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- [00:04]
A
Ajr, the indie pop trio turning chaotic anthems into viral hits. The Billboard Music Award winning brothers Adam, Jack and Ryan have been blowing up social media and selling out arenas with hits like Bang Week and the World's Smallest Violin. But what you might not know is that the band Space Player isn't just a rock star, he's a climate scientist. Now, along with his two brothers, he's harnessing the power of fandom to bring change to the future of our climate.
- [00:39]
B
I looked at how we built this fan base and I said, okay, what if we could do the same thing but for the climate movement?
- [00:48]
A
Today, we're going off the radar with Dr. Adam met to explore how art and activism intersect in ways you've never heard before, bringing the climate crisis center stage to a whole new audience, one arena at a time.
- [01:05]
B
A good story is one that you hear and you're like, oh, that's cool. And you'll share with your friends and family. But an effective story will actually make you get up off your butt and do something about it.
- [01:21]
A
I'm meteorologist Emily Gracey and you're listening to off the Radar, a production of the National Weather Desk. On the show, we dig deep into topics about we climate, the ocean, space, and much more. Our goal is to help you better understand the weather and to love it as much as we do.
- [01:40]
C
Craving your next action packed adventure? Audible delivers thrills of every kind on your command, like Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir, where a lone astronaut must save humanity from extinction. Narrated with stunning intensity by Ray Porter. From electrifying suspense and daring quests to spine tingling horror and romance and far off realms, unleash your adventure aside with gripping titles that'll keep you guessing. Discover exclusive Audible originals, hotly anticipated new releases and must listen bestsellers that hook you from the first minute because Audible knows there's no greater thrill than the one that speaks to you. Discover what lies beyond the edge of your seat. Start your free 30 day trial at audible.com wonderyus that's audible.com wonderyus if you've.
- [02:31]
A
Ever cranked up AJR on a road trip or dance to bang at a party or belted out the good part when you needed a pick me up, you already know the band Three Brothers, countless hits and a sound that somehow makes chaos feel like a good thing. My kids are big fans of AJR and it's not surprising. I mean the they have a song called Don't Throw Out My Legos and another one called Netflix Trip, which is all about the TV show The office. I was attending a concert in Connecticut last year with my family and was kind of caught off guard when they started talking about climate change on stage. Not in an angry or blamey way, but in a really digestible way that made action attainable for the audience members. So here's what's wild. Adam met the guy on base is also a climate scientist with a PhD in human rights and sustainable development. And while he's been on world tour tours and topping charts, he's also been working on climate policy advocacy and a book called Amplify, aimed at helping everyday people get involved in climate action. I was so honored that Adam took the time to join me today in this very important episode where we talk about the power of non traditional climate communication, how music, art and storytelling can open doors that statistics and headlines can't. He shares how AJR quietly weaves climate messaging in their shows, the reaction that they get from the fans, and why he believes anyone with a platform, no matter how small, can help drive change. As we talk, you'll hear AJR's music layered throughout. I want to give a huge thank you to the band and their publicist for giving me permission to use their music to help tell this story. Songs that capture the hopeful, complicated, and sometimes urgent emotions of living through through a climate crisis. So get ready because this is climate action with a musical twist. It's so hard. Can we skip to the good part? Dr. Adam met, I'm so excited to have you on the show today. A little bit starstruck because I happen to be an AJR fan as well.
- [04:40]
B
Oh, thank you.
- [04:42]
A
But that's kind of where this stemmed from because I was at one of your concerts last year and, you know, like halfway through, the music stops and you guys start talking about climate change. And I was like, well, this is interesting and different and not something I've ever experienced at a concert before. So I'm really interested to talk about this new form of climate communication. Tell me about your background as a musician and then how you during that time got educated in climate science.
- [05:09]
B
Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be on. Yeah, I guess I call it my Night Job. My night job is music. So I tour all over the world, I play shows, I work on music. And it's, it's. Myself and my two brothers were in a band called ajr and I'm so thankful for all of the success that we've had over the last bunch of years. It really was this grassroots effort in order to Grow something from nothing. We were independent for a very, very long time. And it really was going perfect person to person, city to city, playing for five people and then 10 people, and then 100 people, and it just grew. And now this last summer, we played for, you know, about half a million people in the United States. We did an arena tour in 50 cities across the US this summer, we're doing an amphitheater tour. So it's really exciting how much that has grown. But at the same time, I stayed in school, so I did my undergrad and then my master's and a PhD and it was all off cycle. So when I wasn't touring, I was in school. Even when I was touring, the back of the tour bus was kind of like a library. I had so many books, people got annoyed. But, you know, you just make it work. And honestly, I needed both to continue to inspire me. So the way I did this was I looked at how we built this fan base. And when I'm talking about the fan base, I'm talking about ajr, I'm talking about the band, this approach to how we used all of these different strategies to grow a fan base. And I said, okay, what if we could do the same thing, but for the climate movement? And that's kind of how my engagement in climate really started. There was a bunch of small touch points and me experiencing climate change firsthand when we were on tour. From the forest fires in the San Francisco area to flooding in Athens. When we were there a few summers ago, we really just hit all of these kind of climate disasters. So it really hit us firsthand. But at the same time, the academic piece of it has always been really close to my heart.
- [07:25]
A
It's a really interesting approach and a very. A different one because I feel like most of the time, the research is done first, and then it's like, how do we share this? You know, the scientists are doing these papers, they're putting it out there. Nobody really can read them. And the people who are good at communicating aren't getting that information or aren't, you know, able to communicate that information. So you started with the communication, and then you got the academic background. So that's a really fascinating way. And it's been successful, from what I understand, correct?
- [07:54]
B
It has worked so far, but it's just a small part of the movement so far. We're growing it to something much bigger. But you're 100% right. I mean, I'm sure for some of the people who are listening, who are, you know, who have PhDs. They know that when you write something like that, very few people end up reading it.
- [08:12]
A
Dear Winter, I hope you like this song.
- [08:16]
B
I wrote something that was three, four hundred pages. I think three people read it. That is so disappointing. So one of my things that I've been working on with my organization, I run a nonprofit called Planet Reimagined. And the whole philosophy behind it is how do we connect research to advocacy? How do we do research with an eye towards how it can be better understood, how it can be implemented, and how it can go out into the real world and be as useful as possible? And so that's always my philosophy anytime I'm doing any sort of research. And so we do this in the policy space, in the movement, building space, and working with corporates and working with governments. It is, let's do really peer review level research, but with an eye towards what is the advocacy strategy, what is the comm strategy, what is the implementation strategy.
- [09:04]
A
Winter, it won't be too long. You know, we don't just have scientists that listen, we have everybody listening. And so I'd love to use your expertise to give a little background too, on some climate issues, if you're willing, because you mentioned a few right there. Are there any surprising issues that people may not be aware of that are being impacted by climate change?
- [09:24]
B
Yeah. So one of my favorite ways to frame this is that climate really is everything and we should stop using the words climate change because climate change feels so far away to most people, it feels existential. What is 1.5 degrees really mean to anybody? Climate is the food that's on your plate. It's when you flip a light switch, how that power gets to, you know, your, your home. It's how you get from place to place. It's our health care system, it's our immigration system, climate impacts, all of these. We're going to have more climate related refugees in the next 10 years than we have in the last 50 years. It's really incredible from a health perspective. You know, as the temperatures continue to warm, we are seeing more and more insect related diseases in the United States, further and further north that were traditionally in the south or in the Caribbean or in Central America. We're seeing more and more of them and they're creating a strain on the health care system. Climate change is impacting everything that we do. And I think if we think about it in terms of how it impacts us personally, so, you know, the cars that we're driving, our transportation systems, our food, our health care, things like that, People will be more eager to change those systems as opposed to, oh my God, climate change is here. What do we do about it? And so this reframing I think is necessary. Thinking about, you know, the, the next step in the climate movement as what is a re. Industrialization of America look like as opposed to how do we tackle climate change? And a reindustrialization of America can focus on how we power things, how we get places, how we build things. That's real and that's concrete and that focuses on economics and jobs, which are two of the biggest drivers of, of things that people care about.
- [11:16]
A
Hmm, very true. Okay, so it feels so big. You're one person. What can you do?
- [11:23]
B
Nothing. No kidding. There's honestly so much that you can do. But one of the things that I hate is that the term carbon footprint, it was coined by BP oil and gas company, Right. They are the ones who have tried to put the burden of climate change on us as individuals. For us to change, the kind of straws we're using for us to recycle. Really none of that has a real impact.
- [11:48]
A
Should I keep it light? Stay out of the fight.
- [11:50]
B
No one's going to listen to me. The real impact is, and I know this sounds strange, but voting in local elections. Now, voting in local elections has a real impact because those people that you're putting in office at the community board level, at the city level, at the state level, those people have the decision making power of where we're building new petrochemical plants, of what our recycling programs look like, of how we're decarbonizing neighborhoods at a time as opposed to individually. Those decisions happen in elections that could be decided by 10 or 20 votes. You have so much more power in a local election than you do every four years in a federal election. That is where the decision making is happening around climate. So my challenge for all of you who are listening is look up when your next local election is. I'm in New York City. We have a primary for mayor that's happening in June. Probably most people don't know about that. So if you're in New York, I'm telling you right now, there's a primary for mayor in June. That is a really big decision. Right? They can make such big changes at the city level. And there are so many cities. This is a really stupid thing to say, but there are so many cities across the United States. As soon as one develops a solution, think about how we can take that solution and then apply it in hundreds of other cities. This has Such a big potential for scaling. So the thing that you can do, number one thing, is vote in local elections. Don't worry about switching the kind of straw you're drinking.
- [13:39]
A
Also, do you feel like with local elections, people are less likely to vote based on party and more likely to do research on a specific candidate?
- [13:46]
B
Absolutely. Absolutely. We did a big study over the last couple of years to figure out why people weren't engaging with political candidates. And it actually turns out that people care about policy at a really deep level, and people don't care as much about political candidates. And so if you can prove to them that a policy will impact their lives in a concrete way, they're much more likely to get engaged. And at the local level, those politicians impact their life in a much more concrete way, down to, we need a stop sign because people are driving really fast through this neighborhood. That impacts people directly, as opposed to some bill that's going through Congress right now that might give me a tax break when it goes into effect in 2035, something like that. Right. So if it's small, if it's local, if it's impactful, I think people are going to engage.
- [14:38]
A
Okay, let's talk about motivation. I want to know where yours comes from. For one, let's get into your childhood. But also, also, how do you motivate people? How do people stay motivated? Because most of the time people have such busy lives. How do they find the time and motivation to do this?
- [14:55]
B
It's so hard. This is kind of one of the biggest questions around climate. You know, let's say there's a mother of three who's just trying to get her kids to and from school, put food on the table. She doesn't have time to engage around climate. That's ridiculous. Right. But she does have time to think about how can we bring down the prices of the food that I'm trying to put on the table. How can we make things like public transportation cleaner and better and safer for everybody? Because it's the thing that she uses every day.
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A
If we're framing arguably as a mother, I would say mothers have a lot of motivation because they have raised. They're raising these. Yes, they are worried about their children and what they're going to live on.
- [15:33]
B
Absolutely. Couldn't agree more. So I think that motivation comes from a lot of different places. My story is one that starts in the arts, starts in music, starts in theater.
- [15:49]
A
Now we won't be young, but we will live among the giants.
- [15:56]
B
When I'm looking for inspiration, looking for creative Ideas, I look to other areas of creativity. So if I'm looking for some inspiration in the policy space, I will look to music, I will go to museums, I will go see movies. And motivation for me comes down to the kind of this very basic principle of how to move people effectively. Moving people effectively basically means how do you make them feel something? You can make them feel something about an idea like climate or any other type of activism, they're much more likely to get engaged at a deeper level. The climate movement has really been based on fear, but fear is not going to motivate everybody. We need to find people who are excited, excited about joining a movement. We need to get people who want to make money off of this, Right? There are a lot of ways to actually make money off of the climate transition. There are huge potentials for investment. There are all of these different incentives, and all of them have to do with kind of emotional feelings. And so for me, my motivation is, how can we find all of these different paths in for people? Some people, it's going to be, like I said, through money and investment. Some people it's going to be because they just care about giving back to their community. Some people are going to care because they're artistic and want to use their artistic skills in order to engage people. And I don't stop because I have a lot of different things that I'm doing. And when I get angry or frustrated or disappointed in one, then I just move to something else. I know a lot of people don't have that luxury of having, you know, five different jobs that they're doing during the day, or maybe they do. That gives me a lot of motivation because I have that ADD thing where I skip from thing to thing to think, to let me know that it feels good to feel at home.
- [18:17]
A
I get that. Okay, so let's talk about confidence too, because I often feel and I. I'm a former broadcast meteorologist, and this is an area where we are the people who should be translating this information, right? Like, we have science degrees, we have access to this information. But confidence level still isn't always there with broadcast meteorologists. And so they just don't talk about it, or just people in general may not talk about it because they don't feel confident in what they're talking about. So how do we get that information and feel like we are capable of carrying on a conversation and arguing back against somebody who may have other talking points?
- [18:51]
B
There was just a study that came out a couple of weeks ago that basically said more than 80% of the people on the planet believe that climate change is real and we need to be doing something more about it. And, and the thing that's stopping people from talking about it is the fact that they don't think others believe that it's real. It's a really interesting kind of paradigm because, you know, if you don't think that your friends think something is cool, you're not going to talk about it in front of your friends, even if you think it's cool. What this study did was said everyone thinks that it's cool to talk about climate change and that it's fair game and that people actually care about it. So one of the things that I think is really important is getting studies like this out there and translated to a point where everyone feels like it's totally fine to talk about and fine to engage. The political nature of climate, especially in the last handful of months, has made it harder for people to talk about it. And threatening words coming out of Washington D.C. about attacks that are going to happen on climate organizations and people who kind of engage in climate. One of the things that I think is key about this is the language we are using, like we were talking about before. I've spoken to a lot of kind of big tech companies. I've spoken to a lot of people who are in the climate space. I think reframing the language about reindustrialization, talking about transportation and waste and energy and agriculture and production and consumption, consumption, this will give people the confidence to actually talk about it in a really kind of deep way. Now, for you all, for meteorologists, for the people who are communicating most often to the general public, you are all these studies have shown that you are the most trusted messengers around these issues for people across the United States. You are the conduits, you are the people who can actually get this message out there. It's a huge amount of pressure, but at the same time, you don't need to frame it in terms of climate change. Right? If you drive home the message that it's getting warmer, the average temperature is far warmer, like today, we've broken records again. It'll drive home that message to people in a concrete way as opposed to climate changes here. If they know that today, this day in May is, you know, the hottest that it's ever been on average, that is something that's going to resonate with him. They'll be like, yeah, it is really warm. And we all know that climate change is not about temperature of an individual day. Right? It's not about the weather of the individual day. It's the overall patterns. And if. Because. Because people engage with you all day to day, they're like your friends. You're in their homes, you're telling them what they should be wearing for the day based on the weather. There's a level of trust there, a trusted messenger, that is so valuable. So I would say don't talk about climate change. I would say talk about how it's impacted, for sure.
- [21:52]
A
Okay, let's talk about the concerts again. And kind of the process of how you got to that point where you're like, let's start talking about these issues in this situation. Where did that come from? And then how has it been received.
- [22:07]
B
About, I don't know, 10 years ago, maybe a little longer. When I was in college, I studied this sociologist named Emile Durkheim. And Durkheim had this idea for a concept called collective effervescence. And it's one of my favorite phrases ever. Collective effervescence is basically that feeling when you're in a big group of people all doing the same thing, and you have that group think, your brainwaves get on the same plane. When you're at a place like a Taylor Swift concert, that happens. Everyone's jumping together, singing the lyrics together, dancing together. And I said, okay, mind you, Durkheim studied this in terms of religious spaces. He didn't study it at a Taylor Swift concert. He's. He's no longer with us for quite some time. So Taylor. I said, you know, what if we could do this at a Taylor Swift concert? And then I said, wait, what if we could do this at our own concert? What if we could look at collective effervescence, see if we could measure it, and then use that energy in order to get people to take some sort of action? So we did a massive study with Ticketmaster to understand what people were willing to do in the concert space, the kinds of actions they were willing to take. And so from that study, we built it out in person, and we've done it now at the 1975 shows. We've done it at I Heart Jingle Balls. We've done it at our concerts, and we're doing it a bunch more this summer, which I'm very excited about. I did it at Coachella a couple of weeks ago. It really works. On our Tour, we had 15% of people who walked through the door take some sort of action around climate, which 15% sounds low, but that's huge, right? If you think about this, Live Nation says that in 2024, 250 million people attended a concert in, in the U.S. that's far more people than actually voted. If we can even get 15% of those people to take some sort of action, that would be enormous. So now we're focusing on scaling it. And one of the things that came out of this study and we continued to do follow ups even after people took action, people have a more favorable view of the artist if the artist is actually inviting them to take action with them, which is great. People are more willing to take action if their friends and family are doing it. So that's why we like doing it at concerts and sports events and places like that, because people do it in groups. It's a nice way of bullying each other, right? If you bully someone, hey, I'm doing this, you should do this with me, they're more likely to do it right. So if we can create these situations where people can do it in groups, and then the last thing is they want to know that their action actually makes a difference. So we partner with all of these different local nonprofits in each city, have them come in and work with them on what the advocacy action is. It could be signing a petition, it could be registering to vote. And in some places we actually had phone banking where people could call their representative, ask them to vote on a specific issue on site at the concert. And that was so impactful. So in seven different states on our tour, we had engagements around policies that were on the ballot. All of those policies went in the right direction, every single one of them, even if the state ended up voting in a different direction.
- [25:25]
A
Wow.
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B
So there's so much potential here for music and sports to be conduits for advocacy. Here we go.
- [25:34]
C
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- [26:07]
A
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- [26:09]
C
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A
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- [26:55]
B
Absolutely. So every single issue that we had on site was a local issue. I'll give you an example. So in Phoenix, we got there, it was 109 degrees that day. In Phoenix, the action that we had on site was a petition to get FEMA to designate extreme heat as an emergency so funds would be unlocked for extreme heat. First of all, it's crazy to me that FEMA doesn't designate extreme heat as an emergency. It absolutely should be. But on that day we got thousands of people to engage because they were like, oh, extreme heat, it's 109 degrees out. We should be getting money in order to build cooling centers, in order to plant more trees on the streets, for shade, for shading on a variety of different kinds of actions. So every single city had its own specified local action. And that really is the way to win if you can make something personal to people.
- [27:51]
A
I'm thinking back to like, gosh, how long ago was it when the Dixie Chicks spoke out at their concert? I'm curious what the feedback is like and is, is it ever negative?
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B
Yeah, no, that's a really good question. Because like 15, 20 years ago, that was the, the kind of MO people wanted to go to concerts because they wanted to escape from everything else. Formerly the Dixie Chicks, now the chicks. Their whole M.O. was, you know, we're just going to speak out. And people responded saying, just shut up and sing. Now, because fans have a much deeper relationship with artists over the last 10, 15 years because of social media. Fans understand when the artist is authentic, when they're not, when they actually care about an issue. And they want to see a well rounded human being, right? They don't just care about it for the music, they care about the clothing that they're wearing, the issues they care about when they're going on tour, the merchandise. They care about all of these other things. And so there is almost an obligation now for artists to be able to talk about the things that they care about, especially on social media and at the concerts. And if the artists do actually care about, and there are a lot that do, from Billie Eilish to Shawn Mendes to Coldplay, they speak up about climate. And that wouldn't have happened 20 years ago, but now we're in a different.
- [29:13]
A
Era and it's tapping into a new audience. I mean, for people who don't know what your fan base is like, can you kind of describe maybe demographic wise, what your fans are?
- [29:22]
B
Sure. The average age of our fans, or they're either just finishing college or just out of college. So it's surprising because one of the things that was always shocking to me is that we have a 5050 demo of male, female, and it really is split. And when I say average age being just out of college, that's true. That's probably where the majority of our fans are. But at the same time, we've been doing this for about 18 years. We've had fans that met at our concerts a decade ago, got married, had a kid, and is now bringing their kid to our concerts. So we have a family demo just as much as we do kind of a college, post college demo. It's really strange. You don't normally see this with music, but I think something about our music resonates with people of all ages.
- [30:15]
A
100%. I agree with that. Okay, so let's talk about songwriting too, because you had one chapter in your book and you spoke about kind of your history with hearing stories and songs and your father and then the importance of that storytelling, when it comes to issues and making people understand something to make them feel something, like you spoke of earlier.
- [30:36]
B
Storytelling is key for any area of work that you're doing. Whether we're focused on climate or music or really anything else. I kind of frame it in the book as the difference between a good story and an effective story. And a good story is one that you hear and you're like, oh, that's cool. And you'll share with your friends and family. But an effective story will actually make you get up off your butt and do something about it.
- [31:10]
A
No, I ain't scared of you.
- [31:15]
B
And so I have all of these different stories from Bob Dylan and Phil Oaks to Billie Holiday to how Hamilton was written to a whole bunch of others. And each of them use a different kind of storytelling technique. And so what I mean by that is you could tell a story straightforward, right? You could just tell the facts of the story, or you can inject your own kind of viewpoints into it, or you can tell it more like a journalist or you can have it be big and inspirational, or you can think about what does the audience want to hear? What is the audience ready for? What is the audience not ready for? Right. Do you want to surprise them in something? Do you want to make them feel comfortable? Do you want to make them feel uncomfortable? Billie Holiday did something incredible and really wanted to make her audience feel uncomfortable based on the song Strange Fruit. You haven't heard it. It's an incredibly powerful song, and multiple people credit it as the beginning of the civil rights movement. And the song starts with black bodies swinging from the poplar trees. She performed in predominantly white crowds, were predominantly white crowds in New York City downtown. And she would end her set with this song singing these lyrics. The entire venue would stop serving food, stop serving drinks. One spotlight. She would sing this song and she would walk off stage. No bow, no encore, nothing. And the goal was to make her audience uncomfortable. This is an incredibly valuable technique in storytelling, making people uncomfortable. It's the idea behind going on strike. If you're making somebody uncomfortable, they have to sit with that feeling, and they're so much more likely to do something about it because they want to get rid of that feeling that is really valuable. Lin Manuel Miranda did a similar kind of thing with Hamilton. The audience was not ready for Hamilton. When he first kind of performed Hamilton, he did a click. He did a little song from it at the White House years before it was on Broadway, and people laughed. People were like, what is this? This is ridiculous. This is great. Crazy. And then slowly, over six years, the country was in a very different place. And he was able to read that and say, okay, now the country is ready for Hamilton. And, boy, was the country ready for Hamilton.
- [33:37]
A
So are you and your brothers writing about climate change? Have you or will you in the future?
- [33:42]
B
Climate is a really interesting thing and a variety of social issues. People write about them in music all the time. One of the things about our music is that it's not on the nose in that we're not writing a song about climate change. So Ryan and Jack, my two brothers, they're the ones who write the music. And we have this conversation a lot, like, there's never going to be a song that's about climate change and what you should do about climate. But if you listen to a couple of our songs, there's lyrics kind of embedded in there about things like climate anxiety, about things like what we're going to do in the future. It kind of is more subtle and more subconscious because that's honest, right? We have a Song called Inertia. I was going to save the planet but today I've got plans. Very real thing. It just injects into people's mind. This is something that is part of the zeitgeist. It's part of the things people talk about all the time. Yeah, I want to do something about it, but I'm busy today.
- [35:01]
A
I love it. That's one of my favorite songs too. Okay, so let's talk about the book and who you want to read this and what their hope, what you want them to do with this.
- [35:11]
B
Yeah, that's a great question. I spent a lot of time thinking about who the audience was for this book. When we put out music for ajr. We put it out because we love it. And it found an audience and it found an audience from 8 year olds to 80 year olds. And those are the people who are coming to our concerts. Different people appreciate it in different ways. That's my intention behind the book. There are very different skill sets in there that I'm trying to get across for people who are in college, just out of college, don't know what they want to do with their life, but know they want to make a difference. And then there are strategies for people who have been movement builders their entire life, but need new kinds of strategies to help rethink how to do those movements. Whether it's the chapter about gamification or the chapter about how to use the in person, the live space more effectively, or how to build a bigger tent. There are all these really kind of concrete strategies in the book to help people reevaluate what they've been doing or give them a path. Because I visit colleges a lot and I give a lot of lectures at colleges and the number one question I get is what can I do? Like, everything's awful. I don't know what to do, how can I participate? And I literally go around the room in these lectures and ask students, what are you studying? What are you studying? And each of them will tell me and they'll be like, I'm studying painting. That's not at all related to climate. I explain to them, yes it is. You're an incredible communicator. You can communicate in a way that people can't in words. You can be painting about climate issues. You can do a whole show that's about climate. You can work with organizations to create materials that'll engage, that'll engage people in a different way. Everybody is doing something that can relate to climate. I think that's really important for people to recognize how does your mind work? How can you engage? Are you a convener? Right. Are you a Cassandra? I'm not going to give away what that means, because that's a really fun story of the book that I want people to actually read. But there are all of these different potential roles that you can play, which I think is really important.
- [37:14]
A
And I loved your hurricane metaphor for the movement as well. Can you speak our language and give us a little overview of that?
- [37:22]
B
Yeah. Oh, absolutely. So traditionally in movements, in the climate movement in particular, there's been something called the ladder of engagement, where it is a ladder, people take one step, they engage, and then they can go up another rung on the ladder. Another rung. This is not really how it works anymore. It looks much more like a hurricane. So when people are new to a movement or new to a fan base, the goal is to bring them really close to the center, meaning close to the artist or close to the people who are running the movement. Give them the tools to be able to then go back out in the world and be evangelizers, to bring other people in. Giving them the tools could be giving them the education, literally physically giving them tools to. In order to go out and do something, like petitions or these strategies to get people to phone bank or door knocking materials, whatever it is. And it's much more of this circular approach, and it actually looks like a hurricane, where you bring things close to the center and then they go and, you know, spin around the outside and then come back to the center and then go back around the outside. That is how movements look in 20, 25. It's not this vertical thing. It's everybody kind of moving in the same direction, but in its different spaces.
- [38:40]
A
I want to know about the audiobook. Is there an audiobook? Is there? Because you're an audio person and I'm an audio storyteller. So I want to know, is there anything out of the audiobook that we can expect that might be different from reading the. Just the paper copy.
- [38:52]
B
Yeah. So I'm very excited about the audiobook because 18 of the guests that I interview in the book itself are actually reading their own portions of the audiobook. So it's almost gonna feel like a long podcast with all of these stories, because you have all of these people actually telling the stories themselves. There's also going to be music when I talk about different kind of songs. So it's going to be music, it's going to be guests, it's going to be me speaking. So the audiobook is going to be something kind of different from your traditional audiobook.
- [39:26]
A
Jeffrey R. Awesome. I was hoping you were going to say that. Did you ever. The audiobook, I think it was Paul Simon and maybe Malcolm Gladwell and it was stories from Paul Simon, but there was all of the music was mixed in for each part of his life and it was so good.
- [39:41]
B
That sounds incredible.
- [39:43]
A
So much more impactful than just the book itself. Cool. You mentioned people in the audiobook. Can you name drop a couple?
- [39:49]
B
Yeah, sure. So Christiana Figueras, who wrote the Paris Climate Agreement, she's reading her section of the book. David Hogg, there's a great interview with him. He's reading his section of the book. Ben Folds, who's reading his section of the book, which is awesome. I don't want to give away too many, but those are some really fun ones.
- [40:08]
A
Awesome. Cool. Can't wait to hear it. Adam, is there anything else you want to share? Any words of wisdom for our audience that you'd love to impart before I let you go?
- [40:16]
B
This has been great. First, thank you so much for this conversation. I love this. Basically the main thing that I want to convey about this and the book is that there are so many ways to engage. It doesn't have to mean that you're becoming an activist or you're becoming a movement leader. There are really simple things that you can do in your day to day life that are not about timing the amount of time you're spending in the shower or turning off the lights every time you leave a room. There are things that could take just a couple of minutes each day that have a really big impact. I don't want to turn everyone into an advocate. I don't want to turn anyone into an activist that doesn't want to be an activist. But I want people to care about the people around them and the planet around them.
- [40:58]
A
Inertia. I recently did an episode, a good news episode for Earth Day about the ozone hole and the progress that humanity has made. Do you have any other good news that you can leave us with a little glimmer of hope perhaps for our planet?
- [41:13]
B
Yeah, sure. So one of the things that gave me a lot of hope there was an interview with one of the heads of the big oil and gas companies that said to the now, our now current president that said, please do not pull us out of the Paris Climate Agreement, which was a really big surprise, right? For an oil and gas company to say don't pull us out of the Paris Climate Agreement, that was huge. What I'm seeing now companies all across the US and all across the world are not changing. We've passed this tipping point about of moving to renewable energy where it's continuing their investment. They might be calling it something different, but they are continuing to move towards renewable energy, towards clean energy. It might be public facing something a little bit different because of what they need to for political reasons, but behind the scenes we've passed this tipping point from an investment perspective. The US is going to be building and using more solar, more wind, more geothermal energy for the next many, many years, moving forward and we are seeing a reduction in oil and gas usage. And so it really is about the numbers and it is sometimes it's sad and we get negative headlines, but really is there are a lot of positive things to be happy about in terms of moving forward.
- [42:38]
A
Awesome. Adamet. Thank you so much. Book is out June 3rd yes, audiobook same time, same time.
- [42:46]
B
You can pre order it now to make sure you get your copy that first week.
- [42:50]
A
Can't wait to hear the audiobook. I've read the book, it's fantastic. I can't wait to hear it as well. Dr. Adam, thank you so much for your time today.
- [42:57]
B
Thank you so much. This is great.
- [43:01]
A
Off the Radar It's a production of the National Weather Desk. Make sure you're following the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. New episodes publish every Tuesday. Thank you to Dr. Adam met for joining me today. His book Amplify is out now, so go buy it or download the audiobook. Thanks again to Adam and his brothers in AJR for allowing me to use their music in today's episode. If you like what you heard, check out their YouTube channel. Thanks to the National Weather Desk and Sinclair Broadcast Group for their ongoing support of the podcast, as well as my associate producer Brian Petras for his help on today's episode. Our meteorologist Emily Gracie. Make it a great day.
- [44:00]
C
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