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Our guest this week is William Sargent. He co-founded Framestore in 1986 and led its rise from an award winning commercials production house to world renowned film and digital studio. During three decades the company has worked on all the Harry Potter films (and the JK Rowling 'Fantastic Beasts') , Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity, James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy, Paul King’s Paddington, Dr Strange, Christopher Robin, Blade Runner 2049 and Marvel’s Avengers Series.

William and his team have won all the major creative awards including 3 Oscars, British Academy, Primetime Emmys, D&AD, Royal Television Society and most recently over 100 global awards for the newest format Virtual Reality.

Equally at home in Hollywood and government, he was Permanent Secretary, Regulatory Reform, at the Cabinet Office, and Board Director of HM Treasury. He is currently a governor at Europe's largest arts complex Southbank Center, the U.K. governments innovation agency, Trinity College Dublin's Provost Council and the London Mayor's Business Council. William is a fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts, member of BAFTA and the Academy. He received a CBE in 2004 and was knighted by the Queen in 2008.

We talk about:

• Rear Projection
• Stop motion animation
• Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity
• How music videos started the UK film industry
• George Lucas’ vision of multi-platform story telling
• How car manufacturing robots help in filmmaking
• Tennis balls and florescent tape
• How to create dinosaurs
• The next decade of filmmaking

Let’s roll.

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Twitter: @whrshallwemeet
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Our guest today is Janine Benyus, who is the Co-founder of Biomimicry 3.8. She is a biologist, innovation consultant, and author of six books, including Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature. Since the book’s 1997 release, Janine’s work as a global thought leader has evolved the practice of biomimicry from a meme to a movement, inspiring clients and innovators around the world to learn from the genius of nature.

She has personally introduced millions to biomimicry through two TED talks, hundreds of conference keynote presentations, and a dozen documentaries such as Biomimicry, produced by Leonardo DiCaprio’s Tree Media, 11th Hour, Harmony, and The Nature of Things with David Suzuki, which aired in 71 countries.

In 1998, Janine co-founded the Biomimicry Guild with Dr. Dayna Baumeister. That consultancy morphed into Biomimicry 3.8, a B-Corp social enterprise providing biomimicry consulting services to clients like Nike, General Electric, Herman Miller, Procter and Gamble, and Levi’s.

In 2006, Janine co-founded The Biomimicry Institute, a non-profit institute to embed biomimicry in formal education and informal spaces such as museums and nature centers. Over 11,000 members are now part of the Biomimicry Global Network, working to practice, teach, and spread biomimicry in their region. In 2008, the institute launched AskNature.org, an award-winning bio-inspiration site for inventors.

Janine believes that the more people learn from nature’s mentors, the more they’ll want to protect them. This is why she writes, speaks, and communicates so prolifically about biomimicry.

We talk about:

• Learning from biological systems
• Waging war against nature rather than allying
• How profitable emulating nature can be
• Fitting form to function
• How ant colonies inspire mobile phone networks
• The dependence of the agricultural system on oil
• Photosynthetic Reaction Centre
• Nature is the best chemist
• AI helping the detective work of biologists

Let's get inspired by nature!

Web: www.whereshallwemeet.xyz
Twitter: @whrshallwemeet
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We are talking about Ancestry today. Our guest is Maya Jasanoff who is the Coolidge Professor of History at Harvard University’s History Department.

Maya’s teaching and research extend from the history of the British Empire to global history. She is the author of three prize-winning books. The Dawn Watch examines the dynamics of modern globalization through the life and times of the novelist Joseph Conrad. Her other books are Liberty’s Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World and her first book, Edge of Empire explores British expansion in India and Egypt through the lives of art collectors. She is currently working on a book about the human preoccupation with ancestry.

In addition to classes on imperial history, she teaches a multidisciplinary Gen Ed course on the topic of "Ancestry: Where Do We Come From and Why Do We Care?". In 2015 Jasanoff was named a Harvard College Professor for excellence in undergraduate teaching. From 2019 to 2022, she is a part-time Visiting Professor at Ahmedabad University in India, where she has been helping launch new curricula in the liberal arts.

Jasanoff has been a Guggenheim Fellow (2013), a fellow at the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, a Kluge Chair at the Library of Congress, and a member of the Institute for Advanced Study. She has participated in several BBC documentaries, and her essays and reviews regularly appear in publications including The New York Review of Books, The Guardian, The New Yorker and The New York Times.

We will be talking about:

• The history of ancestry
• Caste systems in India
• Herder and the Idea of a Nation
• Immigrant nations
• Bards as knowledge keepers
• Race as a factor for resource allocation
• Affirmative Action university admission
• Generational privilege and dispossession
• Transatlantic slave trade

Let’s go back to our roots!

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Twitter: @whrshallwemeet
Instagram: @whrshallwemeet