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Speaker 1: keep Sena. Welcome to Wika f Daily with Me your
Speaker 1: Girl Danielle Moody recording from the Home Bunker. You know, folks,
Speaker 1: everywhere that you look as it pertains to the climate crisis,
Speaker 1: it's bad right now. I believe that over thirty of
Speaker 1: the states in Nigeria or underwater. You wouldn't be hearing
Speaker 1: that from our news because we could give a fuck
Speaker 1: about the continent of Africa or any of its countries.
Speaker 1: But just to give you a quick picture, Nigeria is
Speaker 1: responsible for like three percent of the carbon emissions, but
Speaker 1: is now being hit with the overwhelming impact of climate
Speaker 1: change that they didn't cause Right now, as I report this,
Speaker 1: over six hundred Nigerians are dead, over a million have
Speaker 1: been displaced. And if this sounds familiar, it should because
Speaker 1: it was just maybe two months ago that I was
Speaker 1: telling you the same story, except it was Pakistan that
Speaker 1: has been underwater, most of the fucking country underwater because
Speaker 1: of an uncharacteristic historic monsoon season. How many times do
Speaker 1: we have to hear the word his doric right in
Speaker 1: order for us to recognize that these things are historic.
Speaker 1: They are our new abnormal. This is the reality of
Speaker 1: how the world is moving because of what wealthy industrial
Speaker 1: countries that are largely white lead countries have done. And
Speaker 1: it is the browner and black countries that are going
Speaker 1: to be the ones that face the most harm first.
Speaker 1: But know that these conditions, these storms, these floods, these fires,
Speaker 1: right are also happening in the United States. Case in point,
Speaker 1: what just happened in Florida. Right. My younger cousin is
Speaker 1: down there doing some of the demolition. Right. These homes
Speaker 1: are completely and totally destroyed, and he's been sending pictures
Speaker 1: home so that we can see and he's like, it
Speaker 1: looks like a war zone. He's like I mean, these
Speaker 1: people have lost absolutely everything, and there's no way to
Speaker 1: see even what rebuilding is going to look like because
Speaker 1: we have so much damage to remove. And what I
Speaker 1: say here is that the cost of ignorance is expensive.
Speaker 1: It is in the billions. And yet people continue to
Speaker 1: vote for Republicans who disavow climate changes and as even
Speaker 1: being a problem because they don't give a fuck, because
Speaker 1: they keep thinking to themselves, by the time it's a
Speaker 1: real issue, you know, I'll be dead, right, or maybe
Speaker 1: I'll have enough money to join Basos and the rest
Speaker 1: of them on their rocket ships off of this fucking rock. Right,
Speaker 1: the future in a lot of ways as we are
Speaker 1: looking at it, and as young people generation Z is
Speaker 1: getting ready to take over the helm and enter into
Speaker 1: the workforce, are looking around and they're like, what is
Speaker 1: this keeping pile of shit that you were leaving to us.
Speaker 1: I don't think any other generation before Generation Z has
Speaker 1: an outlook that looks so fucking bleak, right, And No,
Speaker 1: we've had past wars, we've had, you know, civil rights uprisings,
Speaker 1: we've had, but we haven't had them all at once.
Speaker 1: And that's where we are. And so I'm really excited
Speaker 1: today for the conversation that I am going to share
Speaker 1: with all of you. That provides some level of hope, right,
Speaker 1: that provides some level of I don't know, imagination, that
Speaker 1: allows us to dream of something different and something better.
Speaker 1: I've talked about on this show that at the beginning
Speaker 1: of the pandemic in twenty twenty, I got into African futurism,
Speaker 1: and you know, I needed to be taken away from
Speaker 1: the current state and crisis that we were dealing with
Speaker 1: and just be able to imagine and be in other worlds. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm not the only one that feels this way, and
Speaker 1: my next guest, Tory Stevens, is an award winning storyteller
Speaker 1: who focuses primarily on climate fiction. The worlds he creates
Speaker 1: serve as a means of raising awareness to the ongoing
Speaker 1: climate crisis. But get this, He started a and founded
Speaker 1: the Imagine twenty two hundred climate fiction initiative at Grist
Speaker 1: magazine with Fixed Labs, and the idea was for people
Speaker 1: to submit their stories of a uplifting climate future, something
Speaker 1: that wasn't dystopian. Can we if we can imagine all
Speaker 1: of the bad, can we imagine some of the good
Speaker 1: that could actually happen as it pertains to our climate.
Speaker 1: With all of the information and education that we have
Speaker 1: at our fingertips, is it possible to create other worlds
Speaker 1: that are good? And so my conversation with Tori I
Speaker 1: really left feeling uplifted because I think that fictional writing
Speaker 1: and fiction films allow us to imagine world different from
Speaker 1: what we are experiencing right now. And I think now
Speaker 1: more than ever, a lot of us need some type
Speaker 1: of escapism, something to be hopeful about and hopeful for.
Speaker 1: And I think that the twenty two hundred Climate Fiction
Speaker 1: Initiative is that right. Tori will talk to us about
Speaker 1: the fact that they in the first year that they
Speaker 1: did it, they were overwhelmed with the amount of submissions,
Speaker 1: and he will talk about who the winners are and
Speaker 1: where they're coming from. But you know, the idea here
Speaker 1: is that he started writing climate fiction after heavily looking
Speaker 1: into afrofuturism and being inspired by the protests surrounding the
Speaker 1: murder of George Floyd, And so imagining something good out
Speaker 1: of something so tragic is sometimes where we need to go.
Speaker 1: Because I'll tell you that reality these days feels really
Speaker 1: really stark, and I wouldn't mind taking the time to
Speaker 1: imagine something much better than our present. So coming up
Speaker 1: next my conversation with Tory Stevens. Hey there, I want
Speaker 1: to tell you about another podcast I think you'll love.
Speaker 1: The Brown Girl's Guide to Politics, hosted by a Shanty Gohler,
Speaker 1: the president of Emerge BGG, is the one stop shop
Speaker 1: for women of color who want to hear and talk
Speaker 1: about the world of politics. Join a Shanty this season
Speaker 1: as she talks to incredible women of color who are
Speaker 1: changing the face of politics and tackling some of the
Speaker 1: most important issues facing the United States, from reproductive justice
Speaker 1: to voting rights, to climb to change, and more. Tune
Speaker 1: in every Tuesday wherever you get your podcasts, Folks. I
Speaker 1: am very excited to welcome to Woke f Daily for
Speaker 1: the very first time, Tory Stevens, who is the founder
Speaker 1: and creative manager of Imagine twenty two hundred, a climate
Speaker 1: fiction initiative at Fix, which is Gris's climate solution lab. Tory,
Speaker 1: let's start out with Imagine twenty two hundred, because my god,
Speaker 1: do I want to imagine something other than twenty twenty
Speaker 1: two So tell me, so tell us about about Imagine
Speaker 1: twenty two hundred. Yeah, thank you for that, thank you
Speaker 1: for having me as well. I guess I'll start with
Speaker 1: that's the premise of this, that's the point of this.
Speaker 1: The point is to get outside of our everyday usual
Speaker 1: kind of dreams, musings that we have around what we
Speaker 1: want out of life. And so by situating a climate fiction,
Speaker 1: it's a contest that we have. We advertise globally, so
Speaker 1: we're getting folks. The first year we got one thousand,
Speaker 1: one hundred stories. We're now in the second year and
Speaker 1: we got six hundred stories. We tampered down the advertising
Speaker 1: because we had too many stories. It was really hard
Speaker 1: to read all those stories, and we do want to
Speaker 1: honor all the stories that come in. So the whole
Speaker 1: idea is to get people to think about the future.
Speaker 1: What is the future that you want and what is
Speaker 1: the future that we all deserve. What does an abundant
Speaker 1: future look like where we care for folks, where we
Speaker 1: care for the planet, where we care for our non
Speaker 1: human kin, the animals that live here as well. What
Speaker 1: does that look like? You know, so many writers when
Speaker 1: we asked them to, you know, look at the prompt
Speaker 1: and they encountered it online or wherever they found it,
Speaker 1: maybe in a college or in a writing community. They said, no,
Speaker 1: they've never they never thought to write about hopeful, intersectional
Speaker 1: and resilient, abundant futures where we're winning were where the
Speaker 1: world has this imbued with justice, where it's just like
Speaker 1: a strong world that has all these things kind of
Speaker 1: being held in a good way. And so after asking
Speaker 1: that question, there's some folks that have, like I would say,
Speaker 1: the solar punk community, which is a genre, and those
Speaker 1: folks they often ideate and write around hopeful futures that
Speaker 1: were technology technology and people are working together in harmony.
Speaker 1: But many of the writers, not all of them, come
Speaker 1: from the solar punk community. Again, this is a global contest,
Speaker 1: so some folks haven't even heard of the term solar
Speaker 1: punk and they come from another angle of this, and
Speaker 1: they were really excited to write about something hopeful as
Speaker 1: it relates to the climate and as it relates to
Speaker 1: how humans interact with each other. No, I love it,
Speaker 1: and I love the idea so much. I mean I
Speaker 1: joke on wok af on a regular basis that, like
Speaker 1: you know, I just hold onto a mustard seed of
Speaker 1: hope these days. So it is, you know, it is.
Speaker 1: It is very hard, I think when you have been
Speaker 1: showcased just such a dystopian future, right. Anytime you know
Speaker 1: that we have looked at science fiction, when we've looked
Speaker 1: at fantasy, it's always been placed with well, Earth has
Speaker 1: collapsed and so now we're in space or we're still
Speaker 1: on Earth. But it is, it is this tribal war,
Speaker 1: you know, situation. And you know the question that I
Speaker 1: want to ask you too, and I'm assuming that this
Speaker 1: is kind of where you're the idea originated, is that
Speaker 1: black people and brown people were written out of sci fi. Right.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until the likes of you know, the late
Speaker 1: brilliant Octavia Butler that we began to see a future
Speaker 1: that saw us in it. And so I want you
Speaker 1: to speak to speak to that and why this initiative
Speaker 1: too is so important because of who is doing the writing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's definitely an important part of this, which is
Speaker 1: that we want to show futures, as Adrian ree Brown says,
Speaker 1: futures have black people in it, Futures have brown people
Speaker 1: and indigenous people where we will be there and not
Speaker 1: only will we be there, Because this is a part
Speaker 1: that I talk about a lot. We often have black
Speaker 1: or brown folks in stories adjacent or but they have
Speaker 1: no culture to them. So I always say I don't
Speaker 1: want I don't want lego people in my stories. And
Speaker 1: what I mean by that is I don't want to
Speaker 1: be able to take the head off and be able
Speaker 1: to remove and switch the people. And it doesn't matter
Speaker 1: like you could you made a scientist, you made that
Speaker 1: scientist black or brown because you name check that, but
Speaker 1: you didn't add all the culture that comes with black folks.
Speaker 1: You didn't add all the culture that comes with Caribbean
Speaker 1: and folk. Some of the stories we have shown up
Speaker 1: this year. We have the story that won for this
Speaker 1: year takes place in Jamaica. We have another story that's
Speaker 1: from Trinidad, and we have another story from Rwanda. And
Speaker 1: I think that's just like incredible. The thing that makes
Speaker 1: it incredible is that they're not just lego people. They
Speaker 1: have all this culture that is a part of the story.
Speaker 1: So you mentioned sci fi science fiction always taking place
Speaker 1: in space. Often you see this kind of like you know,
Speaker 1: sanitized version of the world where there's this spaceship and
Speaker 1: people have on the same materials or like, but there's
Speaker 1: that that's not like how life is even in the future,
Speaker 1: even if people did live on spaceships, they're going to
Speaker 1: have their own vernacular, They're going to have their own culture,
Speaker 1: ways of being, ways of movement, they will be danced,
Speaker 1: they would just be people who one thing we will
Speaker 1: show up with is culture. And so that's a big
Speaker 1: thing that we're trying to do. It imagine is say, hey,
Speaker 1: we're doing climate fiction, but we want climate fiction that
Speaker 1: is just as important it is to address the climate crisis.
Speaker 1: It's also important that the characters feel real in like
Speaker 1: folks that I would hang out with or are from
Speaker 1: my family, so black, brown, indigenous, Yeah, just really want
Speaker 1: that piece of it. And I guess I would also
Speaker 1: layer in that we want intersectional characters. You know, culture
Speaker 1: is important, but all these other identities like is the
Speaker 1: person working class? What up with my queer folks? Like
Speaker 1: what you know, don't erase them from the stories as well.
Speaker 1: And the whole goal is one is this is how
Speaker 1: the world is. Right. Our world is rich and beautiful
Speaker 1: and vibrant, so let's show it as it is. But
Speaker 1: also I want people to see themselves in these climate
Speaker 1: futures like ways, I want people to see that day
Speaker 1: two can be a part of the climate solution. And
Speaker 1: the fact is, like frontline folks are already fighting, Like
Speaker 1: you have folks in Cancer Alley and Louisiana, black brown
Speaker 1: folks who are fighting against new plastic um. There's like
Speaker 1: a plastic company that was going to move in there
Speaker 1: that they fought and removed from from building a new
Speaker 1: facility because all those facilities have caused UM. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's a reason that's called Cancer Alley. You know, it's
Speaker 1: a very sad reason. But people are fighting on the
Speaker 1: front lines right now. And those people that are fighting
Speaker 1: on the front line are most likely black and brown.
Speaker 1: Because the climate crisis is not equal. You know, our
Speaker 1: folk have um disproportionately been you know, put next to oil, um,
Speaker 1: what do you call it, oil derricks, oil refineries, plastic places,
Speaker 1: anything that's kind of like, you know, just not beautiful.
Speaker 1: And this isn't I'm making like an um, It's not
Speaker 1: always the case, but better believe that, you know, the
Speaker 1: very wealthy are not living right next to these kind
Speaker 1: of like factories and plants where um, you know, there's
Speaker 1: abnormally high cancer rate. Yeah, you know, and I think
Speaker 1: to that point, well, one first I want to pick
Speaker 1: up the Jamaicans that one, because my family is Jamaican American.
Speaker 1: I'm Jamaican American. My family so from Jamaica, So pick
Speaker 1: them up. And I can't wait to read that. But
Speaker 1: you know, I think too to your last point with
Speaker 1: regard to who is disproportionately impacted from the climate crisis,
Speaker 1: we're seeing it right now, right, We're seeing it as
Speaker 1: these hurricanes, um, you know, land and stay over Caribbean islands,
Speaker 1: over low lying um you know, Api islands like and
Speaker 1: these places, and we're saying, who are these people? Right
Speaker 1: what we saw in Pakistan, right, we saw you know,
Speaker 1: over eleven hundred lives lost, right to what they keep saying,
Speaker 1: are these historic monsoons, historic seasons, And yet we're not
Speaker 1: doing anything for the people who are putting out one
Speaker 1: percent right of the carbon emissions, and they're dealing with
Speaker 1: ninety nine percent of the problems. So, you know, I
Speaker 1: want to also talk about is it important to you
Speaker 1: as well, while you're framing this around hopefulness, around a
Speaker 1: future that we can all see ourselves in, is it
Speaker 1: also really important to hold up the truth of how
Speaker 1: how our future can in fact sadly look like what
Speaker 1: has been genre as dystopian, right, Like I brought up Pakistan.
Speaker 1: We can look at Puerto Rico, we can look at Kansas,
Speaker 1: we can look at Florida, we can you know, look
Speaker 1: at Germany and France and Australia that lost a billion animals. Like,
Speaker 1: the future doesn't look bright. So how important is it
Speaker 1: to juxtapose the hopefulness with the reality that people are
Speaker 1: finally starting to see. Yeah, that's a really good question.
Speaker 1: I would say that, you know, this project is focused
Speaker 1: on hope, right, And the reason we do that is
Speaker 1: we're trying to carve out a space for people to
Speaker 1: dream about the future that we want. I'm not saying
Speaker 1: that dystopian stories are not important. I think they're really important.
Speaker 1: They tell of a future that we could have, and
Speaker 1: for some folks, they are living that future right now.
Speaker 1: It's just that middle class folks are going to start
Speaker 1: to feel that pain as well. White folks are going
Speaker 1: to start because if you ask the folks in Cancer
Speaker 1: Alley if they're live in a dystopian future, they're going
Speaker 1: to say yes. Ask the people in Pakistan or they
Speaker 1: live in a dystopian future right now, they're going to
Speaker 1: say yes. The folks in Puerto Rico. I would say,
Speaker 1: like there's been mixed you know, dystopian with like I've
Speaker 1: seen some real resiliency there where folks have kind of
Speaker 1: brought together and come together as a community. But it's
Speaker 1: really important that we carve out space for hope, because
Speaker 1: hope looks different to different people, and I want to
Speaker 1: explore that. I think I've found myself looking at hope
Speaker 1: in the middle of the pandemic and charged with founding
Speaker 1: and starting. All we knew is we wanted to bring
Speaker 1: climate fiction to Grist magazine, but we didn't know that
Speaker 1: what that would look like. And I was like, wait,
Speaker 1: we're going to be talking about hope in this moment.
Speaker 1: It's really tough. But then once we started, I started
Speaker 1: receiving the stories, I started reading them, and I started
Speaker 1: seeing all the visions that people have of the world
Speaker 1: where we're working together in concert to bring climate solutions
Speaker 1: to all folks. It was life changing. Is probably like
Speaker 1: a too big of a word, but like it was
Speaker 1: close to that, like maybe even that's true. You know,
Speaker 1: it has changed my perspective on hope. I would say
Speaker 1: that I was someone who looked at hope from I
Speaker 1: hope that things are going to be better. But now
Speaker 1: I see hope. It's like a praxis. And so this
Speaker 1: is why sometimes I'm not dogging dystopian stories. I think
Speaker 1: that they're important, but I think there's too many of
Speaker 1: them and not enough hopeful visions of what our world
Speaker 1: could look like. So you know, we have Black Mirror,
Speaker 1: we have Squid Games, we have Stranger Things. I mean,
Speaker 1: you can just the list goes on. We have Mad Max.
Speaker 1: There's like just such a long list of dystopian stories.
Speaker 1: But then when you ask about, like what's the most
Speaker 1: hopeful thing you watched recently, they're like more of these
Speaker 1: like Will Smith like movies that are like about hope
Speaker 1: in a kind of happy, feel good way. But that's
Speaker 1: not the type of I mean, those are great, that
Speaker 1: they're good for society. But what I'm trying to get
Speaker 1: after and get stories written and submitted to the contest
Speaker 1: about our stories where hope is driving us to a
Speaker 1: better reality in a it's not about feel good. It's
Speaker 1: about changing systems, changing norms, tackling white supremacy, patriarchy, and
Speaker 1: just going after these systems that are oppressing people so
Speaker 1: that other folks in folks that like and even myself
Speaker 1: just feel more liberated in this world. Get a behind
Speaker 1: the scenes look at Comedy Central's The Daily Show on
Speaker 1: Beyond the Scenes, an original podcast from The Daily Show
Speaker 1: with Trevor Noah. Every week, host Roy Wood Junior goes
Speaker 1: deeper with the notable guests and experts from the Emmy
Speaker 1: Award winning series. Together, they use comedy to tackle current
Speaker 1: topics from gentrification to gun laws and take a closer
Speaker 1: look at how and why these topics matter. Listen to
Speaker 1: Beyond the Scenes from The Daily Show with Trevor Noah
Speaker 1: on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcast. New episodes every Tuesday. Tory, I love the
Speaker 1: phrase hope as a practis my goodness. You should coin
Speaker 1: that and I when you said it, because it triggered
Speaker 1: for me this idea of our ancestors and activism and
Speaker 1: what it meant to, for instance, fight for the abolition
Speaker 1: of slavery. At the time that it was beginning to
Speaker 1: be fought, you had to be hopeful of a future
Speaker 1: that you hadn't seen right, centuries centuries of terrorism, abuse, torture,
Speaker 1: and brutality, and your abolitionists were imagining a time that
Speaker 1: they were never going to necessarily live in, and that
Speaker 1: to me embodies the hope as as practis right as
Speaker 1: somebody who is super political. You know, the framing of
Speaker 1: the future has always I think a lot of the
Speaker 1: times been by the opponents of that future, right, people
Speaker 1: who have said, oh, well, we can't spend money on
Speaker 1: clean energy, right because what about big oil and big coal.
Speaker 1: We can't you know, talk about the reality of science
Speaker 1: and climate change because it will hurt people's feelings. I
Speaker 1: think that we've allowed people to drain us of that hopefulness,
Speaker 1: and we've kind of fallen into this dystopian narrative that
Speaker 1: says to us that the future is already written, right,
Speaker 1: and what you're doing, and what you're doing is saying, no,
Speaker 1: it does not have to be. And I think that that,
Speaker 1: you know, that of itself is a form of activism
Speaker 1: that I don't think that we talk about nearly enough.
Speaker 1: That hopefulness isn't just about that I wish for and
Speaker 1: that I hope for, like we're blowing out candles, It
Speaker 1: really is in the doing of the thing. And so
Speaker 1: for you know, story for people who again have not
Speaker 1: seen their future and have not seen their path be written.
Speaker 1: Just just talk a bit more about the importance of
Speaker 1: us writing our own stories and ones that are framed
Speaker 1: not about our deficit but in the face of abundance. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would say that the way you framed it around
Speaker 1: like folks being like, you know, abolitionists, that's a really
Speaker 1: good example of folks that really had no clue if
Speaker 1: they were going to live, they would live in the
Speaker 1: world in which the one that they were dreaming of.
Speaker 1: So you know that that's a good reference point. That's
Speaker 1: a good thing that I should even remember, like as
Speaker 1: when I'm talking about this, the thing that I also
Speaker 1: want to bring up is, so you before we started
Speaker 1: the show, you were talking about afrofuturism. And so when
Speaker 1: I was looking into who's hopeful in the feet, who's
Speaker 1: hopeful in this kind of way? Who are folks that
Speaker 1: are like oppressed but still looking at a hopeful future,
Speaker 1: I was looking at you know, disabled futurisms. I was
Speaker 1: looking at afrofuturism, Latins futurism, Indigenous futurism. I didn't even
Speaker 1: know there was all these futurisms like until I started
Speaker 1: this project, and so I started to look into that
Speaker 1: and there was all these folks dreaming of like their
Speaker 1: version of Wakanda basically yes and right, and so I
Speaker 1: I that gave me hope, right, And so then I
Speaker 1: started to write the bones of this project in a
Speaker 1: different frame. You know. When I first started, before I
Speaker 1: started diving into these other futurisms, I was, you know,
Speaker 1: looking at climate solutions and the place that I'm at Grist.
Speaker 1: We've fixed the lab that I'm in. We've always had
Speaker 1: like an idea of like turning stories from gloom and
Speaker 1: doom to one of hope in you know, solutions. So
Speaker 1: that was there, but these other pieces bringing in threads
Speaker 1: that other folks have already paved the way for in
Speaker 1: the afrofuturist kind of vein where abundance is talked about,
Speaker 1: where the white gaze doesn't exist because it's not about
Speaker 1: like we're not centering people here, We're sending black and
Speaker 1: brown folks right and opening up that dream space. It
Speaker 1: was something I was working with um the Waconda Dream Lab.
Speaker 1: That's a clique of black and brown creatives that really
Speaker 1: lean into visioning, and so I learned from them as well,
Speaker 1: and it was just so helpful to kind of just
Speaker 1: listen to the way they just talked about visioning and
Speaker 1: how it could you know. So I guess one background
Speaker 1: I want to give is that it was this was
Speaker 1: life changing. I'll just lean into that. I used to
Speaker 1: be in policy healthcare policy, as a as a fundraiser,
Speaker 1: and so a lot of like I thought visioning was
Speaker 1: kind of a bunch of kind of you know, woo
Speaker 1: woo stuff, right, And it wasn't until I met with
Speaker 1: the Wakanda Dream Lab folks and they got me right
Speaker 1: around how powerful visioning can be by stepping outside of
Speaker 1: your immediate Like I was looking at goals as a fundraiser,
Speaker 1: I really wanted, you know, let we have to raise
Speaker 1: money like now this quarter. It's really important because we
Speaker 1: need to get folks who don't have medicaid medicaid like, so,
Speaker 1: you know, let's push that policy, let's advocate, let's raise
Speaker 1: the money we need. We had short timelines, and they
Speaker 1: got me to think outside of the scope of, you know,
Speaker 1: something immediate and look at something that was one hundred
Speaker 1: and eighty years from now just as an exercise, and
Speaker 1: I saw how powerful it was for me and my team.
Speaker 1: And then that's how we kind of pulled that into
Speaker 1: the climate fiction world because we were like, oh, now
Speaker 1: we can allow people to dream of abundance in a
Speaker 1: way that has nothing to do with like what's going
Speaker 1: on with right now, so they could world build and
Speaker 1: sketch out the kind of world they actually want and deserved. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can't express to you one. I had just eighteen
Speaker 1: ideas pop into my head of things that I want
Speaker 1: to do with you all and lift up and lift
Speaker 1: up these different laps and the and the people that
Speaker 1: are visioning behind them, like yourself when you said the
Speaker 1: importance of visioning and like the stepping outside of the
Speaker 1: immediate scope. And I think about the fact that politics,
Speaker 1: you know, and I used to work in policy as well,
Speaker 1: environmental policy many you know, many moons ago, and thinking
Speaker 1: about what it means to pause to dream, what it
Speaker 1: means to actually pause to think about the one, the
Speaker 1: what can be, the what is possible instead of the
Speaker 1: what is? And how like that is that is where
Speaker 1: like the future. It's like the future is developed in
Speaker 1: that in between space. And I think that we allow
Speaker 1: for the negativity and the toxicity of where we are
Speaker 1: to move us outside of that dream. And if I
Speaker 1: really think about it, you know, that is what it
Speaker 1: means to live in an authoritarian state, is like, it's
Speaker 1: the lack of dreaming, right, It's the it's the lack
Speaker 1: of having the possibility of the thing. Right. And if
Speaker 1: you if your future is already carved out, then what
Speaker 1: am I? What am I working towards? What am I
Speaker 1: dreaming towards? And so I just I love I love
Speaker 1: that you said that, and I love that that context
Speaker 1: that that you put it in. UM last question for
Speaker 1: you is you know, what are your hopes story for
Speaker 1: you know, for this, for this project, but also just
Speaker 1: in general of again existing inside of the climate reality
Speaker 1: that people are just waking up to. Right these are
Speaker 1: things that have been warned up. We're experiencing things that
Speaker 1: have been warned about for thirty and forty years right
Speaker 1: and now and now they are happening at rapid pace.
Speaker 1: So what is your what is your you know, your
Speaker 1: your your idea of the future for um Imagine twenty
Speaker 1: two hundred, but also in context of what we are
Speaker 1: seeing and living through now, Yeah, I would say that
Speaker 1: more and more people, as you said, are waking up
Speaker 1: to the fact that this is like an urgent issue,
Speaker 1: and so as people become more awake to this issue.
Speaker 1: What we want to do is be able to reach
Speaker 1: them all with the right information because there's a lot
Speaker 1: of misinformation out there. So Grist as a magazine, as
Speaker 1: a media news organization has does that on the news
Speaker 1: side of things, and so in our lab we were
Speaker 1: thinking about we always think about storytelling and using storytelling
Speaker 1: to reach people who just aren't interested in the news
Speaker 1: or aren't interested in the type of news that's like
Speaker 1: more fact based, science based. And so we've been on
Speaker 1: the fixed side of things, telling stories from a human
Speaker 1: interest point of view with the climate solutions involved in
Speaker 1: that the person is involved in. So typically you'll see
Speaker 1: on the fixed side of things, we tell a story
Speaker 1: about the climate solution and then you'll learn a lot
Speaker 1: about the person. So there's people who really like that
Speaker 1: style of storytelling, so we leaned in on that, but
Speaker 1: then we realize there's still a whole other segment of
Speaker 1: people who get their orientation through fiction and through these
Speaker 1: kind of stories. So that's when we start an experiment
Speaker 1: to say, well, let's let's drop up this climate fiction
Speaker 1: initiative and see if you know, we can reach more people.
Speaker 1: And what we've seen is that there's a growth for this,
Speaker 1: Like so the in the first year we had one
Speaker 1: seventy five thousand, two hundred thousand people depending on the
Speaker 1: numbers visit the site, and so that's you know, a
Speaker 1: lot of people reading stories around hopeful futures, abundance. We
Speaker 1: have a lot of The interesting thing I would say
Speaker 1: about Imagine twenty two hundred is that, yes, these are
Speaker 1: client by stories, but there are also stories about care work,
Speaker 1: about respecting our elders, about the importance of caring for
Speaker 1: our elders in their final days, about reparations, about giving
Speaker 1: land back to indigenous folks. So sometimes the climate is
Speaker 1: like just one of the many issues in the story,
Speaker 1: and we want to introduce people to these ideas as
Speaker 1: well and have them find values in value to the
Speaker 1: stories because they feel at home with these stories. They're like, oh,
Speaker 1: finally someone's doing these kind of stories, and so we're
Speaker 1: creating a platform for people to do that. And I
Speaker 1: guess I'll answer the question around what I hope for
Speaker 1: the project is we would love to take There's some
Speaker 1: folks called the Good Energy Folks or Project, and they've
Speaker 1: been pushing Hollywood to do more stories that have a
Speaker 1: climate at the center of the story, as a plot
Speaker 1: or even adjacent. They found in their most recent reports
Speaker 1: that less than four percent of all of the TV
Speaker 1: that we stream and movies that we watch have anything
Speaker 1: to do with climate. And so that's like, this is
Speaker 1: one of the biggest stories, is one of the biggest
Speaker 1: things we're going to go through in our lifetime, yet
Speaker 1: it's not being depicted on our one of our most
Speaker 1: popularized way of consuming stories, which is through Hollywood. So
Speaker 1: I hope at some point that we could take some
Speaker 1: of these stories off the page and turn them into
Speaker 1: either an animation project or live actors. We're exploring those
Speaker 1: right now with a couple different partners, and you could
Speaker 1: see in a few years. Things move really slow in Hollywood,
Speaker 1: so you could see in a few years some of
Speaker 1: these jump off the page and beyond the screen. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm excited to see it and watch. And as I
Speaker 1: mentioned briefly to you before we started recording m if IF,
Speaker 1: I had not been introduced to African futurism and afrofuturism
Speaker 1: at the beginning of twenty twenty by a good friend
Speaker 1: of mine that said, Danielle, you need to get out
Speaker 1: of what is happening and just just go to another
Speaker 1: world for a bit, just just dream for a bit.
Speaker 1: And so she introduced me to Nadi okafor and I
Speaker 1: ripped through I think every single thing that she had
Speaker 1: had written. Um, I've been turned onto NK Jemison. Obviously
Speaker 1: before that, I had, you know, had already read Octavia
Speaker 1: Butler's Parable series, which I base a lot of things
Speaker 1: that are happening right now around. But it was just,
Speaker 1: you know, being introduced to powerful black women that were
Speaker 1: writing the future was like even even still in some
Speaker 1: of their stories, obviously it is dystopian, but they were
Speaker 1: still I still felt seen and I still felt that
Speaker 1: we were going to be a part of the future.
Speaker 1: So it was, you know, it was it was honestly
Speaker 1: eye opening and life changing for me. So I hope
Speaker 1: that the stories that you're bringing do the same for
Speaker 1: for folks as well. Tori, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: making the time to join woke APP. I hope that
Speaker 1: you come back. Yeah, thanks for having me. Really appreciate
Speaker 1: this conversation and want to follow your journey. And yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you. That is it today for me.
Speaker 1: Friends on woke app. As always, power to the people.
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