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.
Jeff Gomez on how stories can shift culture towards collective healing
Jeff Gomez is an acclaimed writer, producer, and CEO of Starlight Runner Entertainment. Read along as he 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 is a global activist and champion of artivism. Read along as he 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 is a cyborg artist who feels earthquakes in real-time through seismic sensors implanted in her body. Read along as she 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 is UN Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications. Read along as she 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 is a 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 is an award-winning poet, playwright, and theatre-maker from South Africa. Read along as she 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 is a 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.