Speaker 1: Welcome to Everywhere, a production of I Heart Radio. I'm
Speaker 1: your host Daniel Scheffler. This week's commandment thou shalt save
Speaker 1: the fucking planet. Well, here's the thing. I wish I
Speaker 1: knew exactly how to save the planet. I simply do
Speaker 1: not have the answers, But as a frequent flyer, every
Speaker 1: week traveler, it certainly is something I want to be
Speaker 1: thinking about as I see this great Earth. I do, however,
Speaker 1: think they are small ways, like thinking about personal waste
Speaker 1: and being more conscious of how to take take take
Speaker 1: from the planet, and then they are more systematic, big
Speaker 1: ways that government and big tech can help us. Perhaps
Speaker 1: the problem is we can't agree on a simple thing.
Speaker 1: Just how important is nature to you? The Amazon is
Speaker 1: on fire as we speak. Why does it seem like
Speaker 1: half the planet cares and the other half much less so?
Speaker 1: Michael and I talk about microplastics in the oceans all
Speaker 1: the time, and now we've started wondering about the fish
Speaker 1: we consume Poisson de plastique. Doesn't that sound delicious? Also,
Speaker 1: Elon Musk's mission to Mars feels like it's becoming a
Speaker 1: real possibility, So perhaps some are even less inclined to
Speaker 1: care about nature on the third rock from the sun.
Speaker 1: But alas the future is here, and I think the
Speaker 1: future is now, we can agree that a productive, diverse
Speaker 1: natural world plus a stable climate have been the very
Speaker 1: basics that have formed our civilization's successes, And so recycling
Speaker 1: feels really good to me. When I go to my
Speaker 1: local farmer's market or popping at a farm stall, or
Speaker 1: when I shop at places like organic Farmer That's with
Speaker 1: a pH in case you wanted to look that up,
Speaker 1: it does all feel fantastic to me. And I love
Speaker 1: that when I walk around Tokyo there are no trash cans,
Speaker 1: that it's my responsibility to take my trash home with me.
Speaker 1: But let's be honest, what does it really mean? What
Speaker 1: am I actually impacting as I trend all over the
Speaker 1: world with my sneakers made from ocean plastic that has
Speaker 1: been recycled. I do think we need to be talking
Speaker 1: about regenerative farming, and the best way to see this
Speaker 1: and understand this is to travel to places where it's
Speaker 1: being done on big and small scales. In fact, we
Speaker 1: should be doing that right now. I hope that President
Speaker 1: Warren next year will start offering subsidies to organic farming
Speaker 1: when she takes office. That can be my side hustle
Speaker 1: organic farming lobbyist. Okay, so back to what feels utterly
Speaker 1: wonderful whilst I'm traveling. What feels really good is when
Speaker 1: I remember to bring my reusable water flask slash coffee flask.
Speaker 1: I recently started counting how many plastic bottles of water
Speaker 1: get foisted on me during a transcond flight, and it's
Speaker 1: not pretty. Then for the moment, being part of the
Speaker 1: Paris Climate Agreement does also feel utterly fantastic. It is,
Speaker 1: in fact, Climate Week in New York as we speak.
Speaker 1: And just knowing that there are forces from all over
Speaker 1: the globe that are beyond my comprehension working on helping
Speaker 1: this planet, well fuck, that feels sensational. As someone who's
Speaker 1: on board an aeroplane, often I realize that I'm also
Speaker 1: doing my fair share of harm to the planet. I'm
Speaker 1: also not suggesting we don't fly ever again with all
Speaker 1: some kind of perspective. So now, my friend Nick, who
Speaker 1: lives in San Louis, Obispo, plants a tree for every
Speaker 1: trip I take on a plane. Mother Earth thanks him
Speaker 1: actively so as a frequent frequent traveler, I'm clearly not
Speaker 1: doing enough, So what else should I be doing or
Speaker 1: thinking about doing? I am recycling, I'm always shopping local.
Speaker 1: I do turn off the lights and air conditioner in
Speaker 1: hotel rooms when I'm not there, and of course I
Speaker 1: do not need my hotel linen and towels washed every day.
Speaker 1: I think about new ways to aid in this department
Speaker 1: all the time. Of course, I would love any suggestions,
Speaker 1: so please reach out. Eco tourism was a movement that
Speaker 1: started to take shape back in the nineteen eighties. It's
Speaker 1: the oldest and most commonly used word for it, and
Speaker 1: now we say things like sustainable tourism or green tourism, Responsible, ethical, mindful.
Speaker 1: Ecotourism is essentially all about bringing nature and wildlife conservationists,
Speaker 1: with local communities and the responsible travel industry together to
Speaker 1: ensure development is focused on long term sustainability rather than
Speaker 1: strong term profit. So let me tell you a little
Speaker 1: story about a dear friend's mother, let's just call her
Speaker 1: Lie Lie. Lie Lie recently told me that climate change
Speaker 1: and the destruction of this planet is part of the
Speaker 1: bigger plan. It will rid the earth of the glut
Speaker 1: of population, and it will make space for the right
Speaker 1: amount of humans to be here. It is, after all,
Speaker 1: natural selection, a sort of natural order of construction and destruction.
Speaker 1: When she said it, it felt so severe to me.
Speaker 1: But there's something to it, and I just cannot stop
Speaker 1: thinking about it. Maybe the planet is saying, okay, enough
Speaker 1: parasites be gone. Speaking of Lila, well, she's extreme, but
Speaker 1: nobody's pushing the conversation forward the way she does. As
Speaker 1: much as I like Algon, he just isn't hitting the
Speaker 1: same notes that Lilac can. She's dedicated her whole life
Speaker 1: to all this change, and you know what shocks her
Speaker 1: most the fact that she thinks nobody's speaking out and
Speaker 1: she's right, why are we not all speaking up? Last
Speaker 1: week in New York, kids took off school to go
Speaker 1: protest for the planet, and I feel that's crucial, but
Speaker 1: not enough. They may actually need to call lie Line
Speaker 1: to lead their march and be their mascot. She's charismatic
Speaker 1: and speaks her truth. In the nineties seventies, living in
Speaker 1: the original Venice Beach, she would pile the kids in
Speaker 1: the car and head over to the fast food chains
Speaker 1: drive through. She'd pull up and the family would roll
Speaker 1: down their windows and yell at whichever ill fated teenager
Speaker 1: was earning minimum wage at the window. How could you
Speaker 1: use styr foam and all that clastic? Today she drives
Speaker 1: a tesla and she uses it for dumps the diving
Speaker 1: in San Francisco. She recently told me that people are
Speaker 1: discovering all her good spots, but she still does love
Speaker 1: it because, as Lilae says, they throw out all this
Speaker 1: ugly fruit that is perfectly good to use for jams
Speaker 1: and who knows what else. I adore Lilae, even though
Speaker 1: she told me that my very expensive cologne was making
Speaker 1: her tongue tingle and it was probably not good for
Speaker 1: her by arm. She lives on hundreds of acres in Yosemite,
Speaker 1: and she has woofers, the World Organization of organic farmers,
Speaker 1: who come and work and live on her land. They
Speaker 1: learn how to go back to the land. And this
Speaker 1: is where my travel thoughts come into play. Isn't this
Speaker 1: an amazing way to travel the world, Like let's go
Speaker 1: to a kibbutz and learn how farming is done in Israel?
Speaker 1: Or what have we traveled to Bolivia and see how
Speaker 1: Class Maya's teams are employing young people in LAPAs to
Speaker 1: learn to cook with native ingredients in order to rely
Speaker 1: less on imports, or what about going to farms outside
Speaker 1: Abu Dhabi and working on them for a day or
Speaker 1: two because who knew that the UAE even had serious
Speaker 1: farming happening. Lila is inspiring, to say the least. In
Speaker 1: her extremity. She does somewhat push people away, but that's
Speaker 1: what the fringe does here. But without her, will all
Speaker 1: be ruining the planet every day with hardly enough regard
Speaker 1: for this life. Can some and please give this woman
Speaker 1: her own Netflix show or a podcast. She can kind
Speaker 1: of be the Murrie Condo of the environment. She would
Speaker 1: come into your home or your business, or your country
Speaker 1: and show you how to clean it up. Imagine this, No, no,
Speaker 1: put that down. That's far too much plastic, Daniel. You
Speaker 1: do not need to use single use gloves to touch
Speaker 1: that meat, Daniel. Are you going to use those vegetable scraps?
Speaker 1: They are very good for the manure, and those carrots
Speaker 1: and beach shavings they are perfect for coloring my hair.
Speaker 1: I hope you're planning to drink that urine, Daniel. It's
Speaker 1: very good for your immune system. We all need a
Speaker 1: little lie line in our lives. In all my travels,
Speaker 1: I find it difficult to always see and understand what
Speaker 1: everybody's doing to save the planet. Lilac excluded, of course,
Speaker 1: A few places that stick out to me on my
Speaker 1: travels are Botswana, Guyana, and Costa Rica. Of Course, the
Speaker 1: obvious northern European countries I've been to, like Denmark and
Speaker 1: Sweden and Finland are also included. In Botswana, they took
Speaker 1: the country's entire military or defense budget and poured it
Speaker 1: all into conservation. Just think about the impact. If we
Speaker 1: slivered even two percent of our defense budget into conservation,
Speaker 1: it could change the whole country. Costa Rica is by
Speaker 1: far the most eco conscious tourism place on the planet
Speaker 1: right now, with an endless amount of regulation around hotels
Speaker 1: and resorts being able to build and operate on principles
Speaker 1: that are good for the planet, less waste, less destruction.
Speaker 1: In Guyana, they aim to achieve one clean and renewable
Speaker 1: energy supply by and then I found this incredible travel
Speaker 1: app operator Utopia. They're based in Mexico and they're offering
Speaker 1: biocultural trips. Utopia is a platform that will house travelers
Speaker 1: to search for authentic experiences outside the conventional routes. They
Speaker 1: access rural communities, especially the indigenous ones, with hosts who
Speaker 1: want to share the incredible natural richness of their land.
Speaker 1: They preserve the natural and cultural heritage of Mexico by
Speaker 1: revolutionizing tourism. Okay, so what is going to make the
Speaker 1: biggest impact. That's probably what we should be thinking about
Speaker 1: on every trip we take. I try not to preach,
Speaker 1: but rather want to have an open dialogue and try
Speaker 1: and figure this all out. Together. We could save the planet,
Speaker 1: but first we need to find some common ground. I
Speaker 1: faint when I see photos of seals covered in oil.
Speaker 1: My heart caves when I see forests on fire. But
Speaker 1: that's not everyone's messaging. It needs to be something that
Speaker 1: affects everyone in their daily life. Okay, fine, let's sci
Speaker 1: fi this. Margaret Atwood's new book is out after all,
Speaker 1: and I just flew out of Gile Lead. This is
Speaker 1: the Netflix series you've been waiting for. All humans get
Speaker 1: a horrible disease infected by the Earth from its very core,
Speaker 1: all at once. The more you do to help save
Speaker 1: the planet, whether it's banal recycling or big legislation, it
Speaker 1: all starts to heal you. The cure is to help
Speaker 1: the planet. If you do nothing, you just start wasting away,
Speaker 1: slowly dying, killing yourself every moment, and if you help,
Speaker 1: you may live. Maybe this is already happening and we
Speaker 1: just don't know it. And now let's talk to Holly,
Speaker 1: my dearest friend, for some conservation history. I sat here
Speaker 1: being silent for minutes. He was so busy on your
Speaker 1: phone getting Costello ticket. Have a little chat. I did
Speaker 1: that before we started. Don't throw me into the kidding.
Speaker 1: These are very important things. But one of the things
Speaker 1: that you talked about was conservation, and it's an interesting
Speaker 1: subject because different areas of the world have such different
Speaker 1: histories of conservation. And I thought we could talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about the juxtaposition between Western culture and then
Speaker 1: how conservation has been handled in South Africa because they
Speaker 1: intertwine during the colonial era and some interesting things happen.
Speaker 1: Do you know when the first national park in the
Speaker 1: world was created in America? No, do you want to
Speaker 1: guess what country? It's one you've been to. I mean,
Speaker 1: that doesn't narrow things down very much at all. In Mongolia, Oh,
Speaker 1: I knew this. And it's interesting because there is debate
Speaker 1: over when people would say historically, the conservation movement begame
Speaker 1: it like a lot of people link it to industrialization,
Speaker 1: which is natural because there was a resultant reaction to
Speaker 1: that that there was concern over what we were doing.
Speaker 1: But really what is often discussed as the first conservation document,
Speaker 1: at least in Western culture, dates back to sixteen sixty two,
Speaker 1: and that was paper titled Silva, or a Discourse on
Speaker 1: Forest Trees and the Propagation of Timber in His Majesty's Dominions,
Speaker 1: and that was written by John Evelyn and presented to
Speaker 1: the Royal Society, and that was actually at the urging
Speaker 1: of the Royal Society as the King was planning to
Speaker 1: build some more fantastic things and they wanted to consider
Speaker 1: what that would result in in terms of the forestry.
Speaker 1: It's kind of interesting because he really does talk about
Speaker 1: things that we're still discussing today. There's a lot about
Speaker 1: deforestation in England and his concerns about it at the time,
Speaker 1: and he really was one of the first people, at
Speaker 1: least on paper, to introduce this idea of replenishment of
Speaker 1: forest resources. So as you're kind down trees for lumber,
Speaker 1: we need to be replacing those trees with saplings and seedlings,
Speaker 1: and it was actually really successful. People weren't like, you're
Speaker 1: a nut, what are you talking about. They're like, oh,
Speaker 1: these are things we should think about. But really it wasn't,
Speaker 1: as I said, until the early industrial era that we
Speaker 1: really first start seeing people raised some red flags about it.
Speaker 1: Prussia and France started looking at these problems, and as
Speaker 1: early as the eighteenth century, so in the seventeen hundreds,
Speaker 1: they were considering how they were going to manage their
Speaker 1: forests and how agriculture was going to be managed to
Speaker 1: not completely deplete the land of its options and its
Speaker 1: natural resources. And then the Napoleonic Wars had some other issues.
Speaker 1: That is actually when the first conservation laws came into
Speaker 1: being was during the Napoleonic Wars, which were specifically related
Speaker 1: to teak trees. People were very concerned about them, and
Speaker 1: so that was the first time someone said, if a
Speaker 1: tree is smaller than this, you cannot cut it down,
Speaker 1: like they had to be mature trees only. And then,
Speaker 1: as you know, science developed, there was more and more
Speaker 1: information that people could kind of feed into the papers
Speaker 1: that they were writing in the research that they were doing,
Speaker 1: and slowly, over time we get more and more interest.
Speaker 1: Theodore Roosevelt in the US was a big proponent of
Speaker 1: conservation at a time when the conservationists of preservationists were
Speaker 1: kind of at odds. In case anyone doesn't know, conservation
Speaker 1: is about management of resources. Preservation doesn't want to touch
Speaker 1: the resources, but just essentially cordon them off and let
Speaker 1: them be. But at the same time, if we turn
Speaker 1: and spend the globe a little and look at South Africa,
Speaker 1: there's an interesting thing. So before colonization, before Europeans decided
Speaker 1: to move in and do their thing, there was kind
Speaker 1: of already a natural harmony with the natural world and
Speaker 1: the people, and they kind of just inherently understood that
Speaker 1: this is not a thing we should strip and destroy
Speaker 1: for our own benefit. There was a religious element to
Speaker 1: some of that, where they just naturally held certain things
Speaker 1: in a sacred space and so they would not touch them.
Speaker 1: One of the things that is interesting is the idea
Speaker 1: of totem animals, like sacred animals could not be hunted
Speaker 1: at all, and that was they didn't need a law.
Speaker 1: They just understood that that was the thing that was
Speaker 1: off limits. And then scarce products were really just reserved
Speaker 1: for things like honoring people in the highest levels of society.
Speaker 1: They were not something like oh I he got and
Speaker 1: everything I want and everything. Let's get all the ivory
Speaker 1: things and then suddenly you have destroyed the ivory sources
Speaker 1: the beautiful animals that produced them. And of course during
Speaker 1: the colonial period, westerners moved in and wanted to build
Speaker 1: all the things and did the same things that were
Speaker 1: causing problems in Europe. In the US, there was also
Speaker 1: a strange thing that happened, which is that conservation grew
Speaker 1: as an idea, but places that were demarcated for conservation
Speaker 1: were also only for rich people to enjoy. In some cases,
Speaker 1: there were entire groups of indigenous people's that were moved
Speaker 1: off of land because they were like, no, no, we
Speaker 1: want to save this land so white people can go
Speaker 1: stand in it and have wonder. I know, you lived
Speaker 1: here a long time, but you go somewhere, which is
Speaker 1: kind of a really messed up way to look at it.
Speaker 1: And of course, eventually, particularly post apartheid, that's really when
Speaker 1: South Africa established it's more modern approach to like park
Speaker 1: management and looking at truly nature as something that needed
Speaker 1: to be cared for and protected and and how that
Speaker 1: kind of is still. I mean we are all every country,
Speaker 1: I think, with a few exceptions, is still working out
Speaker 1: the best ways to deal with things. Because this technology
Speaker 1: evolves and grows, we are accidentally depleting resources we weren't
Speaker 1: even thinking about. Even in the early days of cold
Speaker 1: there were people going, this doesn't last forever. Do you
Speaker 1: understand that? But we're still having the conversation a hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty years later. But it's one of those things
Speaker 1: where you, I think the idea of conservation kind of
Speaker 1: gets lumped in as a by some folks, not everybody.
Speaker 1: It almost gets seen as like, no, this is a
Speaker 1: like a hippie dippie thing. This is nice to have
Speaker 1: a need to right, this is this is for those
Speaker 1: people that are socialists commuters with nature. But what these
Speaker 1: people before colonization in South Africa inherently understood is that
Speaker 1: there's a symbiosis involved that you can't deny. And if
Speaker 1: you completely destroy an environment and the animals there for
Speaker 1: your own benefit, you are ultimately destroying yourself. Maybe not
Speaker 1: yourself and your generation, but your people behind you are
Speaker 1: going to reap the bad results of all of those
Speaker 1: those desire driven decisions that were made that ultimately hurt
Speaker 1: both the earth and it's creatures. Well, like in South Africa,
Speaker 1: four happened. Nelson Mandela came out of prison and it
Speaker 1: became a democracy, and suddenly South Africa opened up to
Speaker 1: the world. Suddenly it became popular and at that point
Speaker 1: was the first luxury safari launches that opened Singita. They
Speaker 1: were like, wait, everyone's looking to South Africa. We should
Speaker 1: do an INCREDI doable place where people could come and
Speaker 1: appreciate the wild and conservation. That's when Singita started and
Speaker 1: they started building these beautiful launches so that it wasn't
Speaker 1: just camping in the bush, think like Meryl Streep out
Speaker 1: of Africa. They turned it into a much more finessed experience.
Speaker 1: It's glamping with animals, well a little even more fabulous
Speaker 1: than glamping. I mean, Singita has this u incredible footprint
Speaker 1: in South Africa and Tanzania and Zimbabwe, where they've had
Speaker 1: very wealthy founders and investors bring a kind of needed
Speaker 1: conservation element to luxury tourism and safari where if you
Speaker 1: want to go there's a huge amount of the money
Speaker 1: goes to conservation. I mean in Tanzania, in the Grammati Reserve,
Speaker 1: which is where the sinky is. They have nine hundred
Speaker 1: full time anti poaches patrol rolling, which is incredible. So
Speaker 1: when you go to the right places, you realize that
Speaker 1: your money is going towards conservation where it's like a
Speaker 1: country like Botswana did this amazing thing where they took
Speaker 1: the entire military budget and put it all towards conservation,
Speaker 1: which is incredible. And when you go there and you
Speaker 1: stay at wilderness has these incredible largest little mambo and mambo,
Speaker 1: and you spend time with some of the game ranges,
Speaker 1: they'll explain to you how every little element can now
Speaker 1: be funded by these projects. I mean, Africa is like
Speaker 1: so important because it hasn't been developed as much as
Speaker 1: a place like America has or Europe. Right the level
Speaker 1: of industrialization is just not there to create that right
Speaker 1: now for a slight respite. And I'll be right back
Speaker 1: with everywhere after a word from our sponsors. You've just
Speaker 1: been somewhere, what say we go everywhere? Now? Well, I
Speaker 1: guess like the thing that we haven't talked about with
Speaker 1: all of this is that there's an element of global
Speaker 1: warming attached to all of this. The planet is warming,
Speaker 1: Animals are migrating in different ways. Land is changing, so
Speaker 1: the grassland may not be the same grassland as it was,
Speaker 1: and these animals are forced to move and where will
Speaker 1: they go? So this is my thing. I mean, you
Speaker 1: worked at a zoo, right, So like I volunteered at
Speaker 1: an aquarium. I always say you work there, I mean,
Speaker 1: you volunteered at an aquarium. What's interesting for me is
Speaker 1: that in some ways, I feel very uncomfortable with zoos.
Speaker 1: I feel uncomfortable watching an animal in captivity. I'm used
Speaker 1: to seeing animals in I guess from a game drive vehicle,
Speaker 1: but not in a cage or large cage. I'm seeing
Speaker 1: them in a more natural setting. I know it's also
Speaker 1: fenced in, but that's for antipoaching reasons. But I have
Speaker 1: a sort of uncomfortableity with zoos. I I like, I
Speaker 1: kind of appreciate the animals, but I feel like bad
Speaker 1: that they are in a cage. Yeah, And I mean
Speaker 1: I feel like we should acknowledge, right, there are much
Speaker 1: different levels of zoos and aquariums. Like good zoos and
Speaker 1: aquariums are often dealing with rescue animals, and there is
Speaker 1: a balance. I completely understand the desire to not see
Speaker 1: those institutions exist anymore. There is a flip side though,
Speaker 1: right where at the same time, I think to the
Speaker 1: average person, it's a teaching tool to really drive home
Speaker 1: the message of conservation. It's one thing to look at
Speaker 1: a picture in a book or even look at a documentary.
Speaker 1: But then when you see one of these majestic creatures,
Speaker 1: hopefully in as naturalized an environment as possible, up close,
Speaker 1: it shifts you, like you realize really what we're fighting
Speaker 1: for likely what needs to be saved. Well, when you
Speaker 1: go to Africa, that's the thing that hits you. It's
Speaker 1: impossible for not to write if you singing this animal
Speaker 1: in this state and you think, wait, this is with nature.
Speaker 1: It has to remain like this. Yeah, And the thing
Speaker 1: is right, like, not everybody is going to get the
Speaker 1: chance to go to Africa. And that's where I'm like, no,
Speaker 1: I get it. But again, it's very tricky and it
Speaker 1: it is one of those things where you want to
Speaker 1: make sure that the animals are getting optimal care. And
Speaker 1: I mean, I've had the good fortune to speak to
Speaker 1: like veterinarians and facilities like that, and and it kind
Speaker 1: of breaks my heart because I know there are people
Speaker 1: who are vehemently against the very places they work. But
Speaker 1: when I see these people, they are dedicated exclusively to
Speaker 1: really like their lives are about that work. I mean,
Speaker 1: they're like the people that sometimes don't go home for
Speaker 1: a week at a time, their kids don't see them
Speaker 1: because whatever animal might need their attention at any given moment,
Speaker 1: so they'll just sleep on the floor in their office.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a side of it. I think that
Speaker 1: people don't realize that. For the most part, people nobody
Speaker 1: gets into like becoming a biologist or veterinarian of exotic
Speaker 1: animals for the money or fame, right, And they're certainly
Speaker 1: not there because they don't love animals. So that's like
Speaker 1: the trick, right. It's not a high paying profession. It
Speaker 1: does require a lot of personal sacrifice, particularly if you're
Speaker 1: working in a big facility like that, because quite frankly,
Speaker 1: like a whale doesn't care if you have some stuff scheduled.
Speaker 1: Maybe they're sick, or maybe they're pregnant, or maybe they're
Speaker 1: you know, there are any number of things that might
Speaker 1: and those people will almost always just shut down their
Speaker 1: lives and be like, Okay, well I have to take
Speaker 1: care of this thing, and that's all it is. So
Speaker 1: that's like the flip side of that discussion, is that
Speaker 1: one it does I think drive conservation for some people,
Speaker 1: and too, there are a lot of people behind the
Speaker 1: scenes you never see that really have put a lot
Speaker 1: of their personal lives aside just to make sure those
Speaker 1: animals are cared for. Well, Holly, have you ever been
Speaker 1: bitten by an animal? Oh? Yeah, tell me about your
Speaker 1: near death experience with an animal. I don't think I
Speaker 1: have a near death one. I mean I certainly like
Speaker 1: I grew up when I was very young, we lived
Speaker 1: in airs Oonah, and when it would rain heavily, like,
Speaker 1: the tarantulas all come out, and I loved them, so
Speaker 1: I would just scoop them up and put them in
Speaker 1: like a coffee can and be like, this is my pet.
Speaker 1: I don't know why I always named them Bill, but
Speaker 1: I did. My mother was petrified and was always like
Speaker 1: at the very edge of her nerves, possibly going to
Speaker 1: lose her mind because I would walk outside and pick
Speaker 1: up a tarantula without thinking. But I never got bit
Speaker 1: by any of those. I did get attacked by a
Speaker 1: pack of dogs when I was a kid. That was
Speaker 1: a little scary. Yeah, it was like in a completely
Speaker 1: not remote place. It was like in my neighborhood, but
Speaker 1: there was just there were a bunch of stray dogs
Speaker 1: that ran around and I was terrified of them. And
Speaker 1: I'm sure that didn't help matters. But they chased me
Speaker 1: at one point down my driveway we had a long driveway,
Speaker 1: and tackled me and I was very scared, and my
Speaker 1: dad came out and fired a pistol and scared them away,
Speaker 1: of course he did. Well, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: being with me today. So in case you want to
Speaker 1: hear Holly talks and all, which she does all the time,
Speaker 1: well bless you too. You can do that on stuff
Speaker 1: you mist in History Class, which is my regular history
Speaker 1: podcast that is at missed in history everywhere on social
Speaker 1: media or missed in history dot com. All the things
Speaker 1: you didn't know, We're fascinating. There they are. For my
Speaker 1: next interview, I'm with Governor of Washington State, j Ininsley.
Speaker 1: He recently ran for president but is now more focused
Speaker 1: on the environment. Tell me how are you on today?
Speaker 1: I'm great. I'm in a great state, the Evergreen State.
Speaker 1: We got some nice rain yesterday which might hopefully suppress
Speaker 1: the forest fires that are increasing because the climate change.
Speaker 1: So that's good news. We like some rain on occasion,
Speaker 1: I'm complaining good. I believe there's a story of you
Speaker 1: walking and standing in some of the fires. The aftermath
Speaker 1: of the fires tell me a little bit about that. Well. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: as governor, I have experienced firsthand the face of climate change,
Speaker 1: which is the most obvious one is the fires that
Speaker 1: we've had, both in Washington and California. I've gone to
Speaker 1: the multiple communities here in Washington when we've had an
Speaker 1: emergency response where lives have been lost, been in California
Speaker 1: and walked through Paradise, California. It's the town of twenty
Speaker 1: five thousand. It's not just some little crossroads that burned
Speaker 1: the ground. And I walked through at night with Governor
Speaker 1: Jerry Brown's emergency coordinator, and it was like we spent
Speaker 1: about an hour and there was nobody there and it
Speaker 1: was like the scene of a post apocalypse Hollywood movie.
Speaker 1: I've been to Seminar Springs where I've met a woman
Speaker 1: who really stands up out to me in this trail
Speaker 1: of disasters, women named Marcia Moss, who showed me her
Speaker 1: entire ownership was a little pool of melted aluminium which
Speaker 1: used to be her mobile home. So I've seen that,
Speaker 1: and I've walked with people who have real tears over
Speaker 1: a real crisis. So this is not an abstraction to me.
Speaker 1: This is a real peep with real suffering. And I
Speaker 1: wish I could say it's just fires. It's the flood
Speaker 1: victims the Midwest who have met like Regina Haddeck who
Speaker 1: lost her nonprofit called Address for Success. They took your
Speaker 1: victims of domestic violence until her nonprofit was washed away
Speaker 1: by the floods. It's the people in the Everglades who
Speaker 1: love the Everglades. Something like forty acres of the swamp
Speaker 1: was on fire. When your swamps are on fire, you know,
Speaker 1: you know you've got a problem. So I've had many
Speaker 1: walks with many people who are feeling this looming disaster.
Speaker 1: That's not a future thing, it's a reality today. So
Speaker 1: you can say, I know a lot of folks who
Speaker 1: have been affected by this. How do you think it
Speaker 1: affects travelers, people that are traveling internationally locally, whether you're
Speaker 1: going to Disney or going to Denmark. I think it's
Speaker 1: important to look at climate change, like how do you
Speaker 1: think people engage with it? It's interesting you asked that question,
Speaker 1: because the only plus side I can think of from
Speaker 1: a travel perspective is it has encouraged some people to
Speaker 1: travel to locations they otherwise may not have because they
Speaker 1: realize it's their last chance. As you actually see people
Speaker 1: in some sense promoting the idea if you'd like to
Speaker 1: see a glacier, you need to come now because they
Speaker 1: won't be here for another decade or two. The fact
Speaker 1: that Glacier National Park in the near future won't have
Speaker 1: glaciers is stunning lee damaging to me. I'm just heartsick
Speaker 1: about this. But other people have got off the couch
Speaker 1: and go and see the glaciers. So that's the best
Speaker 1: out side you can possibly think, if there is one.
Speaker 1: But the obvious questions are as people are encountering this themselves,
Speaker 1: travelers in the heat of Europe this year, I've talked
Speaker 1: to some people that just were really troubled by the heat.
Speaker 1: It's ninety degrees and anchorage. For goodness sakes, if you
Speaker 1: want to go walking in the permit frost, now you
Speaker 1: kind of melting. You walk in the muck because it's melting.
Speaker 1: There's real consequences to this, you know. The folks when
Speaker 1: you think about Malibu as a paradise in the coastline
Speaker 1: of California, not so much when people are now terrified
Speaker 1: and wondering how I'm going to live here? Actually, so
Speaker 1: it has real world impacts on people. Hopefully travel is
Speaker 1: helpful in inspiring people to get engaged in the effort
Speaker 1: to defeat climate change, because the more you see of
Speaker 1: the world, you more you understand. It's a very beautiful place.
Speaker 1: It's very unique. There's one little blue planet hanging out
Speaker 1: in space and it's very gorgeous. And the more you travel,
Speaker 1: the more you understand all of multiple things that are threatened.
Speaker 1: The folks who would like to go to scuba Iland,
Speaker 1: coral reefs, very significant parts of coral reefs are very
Speaker 1: much endangered. You know, the Great Barrier Reef had tremendous
Speaker 1: bleaching events in our national parks, We've had huge bleaching
Speaker 1: events of coral and that's the reality right now. So
Speaker 1: you literally are having the disappearance of major attractions in
Speaker 1: the travel universe featured around the beauty of the earth
Speaker 1: as we know it. So travel, I hope you can
Speaker 1: help by encourage people to get engaged in this mission statement.
Speaker 1: How do you think we make this real for people
Speaker 1: to day today. Like the problem is that so much
Speaker 1: of it comes from a speech, but so much of
Speaker 1: it is like being you being told by your teacher
Speaker 1: and you being a mand boy, you must recycle, you
Speaker 1: have to do this after this, and people seem to
Speaker 1: especially America, when it's all about freedom of choice, it's
Speaker 1: all about the First Amendment, It's all about I don't
Speaker 1: want government to tell me what to do, Like, how
Speaker 1: do we get it into people's minds that this should
Speaker 1: be important to People are moving very rapidly on this issue.
Speaker 1: The polling is indicated that, and the reason is it
Speaker 1: is not speeches by politicians. I wrote a book about
Speaker 1: this twelve years ago, and at that point it was
Speaker 1: an abstraction with people. Now it is reality. So that
Speaker 1: reality is changing hearts and minds, including the United States.
Speaker 1: People at least say we ought to do something about
Speaker 1: climate change, and so the public is now there on
Speaker 1: the vast majority of Americans that want to see action
Speaker 1: against climate change, it is unfortunately just one of the
Speaker 1: parties and politicians that have refused to act. Half of
Speaker 1: the Republicans the United States believe we should deal with
Speaker 1: climate change, but none of the Republican politicians are because
Speaker 1: they're all afraid of Donald Trump's shadow. It's time to
Speaker 1: get rid of that shadow, get a president who will
Speaker 1: realize that when turbans don't cause cancer, they cause jobs.
Speaker 1: Climate change is not a hoax, it's a president reality
Speaker 1: that's burning down Paradise, California, and flooding Hamburg, Iowa, and
Speaker 1: making the shoreline of Miami Beach and an inndation zone.
Speaker 1: And it is true, this is our very last chance.
Speaker 1: We will not have another chance to deal with this
Speaker 1: uh other than the next administration. So tell me something
Speaker 1: personal that for you set to work on this the
Speaker 1: longer term. Is my dad was a biology teacher. I
Speaker 1: grew up in the outdoors. My mother and father helped
Speaker 1: fix the alpine meadows on the shoulders of Mount Ray
Speaker 1: Near during the summers. I certainly fell in love with
Speaker 1: those alpine medals and forests early in my life, and
Speaker 1: I know that they're threatened right now. I have a
Speaker 1: picture in my office of a magenta paintbrush, which is
Speaker 1: a little flower. The only place that grows in it
Speaker 1: Washington State, essentially, and it may be extinct an hundred
Speaker 1: years because the tree lines moving up with temperature changes
Speaker 1: which are crowding out the alpine meadows. So this is
Speaker 1: something that goes back to my youth, but it also
Speaker 1: on the other bookend of my life as a grandparent.
Speaker 1: You know, I was walking with my grandson a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago on the beach and I was seeing
Speaker 1: him flip over rocks and looking at the little urchins
Speaker 1: and everything, and you just see his little face light up.
Speaker 1: When when you see a kid see a new life
Speaker 1: form and you see that connection, it's very exciting to watch.
Speaker 1: And I realized that that feeling he had was the
Speaker 1: same one I had when I was seven or eight.
Speaker 1: My dad would take me down to the shoreline or
Speaker 1: car keep park and I remember that feeling of seeing
Speaker 1: limpets and urchins for the first time. So this is
Speaker 1: deep with us. The reason I've used travel as this
Speaker 1: vehicle is because it changes your possession, It puts somewhere else,
Speaker 1: and it falces you in so many ways to find humanity,
Speaker 1: to find connections. How do you think we have that
Speaker 1: discussion internationally? Well, you know, my friend Rick Steves, who's
Speaker 1: been doing tremendous work, I'm behalful of travel, and he
Speaker 1: looks at at this not so much as an industry,
Speaker 1: but he looks at it as a way of enlightenment,
Speaker 1: and it is. And people bring things home much more
Speaker 1: than postcards. They bring home a new appreciation, a of
Speaker 1: common humanity. And you know, I know it's like perhaps
Speaker 1: a cliche, but it's true. The more you travel, you
Speaker 1: more I understand that we're all the same, right, So
Speaker 1: that's a cliche. But the most important aspect of travel.
Speaker 1: But as far as a climate changes, she you will
Speaker 1: find anywhere in the world today you go, you will
Speaker 1: see impacts of climate change. It doesn't matter where it is.
Speaker 1: If you go to the Arctic, you will see melting
Speaker 1: glaciers and tunder If you go to India, it's too
Speaker 1: hot to go outside Paris. It's really uncomfortable to walk
Speaker 1: around just because of the heat. So we have a
Speaker 1: common humanity because we're all mother's father's sons and daughters.
Speaker 1: But we're a common humanity because we're all threatened by
Speaker 1: a common threat right now. And I actually think that
Speaker 1: this has the potential to be one of the most
Speaker 1: unifying aspects of human history because it's the one thing
Speaker 1: we've all faced at the same time, every single human
Speaker 1: on Earth several billion people face the same threat at
Speaker 1: the same time, and it requires a joint, unified effort
Speaker 1: to defeat it. So travel could be a very important
Speaker 1: part aspect of that to give us a chance of success.
Speaker 1: And that's what we need desperately right now. Now, Everyone
Speaker 1: for a time out except postpons. We'll be right back
Speaker 1: with more everywhere. Welcome once again to everywhere. Let's hark
Speaker 1: back to it. For my next interview, I'm with Sun John,
Speaker 1: the CEO of Conservation International. We are at his DC
Speaker 1: office overlooking Reagan Airport, talking about how important conservation is.
Speaker 1: I think at the core of most people there is
Speaker 1: a strong thread of empathy, and there's a strong thread
Speaker 1: of wanting to be liked and like. And I think
Speaker 1: if you are really putting yourself on the line and
Speaker 1: you're saying something in a very honest and thoughtful open way,
Speaker 1: I think most human beings we'll find some resonance with it,
Speaker 1: even if they disagree with you. I do think though,
Speaker 1: that for the vast majority of the world, the conclusion
Speaker 1: that I'm coming to any come to conservation or climate
Speaker 1: change or anything like that, that these changes are not
Speaker 1: going to happen because I'm telling someone they need to
Speaker 1: do it, They're going to happen because people are going
Speaker 1: to see that it's in their own self interest, their own,
Speaker 1: as I founder says, their own enlightened self interest to
Speaker 1: make that change happen. And for me, that's been a
Speaker 1: big shift because when we learned about conservation, we learned
Speaker 1: about nature, and when learned about wildlife and the environment,
Speaker 1: the predominant language is the language of love. You watch
Speaker 1: David Attenborough read You're Wilson put Surprising author, you read
Speaker 1: any of these people, it's a it's an owd to love,
Speaker 1: the love of the world and the wonders of the world.
Speaker 1: And the truth is I feel that I feel that
Speaker 1: throbbing in me all the time. I joke and say
Speaker 1: I have a little cabin in Montana because I like
Speaker 1: going for a walk in the words, knowing there's something
Speaker 1: bigger than me, greater than me, grander than me, older
Speaker 1: than me. They can come out of the words and
Speaker 1: take my head off. I kind of like that. But
Speaker 1: it's not a great value proposition for most of the world,
Speaker 1: save the forest, it might one day kill you. For
Speaker 1: most of the planet, I think it has to be
Speaker 1: not just a language of love. It also has to
Speaker 1: be a language of value, and if people don't see
Speaker 1: the value in it, it's going to be hard to
Speaker 1: really motivate them to make those changes at the scale
Speaker 1: that we need to make those changes. How do we
Speaker 1: show people that value? So your question, I would ask
Speaker 1: you this is do you truly believe that we need nature?
Speaker 1: Do you truly believe that you truly believe that the
Speaker 1: world is better with wild places and with nature surrounding us?
Speaker 1: I actually do, because I can't think of places the
Speaker 1: most environmentally damaged places also tend to be at the
Speaker 1: very bottom of the pet when it comes to every
Speaker 1: form of human development index. Go to Haiti and then
Speaker 1: go to the Dominican Republic. You'll see the difference in
Speaker 1: how nature is protected. And it's obvious to me who
Speaker 1: has suffered part because of the destruction of nature. Right,
Speaker 1: So it's not like I've gone to a lot of
Speaker 1: places where they've done a great job of destroying nature
Speaker 1: and now it's a flourishing, amazing place with incredible intellectual
Speaker 1: stimulation and money and all that. It doesn't tend to
Speaker 1: work that way. It tends to work. I was just
Speaker 1: in Rwanda. You know, this is a country that has
Speaker 1: come through a cataclysm, and you look at the way
Speaker 1: they talk about nature. You took the way they take
Speaker 1: care of plastics. You take a look at the way
Speaker 1: that they deal with waste disposal, or about conservation, about gorillas.
Speaker 1: You know, the head of the Ruanda Development Board was
Speaker 1: speaking to me and basically said, look, we're small country,
Speaker 1: and I'll protected here. It's a pretty small but we
Speaker 1: are still able to do quite a lot. And amazingly,
Speaker 1: we're actually expanding our Girla habitat this year because the
Speaker 1: gorillas are out of room. They've grown, the population actually grown.
Speaker 1: So I think these things go hand in hand. I
Speaker 1: think it's pretty good evidence to show environmental destruction happens.
Speaker 1: It then followed by human misery. So what is your
Speaker 1: plan as a person and your plan for conservation international? Wow,
Speaker 1: that's a big question. I like my big questions. That's
Speaker 1: a really big question. I genuinely believe that we have
Speaker 1: ten to twelve years to sort of forget this equation. Right.
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean that in twelve years the world blows up,
Speaker 1: but it does mean that the path we're on is
Speaker 1: the path we're on, and we're not going to be
Speaker 1: able to jot the world into a path of sustainably
Speaker 1: after that time. The science shows that the data is
Speaker 1: pretty strong on that these are the best years of
Speaker 1: my life. I look at my team around here. You know,
Speaker 1: half our staff of millennials. You know, I don't want
Speaker 1: them to live a wasted life. I really don't. So
Speaker 1: for me, my my plan, my plan for myself personally,
Speaker 1: but also the team that I surround myself with is
Speaker 1: let's not live a wasted life. Let's go all in,
Speaker 1: let's go for it. We're never going to regret it.
Speaker 1: I know that, I know that we're not going to
Speaker 1: regret it. So Contrivation International is built on a very
Speaker 1: simple premise that people need nature. We truly believe that
Speaker 1: humans thrive when nature thrives. What we are pushing really
Speaker 1: hard are three things. At first, is we want to
Speaker 1: protect all of nature. That is most important to climate.
Speaker 1: It turns out to the destruction of nature, particularly force,
Speaker 1: particularly tropical force like the Amazon. Turns out that the
Speaker 1: destruction of nature is about thirty of the contributions of
Speaker 1: greenhouse gas missions that's going up into the atmosphere. Put
Speaker 1: another way, if you look at the worst emitters in
Speaker 1: the world, if if before station was a country, it
Speaker 1: would be China would be the worst, the United States
Speaker 1: be right there. Then it would be deforestation. That's what
Speaker 1: we want to tackle. We want to end the destruction
Speaker 1: of intact forests and big tropical force systems. Two, we
Speaker 1: want to massively increase how much ocean is under conservation protection.
Speaker 1: The oceans have got very little little of our attention.
Speaker 1: They're hugely important to people on the planet who depend
Speaker 1: on it for their primary source of protein. They are
Speaker 1: vastly under protected. So we want to massively increase the
Speaker 1: amount of oceans under conservation protection and conservation management. We
Speaker 1: were planned for doing that. And the third it's more
Speaker 1: in a funny way, in a more subtle way or
Speaker 1: more interesting problem. You know this word sustainability, and we
Speaker 1: throw it around all the time. I can tell you
Speaker 1: commodities that are sustainable, like this coffee that I'm drinking
Speaker 1: actually right now is actually sustainably grown, and that it's
Speaker 1: grown in a way that doesn't tend to damage the environment.
Speaker 1: I can't tell you a place that is sustainable. No
Speaker 1: one will fully agree what that actually means. We want
Speaker 1: to demonstrate that. So there are sixteen places around the
Speaker 1: world where we are working with governments, communities and companies
Speaker 1: to demonstrate sustainably at scale. And what I mean by
Speaker 1: that is people can grow things and live a better
Speaker 1: life without destroying nature that they need. So if I
Speaker 1: can show you coffee production going up fullfold while before
Speaker 1: station going down by half, I say that place is
Speaker 1: approaching sustainability. Something that we need to talk about is
Speaker 1: how do we translate conservation into a travel sphere. So
Speaker 1: to me it's obvious. You pack your banks, you get
Speaker 1: on the plane, and you go to Costa Rica and
Speaker 1: you see funck Man. They're doing something differently here, Like,
Speaker 1: how do you understand the importance because I don't think
Speaker 1: people do. We talk about sustainability, as you said, so loosely.
Speaker 1: We talk about being green so easily. But how do
Speaker 1: we tell people to travel to see this, to understand this.
Speaker 1: I don't have an answer, fair enough, I have a thought.
Speaker 1: I love your thoughts. We live in a hyper disconnected world.
Speaker 1: The more connected we are in some ways, the more
Speaker 1: disconnected we are, and there is no sense of geography anymore.
Speaker 1: There's no sense of place. I think one of the
Speaker 1: wonderful things that travel does, even though I fully appreciate
Speaker 1: the environmental cost of travel, and we can talk about that.
Speaker 1: One of the wonderful things it does is it, if
Speaker 1: done right, it really reconnects human beings. It connects them
Speaker 1: to each other and connects them to place and connects
Speaker 1: them to nature. And I think that's a very very
Speaker 1: powerful thing that we have lost. And we haven't lost
Speaker 1: it for centuries. We've lost it for probably the last
Speaker 1: a hundred years, eighty years, and we need to find
Speaker 1: that again. You know, I can sit here in my
Speaker 1: office and fire off emails and buy things from all
Speaker 1: over the world and just get it delivered at my
Speaker 1: home in this weird sort of landscape that never had
Speaker 1: existed anytime before in human history. You know, we're sitting
Speaker 1: here on the banks to Potomac River, right so we're
Speaker 1: here in Crystal City, just you know a couple of us.
Speaker 1: Up here is old Town, Alexandria, and just beyond that
Speaker 1: is Mount Vernon, and I bit that route almost every
Speaker 1: day I live up there. George Washington founder George Washington
Speaker 1: would take his wares from Mount Vernon and tundled them
Speaker 1: down a cart path right along the river to that
Speaker 1: Alexandria Pharma's market every Saturday and sell it there. Imagine
Speaker 1: that sense of place and what you would get and
Speaker 1: the food and the environment. Imagine that kind of seasonality
Speaker 1: playing a real role in people's lives. That's lost today.
Speaker 1: That's completely lost today. I think one of the most
Speaker 1: beautiful things about Traveler is it just it makes you
Speaker 1: human again. You know, we would you and I love Africa,
Speaker 1: and I was just saying to you, you know, I
Speaker 1: would just in quite literally the crazle of humanity. You know,
Speaker 1: maybe thirty miles from Old of I where they found
Speaker 1: the footprints that, at three point four million years old,
Speaker 1: the first direct evidence of an upright hominid, actually a
Speaker 1: pair of them at least walking across this landscape when
Speaker 1: a volcano was probably lovers. Maybe certainly you could see
Speaker 1: the Tilton one. They think it was because the female,
Speaker 1: the smaller of the footprints, was carrying a baby on
Speaker 1: her hip. But it was a day that we know
Speaker 1: it was raining because you can see the little drops
Speaker 1: of rain. There were hyena tracks and jackal tracks and
Speaker 1: guinea foiul tracks criss crossing their footprints. Same thing animals
Speaker 1: I see today. You stand on that soil, you smell
Speaker 1: that air, You want to look at those umbrella shaped
Speaker 1: trees and you think there is cellular memory here. If
Speaker 1: you've never even ever been to East Africa, if you're
Speaker 1: a human being and you're in that landscape, you go,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I feel like I'm at home. The
Speaker 1: air is about seventy degrees, the breezes relatively dry. Their
Speaker 1: landscape of short grass, coupled with those umbrella shaped trees
Speaker 1: is exactly what we make our lawns and our golf
Speaker 1: force courses to look like. And if you quint and
Speaker 1: see some baboons in the distance, they look like a
Speaker 1: bunch of guys playing golf way up there, you know,
Speaker 1: poking around with a little stick in the dirt, right,
Speaker 1: and and you're like, I'm home, even if you've never
Speaker 1: been there. So there is something real about humans that
Speaker 1: makes us want to connect to place. And I think
Speaker 1: we've been unbelievably disconnected. With some benefits. Of course, I
Speaker 1: think it's time to reconnect to me. That's the best
Speaker 1: part of travel. So I want to talk about my
Speaker 1: darling friend, Madigan's mother, who I'd love you to meet.
Speaker 1: Her name's Maybel. She lives on I think two acres
Speaker 1: on the edge of Yosemite, and she is the most
Speaker 1: extreme environmentalist I have ever met, and she thinks the
Speaker 1: warming is good. It's gonna rid half the planet of
Speaker 1: people who don't deserve to be here, and they'll be
Speaker 1: space so we can grow and farm again. She dumps
Speaker 1: the dives in San Francisco. I'm gonna go dumps the
Speaker 1: diving with her for one of my episodes because she's like,
Speaker 1: I know where all the good spots are people like her.
Speaker 1: It's too extreme and people can't hear it and it
Speaker 1: pushes them away. But somewhere in the middle there needs
Speaker 1: to be a path where people would want to trend along.
Speaker 1: How do we get people to do that with us,
Speaker 1: to believe in what we're doing and not feel like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's nonprofited world, I can't engage, or it's maybe oh
Speaker 1: it's so extreme, I can't engage. Great question. Look, I
Speaker 1: have a lot of respect for folks who live a
Speaker 1: particular kind of life because they truly embody this notion
Speaker 1: of don't preach, just live it and do it yourself,
Speaker 1: and you can learn a lot from that. It is difficult, though,
Speaker 1: to scale that. There's an old story about how narrow
Speaker 1: you know the first Prime Minister of India once lamented
Speaker 1: that it took a significant part of his treasury to
Speaker 1: keep them Hatma meaning Mohamma Gandhi to keep the Mahatma
Speaker 1: in poverty. And what he meant by that is every
Speaker 1: time Gandhi had to travel somewhere, they had to bring
Speaker 1: like two goats of spinning wheel, a whole bunch of rise,
Speaker 1: you know, like he needed the accouterments to create the
Speaker 1: illusion of what he was trying to do. Because he
Speaker 1: was a symbol, he'd be sort of transformed into a symbol.
Speaker 1: So and I understand that, and I understand the value
Speaker 1: on then and what you can learn from that. But
Speaker 1: I don't think that the way to solve the world's
Speaker 1: problems is to sort of you spend time in Boulder.
Speaker 1: Boulder has the sort of attitude that I'm gonna get
Speaker 1: in trouble with people in Bolder, and they know what
Speaker 1: I mean. Like there's this sort of general feeling like
Speaker 1: if we just solve boldest problems, the world will be fine.
Speaker 1: And it won't be fine because there are people on
Speaker 1: the other side of the planet who for whom a
Speaker 1: plastic bottle which we don't want anymore. And don't want
Speaker 1: to have is this only way in which they can
Speaker 1: carry water. You literally drive around some parts of rural Tanzania,
Speaker 1: their kids on the side of that street literally asking
Speaker 1: you to chuck out a plastic bottle because they want
Speaker 1: that container. So that you know, it's a big, complex world,
Speaker 1: and so what we try to do. What I try
Speaker 1: to do is find a way to seek inspiration from
Speaker 1: folks like Maple or Boulder, but understand that the challenge
Speaker 1: we have is how do we scale without scale? And
Speaker 1: that's you know you talked about your test I mean
Speaker 1: that's really what Ellen was willing. You know, he could
Speaker 1: have stayed at trying to create a boutique car at
Speaker 1: a very high price point, and he could have created
Speaker 1: a successful company doing that forever. The minute he just decided, no, no,
Speaker 1: I don't need this. What I really need to do
Speaker 1: is get these batteries into everything they have to completely
Speaker 1: change the model. That is the future. It's not having
Speaker 1: a hundred thousand dollar Testla, it's having genuinely a thirty
Speaker 1: thousand dollar electric vehicle that can do the amazing things.
Speaker 1: Tell me a personal story, something personal, then it inspires
Speaker 1: you or you think about conservation because of some experience.
Speaker 1: There's an image that sticks with me and it happened
Speaker 1: on a journey that I made. When I made the
Speaker 1: first documentary film that I was in. It was called
Speaker 1: While Left in a war Zone and I did it
Speaker 1: for the BBC, and what I did was I retraced
Speaker 1: the footsteps of David Attenborough. So we grew up with
Speaker 1: David Attenburg, still growing up with David Attenborough. But back
Speaker 1: in the day, you know that guy, you know, was
Speaker 1: the only model we had on television about what someone
Speaker 1: who cared about animals did. What most people don't know
Speaker 1: is that his first beginning into television was actually in Syrileon.
Speaker 1: It was actually the same village that I grew up in,
Speaker 1: quite literally, so I went back to syrian and sort
Speaker 1: of retraced his early footprints. That was the show. One
Speaker 1: day during that show, we were traveling through a rainforest,
Speaker 1: very difficult terrain, trying to climb into a mountain which
Speaker 1: even he didn't actually have a chance to explore, and
Speaker 1: we needed a place to camp, and there's a little
Speaker 1: village and we kind of got to it just as
Speaker 1: dusk was setting and set up little tents on the
Speaker 1: surrounding edge. Of the village. And I walked into this
Speaker 1: village and I saw a gaggle of boys eight, nine,
Speaker 1: ten years old, maybe about half a dozen or so
Speaker 1: of them, and they were crowded around a little smoky fire.
Speaker 1: And as I got to them, I could see that
Speaker 1: they had a white piece of metal tin that had
Speaker 1: clearly cut from some signboard that you know, you see
Speaker 1: on all those African streets, and they're using that tin
Speaker 1: to frantically fan the flames of this very smoky, dirty fire.
Speaker 1: They had something that they were roasting on top of
Speaker 1: the fire, and as I got closer, I realized first
Speaker 1: that was a monkey, the dead monkey that these boys
Speaker 1: were burning the fur off and roasting kind of by hand.
Speaker 1: The second thing I noticed was the white piece of
Speaker 1: metal that they were using to fan the flames had
Speaker 1: a logo on it, and the logo said World Food
Speaker 1: Program w FB. I have a photo. I snapped a
Speaker 1: little for I didn't really fully understand the implications of
Speaker 1: what I had just seen until later that night, as
Speaker 1: I was sitting in my tent with the rain dripping
Speaker 1: on it and looking through these images. Here's a bunch
Speaker 1: of kids in Africa who are going to share a
Speaker 1: very small monkey as their primary source of protein, and
Speaker 1: they're faring the flames with the sign board for the
Speaker 1: World Food Program. And it struck me like a bolt
Speaker 1: of lightning. If there was those light light bulb moments
Speaker 1: that when when governments fail, when civil society fails, when
Speaker 1: even nonprofits flee, it's nature that provides the ultimate safety net.
Speaker 1: It's nature that holds. And that was a revelation to
Speaker 1: me that you cannot protect people if you're going to
Speaker 1: do it on the at the expense of nature. It
Speaker 1: has to be that nature has to be that underlying
Speaker 1: safety net for all of us. Mhm. It's so beautiful.
Speaker 1: What makes you um very angry about this business? Because
Speaker 1: it's tricky. A lot of this is tricky. I really
Speaker 1: wonder what people are doing with the enormous amount of
Speaker 1: wealth that they have. It doesn't make me angry as
Speaker 1: much as it makes me really sad. You know, our
Speaker 1: chairman at our last board meeting made a very interesting
Speaker 1: comment and he basically said, I look around this table,
Speaker 1: and I think about the first board meeting we had,
Speaker 1: and if I just think about how much those individual
Speaker 1: people who are sitting around the table, how well they
Speaker 1: have done in life and compare it with how much
Speaker 1: this organization has grown while we have grown, and we're
Speaker 1: grateful for that personal wealth is galloped ahead. And that's
Speaker 1: the piece that I really kind of get both frustrated
Speaker 1: and angry and sad about that we are going to
Speaker 1: have a generation that is wealthier than any generation that
Speaker 1: has ever come on the planet, and that generation is
Speaker 1: going to turn over. People are gonna die, and that
Speaker 1: money hasn't been put to the service of the planet.
Speaker 1: You think about this really just a simple point. Nature
Speaker 1: is never going to be as cheap as it is today,
Speaker 1: so there's no point in waiting five years. You're not
Speaker 1: going to get a bargain next month. So if you
Speaker 1: have something and you want to do something to save
Speaker 1: the planet, do it now. You know what makes me
Speaker 1: angry Giant endowments. Giant endowments make me angry. I don't
Speaker 1: get that. I don't get how you're saving so much
Speaker 1: capital for some future when the crisis is happening right now.
Speaker 1: And the ability to change that trajectory so much within
Speaker 1: our grasp every day that goes I the freedom to move,
Speaker 1: the freedom we have to operate and change trajectory gets
Speaker 1: much narrower. But basically, we don't want to put money
Speaker 1: to warrants things that we cannot see. To me, there's
Speaker 1: the fundamental issue with conservation. I can't see it. I'm
Speaker 1: sitting in Washington, d C. Show me. I can't see it.
Speaker 1: The trees looks fine, that it looks lovely, like all
Speaker 1: the planes going, everything looks fine. I need to see
Speaker 1: how fucked we are in order for me to care,
Speaker 1: I think me, But no, I think you're right. I
Speaker 1: think we need to visualize that. We need to see it,
Speaker 1: We need see the impact of it. We also need
Speaker 1: to see the impact of what we're giving to because
Speaker 1: the spending that we do today, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: the amount of money, private money, private money that goes
Speaker 1: into ocean protection is less than you know, the last
Speaker 1: Marvel movie, right, that's insane to me, right, Or Or
Speaker 1: the amount of money that goes into the Amazon, right,
Speaker 1: private money that's going to protect in the Amazon, which
Speaker 1: is on fire right now. It's on everyone. Actually, the
Speaker 1: pledges that have been made less than like two of
Speaker 1: these planes that we've just seen take off right by here.
Speaker 1: The scale of the problem is so much bigger than
Speaker 1: the goodwill that we're generating, and so we have to
Speaker 1: think about this a little bit differently. We have to
Speaker 1: work on one people who have the ability and capacity
Speaker 1: to convince them that they can do something great and
Speaker 1: important and good right now. And I genuinely think I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that for most folks, it's not a question
Speaker 1: of how much can they give, It's a question of
Speaker 1: how much can they imagine? You know, people will put
Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty million dollar gift to build a
Speaker 1: building at a university that has a you know, thirty
Speaker 1: billion dollar trust fund sitting behind it. But that same
Speaker 1: kind of cathedral thinking doesn't seem to happen with the environment.
Speaker 1: The second thing is we've got to be able to
Speaker 1: show We've gotta be able to show that we're making
Speaker 1: progress in a real, meaningful way. My last questions you,
Speaker 1: which was on my mind, is you call yourself Asian,
Speaker 1: which I love. How is it to be Asian? And
Speaker 1: serily o, did you think about it? Did you feel Asian?
Speaker 1: Did you feel different? We thought about it every day.
Speaker 1: I've always felt like I'm a little bit of a
Speaker 1: stranger in a strange land. I've never fully felt like
Speaker 1: I've actually ever fit anywhere really well. Probably the closest
Speaker 1: and strange that the probably the closest have come to
Speaker 1: a being completely at ease in my skin is either
Speaker 1: in East Africa or interestingly, in Montana. It is a
Speaker 1: very wide place, but there's something about that lands, given
Speaker 1: the people who I surround myself with, this sort of
Speaker 1: rural part of Montana, Granite County, that I find honest love.
Speaker 1: We're always aware of uskin color. And you know, people
Speaker 1: who say that they don't see color sort of insane
Speaker 1: because you always it's raised just saying it because they
Speaker 1: I think they're saying it in sort of a way
Speaker 1: to sort of say, I'm not by implication, you are
Speaker 1: if everyone who's off color sees color all the time.
Speaker 1: Being in Asia, when we left Sri Lanka to come
Speaker 1: to Africa, we had never seen I had never seen
Speaker 1: a black person. I don't think my mother had either.
Speaker 1: The only portrayals we had was on television, and imagine
Speaker 1: what that was like in the seventies. So you know,
Speaker 1: it was a huge cultural shift to all of a
Speaker 1: sudden have our doctor being black African, or the pilot
Speaker 1: who flew the little plane that would drop supplies off
Speaker 1: to be black African. That was an amazing shift. It
Speaker 1: really helped open my eyes to what makes it similar
Speaker 1: rather than what makes this different. So good news about
Speaker 1: that kind of childhood is that it makes me a
Speaker 1: bit of a chameleon. No matter where I travel, I
Speaker 1: can usually slip in. It also makes me always little
Speaker 1: bit feeling like I'm a little bit of an outsider.
Speaker 1: New York taught me, for the first time in my
Speaker 1: life to feel okay in my own skin because I
Speaker 1: was just part of all this. In in Africa, I
Speaker 1: felt of the place, but also an unwelcome visitor, you know,
Speaker 1: being white, And I felt that my parents were fierce
Speaker 1: anti apartheid employed people of color, helped people of color,
Speaker 1: But we were also part of the problem. As much
Speaker 1: as we were not directly the problem, we were indirectly
Speaker 1: the problem. What was weird is like I used to think,
Speaker 1: why does no one else have black friends or Indian
Speaker 1: friends or Asian friends. It was just me. I was
Speaker 1: the only one, like of the kind of realm the
Speaker 1: white kids hung out. I hung out with everybody. But
Speaker 1: it's complicated, you know, it's it's you know, prejudices are
Speaker 1: strange things. They're literally learned over small periods of time.
Speaker 1: You know, I have a baby daughter, brand new ten
Speaker 1: weeks old. I didn't know this, but babies can't see color.
Speaker 1: They really are color blind, and they learned to see
Speaker 1: color somewhere between like two months to four months. So
Speaker 1: it's clear to me that certainly color prejudice is learned
Speaker 1: to behavior. There's no adaptation for that in evolutionary terms, right,
Speaker 1: So you will learn it, and just like you learn
Speaker 1: some of these things, you can unlearn these things too.
Speaker 1: My theory on a lot of the stuff is, let's
Speaker 1: talk about grace. I'm going to suck it up. I'm
Speaker 1: going if there's a wrong thing, but let's talk about it.
Speaker 1: Correct me, shame me, whatever you want to do. But
Speaker 1: rather let's talk about it and let me feel uncomfortable
Speaker 1: because it helps me on my path. Yeah, and I've
Speaker 1: to be you know this. This could be treading into
Speaker 1: dangerous waters here for me. But I will say that
Speaker 1: some of the reactions one gets on social media and
Speaker 1: stuff like that not just what I've seen people say
Speaker 1: who have fully acknowledged that they are learning. It just
Speaker 1: seems like people want people to be born perfect and
Speaker 1: perfect meaning in their own mold, and we're not. We're humans.
Speaker 1: We have huge histories that we come with, and it's
Speaker 1: our ability to believe those at the doorstep and transition
Speaker 1: that's what makes it special. So I'm really a bit
Speaker 1: saddened and really dismayed at the victual that is thrown
Speaker 1: at anyone who kind of stumbles and pretending that we're perfect.
Speaker 1: You know, I love to stumble. I stumble all the time.
Speaker 1: It's perfect. I stumble and then I think my husband
Speaker 1: helps me get back up and he's like, everything's fine.
Speaker 1: And I love that, you know. I think that the
Speaker 1: stumble is almost better than the idea of being perfect completely.
Speaker 1: The best stumbles is when you when you're on the road,
Speaker 1: and the stumbles you make during travel is what makes
Speaker 1: those journeys special, whether it's through life, whether it's through
Speaker 1: a physical journey. Thank you, thank you well. I had
Speaker 1: a good time. I hope you did too. If you'd
Speaker 1: like to reach us, go to Everywhere Podcast on Instagram,
Speaker 1: Everywhere Part on Twitter, or the website everywhere podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening. I'm Daniel Scheffler signing off. I'll be
Speaker 1: seeing you Everywhere. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the I Heart Radio app Apple podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.