Speaker 1: Welcome to Zero. I'm Akshatrati. This week characters Climate and Consequences.
Speaker 1: Earlier this year, a new TV show came out that
Speaker 1: caused quite a stir in the climate world. It's called Extrapolations,
Speaker 1: and it starts in the year twenty thirty seven, where
Speaker 1: the chaotic effects of climate change have become embedded into
Speaker 1: everyday lives. Of course, you don't have to go years
Speaker 1: out into the future to see how climate change is
Speaker 1: affecting the world. Climate change is already part of our story.
Speaker 1: As one of the executive producers of the show, Dorothy
Speaker 1: Fortenberry points out.
Speaker 2: You know, people talk about climate fiction as though it's
Speaker 2: this particular genre, and they'll ask us, oh, so you're
Speaker 2: making a science fiction show about climate and I'll always say, well, actually,
Speaker 2: all of the current shows on TV that are taking
Speaker 2: place right now or in the near future that don't
Speaker 2: portray climate change like those are the science fiction shows.
Speaker 3: It is currently happening.
Speaker 2: We are already living in a one point one to
Speaker 2: Grace elcias res in a.
Speaker 1: World written by Scott z Burns and featuring almost as
Speaker 1: many A listers as a Wes Anderson movie. Extrapolations plays
Speaker 1: out over forty years. In each episode, the temperature is
Speaker 1: a little bit hotter and the planet a little less
Speaker 1: hospital and even though the world changes, people largely stay
Speaker 1: the same.
Speaker 3: If God made humans in his image, why do they suck?
Speaker 2: Or did we just evolve into sacking.
Speaker 1: This is from an episode about a girl preparing for
Speaker 1: her bath Mitzua while dealing with two well worn conflicts
Speaker 1: that between a teenager and her parents and the Atlantic
Speaker 1: Ocean versus the city of Miami. Extrapolations is the first
Speaker 1: TV show to put climate at the center of the drama,
Speaker 1: not as dystopia, but as part of our current reality.
Speaker 1: Is the backdrop for a heist, a dinner party, a
Speaker 1: love story. If you care about climate, this feels like
Speaker 1: a massive opportunity to get other people on board to
Speaker 1: spur action. But no TV showrunner and no streaming service
Speaker 1: wants to make an eight hour public service announcement. It
Speaker 1: has to be exciting. So for the last episode in
Speaker 1: our series exploring climate storytelling, Dorothy joins me in New
Speaker 1: York City to talk about how the Extrapolations team actually
Speaker 1: went about making the show, the decisions they made while
Speaker 1: telling a story about climate and the growing demand for
Speaker 1: these kinds of stories. It's worth noting that this interview
Speaker 1: was recorded before the writers strike. Dorothy, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: Now, I've watched the series and I had a lot
Speaker 1: of feelings for many of the characters. But before I
Speaker 1: bring in my opinions, how would you describe Extrapolations?
Speaker 2: I would say that Extrapolations is an eight episode limited
Speaker 2: series with interconnected stories about how climate change affects every
Speaker 2: aspect of our lives. There are stories about parents and children,
Speaker 2: there are stories about communities, there are stories about friends.
Speaker 2: And it's a way of looking at not the question
Speaker 2: of is climate change real? But what does it feel like?
Speaker 2: What does it feel like to live in a world
Speaker 2: whose climate is changing and has changed?
Speaker 1: And you're a writer, playwright and producer. Before working on Extrapolations,
Speaker 1: you worked on The Handmade Stale. What did you learn
Speaker 1: from making a series like that which is dystopian in
Speaker 1: its nature but is based on some true things and
Speaker 1: then takes it further.
Speaker 2: I think the approach the markt Atwood took and creating
Speaker 2: Handmaid's Tale was very similar to the approach that we
Speaker 2: took in terms of not wanting to jump too far afield,
Speaker 2: not wanting to leap to an extreme, different.
Speaker 3: Outlier, odd place.
Speaker 2: I think those stories can be great, no disrespect to
Speaker 2: stories that take place in a very different universe. But
Speaker 2: I think in Handmaid's Tale, as you said, she made
Speaker 2: a point of having every single oppressive, repressive, theocratic thing
Speaker 2: that happened to women in that book have already occurred
Speaker 2: to some specific group of women previously in history. It
Speaker 2: always had a basis in some previous atrocity, some previous
Speaker 2: form of exploitation. And I think when we were coming
Speaker 2: up with the thoughts for extrapolations, that idea of it's
Speaker 2: just you know, it's the house next door, right to reality,
Speaker 2: it's just one over, It's not, you know, in a
Speaker 2: totally different neighborhood and in a totally different planet, it's
Speaker 2: pretty close was definitely something that we thought about, certainly
Speaker 2: with the first couple episodes. Handmaid's Tale takes place in
Speaker 2: a very condensed chunk of time. Episodes unfold, you know,
Speaker 2: the day after or a few weeks after, a few
Speaker 2: months after previous episodes. Often seasons pick up seconds later.
Speaker 2: With extrapolations we were unfolding from twenty thirty seven to
Speaker 2: twenty seventy, so we had a much longer time frame,
Speaker 2: and we were able to start the early episodes in
Speaker 2: a future that felt approachable and relatable and pretty close
Speaker 2: to today, and then kind of turn up the dial
Speaker 2: on the futureyness so that by the final episodes it
Speaker 2: is pretty different. The clothes are pretty different, the rooms
Speaker 2: look pretty different, the technology is pretty different. And we
Speaker 2: also worked really hard to make sure there were a
Speaker 2: mix of technologies and a mix of costume pieces, like
Speaker 2: we are now in twenty twenty three. I am wearing
Speaker 2: a watch with a canvas band. Right, I'm wearing a
Speaker 2: very old fashioned watch. This watch could have existed in
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty or nineteen eighty. I'm currently wearing it in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three. And we try to bring that spirit
Speaker 2: to all of our decisions, that people don't just get
Speaker 2: handed and outfit when they show up in a year
Speaker 2: and say like, okay, you know your head to toe,
Speaker 2: all your technology, all your clothes are from the future.
Speaker 2: People are always collecting a mix of things.
Speaker 1: There's a different year typically in every episode, and there's
Speaker 1: a different temperature at which the planet has warmed. Scientists
Speaker 1: are able to plan many future scenarios based on the
Speaker 1: agency that humans have today. So Extrapolations is essentially a
Speaker 1: climate science future, but in the episodes, there is one
Speaker 1: future that is being lived. Every episode is in a
Speaker 1: different year, the temperature is different. Why is the show
Speaker 1: called extrapolations and not extrapolation?
Speaker 2: We are coming up with a set of potential possibilities,
Speaker 2: and our guiding question when we were trying to pick
Speaker 2: what future to show would be what if we kept
Speaker 2: ongoing with current trends. So we were writing the show
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty twenty twenty one, continued making it in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two, it's on the air in twenty twenty three,
Speaker 2: so we were really looking around at what was happening
Speaker 2: right at that moment, and our philosophical conceptual framework was
Speaker 2: what if we just keep going as is? What if
Speaker 2: we don't get drastically worse, but we also don't get
Speaker 2: drastically better, we don't invest in different technologies, we continue
Speaker 2: current rates of deforestation, all those sorts of things. And
Speaker 2: I think keeping it as extrapolations plural is a way
Speaker 2: of saying, if we keep going as is, then one
Speaker 2: thing leads to the next thing. The decisions made in
Speaker 2: episode one in twenty thirty seven play out in twenty seventy.
Speaker 2: We really wanted to show people that choices made in
Speaker 2: one decade have consequences in another decade, that we are
Speaker 2: already coming into the series after a set of choices
Speaker 2: has been made between twenty twenty two and twenty thirty seven,
Speaker 2: and then picking up and going, well, if those were made,
Speaker 2: then what about the next thing? What about the next thing?
Speaker 2: What about the next thing? If you look at the font,
Speaker 2: this is just something I'm proud of, So I'm going
Speaker 2: to talk about it.
Speaker 3: Oh, I love the fun Thank you.
Speaker 2: I'm very proud of that fought. Our ideal with the
Speaker 2: font was that it starts pretty bold, you know, the
Speaker 2: E of extrapolations is pretty bold, and by the time
Speaker 2: you get to the S, it's pretty thin, because we're
Speaker 2: imagining into a future, and the further away we get,
Speaker 2: the less confident our predictions can be.
Speaker 1: By episode eight, the final episode, it's seventy and the
Speaker 1: earth is two point five eight degrees celsius. Now you
Speaker 1: were thinking about scenarios that would be realistic from the
Speaker 1: world that you were building it in, which was twenty
Speaker 1: twenty twenty twenty one. At the time, you know, we
Speaker 1: were thinking the warmest we could get on business as
Speaker 1: usual would be two point three degrees celsius. Two point
Speaker 1: six is actually pushing it because every point one degree
Speaker 1: celsius makes the planet so much worse. So what went
Speaker 1: into thinking two point six is the kind of realistic
Speaker 1: place where we'll end up.
Speaker 2: I think it was based in the notion that countries
Speaker 2: wouldn't actually meet their targets. I think it is a
Speaker 2: I don't want to say cynical, but it's a sort
Speaker 2: of glass half empty view of the commitments. So people
Speaker 2: make these commitments. We show a cop in episode one.
Speaker 2: You know, we try to talk about how we come
Speaker 2: to these agreements, but I think we were trying to
Speaker 2: say that you can make all these agreements, make all
Speaker 2: these pledges, but is that actually something that you're doing
Speaker 2: or is that just something that you pledged to? And
Speaker 2: in our world, it is a world where institutions and
Speaker 2: politicians are not successful at meeting the challenge. You know,
Speaker 2: I was gratified when the IRA passed because it was
Speaker 2: already something that was better than we had imagined in
Speaker 2: our future.
Speaker 1: Right, the inflation reduction Act passed in twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: right in the middle of making the.
Speaker 2: Show exactly, and we had already filmed it, and we
Speaker 2: had created a world with no Ira, so already reality
Speaker 2: had done a superior job to our characters. But in
Speaker 2: twenty and twenty twenty one, when we were imagining it,
Speaker 2: we didn't know. And I think it was very plausible
Speaker 2: to believe in those years that there would not be
Speaker 2: you know, climate legislation passed in the US. So I
Speaker 2: think our two point six target was a depressing version
Speaker 2: of reality. Like it's not an optimistic view. It's not
Speaker 2: a view of what if we do everything right, But
Speaker 2: it's also not a horror show where everything has to
Speaker 2: go horribly wrong. We just have to kind of suck
Speaker 2: a little bit and fail a little bit for it
Speaker 2: to be pretty horrible. And I also think that one
Speaker 2: of our real goals is to try to translate numbers
Speaker 2: on a graph into experiences and feelings.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: Some of this gets down to like the United States
Speaker 2: not adopting the metric system, you know, I think it's
Speaker 2: a huge climate problem. Like if I could go back
Speaker 2: and try and change like three things, one of them
Speaker 2: would be to get the us to adopt the metric
Speaker 2: system because everyone I know who hears one point five
Speaker 2: or two point five, they think it's degrees fahrenheit because
Speaker 2: we're used to as Americans thinking in degrees fahrenheit, and
Speaker 2: it radically underestimates the problem just in this form of math. Right,
Speaker 2: So we in the show actually balance between talking about
Speaker 2: celsius and talking in fahrenheit, and we sometimes have characters
Speaker 2: describe things in fahrenheit, which would be a little bit
Speaker 2: unusual given who they are, as a way of reaching
Speaker 2: the American audience and setting. I mean, it's so subtle,
Speaker 2: but we're trying to say, like these numbers have a feeling.
Speaker 1: Now in telling a climate story, how do you generate
Speaker 1: a sense that what we are seeing on the screen
Speaker 1: in front of us isn't the only way forward.
Speaker 2: That is a huge question and one that we really
Speaker 2: struggled with and that I think climate fiction in general
Speaker 2: has to tackle. And I think it's really tricky. There
Speaker 2: haven't been a ton of climate movies, but the ones
Speaker 2: that there have been, things like The Day After Tomorrow,
Speaker 2: have often been natural disaster focused, kind of apocalyptic. Everything
Speaker 2: is ending, it's the final collapse, and I think something
Speaker 2: that's tricky about that is if you say climate change
Speaker 2: equals the total collapse of everything, then any moment short
Speaker 2: of the total collapse of everything must not be climate change.
Speaker 2: And what we were trying to show was things can
Speaker 2: be quite quite bad while you still go to work,
Speaker 2: you still watch TV, you still do the cross red puzzle,
Speaker 2: you still live your regular life. But we definitely didn't
Speaker 2: want to inspire a sense of fatalism. The last thing
Speaker 2: we wanted to do was say like, this is how
Speaker 2: it is and it can't be any different. I think
Speaker 2: there are two ways that we try to tackle it.
Speaker 2: One is showing characters always struggling in their own stories
Speaker 2: and in their own ways to make decisions. So our
Speaker 2: characters are in a certain situation because of the decisions
Speaker 2: made by other people, but they always have agency. It's
Speaker 2: not stories of people who are just kind of buffeted
Speaker 2: by the fates. They're always having to decide what do
Speaker 2: I do now, where do I go now? How do
Speaker 2: I act now? And I think our hope is that
Speaker 2: in watching that people will ask those same questions of themselves.
Speaker 1: And yet at the end of the series spoiler alert here,
Speaker 1: you conclude after a code case that human flaws are unfixable.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: The problem that's never been technology.
Speaker 2: The problem is us always has been. What we're trying
Speaker 2: to say is that people are the ingredients of everything.
Speaker 2: You know, it's like soylent green like it's all made
Speaker 2: of people. People are institutions. People are the people who
Speaker 2: come up with the technology. So again, to get a
Speaker 2: little spoilery, there is a technology in episode eight that
Speaker 2: is really revolutionary, and the question is what do we
Speaker 2: do with it? It is deployed in a certain way
Speaker 2: at a certain time by a certain set of people
Speaker 2: in that episode. But I think the question in the
Speaker 2: episode remains if it had been deployed differently, if it
Speaker 2: had been deployed earlier, by a different set of people
Speaker 2: with a different agenda, it could have really done a
Speaker 2: lot of good. So to me, one of the most
Speaker 2: important things that we talk about is human institutions and
Speaker 2: the tension between very powerful individuals and then institutions. Can
Speaker 2: we build a un can we build a religious community?
Speaker 2: Can we build international criminal court? Can we build a
Speaker 2: United States government?
Speaker 3: Can we build.
Speaker 2: Any institution out of regular people that is robust enough
Speaker 2: to resist the influence of one rogue person who has
Speaker 2: a ton of money in power, and I think that's
Speaker 2: a question that we really grapple with in every episode,
Speaker 2: and we're showing one version of that story, but another
Speaker 2: version would be, you know, yes, what if the institutions,
Speaker 2: which are also made of people, also made of flawed
Speaker 2: but wonderful people, can be more robust, can be more dynamic,
Speaker 2: can be more active than one rogue individual's choices matter less.
Speaker 1: Typically in a climate story of fossil fuel executive would
Speaker 1: be the central villain, but you choose to have Nick Bilton,
Speaker 1: who is played by Kid Harrington, who starts off as
Speaker 1: a billionaire with this company called Alpha, providing batteries and
Speaker 1: then eventually social media and services to live forever, essentially
Speaker 1: all the things that humans want, rather than fossil fuels,
Speaker 1: which are the main cause of climate change. Why did
Speaker 1: you choose to make Nick Bilton the central villain of
Speaker 1: the TV series?
Speaker 2: In this case, it was partly about conceptualizing a lot
Speaker 2: of different phenomena in one person, because it's a TV
Speaker 2: show and we have to hire an actor, and having
Speaker 2: somebody portray the entire fossil fuel industry is harder than
Speaker 2: having one person show up and kind of portray all
Speaker 2: of human desire, as you were saying. But I think
Speaker 2: what we most wanted to get across with that character
Speaker 2: is that climate can be an economic opportunity for peace people,
Speaker 2: and we have to be prepared for that. It's going
Speaker 2: to be an economic devastation for a lot of people,
Speaker 2: but someone out there is going to make money off
Speaker 2: of it, and we have to sort of prep for
Speaker 2: and imagine that. I also think we really wanted to
Speaker 2: get the concept of predatory delay, That this is not
Speaker 2: a character who is avoiding the transition to a green
Speaker 2: economy entirely, but this is a character who's putting his
Speaker 2: feet on the brakes, and that that's also something that
Speaker 2: a lot of corporations and people are thinking about, is
Speaker 2: they can say, well, we know we're going to get
Speaker 2: there eventually, but just not today. And we wanted to
Speaker 2: have one person as the avatar of that kind of
Speaker 2: philosophy and that kind of belief.
Speaker 1: After the break, I talked with Dorothy about why so
Speaker 1: many A List actors wanted to be part of Extrapolations
Speaker 1: and how she's working with other writers to make more
Speaker 1: TV shows like it. If you're enjoying Zero and the series,
Speaker 1: please take a moment to write us a review on
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 1: A portion of our audience are climate nerds, and they'll
Speaker 1: watch the series and they'll connect the science to the reality.
Speaker 1: And you would have, I assume, had to work hard
Speaker 1: to make sure that the science is accurate. Who did
Speaker 1: you tap and what were the conversations you had around
Speaker 1: making sure the possible futures, whether it's a drought, whether
Speaker 1: it's a heat wave, whether it's wet bulb temperature or accurate.
Speaker 2: Scott and the writer's room met with a bunch of
Speaker 2: different people before I joined the project. So in that
Speaker 2: writer's room, I know that they spoke to Bill mckibbon,
Speaker 2: They spoke to Elizabeth Kolbert, they spoke to Nicole Hernandez
Speaker 2: and other people whose names I can't remember right now,
Speaker 2: but a lot of different scientists, activists, journalists. Because we
Speaker 2: did want to make the science accurate. We were trying
Speaker 2: to strike a balance where if you were a climate
Speaker 2: nerd and you think about this all day long, and
Speaker 2: you eat and sleep and breathe it, you would not
Speaker 2: be so turned off by our inaccuracies as to not
Speaker 2: watch the show like you might go like, Eh, that's
Speaker 2: not you know, one thousand billion percent perfect, but like
Speaker 2: I get it. You know, you would feel like we
Speaker 2: had done our homework. You would feel like we were respectful.
Speaker 2: We also had researchers on staff throughout the whole process,
Speaker 2: through all of writing and all of production, to provide
Speaker 2: research for anybody who needed it. So if someone was
Speaker 2: writing an episode and we talk about wet bulb temperature,
Speaker 2: they could just email the researcher and be like, send
Speaker 2: me everything about what wet bulb is, how it works,
Speaker 2: what physic consequences would happen if someone were outside in
Speaker 2: a high degree wet bulb situation, What would happen to
Speaker 2: their organs?
Speaker 3: What would happen to their bodies? Who's off run him?
Speaker 1: WHOZI you're additional cargo?
Speaker 3: What's wrong with them?
Speaker 1: Idiot was out collecting data during goddamn daylight.
Speaker 3: When we're bounce back to thirty five, he should be dead.
Speaker 2: One thing I learned working on this project is that
Speaker 2: people who work in the climate space, especially scientists and researchers,
Speaker 2: were so happy to talk to us. I always felt
Speaker 2: awkward contacting them because I was like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 2: you're so important. And busy, and you're gathering all this
Speaker 2: data and you're teaching classes and you're writing books, like
Speaker 2: you probably don't have any time for me. But everybody
Speaker 2: always said, you're going to reach so many more people.
Speaker 2: You know, you're going to make a TV show. Hopefully
Speaker 2: lots of people will watch it. Not everyone's going to
Speaker 2: read this article that I'm preparing for this journal, but
Speaker 2: I know that people will watch a TV show. So
Speaker 2: of course, of course I want to work with you.
Speaker 2: And I was really heartened by how eager people were
Speaker 2: to come, you know, join and we were able to
Speaker 2: get a glacier scientist from NASA to come and talk
Speaker 2: about glaciers, and people just want to share their research.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is a generosity within the climate sphere in general,
Speaker 1: not just and academia, but even within rival journalists and
Speaker 1: competitive startups. That is just one that's wonderful to see.
Speaker 1: There's more for collaboration than there's for competition.
Speaker 2: Yeah, people were so generous, People were so kind, people
Speaker 2: were so available to any question that we had to
Speaker 2: try to make the show as accurate as possible, And
Speaker 2: it really surprised me and warmed my heart.
Speaker 1: Extra Pollutions has a star studded cast Sienna Miller, Kid Harrington,
Speaker 1: Edward Norton, Toby McGuire, and even Merrill Streep doing the
Speaker 1: voice of a vail.
Speaker 3: We who are us share the world all that is there.
Speaker 4: When it becomes less suity.
Speaker 1: What does it say that so many big names wanted
Speaker 1: to work on a climate TV show?
Speaker 2: I think it shows how eager people are. I mean
Speaker 2: it felt sort of like the conversations with the scientists
Speaker 2: where you call up and you say, hi, I'm working
Speaker 2: on climate change, and people want to hear what you
Speaker 2: have to say next. You know, if the scripts were terrible,
Speaker 2: I don't know that they would have come and joined.
Speaker 2: I hope that they also liked the directors, they liked
Speaker 2: the designers, they liked Scott. But I do think there
Speaker 2: is a hunger and an eagerness. It felt like something
Speaker 2: that was sort of bottled up, really looking for release,
Speaker 2: And when people found out we were doing the show,
Speaker 2: they were excited to come on board because they're thinking
Speaker 2: about climate change and to think about it and not
Speaker 2: be able to act on it feels bananas. And so
Speaker 2: to actually get to do something where you are putting
Speaker 2: your concern into acting is really liberating.
Speaker 1: Since you've finished the show and it's now streaming, you
Speaker 1: have continued to work with writers who are interested in
Speaker 1: telling climate stories. What's that been.
Speaker 3: Like, Oh, that's been great.
Speaker 2: So I in a couple of different capacities, am trying
Speaker 2: to help all the other people who want to tell
Speaker 2: climate stories, sort of like you were saying about the
Speaker 2: generosity between journalists or between entrepreneurs.
Speaker 1: Like bussing it on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I hope I put myself out of business. I
Speaker 2: hope I can't sell anything because there are other better
Speaker 2: climate storytellers out there. So one capacity has been with
Speaker 2: the Writers Guild. The WGA and the PGA have created
Speaker 2: a Climate Storytelling Action Group, and we did a series
Speaker 2: of workshops with the NRDC because the NRDC has also
Speaker 2: gotten very interested in climate storytelling.
Speaker 1: Right, there's a National Resources Defense Counsel or US Climate Philanthropy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's an environmental nonprofit and they've in the
Speaker 2: last five years or so gotten very invested in this
Speaker 2: question of where's climate on screen? How do we tell
Speaker 2: climate stories? So we did a series of workshops with
Speaker 2: writers just sort of laying the groundwork of here's what
Speaker 2: climate change is, you know, here's how it functions. Here
Speaker 2: are ways it could be in stories. I'm also a
Speaker 2: mentor for the NRDC has a program I think it's
Speaker 2: called Rewrite the Future. They pair young screenwriters with not
Speaker 2: young screenwriters. And I'm about to meet on Monday with
Speaker 2: a woman who's written a climate television pilot to talk
Speaker 2: to her about her climate television pilot. You know, my
Speaker 2: advice that she can take her leave, but how to
Speaker 2: tell climate stories.
Speaker 1: You're collaborator on this. Scott C. Burns said. One of
Speaker 1: the inspirations for doing this was a book written by
Speaker 1: Amitav Ghosh called The Great Derangement. And the case that
Speaker 1: Amitav has made is that fiction writers, I'm not thinking
Speaker 1: about climate change enough. Not that there isn't climate fiction
Speaker 1: where you take a certain future and run with it
Speaker 1: and see what characters do in that future. He's more
Speaker 1: concerned about climate change as it's happening now or in
Speaker 1: the believable real world. Would you characterize what extrapolations is
Speaker 1: it's closer to Amitav's call for fiction or is it
Speaker 1: climate fiction?
Speaker 2: I think it's much closer to fiction that is based
Speaker 2: in reality. You know, people talk about climate fiction as
Speaker 2: though it's this particular genre, and they'll ask us, oh,
Speaker 2: so you're making a science fiction show about climate and
Speaker 2: I'll always say, well, actually, all of the current shows
Speaker 2: on TV that are taking place right now or in
Speaker 2: the near future that don't portray climate change like those
Speaker 2: are the science fiction shows. Those are the shows that
Speaker 2: are taking an imaginative leap because it is currently happening.
Speaker 2: We are already living in a one point one degrece
Speaker 2: elsius is in a world. I mean the number of
Speaker 2: times that I'll see something in the news that looks
Speaker 2: like something that we shot is daily.
Speaker 1: It'd probably says something about me that my favorite episode
Speaker 1: was episode four, which is really an exploration of geoengineering.
Speaker 1: It's focused so much on the geopolitics, on the decision making,
Speaker 1: on the science and the uncertainties.
Speaker 4: In the past, I was an advocate for something called geoengineering. Okay,
Speaker 4: and my very famous ex wife and I put a
Speaker 4: lot of resource and focus into not just imagining it,
Speaker 4: but contemplating how would you actually do it?
Speaker 2: She called it the biggest and the brightest new business
Speaker 2: opportunity of the century At Davos.
Speaker 3: Here's the thing we were wrong.
Speaker 1: Geoengineering is a subject that just rubs people one way
Speaker 1: or the other and creates all these controversies, and to
Speaker 1: portray it in a way that gets those points across
Speaker 1: while feeling compelling was really well done.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 2: I loved working on episode four. I had a great
Speaker 2: time I was on set. I think every day I think.
Speaker 2: Something about Episode four that I also hope people take
Speaker 2: away is that climate change contains a ton of controversies.
Speaker 2: The controversy is not is it happening. That's not a controversy.
Speaker 2: It's happening. The world is warmart we did it, But
Speaker 2: within that, what do we do about it? Is an
Speaker 2: open and live question, and lots of really smart, thoughtful
Speaker 2: people have really different feelings and thoughts about that, and
Speaker 2: that makes good television. You know, an argument about do
Speaker 2: we do this or do we not do this? I
Speaker 2: hope we gave both sides of that argument the best
Speaker 2: possible case to make. Like that was our intention is
Speaker 2: we didn't want to make anybody mean or bad, or
Speaker 2: dumb or inarticulate. We wanted them to be the brightest
Speaker 2: and most passionate advocates for their point of view, so
Speaker 2: that people could watch that debate play out and come
Speaker 2: to their own conclusions.
Speaker 1: And because it's about the future, the future does actually
Speaker 1: get better in many ways. There are technologies like a
Speaker 1: drug that is printed at home. But the other side
Speaker 1: of the coin, I come from India. I grew up there.
Speaker 1: I now live in the UK, but a lot of
Speaker 1: the episodes, apart from the one India episode, are based
Speaker 1: very much in the US, have very much the sort
Speaker 1: of rich people living their lives in comfortable surroundings in
Speaker 1: really nice houses. How did you choose to focus mostly
Speaker 1: on that world?
Speaker 2: Some of that was about who we felt our audience
Speaker 2: would be. You know, it's a show on Apple TV plus.
Speaker 2: Apple tv plus subscribers are mostly people who have a
Speaker 2: little bit of extra disposable income, mostly live in the West,
Speaker 2: and I think we wanted to say that this is
Speaker 2: a show that shows that their own lives will be disrupted.
Speaker 2: I think it's really complicated and tricky when you talk
Speaker 2: about a universal problem with disparate impact, as I think
Speaker 2: we saw with COVID. We don't want to say that
Speaker 2: you'll be fine, but you also do want to say
Speaker 2: we won't all experience it equally, And that was I
Speaker 2: think the conversation we were trying to straddle was to say, hey,
Speaker 2: upper middle class Apple TV Plus watchers, this could come
Speaker 2: for you too. This could impact a child in your
Speaker 2: family's health, This could impact you know, houses in Malibu
Speaker 2: catch on fire as well. You know, we didn't want
Speaker 2: to say just because you're wealthy, you'll be able to
Speaker 2: insulate yourself completely. But it is tricky. I certainly think
Speaker 2: there are episodes we could have done that focused more
Speaker 2: on other countries, that focused more on not rich people
Speaker 2: within the US. We're capturing a certain slice of certain lives,
Speaker 2: and there's a lot that we left on the table
Speaker 2: in terms of other lives and other lifestyles that we
Speaker 2: didn't show.
Speaker 1: Is there a risk that people watch the show, especially
Speaker 1: wealthy people, and go, it's not the complete shit show
Speaker 1: that we thought it will be. Therefore, I don't need
Speaker 1: to worry about it as much as people think I
Speaker 1: should worry about it.
Speaker 3: I guess there's a risk of that.
Speaker 2: I feel like it's pretty bleak by the time you
Speaker 2: get to episode seven, like people are in you know,
Speaker 2: oxygen masks and you know, roaming a you know, I
Speaker 2: think it's pretty bleak, and I would hope that even
Speaker 2: very rich people can watch it and say I'd rather
Speaker 2: not know.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Will there be a season two? Man?
Speaker 3: I hope.
Speaker 2: So that's not my choice, that's Apple's choice. But I
Speaker 2: know that Scott and I have a lot of other stories,
Speaker 2: especially the stories that we were talking about that we
Speaker 2: weren't able to tell, that we would love to get
Speaker 2: to tell in a season two.
Speaker 1: Which would be a different extra relations where maybe we
Speaker 1: actually keep it under one point five degree celsias.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean that's the great thing about the conceit
Speaker 2: of the show, as we can extrapolate in any direction
Speaker 2: we want.
Speaker 1: I could talk about this for a long time. There
Speaker 1: was so much in there in the TV series that
Speaker 1: I think we didn't explore, And I hope viewers get
Speaker 1: to watch extra pay and maybe there's a season two.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for coming on the show.
Speaker 3: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: If you watch extrapolations, tweet at me and tell me
Speaker 1: who your favorite character was. Mine is Madam from episode four.
Speaker 1: You heard a clip of her earlier talking about the
Speaker 1: idiot who went out during a wet bulb temperature event.
Speaker 1: This is part three of our mini series talking about
Speaker 1: climate storytelling. I hope you've enjoyed the series. If you've
Speaker 1: not already listened to the other episodes, check out our
Speaker 1: interviews with climate fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson and investigative
Speaker 1: journalist Amy Westerbelt. Thank you for listening to Zero. If
Speaker 1: you liked this episode, please take a moment to rate, review,
Speaker 1: and subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Send it to
Speaker 1: a friend or someone who spends longer working out what
Speaker 1: to watch on TV than actually watching TV. Get in
Speaker 1: touch at zero pod at Bloomberg dot Net. Zero's producer
Speaker 1: is Oscar Boyd and senior producer is Christine Driskell. Our
Speaker 1: theme music is composed by Wonderly Special Thanks this week
Speaker 1: to John frar Mesabo and Kira Bindr. I'm Akshatrati back
Speaker 1: next week.