The Creative Process · Arts, Culture & Society: Books, Film, Music, TV, Art, Writing, Creativity, Education, Environment, Theatre, Dance, LGBTQ, Climate Change, Social Justice, Spirituality, Feminism, Tech, Sustainability

How can the arts help cultivate our intuitive intelligence? What does visual art teach us about consciousness and the human condition?    Jonathan Yeo is one of the world’s leading figurative artists and portrait painters. From celebrated figures such as Sir David Attenborough, peace activist Malala Yousafzai, the Duke of Edinburgh, Nicole Kidman, and Tony Blair, sitting for a portrait w...

"The challenges facing our society at the moment effectively are the unintended consequence of a solution we found in the late 1700s when society was running out of energy, we had no more timber, and we realized we could dig underground for ancient fossilized woodland, which is basically what coal is from about 300 million years ago. The consequence of burning all that coal and then oil was a rele...

How have our psychology and cognitive biases altered the course of human history? What would you do if you had to rebuild our world from scratch? Lewis Dartnell is an author, researcher, and holds the Professorship in Science Communication at the University of Westminster. He researches astrobiology and the search for microbial life on Mars. He also works as a scientific consultant for the media a...

"The way I got into this field was working on the environmentally beneficial applications of AI, and I do believe that that's an impactful way of using AI techniques because there's so much data about the climate, satellite data, and sensor data, and the way to go about this is to work with domain experts. AI is never going to solve the problem on its own, but it can be a tool. So I think that the...

What are the pros and cons of AI’s integration into our institutions, political systems, culture, and society? How can we develop AI systems that are more respectful, ethical, and sustainable? Dr. Sasha Luccioni is a leading scientist at the nexus of artificial intelligence, ethics, and sustainability, with a Ph. D. in AI and a decade of research and industry expertise. She spearheads research, co...

"My area of work is sustainable development with a focus on climate. And you can ask what does sustainable development mean? To put it very simply, it means how do you have economic growth that is socially equitable and environmentally sustainable? It's not just that you have ecological sustainability; hence, that is sustainable development. Because lots of examples of economic, ecological, and ec...

How do urbanization and rural development impact communities differently? How can we make public policy and enlightened self-interest advance climate action? Dr. Shiv Someshwar is a Development Clinician, diagnosing development of cities and nation states. A Visiting Professor at Columbia University, New York and at Sciences Po, Paris, he was the founder chair-holder of the European Chair for Sust...

Scientists, artists, psychologists, conservationists, and spiritual leaders share their stories and insights on the importance of connecting with nature, preserving the environment, embracing diversity, and finding harmony in the world. Music courtesy of composer Max Richter . All voices in this episode are from our interviews for The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast. 00:05 Adapting to E...

In this episode on Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu and Azeezah Kanji talk with artists and activists Isabella Frémaux and Jay Jordan about their book, We are ‘Nature’ Defending Itself: Entangling Art, Activism and Autonomous Zones Vagabonds/Pluto/Journal of Aesthetics & Protest, 2021. They tell the story of a 40-year struggle to preserve 4,000 acres of wetlands from...

“We're just a moving ecosystem and we've got this weird thing called consciousness that gives us this impression that we're somehow separate, but we are just part of the ecosystem. We're a bag of microbes that's interacting with all the microbes around us. And I think there's a real need for us to appreciate our harmony with nature and our interrelatedness with nature.” Although they comprise less...

Although they comprise less than 5% of the world population, Indigenous peoples protect 80% of the Earth’s biodiversity. How can we support farmers, reverse biodiversity loss, and restore our ecosystems? Thomas Crowther is an ecologist studying the connections between biodiversity and climate change. He is a professor in the Department of Environmental Systems Science at ETH Zurich, chai...

As we reach the tipping points of climate change, how will our world change? Greenland has already lost 4,700 billion metric tons of ice, an amount that is enough to flood the entire United States in 1.5 feet of water. Peter D. Ditlevsen is an Associate Professor at the Niels Bohr Institute at Copenhagen University. The institute was founded in 1921 as the Institute for Theoretical Physics. Ditlev...

“I think one thing I learned from looking at the ancient trees is that there is no great benefit to anything of growing quickly and accumulating vast resources. Growing slowly and patiently and with fewer demands on the environment in which you live is just as healthy and perhaps more healthy than the endless hunger for more and more and more, which we see as a characteristic of our species.” What...

What can thousand-year-old trees teach us about living sustainably? If we want to be sustained by this planet indefinitely, we need to stop trying to suck it dry. Doug Larson is an award winning scientist, author, and Professor Emeritus of Biology at the University of Guelph. He is an expert on deforestation and regularly contributes to The Guardian and other publications. His books include Cliff&...

"The original edition of The Paradox of Choice came out in 2004, and the internet was just getting started in a major league way, and already the choice overload was a problem. I would say that from the modern perspective, 2004 seems like the 18th century, and as near as I can tell, all of these changes, every single one of them has made the problem substantially worse. The idea that you...

Does having too many choices make us unhappy? How can we learn practical wisdom? Dr. Barry Schwartz is the Dorwin P. Cartwright Professor Emeritus of Social Theory and Social Action in the psychology department at Swarthmore College. He is the author of many books, including Why We Work, The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less, and co-author of Practical Wisdom: The Right Way to Do the Right Thing...

Can we stop talking about growth and mediate an environmental crisis through the structures of capitalism? In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu speaks with Japanese scholar Kohei Saito, whose book, Marx in the Anthropocene sold over half a million copies. In it, Saito shows how late in life Marx came to a richer sense of production when he released that...

In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu speaks with noted researcher and scholar Ben Franta about two new articles he has written that add to his growing archive of seminal work on climate change.  Ben tells us now the fossil fuel industry paid economists to join scientists in denying the true nature of the fossil fuel industry’s destruction of the en...

"The idea that the laws of nature are fixed is taken for granted by almost all scientists and within physics, within cosmology, it leads to an enormous realm of speculation, which I think is totally unnecessary. We're assuming the laws of nature are fixed. Most of science assumes this, but is it really so in an evolving universe? Why shouldn't the laws evolve? And if we think about that, then we r...

How do we navigate ambiguity and uncertainty? Moving beyond linear thinking into instinct and intuition, we might discover other sources within ourselves that lie beyond the boundaries of science and reason. Rupert Sheldrake is a biologist and author best known for his hypothesis of morphic resonance. His many books include The Science Delusion, The Presence of the Past, and Ways to Go Beyond...

“I drove for like a half an hour into absolute nothingness, and I left the car. It was three o'clock in the morning. It was minus 17 degrees and it was absolutely still. I've never experienced stillness such as that. I mean, it's like you feel like you can feel your atoms move or not move because it's so cold. And the sky is full of the Northern Lights. So you are already in a remote place, but yo...

How does the place we’re born influence our beliefs? What would it be like to live in a world run by women, where it’s perpetually night, and the dead can speak to the living? In this episode, we discuss the new season of HBO’s True Detective: Night Country with award-winning cinematographer Florian Hoffmeister. Known for his work on Tár, Pachinko, Great Expectations , and most recently, the new s...

In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu and Azeezah Kanji talk with eminent Anishinaabe legal theorist John Borrows and philosopher Paco Calvo about how we might learn about, learn with, and learn from our plant companions on this earth. Plants show signs of communication and of learning. They produce and respond to many of the same neurochemicals as human...

“If we say Mitakuye Oyasin, we don't really mean all my relations. It's like, no, we're talking about what you can formulate into E = mc2 and beyond. It's beyond what you see. And that energy you don't see with these eyes, which only see a certain range of color and light refraction is what we are also understanding. Our body is, people would say the brain is...there is no disconnection. And...

How can we learn to speak the language of the Earth and cultivate our intuitive intelligence? Tiokasin Ghosthorse is a member of the Cheyenne River Lakota Nation of South Dakota and has a long history with Indigenous activism and advocacy. Tiokasin is the Founder, Host and Executive Producer of “First Voices Radio” (formerly “First Voices Indigenous Radio”) for the last 31 years in New York City a...