Highlights - Actress CATHERINE CURTIN (Orange is the New Black) & Artistic Director KATE MUETH (Director, Educator, Choreographer)

Interviewed by Mia Funk

Why do we make art? What can the performing arts teach us about how to engage in dialogues to overcome conflict and division? Our guests today are actress Catherine Curtin and artistic director Kate Mueth.

Curtin is known for her roles on Stranger Things, Homeland, and Insecure. She played correctional officer Wanda Bell in Orange Is the New Black, and for this role she was a joint winner of two Screen Actors Guild Awards for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series.

Mueth is the Founder and Artistic Director of the award-winning dance theater company The Neo-Political Cowgirls that seeks to deepen and challenge the ways in which audiences experience stories and awaken their human connection. Based in East Hampton, New York they have performed to audiences in America and Europe.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

You have both collaborated together on projects for Neo-Political Cowgirls and you're both very political as actors. How did you come to be so political at the same time as pursuing your art?

KATE MUETH

I don't know why we would really want to tell stories without being connected to the meaning.

And I think that's especially for women, but I do think for human beings, that is how we can work as hard and be able to get up the next morning and keep going. Because we are working through the meaning, and it feeds us as we're like making sense of it all, trying to make sense of it, and for being in community and communion, if I dare say that, as an ex-Catholic too.

Like sharing as a witness what it is to be human and what it means, and through this work, tell our story. So yeah, I feel like it's a bit of a crushing experience, as an industry goes. And I often feel like I'm way flung out to the side in the process of how I do the work versus how the industry wants it done, expects it done, and how the money is made and having it done. And there's an unhappy marriage between art and commerce right now. We've changed as a society, and the internet and AI have changed the world. But I kind of don't care because I get one life that I'm aware of, and I just want to do it in a way that feels good and the art feels true for me.

CATHERINE CURTIN

I grew up in New York City. And when I was like 13, I'd sneak downtown on the subway and I'd go see shows at like La MaMa and Wooster Group and all of these sort of heavy-hitting, really alternative theaters. And theater was, for me, my first love. And I feel like in some ways, we've lost touch with that because we exist in a world that has become so fast moving. And I'm not sure that's a gain, a bonus, but there always has to be a check-in, and I find working with Kate, I've always felt that I never had to fear that my process was taking a long time.

There was never a sense of like, what have you got? Show it right now. Do it, show it, show it! What have you got? Okay. Oh, you haven't got it. It's like there's a sense of, with Kate, it's like you're being wrapped in this enormous teddy bear of artistic freedom and care. Because I do do enough TV and film. Sometimes the bigger the budget, you know, sometimes... (gestures as though to say 'the quality doesn't always increase'). So, I'm always glad to just relax in the creative process, and I'm always very grateful for that. I think it's why I do so much indie film because it's really fun.

...The depth of the pain that so many people who are walking the strike right now feel. It's the depth of the pain of the unhappy marriage between art and commerce. It is the depth of the pain of how we've changed as a society and how the internet and AI in the computer world, it has given us so much, but [we lose something in the process].

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

Your work has resonated widely with some of the really important issues and stories of our time. Women's rights, incarceration, social justice. You mentioned that meaning is very important for art, not just to be entertaining but to have meaning.

MUETH

The best art is political, and it gets us in conversation. And we should be able to sit and hold different opinions and listen to each other and wonder about solutions.

I want everyone to thrive, wherever they're calling is. These are things that fundamentally, to me, make life thrive and be meaningful. And when my neighbor thrives, I'm more likely to thrive. So let us be in communication. And women holding the power of the pen, because enough with this bullshit, patriarchal brokenness and war. Like the fact I look at Putin's war, I look at Ukraine, I look at what America does, I look at this violence and I go: this just makes no sense to me. It looks like a petulant little child kicking each other's sandcastles over. Stupid little men.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

My grandmother just died, and so I'm thinking about what passes away and what remains. That's what a good performance does. We're beautifully flawed. I think that's the advantage that we have over AI. We don't know everything. AI seems to know everything except the very basics of life.

CURTIN

Death is the imperfection of life. Because life is just a fleeting thing for everyone, for all of us. And so there's no way that a black box AI can know death. So AI can never, in that sense, know life, because every day you walk, you think. Like I was just on my way to do the zoom with you guys, and I just went to grab my bracelet, which was sitting next to my grandmother's picture. And I loved my grandmother. So AI doesn't touch us because we exist on a level of such mortal frailty and mortal cruelty, and mortal love, and hate, and jealousy, and insecurity and freedom and joy and wackiness, and being in the moment that there's no way that when one of my neurotic fellow conspiracy theory New Yorker friends says to me that AI is the end of the world! I'm like, it's just not possible because the world is not that permanent for any of us. This is an impermanent destination that we're on.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

You mentioned some of your different role and issues, the incarceration of women. And of course we know Catherine's work from Stranger Things, Orange is a New Black, Homeland, Insecure... I thought that Orange is the New Black was so illuminating because there are so many of these voices and experiences, and I'm afraid to say I never thought that much about the plight of incarcerated women. We often think of the men, but not the women and the families affected by incarceration and the whole prison industrial complex. The way we treat so many of our citizens is devastating, and to hear about the experiences of women more so since that reverberates and is felt all the way down the line to their families.

CURTIN

Women's Prison Association is a fabulous organization that everybody should be aware of. And they do things in the fall like Pack your Book Bag and things like that. So there's a lot of different ways to get involved with them, and they're really wonderful. And the WPA started in like the 1860s in New York because what was happening to a lot of women is - they've kept their books from that time of the people that they helped and the stories that they helped, so this within the books of the WPA archives. What was happening were these women were coming over as immigrants, and maybe their husbands were already here, but their husbands, maybe they got a new family or maybe they just kind of disappeared, checked out for whatever reason. Quite often the husband, it's documented, would sell the children from that woman coming over to the industrial complex - real factory child labor stuff. And the woman was forced to become a prostitute, which I actually think should be legalized, but obviously, at that time it was not. And so the WPA had a lot of women who were immigrants who were prostitutes. And what they sought to do was to help these women not go to prison, get their children back, and get jobs. And that is still what they are doing because the problem with the prison system is that once you're in it, once you have a record, it's very hard, even when you get out to get that record expunged. So the whole effort is to say to a judge, if this woman, who has three strikes or whatever the law is that is funneling her through the system, passes through our program (I think it's a six-month program) and it's difficult, then she won't go to prison. We will endeavor to get her a job, get her an apartment, and get her kids back. And that's the goal. And that has been the goal of the Women's Prison Association and also women coming out of prison. The goal is to get them back into the system of getting a job, getting an apartment, getting their kids back. So the Women's Prison Association, it's a fabulous organization. It's one organization that everybody could support that is really on the right side of making society a stronger, better place.

MUETH

In America, incarcerated people are not seen by us. We act as if we know that oh, they've been tried, they deserve to be in there. And some do. Some are victims themselves. Many of them are women. I just did a month of grand jury duty a month or so ago. And that's where we go and sit with 22 other people and decide, from witnesses, if this case has enough proof for the person to be arraigned, and go to trial.

And something that I came away with was it feels like most people who got themselves in that situation were, most of the time, stupid and greedy. Or they were in abject poverty. All of the hopelessness, right?

They have had nothing but violence in their life. How we can continue to make it a practice and a policy to punish these people and then put them away, punish them some more in our brutal for-profit prison system and expect them to come out and want to be different. Or even have the capacity to be different. It's obscenely naive and ignorant on behalf of our society. And you know, a "Christian nation" bullshit. We're not a Christian nation when you allow this to happen without an ounce of compassion or forethought about how we're going to take care of these people and help them to come to thriving when they get released, as is their right.

CURTIN

We used to edit film on a flatbed. And every time you would take a scissors and make a cut and if you made the wrong cut you had to put the pieces back together and it wasn't a simple little thing.

I believe Angels and Insects was the last film edited on a flatbed. Anybody who looks at that film sees the difference in the edit because when you choose to do something really thoughtfully and carefully as opposed to like, you know, I could put that scene there and I could put that scene here and what we've done today is we've made everything so fast and so easy that I think there's something to the creative process about it being a little bit more of an exploration than it is wham bam, it's done.

Let's go have lunch. And I think there is something to the creative process where it's allowed to develop. It's called process because it is a process.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

You’re both so outspoken and have found your political voices, which is so important, because if we don’t speak up for ourselves, others like lobbyists will fill gap and speak up - and not on our behalf.

CURTIN

It's so important, like when Number 45 went into office, and he emptied out all of the documentation in the EPA. He was like, empty all those files, get rid of all that research, get rid of all those researchers. I think that clearly, even now, the Trumpers are like, oh, the environment. It was a global warming. You know, we had a global warming problem. Well, we knew that a long time ago. And so one hopes that maybe that is one of the places that AI can improve the human condition. Maybe AI, the statistical data, and the non-emotional data will convince people when there's a problem and take the emotion out of the issue. Because I think that that's one of the reasons why issues don't move forward sometimes is that the emotional impact is too hot. And so maybe just getting it into statistics or getting it into data, or getting it into numbers where people can't really deny the truth of one plus one does equal two, you know?

MUETH

The vibration of a beating heart, of a human voice, of the blood pumping in our bodies is so much grander and embracing and full of story than artificial intelligence could ever be, or any technology.

We forget when we're in the woods the hum of nature, it is so distinct and unique. And even when we try to replicate it, we cannot replicate it in truth. And this is the thing, we are so full of hubris and so incurious that we just keep moving past our natural connection to the planet and that's a shame.

And that's where I think we inherently miss out by all of us just getting swept up in this technology and forgetting to pay attention to this place we call home.

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this episode was Sophie Garnier. The Creative Process is produced by Mia Funk. Additional production support by Katie Foster.

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions).

Interviews - FEATURED

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UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network

The SDSN was set up to mobilize research and science for the Sustainable Development Goals. The development goals were adopted in 2015 by all UN member states, marking the first time in human history that we have a common goal for the entire world. Out of all the targets that we track, only 16 percent are estimated to be on track. Currently, none of the SDGs are on track to be achieved at the global level.

CHARLIE HERTZOG YOUNG

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There's that old saying, “blessed are the cracked for they shall let in the light.” For a lot of people like myself, I think it's true that losing your mind can be a proportionate response to the climate crisis. Those of us with mental health issues are often branded as being in our own world. But paradoxically, being in our own world can actually be a result of being more connected to the outside world rather than less. And in the context of climate change, it may be fairer to describe people who fail to develop psychological symptoms as being in their own separate anthropocentric world, inattentive to the experiences of the billions of other human and nonhuman beings on the planet, unaffected by looming existential catastrophe. There are layers and layers of insulation made up of civilizational narratives that dislocate many people from climate chaos and those whose psyches buckle upon contact with this reality are the ones deemed mad. But this pathologizing is a defense mechanism employed by the civilized or by the dominant culture, which ends up subjugating those of us whose minds stray from accepted norms. There are lots of studies that show that certain forms of psychosis are actually a form of meaning-making for communities that feel like they have no sense of purpose. We've had generations and generations of trauma visited upon the human species by picking apart communities and our intimate relationships with nature. Especially since the 80s, picking apart our inability to even consider ourselves as part of society in a meaningful sense .That kind of pulling apart means that we're locked in

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Oscar & Emmy-winning Director
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INGRID NEWKIRK

Founder & President of PETA - People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals

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DANIEL GOLEMAN

Psychologist
Author of Emotional Intelligence · Optimal · Ecological Intelligence

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DUSTIN O'HALLORAN

Emmy Award-winning · Oscar-nominated Composer · Musician
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The album 1 0 0 1 is really like a journey from our connection with nature to where we are now, in this moment where we're playing with technology. We're almost in this hybrid space, not fully understanding where it's going. And it's very deep in our subconscious and probably much greater than we realize. And it sort of ends in this space where the consciousness of what we're creating, it's going to be very separate from us. And I believe that's kind of where it's heading – the idea of losing humanity, losing touch with nature and becoming outside of something that we have created.

JEFFREY ROSEN

President & CEO of the National Constitution Center
Author of The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America

That idea of planting seeds for future generations came from the Tusculan Disputations. There’s something especially empowering about Cicero. And it's very striking that Thomas Jefferson and John Adams and so many in the Founding Era viewed this manual about overcoming grief as the definition for achieving happiness. And I think it's because it's a philosophy of self-mastery, self-improvement, and self-empowerment.

BERTRAND PICCARD

Explorer & Aviator of the First Round-the-World Solar-powered Flight
Founder of Solar Impulse Foundation & Climate Impulse

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ED ZWICK

Academy Award-winning Writer, Director & Producer
Glory · The Last Samurai · Shakespeare in Love · Thirtysomething
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Emmy & Golden Globe-winning Executive Producer · Director
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I think all great work comes from the need to say something. And so this is the challenge for young artists and also maybe one of the essential elements that can never be completely taken over by AI because there has to be something you feel has not been said, and you feel an urgent need to say it. In fact, you can't not say it. That need to express is what gives birth to unique expression, which is where all of our visual, performance, and creative arts come from.

JONATHAN YEO

Artist

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Author of Eco-Travel: Journeying in the Age of the Anthropocene
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CAMILLA HAWTHORNE

Co-Editor of The Black Geographic: Praxis, Resistance, Futurity
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A Black geographic perspective for me was really helpful in trying to clarify how we can simultaneously understand Blackness as a global project, that is anti-national, that transcends borders, but that also takes on really specific meanings and practices in different places, engagements with Black geographies that are looking just beyond the framework of North America.

ITA O'BRIEN

Intimacy Coordinator · Founder of Intimacy on Set
Author of Intimacy On Set Guidelines

For years, people spoke about how awkward or embarrassing it was to perform the intimate content. And what they're speaking about is feeling horrible. If something's awkward, that squirm, that ring in the body, it feels embarrassing. That's actually an emotion that is not professional. That is not allowing the actor to stay feeling listened to, heard, empowered, autonomous. And so that they can just get on without any of those concerns and do their job to their best ability. And that's the awareness that we brought. So, we're saying, it is not suitable in our workplace for anybody to feel harassed or abused.

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ANDRE DUBUS III

NYTimes Bestselling Author
House of Sand and Fog · The Garden of Last Days · Ghost Dogs · Townie

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LUDOVIC SLIMAK

Paleoanthropologist · Author of The Naked Neanderthal: A New Understanding of the Human Creature

This book is not just about Neanderthals. It's a book about us. I wanted to warn humans, to say there is something in us that is so efficient and dangerous. We've effectively collapsed many things and are now inducing the collapse of natural environments on the planet. And after that, we might even cause the collapse of ourselves as Homo sapiens.

PAOLA SPINOZZI

Coordinator, Phd Programme, Environmental Sustainability & Wellbeing · University of Ferrara
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Songs of Nature

Musicians, Writers, Ecologists & Philosophers on the Mysteries of the Natural World

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TARA ISABELLA BURTON

Author of Here in Avalon · Social Creature · Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World
Self-Made: Curating Our Image from Da Vinci to the Kardashians
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BRYCE COON

Director of Education · EarthDay.ORG

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KATHLEEN ROGERS

President of EarthDay.ORG

The world recognizes that plastics have imperiled our future. Many environmentalists, myself included, view plastics as on par with, if not worse than, climate change because we do see a little light at the end of the tunnel on climate change. Babies vs. Plastics is a collection of studies, and we particularly focused on children and babies because their bodies and brains are more impacted than adults by the 30, 000 chemicals that assault us every day.

The Unseen Invasion of Microplastics in Our Lives

Interview with KATHLEEN ROGERS
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Microplastics and nanoplastic pollution are currently blanketing the planet. They are in the air we breathe, the food we eat, and the water we drink, infiltrating our bodies and even brains and human embryos. Coca-Cola alone sells 100 billion+ single-use plastic bottles each year, ending up in landfills and the ocean. Earth’s population will reach 9.8 billion people by 2050. Two-thirds of humans will become city dwellers. Our waste will drive a mounting worldwide crisis.

POORVA JOSHIPURA

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LEWIS DARTNELL

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The challenges facing our society at the moment effectively are the unintended consequence of a solution we found in the late 1700s when society was running out of energy, we had no more timber, and we realized we could dig underground for ancient fossilized woodland, which is basically what coal is from about 300 million years ago. The consequence of burning all that coal and then oil was a release of carbon dioxide, changing our atmosphere and warming the planet. So, it's a problem born out of our ingenuity and resourcefulness, but I'm confident that we will find the solution out of our ingenuity and resourcefulness.

SASHA LUCCIONI

Founding Member of Climate Change AI
AI Researcher & Climate Lead · Hugging Face

My work is really about figuring out how, right now, AI is using resources like energy and emitting greenhouse gases and how it's using our data without our consent. I feel that if we develop AI systems that are more respectful, ethical, and sustainable, we can help future generations so that AI will be less of a risk to society. The way I got into this field was working on the environmentally beneficial applications of AI, and I do believe that that's an impactful way of using AI techniques because there's so much data about the climate, satellite data, and sensor data, and the way to go about this is to work with domain experts. AI is never going to solve the problem on its own, but it can be a tool. So I think that there's a lot of promise there.

DR. SHIV SOMESHWAR

Fmr. European Chair for Sustainable Development & Climate Transition · Sciences Po
Development Clinician focused on Cities & Nation States

How do you have economic growth that is socially equitable and environmentally sustainable? It's not just that you have ecological sustainability; hence, that is sustainable development. Because lots of examples of economic, ecological, and ecologically sensitive growth need not be socially equitable. That's why this whole emphasis on just transition is not just about climate, but it's also about justice. It's about social equity in economic growth. Unlike in Europe, where there is now the call for degrowth or a circular economy, most parts of the world would look at you blankly if you talked about degrowth because they are hungry for growth. And so sustainable development is about managing these trade-offs.

From Ancient Wisdom to the Language of the Earth

Scientists, Artists, Psychologists & 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.

JAY JORDAN & ISABELLE FRÉMEAUX

Artists, Activists & Anarchists Seize Wetlands from the French Republic
Authors of We are ‘Nature’ Defending Itself: Entangling Art, Activism and Autonomous Zones
the story of a 40-year struggle to preserve 4,000 acres of wetlands from being destroyed to make way for an airport

DOUG LARSON

Award-winning Scientist · Ecologist · Professor Emeritus · University of Guelph
Author of Cliff Ecology · The Urban Cliff Revolution · The Dogma At My Homework

I think one thing I learned from looking at the ancient trees is that there is no great benefit to anything of growing quickly and accumulating vast resources. Growing slowly and patiently and with fewer demands on the environment in which you live is just as healthy and perhaps more healthy than the endless hunger for more and more and more, which we see as a characteristic of our species.

THOMAS CROWTHER

Ecologist · Founder of Restor
Co-chair of the Board for the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration

Global restoration really means finding and empowering the millions of local communities, indigenous populations, and farmers who are promoting biodiversity. Restor is a digital platform, sort of like Google Maps, but for restoration. So rather than seeing coffee shops and supermarkets, you will see conservation projects and Indigenous-led restoration initiatives. And that means you can find a currently on Restor - I think we have around 140, 000 - so you can go on there for free right now and find thousands and thousands of these amazing heroes of nature. And you can zoom in and you can see every single tree on the ground. You can see every bush and you can fund them or you can buy their coffee or you can go visit their projects and do ecotourism. There's a myriad of ways that we can all support their efforts by also improving our own lives.

We need to be cutting our emissions so that we can allow nature to thrive and help us along the way. For far too long people have been squabbling about emissions. We should do this or we should do that. Climate change is way too big for us to be squabbling about things. We need to do everything now. When we grow the same crops every year, the soil gets more depleted and all the nutrients are lost. I've heard quotes that if we cannot find agricultural systems that rejuvenate the soil instead of depleting it, we are signing our death warrant. It's like we need to be promoting healthy soils if we're going to have any agriculture in the future.

PETER D. DITLEVSEN

Professor of Physics, Ice, Climate & Earth at the Niels Bohr Institute

What happens if we lose the Greenland ice sheet and pass the tipping points and Earth systems shut down?

If that shuts down, roughly speaking, the climate of Northern Europe would be like the climate of Alaska. So, climate models that actually simulate what happens when it's shut down, would say that England becomes like Northern Norway, which means that food security and things like that will be threatened because you cannot grow many crops in Northern Norway. And other models say precipitation changes, so places that are wet might become dry, and so on. So, these are of course severe consequences for Europe, but in some sense, this is going in the opposite direction of global warming. We're all talking about we're getting into a warmer world, but I'm talking about a cooling here. But the warm water that does not then flow from the tropics into the North Atlantic will stay in the tropics. And there, you're not contra-balancing global warming. There you will have the heating on top of the global warming. And that I see as maybe the largest problem we have is that the tropics become even warmer. And we have to realize if you live in a place where mean temperatures are maybe late thirties Celsius and or rise to the forties livelihood becomes very difficult.

DR. BARRY SCHWARTZ

Psychologist · Author of Why We Work
The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less

In 2004, the internet was just getting started in a major league way, and already the choice overload was a problem. I would say that from the modern perspective, 2004 seems like the 18th century, and as near as I can tell, all of these changes, every single one of them has made the problem substantially worse. The idea that you can get information to help guide you through - well, yeah, but what information do you believe? What's trustworthy? What's being motivated by an opportunity to sell you something? So there is a haze, there is this fog that we're operating in. And I think we just sort of give up in resignation and look at recommendations and hope that they're legitimate because how else do you get through the day?

KOHEI SAITO

Author of Slow Down! How Degrowth Communism Can Save the World
Marx in the Anthropocene: Towards the Idea of Degrowth Communism

The Green New Deal presents itself as a kind of radical policy. If you look at the content, it's just simply the continuation of what capitalism wants to do. It's a massive investment in new, allegedly green industries, with the creation of more jobs with higher wages, but these are not the things that socialists or any environmentalists should be actually seeking because we recognize that capitalism is basically the root cause of the climate crisis and the misery of the workers. If so, I think it is high time to imagine something radically very different from business-as-usual capitalism.

The Long Tradition of American Jewish Critiques of Israel & Their Suppression

American Jews were interested and involved in Palestinian rights all the way back to 1948. There's this idea that it came about just now or in the 1970s, but actually as long as there's been a Nakba. As long as there's been Palestinian refugees, there’s been American Jews concerned with that, too. I would say that a lot of times these American Jews were very well informed and spent time in the region, and they came to these conclusions often not in the United States, but over there where they were talking to the Israeli left and meeting Palestinians and seeing a situation that they don't feel is ethical or sustainable.

BEN FRANTA

Founding Head of the Climate Litigation Lab
Senior Research Fellow at University of Oxford’s Sustainable Law Programme

For 40 years, the American Petroleum Institute has hired economists to argue it would be too expensive to try and control fossil fuels and that climate change wasn't that bad. The same go-to consultancy firm has been involved in every major climate policy fight from the very beginning and hired by the fossil fuel industry, but what are the courts going to do? It's not just the historical deception. It's an ongoing deception.

MICHAEL STICKA

President/CEO of the GRAMMY Museum

It's actually right in our mission statement that “we celebrate the music of yesterday and today to inspire the music of tomorrow.” And we do it through our exhibits. We have 35,000 square feet of galleries. We travel exhibits, really, all over the world over the world for the past 15 years. And through our education programs, we really focus on the next generation of music's creators and leaders. We do that through really specific curricula that is designed to educate particularly young people, K-12, about the business of music, especially for those who want to go into the industry.

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