SIR GEOFF MULGAN

SIR GEOFF MULGAN

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Author of Another World is Possible: How to Reignite Social & Political Imagination
Professor of Collective Intelligence, Public Policy & Social Innovation at University College London

The great thing about a complex society is there is space for lots of different kinds of people. There's space for wildly visionary poets and accountants and actuaries and engineers. And they all have a slightly different outlook, but it's the combination of this huge diversity, which makes our societies work. But what we probably do need a bit more of are the bilingual people, the trilingual people who are as at ease spending a day, a week, a year designing how a criminal justice system could look in 50 years and then getting back to perhaps working in a real court or real lawyer's office.


NICHOLAS A. CHRISTAKIS


NICHOLAS A. CHRISTAKIS

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Author of Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society
Director of the Human Nature Lab at Yale · Co-director of the Yale Institute for Network Science

We're not attempting to invent super smart AI to replace human cognition. We are inventing dumb AI to supplement human interaction. Are there simple forms of artificial intelligence, simple programming of bots, such that when they are added to groups of humans – because those humans are smart or otherwise positively inclined - that help the humans to help themselves? Can we get groups of people to work better together, for instance, to confront climate change, or to reduce racism online, or to foster innovation within firms? Can we have simple forms of AI that are added into our midst that make us work better together? And the work we're doing in that part of my lab shows that abundantly that's the case. And we published a stream of papers showing that we can do that.

TEY MEADOW

TEY MEADOW

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Author of Trans Kids: Being Gendered in the Twenty-First Century
Assistant Professor of Sociology, Columbia University
Co-editor of Other Please Specify: Queer Methods in Sociology

So while there is no kind of one size fits all story, there are plenty of times when...kind of like clusters of activity. And some kids don't come out as trans. They come out as wanting to begin a process of exploration around gender, wanting to sort of bend things a little bit or begin to present themselves in slightly different ways without a concrete cross-identification.

DERRICK EMSLEY

DERRICK EMSLEY

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Co-founder & CEO of veritree - Data-driven Restorative Platform & tentree Apparel Co.

I think what's powerful about a tree is it's tangible and it's symbolic in a lot of ways. We as humans naturally have this emotional connection, I think, to trees, and so particularly when you think of our ability to take action within the climate crisis conversation, a tree is this really powerful symbol and vehicle because it's a lot easier to understand a tree than it is to understand a pound or two of CO2 that's floating in the air. So for us, tree planting is just the start of the communication, just the start of the impact. Really if all it was was to get a stick in the ground that wouldn't have the long-term impact, whether that be carbon, whether that be socioeconomic impact, and things like that. So really for us, veritree helps us collect all that data and create the operating system to pull in the data on everything from planting forms and field updates that are coming in, survivability analysis, and different updates on things like biodiversity. We're partnering with some groups to test underwater sensors in some of these planting sites. We're collecting socioeconomic surveys and things like that to try to attach the impact to the community and back to the planting that's happening.

PETRA CORTRIGHT

PETRA CORTRIGHT

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Artist

I think to pursue mystery and beauty, these things are a bit subjective, so you can't really tell people exactly what it shouldn't be about. And also I have to preserve these things for myself. I primarily make the work for myself, so if I don't have some questions that are unanswered, even for me, then there's not really an interest to like keep going otherwise. So it's also sort of protection and a preservation mindset that I have about leaving things really open for other people and for myself.

FRANK LOY

FRANK LOY

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Fmr. Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs
Fmr. Chief U.S. Climate Negotiator

We have a number of problems, but two of them are war - we see that at the very moment - but the one that is relatively new, that we didn't have a word for it when I grew up, we certainly didn't understand when I grew up, is environmental consequences. And we have gone from not understanding that to understanding it pretty well, but having a difficult time responding appropriately to that threat.

When I decided I would spend some time in the nonprofit sector, it was my wife who said, "Don't diddle around with a whole bunch of things, focus on something that you care about, and spend both time and your money on that." And so I picked the environment because it seemed to me it had a rather unusual and unique combination of social, economic, political, technical, and scientific elements to it that made it a really interesting complex issue.

ELLEN RAPOPORT

ELLEN RAPOPORT

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Creator, Executive Producer & Showrunner of Minx
starring Ophelia Lovibond & Jake Johnson

What drew me to the time period of the 70s was the real story of these magazines Playgirl, Viva, Foxy Lady, all the magazines that existed in this period. So it was a natural outgrowth of trying to tell a story that was inspired by, to some extent, real-life events. When I started developing Minx, what struck me about the 70s, in particular, is just how similar it was to our time. It seems like the magazines were covering all the same issues that we're now talking about. Obviously, we all saw with the leaked decision in Roe vs. Wade just how close we are to that time period and how far we haven't come.

NOAH WILSON-RICH

NOAH WILSON-RICH

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Co-founder & CEO of The Best Bees Company
Largest Beekeeping service in the US

I was originally drawn to bees because they're social creatures. And as humans, I always wanted to know about ourselves and how we can be our healthiest selves and our healthiest society. Bees and wasps, and all of these organisms have been around for so long. Bees especially have been around for 100 million years.

BILL NOVELLI

BILL NOVELLI

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Founder Business for Impact Program at Georgetown University
Co-founder of Porter Novelli, Global PR Agency · Former CEO of AARP

This is one of the biggest problems that we have in this country. So, on the one hand, we know that we have to take personal responsibility for ourselves, our own health, our families – it's up to us. As some people like to say, you're on your own. And we have to balance that against the concept that we're all in this together. You know, the idea that it takes a village and both sides essentially disrespect the other side. They criticize the other side. No, we're not in this together. It's your own responsibility, and vice versa. If we're going to be good citizens, and we're going to make progress, we have to see both sides of that equation. That's not easy to do.

ANTHONY GARDNER

ANTHONY GARDNER

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Professor of Contemporary Art History, University of Oxford
Fmr. Head, Ruskin School of Art · Co-author of Biennials, Triennials and documenta: The Exhibitions That Created Contemporary Art

I think art can engage with the body, the mind, and the imagination in so many different ways that can compliment modes of thinking, other modes of creating and thinking through and working through and devising.
I was thinking about this in relation to the last 18 months and how the sciences have rightly been heralded as the great way of getting ourselves out of this pandemic, but culture is the way and art is the way that we've been getting through the pandemic.