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

Stephen Wolfram is a computer scientist, mathematician, and theoretical physicist. He is the founder and CEO of Wolfram Research, the creator of Mathematica, Wolfram|Alpha, and the Wolfram Language. He received his PhD in theoretical physics at Caltech by the age of 20 and in 1981, became the youngest recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship. Wolfram authored A New Kind of Science and launched the Wolfram Physics Project. He has pioneered computational thinking and has been responsible for many discoveries, inventions and innovations in science, technology and business.“It’s interesting to me that there are things that people have an intuitive sense of and have for a long, long time had an intuitive sense of that sometimes in science, there's been a tendency to say, "Oh, no, no, no. We have a particular way of thinking about things in science and that doesn't fit with it. So let's lock it out," so to speak. So an example of that, well, for example, animism; you mentioned this question of where are their minds? Is it reasonable to think of the weather as having a mind of its own? Is it reasonable to think of the forest as having a mind, so to speak? Well, in these kind of computational terms, yes, it does become reasonable to think about those things. Now if you say then, one comes to that idea from a place of formalized science, but nevertheless, it relates to sort of intuitions that people have had for a long time about that come from that didn't come from that particular kind of branch formalized thinking.”www.stephenwolfram.comwww.wolfram.comwww.wolframalpha.comwww.wolframscience.com/nks/www.amazon.com/dp/1579550088/ref=nosim?tag=turingmachi08-20www.wolframphysics.orgwww.wolfram-media.com/products/what-is-chatgpt-doing-and-why-does-it-work/www.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

“One thing I love about living in Crete is that the sense of the presence of nature is always here. I walk out the door and I can see the mountains around the city. I can see the White Mountains (Lefka Ori), which for half the year are covered in snow. I can see the sea. If you walk out in the summer, you're immediately aware of your physicality. You become dehydrated very quickly. It's not necessarily a kind environment for humans. It's not if you engage in any vigorous activity, but it's one that makes you feel vividly alive."Keith Frankish is an Honorary Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield, a Visiting Research Fellow with The Open University, and an Adjunct Professor with the Brain and Mind Programme in Neurosciences at the University of Crete. Frankish mainly works in the philosophy of mind and has published widely about topics such as human consciousness and cognition. Profoundly inspired by Daniel Dennett, Frankish is best known for defending an “illusionist” view of consciousness. He is also editor of the journal Illusionism as a Theory of Consciousness and co-edits, in addition to others, The Cambridge Handbook of Cognitive Science."The area where I grew up, which is a very low-lying area, in a river valley, it was a landscape where nature felt very dormant. The skies would be gray. The landscape would be flat. There was also a lot of human activity in it. Canals, railway lines, coal mines. It was a land that felt as if it had been depressed, as if it had not been allowed to express itself somehow. And it's been carved up into fields and so on by humans.And so now here, it's the opposite. Although there is a lot of building in the particularly tourist areas, drive five minutes out of the city, and you're in a land of rugged land with almost desert in places. A land where you couldn't survive very long without proper water, in particular. It's a land where you feel the presence. And, also, another thing you feel here is periods of frequent earthquakes, and that again, is quite a salutary thing. When the Earth shakes like that, and you suddenly realize that this building, which seems wonderfully strong and well-equipped, is suddenly moving from side to side under Poseidon's influence. It makes you see how people could animate this landscape. It's a landscape that feels animated with presences, with gods, with non-human entities. There's a way of living, which involves engaging more deeply with the meaning of things, engaging not just living life on the surface, but trying to look for the deeper, for the real patterns, and living with that, not without pleasure, not without relishing life, but with relishing it for its complexity.”www.keithfrankish.comwww.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-handbook-of-cognitive-science/F9996E61AF5E8C0B096EBFED57596B42www.imprint.co.uk/product/illusionismwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

“We and all living beings thrive by being actors in the planet’s regeneration, a civilizational goal that should commence and never cease. We practiced degeneration as a species and it brought us to the threshold of an unimaginable crisis. To reverse global warming, we need to reverse global degeneration.”Can we really end the climate crisis in one generation? What kind of bold collective action, technologies, and nature-based solutions would it take to do it?Paul Hawken is a renowned environmentalist, entrepreneur, author, and activist committed to sustainability and transforming the business-environment relationship. A leading voice in the environmental movement, he has founded successful eco-friendly businesses, authored influential works on commerce and ecology, and advised global leaders on economic and environmental policies. As the founder of Project Regeneration and Project Drawdown, Paul leads efforts to identify and model solutions to reverse global warming, showcasing actionable strategies. His pioneering work in corporate ecological reform continues to shape a sustainable future. He is the author of eight books, including Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation.https://regeneration.orghttps://paulhawken.comhttps://drawdown.orghttps://regeneration.org/nexuswww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Can we really end the climate crisis in one generation? What kind of bold collective action, technologies, and nature-based solutions would it take to do it?Paul Hawken is a renowned environmentalist, entrepreneur, author, and activist committed to sustainability and transforming the business-environment relationship. A leading voice in the environmental movement, he has founded successful eco-friendly businesses, authored influential works on commerce and ecology, and advised global leaders on economic and environmental policies. As the founder of Project Regeneration and Project Drawdown, Paul leads efforts to identify and model solutions to reverse global warming, showcasing actionable strategies. His pioneering work in corporate ecological reform continues to shape a sustainable future. He is the author of eight books, including Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation.“We and all living beings thrive by being actors in the planet’s regeneration, a civilizational goal that should commence and never cease. We practiced degeneration as a species and it brought us to the threshold of an unimaginable crisis. To reverse global warming, we need to reverse global degeneration.”https://regeneration.orghttps://paulhawken.comhttps://drawdown.orghttps://regeneration.org/nexuswww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

“So, New York City will ultimately build a seawall that it estimates will cost somewhere in the order of 120 billion dollars. And, you know, the fact is that many cities in the United States will not be able to afford that, especially smaller ones and especially southern ones.A part of planning for this needs to include thinking about managed retreat from highly vulnerable areas. The tax base of that community that supports schools undermines the real estate market and the value of property, and it can lead to a spiral of economic decline that can be really dangerous for the people who remain. This can really hollow out a community and that's an enormous challenge to deal with, but one way to deal with it is to try to keep the resources and infrastructure in a community proportional to the population that's utilizing it and to maintain some energy and prosperity and vitality. So, I think a lot of places in the United States need to plan to get smaller, which is really the antithesis of the American philosophy of growth and economic growth.If you want to keep your community intact, you could move together, or you could move to a place where your neighbors have also moved or something like that. That's the kind of new idea that is being batted around that can help keep communities coherent.”Abrahm Lustgarten is an investigative reporter, author, and filmmaker whose work focuses on human adaptation to climate change. His 2010 Frontline documentary The Spill, which investigated BP’s company culture, was nominated for an Emmy. His 2015 longform series Killing the Colorado, about the draining of the Colorado river, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Lustgarten is a senior reporter at ProPublica, and contributes to publications like The New York Times Magazine and The Atlantic. His research on climate migration influenced President Biden’s creation of a climate migration study group. This is also the topic of his newly published book, On The Move: The Overheating Earth and the Uprooting of America in which he explores how climate change is uprooting American lives.https://abrahm.comhttps://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374171735/onthemovewww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

An estimated one in two people will experience degrading environmental conditions this century and will be faced with the difficult question of whether to leave their homes. Will you be among those who migrate in response to climate change? If so, where will you go?Abrahm Lustgarten is an investigative reporter, author, and filmmaker whose work focuses on human adaptation to climate change. His 2010 Frontline documentary The Spill, which investigated BP’s company culture, was nominated for an Emmy. His 2015 longform series Killing the Colorado, about the draining of the Colorado river, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Lustgarten is a senior reporter at ProPublica, and contributes to publications like The New York Times Magazine and The Atlantic. His research on climate migration influenced President Biden’s creation of a climate migration study group. This is also the topic of his newly published book, On The Move: The Overheating Earth and the Uprooting of America in which he explores how climate change is uprooting American lives.“So, New York City will ultimately build a seawall that it estimates will cost somewhere in the order of 120 billion dollars. And, you know, the fact is that many cities in the United States will not be able to afford that, especially smaller ones and especially southern ones.A part of planning for this needs to include thinking about managed retreat from highly vulnerable areas. The tax base of that community that supports schools undermines the real estate market and the value of property, and it can lead to a spiral of economic decline that can be really dangerous for the people who remain. This can really hollow out a community and that's an enormous challenge to deal with, but one way to deal with it is to try to keep the resources and infrastructure in a community proportional to the population that's utilizing it and to maintain some energy and prosperity and vitality. So, I think a lot of places in the United States need to plan to get smaller, which is really the antithesis of the American philosophy of growth and economic growth.If you want to keep your community intact, you could move together, or you could move to a place where your neighbors have also moved or something like that. That's the kind of new idea that is being batted around that can help keep communities coherent.”https://abrahm.comhttps://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374171735/onthemovewww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

“So for me, it just kind of removing a lot of the shame and then a lot of the energy that I was wasting trying to fit myself into a neurotypical process or framework or way of thinking or being. So, you know, some people call that unmasking, just kind of removing. I was wasting a lot of energy, basically trying to be someone else and function in a different way. And then just beating myself up internally for not being able to do that. And throughout my healing journey, as I really realized, Oh, that's actually what's happening. Like there's not actually anything wrong with me being able to...That's why it's called Love Your Brain. It's not just, you know, tolerate your brain. Or, fine, you can work with this brain that you have. It's like, no, I genuinely love the weird experiences that my brain can give me and the incredibly rich, deep experience I have of the world. Like I experience nature so deeply and so intensely. I have really strong connections with animals. I have really great intuition, which I think is just from picking up all this sensory data and putting it together. All these experiences that I get to have, but I don't get to have those experiences if I'm just trying to make myself be something else, which I think is most people who are late diagnosed, I feel like that's their experience. It's just like I've been trying to be someone else for so long. It's exhausting. And then you don't have the energy then to be creative, the carving out the time, making the time to actually create.”Mattia Maurée is an interdisciplinary composer whose work centers around themes of perception, body, sensation, trauma, and resilience. Their scores for critically acclaimed films have been played in 13 countries. Their poems have been featured in Boston City Hall as part of the Mayor's Poetry Program, Guerrilla Opera, and Arc Poetry Magazine. Mattia composes and performs on violin, voice, and piano, and has taught music for over 20 years. They have received a Master's of Music in Composition at New England Conservatory and a Bachelor's of Music from St. Olaf College. They also are an AUDHD coach, host the AuDHD Flourishing podcast and help other neurodivergent folks heal and find their creative flow in their course Love Your Brain.http://mattiamauree.comhttps://studio.com/mattiahttps://mattiamauree.com/love-your-brainhttps://www.audhdflourishing.com/hellowww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

“I call myself an apocalyptic optimist. In other words, I do believe there is hope to save ourselves from the climate crisis that we have caused. However, I also believe that saving ourselves will only be possible with a mass mobilization that is driven by the pain and suffering of climate shocks around the world. A generalized sense of extreme risk can lead to peaceful and less-peaceful mass mobilizations at the levels needed to stimulate an AnthroShift. Only a global risk event (or numerous smaller events that are seen as threatening social and economic centers of power) will motivate the kind of massive social change that is needed. In other words, without a risk pivot—be it driven by social or environmental change—an AnthroShift that is large enough to respond adequately to the climate crisis and open a large enough window of opportunity postshock is improbable. At this point, it is impossible to predict if such a shock will come from ecological disaster, war, pandemic, or another unforeseen risk. What is certain, though, is that without such a shock that motivates an AnthroShift large enough to reorient all the sectors of society to respond meaningfully to the climate crisis, it is hard to envision the world achieving the levels of climate action needed. Instead, the best we can hope for is incremental change that does not disrupt the dominant nodes of political and economic power; such incremental change has the potential to reduce the gravity of the crisis, but it will not stop the coming climate crisis.”–  Saving Ourselves: From Climate Shocks to Climate ActionDana R. Fisher is the Director of the Center for Environment, Community, & Equity and Professor in the School of International Service at American University. Fisher’s research focuses on questions related to democracy, civic engagement, activism, and climate politics. Current projects include studying political elites’ responses to climate change, and the ways federal service corps programs in the US are integrating climate into their work. She is a self-described climate-apocalyptic optimist and co-developed the framework of AnthroShift to explain how social actors are reconfigured in the aftermath of widespread perceptions and experiences of risk. Her seventh book is Saving Ourselves: From Climate Shocks to Climate Action.https://danarfisher.comhttps://cece.american.eduwww.acc.govwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

How can we make the radical social changes needed to address the climate crisis? What kind of large ecological disaster or mass mobilization in the streets needs to take place before we take meaningful climate action?Dana R. Fisher is the Director of the Center for Environment, Community, & Equity and Professor in the School of International Service at American University. Fisher’s research focuses on questions related to democracy, civic engagement, activism, and climate politics. Current projects include studying political elites’ responses to climate change, and the ways federal service corps programs in the US are integrating climate into their work. She is a self-described climate-apocalyptic optimist and co-developed the framework of AnthroShift to explain how social actors are reconfigured in the aftermath of widespread perceptions and experiences of risk. Her seventh book is Saving Ourselves: From Climate Shocks to Climate Action.“I call myself an apocalyptic optimist. In other words, I do believe there is hope to save ourselves from the climate crisis that we have caused. However, I also believe that saving ourselves will only be possible with a mass mobilization that is driven by the pain and suffering of climate shocks around the world. A generalized sense of extreme risk can lead to peaceful and less-peaceful mass mobilizations at the levels needed to stimulate an AnthroShift. Only a global risk event (or numerous smaller events that are seen as threatening social and economic centers of power) will motivate the kind of massive social change that is needed. In other words, without a risk pivot—be it driven by social or environmental change—an AnthroShift that is large enough to respond adequately to the climate crisis and open a large enough window of opportunity postshock is improbable. At this point, it is impossible to predict if such a shock will come from ecological disaster, war, pandemic, or another unforeseen risk. What is certain, though, is that without such a shock that motivates an AnthroShift large enough to reorient all the sectors of society to respond meaningfully to the climate crisis, it is hard to envision the world achieving the levels of climate action needed. Instead, the best we can hope for is incremental change that does not disrupt the dominant nodes of political and economic power; such incremental change has the potential to reduce the gravity of the crisis, but it will not stop the coming climate crisis.”–  Saving Ourselves: From Climate Shocks to Climate Actionhttps://danarfisher.comhttps://cece.american.eduwww.acc.govwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcastCredit Sarah Fillman from FillmanFoto, 2023

“The circular economy is a really interesting space because the reality is that these waste streams are an opportunity for these companies to rethink how they can build a product out of it…Do we need to move away from single-use plastic? Absolutely. There's no need for it. Paper has its cons, but at the same time, the recycling rate on paper is better than plastic. So you have to look at the pros and cons of every single one of these and then see what works for your business and your situation.I'm inspired by a lot of young people who are in their early twenties. They're very interested in these topics. They love thrifting because it is trendy, cool, and affordable. And it's also really good for the environment. I hope that they continue to fight for what is right. I think that what's needed in today's world is that we do create more equitable models, whether it's in business or elsewhere. And that we do have some kind of respect for the planet because the reality is, if we don't, we're the ones that are going to suffer at the end of the day. It's only going to become harder for us, whether it's getting food to eat, whether it's having an environment that's comfortable and hospitable, whether it's having the supply chains we need for all the products in the world. I hope that there is a business model and a path forward, and I hope they're the trailblazers who sort of make it happen. We need to encourage that. We need to create policies that also allow for some of this stuff to flourish.”Esha Chhabra has written for national and international publications over the last 15 years, focusing on global development, the environment, and the intersection of business and impact. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Economist, The Guardian, and other publications. She is the author of Working to Restore: Harnessing the Power of Business to Heal the Earth.www.eshachhabra.comwww.beacon.org/Working-to-Restore-P2081.aspxwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast