Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds. We are off for the holidays, but
Speaker 1: in advance we made you a fantastic show. Today, The
Speaker 1: New York Times Nicholas Kristoff stops by to talk to
Speaker 1: us about giving effectively and his favorite charities. But first
Speaker 1: we talked to rohat Argo Walla, New York City's chief
Speaker 1: climate officer, about what New York is doing to counteract
Speaker 1: the coming climate disaster. Welcome to Fast Politics. Read thanks,
Speaker 1: it's great to be here, Molly. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: I am very thrilled to have you tell us exactly
Speaker 1: your title, because you have a fancy title. So I
Speaker 1: am the chief Climate Officer for the City of New
Speaker 1: York and the Commissioner of New York City's Department of
Speaker 1: Environmental Protection. Yeah. New York is an interesting city, and
Speaker 1: in some ways we're not that unusual. Right. We're coastal
Speaker 1: city that's an island, and I mean we are a
Speaker 1: city that is going to be affected by climate change
Speaker 1: in ways we can't even wrap our heads around. Yes. True,
Speaker 1: on many levels, New York, like most of the world's
Speaker 1: Great Cities is a coastal city. You know, most cities
Speaker 1: historically grew up around waterways, which is why the challenges
Speaker 1: at sea level rise and extreme storms are going to
Speaker 1: affect so many people around the world. Because all of
Speaker 1: the city is both in the global North and the
Speaker 1: global South, are really very much on the front lines.
Speaker 1: We actually can sadly imagine a lot of what's going
Speaker 1: to happen. It'll be probably faster than we think, it
Speaker 1: will be more extreme than we think, but we've already
Speaker 1: seen a lot of it already, and the science is
Speaker 1: really clear about what we face. So let's talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about what we face. There are kind of
Speaker 1: three horsemen and the apocalypse that you can think about.
Speaker 1: There's coastal inundation, there's rainfall, and then there's the related issues,
Speaker 1: although you could have a fourth of heat and drought.
Speaker 1: So those are the four things. Pretty much every community
Speaker 1: around the world, if they're at all coastal, they're they're
Speaker 1: probably facing three, if not four. And as you say,
Speaker 1: New York has five miles of coastline, and we are
Speaker 1: vulnerable to all four of those risks. In fact, I mean,
Speaker 1: what do you think is the most imminent well, I
Speaker 1: mean imminent. We've already had. We had a Hurricane Sandy
Speaker 1: ten years ago. Um, you know, forty New Yorkers lost
Speaker 1: their lives to a storm that you know, is at
Speaker 1: the very extreme end of what people would have expected.
Speaker 1: Certainly that kind of storm is exacerbated and made more
Speaker 1: frequent by by climate change, and so the storm surge
Speaker 1: that caused all the flooding and the depths during Sandy
Speaker 1: is an example of the kind of thing that we
Speaker 1: have to be prepared for more frequently and at an
Speaker 1: extreme level. And of course, when you're talking about a
Speaker 1: storm surge, it's over sea level, So as sea level rises,
Speaker 1: those storm surges rise. In addition, you know, both because
Speaker 1: the sea level is higher and because these storms are
Speaker 1: getting more powerful. So it's a compound effect. So that's
Speaker 1: one that we've already seen. I mean, this is a
Speaker 1: problem that New York is going to, Miami is going
Speaker 1: to have, Boston, all the sort of coastal cities will
Speaker 1: have this. What are this sort of ways in which
Speaker 1: you climate people are Can it protect us from all drowning? Well,
Speaker 1: let's remember, Molly, we're all climate people, and we all
Speaker 1: know how to be climate people. There's a lot going on,
Speaker 1: and this is true many cities around around the world
Speaker 1: are doing a lot. Just to be specific to New York.
Speaker 1: In the ten years since SAMI, there are huge projects.
Speaker 1: Billions and billions of dollars have been spent. Well over
Speaker 1: ten billion dollars has been invested to protect our coastline.
Speaker 1: We do that in two ways. One, for example, is
Speaker 1: going on on the Lower east Side. It's gotten a
Speaker 1: lot of attention as well as similar projects and in
Speaker 1: far Rockaway, which was very hard and hard hit, and
Speaker 1: on the south shore of Staten Island to build sea
Speaker 1: walls literally to have those coastal defenses that if the
Speaker 1: sea level rises or if the storm sur derups or
Speaker 1: takes place, it won't actually cause that flooding inland. And
Speaker 1: in some of those cases, the more dramatic ones, that
Speaker 1: actually involves movable barriers, and that's that's one of the
Speaker 1: techniques we've we're deploying on the Lower east Side. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of work though it's gone on actually as
Speaker 1: much money, far more under the radar, which is about
Speaker 1: hardening our buildings and our infrastructure. Because there's one strategy
Speaker 1: for resilience that says well let's prevent something bad from happening.
Speaker 1: There's another which says, let's just make sure we bounce
Speaker 1: back from it. Let's make sure that nobody dies. Let's
Speaker 1: make sure that the equipment, for example, in this case,
Speaker 1: a lot of the work and Nisha which people love
Speaker 1: to complain about, but Nitscha has really done tremendous work
Speaker 1: on this. Explain what NIGHTSHA is to those of us
Speaker 1: who are slightly slow. Not everybody is in municipal government.
Speaker 1: That's fair, right, exactly, That's what I meant for those
Speaker 1: of us who do not work in municipal government. What
Speaker 1: is NIA New York City Housing Authority, which is all
Speaker 1: of the public housing in New York City. Something on
Speaker 1: the order of one out of every ten New Yorkers
Speaker 1: lives in a NIGHTSHA facility. It's the largest landlord, a
Speaker 1: second only to the u US Army UM in the
Speaker 1: United States. And several NIGHTSHA projects or housing developments were
Speaker 1: seriously hurt during Hurricane Sandy. And one of the biggest
Speaker 1: issues was that when basements flooded, and it wasn't just
Speaker 1: nice abilities that had this problem. When basements flooded, a
Speaker 1: lot of equipment was destroyed, and so it wasn't just
Speaker 1: that there was a problem for the people who lived
Speaker 1: there while the flooding was going on, but for days, weeks,
Speaker 1: sometimes months later, the time it took to do those repairs,
Speaker 1: there was an impact. So when a lot of work
Speaker 1: has gone into hardening that moving some of those critical
Speaker 1: pieces of equipment up to upper floors, waterproofing the ones
Speaker 1: that have to remain at lower levels. At my agency
Speaker 1: at d e P where we were on the water supply,
Speaker 1: on the wastewater treatment for the city, we've done a
Speaker 1: great deal of that because all of our wastewater treatment
Speaker 1: plans that process our sewage and make sure we're not
Speaker 1: dumping raw sewage into the harbor, are also of course
Speaker 1: right at sea level, so we have to protect them.
Speaker 1: We can't always keep the flooding out. We have to
Speaker 1: also make sure that they'll bounce back. Talk to me
Speaker 1: about what preventing flooding looks like more specifically, to prevent
Speaker 1: flooding again, you can you can build a wall, right,
Speaker 1: you can build a barrier, and that's that's the kind
Speaker 1: of thing we're doing at the Lower east Side. If
Speaker 1: you if you go down to the Lower east Side
Speaker 1: now you'll see that's the green zone. Can you explain
Speaker 1: that to us a little bit how that works. There
Speaker 1: are a lot of different designs. Some of them are
Speaker 1: literally just putting a wall up, that's basically building a dam.
Speaker 1: A lot of the work on the lower east side
Speaker 1: is around having it be much more accessible, So we're
Speaker 1: literally raising a park on the shoreline by something on
Speaker 1: the order of ten or more feet so that it's
Speaker 1: simply a higher bank on the east river. And then
Speaker 1: there are some places where we can't do that, and
Speaker 1: there are movable gates where when we know a storm comes,
Speaker 1: because it's one of the nice things about hurricanes is
Speaker 1: you generally have some warning. Is you can close these
Speaker 1: big gates and you create a barrier so that the
Speaker 1: water will stay on the other side. That's a technique,
Speaker 1: of course, that the Dutch are famous for. They've been
Speaker 1: doing it for hundreds of years. Cities around the world
Speaker 1: are embracing that. I mean, will that work when we
Speaker 1: start getting very large waves? You have to follow the
Speaker 1: science and the best predictions about what is reasonable to
Speaker 1: prepare for. I mean, yes, of course, the theory you
Speaker 1: could imagine some infinitesimal risk of a fifty foot inundation
Speaker 1: or something like that. You can't you literally cannot protect
Speaker 1: against every risk. So right now we've used designs that
Speaker 1: look ahead to what we expect rationally to be the
Speaker 1: case for say a fifty year seventy year time horizon.
Speaker 1: But I think the planners who work on resilience, of course,
Speaker 1: we know the climate sciences is evolving. We we know
Speaker 1: we don't we don't know when we're going to end
Speaker 1: carbon emissions around the world, so we don't know when
Speaker 1: this process of global warming begins to slow down. So
Speaker 1: a lot of these designs are built so that they
Speaker 1: can be added to and raised if need be, so
Speaker 1: that flexibility that has to be built in. One of
Speaker 1: the things you said to me when we talked was
Speaker 1: that it's not a question of which one of these
Speaker 1: adaptations we're gonna have to take. We're gonna have to
Speaker 1: take all of them, gonna have to do all of
Speaker 1: these things, and that climate is actually climate change is
Speaker 1: happening in a way that's much faster than a lot
Speaker 1: of us thought. Can you talk about what you've seen
Speaker 1: in New York that where you've seen climate change in action, Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, the data is really clear on all of
Speaker 1: the risks that I mentioned, but I'm thinking about the
Speaker 1: micro verse and the stuff you were telling me about. Well,
Speaker 1: in addition to those coastal inundations which got our attention
Speaker 1: a decade ago, you know, just last year we really
Speaker 1: started to see a change in summer rainfall patterns. You know,
Speaker 1: for seventy years of good weather data, that we have
Speaker 1: the most intense rainfall that New York had ever experienced,
Speaker 1: which is how much rainfalls in an hour, right, because
Speaker 1: that's what really calls causes flooding, Like long duration light
Speaker 1: rain doesn't cause a problem, it's it's those really intense firsts.
Speaker 1: Was around one point seven or five inches per hour,
Speaker 1: was the most intense rain we've ever got for decades
Speaker 1: and decades. Last year, in August of Hurricane Henri came
Speaker 1: by and gave us one point nine inches of rain
Speaker 1: in one hour, and then only ten days later, Hurricane
Speaker 1: Ida arrived and gave some neighborhoods in the city three
Speaker 1: point seven five inches of rain in one hour, literally
Speaker 1: doubling more than doubling the historic rate. And of course
Speaker 1: the problem is all of our sewage are sewer system
Speaker 1: and our drainage plans are all based on that historical
Speaker 1: maximum one point seven five inches, So we've got to
Speaker 1: come up with an entirely new playbook. And then, as
Speaker 1: you were correctly citing, we've now begun to see a
Speaker 1: pattern of microbursts where the kind of rainfall that you
Speaker 1: associate with like the Caribbean or Florida, where every afternoon
Speaker 1: on a summer afternoon, you know it's going to rain,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be very intense, it's going to be very
Speaker 1: short lived, and you don't quite know where it's going
Speaker 1: to be because it might be rain over here, in
Speaker 1: five blocks away, it's there's not much rain at all. Right,
Speaker 1: We've started seeing that pattern in New York and just
Speaker 1: last year we had a couple of these. Just this
Speaker 1: past summer, rather number of twenty two, we've had a
Speaker 1: couple of these examples, one of them in the Bronx
Speaker 1: that caused a sinkhole because it actually the flooding damaged
Speaker 1: one of our sewers and the street collapsed. Another one
Speaker 1: in September that I like to site because in one
Speaker 1: hour LaGuardia Airport got more than two inches of rain,
Speaker 1: again blowing that historical record out of the water. But
Speaker 1: for Hurricane Ida, so LaGuardia got more than two inches
Speaker 1: of rain in one hour. Central Park got point one
Speaker 1: five inches of rain in that same same storm, so
Speaker 1: radically different across the city parts of New York that
Speaker 1: day it didn't even rain it at all. Right, so interesting.
Speaker 1: So I mean, what are the other sort of things
Speaker 1: that are interesting climate sort of adaptations that New York
Speaker 1: is working on right now and that other American cities
Speaker 1: are working on. Well, I think, you know, in addition
Speaker 1: to all the things that are related to water in fact,
Speaker 1: that people don't appreciate because we we lost forty people
Speaker 1: during Hurricane Sandy, we lost a leven New Yorkers um
Speaker 1: during Hurricane Ida. Flooding and water gets a lot of
Speaker 1: the attention in fact, and it's true in New York,
Speaker 1: it's true in in most places around the world. Most
Speaker 1: climate related deaths are caused by heat. And the significant
Speaker 1: increase in the heat of our summers, longer durations and
Speaker 1: hotter higher temperatures which we've seen, is leading to an
Speaker 1: increase in depths, and those deaths are concentrated among people
Speaker 1: who are older and among people who are low income,
Speaker 1: because it's older people who are just more susceptible to
Speaker 1: the things that go wrong when you have extended periods
Speaker 1: when you're hot. And of course lower income people are
Speaker 1: less likely to have air conditioning, and so during during
Speaker 1: the pandemic, in fact, New York had a program to
Speaker 1: give air conditioners out to several thousand low income individuals
Speaker 1: who were at risk. And we are developing plans for
Speaker 1: how we think about cooling as something that we have
Speaker 1: to take as seriously in all of our buildings as
Speaker 1: we do heating. Yeah, that's really interesting. What can people
Speaker 1: who are listening to this right now in abject horror?
Speaker 1: I mean, what can they do? The first thing is
Speaker 1: that if you're worried about climate as if you know
Speaker 1: when you're in a hole, the first thing to do
Speaker 1: is stop digging. Right. So as important as it is
Speaker 1: to plan for for adaptation and resilience, we also have
Speaker 1: to get control of our carbon emissions. Um. New York
Speaker 1: has been a leader on this. We've got a law
Speaker 1: that's going to impact many New York City buildings that
Speaker 1: are going to have to reduce their carbon emissions. Some
Speaker 1: buildings are going to have to make some real big
Speaker 1: investments to become more energy efficient and more carbon efficient.
Speaker 1: We've got to make big changes in our our transportation system.
Speaker 1: So that person you're thinking about, I hope they're thinking
Speaker 1: about buy an electric vehicle. I hope they're thinking about
Speaker 1: leaving that electrical vehicle at home when they can and
Speaker 1: biking or taking transit or walking whatever possible. Here in
Speaker 1: New York, we're we're going to bring congestion pricing to
Speaker 1: the city, which will which will help both fund more
Speaker 1: investments in transit and reduce the propensity to drive. So
Speaker 1: that that's the first step. Can you explain can chess
Speaker 1: gen pricing and why it's good for the environment. Well, so,
Speaker 1: congestion pricing, which is something that I was advocating for
Speaker 1: when Mayor Bloomberg was mayor, and we've been working towards
Speaker 1: the New York for a long time. There's a system
Speaker 1: they have it in in London and Singapore and Milan
Speaker 1: and in Stockholm, several many other big cities around the
Speaker 1: city have it. It's basically a toll to drive into
Speaker 1: the most congested, most transit rich part of the city,
Speaker 1: and so here in New York, basically to drive anywhere
Speaker 1: in Manhattan below sixt Street will involve paying a toll,
Speaker 1: and the idea is that most everybody traveling from anywhere
Speaker 1: in the Tri state area going to Manhattan below six
Speaker 1: Street has a transit option, and they should take it
Speaker 1: unless there is a very good reason. And if there
Speaker 1: is a very good reason, it's not that big an
Speaker 1: imposition to pay at all. I mean, I think that's
Speaker 1: that's a really good point. Will you just tell us
Speaker 1: we're almost out of time, but just tell us what
Speaker 1: one of the sort of most interesting things that um
Speaker 1: the city is doing to deal with climate the most
Speaker 1: interesting thing or whatever you want to talk about. I'll
Speaker 1: say that certainly, when it comes to dealing with with
Speaker 1: both coastal inundation and stormwater, we have to think very
Speaker 1: differently about our landscape. Traditionally New Yorkers have relied on
Speaker 1: gray infrastructure sewers underground to get rid of our water.
Speaker 1: Over the last several years, we've started really to think
Speaker 1: to be thinking as much or more about the green infrastructure.
Speaker 1: And one great example of that, which I think maybe
Speaker 1: the most exciting thing that New York City is doing
Speaker 1: related to climate adaptation is our Blue Belt network, which
Speaker 1: started on Staten Island in the es And and basically
Speaker 1: it has the realization that lakes ponds and streams, many
Speaker 1: of which we have filled in or covered over over
Speaker 1: two hundred years of development, are great receivers for stormwater
Speaker 1: and so d ep. We now have more than thirty
Speaker 1: of these, and Staten Island and Queens were working to
Speaker 1: develop a citywide plan for them so that we have
Speaker 1: them all over these we we take either open space
Speaker 1: or existing lakes and streams, we connect them to storm sewers.
Speaker 1: There's a little bit a bit of filtration so that
Speaker 1: the water that runs off the street is not just
Speaker 1: bringing garbage into these places. And then during a storm
Speaker 1: they fill up, and when there's no storm, they drain
Speaker 1: naturally and over time, and that's been tremendous. A lot
Speaker 1: of Staten Island is now much better off in terms
Speaker 1: of stormwater flooding than it was a decade ago because
Speaker 1: of these things, and they're beautiful people of them. They
Speaker 1: improve property values in the neighborhood. So that's a that's
Speaker 1: a great innovation. Oh, that's so interesting. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for joining us. So important, and I really hope
Speaker 1: you'll come back all right. Thanks for having me, Molly
Speaker 1: do well. Nicholas Kristof is a New York Times columnist
Speaker 1: welcome Too Fast Politics, Nick Kristof A great to be
Speaker 1: with you. We're thrilled to have you. Very exciting. So
Speaker 1: it is the holiday season and you do something very
Speaker 1: important during the hot as will you talk to us
Speaker 1: about what it is? Yeah, and uh, it raised a
Speaker 1: lot of eyebrows when I started, But it's to recommend
Speaker 1: ways in which people can give effectively to you know,
Speaker 1: some fantastic organizations abroad and at home. And you know,
Speaker 1: I think originally there was some doubt about, you know,
Speaker 1: should journalists really be telling people where to give? And
Speaker 1: it's been just a wonderful experience to make these recommendations
Speaker 1: and people have really responded. So I've just issued my
Speaker 1: two recommendations. So how long have you been doing this?
Speaker 1: I think it's been twelve years now. You know, it's
Speaker 1: one of the most satisfying things I do because normally
Speaker 1: I'm fulminating about healthcare, about President Trump or whatever, and
Speaker 1: nothing really changes. And here's a chance where as journalists,
Speaker 1: you know, we can recommend an organization that we've seen
Speaker 1: on the ground that really is making a difference, and
Speaker 1: people respond and as a result, you know, people get uh,
Speaker 1: you know, they get investments, they can feed their kids
Speaker 1: better and they can send their kids to school. Uh,
Speaker 1: it makes a real difference in lives. So tell us
Speaker 1: one of the heartwarming holiday stories of a charity you
Speaker 1: recommended that got a boost from your column this year.
Speaker 1: You mean, well, you could this year, but you could
Speaker 1: also tell us historically, because these new charities are you're
Speaker 1: just introducing them, so it's curious of their stories from
Speaker 1: the history of it. Yeah, I mean in the past.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I've really come to believe
Speaker 1: in my reporting is the power of girls education and
Speaker 1: the way the girl's education improves life not only for
Speaker 1: those young women, but for entire societies. And so there's
Speaker 1: a group that I recommended some years ago called camp FED,
Speaker 1: which stands for Campaign for Female Education, and it is
Speaker 1: just so incredibly cheap to send a girl to school,
Speaker 1: you know, elementary schools less than a hundred dollars a year.
Speaker 1: And so tens of thousand readers really responded. They supported
Speaker 1: camp FED in a huge way. And the upshot is
Speaker 1: that tens of thousands of girls got to go to
Speaker 1: school who otherwise would not have. That makes you feel
Speaker 1: pretty good over the holiday season. So tell me about
Speaker 1: some of these charities that you have on the list
Speaker 1: this year. So this year I was, you know, really
Speaker 1: affected in part by the crisis in Ukraine. I I'm
Speaker 1: just back from the reporting trip to Ukraine, and one
Speaker 1: of the things that is striking is that while there
Speaker 1: are many thousands of Ukrainians dying, there are also many
Speaker 1: thousands of people in poor countries who were dying from malnutrition,
Speaker 1: typically kids, because the war there has raised the cost
Speaker 1: of fertilizer and of food. And so I'm supporting a
Speaker 1: group called the One Acre Fund, which helps farmers in
Speaker 1: Africa increase their harvests. And it typically constantly twenty five
Speaker 1: dollars per family, and it increases their harvest by that
Speaker 1: means that families can feed their kids, it means they
Speaker 1: can send their kids to school. It can be transformative,
Speaker 1: and so one Acre Fund is the is my number
Speaker 1: one pick this year. I want you to explain to
Speaker 1: us what exactly does this do that helps them. It's
Speaker 1: giving them good fertilizer, for example, and good seeds, and
Speaker 1: in some cases encouraging them to try new techniques or
Speaker 1: new crops that might be effective, advising them on ways
Speaker 1: to irrigate that will use less water, use it more productively.
Speaker 1: It kind of means something to me because I grew
Speaker 1: up on a farm in rural Oregon and we always
Speaker 1: had extension agents who advised us how to improve farming
Speaker 1: techniques and improve crops. And in rural Africa it is
Speaker 1: so hard, and you know, they don't get that advice.
Speaker 1: So the quality of the farming elements makes better food,
Speaker 1: makes more food, helps children. Better farming results more food
Speaker 1: for kids. What other charities are you working with? And
Speaker 1: let me just add on on that front that you
Speaker 1: know a lot of farmers in Africa that when they
Speaker 1: go to the market and buy fertilizer, the fertilizer is
Speaker 1: fake and so they've spent their money and it's just inert,
Speaker 1: you know, stuff that doesn't do any good. Or they
Speaker 1: buy seeds and the seeds are counterfeit and don't really
Speaker 1: grow things. And so for these farmers to be able
Speaker 1: to get reliable seeds and reliable fertilizer again is transformative.
Speaker 1: That was my number one pick. Another one that I
Speaker 1: that I chose that I really liked it. It's called
Speaker 1: Vision to Learn, and the idea behind it is that
Speaker 1: about a quarter of kids need glasses and if you're
Speaker 1: an affluent kid or a middle class kid, then of
Speaker 1: course you get classes and if you break them, then
Speaker 1: you get a replacement pair. But if you're a low
Speaker 1: income kid, then you probably don't get glasses. So you're distracted,
Speaker 1: you can't see the board, you squabble with the kid
Speaker 1: in the seat next to you, right, and you can't
Speaker 1: do as well in school. Yeah, and you you're just
Speaker 1: labeled a troublemaker. Um. The kids in juvenile detention centers
Speaker 1: or disproportional kids who need glasses partly because that's when
Speaker 1: their vision problems are first diagnosed. It's really cheap to
Speaker 1: get a kid glasses, and you know, if it's done
Speaker 1: in first, second, third grade, that is just transformative for
Speaker 1: their whole career. They're more likely to graduate from high school,
Speaker 1: to go to college, to get a good job. And
Speaker 1: question isn't whether we can afford that is if we
Speaker 1: can afford not to provide those classes. And this group
Speaker 1: Vision to Learn does that really well in fifteen states.
Speaker 1: It needs support to be able to expand to the
Speaker 1: rest of the states. Okay, fantastic, Tell me what else
Speaker 1: you're working on. I'm a big believer that education is
Speaker 1: the best letter to success for Everybody. And there's you know,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of the debates about education, but
Speaker 1: there's one organization that has really emphasized evidence and it's
Speaker 1: been subject to more than fifty careful studies. It's called
Speaker 1: Success for All, founded by some experts at Johns Hopkins.
Speaker 1: They're my third recommended group, Success for All Foundation. And
Speaker 1: then I also wanted in the holiday season, you know,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of folks who they may not
Speaker 1: have money to donate, but they have time, and so
Speaker 1: I wanted to recommend groups of people can volunteer for.
Speaker 1: So my recommendations there were Big Brothers Big Sisters, which
Speaker 1: you know is mentoring organization does fantastic work, has thirty
Speaker 1: thousand kids on a wait list for a Big Brother
Speaker 1: and Big Sister, So I'm hoping people will volunteer. And
Speaker 1: the final one, also for volunteers, is called Welcome dot
Speaker 1: Us and it's to help people sponsor a refugee from Ukraine, Venezuela, Afghanistan.
Speaker 1: That's particularly meaningful to me because my dad was a
Speaker 1: refugee from Eastern Europe in nWo and a group of
Speaker 1: people sponsored him, and you know that was transformative for
Speaker 1: the Christoffs and I think it would be fantastic if
Speaker 1: more people provided that kind of sponsorship for refugees who
Speaker 1: needed today. Can you give me a little sense of
Speaker 1: like how this year's charities are different from previous years.
Speaker 1: I try to connect with issues that are really you know,
Speaker 1: important at the moment, and so given the food crisis
Speaker 1: that is affecting so many poor countries, I thought it
Speaker 1: important to provide something that had to do with food,
Speaker 1: and that was why I chose one Acre Fund that
Speaker 1: I thought that will alleviate the malnutrition around the world.
Speaker 1: I think, you know, a child dies of malintrician every
Speaker 1: fourteen seconds somewhere around the world, and that's in part
Speaker 1: because of the war in Ukraine. Likewise, given the war
Speaker 1: in Ukraine, I wanted to find a way to support refugees,
Speaker 1: and this volunteer organization, Welcome dot US would do that.
Speaker 1: But I also think it's really important to for people
Speaker 1: in the holiday season to donate intelligently based on evidence
Speaker 1: and not just on kind of a hunt show this
Speaker 1: feels good, this feels like a good organization, but really
Speaker 1: go with organizations that have proof of their effectiveness. And
Speaker 1: I you know, I'd like to think that all my
Speaker 1: organizations really do that. Just explain just for a minute
Speaker 1: or two why this was controversial. It's so funny because
Speaker 1: it's like, now we're so many years into this world,
Speaker 1: the controversality of this seems insane, but it was right
Speaker 1: at the time. Yeah, it really was. And you know,
Speaker 1: I think the idea was that as journalists we shouldn't
Speaker 1: be raising money for specific organizations or telling people what
Speaker 1: to do. That we should be just passionate and covering
Speaker 1: the story, but not advising people on giving. And that
Speaker 1: always seemed to me missing a real service we could
Speaker 1: provide for readers that you know, readers they read something
Speaker 1: or they want something on TV, and they want to
Speaker 1: know what can I do? How can I help? And
Speaker 1: we did not meet that need. We did not respond
Speaker 1: to that that it should people to help. And I'm
Speaker 1: really glad that it has become you know, I think
Speaker 1: now routine for news organizations to actually help scratch that
Speaker 1: itch and tell people how they can help. That's very interesting.
Speaker 1: Can you just explain a little more are about why
Speaker 1: giving is good for the giv our and to give? Yeah,
Speaker 1: we used to talk about, oh is more blessed to
Speaker 1: give than to receive? And all that, but now we
Speaker 1: actually have evidence from from brain science about it. They've
Speaker 1: hook people up to brain scans and they have a
Speaker 1: little screen in front of them, and as they give
Speaker 1: money to various causes and as they get money coming in,
Speaker 1: and it turns out that people actually vary and that
Speaker 1: there are some people who maybe are a little more selfish,
Speaker 1: who their pleasure centers light up more when they received
Speaker 1: than when they give. But for most people, most of
Speaker 1: the time, when they give money to a good cause,
Speaker 1: and the pleasure centers of their brains actually light up
Speaker 1: and respond even more when they're giving to a specific
Speaker 1: cause than when they are getting. And you know, I
Speaker 1: think that kind of fits in with what a lot
Speaker 1: of us feel intuitively, that we feel a sense of
Speaker 1: satisfaction and purpose when we make those donations and you know,
Speaker 1: make a better world. Thank you so much, Nick, Kristoph
Speaker 1: oh my pleasure, and I encourage anybody who wants to
Speaker 1: follow up to check out Kristophe Impact dot org again
Speaker 1: support these amazing organizations. That's it for this episode of
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Speaker 1: again thanks for listening.