Popular Culture Shifting Inner and Outer Worlds
What role do platforms, communities, and tangible experiences play in shaping our collective beliefs and identities around connection? And in a world facing urgent challenges, how can popular culture create a sense of global solidarity and encourage empathy, so that we, as a collective, are moved to act together for a more positive future?
In The Shift, UN Live brings together thought leaders to explore how music, art, media, and even everyday spaces—from stadiums to dinner tables—can become stages for more connection, inspired empathy, and collective action.
It's time to rethink—and imagine the futures we want to create.
Stina Daag on connection and presence through movement
Stina Daag, founder and editor-in-chief of Human Shift and a Vipassana meditation teacher, explores the transformative power of movement, and how leading from the heart can spark profound shifts, both within ourselves and in the world around us.
Jeff Gomez on how stories can shift culture towards collective healing
Jeff Gomez, acclaimed writer, producer, and CEO of Starlight Runner Entertainment, shares how stories like Black Panther and One Piece illustrate paths to transcending conflict, and why the narratives we need must shift us from "me" to "we."
Kumi Naidoo on transforming empathy into action for justice and climate
Kumi Naidoo, global activist and champion of artivism, shares how cultural moments, from freedom songs to protest movements, expand our imagination of what is possible and remind us that our liberation is bound up together.
Moon Ribas on how technology together with sensory perception can deepen our connection to the planet
Moon Ribas, cyborg artist, shares how expanded perception can deepen our connection to the planet and why placing humans at the center limits our capacity for empathy.
Melissa Fleming on hope as the antidote to climate doomism
Melissa Fleming, UN Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications, shares how hope is the antidote to climate doomism, why human stories move us more than statistics, and how popular culture can rebuild trust and spark action.
Daniel Roa on silence itself as a tool for connection
Daniel Roa, musician, producer, and founder of Vozterra, the music collective behind the early experiments that sparked Sounds Right. Read along as he shares how music and silence can become vessels for memory and spirit, and why stillness might be the most radical act we can take.
Koleka Putuma on poetry as a tool for connection
Koleka Putuma, award-winning poet, playwright, and theatre-maker from South Africa, shares how poetry and imagination become tools for connection and why questioning what must be unlearned is essential to transformation.
Christiana Figueres on inner work as catalysts for hope and change
Christiana Figueres, global climate leader, former Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and Chief Negotiator of the landmark Paris Agreement of 2015. Read along as she shares how inner grounding and empathy can be powerful tools in climate leadership.
Jeremy Lent on recognising the world view that shapes our reality and choosing a different story
Jeremy Lent, author and founder of the Ecocivilization Coalition, explores why the most urgent transformation isn't technological or political but a shift in how we see ourselves in relation to life itself.
Anna Laura on leading with compassion and love
Anna Laura, artist and graphic novelist, on leading with compassion and love, and how comics and arts can help people connect to emotions or experiences they might struggle to express in words.
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