In this time of rapid technological change, how do we hold onto our humanity? How do stories, traditions, and community help us find meaning in loss and face an uncertain future? How can science, art, and spirituality open new pathways to understanding ourselves and the human experience?
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.
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.
A Conversation with MARK CAMPANALE · Founder of Carbon Tracker
Carbon Tracker is a non-profit financial think tank focused on change and the energy transition. I set it up because I spent 20 years working in the financial world, and I noticed that a lot of coal, oil, and gas projects, even with all the evidence we know about climate change, were getting financed through banks and the stock market. It was almost as if investors were completely disregarding what climate change was going to do within our lifetime. What I wanted to do was challenge that, challenge the way people think, and challenge the financial operators, the bankers, stock exchange regulators, and investors to think about what climate change was going to do and what we could do about it. We're saying to the owners of these companies, the shareholders, "Why don't you think about what the world will look like in 50 years, and why are you putting these young people's pensions into coal, which we know is going to destroy the planet?"
A Conversation with MARK CAMPANALE · Founder of Carbon Tracker
Carbon Tracker is a non-profit financial think tank focused on change and the energy transition. I set it up because I spent 20 years working in the financial world, and I noticed that a lot of coal, oil, and gas projects, even with all the evidence we know about climate change, were getting financed through banks and the stock market. It was almost as if investors were completely disregarding what climate change was going to do within our lifetime. What I wanted to do was challenge that, challenge the way people think, and challenge the financial operators, the bankers, stock exchange regulators, and investors to think about what climate change was going to do and what we could do about it. We're saying to the owners of these companies, the shareholders, "Why don't you think about what the world will look like in 50 years, and why are you putting these young people's pensions into coal, which we know is going to destroy the planet?"
The Earth started as one big rock, and soil did not exist. Without soil, you can't really grow trees or any crops whatsoever. We are depleting soils super fast, and it is predicted that in less than 25 years, 90% of our soils will be degraded. We as humans can destroy things in a couple of years that have taken thousands or even millions of years to form. On the other hand, nature regenerates pretty fast. It heals itself. If humans help this healing process, it can go even faster.
& The Future of Museums
A Conversation with NICOLA LEES · Director of the Aspen Art Museum
It's a complicated time to think about how we can slow down, be still, and bring a brilliant group of people together to do something that feels purposeful and can be productive. It's a moment where things are moving so fast. When I brought up the idea of a hinge generation, I think it's impossible to know how we will look back and reflect on this time and these moments. This year, there is a real emphasis on the relationship between the question we have posed for the retreat, which is fundamentally about our relationship with technology and identifying our relationship with the world and how we want to be present in the moment.
MONICA FERIA-TINTA on Ten Cases of Hope for Our Future
I like young people to know that they're extremely powerful. I guess the book was about giving hope because I realized how much we could do together. If a person can manage to argue and make a major impact in the way we are understanding treaties in human rights or other things, imagine what could be if every single person is in their own place in some field, with that alertness and synced in the same way. I believe that ordinary people are the ones bringing changes here. I believe that the communities gathering together – for example, I am seeing that in this country around the protection of rivers – are the ones that will mark the change. It's not going to come from above; it's going to come from below, up. We all have a role. Working for the protection of what we love the most will make you happy. So get into a positive mindset. Learn all you can. Be part of things that make you feel positive. You will see how you will find your way, and there is no place for feeling disempowered. This is the moment where you should feel very powerful because it is us who are going to make the future of this Earth.
World-Making, Life-Giving & Indigenous Internationalism with LEANNE BETASAMOSAKE SIMPSON
So I think that part of colonialism for Indigenous peoples has been this idea that Indigenous peoples aren't thinking peoples and that we don't have thought on a kind of systemic level. One of the things that I was interested in doing is intervening in that because I think Indigenous people have a lot of beautiful, very intellectual, theoretical contributions to make to the world. A lot of our theory is encoded in story, but a lot of our theory is also encoded in land-based practice. You can't learn about it from reading books or from going to lectures. You have to really be out on the land with elders for long periods of time.
A Conversation with M. E. O’BRIEN & EMAN ABDELHADI
The book is a speculative fiction novel that imagines a transition out of capitalism in the nation-state in the next few decades, but it is composed of a series of fictional oral history interviews. We imagine ourselves in the future, and we are writing a book to celebrate the 20th anniversary of a food riot that launches the New York version of this kind of revolutionary transition. We are conducting various oral histories with different actors, some who participated in the revolution and some who grew up in the new social form, which is the commune. The book consists of a series of 12 interviews that we trade off as interviewers. It was actually Michelle’s idea to write the book. She had written a fictional oral history interview for an online magazine and invited me to create a whole novel of these interviews. We both have a relationship with oral history as a form of research and engagement with the world. I conduct life history interviews for my sociological research, and Michelle ran a New York Trans Oral History project, which is a great archive that people should check out. It has 200 interviews, so we both have experience in this field. We are both science fiction fans, friends, and comrades. I have spent many years discussing politics, the future, and the left. The book is a culmination of all these elements, representing an intersection of various facets of our lives as scholars, as well as our friendship and comradeship. We pitched the book to Common Notions, presenting a general outline of the world and brief paragraphs about each character we thought we might write about. They encouraged us to proceed, and the rest is history.
I like young people to know that they're extremely powerful. I guess the book was about giving hope because I realized how much we could do together. If a person can manage to argue and make a major impact in the way we are understanding treaties in human rights or other things, imagine what could be if every single person is in their own place in some field, with that alertness and synced in the same way. I believe that ordinary people are the ones bringing changes here. I believe that the communities gathering together – for example, I am seeing that in this country around the protection of rivers – are the ones that will mark the change. It's not going to come from above; it's going to come from below, up. We all have a role. Working for the protection of what we love the most will make you happy. So get into a positive mindset. Learn all you can. Be part of things that make you feel positive. You will see how you will find your way, and there is no place for feeling disempowered. This is the moment where you should feel very powerful because it is us who are going to make the future of this Earth.
Lessons for America From Around the Globe with Journalist NATASHA HAKIMI ZAPATA
It's a really dangerous time we're living through, and I do think that when we talk about these progressive policies, a huge problem in the US is that we still have a lot of stigma left over from the Cold War that keeps us from really great ideas because they're branded as socialist or communist. And I’ve seen, in the time I've been a journalist for the past 15 years, how that stigma has slowly faded. And you see that younger people are more and more interested in these ideas, whether or not they're considered socialist.
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.
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.
Community & Belonging with ROBERT & VICTORIA PATERSON
In an age of seeming isolationism, where some countries tend to isolate, this is such a great way to bring people together. When you're doing music and the arts, all those barriers just fall away. People are just collaborating and having fun. It’s such a bridge-building endeavor. I don't mean that to sound cheesy either, because I just think it is really amazing. They end up being ambassadors who go back to their own country and say, “Wow, I had a great time at this festival in America or in the Netherlands.” It ends up being one more step in our way, with our organization, of trying to connect people together in an age when so many people seem to want to hide out and not connect. We’re big advocates of connecting, and that’s another great reason why I think we love to do this. too.
Co-founder & CEO of The Best Bees Company
Largest Beekeeping service in the US
I was originally drawn to bees because they're social creatures. And as humans, I always wanted to know about ourselves and how we can be our healthiest selves and our healthiest society. Bees and wasps, and all of these organisms have been around for so long. Bees especially have been around for 100 million years.
I was originally drawn to bees because they're social creatures. And as humans, I always wanted to know about ourselves and how we can be our healthiest selves and our healthiest society. Bees and wasps, and all of these organisms have been around for so long. Bees especially have been around for 100 million years.
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?
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?
How do our personal relationships affect political movements and activism? What can we learn from Native American tradition to restore ecological balance? How can transforming capitalism help address global inequality and the environmental crisis? Dean Spade, Jericho Brown, Alexi Hawley, Tiokasin Ghosthorse, and Paul Shrivastava share their stories.
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.
