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

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

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."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."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

How can we resolve conflicts without compromising our ethics and moral vision? Each year, wars are being fought in our name or with our support that citizens never get an opportunity to vote on. How can we make our voices heard?“Warism, taking war for granted as morally acceptable, even morally required, is the primary obstacle to peace.” Duane L. Cady is a philosopher and Professor Emeritus at Hamline University. He was nominated for the 1991 Grawemeyer World Order Award, was named Outstanding Educator of the Year by the United Methodist Foundation for Higher Education, and a festschiff in his honor was published in 2012. Cady is best known for his works on pacifism, including Moral Vision: How Everyday Life Shapes Ethical Thinking, and From Warism to Pacifism: A Moral Continuum."One of the statistics that sticks in my mind is that the U.S. military burns more fossil in a year than the whole country of Sweden. It's just staggering, and where do we dump military waste? Well, usually on poor people, and usually in parts of the country like on Native American reservations, where we dig into the ground and get rid of our nuclear waste. And why do we do that? Well, we wouldn't want it near us."https://duanelcady.comwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

How do we define intelligence? What is the point of creativity and intelligence if we are not creating good in the world? In this age of AI, what is the importance of a synthesizing mind?Howard Gardner, Research Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, an author of over 30 books, translated into 32 languages, and several hundred articles, is best known for his theory of multiple intelligences, a critique of the notion that there exists but a single human intelligence that can be assessed by standard psychometric instruments. He has twice been selected by Foreign Policy and Prospect magazines as one of the 100 most influential public intellectuals in the world. In the last few years, Gardner has been studying the nature of human synthesizing, a topic introduced in his 2020 memoir, A Synthesizing Mind.For 28 years, with David Perkins, he was Co-Director of Harvard Project Zero, and in more recent years has served in a variety of leadership positions. Since the middle 1990s, Gardner has directed The Good Project, a group of initiatives, founded in collaboration with psychologists Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and William Damon. The project promotes excellence, engagement, and ethics in education, preparing students to become good workers and good citizens who contribute to the overall well-being of society. Through research-based concepts, frameworks, and resources, The Good Project seeks to help students reflect upon the ethical dilemmas that arise in everyday life and give them the tools to make thoughtful decisions."The barriers to climate change are largely political: individual countries and countries working together. We need to keep carbon down and have people lead lives in ways which are less destructive to our environment. And I don't have a great deal of faith that our political system can do that. I'm not religious myself, but I think that we need to have a new religious leader in the world. I always say Gandhi is the most important person of the last thousand years because he understood that if we tried to fight with weapons, we would just destroy one another. We have to disagree peacefully. And I think we need that kind of figure who can mobilize people across different nations and different attitudes on the question. Where I think I do have something to say, is I think in the schools of the future, we're going to focus much more on what it means to be human beings on our planet. I think that's the best chance for the planet to survive, which is the question of climate change, but also to thrive, which is a question of good work and good citizenship."www.howardgardner.comhttp://thegoodproject.orghttps://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262542838/a-synthesizing-mindwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with legendary climate activist Bill McKibben and scholar Caroline Levine. McKibben relates his long struggle to get companies to divest from fossil fuels and for the world in general to act immediately to seriously and substantially address this existential crisis. Levine tells of her efforts to get the giant pension fund, TIAA-CREF, to divest. She also talks about her new book, The Activist Humanist, and its relation to both her teaching and her activism.Bill McKibben is founder of Third Act, which organizes people over the age of 60 for action on climate and justice. His 1989 book The End of Nature is regarded as the first book for a general audience about climate change, and has appeared in 24 languages. He’s gone on to write 20 books, and his work appears regularly in periodicals from the New Yorker to Rolling Stone. He serves as the Schumann Distinguished Scholar in Environmental Studies at Middlebury College, as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he has won the Gandhi Peace Prize as well as honorary degrees from 20 colleges and universities. He was awarded the Right Livelihood Award, sometimes called the alternative Nobel, in the Swedish Parliament. Foreign Policy named him to its inaugural list of the world’s 100 most important global thinkers.McKibben helped found 350.org, the first global grassroots climate campaign, which has organized protests on every continent, including Antarctica, for climate action. He played a leading role in launching the opposition to big oil pipeline projects like Keystone XL, and the fossil fuel divestment campaign, which has become the biggest anti-corporate campaign in history, with endowments worth more than $40 trillion stepping back from oil, gas and coal. He stepped down as board chair of 350 in 2015, and left the board and stepped down from his volunteer role as senior adviser in 2020, accepting emeritus status. He lives in the mountains above Lake Champlain with his wife, the writer Sue Halpern, where he spends as much time as possible outdoors. In 2014, biologists credited his career by naming a new species of woodland gnat—Megophthalmidia mckibbeni–in his honor.Caroline Levine has spent her career asking how and why the humanities and the arts matter, especially in democratic societies. She argues for an understanding of forms and structures as essential both to understanding links between art and society and to the challenge of taking meaningful political action. She is the author of four books. The most recent, The Activist Humanist: Form and Method in the Climate Crisis (Princeton University Press 2023), grows out of the theoretical work of Forms: Whole, Rhythm, Hierarchy, Network (2015, winner of the James Russell Lowell Prize from the MLA, and named one of Flavorwire’s “10 Must-Read Academic Books of 2015”). Levine has also published The Serious Pleasures of Suspense: Victorian Realism and Narrative Doubt (2003, winner of the Perkins Prize for the best book in narrative studies) and Provoking Democracy: Why We Need the Arts (2007)."Viewed one way, we live in a very hopeful moment. Thanks to in large part the work of university scientists and engineers, we now live on a planet where the cheapest way to produce power is to point a sheet of glass at the sun. That is to say, we could run our Earth on energy from heaven instead of hell, and we could do it fast. The fast is the hard part here. The only difference between all the examples of the long victories of social justice activism that we're in now is that this one is a time-limited problem. If we don't solve it fast, then no one's got a plan for how you refreeze the Arctic once you've melted it. And so we have to move very quickly. Our systems are not designed to move quickly. It's the easiest thing in the world to slow down and delay change, which is all that the fossil fuel industry at this point is trying to do, and that means that it's time for maximum effort from all of us. The story to tell is that the planet is outside its comfort zone, so we need to be outside ours."https://billmckibben.comhttps://350.orghttps://thirdact.orghttps://english.cornell.edu/caroline-levinehttps://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691250588/the-activist-humanisthttps://tiaa-divest.orgwww.palumbo-liu.com https://speakingoutofplace.comhttps://twitter.com/palumboliu?s=20

How do some people face incredible tragedies and find within these experiences inspiration to improve the lives of others? Our guest today lost her grandfather, who was the assassinated Prime Minister of the Buganda Kingdom, and her father, who was disappeared by Idi Amin, and yet she went on to become a leading conservationist.Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka is Uganda's first full-time wildlife veterinarian and the Founder and CEO of Conservation Through Public Health. Interested in animals from a young age, she pursued her studies at the Royal Veterinary College at the University of London before returning to Uganda. In the time since, she's worked tirelessly to preserve the animals of Uganda, being awarded the Whitley Gold Award, Sierra Club Earth Care Award, Edinburgh Medal, National Geographic Explorer, and most recently an appointment to become a United Nations Champion of the Earth for Science and Innovation. She is author of Walking with Gorillas: The Journey of an African Wildlife Vet."I have always wanted to be around animals and growing up, I cannot remember a time when there were no pets at home. My elder brother Apollo Katerega, who was 10 years older than me, also liked animals, especially dogs and was always bringing stray dogs and cats home. I was the last born of six children. My sister, Veronica Nakibule, who I followed, was five years older than me so were just outside each other's age bracket for playing. Thus the pets at home became my main companions, and we developed a strong bond.Along the way, I eventually fulfilled my lifelong dream to not only become a veterinarian, but a wildlife veterinarian. In 1996, I began to take care of the critically endangered mountain gorillas of Uganda. Since then, they've increased in number from six hundred and fifty to 1,063 individuals in Uganda, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo(DRC). There are no mountain gorillas surviving in zoos outside their range countries, and their only hope is to keep the population thriving where they are naturally found.The gorillas have shaped my life's calling since I first studied them as a student at the Royal Veterinary College, University of London. I've treated them as the first full-time wildlife veterinarian in Uganda and supported them as Founder and Chief Executive Officer of a grassroots NGO and nonprofit, Conservation Through Public Health, more commonly known as 'CTPH,' that promotes biodiversity conservation through not only improving the health of gorillas and other wildlife, but also the health and wellbeing of the people and livestock with whom they share their fragile habitats."www.ctph.orghttps://www.skyhorsepublishing.com/9781950994267/walking-with-gorillas/www.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast