"When I did my show Positive Me, we were in the middle of a horrible crisis. The AIDS crisis was very real to me and my friends and not real to the people that I knew from New Jersey. They thought it was government hype. They didn't believe in it. And so I couldn't even fathom that. And I had taken a class with Elizabeth Swados about writing satire, and she was very encouraging in terms of what I was doing. And so maybe it was just gumption. I just thought, Okay, then this is what I'm going...

How can the arts help us examine and engage with social issues? How do our families shape our views, memories, and experience of the world? From her role as Dr. Lisa Cuddy on the hit Fox series House, to her starring role as Abby McCarthy in Bravo's first scripted series Girlfriend's Guide to Divorce, Lisa Edelstein's range of roles are as diverse talent. Some of Edelstein's feature credits include Keeping the Faith, What Women Want, Daddy Daycare, As Good as It Gets, and Fathers and Sons....

“When I was younger, I used to draw all the time, so cartoons, comic books, anything visual just got me really quickly when I was younger. And I wanted to be a cartoonist up until I was 14, 15. And then I had this idea to be a rapper, but animation cartoons, these were things that I was super passionate about. It's something that never changed throughout my life. You know, as I grew older, I still had an interest in comics. I still had an interest in animation. And reading comics as a kid as...

What does the future hold for our late-stage capitalist society with mega-corporations owning and controlling everything? How can the world-building skills of the makers of films and comics help us imagine a better future? Kyle Higgins is an Eisner award-nominated #1 New York Times best-selling comic book author and award-winning filmmaker known for his work on DC Comics’ Batman titles as well as his critically-acclaimed reinventions of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers for Boom! Studios/Hasbro,...

"Climate change gives us a chance to re-imagine the world in a way that every single human being can participate in. And so whether you're in a remote part of the United States or some other country, when you learn about climate change, it shouldn't just be the science. It should be the opportunity." –Kathleen Rogers Excerpts of interviews from One Planet Podcast & The Creative Process.

“The natural world has its own sonic language. Its own fingerprints. And that's one of the beautiful things about being out here. There is another acoustic environment, another sort of sonic fingerprint, and it is always changing. Every day is a sort of a different sound picture. I walk out the door and you do hear it changing over time. The leaves are coming in now, different kinds of bird song. The wind sounds different. It's a wonderful thing to be around and experience.” —Max...

"My most formative TV experience having been Six Feet Under, I tend to want to take a rather conservative approach to score, in that if a scene works brilliantly without music, why do you need music? And that score, especially, is usually there to provide an element that you're not getting fully from the dry–when there's no score, we call it dry. So with the dry footage, that was always our philosophy on Six Feet Under: if the scene works just as well without music, we don't need music. And...

What does learning another language and living in another culture do for your humanity and creative process? Alan Poul is an Emmy, Golden Globe, DGA, and Peabody Award-winning producer and director of film and television. He is Executive Producer and Director on the Max Original drama series Tokyo Vice, written by Tony Award-winning playwright J.T. Rogers and starring Ansel Elgort and Ken Watanabe, as an American journalist in Japan and his police detective mentor. Poul is perhaps best known...

Scientists, artists, psychologists, conservationists, and spiritual leaders share their stories and insights on the importance of connecting with nature, preserving the environment, embracing diversity, and finding harmony in the world. Music courtesy of composer Max Richter. All voices in this episode are from our interviews for The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast.

“If we say Mitakuye Oyasin, we don't really mean all my relations. It's like, no, we're talking about what you can formulate into E = mc2 and beyond. It's beyond what you see. And that energy you don't see with these eyes, which only see a certain range of color and light refraction is what we are also understanding. Our body is, people would say the brain is...there is no disconnection. And so are we fully understanding or do we have a full spectrum perspective of what tools of the Earth...

How can we learn to speak the language of the Earth and cultivate our intuitive intelligence? Tiokasin Ghosthorse is a member of the Cheyenne River Lakota Nation of South Dakota and has a long history with Indigenous activism and advocacy. Tiokasin is the Founder, Host and Executive Producer of “First Voices Radio” (formerly “First Voices Indigenous Radio”) for the last 31 years in New York City and Seattle/Olympia, Washington. In 2016, he received a Nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize from...

“It took me some time to understand where I was going to see myself. It’s true that, at home, me and my brothers had a beautiful cultural environment because my father was, not a professional musician, but a jazz lover. He was really into jazz music and really passionate about it. But he was never a professional musician. He was an amateur. My mother, also, was a teacher and a writer, so I think we had this environment at home that got us into music. We were always listening either to opera...

Bernardo Moreira is one of the most active Portuguese double bassists. He has performed as a guest soloist with Gulbenkian, Metropolitan de Lisboa, and Nacional do Porto orchestras, and gained prominence for his collaborations with international artists, including the legendary Benny Colson, Freddie Hubbard, Wayne Shorter, Art Farmer, and Kenny Wheeler. He is a regular collaborator with many jazz musicians in Portugal, participating in formations such as the Maria João/Mário Laginha quartet,...

"I don't honestly know entirely where I'm headed musically. I still have a lot of songs that I haven't finished that are relatively recent and some that go back to 40 years ago, if not more. You know, projects like this last album Jude, partially songs that never had a home, you know, that didn't quite fit on an album or another project. And so, I mean, strangely enough, what I've been doing personally for the end of this year has been going through trying to get all the admin out the way, so...

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...

Q: Who is David Byrne? David Byrne: ...I have no idea. Most people know me through music, but when I was in high school I saw science and the arts as being equally creative fields. More recently, I just started taking an interest in how the brain works, and there's been this explosion of literature. As much as I love reading about neuroscience, I realize that experiencing some of the phenomena is just on a different level. I wanted to create an experience that shows us we're not who we think...

What is consciousness? The mind produces thoughts, sensations, perception, emotions. How can these inner felt experiences be produced within the darkness of the human skull? Nicholas Bruckman is founder and CEO of People's Television, a production studio and creative agency that produces independent films, and video storytelling for brands. Collaborating with the The Simons Foundation through their 'Science Sandbox' Initiative, he directed Theater of the Mind, which takes audiences into the...

Ralph Gibson has photographed The Beatles, Lou Reed (with whom he also made the documentary Red Shirley), Laurie Anderson, and created album artwork for Joy Division. Gibson composes and plays his own music. "Music is purely abstract sound capable of defining the undefinable. And it also happens to be a language that's universally spoken. We could play certain pieces of music in any society in the world and it would be to some extent or another perceived, understood. I recently read that...

How does the mind influence the mind? The mind cannot function without memory. And memory is just the mind aware of itself. So how do images tell us how we see and who we are? Ralph Gibson is one of the most interesting American photographers of our time. His international renown is based on his work, which is shown and collected by some of the world’s leading museums, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the J.P. Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial...

"So it's just a great joy to be passing this guitar made from the wood of an 800-year-old tree around to musicians and asking them to play a song of resistance or celebration. And that's what we're going to do at Climate Aid: The Voice of the Forest. We're going to have it be an annual event like Farm Aid. And we want it to be big. We want it to be Woodstock in its pivot point. The way the Children's Trust court case was pivotal, the way this Black Ram court case we had and won was pivotal."

Rick Bass, a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist for his memoir Why I Came West, was born and raised in Texas, worked as a petroleum geologist in Mississippi, and has lived in Montana's Yaak Valley for almost three decades. His short fiction, which has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Esquire, and The Paris Review, as well as numerous times in Best American Short Stories, has earned him The Story Prize, multiple O. Henry Awards and Pushcart Prizes in addition to NEA and...

Have you ever experienced the feeling of being alone and not having a community? How can we build an atmosphere of inclusion and greater understanding? Brooklyn-based artist Elliot Lee fuses dark pop melodies with edgy vocals and innovative electronic-rock soundscapes to create an unpredictable sound, acting as a voice for the voiceless. Elliot Lee holds an awareness of what music that is unhindered by norms can do for the underrepresented. Elliot’s single "Easy To Be You” is dedicated to...

"Music has the ability to transport you to a place and create a sort of internal landscape. And we all have life-changing things that happened to us. And I remember I made it as a way to kind of ease a busy mind. And perhaps I was missing home. I still call Orkney home, even though I'm not there every day. I'm a thousand miles away today, and I still call Orkney home. For example, when I hear the voice of the curlew, it transports me back to Orkney with such a jolt. In a heartbeat. And music...

How has music transported you? Where do you find inspiration from the natural world? Where do you find moments of every day magic? Erland Cooper is a Scottish composer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist from Stromness, Orkney. He has released three acclaimed studio albums, four additional companion albums, and multiple EPs, including a trilogy of work inspired by his childhood home. His work combines field recordings with traditional orchestration and contemporary electronic elements....

What is the role of music in cinema and why it is such an important part of the storytelling process? How does music increase our capacity for empathy and wonder? Fabrizio Mancinelli is an Italian-American composer, songwriter, and conductor, best known for his musical contributions to the world of cinema. As a songwriter, he has created original scores for The Land of Dreams,The Snow Queen 3, The Boat, and the upcoming animated drama Mushka, among others. In 2017, he led the orchestral...