Hans-Josef Fell
President of Energy Watch Group
Member of German Parliament 1998-2013
Climate scientists forecast that we will see more pandemics, more sickness in people. We have about 8 million people die from air pollution every year around the world. So if we want to save their lives so that they do not become ill, we have to stop air pollution. Climate protection is the best contribution to healthcare for humankind.
Choreographer & Media Artist
Choreography is always, also, a Visual Art…
The etymology of crisis is very productive and constructive because krísis in the Greco-Roman etymology is what happens when there is a germ in the body, so this heat from the krísis creates fever, and fever and the breaking of fever tends to flush out the germ. Healing the germ through crisis is the etymology. And crisis gave birth and rebirth to criticism. Criticism and crisis have the same root word.
Inaugural Director · UNESCO Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace & Sustainable Development
The whole of hierarchy is just wrong. It’s about passion and it’s about letting the person explore themselves. That’s how I think education should be. It should not be a mechanised…it should be a place to explore. It’s a place to have dialogues.
International Outreach Citizens’ Climate Lobby
Coordinator, Senior Stewards Acting for the Environment
When I was in highschool, I recognized that climate change was going to be the largest problem facing my generation and future generations, and I couldn’t help but feel like there was nothing I could do in the face of such an impending problem. So I was actively looking at different organizations that I could become involved with that would help me develop the skills and knowledge I needed to be an effective climate advocate.
Songwriter & President of the Songwriters Guild of America
Songwriters create the meaning in people’s lives. When you’re married, you have a song. When you fall in love, you have a song. At a funeral, they play a song. When people go off to war, they’re singing a war ballad. Songs create the meaningful moments in people’s lives. People bookmark the moment they met and kissed for the first time with a song. Songs are the bookmarks of your life. Your life is not going to have those meaningful moments cemented into your heart and soul without those songs. That’s a critically important job. That’s worth paying for.
Artistic Director of Pacific Northwest Ballet
Dance is for everyone. That’s the mission. We see people that people that might not be able to encounter dance in so many ways because it’s not something that their school offers…and I think traditionally ballet has felt like it can be an elitist art form. Only certain people are invited. You have to have a certain type of foot. You have to have a long neck. You may have to have finances to be able to study ballet. We would like to eliminate that and make sure that it’s available for everybody to sort of dip their toe in and get a sense of it and have an experience of dance.
Founder & President of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)
They’re not human traits. They’re all shared traits because, of course, we all love. We all love our families, or not. We all grieve if somebody we love disappears or dies. A family dog, perhaps. A grandfather. We all feel loneliness, we all feel joy. We all really value our freedom. And so I think, if anything, looking into the eyes of the animal, even online, you see a person in there. There’s a someone in whatever the shape or the physical properties of that individual are. And that lesson is that I am you. You are me, only different. We are all the same in all the ways that count…Any living being teaches you– Look into my eyes. And there you are, the reflection of yourself.
Professor Emeritus of Management at George Washington University School of Business
Former President of the American Society of Cybernetics
Associate Editor of the Journal of Cybernetics and Systems
“Cybernetics is the Greek word for governor, that’s where it came from. It was introduced into the contemporary discussion with a book by Norbert Wiener in 1948 called Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. These were the very early days of computers and they were looking for a theory to guide the creation of computers.”
The Creative Process’s poetry and prose series hosted by Mia Funk & Yu Young Lee. Powerful readings of poems and prose from Neil Gaiman, Marge Piercy, Alice Fulton, EJ Koh, Alice Notley, Margo Berdeshevsky, Gerald Fleming, Jess Wilber, and Yu Young Lee.
Artist & Environmentalist
I have this idea art should be in the world in as many forms and ways as possible, and I love communicating with skate decks… It partially started out in Brazil because what I was doing in Brazil is x-raying animals in the Amazon and I thought there was this idea in the old days that you’d go to the Amazon, you’d kill an animal, stuff it, bag it, and then you’d have this trophy of your kill. The alligators that we x-rayed were alive. I got them from a zoo in a town called Belem, which means Bethlehem in Portuguese.
Essayist & Co-Author of The Lifespan of a Fact
For a writer of non-fiction or essayist that’s very difficult to work with because we aren’t, or at least some of us don’t consider ourselves journalists. The tools that we are working with aren’t–What your favorite color is. Where you grew up. Or what your favorite number is. If we’re writing a profile of something, the tools that we’re working with are long conversations in which people are sharing anecdotes about themselves. When I do an interview with somebody, I don’t take out a tape recorder. I don’t have a notebook. I invite them on a walk so that we can feel at least that we’re just chatting.
Australian Cinematographer of the Year ACS
One of the first things that we did when we did when we arrived in New Zealand to start pre-production was to travel to some of the actual locations where the story is set. One of them is Hokitika on the West Coast of the south island of New Zealand. And we discovered there’s an absolutely fantastic very small but a little museum that was full of so much incredible archival photography that you could not find searching the internet and the imagery just inspired so many thoughts and ideas and design. What was really interesting is it’s so unique to New Zealand.
Award-winning Singer-Songwriter
I like the dark. I don't like the darkness actually. Everybody has parts of darkness in themselves, and I feel that my creations have always come out of a dark place, from that sense of being alone, feeling alone, feeling misunderstood for being the person I am, too extravagant and sometimes too much for people. This is a way to help myself deal with it, to give it a place somewhere in my mind where it's okay.
Pacific Northwest Ballet, one of the largest and most highly regarded ballet companies in the United States, was founded in 1972. In July 2005, Peter Boal became artistic director, succeeding Kent Stowell and Francia Russell, artistic directors since 1977. The Company of nearly fifty dancers presents more than 100 performances each year of full-length and mixed repertory ballets at Marion Oliver McCaw Hall in Seattle and on tour. The Company has toured to Europe, Australia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Canada, and throughout the United States, with celebrated appearances at Jacob’s Pillow and in New York City and Washington DC.
In this interview, we speak with soloist Price Suddarth and corps de ballet Christopher D’Ariano and Amanda Morgan.
This interview was conducted by Mia Funk and Caroline Dougherty with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this podcast was Ari T. Renai. Digital Media Coordinator is Hannah Story Brown.
Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process.
Award-Winning Writer, Producer & Co-founder of Third Wave Fund
The idea of writing memoir is about listening carefully. The way to find a story or, at least the story that needs to be told is that moment that you’re writing is the emerges from a deep kind of inner listening and finding the memories that are charged that don’t want to leave that have a certain kind of energy to them and, if you listen to them, and you allow them to be born in the writing, you discover your own story because your story is basically made up of all the memories that continue to hold the charge for you. All the memories that are lodged in your mind that you’ve secreted away and when you can excavate that story and you can write it down, then you can make sense of it and you can understand why you’re living the way you’re living and why you feel the way you feel. And you can also decide to to release those memories so that you can have new memories that can define and can shape your life.
Executive Director · European Environment Agency
I'm a deep believer in the values of democracy, human rights, and the system where civil society and people play a key role in the discussions about society and also assuming responsibility, whether it's through labor unions, youth organizations…I think one key solution at the level of society is more equality. More equal societies bring a lot of advantages. I think that is a critical component to building a sustainable society. We cannot pretend that the current distribution of wealth on this planet between countries and within countries is a fertile ground for longterm sustainability. It isn’t.
Winner of the Bailey Women’s Prize for Fiction · Goldsmiths Prize · Irish Novel of the Year
Author of A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing · The Lesser Bohemians · Strange Hotel
Eimear McBride trained at The Drama Centre in London. Her debut novel A Girl is a Half-formed Thing received a number of awards, including the Bailey Women’s Prize for Fiction, and the Irish Novel of the Year. She occasionally writes interviews for The Guardian, TLS, and The New Statesman.
The National Museum of Contemporary Art EMST started its operation in Athens in 2000. With help from grants and funding, EMST was able to begin moving into a permanent museum space by 2015 and opened fully to the public in February 2020. This museum is the first of its kind in Greece, as much of the museums and culture are focused more on ancient history or foreign artists. Curators Daphne Vitali, Tina Pandi, and Elena Ganiti are focused on the areas of painting, sculpture, and engraving, while Stamatis Schizakis curates photography and audiovisual works.
This interview was conducted by Mia Funk with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this podcast was Pierson Brown. Digital Media Coordinator is Yu Young Lee.
Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process.
Award-Winning Cinematographer
There are many people you meet along the way and you pick up things from them. I loved when I started working with Anton Corbijn. His photography is so…he mainly uses one lens. One camera. It’s not complicated, but he gets intimate with people in the way he is with them. That’s why his portrait photography is so stunning. Over the years, it’s relevant because he’s curious, he’s open, and he just allows things to happen. I love that. I love creative things.
The Creative Process: Podcast Interviews & Portraits of the World’s Leading Authors & Creative Thinkers
Inspiring Students – Encouraging Reading - Connecting through Stories
The Creative Process exhibition is traveling to universities and museums. The Creative Process exhibition consists of interviews with over 100 esteemed writers, including Joyce Carol Oates, Hilary Mantel, Neil Gaiman, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Tobias Wolff, Richard Ford, Junot Díaz, Marie Darrieussecq, Michel Faber, T.C. Boyle, Jay McInerney, George Saunders, Geoff Dyer, Etgar Keret, Douglas Kennedy, Sam Lipsyte, and Yiyun Li, among others. Artist and interviewer: Mia Funk.
