Philosophy, Ideas, Critical Thinking, Ethics & Morality: The Creative Process: Philosophers, Writers, Educators, Creative Thinkers, Spiritual Leaders, Environmentalists & Bioethicists

"I think people need to remember consciousness. I think it's the most central aspect of our existence. And I think we need to remember to appreciate that felt quality of experience and know what it is and know what it is not. So as we move forward and deliberate over the human future and grasp machine intelligence and see it increasing and improving, we need to understand what's distinctive about us. And I think having a better scientific and philosophical understanding of these questions is very important."Will AI become conscious? President Biden has just unveiled a new executive order on AI — the U.S. government’s first action of its kind — requiring new safety assessments, equity and civil rights guidance, and research on AI’s impact on the labor market. With this governance in place, can tech companies be counted on to do the right thing for humanity? Susan Schneider is a philosopher, artificial intelligence expert, and founding director of the Center for the Future Mind at Florida Atlantic University. She is author of Artificial You: AI and the Future of Your Mind, Science Fiction and Philosophy: From Time Travel to Superintelligence, and The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness. She held the NASA Chair with NASA and the Distinguished Scholar Chair at the Library of Congress. She is now working on projects related to advancements in AI policy and technology, drawing from neuroscience research and philosophical developments and writing a new book on the shape of intelligent systems.www.fau.edu/artsandletters/philosophy/susan-schneider/index www.fau.edu/future-mind/www.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Will AI become conscious? President Biden has just unveiled a new executive order on AI — the U.S. government’s first action of its kind — requiring new safety assessments, equity and civil rights guidance, and research on AI’s impact on the labor market. With this governance in place, can tech companies be counted on to do the right thing for humanity? Susan Schneider is a philosopher, artificial intelligence expert, and founding director of the Center for the Future Mind at Florida Atlantic University. She is author of Artificial You: AI and the Future of Your Mind, Science Fiction and Philosophy: From Time Travel to Superintelligence, and The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness. She held the NASA Chair with NASA and the Distinguished Scholar Chair at the Library of Congress. She is now working on projects related to advancements in AI policy and technology, drawing from neuroscience research and philosophical developments and writing a new book on the shape of intelligent systems."I think people need to remember consciousness. I think it's the most central aspect of our existence. And I think we need to remember to appreciate that felt quality of experience and know what it is and know what it is not. So as we move forward and deliberate over the human future and grasp machine intelligence and see it increasing and improving, we need to understand what's distinctive about us. And I think having a better scientific and philosophical understanding of these questions is very important."www.fau.edu/artsandletters/philosophy/susan-schneider/index www.fau.edu/future-mind/www.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

What will the future look like? What are the risks and opportunities of AI? What role can we play in designing the future we want to live in?Voices of philosophers, futurists, AI experts, science fiction authors, activists, and lawyers reflecting on AI, technology, and the Future of Humanity. All voices in this episode are from our interviews for The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast.Voices on this episode are:DR. SUSAN SCHNEIDER American philosopher and artificial intelligence expert. She is the founding director of the Center for the Future Mind at Florida Atlantic University. Author of Artificial You: AI and the Future of Your Mind, Science Fiction and Philosophy: From Time Travel to Superintelligence, and The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness. www.fau.edu/artsandletters/philosophy/susan-schneider/indexNICK BOSTROM Founder and Director of the Future of Humanity Institute, University of Oxford, Philosopher, Author of NYTimes Bestseller Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies. Bostrom’s academic work has been translated into more than 30 languages. He is a repeat main TED speaker and has been on Foreign Policy’s Top 100 Global Thinkers list twice and was included in Prospect’s World Thinkers list, the youngest person in the top 15. https://nickbostrom.com https://www.fhi.ox.ac.ukBRIAN DAVID JOHNSONFuturist in residence at Arizona State University’s Center for Science and the Imagination, a professor in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and the Director of the ASU Threatcasting Lab. He is Author of The Future You: How to Create the Life You Always Wanted, Science Fiction Prototyping: Designing the Future with Science Fiction, 21st Century Robot: The Dr. Simon Egerton Stories, Humanity in the Machine: What Comes After Greed?, Screen Future: The Future of Entertainment, Computing, and the Devices We Love.https://csi.asu.edu/people/brian-david-johnsonDEAN SPADE Professor at SeattleU’s School of Law, Author of Mutual Aid, Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next), and Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law.www.deanspade.netALLEN STEELEScience Fiction Author. He has been awarded a number of Hugos, Asimov's Readers, and Locus Awards. of the Coyote Trilogy, Arkwright, and other books. His books include Coyote Trilogy and Arkwright. He is a former member of the Board of Directors and Board of Advisors for the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. He has also served as an advisor for the Space Frontier Foundation. In 2001, he testified before the Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics of the U.S. House of Representatives in hearings regarding space exploration in the 21st century.www.allensteele.comwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

"You start the film with: Who is David Byrne? And he's a little taken aback by the question.""So who are you? What is your sense of self and consciousness?"Ian Moubayed: I think, as David Byrne said, "People are not static. We're ever-evolving." And so I'm not the same person that I was when I was a kid. And so, right now, I'm a filmmaker, I'm a New Yorker, but we're constantly changing, and I'm sure I'll be different in five years from now. John Tracey: To me, it evokes this question: Is who you are communicable? And whether it is possible for other people, beyond maybe one or two or none, to know that? And it's funny because the Theater of Mind show plays with that and, without giving too much away, each time you go through the show, it's not going to be the same experience as you had maybe the last time.Nicholas Bruckman: Yeah, it's an uncomfortable question to be confronted with. And I think there's the me that's on this podcast right now. That's maybe more presentational than me over a beer with Ian or with my family or partner. And going back to the meta-storytelling themes, there's a big question about documentary truth when doing portraits of characters. And is this the real version of that person? And I think when you do these kinds of films, you're only able to capture one of those selves.Nicholas Bruckman is founder and CEO of People's Television, a production studio and creative agency that produces independent films, and video storytelling for brands. Collaborating with the The Simons Foundation through their 'Science Sandbox' Initiative, he directed Theater of the Mind, which takes audiences into the creative inner workings of Musician and Artist David Byrne’s brain, showcasing Byrne’s immersive theater performance, which attempts to conceptualize the idea of our sense of self and how malleable the mind truly is.He directed the award-winning healthcare justice documentary Not Going Quietly, executive produced by Mark and Jay Duplass.John Tracey is Program Director of Science, Society and Culture projects at the Simons Foundation whose mission is to advance the frontiers of research in mathematics and the basic sciences to unravel the mysteries of the universe. The foundation champions basic science through grant funding, support for research and public engagement.Ian Moubayed started his career as a cinematographer, collaborating with Emmy, Peabody, and Oscar-winning filmmakers. His work includes Netflix’s The Great Hack, NBC Peacock’s The Sit-In: Harry Belafonte Hosts the Tonight Show, and HBO’s  The Vow.www.youtube.com/@sciencesandboxwww.davidbyrne.comhttps://nickny.com/biohttps://www.simonsfoundation.org/people/john-tracey/https://peoples.tv/director/ian-moubayed/www.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

What is consciousness? The mind produces thoughts, sensations, perception, emotions. How can these inner felt experiences be produced within the darkness of the human skull?Nicholas Bruckman is founder and CEO of People's Television, a production studio and creative agency that produces independent films, and video storytelling for brands. Collaborating with the The Simons Foundation through their 'Science Sandbox' Initiative, he directed Theater of the Mind, which takes audiences into the creative inner workings of Musician and Artist David Byrne’s brain, showcasing Byrne’s immersive theater performance, which attempts to conceptualize the idea of our sense of self and how malleable the mind truly is.He directed the award-winning healthcare justice documentary Not Going Quietly, executive produced by Mark and Jay Duplass.John Tracey is Program Director of Science, Society and Culture projects at the Simons Foundation whose mission is to advance the frontiers of research in mathematics and the basic sciences to unravel the mysteries of the universe. The foundation champions basic science through grant funding, support for research and public engagement.Ian Moubayed started his career as a cinematographer, collaborating with Emmy, Peabody, and Oscar-winning filmmakers. His work includes Netflix’s The Great Hack, NBC Peacock’s The Sit-In: Harry Belafonte Hosts the Tonight Show, and HBO’s  The Vow."You start the film with: Who is David Byrne? And he's a little taken aback by the question.""So who are you? What is your sense of self and consciousness?"Ian Moubayed: I think, as David Byrne said, "People are not static. We're ever-evolving." And so I'm not the same person that I was when I was a kid. And so, right now, I'm a filmmaker, I'm a New Yorker, but we're constantly changing, and I'm sure I'll be different in five years from now. John Tracey: To me, it evokes this question: Is who you are communicable? And whether it is possible for other people, beyond maybe one or two or none, to know that? And it's funny because the Theater of Mind show plays with that and, without giving too much away, each time you go through the show, it's not going to be the same experience as you had maybe the last time.Nicholas Bruckman: Yeah, it's an uncomfortable question to be confronted with. And I think there's the me that's on this podcast right now. That's maybe more presentational than me over a beer with Ian or with my family or partner. And going back to the meta-storytelling themes, there's a big question about documentary truth when doing portraits of characters. And is this the real version of that person? And I think when you do these kinds of films, you're only able to capture one of those selves.www.youtube.com/@sciencesandboxwww.davidbyrne.comhttps://nickny.com/biohttps://www.simonsfoundation.org/people/john-tracey/https://peoples.tv/director/ian-moubayed/www.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu and Azeezah Kanji talk with Joseph M. Pierce and Liza Black about the vast number of questions that are opened up when people pretend to be Native when they in fact are not. These cases take on a specific significance when such false identifications allow these people access to privilege and positions of authority. When these falsehoods are found out, they place scholars and activists who have allied themselves with these people in extremely difficult positions, and unfortunately make institutions like colleges and universities the final arbiters of how “justice” is to be served. Finally, these cases put even more pressure on Native peoples to imagine and practice inventing identities that are both rooted and at the same time open to a broader set of possibilities.Liza Black is a citizen of Cherokee Nation. Recently on fellowship at UCLA, Black is currently completing her book manuscript: How to Get Away with Murder: A Transnational History of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, contracted with Johns Hopkins University Press for an anticipated publication date of 2026. How to Get Away with Murder provides six case studies of women, girls, and two spirits disappeared or murdered over the course of the 20th century. Black is an Associate Professor of History and Native American and Indigenous Studies. In 2020, Black published Picturing Indians: Native Americans in Film, a deeply archival book making the argument that mid-century Native people navigated the complexities of inhabiting filmic representations of themselves as a means of survivance. Black has received several research grants including the Ford pre-, doc and post-doc fellowships; the Institute of American Cultures at UCLA fellowship; and the Cherokee Nation Higher Education Grant.Joseph M. Pierce is Associate Professor in the Department of Hispanic Languages and Literature at Stony Brook University. His research focuses on the intersections of kinship, gender, sexuality, and race in Latin America, 19th century literature and culture, queer studies, Indigenous studies, and hemispheric approaches to citizenship and belonging. He is the author of Argentine Intimacies: Queer Kinship in an Age of Splendor, 1890-1910 (SUNY Press, 2019) and co-editor of Políticas del amor: Derechos sexuales y escrituras disidentes en el Cono Sur (Cuarto Propio, 2018) as well as the 2021 special issue of GLQ, “Queer/Cuir Américas: Translation, Decoloniality, and the Incommensurable.” His work has been published recently in Revista Hispánica Moderna, Critical Ethnic Studies, Latin American Research Review, and has also been featured in Indian Country Today. Along with S.J. Norman (Koori of Wiradjuri descent) he is co-curator of the performance series Knowledge of Wounds. He is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation.www.lizablack.comwww.josephmpierce.comwww.palumbo-liu.com https://speakingoutofplace.comhttps://twitter.com/palumboliu?s=20

"I just started reading Emerson, and I'm glad that I've gotten to it because he talks about history and says that folded into every person, if you think of this as a fractal situation, I was just reading about this and it blew my mind. There is the understanding and the containment of all of history, of all dreams, of all desires of all the furthest reaches of our minds and our accomplishments are folded into every person. And how astonishing is that? I mean, I'm so mad at people all the time about what a mess everything is. On the other hand, we are just astonishing. And we have so much potential. But we're also so misdirected by advertising, by product placement, by false desires - say, to get everybody addicted to corn syrup and then have them develop diabetes is really evil, in my opinion. So I'm just always swinging wildly between an appreciation at the amazement of the human spirit and humanity and its accomplishments and then frustration at the bad uses to which that's put."In this fractured world, how do the arts build community, understanding, and inspire change? How does art help us define who we are and our place in the world?April Gornik is known for her large scale landscape paintings which embrace the vastness of sea and sky. Her imagined landscapes, built up through a series of underpaintings are meditations on light and time. Her work is included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC. She is a director of the board of the Sag Harbor Cinema Arts Center and co-founded The Church arts, exhibition space, and creativity center, which is a sanctuary for visual, performing, literary artists, and other creatives. Together with her husband the artist Eric Fischl, they are at the center of Sag Harbour’s arts district, and in this episode, we’ll also hear from some of the talented artists they’ve brought to their stages.www.aprilgornik.comwww.thechurchsagharbor.orgwww.milesmcenery.com/exhibitions/april-gornik2https://sagharborcinema.org/www.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcastKimiko Ishizaka - Bach - Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1 - 01 Prelude No. 1 in C major, BWV 846Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain

In this fractured world, how do the arts build community, understanding, and inspire change? How does art help us define who we are and our place in the world?April Gornik is known for her large scale landscape paintings which embrace the vastness of sea and sky. Her imagined landscapes, built up through a series of underpaintings are meditations on light and time. Her work is included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC. She is a director of the board of the Sag Harbor Cinema Arts Center and co-founded The Church arts, exhibition space, and creativity center, which is a sanctuary for visual, performing, literary artists, and other creatives. Together with her husband the artist Eric Fischl, they are at the center of Sag Harbour’s arts district, and in this episode, we’ll also hear from some of the talented artists they’ve brought to their stages."I just started reading Emerson, and I'm glad that I've gotten to it because he talks about history and says that folded into every person, if you think of this as a fractal situation, I was just reading about this and it blew my mind. There is the understanding and the containment of all of history, of all dreams, of all desires of all the furthest reaches of our minds and our accomplishments are folded into every person. And how astonishing is that? I mean, I'm so mad at people all the time about what a mess everything is. On the other hand, we are just astonishing. And we have so much potential. But we're also so misdirected by advertising, by product placement, by false desires - say, to get everybody addicted to corn syrup and then have them develop diabetes is really evil, in my opinion. So I'm just always swinging wildly between an appreciation at the amazement of the human spirit and humanity and its accomplishments and then frustration at the bad uses to which that's put."www.aprilgornik.comwww.thechurchsagharbor.orgwww.milesmcenery.com/exhibitions/april-gornik2https://sagharborcinema.org/www.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcastKimiko Ishizaka - Bach - Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1 - 01 Prelude No. 1 in C major, BWV 846Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public DomainAdditional audio courtesy of Sag Harbor Cinema Arts Center.

"I think that the confidence that I'm talking about, in terms of allowing yourself to turn out something that isn't perfect and to still believe in yourself, I think that comes from my love of science and my understanding of the scientific process. So many experiments fail the first time or the second time or the third time. Also, so many startup companies in Silicon Valley fail and then they innovate and they innovate and they innovate and they become big hits. And I think it's the difference between what's called a fixed mindset versus a growth mindset where people think that they either have a fixed amount of talent or they believe that they have a growing amount of talent where more practice and more input can affect the outcome. And I don't believe that human beings have fixed talent. I believe that human beings have growing talent and that they shouldn't be so fearful of just trying and learning and growing."Lindsey Anderson Beer wrote and executive produced the hit Netflix original dramedy Sierra Burgess is a Loser before making the jump to direct the horror genre with Pet Sematary: Bloodlines, starring Jackson White and Natalie Alyn Lind. The story is based on an untold chapter of Stephen King's self-proclaimed, scariest property of all time. Up next, she will helm Paramount’s Sleepy Hollow reboot as the writer, director, and producer. She also has several projects in various phases of development and production, including Disney's live action remake of Bambi, New Line's Hello Kitty, and Universal's Fast and Furious spinoff, which she wrote with Geneva Robertson-Dworet. Under her production banner Lab Brew, Lord of the Flies will be directed by Luca Guadagnino and written by Patrick Ness for Warner Bros.www.imdb.com/name/nm5170222/www.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Lindsey Anderson Beer wrote and executive produced the hit Netflix original dramedy Sierra Burgess is a Loser before making the jump to direct the horror genre with Pet Sematary: Bloodlines, starring Jackson White and Natalie Alyn Lind. The story is based on an untold chapter of Stephen King's self-proclaimed, scariest property of all time. Up next, she will helm Paramount’s Sleepy Hollow reboot as the writer, director, and producer. She also has several projects in various phases of development and production, including Disney's live action remake of Bambi, New Line's Hello Kitty, and Universal's Fast and Furious spinoff, which she wrote with Geneva Robertson-Dworet. Under her production banner Lab Brew, Lord of the Flies will be directed by Luca Guadagnino and written by Patrick Ness for Warner Bros."I think that the confidence that I'm talking about, in terms of allowing yourself to turn out something that isn't perfect and to still believe in yourself, I think that comes from my love of science and my understanding of the scientific process. So many experiments fail the first time or the second time or the third time. Also, so many startup companies in Silicon Valley fail and then they innovate and they innovate and they innovate and they become big hits. And I think it's the difference between what's called a fixed mindset versus a growth mindset where people think that they either have a fixed amount of talent or they believe that they have a growing amount of talent where more practice and more input can affect the outcome. And I don't believe that human beings have fixed talent. I believe that human beings have growing talent and that they shouldn't be so fearful of just trying and learning and growing."www.imdb.com/name/nm5170222/www.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast