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

“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

“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

“We're living in a fascinating time, and unfortunately, to an extent, Europe and, very much so, North America are trying to hold onto the past while other parts of the world, like China, Taiwan, Korea, and Japan, are looking to the future. As an Italian citizen and an English citizen, I feel that we’ve left ourselves behind and that others are taking leaps forward. This isn't just about climate science; it’s about big geopolitics. It's about who wins the power battle over the dominant economy, economic thinking, and currencies. Do we have a reserve currency in the petrodollar? All these things are now being questioned in 2025. We're in an extraordinary period of history.”For decades, the conversation around climate change often felt abstract, a distant threat. But what happens when that threat collides with the very concrete world of finance, with investments, and with the bottom line? Mark Campanale has been at the forefront of this critical intersection for over two decades. He's a veteran of sustainable finance, having helped launch some of the earliest responsible investment funds. But it's his work with the Carbon Tracker Initiative that has truly reshaped how we understand the economic risks of a fossil fuel-dependent future. Carbon Tracker, an independent financial think tank, introduced concepts like the "carbon bubble" and "stranded assets"—terms that have not only become central to the divestment movement but are now indispensable for investors and regulators trying to navigate the path to decarbonization. Mark Campanale and the Carbon Tracker Initiative have made it impossible to ignore the financial implications of a warming planet.Episode Websitewww.creativeprocess.info/podInstagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

“Carbon Tracker is a non-profit financial think tank focused on change and the energy transition. I set it up because I spent 20 years working in the financial world, and I noticed that a lot of coal, oil, and gas projects, even with all the evidence we know about climate change, were getting financed through banks and the stock market. It was almost as if investors were completely disregarding what climate change was going to do within our lifetime. What I wanted to do was challenge that, challenge the way people think, and challenge the financial operators, the bankers, stock exchange regulators, and investors to think about what climate change was going to do and what we could do about it. We're saying to the owners of these companies, the shareholders, ‘Why don't you think about what the world will look like in 50 years, and why are you putting these young people's pensions into coal, which we know is going to destroy the planet?’ ”For decades, the conversation around climate change often felt abstract, a distant threat. But what happens when that threat collides with the very concrete world of finance, with investments, and with the bottom line? Mark Campanale has been at the forefront of this critical intersection for over two decades. He's a veteran of sustainable finance, having helped launch some of the earliest responsible investment funds. But it's his work with the Carbon Tracker Initiative that has truly reshaped how we understand the economic risks of a fossil fuel-dependent future. Carbon Tracker, an independent financial think tank, introduced concepts like the "carbon bubble" and "stranded assets"—terms that have not only become central to the divestment movement but are now indispensable for investors and regulators trying to navigate the path to decarbonization. Mark Campanale and the Carbon Tracker Initiative have made it impossible to ignore the financial implications of a warming planet.Episode Websitewww.creativeprocess.info/podInstagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

“We as humans can destroy things in a couple of years that have taken thousands or even millions of years to form. So in the snap of a finger, we can destroy so much work. That's an observation I’ve seen in all biomes, and it's pretty scary. On the other hand, nature regenerates pretty fast. It heals itself. If humans help this healing process, it can go even faster.”Louis De Jaeger has spent years traveling the world, witnessing firsthand the decline of nature. He is an eco-entrepreneur, a landscape designer, co-founder of the Food Forest Institute, and a leading voice in the regenerative agriculture and food forest movements. He’s founded numerous ventures aimed at creating positive impact and has created over 100 food forest sites around the world. His new book, SOS: Save Our Soils: How regenerative food and farming will save your health and the planet, asks us to consider every meal as a vote for either destruction or regeneration.Episode Websitewww.creativeprocess.info/podInstagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

“The Earth started as one big rock, and soil did not exist. Without soil, you can't really grow trees or any crops whatsoever. We are depleting soils super fast, and it is predicted that in less than 25 years, 90% of our soils will be degraded. We as humans, we can destroy things in a couple of years that have taken thousands or even millions of years to form. On the other hand, nature regenerates pretty fast. It heals itself. If humans help this healing process, it can go even faster.”Louis De Jaeger has spent years traveling the world, witnessing firsthand the decline of nature. He is an eco-entrepreneur, a landscape designer, co-founder of the Food Forest Institute, and a leading voice in the regenerative agriculture and food forest movements. He’s founded numerous ventures aimed at creating positive impact and has created over 100 food forest sites around the world. His new book, SOS: Save Our Soils: How regenerative food and farming will save your health and the planet, asks us to consider every meal as a vote for either destruction or regeneration.Episode Websitewww.creativeprocess.info/podInstagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

“Abolishing Silicon Valley means freeing the development of technology from a system that will always relegate it to a subordinate role, that of entrenching existing power relations. It means designing a new system that isn't deluged in the logic of the bucket. It means liberating our worlds from the illegitimate ring of capital. Perhaps this sounds unfair to capital. Perhaps I sound like I'm not grateful enough for everything that capital has given us, but we don't owe capital anything; the things we attribute to capital were built by workers.People can labor and sometimes die in a process. Their contributions are unrecognized in death as in life. So don't thank capital. It doesn't deserve our gratitude, and it doesn't need it. Thank the people who created everything that capital always takes credit for. Capital is a means of accounting for wealth ownership, not its creation. And that means it's perpetually shrouded in a fundamental untruth; we can leap the swamp of capital behind and start over with something new. “In this episode on Speaking Out of Place podcast Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with Wendy Liu. Ever since its publication, Abolish Silicon Valley—How to Liberate Technology from Capitalism has proven to be more urgent and insightful. Today, he talks with author Wendy Liu about how developments like AI and LLM, further erosions of intellectual property, and increased invasions of privacy make the case for abolishing Silicon Valley even more important. They talk about how abolition is critical at a time when more and more the private sector has come to eviscerate the public good. Turning to the genocide in Gaza, they discuss the ways Capital has enlisted technology in deadly and horrific manners. They end with a meditation on the commons and how one can live with fewer commodities and find value in common projects to make life more valuable and worthwhile outside of the logic of the market.Wendy Liu is the author of Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology From Capitalism, a memoir/manifesto about the tech industry from the perspective of a former believer. She lives in San Francisco and is working on a novel.www.palumbo-liu.comhttps://speakingoutofplace.comBluesky @palumboliu.bsky.socialInstagram @speaking_out_of_place

“For us, I think it really is about trust and commitments, and I don't think that has necessarily changed over the years. As we work on that, obviously, we are very much invested in how we can engage an audience and spark the curiosity that people are looking for. The most important thing often is how we can spark that curiosity in ourselves. As a way of working, which I think is the most important framework for an institution, the institution should constantly want to learn and evolve, and it isn't a static place. Particularly coming from the opportunity of not being a collecting institution, we are ever-evolving and ever-changing.”Nicola Lees is truly pushing the boundaries of what a museum can be. Since 2020, she has been director of the Aspen Art Museum, a non-collecting, artist-founded institution dedicated to experimentation and supporting the most innovative voices in contemporary art. Under her direction, the AAM has just unveiled an ambitious, decade-long initiative called AIR Aspen. From July 26–August 1, 2025, AIR isn't just another program; it's the first artist-led global summit, a bold undertaking that will bring together artists, cultural leaders, policymakers, and influencers for yearly talks, performances, workshops, and an annual retreat. It’s designed to explore the profound role of art in addressing the big questions of our time, from AI to how we relate to one another. The inaugural theme, "Life As No One Knows It," promises to be a deeply engaging exploration of what it means to be alive in an era of rapid technological and environmental change, and it will feature an extraordinary roster of creatives whose work transcends traditional disciplines, including Francis Kéré, Paul Chan, Aria Dean, Glenn Ligon, and Maya Lin.Before her tenure in Aspen, Nicola Lees made her mark as the director and curator of New York University’s 80WSE and as a curator for Frieze Projects at Frieze London. Today, we’ll delve into her philosophy of art, leadership, and the transformative power of this new initiative.Episode Websitewww.creativeprocess.info/podInstagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

“As a writer, I do believe that art and literature in and of themselves are important. I'm going to keep on writing novels, and one of the most important reasons why is because, as you mentioned, language is crucial. Part of the way that states and authoritarian regimes exercise their power is not just through physical violence and intimidation, but through a maltreatment of language itself. Trump is a perfect example of this. Everything that comes out of his mouth in terms of language is horrifying for anybody with any sensitivity to language. The excesses of his language in terms of insults and hyperbolic praise for his fans are perfect examples of how language is used by an authoritarian and by the state to obfuscate reality and intimidate people. That language is ugly from my perspective, and there is something about being committed to literature and to art that awakens us to the importance of beauty.I think about what John Keats, the poet, said: beauty is truth, truth beauty. You can't separate these kinds of things. If you're committed to the beauty of language, you're also committed to the idea that language has a relationship to truth. You can see that authoritarians don't have a relationship to truth. They have a relationship to the abuse of truth and to lying, not only in content but in the form of their language as well. There is a crucial role for writers here in our relationship to language because language is one of the most crucial ways that authoritarianism extends its power. What I've discovered as a writer is that fear is a good indicator that there is a truth. To speak the truth in a society is oftentimes an act that requires some courage.”Viet Thanh Nguyen has spent much of his life exploring the stories we tell—and the stories we erase—about war, migration, and memory. His 2015 debut novel The Sympathizer, about a communist double agent in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, won the Pulitzer Prize and a long list of other major literary awards. In 2024, The Sympathizer was adapted into a critically acclaimed HBO series directed by Park Chan-wook.He followed it with The Committed, and his latest work, To Save and to Destroy: Writing as an Other, a meditation on writing, power, and the politics of representation.Nguyen is also the author of Nothing Ever Dies, a finalist for the National Book Award in nonfiction, and the short story collection The Refugees. He’s edited collections like The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives, and most recently the Library of America volume for Maxine Hong Kingston, who was once his teacher.He was born in Vietnam, came to the U.S. as a refugee, and is now a professor at the University of Southern California. He’s received Guggenheim and MacArthur fellowships, honorary doctorates, and has been named a Chevalier by the French Ministry of Culture. Today, we’ll talk about his books, America’s forever wars, and how the act of writing—across fiction, memoir, and scholarship—can become both a form of resistance and a way of making sense of being, as he puts it in his memoir “A Man of Two Faces.”Episode Websitewww.creativeprocess.info/podInstagram:@creativeprocesspodcast