in touch with that. Include those signals as part of your mental checking out. Expand your awareness because you can read that every few seconds all the time. And your life will be very different. There are feelings below your feelings. They are not always right, but they're always worth listening to.

STEVE BIDDULPH

STEVE BIDDULPH

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Parent Educator & Bestselling Author of The Secret of Happy Children
Raising Boys, The New Manhood, and 10 Things Girls Need Most

We drastically misuse our mind and have neglected a very important part of the way our mind works in the modern world. I think preindustrial people and our ancestors used this very well. And that is that we have a whole right hemisphere of our brain which doesn't think in words, which takes in the holistic picture of everything around us. Anyone who is listening to this podcast will be aware that sometimes you have got feelings about things. They are signals that are sent from the right hemisphere of the brain, picking up things that we can't consciously interpret or read. It goes through our amygdala, which is our alarm system, and straight down the vagus nerve, and we feel it down in the middle of our body. What the books argue, if you want to be able to parent effectively, and live your life effectively, is to stay in touch with that. Include those signals as part of your mental checking out. Expand your awareness because you can read that every few seconds all the time. And your life will be very different. There are feelings below your feelings. They are not always right, but they're always worth listening to.

(Highlights) TREVA B. LINDSEY
TREVA B. LINDSEY
(Highlights) NATALIE HODGES

(Highlights) NATALIE HODGES

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Author of Uncommon Measure A Journey Through Music, Performance, and
the Science of Time · Fmr. Classical Violinist

There's a real decrease in functional connectivity between regions of the brain that modulate the ego and a sense of self for Gabriela Montero when she's improvising. That's not a region of the brain in particular, it’s the connections between a lot of them and that together as well and also our sense of self and also our conscious memory and our ability to anticipate and plan for the future. So our knowledge of ourselves in these different spheres of time, the light of that activity is dimmed during improvisation. There really is a biological reason behind her feeling that she gets out of the way and something else comes to the fore. The study asks why are her improvisations still so coherent, why did they hold together in time. They refer to it as this form of embodied creativity or embodied cognition, where it’s a deeper kind of memory. a more physical memory in her fingers in her body that know how to play and kind of takes over and allows for ego to kind of dissolve in that moment as she performs.

NATALIE HODGES

NATALIE HODGES

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Author of Uncommon Measure A Journey Through Music, Performance, and
the Science of Time · Fmr. Classical Violinist

There's a real decrease in functional connectivity between regions of the brain that modulate the ego and a sense of self for Gabriela Montero when she's improvising. That's not a region of the brain in particular, it’s the connections between a lot of them and that together as well and also our sense of self and also our conscious memory and our ability to anticipate and plan for the future. So our knowledge of ourselves in these different spheres of time, the light of that activity is dimmed during improvisation. There really is a biological reason behind her feeling that she gets out of the way and something else comes to the fore. The study asks why are her improvisations still so coherent, why did they hold together in time. They refer to it as this form of embodied creativity or embodied cognition, where it’s a deeper kind of memory. a more physical memory in her fingers in her body that know how to play and kind of takes over and allows for ego to kind of dissolve in that moment as she performs.

(Highlights) IAIN McGILCHRIST

(Highlights) IAIN McGILCHRIST

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Author of The Matter with Things · The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World Psychiatrist, Neuroscience Researcher, Philosopher & Literary Scholar

The heart also reports to the brain and receives from the brain. So our bodies are in dialogue with the brain. And we don't really know where consciousness is, we sort of imagine it's somewhere in the head. We have no real reason to suppose that it's just we identify it with our sight and we, therefore, think it must be somewhere up there behind the eyes, but it's something that takes in the whole of us and to which the whole of us contributes.

IAIN McGILCHRIST

IAIN McGILCHRIST

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Author of The Matter with Things · The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World Psychiatrist, Neuroscience Researcher, Philosopher & Literary Scholar

The heart also reports to the brain and receives from the brain. So our bodies are in dialogue with the brain. And we don't really know where consciousness is, we sort of imagine it's somewhere in the head. We have no real reason to suppose that it's just we identify it with our sight and we, therefore, think it must be somewhere up there behind the eyes, but it's something that takes in the whole of us and to which the whole of us contributes.

(Highlights) WILLIAM McDONOUGH

(Highlights) WILLIAM McDONOUGH

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Leader in Sustainable Design & Development
Architect, Co-author of Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things

I think believing in something is also part of the responsibility of the believer to sift through these things. So there are a lot of people saying I'm green because they do something less badly. So for me, it’s not green yet, it's just less bad. It's not really good yet. It's not really fabulous, but that just means there's an opportunity to keep going to share information and help each other because in the end, I think what we're dealing with now is the recognition that the world has a very serious issue with climate, that's very clear now. So how can we help each other? The question is no longer what is wrong with the way you're doing it. The real question now is how can I help you?

WILLIAM McDONOUGH

WILLIAM McDONOUGH

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Leader in Sustainable Design & Development
Architect, Co-author of Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things

I think believing in something is also part of the responsibility of the believer to sift through these things. So there are a lot of people saying I'm green because they do something less badly. So for me, it’s not green yet, it's just less bad. It's not really good yet. It's not really fabulous, but that just means there's an opportunity to keep going to share information and help each other because in the end, I think what we're dealing with now is the recognition that the world has a very serious issue with climate, that's very clear now. So how can we help each other? The question is no longer what is wrong with the way you're doing it. The real question now is how can I help you?