(Highlights) GEORGE ELLIS

(Highlights) GEORGE ELLIS

Cosmologist, Theoretical physicist & Star of South Africa Medal Recipient

Artistic creativity and it’s crucial to artistic creativity amongst many other things. In artistic creativity, from my viewpoint, is that you start off with an idea and you’re shaping and you’re totally in control and it doesn’t matter if it's music or sculpture or painting or a novel, eventually the thing sparks its own life, becomes itself, and at that point, the role of the artist is to stand back and let it become what its got to become. And that’s where you get the great art.

GEORGE ELLIS

GEORGE ELLIS

Cosmologist, Theoretical physicist & Star of South Africa Medal Recipient

Artistic creativity and it’s crucial to artistic creativity amongst many other things. In artistic creativity, from my viewpoint, is that you start off with an idea and you’re shaping and you’re totally in control and it doesn’t matter if it's music or sculpture or painting or a novel, eventually the thing sparks its own life, becomes itself, and at that point, the role of the artist is to stand back and let it become what its got to become. And that’s where you get the great art.

TERRY RADIGAN

TERRY RADIGAN

Musician and Songwriter

So, I started the program called Shelter Songs. I'm in two shelters now and expanding to 4 or 5 throughout the city. It's a nice thing to just look at them and say, "I'm with you for an hour. I'm here to serve you. Whatever you want. I have no agenda on what we're going to write.

(Highlights) ROB NIXON

(Highlights) ROB NIXON

Author of Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor
Professor Environmental Humanities at Princeton

There are some recurrent threads in indigenous cultures across the world. One of those is–We don’t own the land. The land owns us. It’s not seen as property first. It’s seen as inalienable in that sense because you don’t own it in the first place. What we’re seeing now is a kind of movement where more and more indigenous people are living kind of amphibious lives. On the one hand, they have their indigenous cosmologies. And the other hand, in order to increase the likelihood that they can keep out big corporations, mining, logging, and so forth, their presence on the land needs to be bureaucratically recognized is to have recognition that “this is your property.” So in one sense many of these communities I find are both inside and outside private property regimes.

INGRID NEWKIRK

INGRID NEWKIRK

Founder & President of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)

They’re not human traits. They’re all shared traits because, of course, we all love. We all love our families, or not. We all grieve if somebody we love disappears or dies. A family dog, perhaps. A grandfather. We all feel loneliness, we all feel joy. We all really value our freedom. And so I think, if anything, looking into the eyes of the animal, even online, you see a person in there. There’s a someone in whatever the shape or the physical properties of that individual are. And that lesson is that I am you. You are me, only different. We are all the same in all the ways that count…Any living being teaches you– Look into my eyes. And there you are, the reflection of yourself.

ROB NIXON

ROB NIXON

Rob Nixon is a nonfiction writer and the Barron Family Professor in Environmental Humanities at Princeton University. He is the author of four books, most recently Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Nixon is currently writing a book on environmental martyrs and the defense of the great tropical forests. He writes frequently for the New York Times. His writing has also appeared in The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, The Guardian, The Nation, London Review of Books, The Village Voice, Aeon and elsewhere. Much of his writing engages environmental justice struggles in the global South. He has a particular interest in understanding the roles that artists can play in effecting change at the interface with social movements.

ROB NIXON

There are some recurrent threads in indigenous cultures across the world. One of those is–We don’t own the land. The land owns us. It’s not seen as property first. It’s seen as inalienable in that sense because you don’t own it in the first place. What we’re seeing now is a kind of movement where more and more indigenous people are living kind of amphibious lives. On the one hand, they have their indigenous cosmologies. And the other hand, in order to increase the likelihood that they can keep out big corporations, mining, logging, and so forth, their presence on the land needs to be bureaucratically recognized is to have recognition that “this is your property.” So in one sense many of these communities I find are both inside and outside private property regimes.

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk & Phil Kehoe with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this podcast was Phil Kehoe. Digital Media Coordinator is Phoebe Brous.

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions).

(Highlights) ANA CASTILLO

(Highlights) ANA CASTILLO

Award-winning Xicana Activist, Editor, Poet, Novelist, Artist
Author of My Book of the Dead
One of the things that is dying is our planet. We hear these sirens every single day. We’re being warned daily by experts and concerned people how vast that squandering is going. It’s a case of urgency and it’s astounding and a very sad, a very pathetic comment on modern life that most people are ignoring those signs. As a poet, it seems to me that one of the tasks that the poet takes on, it’s a vocation that’s born with it, it’s this consciousness, this serving as witness.

ANA CASTILLO

ANA CASTILLO

Award-winning Xicana Activist, Editor, Poet, Novelist, Artist
Author of My Book of the Dead
One of the things that is dying is our planet. We hear these sirens every single day. We’re being warned daily by experts and concerned people how vast that squandering is going. It’s a case of urgency and it’s astounding and a very sad, a very pathetic comment on modern life that most people are ignoring those signs. As a poet, it seems to me that one of the tasks that the poet takes on, it’s a vocation that’s born with it, it’s this consciousness, this serving as witness.