The Creative Process · Arts, Culture & Society: 2015-2021

It is said that people never die until the last person says their name. In memory of the writer and director Paul Auster, who passed away this week, we're sharing this conversation we had back in 2017 after the publication of his novel 4 3 2 1. Auster reflects on his body of work, life, and creative process.Paul Auster was the bestselling author of Winter Journal, Sunset Park, Invisible, The Book of Illusions, and The New York Trilogy, among many other works. He has been awarded the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature, the Prix Médicis étranger, an Independent Spirit Award, and the Premio Napoli. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is a Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He has also penned several screenplays for films such as Smoke (1995), as well as Lulu on the Bridge (1998) and The Inner Life of Martin Frost (2007), which he also directed.“But what happens is a space is created. And maybe it’s the only space of its kind in the world in which two absolute strangers can meet each other on terms of absolute intimacy. I think this is what is at the heart of the experience and why once you become a reader that you want to repeat that experience, that very deep total communication with that invisible stranger who has written the book that you’re holding in your hands. And that’s why I think, in spite of everything, novels are not going to stop being written, no matter what the circumstances. We need stories. We’re all human beings, and it’s stories from the moment we’re able to talk.”We apologize for the quality of the recording since it was not originally meant to be aired as a podcast. Portrait of Paul Auster by Mia Funk, inspired by his novel 4 3 2 1.www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/1045/paul-austerwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Neil Gaiman is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of more than twenty books, including The Sandman, American Gods, Good Omens, Stardust, Coraline, Norse Mythology, Neverwhere, and The Graveyard Book. He’s adapted many of his books for television and film. Among his numerous literary awards are the Newbery and Carnegie medals, and the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, and Will Eisner awards. He is a Global Goodwill Ambassador for United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). In this episode, Gaiman reads his poems “A Writer’s Prayer” and “These Are Not Our Faces”.  To hear our full interview with Neil Gaiman, visit The Creative Process Podcast: Arts, Culture & Society.www.neilgaiman.comwww.imdb.com/name/nm0301274/www.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Todd Miller is an author and independent journalist. He has researched and written about border issues for more than 15 years, the last eight as an independent journalist and writer. He resides in Tucson, Arizona, but also has spent many years living and working in Oaxaca, Mexico. His work has appeared in the New York Times, TomDispatch, The Nation, San Francisco Chronicle, In These Times, Guernica, and Al Jazeera English, among other places.  Miller has authored four books: Build Bridges, Not Walls: A Journey to a World Without Borders (City Lights, 2021), Empire of Borders: The Expansion of the U.S. Border Around the World (Verso, 2019),  Storming the Wall: Climate Change, Migration, and Homeland Security (City Lights, 2017), and Border Patrol Nation: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Homeland Security (City Lights, 2014).  He’s a contributing editor on border and immigration issues for NACLA Report on the Americas and its column “Border Wars”.· www.toddmillerwriter.com · www.oneplanetpodcast.org · www.creativeprocess.info

“Is it okay that you benefit at the expense of everyone and everything else? Is that a way that you really feel like you are winning at life? If not, then reconsider what you’re doing and just realize that we all live in this inextricably connected closed sphere in the middle of space. Anything that harms one area harms every area. There is nobody who can escape dirty air, dirty water, dirty food, economic political disruptions, etc. We’re all in this together. So don’t fool yourself by thinking somehow you’re going to come out this unscathed and having ‘won’ while everybody else loses.”Ibrahim AlHusseini was born in Jordan and raised in Saudi Arabia by parents who are Palestinian refugees. He emigrated to the United States in the 1990s to attend college at the University of Washington and he currently resides in Los Angeles. AlHusseini is a venture capitalist, sustainability-focused entrepreneur, and environmentalist. He is the founder and CEO of FullCycle, an investment company accelerating the deployment of climate-restoring technologies. AlHusseini is also the founder and managing partner of The Husseini Group.· fullcycle.com· www.oneplanetpodcast.org· www.creativeprocess.info

Ibrahim AlHusseini was born in Jordan and raised in Saudi Arabia by parents who are Palestinian refugees. He emigrated to the United States in the 1990s to attend college at the University of Washington and he currently resides in Los Angeles. AlHusseini is a venture capitalist, sustainability-focused entrepreneur, and environmentalist. He is the founder and CEO of FullCycle, an investment company accelerating the deployment of climate-restoring technologies. AlHusseini is also the founder and managing partner of The Husseini Group.· fullcycle.com· www.oneplanetpodcast.org· www.creativeprocess.info

"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."National Magazine Award finalist McKenzie Funk writes for Harper’s, National Geographic, Rolling Stone, Outside, The New York Times Magazine, and the London Review of Books. His first book, Windfall, won a PEN Literary Award and was named a book of the year by The New Yorker, Mother Jones, Salon, and Amazon.com. A former Knight-Wallace Fellow and Open Society Fellow, he’s a cofounder of the journalism cooperative Deca and a board member at Amplifier.· www.mckenziefunk.com · www.oneplanetpodcast.org · www.creativeprocess.info

National Magazine Award finalist McKenzie Funk writes for Harper’s, National Geographic, Rolling Stone, Outside, The New York Times Magazine, and the London Review of Books. His first book, Windfall, won a PEN Literary Award and was named a book of the year by The New Yorker, Mother Jones, Salon, and Amazon.com. A former Knight-Wallace Fellow and Open Society Fellow, he’s a cofounder of the journalism cooperative Deca and a board member at Amplifier.· www.mckenziefunk.com · www.oneplanetpodcast.org · www.creativeprocess.info

Jennifer Morgan took the helm of Greenpeace International in April 2016. She was formerly the Global Director of the Climate Program at the World Resources Institute. A climate activist, she has been a leader of large teams at major organisations, and her other ports of call have included the Worldwide Fund for Nature, Climate Action Network, and E3G. · www.greenpeace.org ·www.oneplanetpodcast.org · www.creativeprocess.info

Jennifer Morgan took the helm of Greenpeace International in April 2016. She was formerly the Global Director of the Climate Program at the World Resources Institute. A climate activist, she has been a leader of large teams at major organisations, and her other ports of call have included the Worldwide Fund for Nature, Climate Action Network, and E3G. · www.greenpeace.org ·www.oneplanetpodcast.org · www.creativeprocess.info

“For many years I wrote, taught, and published about climate change from a more philosophical, existential point of view, especially thinking about deep time, but I did come back to fuels with my Fuel book in part for the fact that so much of the press and so much of public discourse confuses fuel and energy, and it’s still happening today. I thought about this so long and the same themes, the same tropes are still being recycled.”Karen Pinkus is Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature at Cornell University.  She is a minor graduate field member in Studio Art and a Faculty Fellow of the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future.For more than a decade, Karen has been working between Italian studies and environmental humanities with a focus on climate change. She is Editor of Diacritics. Her books include Fuel: A Speculative Dictionary, Clocking Out: The Machinery of Life in 60s Italian Cinema, exploring issues around labor, automation and repetition in Italian art, literature, design and film of the 60s, and the forthcoming Subsurface, Narrative, Climate Change.· romancestudies.cornell.edu/karen-pinkus · www.creativeprocess.info· www.oneplanetpodcast.org

Karen Pinkus is Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature at Cornell University.  She is a minor graduate field member in Studio Art and a Faculty Fellow of the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future.For more than a decade, Karen has been working between Italian studies and environmental humanities with a focus on climate change. She is Editor of Diacritics. Her books include Fuel: A Speculative Dictionary, Clocking Out: The Machinery of Life in 60s Italian Cinema, exploring issues around labor, automation and repetition in Italian art, literature, design and film of the 60s, and the forthcoming Subsurface, Narrative, Climate Change.· romancestudies.cornell.edu/karen-pinkus · www.creativeprocess.info· www.oneplanetpodcast.org

“As an administrator for 15 years, I still tried to do science and it was difficult because being a dean, every day there is a problem. Every day you have to solve some personal issues, so it’s difficult to concentrate and what I would do was, whenever there was an opportunity to go to a conference away from the university, particularly in a different country, I would sit in the conference room listening to these lectures. You know how it is with meetings, maybe 10% of the speakers are exciting and interesting. What I found is even when I was not listening because I was in this atmosphere of people talking about physics, my mind was set free and would just start percolating. And all of a sudden ideas would come completely unrelated to what the speaker was talking about, except that they were scientific ideas. And I would jot them down and I found that this was really quite an interesting process because it was kind of an immersion process where you actually are not concentrating on what is exactly in front of you, but it puts you in this mood. The brain turns on a different lode and I think by association other ideas come up.”Pierre Sokolsky is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Physics and Astronomy and Dean Emeritus of the College of Science at the University of Utah. He has been a leader in the field of Particle Astrophysics, with a specific interest in the highest energy particles produced by natural processes in the universe. Born in France, he was educated at the University of Chicago and University of Illinois. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, past Guggenheim Fellow, and recipient of the Panofsky Prize of the American Physical Society.· faculty.utah.edu/u0029107-PIERRE_SOKOLSKY/hm/index.hml · www.creativeprocess.info

Pierre Sokolsky is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Physics and Astronomy and Dean Emeritus of the College of Science at the University of Utah. He has been a leader in the field of Particle Astrophysics, with a specific interest in the highest energy particles produced by natural processes in the universe. Born in France, he was educated at the University of Chicago and University of Illinois. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, past Guggenheim Fellow, and recipient of the Panofsky Prize of the American Physical Society.· faculty.utah.edu/u0029107-PIERRE_SOKOLSKY/hm/index.hml · www.creativeprocess.info

“I’ve always considered myself a believing historian and, in fact, most historians of religion are actually believing historians. Very frequently they emerge from the congregations that they’re writing about, whether new religious movements or traditional religions, this is true of Kabbalistic scholar Gershom Scholem, it’s true of people who have written probably the most important biographies of more recent religious figures like Mary Baker Eddy or Joseph Smith, a Mormon prophet. Although, historians don’t frequently acknowledge being believing historians because they feel that it might seem to compromise their capacity for critical judgement, but my impression is different. My impression is that being in very direct proximity to the nature of the philosophical, religious, ethical, therapeutic movements that you’re writing about can heighten your critical acumen.”Mitch Horowitz is a historian of alternative spirituality and one of today’s most literate voices of esoterica, mysticism, and the occult. Mitch illuminates outsider history, explains its relevance to contemporary life, and reveals the longstanding quest to bring empowerment and agency to the human condition. Mitch is a Writer & Lecturer in Residence at the New York Public Library and the PEN Award-winning author of books, including Occult America, One Simple Idea: How Positive Thinking Reshaped Modern Life, and The Miracle Habits. · www.mitchhorowitz.com · www.creativeprocess.info

Mitch Horowitz is a historian of alternative spirituality and one of today’s most literate voices of esoterica, mysticism, and the occult. Mitch illuminates outsider history, explains its relevance to contemporary life, and reveals the longstanding quest to bring empowerment and agency to the human condition. Mitch is a Writer & Lecturer in Residence at the New York Public Library and the PEN Award-winning author of books, including Occult America, One Simple Idea: How Positive Thinking Reshaped Modern Life, and The Miracle Habits. · www.mitchhorowitz.com · www.creativeprocess.info

“It’s about leaving the planet in a better condition than it is currently. What you’re witnessing is years of neglect. It’s the humans who have screwed it all up, and the warming of the earth is no different. The oceans are changing. The topography is changing. Mussels are being fried when the tides recede. This is all unnatural. Or maybe it’s natural. I think it’s Mother Nature just being pissed off and saying, “This is what you get.” And so it’s up to everyone to change their ways. Their shopping habits, their eating habits, how much gas they use. All that stuff which people think “that can’t affect anything.” Well, you’re seeing the result of it now.”Ian Seabrook is an Underwater Director of Photography in the Motion Picture and Television Industry, working on a number of feature productions, such as Batman v Superman, Deadpool 2 and Jungle Cruise, along with documentary films such as The Rescue. Seabrook is also the winner of Double Gold & Silver Medals for Cinematography at the 2019 Telly Awards. A full member of the Society of Camera Operators, and the CSC, Seabrook holds both commercial and recreational dive certifications.· www.ianseabrook.net · www.creativeprocess.info · www.oneplanetpodcast.org

Ian Seabrook is an Underwater Director of Photography in the Motion Picture and Television Industry, working on a number of feature productions, such as Batman v Superman, Deadpool 2 and Jungle Cruise, along with documentary films such as The Rescue. Seabrook is also the winner of Double Gold & Silver Medals for Cinematography at the 2019 Telly Awards. A full member of the Society of Camera Operators, and the CSC, Seabrook holds both commercial and recreational dive certifications.· www.ianseabrook.net · www.creativeprocess.info · www.oneplanetpodcast.org

“We planted over 10 million trees in 2020 alone. And it’s one tree planted for every dollar donated, so we make it as simple as possible, but when you add it all up together the impact is just tremendous and growing every day.”Diana Chaplin is the Canopy Director of One Tree Planted, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit on a mission to make it simple for anyone to help the environment by planting trees. Her role is focused on managing communications, marketing, and storytelling around the many reforestation projects that the organization conducts. She's a holistic thinker who applies the wisdom of nature's systems towards creating connectivity through content that ultimately helps scale the impact of One Tree Planted's work. · onetreeplanted.org· www.oneplanetpodcast.org· www.creativeprocess.info

Diana Chaplin is the Canopy Director of One Tree Planted, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit on a mission to make it simple for anyone to help the environment by planting trees. Her role is focused on managing communications, marketing, and storytelling around the many reforestation projects that the organization conducts. She's a holistic thinker who applies the wisdom of nature's systems towards creating connectivity through content that ultimately helps scale the impact of One Tree Planted's work. · onetreeplanted.org· www.oneplanetpodcast.org· www.creativeprocess.info

“Now I think we’re in another culture war. I think we’re in, as we see the realm of cancel culture in social media and this very polarising war between the liberal left and the conservative right. I think that we’re in another culture and a lot of it is centering around gender and race. If you look at what’s happened to black women athletes in the last couples of months, the censuring of their bodies either because of hormones in the case of Caster Semenya or Naomi Osaka, there’s a lot of ways that our society has found to police black bodies for being too exceptional in a lot of ways. For performing in exceptional ways, and the white patriarchy doesn’t like to see that because it starts to diminish their power.”Professor Micol Hebron is a video and performance artist who works out of Los Angeles. Professor Hebron has studied at UCSD, Academia di Belle Arti at Università di Venezia, and UCLA. She founded Gallery B12, a cooperative artists-run exhibition and lecture space in Hollywood. Hebron co-produced the Full Nelson Festival a showcase of international performance art and, in 2004, founded the LA Art Girls. Hebron has held teaching positions in new genres and contemporary art history and theory at Chapman University, Art Center College of Design, UCLA Extension and Chaffey College.· micolhebron.com· www.creativeprocess.info