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

Adam Alter is a Professor of Marketing at NYU’s Stern School of Business and the Robert Stansky Teaching Excellence Faculty Fellow. Adam is the New York Times bestselling author of Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked, and Drunk Tank Pink, which investigates how hidden forces in the world around us shape our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. He has...

"We're really starting to witness serious climate extremes that can no longer be ignored. And the IPCC, one of our key conclusions to that report was that effectively the human fingerprint on the climate system is now undeniable. It is now an established fact that we have warmed every single continent, every ocean basin on the planet. And again, that's a pretty serious thing to contemplate that hu...

Dr. Joëlle Gergis is an award-winning climate scientist and writer at the Australian National University. She served as a lead author for the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report and is the author of Humanity’s Moment: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Sunburnt Country: The History and Future of Climate Change in Australia. Joëlle has also contributed chapters to The Climate Book...

"For me, there is something about art, it's not a monologue, it's a dialogue. Some people, it doesn't matter who they speak to, they will speak in the same way they would speak to a five-year-old or to an intellectual or to somebody who doesn't speak the language very well. They would speak the same way and they don't care because this is what they have to say, but I think that the natural thing i...

Author, Screenwriter, and Director Etgar Keret is a recipient of the French Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, the Charles Bronfman Prize, and the Caméra d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival for Jellyfish, which he directed with his wife Shira Geffen. Most recently, they created the TV mini series The Middleman (L’Agent Immobilier) starring Mathieu Amalric. His books include the short story collection...

"What I think made me want to pursue film or what started my fascination with film and cinema were definitely Fellini, Antonioni, and Bertolucci; the masters, if you will, that kind of make you dream - make you just go to a movie theater, enter this space, and just have a communal experience. I know looking at the screen and just being completely immersed and experiencing stories or experienc...

Cinematographer Manuel Billeter has worked across a variety of iconic and groundbreaking shows and films including Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, Law & Order, Person of Interest, Orange Is The New Black, Lawless, and Alfonso Cuarón’s Y tu mamá también.  Most recently he has been Director of Photography on the HBO Max series The Gilded Age, starring Carrie Coon and Christine Baranski, an...

"I think  Riches  has all the hallmarks of the things I've worked on before in terms of complex, slightly subversive women. At the heart of it, it is negotiating power dynamics. And at the heart of it, there are two very complex and yet vulnerable black women, but I've always loved family drama shows and particularly family businesses, whether it's fictional ones or in real life. I think...

Abby Ajayi is a British Nigerian writer and director who serves as a show creator, executive producer, and writer on the Amazon Series Riches, which is currently on Amazon Prime and premiers on ITVX in the UK on December 22. She has previously worked on the shows Four Weddings and a Funeral, How to Get Away with Murder, Inventing Anna, The First Lady, and Eastenders. As a result, she had the oppor...

“Digital advocacy organizations are recognized as influential actors by the media, politicians, and some academics. In 2016, GetUp, an Australian digital advocacy organization, was named by the Australian Financial Review as one of the top ten actors with ‘covert power’ in Australia.1 Campact in Germany has powerfully mobilized public opinion against the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partners...

Nina Hall is an Assistant Professor in International Relations at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (Europe). She previously worked as a Lecturer at the Hertie School of Governance, where she published her first book Displacement, Development, and Climate Change: International Organizations Moving Beyond their Mandates? Her latest book is Transnational Advocacy in the Digital...

"At this very moment, millions of people around the world are working hard to bring to life. A handful of these ideas will turn out to be stunning successes and will have a major impact on the world and culture. The next polio vaccine, the next Google, the next Harry Potter. Others will become smaller, more personal, but no less meaningful successes... Most people believe that they either are or w...

Alberto Savoia was Google’s first engineering director and is currently Innovation Agitator Emeritus, where, among other things, he led the development and launch of the original Google AdWords. He is the author of The Right It: Why So Many Ideas Fail and How to Make Sure Yours Succeed, a book that provides critical advice for rethinking how we launch a new idea, product, or business, and gives in...

Writer/director Dean Craig's film career took off in 2007 when he wrote the hit UK comedy, Death at a Funeral, starring Matthew Macfadyen, Keeley Hawes and Peter Dinklage, and directed by Frank Oz. The film won several audience awards for Best Film, and was remade in the US starring Chris Rock, Zoe Saldana, Martin Lawrence, and Tracy Morgan. In 2020, Craig turned his attention to directing as well...

"Actually, awareness doesn't help. We are on the campaign to produce a desire for that transformation. Information is useless unless it's empowering. And of course, it has to be factual. If it's not factual, then it's going to be found out, and it also has to be relevant because otherwise, it's irrelevant. But if it's just relevant, it actually may just be counterproductive because if people see i...

Mathis Wackernagel is Co-founder and President of Global Footprint Network. He created the Ecological Footprint with Professor William Rees at the University of British Columbia as part of his Ph. D. in community and regional planning. Mathis also earned a mechanical engineering degree from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. Mathis has worked on sustainability with governments, corporation...

“Don’t you think maybe they are the same thing? Love and attention?"–Lady Bird, written and directed by Greta Gerwig  "I really love that line in the script. It's an incredible script that Greta Gerwig wrote. It's not obvious, that sentiment that she says. I think that's why she has to point it out to the Lady Bird character, but I think if we're lucky in our lives, we can choose the pat...

Sam Levy studied film in Paris with French New Wave director Eric Rohmer and began his career as an apprentice to legendary cinematographer Harris Savides. Sam first gained recognition as a cinematographer when he photographed Wendy and Lucy for director Kelly Reichardt - voted “One of the Best 25 Films of the 21st Century” by The New York Times. He went on to shoot France...

"If someone comes to me, and they say, 'Oh, I have a new brand. It's a startup.' First of all, I have to like the person, they have to like me. It's a two way street. And that's the most important thing with anyone in life, not just work. In life, why do we make friends with who we make friends with? They are relationships. And if you connect with someone, magic will happen. If you don't connect w...

Oberon Sinclair is the CEO and founder of the creative and branding agency, My Young Auntie. Since she founded the company in 1997, Oberon has collaborated with and managed an array of notable clients from the high luxury, art, fashion, food and lifestyle sectors, including Hermès, Vivienne Westwood, Fabergé, the Richemont Group, Jack Spade, ArtForum, Selfridges, Rizzoli Books, Island Records...

"In some ways, our insistence on dominating is actually destroying us." "It definitely is destroying us. It definitely destroys ecosystems. And I think part of the reason that this story of cooperation among living things appeals to me so much. I mean, in my book Sweet in Tooth and Claw, I look at the work of lots of scientists who studying how nature works and discovering all these incr...

Kristin Ohlson is the author of Sweet in Tooth and Claw: Stories of Generosity and Cooperation in the Natural World. Her other books include The Soil Will Save Us: How Scientists, Farmers and Foodies are Healing the Soil to Save the Planet, and Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil. Olson appears in the award-winning documentary film Ki...

"Einstein on the Beach, it's a masterpiece. America, in 1976, was to be celebrating its 200th year of existence, and Michel Guy, the French Minister of Culture, came to New York to offer a commission to Philip Glass and Robert Wilson to write an opera. This was the gift that France would give for America's two-hundredth anniversary. That was the first time I met Robert Wilson." "My son had di...

For nearly half a century, Richard “Dickie” Landry was at the center of the New York avant-garde. Born in the small Louisiana town of Cecilia in 1938, he began making pilgrimages to the city while still in his teens in search of the city’s most cutting edge gestures in jazz, and relaxed there not long after, falling in with a close knit community of artists and composers like Keith Sonnier, Philip...

"I just feel there is already a connection, something I have to come to, but that I'm trying to search it out or see what's already there. I feel that we are truly connected as a world. And  I'm just trying to make people aware of an existing connection we already have, to send that message out there. And I like to do it in the form of...I guess you'd call it a mundane image, where it's not r...