Social Justice & Activism - The Creative Process - Activists, Environmental, Indigenous Groups, Artists and Writers Talk Diversity, Equity and inclusion

We examine different stances toward a two-state solution, international humanitarian law, and the need to go beyond state-centric notions of justice and the recommendation that a people’s parliament might be a better way to approach the crises we see on a planetary scale. Noura Erakat is a human rights attorney and an Associate Professor at Rutgers University, New Brunswick.  She is a Co-Edit...

In this episode on Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu and Azeezah Kanji have a conversation with critical political theorists Adom Getachew and Ayça Çubukçu on the colonial construction of the international system and its organization around the institution of the nation state. The conversation covers and uncovers so many aspects of the hidden colonial history behind the co...

"Midway Island, one of the most remote islands in the world, lies at the centre of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a huge concentration of plastic litter covering a surface that is almost three times the size of France. Islands that formerly offered visions of unexampled environmental plenty are now witness to unparalleled ecological devastation." Michael Cronin is an Irish academic specialist in...

How has tourism and writing about travel contributed to the ecological degradation of the planet? How does language influence perception and our relationship to the more-than-human world? Michael Cronin is an Irish academic specialist in culture, travel literature, translation studies, and the Irish language. He has taught in universities in France and Ireland and has held visiting research fellow...

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...

"Slavery is the most glaring, notorious, and important hypocrisy to discuss. How was it possible that these Founders, all of whom acknowledge that slavery violated natural rights and natural justice, themselves owned slaves? And it was striking to discover that they didn't even try. That Patrick Henry quote is so significant. He said: is it not amazing that I myself who believe that slavery is imm...

What is the true meaning of the pursuit of happiness? What can we learn from the Founding Fathers about achieving harmony, balance, tranquility, self-mastery, and pursuing the public good? Jeffrey Rosen is President and CEO of the National Constitution Center, where he hosts We the People, a weekly podcast of constitutional debate. He is also a professor of law at the George Washington Univer...

Working with Michaela Coel on  I May Destroy You "That was such a privilege and a joy to work with Michaela Coel, just to be witness and to support her amazing creative process as a writer, as it being part of her life story, as executive producer, as co director, and then finally as actor. Those kinds of storytellings are really important in that they're told with full-on emotional content t...

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 was the boy whose hatred for bullies had become a hatred for injustice of all kinds–for imperialism and colonialism, for racism and poverty, for a world where cruelty and violence and oppression were rewarded with power and vast sums of money for the brutal for the brutal few at the expense of many." Andre Dubus III’s nine books include the New York Times’ bestsellers House of Sand and Fog, The...

What can reading teach us about loss, healing, and survival? How can we transform anger into empathy? What can we learn from the creative act about turning personal setbacks into opportunities for self-discovery and growth? Andre Dubus III’s nine books include the New York Times’ bestsellers House of Sand and Fog, The Garden of Last Days, and his memoir, Townie. His work has been included in The B...

"In a lot of regions of the world, ecology has started to be a hostage of political parties. You have the left wing, which takes ecology as its flagship. You have the right wing, which is fighting against ecology because they want to fight against the left wing, and they use all the arguments of ecology to destroy ecology. It's very strange that the people who want to protect the environment are n...

What is the future of green aviation? How do we share environmental solutions to unite people and change the climate narrative from sacrifice and fear to enthusiasm and hope? Bertrand Piccard is a notable Swiss environmentalist, explorer, author, and psychiatrist. His ventures include being the first to travel around the world in a non-stop balloon flight and years later in a solar-powered airplan...

“This book is not just about Neanderthals. It's a book about us. I wanted to warn humans, to say there is something in us that is so efficient and dangerous. We've effectively collapsed many things and are now inducing the collapse of natural environments on the planet. And after that, we might even cause the collapse of ourselves as Homo sapiens.” Ludovic Slimak is a paleoanthropologist at the Un...

Who were the Neanderthals? And what can our discoveries about them teach us about intelligence, our extractivist relationship to the planet, and what it means to be human? Ludovic Slimak is a paleoanthropologist at the University of Toulouse in France and Director of the Grotte Mandrin research project. His work focuses on the last Neanderthal societies, and he is the author of several hundred sci...

How would the life of Jesus be told through the eyes of his mother? How can literature help us understand history and the nature of identity? Maciej Hen was born in 1955 in Warsaw. He graduated from the Cinematography Department at the Film School in Łódź. For years he has been trying his hand at diverse activities, from music to all fields of journalism and television lighting design. As a p...

In this episode on Speaking Out of Place podcast Professor David Palumbo-Liu and speaks with publisher Judith Gurevich and translator Luke Leafgren about a remarkable first-person narrative by Nasser Abu Srour, a Palestinian political prisoner who in 1993 was given a life sentence of 215 years. His novel, The Tale of a Wall , tells of the author’s decades-long life in multiple prisons, moving thro...

"The Canadian Indian Residential School system was a network of boarding schools for Indigenous peoples funded by the Canadian government's Department of Indian Affairs and administered by Christian churches. Over 150,000 Indigenous children were forcibly taken from their homes and placed in residential schools nationally. From the 1960s until the 90s, the Canadian government was trying to resolve...

How can the arts help us examine and engage with social issues? How do our families shape our views, memories, and experience of the world? From her role as Dr. Lisa Cuddy on the hit Fox series House, to her starring role as Abby McCarthy in Bravo's first scripted series Girlfriend's Guide to Divorce, Lisa Edelstein's range of roles are as diverse talent. Some of Edelstein's feature credits includ...

“I write science fiction, so it's fascinating from a technological standpoint, but we have dozens and dozens of years of science fiction warning us about technology unchecked. The irony is that now so many of those science fiction stories have probably been used to feed the AI training algorithms that they are now repurposing and ripping off. So it's very ironic in that regard to me. I've heard ar...

What does the future hold for our late-stage capitalist society with mega-corporations owning and controlling everything? How can the world-building skills of the makers of films and comics help us imagine a better future? Kyle Higgins is an Eisner award-nominated #1 New York Times best-selling comic book author and award-winning filmmaker known for his work on DC Comics’ Batman titles as well as...

"Climate change gives us a chance to re-imagine the world in a way that every single human being can participate in. And so whether you're in a remote part of the United States or some other country, when you learn about climate change, it shouldn't just be the science. It should be the opportunity." –Kathleen Rogers Excerpts of interviews from One Planet Podcast & The Creative Process. Voices...

“The natural world has its own sonic language. Its own fingerprints. And that's one of the beautiful things about being out here. There is another acoustic environment, another sort of sonic fingerprint, and it is always changing. Every day is a sort of a different sound picture. I walk out the door and you do hear it changing over time. The leaves are coming in now, different kinds of bird song....

How can we better educate young people about the future & the planet? How can we address eco-anxiety while providing students with climate optimism, hope, and solutions? Bryce Coon is the Director of Education at EarthDay. ORG, a nonprofit that champions climate education for all students and is the global driving force behind Earth Day. Previously, Coon was a high school teacher for 11 years...

How can we reimagine a world without plastic? How can we push governments and companies to admit what they know about the health impacts of plastics and change public policy? Kathleen Rogers is the President of EARTHDAY.ORG. Under her leadership, it has grown into a global year-round policy and activist organization with an international staff. She has been at the vanguard of developing campaigns...