SIR ANDY HAINES - Tyler Prize Award-winner for Environmental Achievement - Prof. Env. Change & Public Health

SIR ANDY HAINES - Tyler Prize Award-winner for Environmental Achievement - Prof. Env. Change & Public Health

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Tyler Prize Award-winner for Environmental Achievement
Professor of Environmental Change & Public Health
Fmr. Chair of WHO World Health Report · Rockefeller /Lancet Commission on Planetary Health

In terms of the impacts of climate change on health when we started 30 years ago, because there was very little data then, so we made suggestions as to what we thought the health outcomes we thought would be affected like vector-borne diseases, crop failures, water availability, sea level rise, increasing disasters related to climatic extreme events, and obviously the effects of extreme heat on vulnerable populations. In particular, elderly people, but not just elderly people. So we suggested a whole range of different health impacts that could occur. And I think, in general, those ideas have stood the test of time, but of course, as the situation has moved on, we've also become much more preoccupied with what kind of action we need to take.

Highlights - JILL JOHNSON - Dancer - Choreographer & Ballet Stager - Fmr. Dance Director, Harvard

Highlights - JILL JOHNSON - Dancer - Choreographer & Ballet Stager - Fmr. Dance Director, Harvard

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Dancer · Choreographer and Ballet Stager · Fmr. Director Harvard Dance

Keeping people interested in dance is exposing folks, no matter how big or small an audience, to the different ways of seeing. How can you place a value on solace, joy, or tenderness and vulnerability?

JILL JOHNSON - Dancer - Choreographer & Ballet Stager - Fmr. Dance Director, Harvard

JILL JOHNSON - Dancer - Choreographer & Ballet Stager - Fmr. Dance Director, Harvard

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Dancer · Choreographer and Ballet Stager · Fmr. Director Harvard Dance

Keeping people interested in dance is exposing folks, no matter how big or small an audience, to the different ways of seeing. How can you place a value on solace, joy, or tenderness and vulnerability?

Highlights - NICHOLAS ROYLE - Author of "Mother: A Memoir"

Highlights - NICHOLAS ROYLE - Author of "Mother: A Memoir"

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Co-author of An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory
Author of Mother: A Memoir · Managing Editor of Oxford Literary Review

My mother died years ago. What has induced me to write about her after all this time remains mysterious to me. It is connected to the climate crisis. As the natural historian David Attenborough says: 'the collapse of our civilizations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon.' In ways I cannot pretend to fathom I have found that writing about my mother is bound up with writing about Mother Nature and Mother Earth. And no doubt it has to do also with my own aging and the buried life of mourning. The strange timetables of realization and loss. A memoir is 'a written record of a person's knowledge of events or of a person's own experiences'. 'A record of events written by a person having intimate knowledge of them and based on personal observation.' So the dictionaries tell us. But this memoir of my mother makes no attempt at a comprehensive record.

NICHOLAS ROYLE - Co-author of "An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory" - Author of “Mother: A Memoir”

NICHOLAS ROYLE - Co-author of "An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory" - Author of “Mother: A Memoir”

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Co-author of An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory
Author of Mother: A Memoir · Managing Editor of Oxford Literary Review

My mother died years ago. What has induced me to write about her after all this time remains mysterious to me. It is connected to the climate crisis. As the natural historian David Attenborough says: 'the collapse of our civilizations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon.' In ways I cannot pretend to fathom I have found that writing about my mother is bound up with writing about Mother Nature and Mother Earth. And no doubt it has to do also with my own aging and the buried life of mourning. The strange timetables of realization and loss. A memoir is 'a written record of a person's knowledge of events or of a person's own experiences'. 'A record of events written by a person having intimate knowledge of them and based on personal observation.' So the dictionaries tell us. But this memoir of my mother makes no attempt at a comprehensive record.

Highlights - ANNA ABRAHAM - Author of “The Neuroscience of Creativity” - Director of Torrance Center for Creativity

Highlights - ANNA ABRAHAM - Author of “The Neuroscience of Creativity” - Director of Torrance Center for Creativity

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Author of The Neuroscience of Creativity
Director of the Torrance Center for Creativity & Talent Development, University of Georgia

I love podcasts and things like that, if only to listen to people who've done incredible things. We live in a kind of unusual time where we can hear firsthand people talking about their own experiences, and what they went through when they were creating something. And while artists differ greatly from one another in terms of the specifics of their process, what certainly seems to be the case is that they're extraordinarily interested in their own mind, and they have what we would call a metacognitive awareness. They know almost quite precisely, at least what doesn't work for them. They're very cued into what to avoid and how to sort of generate the mental conditions that are necessary in order to be as generative or as creative as they're likely to be in a specific situation. So that is a deep medical awareness that they have about their own process that is really quite something. They know themselves very well.

ANNA ABRAHAM - Author of “The Neuroscience of Creativity” - Director of Torrance Center for Creativity & Talent Development

ANNA ABRAHAM - Author of “The Neuroscience of Creativity” - Director of Torrance Center for Creativity & Talent Development

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Author of The Neuroscience of Creativity
Director of the Torrance Center for Creativity & Talent Development, University of Georgia

I love podcasts and things like that, if only to listen to people who've done incredible things. We live in a kind of unusual time where we can hear firsthand people talking about their own experiences, and what they went through when they were creating something. And while artists differ greatly from one another in terms of the specifics of their process, what certainly seems to be the case is that they're extraordinarily interested in their own mind, and they have what we would call a metacognitive awareness. They know almost quite precisely, at least what doesn't work for them. They're very cued into what to avoid and how to sort of generate the mental conditions that are necessary in order to be as generative or as creative as they're likely to be in a specific situation. So that is a deep medical awareness that they have about their own process that is really quite something. They know themselves very well.

Highlights - JILL HEINERTH - Explorer, Presenter, Author of “Into The Planet: My Life as a Cave Diver”

Highlights - JILL HEINERTH - Explorer, Presenter, Author of “Into The Planet: My Life as a Cave Diver”

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Explorer · Presenter · Author of Into The Planet: My Life as a Cave Diver

If I die, it will be in the most glorious place that nobody has ever seen. I can no longer feel the fingers in my left hand. The glacial Antarctic water to see through a tiny puncture in my formerly waterproof glove. If this water were one-tenth of a degree colder, the ocean will become solid. Finding the knife-edged freeze is depleting my strength, my blood vessels throbbing in a futile attempt to deliver warmth to my extremities. The archway of ice above our heads is furrowed like the surface of a golf ball, carved by the hand of the sea. Iridescent blue, Wedgewood, azure, cerulean, cobalt, and pastel robin’s egg meld with chalk and silvery alabaster. The ice is vibrant, right, and at the same time ghostly. The beauty contradicts the danger. We are the first people to cave dive inside an iceberg. And we may not live to tell the story.

JILL HEINERTH - Explorer, Presenter, Author of “Into The Planet: My Life as a Cave Diver”

JILL HEINERTH - Explorer, Presenter, Author of “Into The Planet: My Life as a Cave Diver”

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Explorer · Presenter · Author of Into The Planet: My Life as a Cave Diver

If I die, it will be in the most glorious place that nobody has ever seen. I can no longer feel the fingers in my left hand. The glacial Antarctic water to see through a tiny puncture in my formerly waterproof glove. If this water were one-tenth of a degree colder, the ocean will become solid. Finding the knife-edged freeze is depleting my strength, my blood vessels throbbing in a futile attempt to deliver warmth to my extremities. The archway of ice above our heads is furrowed like the surface of a golf ball, carved by the hand of the sea. Iridescent blue, Wedgewood, azure, cerulean, cobalt, and pastel robin’s egg meld with chalk and silvery alabaster. The ice is vibrant, right, and at the same time ghostly. The beauty contradicts the danger. We are the first people to cave dive inside an iceberg. And we may not live to tell the story.

Highlights - Max Stossel - Award-winning Poet, Filmmaker, Creator of "Words That Move"

Highlights - Max Stossel - Award-winning Poet, Filmmaker, Creator of "Words That Move"

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Award-winning Poet, Filmmaker & Speaker
Creator of the Stand-Up Poetry Special Words That Move

Technology has very much changed the way we read and take in information and shortened it into quick bursts and attention spans. We're living in a new world, for sure. And how do we communicate in this new world? Not just in a way that gets the reach, because there are whole industries aimed at what do I do to get the most likes or the most attention, and all of that, which I don't think is very fulfilling as artists.

It's sort of a diminishing of our art form to try and play the game because then we're getting the attention and getting the hits, as opposed to what do I really want to create? How do I really want to create it? How do I want to display this? And can I do it in a way that breaks through so that if I do it my way, it's still going to get the attention, great. But if it doesn't, can I be cool with that? And can I be okay creating what I want to create, knowing that that's what it's about. It's about sharing in an honest, authentic way what I want to express without letting the tentacles of social media drip into my brain and take over why I'm literally doing the things that I'm doing.

Max Stossel - Award-winning Poet, Filmmaker, Creator of "Words That Move"

Max Stossel - Award-winning Poet, Filmmaker, Creator of "Words That Move"

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Award-winning Poet, Filmmaker & Speaker
Creator of the Stand-Up Poetry Special Words That Move

Technology has very much changed the way we read and take in information and shortened it into quick bursts and attention spans. We're living in a new world, for sure. And how do we communicate in this new world? Not just in a way that gets the reach, because there are whole industries aimed at what do I do to get the most likes or the most attention, and all of that, which I don't think is very fulfilling as artists.

It's sort of a diminishing of our art form to try and play the game because then we're getting the attention and getting the hits, as opposed to what do I really want to create? How do I really want to create it? How do I want to display this? And can I do it in a way that breaks through so that if I do it my way, it's still going to get the attention, great. But if it doesn't, can I be cool with that? And can I be okay creating what I want to create, knowing that that's what it's about. It's about sharing in an honest, authentic way what I want to express without letting the tentacles of social media drip into my brain and take over why I'm literally doing the things that I'm doing.

Highlights - Debra Fisher - Showrunner of Netflix’s “Ginny & Georgia” - Writer, Exec. Producer “Criminal Minds” , “Alias”

Highlights - Debra Fisher - Showrunner of Netflix’s “Ginny & Georgia” - Writer, Exec. Producer “Criminal Minds” , “Alias”

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Showrunner of Netflix’s Ginny & Georgia
Writer · Exec. Producer · Director · Alias · Criminal Minds · The OC · Charmed

I need a balance of light and dark. It can't be just one thing. I want you to be laughing one minute and by the end I want you to be crying. For me, character study is what is the most important. It all comes down to the characters. It's less about action or things like that, which you can have some of that, but it tonally, has to be female-centric and you have to be crying and laughing. There's so many interesting shows that walk that line of light and dark. I want to always live in the gray area with characters. Always. Nothing is ever black or white. It's always a weird gray area.

Debra J. Fisher - Showrunner of Netflix’s “Ginny & Georgia” - Writer, Exec. Producer “Criminal Minds” , “Alias”

Debra J. Fisher - Showrunner of Netflix’s “Ginny & Georgia” - Writer, Exec. Producer “Criminal Minds” , “Alias”

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Showrunner of Netflix’s Ginny & Georgia
Writer · Exec. Producer · Director · Alias · Criminal Minds · The OC · Charmed

I need a balance of light and dark. It can't be just one thing. I want you to be laughing one minute and by the end I want you to be crying. For me, character study is what is the most important. It all comes down to the characters. It's less about action or things like that, which you can have some of that, but it tonally, has to be female-centric and you have to be crying and laughing. There's so many interesting shows that walk that line of light and dark. I want to always live in the gray area with characters. Always. Nothing is ever black or white. It's always a weird gray area.

Highlights - Joëlle Gergis - Lead Author - IPCC Sixth Assessment Report - Author of “Humanity’s Moment”

Highlights - Joëlle Gergis - Lead Author - IPCC Sixth Assessment Report - Author of “Humanity’s Moment”

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Lead Author  of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report
Author of Humanity’s Moment: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope
Sunburnt Country: The History and Future of Climate Change in Australia
Contributor to The Climate Book, ed. Greta Thunberg · Not Too Late, eds. Rebecca Solnit, Thelma Young Lutunatabua

is an award-winning climate scientist and writer at the Australian National University. She served as a lead author for the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report and is the author of and Sunburnt Country: The History and Future of Climate Change in Australia. Joëlle has also contributed chapters to The Climate Book by Greta Thunberg, and Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility, edited by Rebecca Solnit and Thelma Young Lutunatabua.

Joëlle Gergis - Lead Author - IPCC Sixth Assessment Report - Author of “Humanity’s Moment”

Joëlle Gergis - Lead Author - IPCC Sixth Assessment Report - Author of “Humanity’s Moment”

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Lead Author  of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report · Author of Humanity’s Moment: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope · Sunburnt Country · Contributor to The Climate Book, ed. Greta Thunberg · Not Too Late, eds. Rebecca Solnit, Thelma Young Lutunatabua

We're really starting to witness serious climate extremes that can no longer be ignored. And the IPCC, one of our key conclusions to that report was that effectively the human fingerprint on the climate system is now undeniable. It is now an established fact that we have warmed every single continent, every ocean basin on the planet. And again, that's a pretty serious thing to contemplate that human activity from the burning of fossil fuels and the clearing of land has led to this energy imbalance in the earth system, which is leading to a rapidly shifting climate.

Highlights - Etgar Keret - Cannes Film Festival Award-winning Director - Author of “Fly Already”, “The Seven Good Years”

Highlights - Etgar Keret - Cannes Film Festival Award-winning Director - Author of “Fly Already”, “The Seven Good Years”

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Cannes Film Festival Award-winning Director
Author of Fly Already · Suddenly a Knock on the Door · The Seven Good Years

For me, there is something about art, it's not a monologue, it's a dialogue. Some people, it doesn't matter who they speak to, they will speak in the same way they would speak to a five-year-old or to an intellectual or to somebody who doesn't speak the language very well. They would speak the same way and they don't care because this is what they have to say, but I think that the natural thing in the dialogue is really to look into the eyes of the person you speak to and see when he understands or when she doesn't understand or when she's moved or when he's angry. And basically out of that, kind of create your own language.

Etgar Keret - Cannes Film Festival Award-winning Director - Author of “Fly Already”, “Suddenly a Knock on the Door”

Etgar Keret - Cannes Film Festival Award-winning Director - Author of “Fly Already”, “Suddenly a Knock on the Door”

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Cannes Film Festival Award-winning Director
Author of Fly Already · Suddenly a Knock on the Door · The Seven Good Years

For me, there is something about art, it's not a monologue, it's a dialogue. Some people, it doesn't matter who they speak to, they will speak in the same way they would speak to a five-year-old or to an intellectual or to somebody who doesn't speak the language very well. They would speak the same way and they don't care because this is what they have to say, but I think that the natural thing in the dialogue is really to look into the eyes of the person you speak to and see when he understands or when she doesn't understand or when she's moved or when he's angry. And basically out of that, kind of create your own language.

Highlights -Manuel Billeter - Cinematographer - “The Gilded Age” “Inventing Anna” “Jessica Jones” “Luke Cage”

Highlights -Manuel Billeter - Cinematographer - “The Gilded Age” “Inventing Anna” “Jessica Jones” “Luke Cage”

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Cinematographer · The Gilded Age · Inventing Anna
Jessica Jones · Luke Cage

What I think made me want to pursue film or what started my fascination with film and cinema were definitely Fellini, Antonioni, and Bertolucci; the masters, if you will, that kind of make you dream - make you just go to a movie theater, enter this space, and just have a communal experience. I know looking at the screen and just being completely immersed and experiencing stories or experiencing things that make you understand life more - or make you understand life less - and create a dialogue between you and the rest of the world.

Manuel Billeter - Cinematographer - “The Gilded Age” “Inventing Anna” “Jessica Jones” “Luke Cage”

Manuel Billeter - Cinematographer - “The Gilded Age” “Inventing Anna” “Jessica Jones” “Luke Cage”

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Cinematographer · The Gilded Age · Inventing Anna
Jessica Jones · Luke Cage

What I think made me want to pursue film or what started my fascination with film and cinema were definitely Fellini, Antonioni, and Bertolucci; the masters, if you will, that kind of make you dream - make you just go to a movie theater, enter this space, and just have a communal experience. I know looking at the screen and just being completely immersed and experiencing stories or experiencing things that make you understand life more - or make you understand life less - and create a dialogue between you and the rest of the world.

Highlights - Abby Ajayi - Creator of “Riches” - Writer/Producer “Inventing Anna” “The First Lady”

Highlights - Abby Ajayi - Creator of “Riches” - Writer/Producer “Inventing Anna” “The First Lady”

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Creator of the Amazon series Riches
Writer/Producer on Inventing Anna · The First Lady · How to Get Away with Murder

I do feel that if one has the desire and the ability to be a much more big-picture showrunner, I think that's to the best. That benefits the show because there's a creative voice running all the way through. This isn't a movie, where it's a director's medium. It is the writer's medium, so I think the writer should be across producing and also empowering the director, but there is a clear vision. I think Riches has all the hallmarks of the things I've worked on before in terms of complex, slightly subversive women. At the heart of it, it is negotiating power dynamics. And at the heart of it, there are two very complex and yet vulnerable black women, but I've always loved family drama shows and particularly family businesses, whether it's fictional ones or in real life.