Zoe Austin · Religion, Science & Society Podcaster · Wesleyan University

I've grown up in the Midwest, so most of my childhood was spent in nature. In the summer I spent most of my time in a willow tree in my front yard. As I grew up we had to cut down branches, and I saw it age into decay. In a strange way it could be likened to the giving tree, but we didn't cut it down, and I want it to survive. As a part of my own work to reduce my own emissions. I think about the trees and other energy sources as I consume resources for my own survival. As I grow up and become more and more independent I am trying to reduce food waste and eat locally. My family and I belong to a local grocery co-op which delivers us local food. I am working to develop more strategies to consume resources I've grown myself.

This past semester I began my senior project a work which analyzes savior narratives in food and agriculture. My focus likens soy as a savior crop to the evolution of monotheism from polytheism. My hope with this project is to develop a critique of savior crops in agriculture, and introduce how these narrative work against their goals. Originally I planned to ground this project in a paper, but I am considering introducing multiple platforms including a podcast. The podcast section would have a series of interviews with soy farmers, soy historians, and soy scientists to gather information about the soy industry, before introducing a critique and making the parallel evolution of religious histories.

I've never been a huge fan of scientific articles. Consuming any sort of information has been much more palatable when it comes in the form of a narrative or it can be directly related to my own life. I grew up in a public school system dedicated to the sciences and memorization. Because of the strictly fact based environment, I had a lot of trouble navigating and connecting facts to a greater schema. Storytelling and creativity are really important components to connecting all of the really important scientific discoveries being made right now. Stories force facts into relevance, and broadens the audience who receives them. Stories like Interstellar widened my grasp of the closeness and concern for climate change. I get to create meaningful stories and develop my storytelling capabilities with One Planet Podcast & The Creative Process.

Dónal Gannon · History & Literature Podcaster · American University, D.C.

I grew up next to the Ramapo River in New Jersey. I spent many of my summer growing up fishing there, building forts in the woods with my friends, and exploring the woods. Nature and the outdoors has been integral to my upbringing and it hurts to see it slowly disappearing as I get older. Some of my best memories were the backpacking and camping trips I used to go on, either with my friends or the BoyScouts and especially in this modern world it is ever more important to put away technology and experience the great outdoors. Though New Jersey is one of the densest states in terms of people, it has some captivating woods and wilds that not enough people have had the opportunity to experience.

A majority of my works during the year is for my university's paper, The Eagle, as well as out investigative magazine AWOL. Outside of academics I creatively write, though not in a published fashion, and run several Dungeons and Dragons games where I am responsible for coming up with compelling stories, lovable characters and moments of tension for my players.

Storytelling is one of the most essential things to the human experience in my opinion, its why I chose journalism and History as my majors. History is the essentially the story of how we got to where we are today, and journalism is telling the story of those who deserve to have their voices heard. Stories, in many ways the fictional ones can be far more powerful than anything else. Much of my life has been informed by the art I consume and the lessons that can be drawn from it. Creativity is what gives color to life and allows everyone to step into the shoes of others. Through working with the Creative Process, I have a chance to deepen my understanding of how others approach creativity and learn as much as I can about both podcasting and how the creative mind tackles issues and invents something impactful from nothing.

Em Waddle · Social Justice & Human Rights Podcaster · Virginia Tech

I grew up in rural Virginia close to the Blue Ridge Mountains, and chose to go to college at Virginia Tech in Appalachia. The mountains have always been a constant in my life and I've grown to love everything about this environment. I feel lucky to have grown up in a place that sees all four seasons and the changing of the leaves. I spent lots of time outside as a kid exploring, climbing trees and camping. I find solace in nature so it has been a lifelong comfort. It is my hope that every child can enjoy the outdoors as I have.

Throughout my high school career I worked on my school's newspaper staff as well as for the local newspaper. I found a niche that I felt I could flourish in. Being in a position where I can make smaller voices heard was an incredibly important role to me. I worked on many projects and stories and found a love for activism. For the same reasons I have applied for a study abroad program in New Zealand for winter 2021-2022 that focuses on environmental studies and human societies I am excited to have the opportunity to be part of something that will have a lasting effect on myself and how I view the world around me.

Storytelling is important because of how it can affect how the story is perceived. No one wants to listen to a boring story, so how the story is told, written, narrated, can peak or lose interest in the topic. Storytelling is a perfect place for creativity. It can be a place to express new ideas and ways to gain interest in stories. The creativity is not only in the writing, but the telling - and a new approach to both can change the impact of any story.

Clara Rabbani · Indigenous Stories & Anthropology Podcaster · University of Chicago

I love the diversity of life that exists on this planet, which is being threatened by rapid and ongoing climate change. I don't want to lose the sense that I am part of the environment. I am afraid of a world that is guided by human constructs alone rather than natural ones. Growing up on acreage, surrounded by forest and a wide array of wildlife, nurtured in me a passion for preserving the environment.

This summer, I have been interning remotely with the Institute for Applied Ecology, compiling research on various topics related to native plant conservation and creating a comprehensive "native plant manual" that incorporates information on a wide array of plant species native to New Mexico. I hope to major in Anthropology and minor in Urban and Environmental Studies in order to advance my research in the field of Environmental Anthropology. I'm eager to better understand the ways that different cultures interact with their natural environment to help guide public policy.

I think that storytelling creates a neutral and welcoming ground through which diverse experiences can be expressed, beliefs can be challenged, and hearts can be moved to change. For years, I have been writing and publishing poetry of resistance, many of which focus on our unfair treatment of the environment. By collaborating with The Creative Process, I am interacting with people of various backgrounds and experiences, learning about different environmental initiatives, and contributing my own creative voice and passion for storytelling to raising consciousness of what environmental justice would look like.

Aarti Mistry · Pollution & Urban Environments Podcaster · DePaul University

Society and the environment have a complex and interconnected relationship that goes back to the dawn of our history. These connections ground us, shaping our internal and external wellbeing. However, with the advancement of technology, some of our relationships with natural resources have become lost in communication. The way we think and talk about nature has become out of touch with the future. I want to connect my audience to nature in a way that resonates with the future.

I am currently completing my Master's thesis and in the future will pursue a Ph.D. I want to use my research skills in the creative field and create content that is intended for the non-scientific audience.

I started my career as a research scientist, and a vital skill I use every day is communicating my knowledge to various audiences in a way they understand and follow the ideas. Scientific ideas and writing use storytelling and creativity to paint the narrative of how one idea fits into another idea and how all those ideas come together. The biggest joy of this process is when someone outside your subdiscipline connects discrete yet connected ideas. When your audience engages with the content, positive changes can happen for the environment. With my research experience and collaboration with The Creative Process, I am engaging with a wider audience and have the chance to contribuute creditable thought-provoking content.

Aitana Wieg-Mondejar · Climate Change, Sustainability & Environmental Education Podcaster · George Washington University

I have a strong attachment to the natural world, as I hope most humans do and should. Our environment and Earth are everything we need to survive and thrive and therefore should be given our utmost respect. I am from New Orleans, which will eventually, in the coming years, be underwater due to sea-level rise. As a result of climate change and the negative impacts caused by man-made infrastructure and energy extraction, our world is warmer, temperamental, and at greater risk of flooding and sea-level rise. I want to protect my home, my childhood, and everything I have known for years. New Orleans is a unique and special place not only to me but to America. Its rich history and diverse culture deserve to be preserved along with its bountiful natural habitats filled with wildlife. I want to be able to come back home and remember the good memories made here. I want to be able to reconnect with the parks, animals, and neighborhoods here. I don't want my childhood to become a mere memory, but rather be able to relive those moments upon my return to the city. People need to know what is happening and the word needs to be spread. Most people even in the community in New Orleans are not aware of how serious this issue is and will become.

Currently, I am a recent summer graduate who has been a teaching assistant for environmental and historical geology courses for two years now. I am confident in my oral and writing skills pertaining to issues of the environment, as I have taught both online and in-person. I love educating others and want to be able to educate others on issues that most are ignorant or uncertain of. We need to share stories and spread our passion for how grave these issues are so that change can occur now. Besides teaching environmental issues to other undergraduate students, I have also conducted research on air quality in D.C. and been able to incorporate equity issues within my study. This was a part of my culminating experience course for my sustainability minor. I am passionate about finding the problems and being able to create and communicate a story that our community can actually find meaningful. I am passionate about sustainable fashion and discouraging fast fashion, along with promoting the greater use of renewables.

Storytelling is key to getting any argument or study effectively understood by individuals. If people connect personally to research, they are more likely to care and create concrete change. Being creative and stirring emotion in a community is the way to create effective change and start a passionate movement that will produce effective actions. In collaborating with The Creative Process, I am spreading awareness on issues that may seem small to individuals, but all connect and need to be addressed as soon as possible. I want to collaborate with like-minded people who also respect our environment and want to promote positive changes that can help save our world from these horrific negative impacts. Education is crucial in clarifying what sustainability means to people. The more we discuss what is going on and enlighten people on what to expect in the future, the more likely communities will feel inspired to enact changes. Podcasts are also a hot trend right now that is an effective and smart way to spread information on climate and sustainability topics. This is a great way to reach a large number of people and hopefully inspire younger individuals to take actions that help sustain our environment.

Ananya Suresh · Climate Change, Global South & Storytelling Podcaster · Vassar College

I remember hiking the mountain Gwanaksan in Korea in the summer of 2019. It was the first time I had done a hike by myself. Hiking by myself was a very meditative and pensive experience: I was able to focus on the trees and the views and the people that I met along the way. At the top of the mountain was a Buddhist temple in which I meditated for a few minutes, watching the expanse of the world open up in front of me. After that I met an old couple who shared with me a snack of tomatoes from their garden at home, coffee and lessons for how to live my life. It was an ephemeral moment of connection across age, country and culture that was built on our shared experience of hiking, our relief at reaching the top and the awakening of our poetic selves in the cold air of Gwanaksan. I never want to lose the people I meet in the natural world: when they are away from the bustle of the concrete jungle, we experience time differently and think about our lives and selves differently.

I am currently in the process of converting my travel journals into a podcast/soundscape modelled on the ted podcast "pindrop" and the studio ochenta podcast "mija." I am attempting focus both on race and immigration as well as cities and their environment throughout this project.

I sound designed and edited an audio play at Vassar College titled h.b. floating palace which focused thematically on the geo-politics of Kashmir and the partition of India and Pakistan. -I was also a part of the executive team of Vassar Voices, a story-telling initiative that challenges the devaluation of emotions by hosting events for students, faculty, and administrators to tell stories about mundane yet meaningful aspects of their lives. I was a part of a committee of 4 students who planned and facilitated three events for over 100 people. We also designed and ran a series of workshops for storytellers to develop their stories and build comfort with sharing them. Our digital archive has recorded stories from the event -- all recorded and edited by our group as well. I’m currently applying to graduate school for environmental studies and gender and sexuality studies and working on bringing together activism and academia for a more rigorous approach to the challenge of climate change.

I believe that storytelling challenges the devaluation of emotions in professional and activist circles. Emotions and empathy are key to generating transformative encounters that can change peoples minds and encourage their passions towards doing the work of reversing climate change and saving the environment. Furthermore, I believe that storytelling and creativity can center what is commonly thought of as the "mundane" aspects of people's lives. For example, someone's bike ride to work or trip to a park for weekly soccer practice are events that are often taken for granted. Storytelling and creativity can imbue rich meanings and poetry into these seemingly mundane events to show listeners how these events that are often taken for granted are actually the most important things to be saved and protected. I get to have experiences of collaboration and community with The Creative Process with people who are committed to storytelling and the environment. I can share my stories in a creative way but would also like to listen to the stories of others and support them with my skills.

Christina Zhang · Ecology, Biodiversity & Sustainability Podcaster · University of Chicago

There's a little nature preserve about 15 minutes away from my house that not many people go to and over quarantine, it became something of my safe haven. I've always loved nature and being outdoors, but it wasn't until the past few months when I had the chance to really immerse myself in it. As many people probably realized over quarantine, regular life is hectic. Being in the woods alone and without a map for extended periods of time probably was not my brightest idea, but it gave me a sense of peace and a space for introspection that I've never had before. To me, the natural world is a timeless world, in the sense that there is nothing that "should" be happening "soon" or "later"--things just happen when they do. But this aspect of nature is contrasted by the human perspective on environmentalism--things aren't happening when we expect them to, and things are happening that shouldn't be happening. I love how resilient and self-governed nature is by cycles of life evolved over millenia, and I don't want nature to lose its self-regulation due to harmful human activity. While I understand the importance of human intervention to regulate invasive species and keep ecosystems in balance, I hope we can address the root of the problems (pollution, human activity, etc.) so that nature may continue to thrive with us, and on its own.

Recently I've been painting and selling sweatshirts as a sort of casual part business, and donating 15% of profits to the environmental charity "Rainforest Alliance".

Growing up, I always remember listening to podcasts and radio talk shows on long car rides with my dad. It never failed to spark interesting conversations and debates, and undoubtedly shaped by worldview now. Looking back, I have a word to put to the feeling I felt: sonder. A term coined by John Koenig, it describes the "realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own". Podcasts were always a window into someone else's life, and if done creatively and well, slipping into their shoes by listening to their story took very little effort. I think a universal tragedy is the inability to directly transfer your experiences and emotions to someone else, because true empathy, truly understanding what someone is trying to convey, is so rare. But through creative storytelling, I think you can get pretty close. With the Creative Process, I can help share other peoples' unique stories, and cultivate the same sense of connectedness between completely different life stories.

Matthew Rubenstein · Global Warming & Sustainability Podcaster · University of Chicago

To me, the environment isn’t just an abstract; I interact with it every day, so I fully realize what society stands to lose. I’ve lived next to a wildland park for the majority of my life, and as I’ve grown up, I’ve watched housing development after housing development tear down small sections of trees, displacing the wild animals, as my mountain has disappeared from in front of me. I can only imagine what the world would look like if civilization’s expansion and climate change continue to rage unchecked. No more forests and grasslands, no more coastlines. Uninhabited deserts and the scorched remains of raging forest fires. I want to do my part to help protect the earth, but I feel I need to learn more about it first. So, I’ve started by learning about my local environment. As part of a community action training program, I learned about the destruction that global warming is causing to ecosystems across the Pacific Northwest, from low salmon populations to orca malnutrition. At the same time, while interning for the Mid-Sound Fisheries Enhancement Group, I learned from multiple non-profit environmental groups about our ecosystems. I’ve also worked together with my local city on an initiative to create more community involvement in environmental restoration efforts, helping to organize community service events and creating educational materials for distribution throughout the populace. I’ve worked to become a leader and push environmental reform throughout our community. There are a lot of pressing issues out there: homelessness, opioids, civil wars, genocides. But I believe that global warming is the single most important issue at this time, because if unstopped, it will spell the end of both humanity and the earth itself. The situation isn’t natural. We caused it, and it’s our responsibility to fix it. Global warming is a hard problem to solve because it’s hard for some people to quantify its effects. We have no exact number of how many humans it’s killed, or any specific methods of solving it. But if all we do is continue to impose humanity’s will on the environment around us, then that’s the end of the story. Of everyone’s story.

In addition to working with the Mid-Sound Fisheries Enhancement Group, I've collaborated with the Environmental Research Group at the University of Chicago to advocate for more environmentally friendly transportation in the city of Chicago and contributed as part of the design team to the University of Chicago's independent newspaper, the Chicago Maroon. My plans for the future include graduating from the University of Chicago with a degree in Computer Science.

I believe in the power of books. I believe in the simplicity of a few words written on a piece of paper, and the complexity that stringing enough of these words together brings. I believe in the power that reading these books can give the individual. I love reading because each book is a door to its own world, a creative outlet for both the reader and the author. Throughout my life, creativity has been a driving factor in my decisions. It’s one of the reasons I love writing so much; no matter what you write, you’re creating something new. It’s also present in my love for coding. With code, you’re starting out with simple materials like semicolons and variables, but with a little work, you can create something that others don’t just use, but interact with. And my goal for life is to create as many new things as possible. Even if it’s small and unimportant, it’s still something new and unique; it’s still something I can call mine. Without creativity, new ideas are impossible, and it gets a lot harder to make your mark on the world. Creativity exists in all walks of life, from our myths and legends to our sources of entertainment. Books like “Odysseus” and “The Iliad” have sparked the imaginations of people for centuries and continue to do so today. Every year, over 600,000 new books are published, and each one continues to fuel the creativity of people all around the world. I believe that the most important quality a person can have is creativity. I believe that creativity, and the ideas that come from it, are essential to our life. I believe that creativity, by definition, is the root of all creations. Through The Creative Process, I not only get a chance to nourish my own sense of creativity, but to learn from others on how they’ve developed theirs. So much of what’s precious in today’s world, and what will continue to be precious in the future, stems from innovation, from creating something new, and unique, and sometimes slightly absurd. Creativity isn’t solely something innate, it’s something that can be grown and developed and molded, and the best way to do that is by interacting with those who have perfected it, or who are working to do so. By collaborating with The Creative Process, I’m collaborating with a community who cares for creativity and imagination as much as I do.

Lauren Guevara · Conservation Biology Podcaster · UCLA

When first studying biology, I found myself loving ecology and evolution in my second semester biology lab. My professor would tell us stories about deep sea diving to study marine organisms for his other job. This revived a longtime personal interest in marine biology that occurred throughout my adolescence. Additionally, I’ve always found myself attracted to environmental sciences, as I connect with nature often. Even as a child, camping was frequent, and experiences through my elementary school’s field trips to the ocean would shape my imagination. Many people I talk to always are fearful of the ocean, but is it something that has always intrigued me. I hope to guide my career in such a way that caters to preserving it as I understand that it is subject to climate change.

In my freshman summer, I interned at the Southern California Marine Institute, located on Terminal Island in San Pedro, California. The program allowed me to participate in long term research, which entailed monitoring ocean conditions in the Port of Los Angeles. My responsibilities included periodically removing sondes sensors from the water to log their data, analyze the data, clean the sondes, and place them back in the ocean. The facility also housed large fish tanks for other southern California universities to use for their research. I was also taught how to manage the aquarium systems, clean the fish tanks, and feed the fish. My favorite tank contained our three giant sea bass that were used in a study to observe their sound patterns. This internship gave me the confidence to continue into the division of biology that I truly enjoy. As I explore career options for myself, I hope to better understand the environment and the effects of climate change. Hence, I plan to do graduate study and specialize. Participating in One Planet Podcast and The Creative Process is related to my interests, but also something entirely new.

I love the idea of creatively expressing information to educate the public about the environment. I am learning logistical skills, producing, and research techniques as well as diving into the content of the podcasts and further educate myself.

Joanne Kwak · Ecology & Public Policy Podcaster · UCLA

There was a small creek in the mountain behind my Grandmother's house. The water was always numbingly cold, and I would sit and watch tiny silver fish dart among the rocks for hours. I would build huts out of sticks and use moss as my carpet. I remember how tall the oak trees were, and how quiet it felt to be surrounded by life older than I would ever be. I want to save those experiences and that quiet joy for generations of little girls to come.

On the Environmental side, I am currently an Undergraduate Voting Member for the Department of Sustainability at UC Davis. I act as a project manager for projects throughout Davis funded by The Green Initiative Fund. In the future I plan to attend law school and pursue a career within Environmental Law and Policy. On the creative side, I had originally planned to attend art school and spent my high school years prepping my portfolio. I still paint and illustrate often- I have recently started a new project of creating storyboards to go alongside my dream journal, which I plan to publish on my Art Instagram account.

I believe that the importance of storytelling and creativity lies within the ability to give heart and spirit to abstract concepts. I have always loved stories in whatever medium they take, whether that be podcasts or books or art. As a deeply creative STEM Major, through One Planet Podcast, I have the chance to meet and work with a talented people that share my passion for environmentalism and sustainability.

A selection of my environmental artwork: