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

“It’s basically a seed bank of genetic and metabolic diversity. The Earth’s entire microbiome is just a tremendous treasure trove of history, evolution, and diversity. So I would say we have no idea what’s in a lot of that diversity. It's like the dark matter of the universe. People call it the dark matter of the microbiome, and we're still figuring out what that matter does. We know that they're...

Dr. Steven Allison is a Professor of Ecology at the University of California, Irvine. He holds a PhD in Biological Sciences from Stanford University. As part of the University of California’s Carbon Neutrality Initiative, Dr. Allison was named the UC Irvine Climate Action Champion in 2016. He teaches ecosystem ecology and directs the Ridge to Reef Graduate Training Program, an interdisciplinary pr...

Yves Winkin is Distinguished Emeritus Professor at the University of Liège and Honorary Professor at the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers. He proposed an "anthropology of communication" based on an ethnographic approach. He was deputy director of the École normale supérieure de Lyon, director of the French Institute of Education and director of the musée des Arts et Métiers. He is the au...

Yves Winkin is Distinguished Emeritus Professor at the University of Liège and Honorary Professor at the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers. He proposed an "anthropology of communication" based on an ethnographic approach. He was deputy director of the École normale supérieure de Lyon, director of the French Institute of Education and director of the musée des Arts et Métiers. He is the au...

Gabrielle Selz is the author of Unstill Life: A Daughter’s Memoir of Art and Love in the Age of Abstraction, published by W.W. Norton in 2014. Unstill Life received the best memoir of the year award from the American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA) and was chosen as one of the best books of the year by both the San Francisco Chronicle and Berkeleyside. She is currently writing Light on F...

Gabrielle Selz is the author of Unstill Life: A Daughter’s Memoir of Art and Love in the Age of Abstraction, published by W.W. Norton in 2014. Unstill Life received the best memoir of the year award from the American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA) and was chosen as one of the best books of the year by both the San Francisco Chronicle and Berkeleyside. Selz holds a special interest in th...

"It's always difficult to avoid charges of being nostalgic if we talk about going back to things. Back to the past or forward to the past, but there are principles that existed in preindustrial/early industrial cities and which were overturned by key technological inventions of the late 19th and early 20th century, particularly the railway, the motorcar, of course, the internal combustion engine o...

David Simon is Professor of Development Geography and Director for External Engagement in the School of Life Sciences and the Environment, Royal Holloway, University of London. He was also Director of Mistra Urban Futures, Gothenburg, Sweden from 2014–2019. A former Rhodes Scholar, he specialises in cities, climate change and sustainability, and the relationships between theory, policy and practic...

“I would say that I write liminal fantasy. I write surrealist work and literary fiction. I write horror. Horror is probably the genre that speaks to me the most. I feel horror is the genre that I feel the most affinity towards. For me, that is the sweet spot where the beautiful and the grotesque meet each other. It's very interesting to me, and I think encouraging people to look at certain ideas t...

Carmen Maria Machado is the author of the bestselling memoir In the Dream House and the award-winning short story collection Her Body and Other Parties. She has been a finalist for the National Book Award and the winner of the Bard Fiction Prize, the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction, the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Nonfiction, the Brooklyn Public Library Literature Prize, the Shirley...

Actor, producer, writer and director, Joe Mantegna began his career on the stage with the 1969 musical Hair. He later earned a Tony Award for portraying Richard Roma in the first American production of David Mamet's play Glengarry Glen Ross, the first of many collaborations with Mamet. Mantegna has appeared in Three Amigos, The Godfather Part III, Forget Paris, and Up Close & Personal and other fi...

Actor, producer, writer and director, Joe Mantegna began his career on the stage with the 1969 musical Hair. He later earned a Tony Award for portraying Richard Roma in the first American production of David Mamet's play Glengarry Glen Ross, the first of many collaborations with Mamet. Mantegna has appeared in Three Amigos, The Godfather Part III, Forget Paris, and Up Close & Personal and other fi...

Howard A. Rodman is a screenwriter, author and educator. His novels include The Great Eastern and Destiny Express. As a screenwriter, Rodman wrote Savage Grace, with Julianne Moore and Eddie Redmayne, nominated for Best Screenplay at the 2009 Spirit Awards, and AUGUST, starring Josh Hartnett and David Bowie. He also wrote Joe Gould’s Secret, the opening night film of the Sundance Film Festiva...

Howard A. Rodman is a screenwriter, author and educator. His novels include The Great Eastern and Destiny Express. As a screenwriter, Rodman wrote Savage Grace, with Julianne Moore and Eddie Redmayne, nominated for Best Screenplay at the 2009 Spirit Awards, and AUGUST, starring Josh Hartnett and David Bowie. He also wrote Joe Gould’s Secret, the opening night film of the Sundance Film Festiva...

James McDaniel is an actor and director best known for his award winning performances on NYPD Blue, Detroit 187, and Edge of America. When he’s not acting in front of the camera you can find James on and off-Broadway starring in works like Before it Hits Home, August Wilson’s Joe Turners Come and Gone, and most recently A Soldier’s Play. James also created the role Paul, in Six Degrees of Separati...

James McDaniel is an actor and director best known for his award winning performances on NYPD Blue, Detroit 187, and Edge of America. When he’s not acting in front of the camera you can find James on and off-Broadway starring in works like Before it Hits Home, August Wilson’s Joe Turners Come and Gone, and most recently A Soldier’s Play. James also created the role Paul, in Six Degrees of Separati...

“What is societal progress? I think the last 70 years, clearly, in the post World War II period, we have been thinking of economic growth and have been equating that with societal progress. To an extent of course that's right. To an extent, we need this economic growth to lift people out of poverty. We’ve kind of lost the reasoning. We have been following only this economic growth paradigm measure...

Alice Schmidt is a global sustainability advisor who has worked in 30 countries on 4 continents with 70+ organisations of all shapes and sizes. She has a deep passion for creating opportunities and win-wins across the social, environmental and economic spheres. Many of her experiences are highlighted in the new book “ The Sustainability Puzzle : How Systems Thinking, Climate Action, Circularity an...

Film editor Alan Edward Bell has cut three of The Hunger Games series. He also edited (500) Days of Summer, Water for Elephants, Red Sparrow, The Dark Tower, The Amazing Spiderman, and other films. A former competitive rock-climber and guide, Alan transitioned to editing after spending time around film people while taking them on climbing expeditions. That his editing often pushes the boundaries o...

Film editor Alan Edward Bell has cut three of The Hunger Games series. He also edited (500) Days of Summer, Water for Elephants, Red Sparrow, The Dark Tower, The Amazing Spiderman, and other films. A former competitive rock-climber and guide, Alan transitioned to editing after spending time around film people while taking them on climbing expeditions. That his editing often pushes the boundaries o...

“I do feel that we are infinite choice makers. You make millions of choices all the time. Make the right choice and if you make the wrong choice, understand that mistakes are great teachers. Learn from that and move on. I do have this sense of responsibility of passing something on a love of dance history that really informs my process. Speaking in old language in a new way with a contemporary acc...

Seán Curran began his dance training with traditional Irish step dancing as a young boy in Boston, Massachusetts. He went on to make his mark on the dance world as a leading dancer with Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. He received a New York Dance and Performance Bessie Award for his performance in Secret Pastures. A graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, Curran was an...

“It's kind of a scary thought. We've got these PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), you hear them now referred to as forever chemicals because these chemicals–none of these existed on the planet prior to World War II–they're fairly recent invention and they have this unique chemical structure that makes them incredibly useful in a lot of different products, manufacturing operations, but als...

Rob Bilott is a partner in the Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky offices of the law firm, Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP , where he has practiced in the Environmental and Litigation Practice Groups for over 31 years. During that time, Rob has handled and led some of the most novel and complex cases in the country involving damage from exposure to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (“PFAS”), inclu...

Michael Maren is a journalist, filmmaker and former aid worker. He’s written scripts for HBO, Sony Pictures, and many independent producers. His film, A Short History of Decay was a funny and moving examination of a writer Bryan Greenberg visiting his ailing parents, played by Linda Lavin and Harris Yulin. His forthcoming film is an adaptation of Chris Belden’s novel Shriver. It’s a comedy set at...