Feminism, Women’s Stories: The Creative Process: Empowering Stories, Inspiring Women, Gender Equality, Women's Rights & Empowerment

How can we unlock a state of flow in our daily lives? How does connecting with nature influence our mental and physical well-being? How do movement, dance and play help us feel more creative, connected, and content? Dr. Julia F. Christensen is a Danish neuroscientist and former dancer currently working as a senior scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Germany. She studi...

Today, Sunday morning, October 20, former general Prabowo Subianto is being sworn in as Indonesia’s new president. In this episode on Speaking Out of Place podcast Professor David Palumbo-Liu and Azeezah Kanji talk with Intan Paramaditha and Michael Vann about the road leading up to this inauguration, beginning in the 1960s with the Suharto regime.  Prabowo is a strong-arm authoritarian figur...

“I came to neuroscience from a humanistic perspective. I was very interested to find out who we are. What do we know? What do we think we know? Why do we think we know certain things? How do we see things? How do we perceive them? Ultimately, the question behind curiosity is what things we find interesting in our environment. The way I think about eye movements is that they really are trained...

What ignites curiosity in humans? How does our brain select things we need to know and ignore what isn’t essential? How does our perception shape what we know about the world? Dr. Jacqueline Gottlieb is a Professor of Neuroscience and Principal Investigator at Columbia University’s Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute. Dr. Gottlieb studies the mechanisms that underlie the brain's higher cogniti...

“Often when people write or make movies about romances with young adults, I think they are very flippant about it and don't take it seriously. But I think that those friendships and romantic relationships are some of the most important ones because they really set the stage for the rest of our lives. If your first relationship is incredibly toxic and damaging, it can take you years to  figure...

"When we wrote Half the Sky about empowering women around the world, if it had been just a woman writing that book, it would have been marginalized as just a woman's issue. And it would have been weird if it had been just a man writing it, but I think a man and a woman addressing gender inequity together underscores that this is an issue that affects all of us, whatever our sex. And that we all ha...

How can journalism make people care and bring about solutions? What role does storytelling play in shining a light on injustice and crises and creating a catalyst for change? Nicholas D. Kristof is a two-time Pulitzer-winning journalist and Op-ed columnist for The New York Times , where he was previously bureau chief in Hong Kong, Beijing, and Tokyo. Kristof is a regular CNN contributor and has co...

How do the works of Emily Dickinson and Charles Darwin continue to influence our understanding of nature, ecological interdependence, and the human experience? How does understanding history help us address current social and environmental issues. How can dialogues between the arts and sciences foster holistic, sustainable solutions to global crises? Renée Bergland is a literary critic, historian...

"I would say what we can celebrate is the incredible mobilization of the young people. They went everywhere, they knocked on the door, they mobilized. This was an incredible, incredible mobilization. So that was extraordinary because it showed real mobilization and an understanding that the National Rally was a real threat. We knew that if they came to power, the first people who would be targeted...

“I like to think of utopianism as “effective social daydreaming” because utopia is associated with consciously imagining societies. Our imagination is always involved in creating reality. The opposition between the two, reality and the imaginary, is not a stark one; they're porous.” S. D. Chrostowska is professor of humanities at York University, Canada. She is the author of several books, among t...

As Surrealism turns 100, what can it teach us about the importance of dreaming and creating a better society? Will we wake up from the consumerist dream sold to us by capitalism and how would that change our ideas of utopia? S. D. Chrostowska is professor of humanities at York University, Canada. She is the author of several books, among them Permission , The Eyelid , A Cage for Every Child , and,...

Can silence be painted? How can artists capture interior states, solitude, and the passing of time? How are the homes we live in a reflection of the people who inhabit them? How can we read a painting to piece together the life of the artist? From 1 June to 13 July 2024, Hauser & Wirth presents Vilhelm Hammershøi: Silence in its new gallery location in Basel. This exhibition celebrates the ren...

“As a filmmaker, I've always made films about extraordinary women whose lives are faced with extenuating circumstances who've had adversity thrown at them and who've risen to the occasion. And when I began to look at Diane's story, for me, Diane is a fashion designer, but she's so much more. Her central ethos is woman before fashion, and we felt it was very important to take that ethos and weave i...

How can we free ourselves from fear and social barriers to live more fulfilling and meaningful lives? What does it take to overcome trauma and turn it into triumph, and failure into reinvention? How can we shine a light on the marginalized and misunderstood to create social change that transforms the lives of women? Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy is an Oscar and Emmy award-winning Canadian-Pakistani filmma...

How can we show more kindness, respect, and love to the animals we share this planet with? What lessons can we learn from non-human animals about living in greater harmony with nature? Ingrid Newkirk is the Founder and President of PETA, actively leading the organization and advocating for animal rights. PETA is the largest animal rights organization in the world with more than 9 million members a...

“I call myself an apocalyptic optimist. In other words, I do believe there is hope to save ourselves from the climate crisis that we have caused. However, I also believe that saving ourselves will only be possible with a mass mobilization that is driven by the pain and suffering of climate shocks around the world. A generalized sense of extreme risk can lead to peaceful and less-peaceful mass mobi...

How can we make the radical social changes needed to address the climate crisis? What kind of large ecological disaster or mass mobilization in the streets needs to take place before we take meaningful climate action? Dana R. Fisher is the Director of the Center for Environment, Community, & Equity and Professor in the School of International Service at American University. Fisher’s resea...

"At the end of 2019, I started a tea company. It's called Alaya Tea. We do loose leaf organic tea, and we source as regeneratively as possible, but the packaging was a real headache. We didn't want to do glass because it's too difficult to ship. Aluminum has its own challenges, and the other option is plastic stand up pouches, and you can get a lot of them that are made out of...

What is regenerative business? How can we create a business mindset that addresses social, economic and environmental issues? Esha Chhabra has written for national and international publications over the last 15 years, focusing on global development, the environment, and the intersection of business and impact. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Economist, The Guardian, and othe...

“I grew up with folktales and fairytales from the Indonesian archipelago, from the Nusantara. And of course I grew up with the stories from the Grimm brothers and Hans Christian Andersen and actually I like them better than the Disney version because they're more bloody and gory. I guessed that also shaped my preferences for more dark and gothic stories as I grew up. I did English literature at th...

How are writing and travel vehicles for understanding? How can we expand the literary canon to include other voices, other cultures, other experiences of the world? Intan Paramaditha is a writer and an academic. Her novel The Wandering (Harvill Secker/ Penguin Random House UK), translated from the Indonesian language by Stephen J. Epstein, was nominated for the Stella Prize in Australia and awarde...

In this episode on Speaking Out of Place podcast Professor David Palumbo-Liu and Azeezah Kanji talk we talk with Camilla Hawthorne about her recent edited collection, The Black Geographic: Praxis, Resistance, Futurity, and its relation to her prior monograph, Contesting Race and Citizenship: Youth Politics in the Black Mediterranean. She explains and elaborates on how Blackness is not singular, bu...

"It's been a very organic journey and one that still surprises me and I feel I'm so grateful for the journey that life has taken me on and subsequently the creation of this work. I was a dancer and then a musical theatre performer, professionally trained as an actor, and then did the MA in Movement Studies at Central and worked as a movement teacher and a movement director. During that time, I was...

How can intimate scenes be brought to the screen in ways that respect the emotional well-being and privacy of the artists themselves? How do we make sure that we can create a story about abuse without anyone being abused in the process? Ita O’Brien is the UK’s leading Intimacy Coordinator, founder of Intimacy on Set (and author of the Intimacy On Set Guidelines). Her company, set up in 2018 provid...

"I mean, your mother, your concept of God, all of this I feel for our Earth. More than if Earth were a person. And I grew up Christian, I grew up Methodist, and I still pray and read the Bible. If you believe that there is any Creator, what better thing can you do with your life than honor the creation? And if you don't believe in that, but you understand the facts of evolution – which I also unde...