Sustainability, Climate Change, Renewable Energy, Politics, Activism, Biodiversity, Carbon Footprint, Wildlife, Regenerative Agriculture, Circular Economy, Extinction, Net-Zero · One Planet Podcast

How does the place we’re born influence our beliefs? What would it be like to live in a world run by women, where it’s perpetually night, and the dead can speak to the living? In this episode, we discuss the new season of HBO’s True Detective: Night Country with award-winning cinematographer Florian Hoffmeister.Known for his work on Tár, Pachinko, Great Expectations, and most recently, the new season of True Detective, he's also known for his collaboration with director Terence Davies on the films The Deep Blue Sea and A Quiet Passion. His work on Great Expectations earned him an Primetime Emmy and a BAFTA in cinematography, and in 2022, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Cinematography for his work on Tár.“I drove for like a half an hour into absolute nothingness, and I left the car. It was three o'clock in the morning. It was minus 17 degrees and it was absolutely still. I've never experienced stillness such as that. I mean, it's like you feel like you can feel your atoms move or not move because it's so cold. And the sky is full of the Northern Lights. So you are already in a remote place, but you want to go further. And I think maybe those themes of going out into the wilderness are motivated by the urge to connect. And I think Issa López has really incorporated it beautifully into the script. And the show tells of this great disconnect between people. So not only are we disconnected from our environment, but we are disconnected from each other. When we were shooting I sometimes thought, there is this beauty about collaboration between a director, cinematographer, and production designer, and all these key people. And I'm more and more convinced there's some kind of conscious thing happening. And there's also something subconscious happening.”http://florianhoffmeister.de/ www.hbo.com/true-detective www.imdb.com/title/tt2356777/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1www.creativeprocess.info www.oneplanetpodcast.org IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcastPhoto credits: Michele K. Short / HBO

In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu and Azeezah Kanji talk with eminent Anishinaabe legal theorist John Borrows and philosopher Paco Calvo about how we might learn about, learn with, and learn from our plant companions on this earth. Plants show signs of communication and of learning. They produce and respond to many of the same neurochemicals as humans, including anesthetics. They share resources with one another, and when under threat, emit signals of warning and of pain. While Barrows and Calvo both urge us to listen to the Earth, during this conversation we discover that these two thinkers are often listening for different things. The discussion reveals fascinating points of difference and commonality. And in terms of the latter, the point both John and Paco insist upon is that we maintain our separation from other beings at our peril and at a loss.Dr. John Borrows, BA, MA, JD, LLM, PhD, LLD, FRSC, is Canada's pre-eminent legal scholar and a global leader in the field of Indigenous legal traditions and Aboriginal rights. John holds the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Law at the University of Victoria as well as the Law Foundation Chair in Aboriginal Justice and Governance.Paco Calvo is a renowned cognitive scientist and philosopher of biology, known for his groundbreaking research in the field of plant cognition and intelligence. He is a professor at the University of Murcia in Spain, where he leads the Minimal Intelligence Lab (MINT Lab), focusing on the study of minimal cognition in plants. Calvo’s interdisciplinary work combines insights from biology, philosophy, and cognitive science to explore the fascinating world of plant behavior, decision-making, and problem-solving.https://www.uvic.ca/law/facultystaff/facultydirectory/borrows.phphttps://www.um.es/mintlab/index.php/about/people/paco-calvo/00:02 Introduction to Plant Communication00:21 Conversation with John Burrows and Paco Calvo01:11 Challenging Pre-existing Concepts about Intelligence01:37 Exploring Plant Intelligence02:32 Understanding Human Intelligence04:47 Challenging Orthodox Cognitive Psychology05:34 Ecological Approach to Intelligence07:26 The Role of Indigenous Knowledge in Understanding Intelligence09:11 Understanding Anishinaabe Law and Ethical Traditions12:09 The Role of Treaties in Indigenous Peoples' Relationships with Nature38:51 The Role of Education in Understanding Ecological Cognition45:28 The Importance of Experiential Learning and Literacy Beyond Books46:24 The Power of Ignorance and Openness to Knowledge50:00 The Ethical Obligations to the More Than Human World01:07:43 The Role of Religion in Understanding Our Relationship with the More Than Human World01:16:16 The Importance of Slowing Down to Appreciate Plant Behavior01:17:39 The Co-Evolutionary Perspective of Lifewww.palumbo-liu.com https://speakingoutofplace.comhttps://twitter.com/palumboliu?s=20

"So we get to a certain stage in Western society, I'd never call it a culture, but a society trying to figure out its birth and how to become mature. Whatever it's doing it has slowed down natural relationships. It took us out of the land, put us into factories, put us into institutions where you can learn a trade. It kept giving you jobs that had nothing to do with Earth. And so if you're living, you're working in this box called a factory, and the farmers out there are becoming less and less. Even the farming, the ideas of farming are foreign. And I think that when the technical language came out, we dropped another natural umbilical cord to and with Earth. And so we severed that relationship. So you can see this gradual severing of relationships to Earth with Earth, that now we have to have retreats to learn empathy again. We do all these Westernized versions of piecing ourselves back together and as Indigenous folks where we're getting that way now, but a lot of traditional people don't need that. We don't need environmental movements. You know, Wild Earth is a foreign concept. There are a lot of words that organizations use to rationalize why we need to teach how to be human beings. So you see technology, the Industrial Machine Age taught us this language of disconnection, taught us things like plug-in, get connected. You know, all these words that came along to fill that information that could be controlled by authority now in the Western process. John Gatto, who won the New York State Teacher of the Year award in 2008, upon his retirement, specifically said, 'It takes 12 years to learn how to become reflexive to authority.' And who is the authority? Who is controlling information? Who's controlling education? Who's controlling knowledge? And now they want to control Wisdom, and all wisdom means is common sense.”Tiokasin Ghosthorse is a member of the Cheyenne River Lakota Nation of South Dakota and has a long history with Indigenous activism and advocacy. Tiokasin is the Founder, Host and Executive Producer of “First Voices Radio” (formerly “First Voices Indigenous Radio”) for the last 31 years in New York City and Seattle/Olympia, Washington. In 2016, he received a Nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize from the International Institute of Peace Studies and Global Philosophy. Other recent recognitions include: Native Arts and Cultures Foundation National Fellowship in Music (2016), National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship Nominee (2017), Indigenous Music Award Nominee for Best Instrumental Album (2019) and National Native American Hall of Fame Nominee (2018, 2019). He also was recently nominated for “Nominee for the 2020 Americans for the Arts Johnson Fellowship for Artists Transforming Communities”. He is the Founder of Akantu Intelligence.https://firstvoicesindigenousradio.org/ https://akantuintelligence.orgwww.creativeprocess.info www.oneplanetpodcast.org IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcastSongs featured on this episode are “Butterfly Against the Wind” And from the album Somewhere In There “Spatial Moon” and “Sunrise Moon” Composed by Tiokasin Ghosthorse and Alex Alexander Music on this episode is courtesy of Tiokasin Ghosthorse.

How can we learn to speak the language of the Earth and cultivate our intuitive intelligence?Tiokasin Ghosthorse is a member of the Cheyenne River Lakota Nation of South Dakota and has a long history with Indigenous activism and advocacy. Tiokasin is the Founder, Host and Executive Producer of “First Voices Radio” (formerly “First Voices Indigenous Radio”) for the last 31 years in New York City and Seattle/Olympia, Washington. In 2016, he received a Nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize from the International Institute of Peace Studies and Global Philosophy. Other recent recognitions include: Native Arts and Cultures Foundation National Fellowship in Music (2016), National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship Nominee (2017), Indigenous Music Award Nominee for Best Instrumental Album (2019) and National Native American Hall of Fame Nominee (2018, 2019). He also was recently nominated for “Nominee for the 2020 Americans for the Arts Johnson Fellowship for Artists Transforming Communities”. He is the Founder of Akantu Intelligence."So we get to a certain stage in Western society, I'd never call it a culture, but a society trying to figure out its birth and how to become mature. Whatever it's doing it has slowed down natural relationships. It took us out of the land, put us into factories, put us into institutions where you can learn a trade. It kept giving you jobs that had nothing to do with Earth. And so if you're living, you're working in this box called a factory, and the farmers out there are becoming less and less. Even the farming, the ideas of farming are foreign. And I think that when the technical language came out, we dropped another natural umbilical cord to and with Earth. And so we severed that relationship. So you can see this gradual severing of relationships to Earth with Earth, that now we have to have retreats to learn empathy again. We do all these Westernized versions of piecing ourselves back together and as Indigenous folks where we're getting that way now, but a lot of traditional people don't need that. We don't need environmental movements. You know, Wild Earth is a foreign concept. There are a lot of words that organizations use to rationalize why we need to teach how to be human beings. So you see technology, the Industrial Machine Age taught us this language of disconnection, taught us things like plug-in, get connected. You know, all these words that came along to fill that information that could be controlled by authority now in the Western process. John Gatto, who won the New York State Teacher of the Year award in 2008, upon his retirement, specifically said, 'It takes 12 years to learn how to become reflexive to authority.' And who is the authority? Who is controlling information? Who's controlling education? Who's controlling knowledge? And now they want to control Wisdom, and all wisdom means is common sense.”https://firstvoicesindigenousradio.org/ https://akantuintelligence.orgwww.creativeprocess.info www.oneplanetpodcast.org IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcastSongs featured on this episode are “Butterfly Against the Wind” And from the album Somewhere In There “Spatial Moon” and “Sunrise Moon” Composed by Tiokasin Ghosthorse and Alex Alexander Music on this episode is courtesy of Tiokasin Ghosthorse.

"This generation will say to us quite clearly 'past generations have messed everything up.' And now we're left with the devastating consequences. They're angry, and it's very difficult. How do you get human beings to invest in something that pays off 20 or 50 years down the road? And that's the difficulty. It's not clear that we as humans are capable of really tackling a problem that requires so much long-term thinking. Politicians want results within the same fiscal year, right? And so what do we do with things like climate change or investing in early childhood development?Again, the payoffs are enormous, but they happen 20 years down the line. So I think that my advice to all of us is to set up structures that are going to last and support these long-term goals. So not just one government that commits itself to slowing climate change, like the current US government. Structure organizations where that won't change over 20, 30, 50 years. How could we do that? Because otherwise, we're just going to have alternating governments with alternating sets of priorities. And an inadequate response to these bigger, longer-term problems."What makes a good life? How important are relationships in helping us lead happy and meaningful lives?Dr. Robert Waldinger is a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development at Massachusetts General Hospital, and cofounder of the Lifespan Research Foundation. Dr. Waldinger received his AB from Harvard College and his MD from Harvard Medical School. He is a practicing psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, and he directs a psychotherapy teaching program for Harvard psychiatry residents. He is also a Zen master (Roshi) and teaches meditation in New England and around the world. His TED Talk about the Harvard study “What makes a good life?” has been viewed more than 42 million times and is one of the 10 most watched TED Talks ever. He is co-author of The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness.https://www.robertwaldinger.com/https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Good-Life/Robert-Waldinger/9781982166694https://www.adultdevelopmentstudy.org/ https://www.lifespanresearch.orgwww.creativeprocess.info www.oneplanetpodcast.org IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

What makes a good life? How important are relationships in helping us lead happy and meaningful lives?Dr. Robert Waldinger is a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development at Massachusetts General Hospital, and cofounder of the Lifespan Research Foundation. Dr. Waldinger received his AB from Harvard College and his MD from Harvard Medical School. He is a practicing psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, and he directs a psychotherapy teaching program for Harvard psychiatry residents. He is also a Zen master (Roshi) and teaches meditation in New England and around the world. His TED Talk about the Harvard study “What makes a good life?” has been viewed more than 42 million times and is one of the 10 most watched TED Talks ever. He is co-author of The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness."This generation will say to us quite clearly 'past generations have messed everything up.' And now we're left with the devastating consequences. They're angry, and it's very difficult. How do you get human beings to invest in something that pays off 20 or 50 years down the road? And that's the difficulty. It's not clear that we as humans are capable of really tackling a problem that requires so much long-term thinking. Politicians want results within the same fiscal year, right? And so what do we do with things like climate change or investing in early childhood development?Again, the payoffs are enormous, but they happen 20 years down the line. So I think that my advice to all of us is to set up structures that are going to last and support these long-term goals. So not just one government that commits itself to slowing climate change, like the current US government. Structure organizations where that won't change over 20, 30, 50 years. How could we do that? Because otherwise, we're just going to have alternating governments with alternating sets of priorities. And an inadequate response to these bigger, longer-term problems."https://www.robertwaldinger.com/https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Good-Life/Robert-Waldinger/9781982166694https://www.adultdevelopmentstudy.org/ https://www.lifespanresearch.orgwww.creativeprocess.info www.oneplanetpodcast.org IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

"I do think that the environment is a place where having more data will help us create better models for thinking about how climate change is going to affect life on Earth. And I agree with you, I think that we should be thinking about the now and life on Earth today and not doing harm going forward because I think it's important to live now and not in this projected future with regard to AI with the 'killer robots' but also with climate change with some of the horrible projections that people have put out there that might happen if we don't mitigate carbon production.So let's focus on creating solutions for today. Like, how are we going to get to net zero by 2050, for example, right? And so in some ways, data minimization as a standard or as a norm is really in my mind. And so when we think about other fields, if we think about climate science, for example, I don't know if I'd follow a data minimization model because I think we have a lot of data.Earlier this year, there was a lake in Ontario where they were able to pull some really important soil samples out to think about the dawn of the Anthropocene. And I think that's really important. That's a great discovery for thinking about the effects of human-driven climate change, but also it creates lots of data, more data for us to understand the process."Does privacy exist anymore? Or are humans just sets of data to be traded and sold?Wendy H. Wong is Professor of Political Science and Principal's Research Chair at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan. She is the author of two award-winning books: Internal Affairs: How the Structure of NGOs Transforms Human Rights and (with Sarah S. Stroup) The Authority Trap: Strategic Choices of International NGOs. Her latest book is We, the Data: Human Rights in the Digital Age.www.wendyhwong.comhttps://mitpress.mit.edu/author/wendy-h-wong-38397www.creativeprocess.info www.oneplanetpodcast.org IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Does privacy exist anymore? Or are humans just sets of data to be traded and sold?Wendy H. Wong is Professor of Political Science and Principal's Research Chair at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan. She is the author of two award-winning books: Internal Affairs: How the Structure of NGOs Transforms Human Rights and (with Sarah S. Stroup) The Authority Trap: Strategic Choices of International NGOs. Her latest book is We, the Data: Human Rights in the Digital Age."I do think that the environment is a place where having more data will help us create better models for thinking about how climate change is going to affect life on Earth. And I agree with you, I think that we should be thinking about the now and life on Earth today and not doing harm going forward because I think it's important to live now and not in this projected future with regard to AI with the 'killer robots' but also with climate change with some of the horrible projections that people have put out there that might happen if we don't mitigate carbon production.So let's focus on creating solutions for today. Like, how are we going to get to net zero by 2050, for example, right? And so in some ways, data minimization as a standard or as a norm is really in my mind. And so when we think about other fields, if we think about climate science, for example, I don't know if I'd follow a data minimization model because I think we have a lot of data.Earlier this year, there was a lake in Ontario where they were able to pull some really important soil samples out to think about the dawn of the Anthropocene. And I think that's really important. That's a great discovery for thinking about the effects of human-driven climate change, but also it creates lots of data, more data for us to understand the process."www.wendyhwong.comhttps://mitpress.mit.edu/author/wendy-h-wong-38397www.creativeprocess.info www.oneplanetpodcast.org IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

The more the science of intelligence (both human and artificial) advances, the more it holds the potential for great benefits and dangers to society.Max Bennett is the cofounder and CEO of Alby, a start-up that helps companies integrate large language models into their websites to create guided shopping and search experiences. Previously, Bennett was the cofounder and chief product offi­cer of Bluecore, one of the fastest growing companies in the U.S., providing AI technologies to some of the largest companies in the world. Bluecore has been featured in the annual Inc. 500 fastest growing com­panies, as well as Glassdoor’s 50 best places to work in the U.S. Bluecore was recently valued at over $1 bil­lion. Bennett holds several patents for AI technologies and has published numerous scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals on the topics of evolutionary neuro­science and the neocortex. He has been featured on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list as well as the Built In NYC’s 30 Tech Leaders Under 30. He is the author of A Brief History of Intelligence: Evolution, AI, and the Five Breakthroughs That Made Our Brains."We are on a speck of dust in the middle of nothingness. That is the only haven we are privy to that can support life and intelligence. I forget who came up with this analogy but I love it, which is if we think about Earth, not as a planet, but as a spaceship, and we're tunneling through the void, wouldn't we care a lot about the state of this spaceship? Like, this is where we live. Would we let it start rusting in places and things start breaking down? Would we let it run out of fuel? Would we let key parts of the spaceship's functioning just cease to be working? With the hope that, oh, we'll have generations in the future who will fix the spaceship.We have what might be called the technophiles who are fascinated with accelerating technology and expanding human consciousness into machines and seeing how far into the universe we can spread and going on these grand adventures. And some think what's beautiful about the human condition doesn't require expansion. It doesn't require more. We already have everything beautiful about sentience. We should preserve it and just share it with other animals and maintain some form of symbiosis and balance. And no matter which of these two sides of the spectrum you fall on, we must keep Earth healthy."www.abriefhistoryofintelligence.com/ www.alby.com www.bluecore.com www.creativeprocess.info www.oneplanetpodcast.org IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

"With this film in particular tugging at people's hearts, regarding family. I mean, really trying to get the point across that this really affects all of us in every way, shape, or form, and that, you know, if we don't do anything...It seems to me that since the beginning of time almost, at least in the corporate world, there's always been walls put up for anything that's organic, positive, natural, and the list goes on. And I think that filters down in many fields. And so be part of something, a positive movement that continues to do such great work, I just keep my fingers crossed. And obviously, my job here as well is to support in any way, shape I can.And of course, I believe in everything that's being told. It is the truth. These are the facts of our lives at the moment. And, if we don't look after Mother Earth, Gaia, she can't look after us. It's a shared experience. It's a balance between things, everything in life. You know, we need each other."How can the arts inspire us to lead lives of greater meaning and connection? What kind of world are we leaving for future generations?Julian Lennon is a Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter, photographer, documentary filmmaker, and NYTimes bestselling author of children's books. Executive Producer of Common Ground and its predecessor Kiss the Ground, which reached over 1 billion people and inspired the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) to put $20 billion toward soil health. The natural world and indigenous people are also the focus of Lennon’s other documentaries Whaledreamers, and Women of the White Buffalo. In 2007, Julian founded the global environmental and humanitarian organization The White Feather Foundation, whose key initiatives are education, health, conservation, and the protection of indigenous culture, causes he also advances through his photography, exhibited across the US and Europe. His latest album Jude spans a body of work created over the last 30 years. Julian was named a Peace Laureate by UNESCO in 2020.https://julianlennon.com https://commongroundfilm.org https://kissthegroundmovie.com https://whitefeatherfoundation.com https://julianlennon.lnk.to/JudeWE https://julianlennon-photography.comwww.creativeprocess.info www.oneplanetpodcast.org IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast