PINC’s ‘bubblebath for your brain’ Sells Out Again

Sarasota PINC’s “bubblebath for the brain” returns for its sixth year. This time, one of the featured speakers, Sophie Hollingsworth, is a Pine View School graduate.

SARASOTA — What do a violin maker, an Iranian documentary producer, a criminologist who exchanged ideas with serial killers and a caver obsessed with crystallized insects have in common? For one day only, it’ll be the stage at Sarasota Opera House.

And yes, it’s sold out. Again. At $425 a ticket.

For the sixth year in a row, Sarasota’s PINC Experience is hosting an eclectic lineup of “Global Thinkers and Innovators” for a day-long affair Thursday that celebrates the acronym People, Ideas, Nature and Creativity. Per tradition, 12 speakers will each get 20 minutes to provide what founder Anand Pallegar is fond of calling a “bubblebath for your brain.”

And although PINC never books speakers who live in the area, this year’s edition will feature the first-ever graduate of Pine View School — adventurer/conservationist Sophie Hollingsworth.

The 25-year-old Fulbright Scholar still has family in Sarasota. Hollingsworth splits her time between New York City and Australia, where she acquired a set of primitive outdoor cooking skills since parlayed into a business she calls Adventure Cooking.

Most recently featured on a National Geographic Channel documentary in October about plastic pollution in The Philippines, Hollingsworth’s novel lifestyle has resulted in an Explorers Club Fellowship and Explorer of the Year honors from National Geographic. Although some of her Adventure Cooking fare will be open to scrutiny for the PINC crowd, she says she views food as a means to an end.

“I think there’s something to be said for a good old-fashioned conversation over dinner,” she says. “If we can just get out from behind our Facebook comments and start talking to each other again, I think we’ll find that we have a lot more in common than differences.”

Given the environmental catastrophes she’s seen — whether standing atop mountains of compacted plastic garbage on the shores of Manila, or breathing in the orange drought-choked skies of Sydney (“I haven’t worked outside in two months, it’s almost apocalyptic”) — staying optimistic is a difficult hand to play.

But Adventure Cooking, which eschews stoves, microwaves and ovens for fish nailed to logs, fruits and veggies strung from tripods to roast over open fires, and dining with sticks as utensils, is part of Hollingsworth’s own personal evolution into a larger realm of sustainability.

During the National Geographic project, the erstwhile vegetarian says she worked closely with Procter & Gamble, which underwrote much of the expenses. “I think my younger self would’ve been irate with me now for engaging with a big corporation and working with them on a TV show,” says the Global Citizen activist.

“But it’s like, if we sort of just blame these big companies and we don’t have a conversation to work with them, no real change is going to happen. At least through compromise, you can move the dial in another direction.”

Part of the sustainability challenge, Hollingsworth says, is getting the price of recycled plastic to be more competitive with the production of “virgin” plastic production, a goal she says is within reach. But that requires working more cooperatively with companies and local government, she says.

“Governments can act quickly, but they usually don’t. A CEO can issue a directive, which still takes time, but changes at a corporate level are often more nimble than, say, national government policy,” she says. “Local municipalities can move a lot quicker, too.”

Hollingsworth’s transition from dogma to pragmatism has been partially shaped by her treks through the Australian outback, where fresh fruits and vegetables are rare and pricey.

“You’d go to a remote town or a cattle station, and they were like, ’Do you want a whole cow, a half cow or a quarter cow? And some of these cuts were as big as I am,” she says. Lacking sufficient butchering skills, or the pans to accommodate them, “I had to get creative, so I starting building little fires and hanging the damn things up.”

Hollingsworth says “vegetarianism is the best thing you can do for the planet in a lot of cases,” but “you can’t get your protein without having a huge impact on the environment, which is what factory farming is. Going out and catching your own fish is a lot more sustainable than having chickpeas imported from China.”

Adventure Cooking, she says, may not be a practical daily regimen. But “I find it’s a great way to get people out of their comfort zones a little bit and interacting with nature in their own backyards,” she says. “Having these outdoor cooking events is sort of a way to connect people to the environment, to think about these contexts in a way that’s not as confrontational and preachy as often environmentalists push it out.