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Speaker 1: We have a cool surprise coming this year. It's our

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Speaker 1: first total crossover partnership season with a podcast called Non Toxic,

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Speaker 1: hosted by Daniel Penny. Hi.

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Speaker 2: I'm Daniel Penny. I am the host of Non Toxic.

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Speaker 2: I'm a journalist and critic who's been working in the

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Speaker 2: intersection between climate and culture for a long while now,

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Speaker 2: and I've been particularly interested in the ways that masculinity

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Speaker 2: and the climate crisis seem to be increasingly entwined together

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Speaker 2: in our politics and our culture. I've been working on

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Speaker 2: this show for a few years, but I'm really excited

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Speaker 2: to take things to the next level with the help

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Speaker 2: of Drilled and Amy, and we have a really exciting

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Speaker 2: season planned of a Non Toxic ex Drilled collaboration.

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Speaker 1: Daniel's here with me today. We're going to talk a

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Speaker 1: little bit about what he's been doing and what we

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Speaker 1: can expect in this season.

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Speaker 2: Hi, Daniel, Hey me.

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Speaker 1: Daniel. Can you tell us a little bit about what

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Speaker 1: were you working on before you got into doing a podcast?

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Speaker 1: Were you writing about this stuff? Is that what prompted

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Speaker 1: the podcast?

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Speaker 2: Sure, I've had kind of a securitous route, I guess

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Speaker 2: in all of this, I'm mostly thought of myself as

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Speaker 2: a writer. I started my career more in the cultural

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Speaker 2: criticism space. I was writing a lot for like the

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Speaker 2: Boston Review had a big early essay about Milo Yanopolis

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Speaker 2: and the aesthetics of fascism back in like twenty sixteen

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Speaker 2: or twenty seventeen. I don't know if anybody remembers him, but.

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Speaker 1: I do. Yeah, it's wild that he's kind of like

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Speaker 1: out of the picture. I feel like his brand of

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Speaker 1: stuff is kind of mainstream alma it is.

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Speaker 2: He was ahead of his time. I think the problem

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Speaker 2: was that he spoke openly in defense of pedophilia, and

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Speaker 2: that was a bridge too far for even you know,

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Speaker 2: the genocidal maniacs in far right. So I was doing

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Speaker 2: a lot of cultural criticism around kind of politics the Internet,

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Speaker 2: and I was also writing about art and fashion, and

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Speaker 2: I'd always had an interest in sustainability and was increasingly

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Speaker 2: trying to take my fashion writing in that direction. I

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Speaker 2: had a good friend Emily Chan, who's the sustainability editor

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Speaker 2: at British Vogue, and I was writing things for GQ,

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Speaker 2: and I felt like, we why can't I do more

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Speaker 2: of that? But I kept getting rejections from editors. So

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Speaker 2: like guys don't care about this, Like nobody's reading this.

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Speaker 2: And I got pretty annoyed with that line. I felt

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Speaker 2: like I couldn't possibly be true that, like male readers

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Speaker 2: were just totally uninterested in any discussion of the climate crisis.

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Speaker 1: Or it's really interesting wow, So this is like GQ

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Speaker 1: standard men's magazine and stuff. We're saying, yeah, that's really

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Speaker 1: interesting wow.

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Speaker 2: And I was coming back. I was on a train

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Speaker 2: back from like a London Fashion Week event and coming

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Speaker 2: back to Cambridge, where I was living at the time,

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Speaker 2: and I just thought, like, this can't be all there is,

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Speaker 2: you know, like, this is not this is not really

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Speaker 2: what I set out to do, and this isn't what

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Speaker 2: I care about, and I need to do something else,

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Speaker 2: And if editors are telling me no, then I need

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Speaker 2: to just strike out on my own and kind of

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Speaker 2: get back to my roots a bit as a critic

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Speaker 2: and essayist and someone who thinks about culture more broadly

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Speaker 2: and deeply than I felt I was being paid to

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Speaker 2: do at the time. So yeah, I just I thought, Okay,

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Speaker 2: I care about climate I think other men do, but

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Speaker 2: I think the conversation, especially at that time, it felt

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Speaker 2: like all of the people that I was talking to

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Speaker 2: about it were women, and that especially like in the

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Speaker 2: sort of fashion sustainability space, it was a very female

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Speaker 2: dominated space, at least in terms of you was talking.

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Speaker 2: It didn't mean that the people who actually had the

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Speaker 2: levers of power were all women. In fact, I think

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Speaker 2: it's the opposite, but in terms of who the faces were.

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Speaker 2: And I thought like, oh, that's interesting, what's that about.

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Speaker 2: And I think it was also just a time where

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Speaker 2: more and more I was seeing kind of entertaate and

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Speaker 2: this kind of rise of the in cell and all

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Speaker 2: of these kind of related politics of grievance around masculinity,

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Speaker 2: and they seemed to often be talking about certain ideas

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Speaker 2: related to the nature of men and women, and the

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Speaker 2: idea of the natural was very important to them in

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Speaker 2: one way or another. And then it actually really kind

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Speaker 2: of came together when Andrew Tate got arrested, because all

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Speaker 2: of that started with this Twitter exchange between him and Greta.

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Speaker 1: Oh I don't think I ever even knew that. Wow.

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Speaker 2: So he was boasting about his collection of gas guzzling cars,

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Speaker 2: trying to like troll her.

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Speaker 1: And that's like how they found him, right.

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Speaker 2: Well, yeah, so then they had this kind of like

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Speaker 2: back and forth, and it's I've never gotten confirmation that

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Speaker 2: this is true or not from like the Romanian police.

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Speaker 2: I've never seen any documentation proving it. But the story

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Speaker 2: was that there was like a sort of Romanian brand

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Speaker 2: of pizza box that was in one of the videos

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Speaker 2: or photographs that had released, and they used it to

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Speaker 2: confirm that he was in the country and issue there,

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Speaker 2: you know, sex trafficking warrant for his arrest because I think, again,

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Speaker 2: this is a legend that they couldn't confirm that he

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Speaker 2: was in Romania at the time because I guess he

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Speaker 2: wasn't leaving his man lair and it was, you know,

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Speaker 2: the presence of this, but it just seemed like, wow,

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Speaker 2: it's all right here.

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Speaker 1: It's like well connected. Wow, Yeah, that's really interesting, and.

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Speaker 2: I thought, okay, I just need to do a season

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Speaker 2: interview people who are working in this space and see

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Speaker 2: what I can find. And yeah, been going for a

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Speaker 2: few years now.

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Speaker 1: That's so interesting. I don't know if we've ever talked

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Speaker 1: about this, but I actually started out doing arts and

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Speaker 1: culture writing too.

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Speaker 2: I always thought you were started out as a business writer.

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Speaker 1: No, although I did spend some time doing that as well. Know,

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Speaker 1: I applied for an internship at this arts and culture magazine,

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Speaker 1: and I showed up the first day like did my thing.

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Speaker 1: And then I showed up the second day and the

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Speaker 1: entire editorial staff had quit because the publisher was this

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Speaker 1: sort of stereotypical megalomaniac monster that was really art work

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Speaker 1: for So he made me and the other intern temporary

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Speaker 1: co managing editors and was like, oh my god, let's

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Speaker 1: see how you guys do. And then the next day

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Speaker 1: the other intern showed up five minutes late, so he

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Speaker 1: fired her.

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Speaker 2: What So that was a magazine of one person.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it was me. The art director was still there,

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Speaker 1: he had not left, and then the creative director was

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Speaker 1: in New York, so he was still around because he

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Speaker 1: didn't actually have to deal day to day with this guy.

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Speaker 1: So it was just me, the creative director and the

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Speaker 1: art director. And I mean, I was like twenty four.

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Speaker 1: He's like, okay, it's you kid. We've got an issue

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Speaker 1: do with the printers in two weeks. And I talked

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Speaker 1: to the creative director and he's like, Yeah, this is

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Speaker 1: going to be our first politics issue, and we're going

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Speaker 1: to do an interview with Ralph Nader and an interview

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Speaker 1: with Noam Chomsky and it's going to be really cool.

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Speaker 1: This was like, had been up to that point almost

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Speaker 1: exclusively a fashion an art magazine, but this guy was

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Speaker 1: trying to like inject politics. It was like two thousand

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Speaker 1: and five, I want to say something like.

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Speaker 2: That interesting and Ralph Nader was still relevant.

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Speaker 1: Yeah to this guy anyway. Anyway, So I was like, Okay, cool,

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Speaker 1: when are those interviews coming in? And he was like, oh,

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Speaker 1: we haven't booked them or assigned writers to those stories.

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Speaker 2: Oh my god.

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Speaker 1: It was just a wish list, you know. But I

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Speaker 1: was like young and inexperienced and didn't know any better

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Speaker 1: and was trying to turn this temporary gig to permanent.

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Speaker 1: So I was like, Okay, we're going to do it,

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Speaker 1: and we did. We actually got those interviews and pulled

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Speaker 1: together a really great issue and that became my job.

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Speaker 1: But yeah, I did mostly film reviews. I wrote about

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Speaker 1: like cultural trends, and it was really fun. I enjoyed

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Speaker 1: it a lot. And then I also quit spontaneously because

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Speaker 1: after a while you just couldn't keep dealing with that guy.

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Speaker 1: It became almost impossible for me to actually work because

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Speaker 1: I would come and as soon as he would come

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Speaker 1: to the office, he would insist that I sit at

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Speaker 1: his desk so he could dictate all of his emails

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Speaker 1: for me to type for him.

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Speaker 2: Oh so you became his secretary as well as the

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Speaker 2: managing editor of Implication.

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Speaker 1: You would like pace behind me, and like ninety percent

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Speaker 1: of his emails were like mad emails. We just sort

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Speaker 1: of stop around behind me dictating these emails, including to

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Speaker 1: the woman who delivered our mail, who he had an

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Speaker 1: endless ongoing battle with.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So I had started coming into work at like five am,

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Speaker 1: just so I could get stuff done before he showed up,

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Speaker 1: because he was taking over my day. At one point,

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Speaker 1: he exploded at me about something and I just like

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Speaker 1: hurled my keys at his head and said I quit

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Speaker 1: and like left and never went back. But then I

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Speaker 1: was like, oh shit, I have to pay rent in

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Speaker 1: two weeks. And a friend of mine was working for

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Speaker 1: an engineering firm. He's like, okay, well we need someone

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Speaker 1: to do some copywriting. It's really boring, but it pays

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Speaker 1: well and they'll just pay you as you go so

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Speaker 1: it pays quickly. I was like, perfect, sign me up.

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Speaker 1: They just needed someone to write case studies of some

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Speaker 1: of their projects, and then one of their projects was

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Speaker 1: re engineering off ore oil platforms for Shell in the

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Speaker 1: mid to late nineties to deal with sea level rise.

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Speaker 1: And I was like, huh, that's interesting because I feel

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Speaker 1: like Shell was not even admitting that sea level rise

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Speaker 1: was going to be a problem in the late night.

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Speaker 1: So I looked into it and sure enough they were not.

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Speaker 1: And I pitched that story to a small environmental magazine

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Speaker 1: and basically that's what put me on everything I've been

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Speaker 1: doing since then, So.

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Speaker 2: You know, amazing. I had no idea went out.

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Speaker 1: For paying the rent.

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Speaker 2: Daniel, Yeah, I'll tell you on that one.

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Speaker 1: Let's talk about what we're planning for this crossover season.

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Speaker 1: So actually, first I want to ask you a little

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Speaker 1: bit more about Non Toxic and like that, what are

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Speaker 1: some of your favorite episodes that you guys had to I.

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Speaker 2: Did do an interview with the artist and filmmaker Richard Moss,

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Speaker 2: which has consistently been one of my audience's favorite conversations. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: he did this amazing film photo installation project called Broken

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Speaker 2: Specter that was kind of deep in the Amazon focused

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Speaker 2: on the mining and lawugging communities that are illegally extracting

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Speaker 2: resources in these kind of wild West towns, and I

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Speaker 2: don't know, just through his sheer irish charm managed to

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Speaker 2: inveigle himself into these camps with these guys who are

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Speaker 2: doing this work, And I thought it was one The

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Speaker 2: art is just really beautiful and visually complex. He's using

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Speaker 2: all of these different kind of visual technologies and different

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Speaker 2: types of satellite imagery, microscopic, all of these things like

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Speaker 2: UV to kind of bring different elements to light. But

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Speaker 2: also just like the way that he was able to

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Speaker 2: tell the human side of this story, the kind of

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Speaker 2: the machismo of these places, the effects that it has

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Speaker 2: on women es actually indigenous women who live near these

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Speaker 2: illegal encampments, And yeah, I felt like he really was

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Speaker 2: hitting like every note that I was interested in. And

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Speaker 2: he you know, he'd spent over a year making this,

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Speaker 2: so he had a kind of a deep well of

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Speaker 2: stories to draw from, and he was very like reflective

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Speaker 2: on kind of the process of making the piece as well,

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Speaker 2: which I thought was just really powerful and useful to

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Speaker 2: understand that it's not just here's this cool art project,

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Speaker 2: but this is the story of how it was made.

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Speaker 1: What are some of the things that you're seeing right

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Speaker 1: now that you're like, oh, yeah, this is where I

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Speaker 1: thought this trend was going, or I don't know that

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Speaker 1: are just peauking your interest in this area.

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Speaker 2: I mean, I think for this season, the kind of

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Speaker 2: central node is going to be the reelection of Trump.

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Speaker 2: That's it's kind of an inescapable fact that I thought

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Speaker 2: was was maybe I thought Trump was going to be

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Speaker 2: in the rear view mirror, like especially once Biden dropped out,

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Speaker 2: I kind of thought, oh, this is the end of

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Speaker 2: nontoxic Kamala will be president.

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Speaker 1: Oh you sweet summer child.

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Speaker 2: It's like, who's going to care about this? You know,

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Speaker 2: these internet chads are going to go back into their hole.

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Speaker 2: But obviously, yeah, that's not what happened. And I think

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Speaker 2: the sort of the twin forces. I mean, there are

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Speaker 2: many forces that animated Trump's rise, but I think two

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Speaker 2: that are of particular import are the kind of masculinity, grievance,

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Speaker 2: politics of the right, and then also like fossil fuel money.

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Speaker 2: You know, he made a deal at mar A Lago

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Speaker 2: where he said, give me a billion dollars.

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Speaker 1: And I'll make your dreams come true and I'll yeah,

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Speaker 1: and they did. I know.

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Speaker 2: It's really so I think that his administration kind of

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Speaker 2: brings together in human form and through its policies. You know,

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Speaker 2: it's war on the so called gender ideology, and it's

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Speaker 2: warm environmental regulations, it's you know, complete gutting of the EPA.

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Speaker 2: Like there they and they very much understand that project

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Speaker 2: is being intertwined. They want to go back to an

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Speaker 2: era when men were in charge and the economy ran

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Speaker 2: on fossil fuels, and they see those two things as

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Speaker 2: being kind of mutually constitutive. We're going to talk about

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Speaker 2: that this season with Kara Daggett and during an episode

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Speaker 2: on Petro masculinity, which is this concept she coined, I think, yeah,

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Speaker 2: that for me is is kind of the inescapable fact

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Speaker 2: that these these things are very much like a singular

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Speaker 2: ideology and they need to be understood together. I think

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Speaker 2: also something that has been a thread throughout my work

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Speaker 2: is that, you know, the kind of climate denial or

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Speaker 2: climate refusal often takes kind of uniquely masculine forms. So

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Speaker 2: things like the needing to drive a huge pickup truck

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Speaker 2: roll coal and being an obsession with meat, which is

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Speaker 2: a huge contributor to the climate crisis. Like a lot

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Speaker 2: of the signifiers of contemporary masculinity are totally bound up

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Speaker 2: in kind of profligate environmental destruction in one way or another,

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Speaker 2: and that is a bizarre not to me, a wicked not.

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Speaker 2: I guess we have to try to untangle if we're

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Speaker 2: going to kind of change social norms and build the

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Speaker 2: consensus around climate action. I think, you know, one of

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Speaker 2: the things that I started with was a premise for

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Speaker 2: Steve Bannon that politics is downstream of culture. And I thought, okay, well,

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Speaker 2: what are the cultural factors that are kind of producing

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Speaker 2: this either political inaction or and now at this point

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Speaker 2: political rollback of so many of the protections that we

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Speaker 2: thought we had, And how are we going to fight

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Speaker 2: that battle? Like, it's not just a matter of coming

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Speaker 2: up with the right policy. And I think that this

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Speaker 2: is an analysis that ultimately is oriented towards some kind

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Speaker 2: of political action. I'm not acting as a neutral arbiter.

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Speaker 2: I'm very much an interested party and also like I'm

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Speaker 2: a man, you know, in case listeners hadn't figured that

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Speaker 2: out yet, I'm in reveal. I think a lot about

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Speaker 2: kind of what masculinity has become. We've lived through the

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Speaker 2: like the me too era, and now the complete reversal

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Speaker 2: of the me too era, and I see, you know,

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Speaker 2: I've seen kind of the backsliding on gen Z.

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Speaker 1: I thought that I've been calling it the U two era.

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Speaker 2: It's been so disheartening to see younger men drift into

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Speaker 2: this right wing, anti feminist, anti environmental, kind of anti everything.

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Speaker 2: I mean, it's a kind of deeply nihilistic reactionary position

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Speaker 2: that doesn't necessarily have any kind of I mean, it

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Speaker 2: does have goals sometimes, but I think for a lot

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Speaker 2: of these young men it's it's just attractive because it's

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Speaker 2: a rejection of you know, mommy and like scolding teachers

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Speaker 2: and all of these kinds of figures in their lives

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Speaker 2: that they resent for telling them now right right? And

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Speaker 2: how are we going to undo that? How we're going

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Speaker 2: to move forward on that? We need a real reckoning

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Speaker 2: with the social, economic, psychological, gendered conditions in our culture

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Speaker 2: that are priming the pump for this situation.

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Speaker 1: It reminds me well two things. First, like, for the

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Speaker 1: folks who are anti climate action, it always goes along

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Speaker 1: with anti equity of all kinds, gender, racial, class, whatever,

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Speaker 1: being very like anti LGBTQ, anti labor. It's all kind

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Speaker 1: of bundled together. I talk about it as the right

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Speaker 1: actually being way more intersectional than the left at the moment,

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Speaker 1: and we need to realize that these things are always

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Speaker 1: going together. And then on the culture side, kind of

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Speaker 1: similar to how Steve Bannon has talked about this. For

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Speaker 1: part of the book research, I went to an archive

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Speaker 1: of this big network of conservative think tanks. It's called

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Speaker 1: the Atlas Network. The Atlas Network think tanks which include

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Speaker 1: a lot of the groups that were involved in Project

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Speaker 1: twenty twenty five, for example, Heritage Foundation, all the Koch

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Speaker 1: Brothers foundations are all they're all up in there. But

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Speaker 1: in this archive, I was looking through a bunch of

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Speaker 1: their founding documents even before they officially existed, like in

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Speaker 1: the late seventies and early eighties, as they were getting going.

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Speaker 1: And they're very very clear about this idea that they

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Speaker 1: are not trying to put forth or achieve any particular policy,

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Speaker 1: that their job is to sort of seed the cultural

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Speaker 1: and intellectual soil in which future policies can take hold.

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Speaker 1: And I just don't think that there has been any

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Speaker 1: kind of similar effort on the left or progressive side

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Speaker 1: of things. I think a lot of people who are

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Speaker 1: creatives or who work in culture have tended to be progressive,

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Speaker 1: and therefore, like maybe some of those ideas have found

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Speaker 1: their way into culture. But I don't know that there's

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Speaker 1: been this super concerted, well funded, long term effort in

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Speaker 1: the way.

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Speaker 2: That's not sure if you ask Tucker Carlson.

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Speaker 1: I know, I know, the globless political funders and foundations

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Speaker 1: and stuff that I've had a window into, they're very

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Speaker 1: policy focused. It's like they fund campaigns and they fund

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Speaker 1: campaigns pegged too specific policy outcomes that they want, but

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Speaker 1: they really do not do. I mean, you can see

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Speaker 1: it in the climate space right now, like all of

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Speaker 1: all the foundations are just now kind of starting to

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Speaker 1: use this word narrative change a lot, you know, and

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Speaker 1: I'm like, oh my god, you guys are like fifty

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Speaker 1: years behind, you know. So anyway, it is interesting to

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Speaker 1: me how all that intersects together. And I think that similarly,

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Speaker 1: I don't know that you end up with masculinity backlash

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Speaker 1: thing that we're seeing now in the absence of this

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Speaker 1: whole information ecosystem. There's so much being done to really

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Speaker 1: pull people into that. I mean, there's underlying drivers too,

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Speaker 1: but I don't know that it would be so rampant

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Speaker 1: and so effective about all of the disinformation tools too.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. I think specifically the balance of gender is so powerful.

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Speaker 2: It's it's for many people the most core aspect of

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Speaker 2: their identity. And if they feel that something like climate

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Speaker 2: or any number of other so called progressive ideas is

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Speaker 2: threatening that, then it's it's kind of like, uh, the

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Speaker 2: most important thing that you have, you have to defend it. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: that thing that is the most basic part of who

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Speaker 2: I am is being taken away from me or destroyed.

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Speaker 2: I can't allow that, right, right?

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Speaker 1: Do you think that any of it hards back to

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Speaker 1: the really big man versus nature domination stuff too. There's

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Speaker 1: this social sciences researcher that I like a lot because

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Speaker 1: she focuses on media studies and communications and stuff. Melissa

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Speaker 1: Aroncheck is her name. She wrote a book called A

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Speaker 1: Strategic Nature, and it's about the history of environmental pr

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Speaker 1: and she talks about these two approaches to quote unquote

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Speaker 1: the environment in the US kind of in the early

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Speaker 1: early days of the country. She particularly ties them to

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Speaker 1: two specific men, Gifford Pinchot, who is like the first

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Speaker 1: forester in the US, and John Muir, who is all

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Speaker 1: about conservation and creating national parks and all of this stuff,

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Speaker 1: and of course neither of them is paying any attention

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Speaker 1: at all to the indigenous approach to nature that existed

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Speaker 1: before the US. But she talks about it as like

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Speaker 1: these two kind of warring ideas about nature, one to

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Speaker 1: preserve it and the other to control it and kind

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Speaker 1: of see it as an economic resource. And I feel

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Speaker 1: like there's a lot of that that's like tied to

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Speaker 1: the masculinity stuff too.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think there are other psychological relationships.

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Speaker 2: I mean, at this point, this is something we'll also

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Speaker 2: be talking about, this idea of eco sadism that we

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Speaker 2: live in a time when it's it's almost like it's

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Speaker 2: funny to own the libs by destroying something or you know,

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Speaker 2: intentionally like rolling coal as an example. Yeah, things that

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Speaker 2: you know, on the face of them defy logic, but

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Speaker 2: when you understand, like psychologically what they kind of do

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Speaker 2: for the person is kind of engaging in these practices,

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Speaker 2: I wouldn't say it makes sense, but it definitely is

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Speaker 2: outside the paradigm of rationality. Yeah, you're talking about with

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Speaker 2: the kind of like, oh, do we kind of conserve

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Speaker 2: and exploit or do we preserve nature as this kind

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Speaker 2: of untouched wilderness. Yet now it's like, well, why don't

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Speaker 2: we just burn it because it's fun?

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Speaker 1: I see the burn it because it's fun stuff. Also

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Speaker 1: being tied a lot to ideas of like freedom, you know.

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Speaker 2: Like exercising my sovereignty.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, totally freedom and like no rules and all

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Speaker 1: of that kind of thing. All right, cool, Well I

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Speaker 1: could talk to you about this stuff for hours, which

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Speaker 1: is why we're doing a whole season. I'm very excited.

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Speaker 1: Thank you so much, and look out for that season

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Speaker 1: coming in your feeds soon