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

“One of the things that is dying is our planet. We hear these sirens every single day. We’re being warned daily by experts and concerned people how vast that squandering is going. It’s a case of urgency and it’s astounding and a very sad, a very pathetic comment on modern life that most people are ignoring those signs. As a poet, it seems to me that one of the tasks that the poet takes on, it’s a...

Xicana activist, editor, poet, novelist, and artist Ana Castillo , was born and raised in Chicago. She is known for coining the term “xicanisma” which is defined in her book the Massacre of the Dreamers as, “a sociopolitical movement in the United States that analyzes the historical, cultural, spiritual, educational, and economic intersection of Mexican American women that identify as Chicana.” Th...

“Literally during the last week of production, we kept having this conversation. We are part of a cultural moment and we know we are, which is a very out of body experience… Any iconic black show, did they know? Because a lot of those when you look back at their history they were one the bubble, and I always think about Girlfriends and Living Single–– did they know that people would still be talki...

Amy Aniobi is a writer, director and Executive Producer on HBO’s Emmy-nominated comedy, “Insecure,” starring Issa Rae. “Insecure” will premiere its fifth and final season on October 24th with Aniobi behind the camera as director of the seventh episode (#507) to be broadcast on December 5th. She also served as showrunner/head writer/EP for season one of the HBO stand-up special “2 Dope Queens.” Und...

"The idea of writing memoir is about listening carefully. The way to find a story or, at least the story that needs to be told is that moment that you’re writing is the emerges from a deep kind of inner listening and finding the memories that are charged that don’t want to leave that have a certain kind of energy to them and, if you listen to them, and you allow them to be born in the writing, you...

Writer and producer Rebecca Walker has contributed to the global conversation about race, gender, power, and the evolution of the human family for three decades. Author and editor of seven bestselling books on multiracial identity , Black Cool and ambivalent motherhood, she has co-founded the Third Wave Fund, which makes grants to womxn and transgender youth working for social justice. For her eff...

“Take care of yourself. Bring that love and kindness and compassion into your dealings with self and others. And this world will change dramatically. I think you’ll find great reason for optimism and hope and viewing the way our world can go, but it absolutely involves a change from the status quo from our current direction.” Eben Alexander, MD, was an academic neurosurgeon for over 25 years, incl...

Eben Alexander, MD, was an academic neurosurgeon for over 25 years, including 15 years at the Brigham & Women’s Hospital, Children’s Hospital, and Harvard Medical School in Boston. He experienced a transcendental Near-Death Experience (NDE) during a week-long coma from an inexplicable brain infection that completely transformed his worldview. A pioneering scientist and modern thought leader in the...

“What frame, what scene, ultimately what story is going to capture the most emotion to make you feel something? Because those are the films that have always resonated the most with me. Those films that actually make you feel. They stop you and they make you feel and make you think. They really jar you.” Director of photography John Matyśiak’s career has focused on shooting internationally recogniz...

Director of photography John Matyśiak’s career has focused on shooting internationally recognized independent films, which have screened at over 50 festivals worldwide, including the Festival de Cannes. Matyśiak is widely admired for his arresting, contemporary images, which evocatively support and amplify his directors’ vision. He recently shot Meet Cute, a genre-defying dark comedy starring Pete...

“I went to the Amazon and I got a canoe and I started rowing into the forest. It was absolutely like going back into the 17th century! I went around for six months on my own and that was fantastic because in this part of the Colombian rainforest there were absolutely no roads, no towns, no electricity, no flowing water. You are with the indigenous group. They are all still in their loincloths. The...

Martin Von Hildebrand has dedicated the last five decades strengthening indigenous communities in the Colombian Amazon. During this time he obtained the recognition of their rights in the National Constitution, including the collective ownership of their land and the development of their governments. They now own 26 million hectares of continuous rain forest, their rights have been recognized, and...

“I like uncovering truth about behaviour, about history. I think all artists are attracted to unveiling truth. I think it’s a mirror of our society, of our world. It’s the soul of our world.” Jim Jermanok is an award-winning writer, director, producer author and speaker based in NY. He is currently directing and producing a feature documentary about the life and art of Oscar-winning actor Martin L...

Jim Jermanok is an award-winning writer, director, producer author and speaker based in NY. He is currently directing and producing a feature documentary about the life and art of Oscar-winning actor Martin Landau.  Jermanok wrote and produced the highly acclaimed romantic comedy, Passionada . His  film Em won the Grand Jury Prize at the Seattle International Film Festival and the Criter...

“One of the things I’ve noticed is that a lot of those younger people are actually much nicer than they need to be. And they have to realize that this is going to be your world. It turns out the way you want to make it and so you should be thinking now about what you want out of this. What do you want that world to be? Do not wait around until the two generations beyond you have gone ahead and don...

Mike Pondsmith is an accomplished roleplaying, tabletop, and video game designer. He is best known for his work with the publisher R. Talsorian Games where he developed the majority of the company’s roleplaying games since its founding in 1982. He is credited as the author of several tabletop roleplaying games such as Mekton, Cyberpunk, and Castle Falkenstein and was recently involved with creatin...

“The problem doesn’t really reside there. The problem is that people have gotten used to thinking about water as a technical issue that can be solved by somebody sitting in a room somewhere with a white coat. The reality is that the history of water shows that this is probably the most political and salient issue of society–How we share the resources that make it possible for us to live is a funda...

Giulio Boccaletti, Ph. D., is a globally recognized expert on natural resource security and environmental sustainability. Trained as a physicist and climate scientist, he holds a doctorate from Princeton University, where he was a NASA Earth Systems Science Fellow. He has been a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a partner of McKinsey & Company, and the chief str...

“All the themes are very contemporary. I think what moves this story is the search for instantaneous celebrity. That’s what the girls are all about, Roxie and Velma. They want to be famous. Of course everything that you cited, corruption, crimes, the press focusing on sensational stories–it’s all there. And I think that’s why the public relates so much to it.” Paulo Szot won the Tony as Best Leadi...

Paulo Szot won the Tony as Best Leading Actor in a Musical for his Broadway debut at Emile de Becque in the 2008 Tony-winning revival of South Pacific. This performance also netted him Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, and Theatre World awards. Szot’s opera credits include performances at the Metropolitan, Scala di Milano, Paris Opera, Carnegie Hall, and others. He’s currently starring as Billy Fl...

“That’s just always been something that’s been inspiring to me which is helping people from the wrong side of the tracks, the misunderstood, the addicted, helping people step into their power and believe in themselves.” Jessa Reed is a comedian and host of her own podcast called Awakening Orientation Dept. She describes herself as an 8th dimensional being disguised as a comedian. Reluctantly shari...

Jessa Reed is a comedian and host of her own podcast called Awakening Orientation Dept. She describes herself as an 8th dimensional being disguised as a comedian. Reluctantly sharing pointers for “life in the Matrix”. She is also the host of her other podcast Soberish . Jessa has been featured on Comedy Central, This Is Not Happening, and more. She’s a bridge between worlds, a storyteller, a “gala...

“We’re not waiting for the disasters to happen. They have happened. They are happening, and the disasters aren’t natural. They involve climate, but the disasters are very much made by the conditions of capitalist accumulation. We are not going to be able to grapple with the challenges of planetary crisis with the thinking that created planetary crisis.” Jason W. Moore is an environmental historian...

Jason W. Moore is an environmental historian, historical geographer, and professor of sociology at Binghamton University.  He is author or editor, most recently, of Capitalism in the Web of Life , Anthropocene or Capitalocene? Nature, History, and the Crisis of Capitalism , and, with Raj Patel, A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things . His books and essays on environmental history, capit...

“I’m grateful for the fact that through my work I’ve had a lot of opportunities to go to places that a lot of people just simply won’t ever get a chance to go. I like having those opportunities to try to share with people what that’s like. I honestly had no idea I would ever be here. I’m from a working-class background, didn’t have a huge amount of opportunities but now I can and that’s one thing...