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.
Author SIRI HUSTVEDT Remembers Her Late Husband, PAUL AUSTER
Grief happens because you don't stop loving the person who died. The person doesn't exist in your reality anymore. The everyday is not colored and shaped by this other human being, but you don't stop loving the person. So grief is a particular kind of unrequited love. And probably without that dynamic relationship with this person, I would be someone else. And he would've been someone else. Paul died before me. But we were, I think, hugely important to the drama of becoming in our own lives.
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.
A Conversation with Documentary Filmmaker REBECCA TICKELL
Today, we explore the work of a filmmaker whose lens is consistently turned toward the most critical issues facing our planet. Rebecca Tickell, in collaboration with her husband Josh Tickell, has created a powerful cinematic catalog of films that are not merely observations, but catalysts for change. They've taken on the complexities of our energy systems, the deep-seated problems within our food supply, and now, with her latest work, Bee: Wild, they explore the essential, fragile, and often unseen world of pollinators.
Their film Kiss the Ground sparked a global conversation about regenerative agriculture, leading to tangible shifts in policy and public understanding. Common Ground continued this exploration, unraveling the intricate web of our food systems. Now, with Bee: Wild, narrated by Ellie Goulding and executive produced by Angelina Jolie, Rebecca brings her characteristic blend of journalistic rigor, personal narrative, and solutions-driven storytelling to the urgent plight of bees, asking us to reconsider our relationship with the natural world.
Musician & Activist PLUMES
Mostly I’ll play in a minor key, something sad, which I think can work for an animal because they can sense the sadness, and they try to reassure me and comfort me. I chose love songs because I'm convinced they are very intuitive and they can sense what I am trying to say to them, and profess my love in a way. I think there's always a way to connect, and if you're being cautious and don't threaten the animals, something beautiful can happen.
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?
TOM CHI · Physicist · Designer · Inventor · Google X Co-founder (Glass, Loon, Waymo) · Founding Partner of At One Ventures · Author of Climate Capital
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.
Biologist · Author DAVID GEORGE HASKELL on Deep Time, Plant Intelligence & Listening to the Living World
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.
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
YANN MARTEL · Booker Prize-winning Author of Son of Nobody · Life of Pi
Storytelling, which is a very whole person kind of activity, is one that delivers all kinds of truths. Facts are just the ground upon which we build the edifices that we actually live in. And those are not just made of facts. They're made of other kinds of truths that make the stories of who we are, the cities we live in, the languages we speak—these are made of fact and fiction together, and those are the stories that define our lives.
Actress · Director CHERIEN DABIS discusses All That's Left of You
For me, we Palestinians are so much more than our pain and suffering, and the world often sees only our pain and suffering. I wanted to show other facets of who we are, no matter whether we're on the activist side of the spectrum or audience members who don't know very much about the situation. At the end of the day, we all have to choose humanity. In many ways I was inspired by observing the different generations of my own family and how our identities were shaped by everything happening in Palestine. That became the first idea for this film, to really show how it is a collective trauma for all Palestinians. That trauma is being passed down from generation to generation. Even if you're not a direct descendant of Nakba survivors, you still have that trauma. I wanted to explore that passage of trauma, that inheritance of my own trauma and take a look at how history and political events shape people.
A Conversation with Philosopher C. THI NGUYEN · Author of The Score · Games: Agency as Art
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.
Writers, Artists, Filmmakers & Activists Share Their Stories
Manuela Luca-Dazio, Siri Hustvedt, Hala Alyan, Ana Castillo, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, Sara Ahmed, Marilyn Minter, Ellen Rapoport, Intan Paramaditha, Ada Limón and Ami Vitale discuss art and storytelling as a tool for political solidarity, legal change and exploring freedom.
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.”
DAISY FANCOURT · Author of Art Cure · Director of WHO Collaborating Centre on Arts & Health · Prof. Psychobiology & Epidemiology at UCL
Within society we seem to have separated the arts out, so they’re not so much a part of our daily lives. As I’ve become a mother and I have children now, it’s been really eye-opening to rediscover lots of arts things that I’d stopped doing in my own childhood. But now coming back to them I think probably the most meaningful one for me is one I describe in the book, which is about my younger daughter, Daphne, who was premature and unfortunately got incredibly ill with meningitis and was in intensive care when she was just a few days old.
A Conversation with Author DOUG WOODHAM
Fmr. President of the Americas at Christie’s · Managing Partner, Art Fiduciary Partners
All of the great artists are there for a reason: because they rebelled in some way. They created a visual vocabulary that felt fresh and new, which excited people. So, the great artists are not built on sort of anthills of sand. They're built on things of substance and of meaning. Though this is not a sufficient condition to become an icon, it's a necessary but not sufficient condition. I think you have to have an interesting and vivid personality or personal narrative that makes you interesting for people to talk about and want to learn about. I think you also have to have a support network of galleries, curators, and collectors who are excited about your work and want to push it forward, not wanting it to be forgotten. Basquiat's visual vocabulary is distinctive and stands out relative to what was being done in the 1980s. That's the sort of strong hill on which his reputation is built. Basquiat benefited from being the first black artist of note who got pushed forward. As in many things, the first benefits.
A Conversation with International Gallerist, Curator & Podcast Host
Today, the world is very divided, lots of fractures. It is the time for art and culture to come into play because art is about soft power. If we want to resolve misunderstandings, art is the best, best, best way to communicate. So use this.
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.
