What Do We Do with the One Life We’re Given? - Scientists, Writers, Philosophers & Changemakers Share their Stories
In this time of rapid technological change, how do we hold onto our humanity? How do stories, traditions, and community help us find meaning in loss and face an uncertain future? How can science, art, and spirituality open new pathways to understanding ourselves and the human experience?PAUL SHRIVASTAVA (Co-President of The Club of Rome) discusses the need for a holistic, eco-civilizational future, emphasizing that science, technology, and economics are important but not the whole picture. He urges us to design our own lives and livelihoods to meet diverse ecological futures, and later highlights the importance of embodied, emotional, and spiritual learning as essential to evolving human consciousness in a technologically dominated world.BAYO AKOMOLAFE (Philosopher, Psychologist, Writer & Founder of the Emergence Network) shares a deeply personal story about the loss of his father, describing how it forced him to mature quickly and become the breadwinner for his family. He reflects on the lessons learned from his children, especially his autistic son, who teaches him about grace, possibility, and futurity.MICHEL FORST (Human Rights Advocate & the UN Special Rapporteur on Environmental Defenders) explores how theology and meditation serve as ongoing sources of inspiration, shaping his values and career choices in human rights advocacy.DR. GUY LESCHZINER(Neurologist & Author of The Nocturnal Brain, The Man Who Tasted Words & other books; Consultant Neurologist & Professor at King's College London) analyzes the concept of free will, suggesting that much of what we do is influenced by factors beyond our control. He also discusses the importance of striving to make the world better, the role of sleep and dreams in memory and emotional processing, and the changing nature of mentorship and education.EIREN CAFFALL (Musician & Author of All the Water in the World) highlights the importance of preserving knowledge and human history, imagining how future generations might rebuild society after catastrophe by holding onto stories, traditions, and the hope of repair.DR. FERNANDO GARCÍA-MORENO (Neuroscientist, Ikerbasque Research Associate at the Achucarro Basque Centre for Neuroscience) explains that while our brains have not changed biologically for thousands of years, cultural evolution has accelerated. He emphasizes the unique human roles of generating and transmitting knowledge across generations.NATASHA HAKIMI ZAPATA (Journalist, Author of Another World Is Possible: Lessons for America From Around the Globe) shares her inspiration from the generosity and hope she encounters in others, and describes how connecting with nature—especially bodies of water—reinforces the importance of conservation policies that integrate human communities into ecosystems.IRVIN WEATHERSBY JR. (Author of In Open Contempt) reflects on the influence of his church upbringing and family, especially his grandmother, on his writing and creative expression. He discusses the impact of music, particularly hip hop, and the importance of lyricism and cultural heritage in shaping his literary voice.To hear more from each guest, listen to their full interviews.Episode Websitewww.creativeprocess.info/podInstagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
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From 'Bee: Wild' to the 'Kiss the Ground' Regenerative Agriculture Documentary Trilogy - Highlights
"For the last two decades, I've made over 20 films about the environment, starting with oil and carbon emissions. Those films, Kiss the Ground and now Common Ground, talk about how we can stabilize the climate, reverse climate change, grow nutrient-dense food, and help farmers make a profit through biodiversity and regenerative practices and principles.There's incredible intelligence in nature; it knows how to be resilient. We thought we could do it better, and in trying to mechanize and industrialize the entire system, we created a linear system that doesn’t make sense. We’re growing animals to produce food that we can’t eat so that we can ship it halfway around the world. It’s a system that doesn’t work.The way to heal, regenerate, stabilize the climate, and reverse climate change is literally one inch and one acre at a time—through communities waking up to the power of soil and biodiversity to sequester carbon for all of us. The oceans can’t handle any more carbon absorption; they’re acidifying and heating up. We need to take the carbon we’ve emitted and put it back into the soil. When we do that, we create thriving ecosystems, biodiversity, and water infiltration, which massively reduces the risks from flooding. It helps reverse desertification and staves off droughts by retaining water like a sponge. Resiliency comes from having genetic diversity rather than just one of everything."Today, we explore the work of a filmmaker whose lens is consistently turned toward the most critical issues facing our planet. Rebecca Tickell, in collaboration with her husband Josh Tickell, has created a powerful cinematic catalog of films that are not merely observations, but catalysts for change. They've taken on the complexities of our energy systems, the deep-seated problems within our food supply, and now, with her latest work, Bee: Wild, they explore the essential, fragile, and often unseen world of pollinators.Their film Kiss the Ground sparked a global conversation about regenerative agriculture, leading to tangible shifts in policy and public understanding. Common Ground continued this exploration, unraveling the intricate web of our food systems. Now, with Bee: Wild, narrated by Ellie Goulding and executive produced by Angelina Jolie,Rebecca brings her characteristic blend of journalistic rigor, personal narrative, and solutions-driven storytelling to the urgent plight of bees, asking us to reconsider our relationship with the natural world.Episode Websitewww.creativeprocess.info/podInstagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
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All About Bees, Soil & Regeneration with Documentary Filmmaker REBECCA TICKELL
“I didn't really appreciate bees until I became a farmer, and then I started to understand how essential bees are for our food. They pollinate 70% of our food, and that feeds 90% of the world. There's a whole world of insects that creates the color in our food; it's what creates the flavor in our food. It's part of our biodiversity, and it's essential for human life on Earth to protect and understand how to protect these bees and pollinators.If you look at the COP, the Conference of the Parties, they haven't even been talking about soil regeneration at all, and they've been holding these conferences in oil-rich countries, then talking about reducing carbon emissions. Soil has the power, through photosynthesis, to draw down carbon from the atmosphere. It's called biosequestration. It takes that carbon down into the roots, and then it turns it into healthy humus. That is the food for life in the soil. It needs that carbon. And so that is the purpose of plants. They breathe in the carbon and breathe out the oxygen. As we've been watching carbon levels increase in our atmosphere, we've been watching the ocean try to absorb as much of it as it can and become acidified as a result, leading to great losses to our ocean habitat and coral reefs.We've forgotten that simple tool of the solution that's right beneath our feet called soil health and soil regeneration. Not only does it draw down carbon, it's the only place we can put that teraton of carbon that we've emitted. There's only one place for it, and it's in the soil. So why isn't that the main conversation of every climate conversation? You not only bring the soil back to life, but you are creating nutrient-dense food. You're giving plants the ability to work in symbiosis with the soil that it co-evolved with. That then allows for it not only to be resilient and have a strong immune system, but also to absorb nutrition, which, in turn, we eat and absorb that nutrition. Like I said, we're a reflection of the soil.”Today, we explore the work of a filmmaker whose lens is consistently turned toward the most critical issues facing our planet. Rebecca Tickell, in collaboration with her husband Josh Tickell, has created a powerful cinematic catalog of films that are not merely observations, but catalysts for change. They've taken on the complexities of our energy systems, the deep-seated problems within our food supply, and now, with her latest work, Bee: Wild, they explore the essential, fragile, and often unseen world of pollinators.Their film Kiss the Ground sparked a global conversation about regenerative agriculture, leading to tangible shifts in policy and public understanding. Common Ground continued this exploration, unraveling the intricate web of our food systems. Now, with Bee: Wild, narrated by Ellie Goulding and executive produced by Angelina Jolie, Rebecca brings her characteristic blend of journalistic rigor, personal narrative, and solutions-driven storytelling to the urgent plight of bees, asking us to reconsider our relationship with the natural world.Episode Websitewww.creativeprocess.info/podInstagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
“If we look at the entire history of the human experience, if you saw some text or you heard some spoken language, you could 100 percent reliably infer that there was a human who created that. Our experience of having that text or that image generated for us is very akin to the experience of a magic trick, and we sort of pre-subconsciously want to attribute some kind of intelligence to what's going on on the other side.At the core of the work is that sense of curiosity, that sense of joy, that sense of beauty, and that sense of learning. I've been fortunate to have all kinds of strange and interesting experiences, whether that's seeing weird things in the sky over secret military bases in the middle of the Nevada desert, going scuba diving and finding internet cables on the bottom of the ocean, or tracking spy satellites in the sky and being able to predict when they'll appear in a flash against the backdrop of stars. The world around us is extraordinary and embodied, right? It is not on screens, and I’m very privileged to have that be so much a part of my process.”Trevor Paglen is an artist whose work makes the invisible visible, whether he's photographing secret government sites from miles away or revealing the hidden infrastructures of mass surveillance. He's a geographer by training, and he combines investigative journalism with his art practice to explore the hidden power structures of our time, including military technology and artificial intelligence. His work has been exhibited in major museums around the world, and he's also an award-winning author. His exhibitions, like 'The Black Sites' and 'Limit Tele-photography,’ have earned him critical acclaim, including a MacArthur Fellowship. He's recently opened a new exhibition at Pace Gallery in New York called Cardinals (Jun 26–Aug 15) which delves into the intriguing connections between UFO sightings, AI, and the spread of disinformation.Episode Websitewww.creativeprocess.info/podInstagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
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How AI is Shaping Perception, How Deception is Sculpting Our Reality with Artist TREVOR PAGLEN
“There's a word for this brain rot, right? I think that's very real. There are studies coming out now that are showing that the more and more of our cognitive labor we offload to AI systems, the less creative we become, the less critical we become, and the less of our human faculties for reason we use. There's something sad about that, but there’s also something dangerous about it because that leaves us very open to being manipulated. The surveillance capitalism kind of economy of extracting data from every possible moment of everyday life in order to extract value. The sensor systems that we're surrounded with are not simply passive devices that are recording us; they are increasingly becoming active sculptors of our experience of reality. Playing dirty.If we look at the entire history of the human experience, if you saw some text or you heard some spoken language, you could 100 percent reliably infer that there was a human who created that. Our experience of having that text or that image generated for us is very akin to the experience of a magic trick, and we sort of pre-subconsciously want to attribute some kind of intelligence to what's going on on the other side.I’m trying to think about these other media strategies, whether that's UFO photography, psychological operations, magic, or neuroscience, and take them seriously as contributing factors to the changing visual culture. With the collection at Pace Gallery, (New York, Jun 26–Aug 15) it was really just to put those images together and show them. They’re all photographed on film. A lot of them are photographed on instant film. They’re not images that are made with AI; they're not images that are photoshopped. What I really wanted to get at was thinking about the ways in which what we see in an image is very often what we're predisposed to see. I am playing with these mechanics of perception and proposing that as a way of thinking about images now.At the core of the work is that sense of curiosity, that sense of joy, that sense of beauty, and that sense of learning. I've been fortunate to have all kinds of strange and interesting experiences, whether that's seeing weird things in the sky over secret military bases in the middle of the Nevada desert, going scuba diving and finding internet cables on the bottom of the ocean, or tracking spy satellites in the sky and being able to predict when they'll appear in a flash against the backdrop of stars. The world around us is extraordinary and embodied, right? It is not on screens, and I’m very privileged to have that be so much a part of my process.”Trevor Paglen is an artist whose work makes the invisible visible, whether he's photographing secret government sites from miles away or revealing the hidden infrastructures of mass surveillance. He's a geographer by training, and he combines investigative journalism with his art practice to explore the hidden power structures of our time, including military technology and artificial intelligence. His work has been exhibited in major museums around the world, and he's also an award-winning author. His exhibitions, like 'The Black Sites' and 'Limit Tele-photography,’ have earned him critical acclaim, including a MacArthur Fellowship. He's recently opened a new exhibition at Pace Gallery in New York called Cardinals, which delves into the intriguing connections between UFO sightings, AI, and the spread of disinformation.Episode Websitewww.creativeprocess.info/podInstagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
Acerca de Spirituality & Mindfulness · The Creative Process: Spiritual Leaders, Mindfulness Experts, Great Thinkers, Authors, Elders, Artists Talk Faith & Religion
Spirituality & Mindfulness episodes of the popular The Creative Process podcast. We speak to spiritual leaders, mindfulness experts, great thinkers and authors, elders, artists, musicians and others discuss paths to faith, connection, and creativity. To listen to ALL arts, education & spirituality episodes of “The Creative Process · Arts, Culture & Society”, you’ll find our main podcast on Apple: tinyurl.com/thecreativepod, Spotify: tinyurl.com/thecreativespotify, or wherever you get your podcasts!
Exploring the fascinating minds of creative people. Conversations with writers, artists & creative thinkers across the Arts & STEM. We discuss their life, work & artistic practice. Winners of Oscar, Emmy, Tony, Pulitzer, leaders & public figures share real experiences & offer valuable insights. Notable guests and participating museums and organizations include: Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, Neil Patrick Harris, Smithsonian, Roxane Gay, Musée Picasso, EARTHDAY.ORG, Neil Gaiman, UNESCO, Joyce Carol Oates, Mark Seliger, Acropolis Museum, Hilary Mantel, Songwriters Hall of Fame, George Saunders, The New Museum, Lemony Snicket, Pritzker Architecture Prize, Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Serpentine Galleries, Joe Mantegna, PETA, Greenpeace, EPA, Morgan Library & Museum, and many others.
The interviews are hosted by founder and creative educator Mia Funk with the participation of students, universities, and collaborators from around the world. These conversations are also part of our traveling exhibition. www.creativeprocess.info
For The Creative Process podcasts from Seasons 1, 2, 3 visit: tinyurl.com/creativepod or creativeprocess.info/interviews-page-1, which has our complete directory of interviews, transcripts, artworks, and details about ways to get involved.
INSTAGRAM: @creativeprocesspodcast
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