JERICHO BROWN

JERICHO BROWN

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Pulitzer Prize-winning Poet
Author of The Tradition & The New Testament

I just want to make the poems like a living being…There are moments that I’m not at the desk, but I’m living life. And living life is actually what leads to writing. You have to have experiences to write about. Whether or not you are aware of those experiences as you are writing them down because if you’re doing music first, maybe you’re not aware of what you’re writing. And yet, those experiences are what come to fruition in your writing. You become aware. Oh, I did come on that roller coaster that time that I haven’t thought about in twenty years. Oh I did make love to that cute person that I haven’t thought about in ten years, but you’ve got to make love, you’ve got to get on roller coasters, you’ve got to get your heart broken. You’ve got to dance. You gotta get out and do things and that, too, is a part of writing. You have to trust you’re a writer by identity. And if you can trust that you’re a writer by identity, then you don’t have to be at a desk.

AMY ANIOBI

AMY ANIOBI

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Amy Aniobi is a writer, director and Executive Producer on HBO’s Emmy-nominated comedy, “Insecure,” starring Issa Rae. “Insecure” will premiere its fifth and final season on October 24th with Aniobi behind the camera as director of the seventh episode (#507) to be broadcast on December 5th. She also served as showrunner/head writer/EP for season one of the HBO stand-up special “2 Dope Queens.” Under her new production shingle “SuperSpecial” and overall deal with HBO, Aniobi already is in development on several projects, as well as two features set up at Universal. Amy recently directed the award-winning short film, "Honeymoon," which explores a modern-day Nigerian couple's arranged marriage. She also co-created, co-directed and starred in the web series, “Lisa and Amy Are Black,” created the web series, “The Slutty Years” and wrote for both seasons of “Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl.” Amy is Nigerian, hails from North Texas, graduated from Stanford University and UCLA, and has lived both in the US (New York, the Bay Area) and abroad (France, Morocco).

AMY ANIOBI

Literally during the last week of production, we kept having this conversation. We are part of a cultural moment and we know we are, which is a very out of body experience… Any iconic black show, did they know? Because a lot of those when you look back at their history they were one the bubble, and I always think about Girlfriends and Living Single––did they know that people would still be talking about them?

Photo Credit: Merie W. Wallace/HBO



This interview was conducted by Mia Funk & Iyabo Lawal with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this podcast was Iyabo Lawal. Digital Media Coordinator is Phoebe Brous.

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

(Highlights) ANA CASTILLO

(Highlights) ANA CASTILLO

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Award-winning Xicana Activist, Editor, Poet, Novelist, Artist
Author of My Book of the Dead
One of the things that is dying is our planet. We hear these sirens every single day. We’re being warned daily by experts and concerned people how vast that squandering is going. It’s a case of urgency and it’s astounding and a very sad, a very pathetic comment on modern life that most people are ignoring those signs. As a poet, it seems to me that one of the tasks that the poet takes on, it’s a vocation that’s born with it, it’s this consciousness, this serving as witness.

ANA CASTILLO

ANA CASTILLO

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Award-winning Xicana Activist, Editor, Poet, Novelist, Artist
Author of My Book of the Dead
One of the things that is dying is our planet. We hear these sirens every single day. We’re being warned daily by experts and concerned people how vast that squandering is going. It’s a case of urgency and it’s astounding and a very sad, a very pathetic comment on modern life that most people are ignoring those signs. As a poet, it seems to me that one of the tasks that the poet takes on, it’s a vocation that’s born with it, it’s this consciousness, this serving as witness.

(Highlights) REBECCA WALKER

(Highlights) REBECCA WALKER

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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.

REBECCA WALKER

REBECCA WALKER

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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.

(Highlights) MARTIN VON HILDEBRAND

(Highlights) MARTIN VON HILDEBRAND

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Indigenous Rights Activist
Winner of Right Livelihood & Skoll Awards
His Fundacion Gaia Amazonas has been named #40 NGOs of the World

I went to the Amazon and I got a canoe and I started rowing into the forest. It was absolutely like going back into the 17th century! I went around for six months on my own and that was fantastic because in this part of the Colombian rainforest there were absolutely no roads, no towns, no electricity, no flowing water. You are with the indigenous group. They are all still in their loincloths. They speak different languages. I went through about eight different ethnic groups. They all spoke different languages. I couldn’t understand what they said. They couldn’t understand what I said, but we got along well.

MARTIN VON HILDEBRAND

MARTIN VON HILDEBRAND

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Indigenous Rights Activist
Winner of Right Livelihood & Skoll Awards
His Fundacion Gaia Amazonas has been named #40 NGOs of the World

I went to the Amazon and I got a canoe and I started rowing into the forest. It was absolutely like going back into the 17th century! I went around for six months on my own and that was fantastic because in this part of the Colombian rainforest there were absolutely no roads, no towns, no electricity, no flowing water. You are with the indigenous group. They are all still in their loincloths. They speak different languages. I went through about eight different ethnic groups. They all spoke different languages. I couldn’t understand what they said. They couldn’t understand what I said, but we got along well.

(Highlights) JASON W. MOORE

(Highlights) JASON W. MOORE

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Environmental Historian, Historical Geographer & Professor of Sociology · Binghamton University

We’re not waiting for the disasters to happen. They have happened. They are happening, and the disasters aren’t natural. They involve climate, but the disasters are very much made by the conditions of capitalist accumulation. We are not going to be able to grapple with the challenges of planetary crisis with the thinking that created planetary crisis.


JASON W. MOORE

JASON W. MOORE

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Environmental Historian, Historical Geographer & Professor of Sociology · Binghamton University

We’re not waiting for the disasters to happen. They have happened. They are happening, and the disasters aren’t natural. They involve climate, but the disasters are very much made by the conditions of capitalist accumulation. We are not going to be able to grapple with the challenges of planetary crisis with the thinking that created planetary crisis.


(Highlights) TODD MILLER

(Highlights) TODD MILLER

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Journalist & Author
Build Bridges, Not Walls · Storming the Wall: Climate Change, Migration & Homeland Security

In 2003, the Pentagon commissioned a report titled something like An Abrupt Climate Scenario. They asked some independent researchers to look at what would happen in a worse case scenario. They found that the United States and Australia. They said that they would have to put up defensive fortresses ‘to stop unwanted starving immigrants’…

TODD MILLER

TODD MILLER

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Journalist & Author
Build Bridges, Not Walls · Storming the Wall: Climate Change, Migration & Homeland Security

In 2003, the Pentagon commissioned a report titled something like An Abrupt Climate Scenario. They asked some independent researchers to look at what would happen in a worse case scenario. They found that the United States and Australia. They said that they would have to put up defensive fortresses ‘to stop unwanted starving immigrants’…

(Highlights) McKENZIE FUNK

(Highlights) McKENZIE FUNK

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Journalist & PEN Literary Award-Winning Author of Windfall

As a parent and especially through all this reporting, what I’ve tried to do is think through these solutions and these fixes we have for everything and make sure that we’re not forgetting…that we’re thinking about other people. Capitalism won’t do it. Self-interest isn’t going to do this for us. As silly as it is to think that empathy will do or caring about your fellow humans will do it, I don’t know what else there is to hope for. I don’t believe that people do stuff purely out of rational self-interest, this libertarian idea that I was quietly pushing against the entire time in Windfall. That we do things just for ourselves or just to make money–that’s not been the reality of my lifetime.

McKENZIE FUNK

McKENZIE FUNK

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Journalist & PEN Literary Award-Winning Author of Windfall

As a parent and especially through all this reporting, what I’ve tried to do is think through these solutions and these fixes we have for everything and make sure that we’re not forgetting…that we’re thinking about other people. Capitalism won’t do it. Self-interest isn’t going to do this for us. As silly as it is to think that empathy will do or caring about your fellow humans will do it, I don’t know what else there is to hope for. I don’t believe that people do stuff purely out of rational self-interest, this libertarian idea that I was quietly pushing against the entire time in Windfall. That we do things just for ourselves or just to make money–that’s not been the reality of my lifetime.

(Highlights) JENNIFER MORGAN

(Highlights) JENNIFER MORGAN

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Executive Director of Greenpeace International

I have always hoped and dreamt to work with young people because I’ve always felt that it is their future. It’s so inspiring to be working with young people all around the world. I feel that we are in the midst of transformational change and that working together around these key moments where you can see those shifts happening – unimaginable things that you never thought were going to happen can happen. That would be my other advice to young activists that just when you aren’t expecting it, something will happen and you’ll be like, “I can’t believe they just decided that! Holy cow!” And then you’ve got to celebrate.

JENNIFER MORGAN

JENNIFER MORGAN

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Executive Director of Greenpeace International

I have always hoped and dreamt to work with young people because I’ve always felt that it is their future. It’s so inspiring to be working with young people all around the world. I feel that we are in the midst of transformational change and that working together around these key moments where you can see those shifts happening – unimaginable things that you never thought were going to happen can happen. That would be my other advice to young activists that just when you aren’t expecting it, something will happen and you’ll be like, “I can’t believe they just decided that! Holy cow!” And then you’ve got to celebrate.

(Highlights) PETER SINGER

(Highlights) PETER SINGER

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Most Influential Living Philosopher
Author · Founder of The Life You Can Save

I would like young people to recognise that they are part of a long tradition that has been trying to the make the world a better place. A tradition that goes back as far as we have recorded history, that there are people who tried to–like Socrates, but also like Buddha and many other figures in different cultures–think more about how we ought to live in accordance with their thinking. Tried to do good in the world and that’s a tradition they can be part of. This generation really does hold the future of the planet in its hands.

PETER SINGER

PETER SINGER

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Most Influential Living Philosopher
Author · Founder of The Life You Can Save

I would like young people to recognise that they are part of a long tradition that has been trying to the make the world a better place. A tradition that goes back as far as we have recorded history, that there are people who tried to–like Socrates, but also like Buddha and many other figures in different cultures–think more about how we ought to live in accordance with their thinking. Tried to do good in the world and that’s a tradition they can be part of. This generation really does hold the future of the planet in its hands.

(Highlights) JESS WILBER

(Highlights) JESS WILBER

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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.

JESS WILBER

JESS WILBER

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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.