What If We’re All Right? with Stephanie Lepp

Stephanie Lepp is an award-winning producer, storyteller, and speaker, whose work strives to expand hearts and minds. She’s the former Executive Director at the Institute for Cultural Evolution, a non-profit think tank that addresses political polarization at its cultural roots. Before that, she was the Executive Producer at the Center for Humane Technology, the organization at the heart of the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma. Today, she leads Synthesis Media, a non-profit production studio devoted to expanding hearts and minds.

Stephanie recently delivered a TED Talk about her project Faces of X, which uses a ‘thesis, antithesis, synthesis’ model to help people have better conversations about polarising topics like gender, race and class.

We did a Substack Live together to discuss what she’s learned from the project, and how to find new territory together without falling into a mushy middle ground. Stephanie will be hosting a participatory Anti-Debate session for Founding Members on Thursday 21 August at 6pm UK time. We’re in the process of finalising our schedule of guests and facilitators for the rest of the year, with a lot of great people coming in from September. Sign up today if you’d like to join in, participate and skill up.

Next up I’m having a conversation with creative producer Ari Kuschnir who’s coming on to discuss how he’s pioneering a new kind of hope-centred AI art. Ari’s films have racked up millions of views over the last year, multiple celebrity endorsements and most importantly, thousands of comments from people sharing how they’ve inspired them to imagine new possibilities. We’ll be discussing the role of art after post-modern cynicism, tensions around AI art, and the power of art to help us imagine new realities in a time of chaos. Check out his most recent viral hit which came out just a few days ago.

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