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

Carl Safina’s lyrical non-fiction writing explores how humans are changing the living world, and what the changes mean for non-human beings and for us all. His work has been recognized with MacArthur, Pew, and Guggenheim Fellowships, and his writing has won Orion, Lannan, and National Academies literary awards and the John Burroughs, James Beard, and George Rabb medals. Safina is the inaugural holder of the endowed chair for nature and humanity at Stony Brook University, where he co-chairs the steering committee of the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science and is founding president of the not-for-profit Safina Center. He hosted the 10-part PBS series Saving the Ocean with Carl Safina. His writing appears in The New York Times, National Geographic, Audubon, CNN.com, National Geographic News, and other publications. He is the author of ten books including the classic Song for the Blue Ocean, as well as New York Times Bestseller Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel. His most recent book is Becoming Wild: How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace."So we tend to take living for granted. I think that might be the biggest limitation of human intelligence is to not understand with awe and reverence and love that we live in a miracle that we are part of and that we have the ability to either nurture or destroy.The living world is enormously enriching to human life. I just loved animals. They're always just totally fascinating. They're not here for us. They're just here like we're just here. They are of this world as much as we are of this world. They really have the same claim to life and death and the circle of being."www.safinacenter.orgwww.carlsafina.orgwww.oneplanetpodcast.orgwww.creativeprocess.infoPhoto: Carl Safina in Uganda

"Well, I had a wonderful teacher in second grade who kind of inspired me to start writing and really stuck with me through elementary school and beyond as I made attempts to find my voice, but think part of the reason it never really went anywhere for me as a young person was because I was too afraid to share that with anyone except for that one teacher. I never showed friends. I didn't even really show family. I just always felt that it wasn't quite good enough. And so the thing I always tell writers now if they ask for, you know, "What's one tip?" It's let someone else tell you no, because I just told myself no for pretty much my entire young adulthood. And once I let other people tell me no, they did a lot, you know, but that is how I got better."Karen M. McManus is a #1 New York Times and international bestselling author of young adult thrillers. Her books include the One of Us Is Lying series, which has been turned into a television show on Peacock and Netflix, as well as the standalone novels Two Can Keep a Secret, The Cousins, You’ll Be the Death of Me, and Nothing More to Tell. Karen's critically acclaimed, award-winning work has been translated into more than 40 languages.https://www.karenmcmanus.com@writerkmcon Twitter - Instagramwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.org

Karen M. McManus is a #1 New York Times and international bestselling author of young adult thrillers. Her books include the One of Us Is Lying series, which has been turned into a television show on Peacock and Netflix, as well as the standalone novels Two Can Keep a Secret, The Cousins, You’ll Be the Death of Me, and Nothing More to Tell. Karen's critically acclaimed, award-winning work has been translated into more than 40 languages."Well, I had a wonderful teacher in second grade who kind of inspired me to start writing and really stuck with me through elementary school and beyond as I made attempts to find my voice, but think part of the reason it never really went anywhere for me as a young person was because I was too afraid to share that with anyone except for that one teacher. I never showed friends. I didn't even really show family. I just always felt that it wasn't quite good enough. And so the thing I always tell writers now if they ask for, you know, "What's one tip?" It's let someone else tell you no, because I just told myself no for pretty much my entire young adulthood. And once I let other people tell me no, they did a lot, you know, but that is how I got better."https://www.karenmcmanus.com@writerkmcon Twitter - Instagramwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.org

"The field of synthetic biology, which is known by some as extreme genetic engineering – that's a name mostly used by people who don't like it - amounts to a set of tools that humans have developed to be able to very precisely and accurately change the genetic code, the DNA of living organisms in order to get those organisms to do things that humans want. So the applications in medicine are predominantly devoted to trying to make us healthier people, and they range from some really exciting work on tumor biology to work on the microbiome, which is all of the thousands and tens of thousands of species that live on our lips, our mouths, our guts, our skin. And in agriculture, it's primarily directed at crop genetics, trying to improve the productivity of crops, the nutritional value of crops, the ability of crops to respond to climate change, and a whole variety of other things. Some people may have heard of one of these tools called CRISPR used to very precisely alter the sequences of DNA.This book that Bill and I wrote is about the impending intersection between synthetic biology and the field of nature conservation, not an examination of the technologies per se, but an examination of the way that we are going to end up needing to think about the intersection between our ability to change DNA, and what it means to be natural, and what it means to conserve things and whether or not we want to conserve things that we have altered."Kent H. Redford is a conservation practitioner and Principal at Archipelago Consulting established in 2012 and based in Portland, Maine, USA. Archipelago Consulting was designed to help individuals and organizations improve their practice of conservation. Prior to Archipelago Consulting Kent spent 10 years on the faculty of University of Florida and 19 years in conservation NGOs with five years as Director of The Nature Conservancy’s Parks in Peril program and 14 years as Vice President for Conservation Science and Strategy at the Wildlife Conservation Society. For six years he was Chair of IUCN’s Task Force on Synthetic Biology and Biodiversity Conservation. In June 2021 Yale University Press published Kent’s book with W.M. Adams: Strange Natures. Conservation in the Era of Synthetic Biology.https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300230970/strange-natures/ https://archipelagoconsulting.comwww.oneplanetpodcast.orgwww.creativeprocess.info

Kent H. Redford is a conservation practitioner and Principal at Archipelago Consulting established in 2012 and based in Portland, Maine, USA. Archipelago Consulting was designed to help individuals and organizations improve their practice of conservation. Prior to Archipelago Consulting Kent spent 10 years on the faculty of University of Florida and 19 years in conservation NGOs with five years as Director of The Nature Conservancy’s Parks in Peril program and 14 years as Vice President for Conservation Science and Strategy at the Wildlife Conservation Society. For six years he was Chair of IUCN’s Task Force on Synthetic Biology and Biodiversity Conservation. In June 2021 Yale University Press published Kent’s book with W.M. Adams: Strange Natures. Conservation in the Era of Synthetic Biology."The field of synthetic biology, which is known by some as extreme genetic engineering – that's a name mostly used by people who don't like it - amounts to a set of tools that humans have developed to be able to very precisely and accurately change the genetic code, the DNA of living organisms in order to get those organisms to do things that humans want. So the applications in medicine are predominantly devoted to trying to make us healthier people, and they range from some really exciting work on tumor biology to work on the microbiome, which is all of the thousands and tens of thousands of species that live on our lips, our mouths, our guts, our skin. And in agriculture, it's primarily directed at crop genetics, trying to improve the productivity of crops, the nutritional value of crops, the ability of crops to respond to climate change, and a whole variety of other things. Some people may have heard of one of these tools called CRISPR used to very precisely alter the sequences of DNA.This book that Bill and I wrote is about the impending intersection between synthetic biology and the field of nature conservation, not an examination of the technologies per se, but an examination of the way that we are going to end up needing to think about the intersection between our ability to change DNA, and what it means to be natural, and what it means to conserve things and whether or not we want to conserve things that we have altered."https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300230970/strange-natures/ https://archipelagoconsulting.comwww.oneplanetpodcast.orgwww.creativeprocess.info

"Most bees are quite short-lived, not all bees. So queen bees can live for many years, up to seven years, and some stingless bees, the queens can even live much longer than that, but their lives are less exciting in a sense that they are, most of their lives, cave animals, where most of what they do is egg laying.So when we're talking about intelligence tests and bees, these are mostly done with the worker bees, and they only live for a few weeks. And it might be surprising to many people that an animal this short-lived can learn anything at all because, of course, in humans, the process of acquiring crucial life skills takes much longer, many years typically. So when a bee first emerges from the pupa - bees spend their first few days as little grubs inside a wax pot. And this larval stage, of course, there isn't much learning going on. They have a very pampered and easy life in that they are basically immersed in the food that they're required to grow. And then they pupate and turn from what are formerly little helpless grubs into adult bees.Once the bee emerges from the pupa, they have a number of different tasks waiting for them, which in honey bees a fairly defined sequence where the bee might in her first few days simply be involved in the many duties inside the hive – to clean cells, to build wax comb, to feed the larva – and then to transition to their life as a forager.”Lars Chittka is professor of sensory and behavioral ecology at Queen Mary University of London, where he founded a new Research Centre for Psychology in 2008 and was its scientific director until 2012. He is the author of The Mind of a Bee and is the coeditor of Cognitive Ecology of Pollination. He studied Biology in Berlin and completed his PhD studies under the supervision of Randolf Menzel in 1993. He has carried out extensive work on the behaviour, cognition and ecology of bumble bees and honey bees, and their interactions with flowers. His discoveries have made a substantial impact on the understanding of animal intelligence and its neural-computational underpinnings. He has published over 250 peer-reviewed articles, and has been an editor of biology’s foremost open access journal PLoS Biology since 2004. He is an elected Member of the German National Academy of Sciences (Leopoldina), a Fellow of the Linnean Society and Royal Entomological Society, as well as the Royal Society of Biology.http://chittkalab.sbcs.qmul.ac.uk/Lars.htmlhttps://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691180472/the-mind-of-a-beehttps://journals.plos.org/plosbiologywww.oneplanetpodcast.orgwww.creativeprocess.info

Lars Chittka is professor of sensory and behavioral ecology at Queen Mary University of London, where he founded a new Research Centre for Psychology in 2008 and was its scientific director until 2012. He is the author of The Mind of a Bee and is the coeditor of Cognitive Ecology of Pollination. He studied Biology in Berlin and completed his PhD studies under the supervision of Randolf Menzel in 1993. He has carried out extensive work on the behaviour, cognition and ecology of bumble bees and honey bees, and their interactions with flowers. His discoveries have made a substantial impact on the understanding of animal intelligence and its neural-computational underpinnings. He has published over 250 peer-reviewed articles, and has been an editor of biology’s foremost open access journal PLoS Biology since 2004. He is an elected Member of the German National Academy of Sciences (Leopoldina), a Fellow of the Linnean Society and Royal Entomological Society, as well as the Royal Society of Biology."Most bees are quite short-lived, not all bees. So queen bees can live for many years, up to seven years, and some stingless bees, the queens can even live much longer than that, but their lives are less exciting in a sense that they are, most of their lives, cave animals, where most of what they do is egg laying.So when we're talking about intelligence tests and bees, these are mostly done with the worker bees, and they only live for a few weeks. And it might be surprising to many people that an animal this short-lived can learn anything at all because, of course, in humans, the process of acquiring crucial life skills takes much longer, many years typically. So when a bee first emerges from the pupa - bees spend their first few days as little grubs inside a wax pot. And this larval stage, of course, there isn't much learning going on. They have a very pampered and easy life in that they are basically immersed in the food that they're required to grow. And then they pupate and turn from what are formerly little helpless grubs into adult bees.Once the bee emerges from the pupa, they have a number of different tasks waiting for them, which in honey bees a fairly defined sequence where the bee might in her first few days simply be involved in the many duties inside the hive – to clean cells, to build wax comb, to feed the larva – and then to transition to their life as a forager.”http://chittkalab.sbcs.qmul.ac.uk/Lars.htmlhttps://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691180472/the-mind-of-a-beehttps://journals.plos.org/plosbiologywww.oneplanetpodcast.orgwww.creativeprocess.infoPhoto credit: Markus Scholz / Leopoldina

"I do think though that there is a real possibility that within the lifetime of many people who are here today, we will see the arrival of transformative AI, machine intelligence systems that not only can automate specific tasks but can replicate the full generality of human thinking. So that everything that we humans can do with our brains,  machines will be able to do, and in fact do faster and more efficiently. What the consequences of that are, is very much an open question and, I think, depends in part on the extent to which we manage to get our act together before these developments. In terms of, on the one hand, working out our technical issues in AI alignment, figuring out exactly the methods by which you could ensure that such very powerful cognitive engines will be aligned to our values, will actually do what we intend for them to do, as opposed to something else. And then, of course, also the political challenges of ensuring that such a powerful technology will be used for positive ends. So depending on how well we perform among those two challenges, the outcome, I think, could be extremely good or extremely bad. And I think all of those possibilities are still in the cards."Nick Bostrom is a Swedish-born philosopher with a background in theoretical physics, computational neuroscience, logic, and artificial intelligence, as well as philosophy. He is the most-cited professional philosopher in the world under the age of 50.He is a Professor at Oxford University, where he heads the Future of Humanity Institute as its founding director. He is the author of some 200 publications, including Anthropic Bias, Global Catastrophic Risks, Human Enhancement, and Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, a New York Times bestseller which helped spark a global conversation about the future of AI. He has also published a series of influential papers, including ones that introduced the simulation argument and the concept of existential risk.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. As a graduate student he dabbled in stand-up comedy on the London circuit, but he has since reconnected with the heavy gloom of his Swedish roots.https://nickbostrom.comhttps://www.fhi.ox.ac.ukwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.org

Nick Bostrom is a Swedish-born philosopher with a background in theoretical physics, computational neuroscience, logic, and artificial intelligence, as well as philosophy. He is the most-cited professional philosopher in the world under the age of 50.He is a Professor at Oxford University, where he heads the Future of Humanity Institute as its founding director. He is the author of some 200 publications, including Anthropic Bias, Global Catastrophic Risks, Human Enhancement, and Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, a New York Times bestseller which helped spark a global conversation about the future of AI. He has also published a series of influential papers, including ones that introduced the simulation argument and the concept of existential risk.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. As a graduate student he dabbled in stand-up comedy on the London circuit, but he has since reconnected with the heavy gloom of his Swedish roots."I do think though that there is a real possibility that within the lifetime of many people who are here today, we will see the arrival of transformative AI, machine intelligence systems that not only can automate specific tasks but can replicate the full generality of human thinking. So that everything that we humans can do with our brains,  machines will be able to do, and in fact do faster and more efficiently. What the consequences of that are, is very much an open question and, I think, depends in part on the extent to which we manage to get our act together before these developments. In terms of, on the one hand, working out our technical issues in AI alignment, figuring out exactly the methods by which you could ensure that such very powerful cognitive engines will be aligned to our values, will actually do what we intend for them to do, as opposed to something else. And then, of course, also the political challenges of ensuring that such a powerful technology will be used for positive ends. So depending on how well we perform among those two challenges, the outcome, I think, could be extremely good or extremely bad. And I think all of those possibilities are still in the cards."https://nickbostrom.comhttps://www.fhi.ox.ac.ukwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.org

"There are four modes of communicating: preacher, prosecutor, politician, and scientist. So those three Ps are very important modes, but if you spend all your time in these modes, you will learn very little because all of them are kind of outward-looking modes. You're trying to convince others, and you don't learn very much when you're in those modes. Now, I would argue that most of us need to spend a good chunk of our time in a scientist mode. If you are in a scientist mode, then you are doing what Seneca said, "time discovers truth."So in the scientist mode, everything you look at is a hypothesis, and then all you're trying to do is just trying to figure out if your hypothesis is right or wrong. And therefore in the debate, you're trying to understand the other person's side, not necessarily be in prosecutor mode to convince the person to change his or her mind.We want to be very careful that ideas don't become our identity because once they do, we can't change it. In fact, I would argue, we have to be very mindful and evaluate our identity because a lot of times our identity is formed through completely random experiences."Vitaliy Katsenelson was born in Murmansk, Russia and immigrated to the United States with his family in 1991. He is the author of Soul in the Game, The Art of a Meaningful Life. He is the CEO of Denver-based value investment firm IMA. Vitaliy has also written two books on investing. Forbes Magazine called him “The New Benjamin Graham.” He’s written for the Financial Times, Barron’s, Institutional Investor and Foreign Policy. Vitaliy lives in Denver with his wife and three children, where he loves to read, listen to classical music, play chess, and write about life, investing, and music.https://soulinthegame.nethttps://contrarianedge.comhttps://imausa.comwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.org