Transcript
Marc Maron (0:02)
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Aaron Brockovich (0:56)
What the fuck, buddies?
Marc Maron (0:57)
What the fuck? Nicks? What's happening? I'm Marc Marin. This is my podcast. Welcome to it. What's happening? You all right? Are you keeping it together? Did you get that shit done? Oh, that's an. That's a universal question. Did you get that shit done? I don't know. It's just there's so much to do. All seemingly just as important as the other thing, but most of it just bullshit. Tomorrow, if you're in Los Angeles, I'll be at Largo here in Los Angeles tomorrow night. Largo at the Coronet. Today on the show, I'm going to talk to Erin Brockovich. I guess most of you remember her name or know her by the movie that's based on her, where she was played by Julia Roberts. Her legal work and her advocacy has centered around environmental issues. And her most recent book is called Superman's Not Coming, about the country's water crisis and why it's up to citizens to. To find solutions since institutions are failing us. Her home is near the Palisades fire, and she was evacuated during the week it was raging. That was the same week I evacuated my house. Look, she just seemed like a great person to talk to as we're in the middle of yet another environmental crisis with no easy answers. And, yeah, I'd been in contact with her on Twitter years ago. Interesting person. I mean, advocacy, consumer advocacy, environmental advocacy. It's an important role. I talked about this a little bit before in the. I guess last week that thank God, if you believe in God or just be grateful that there are people that still are civic minded, want to help people, want to bring up, you know, these truths and Realities and events that are, you know, should be stopped or should be reckoned with. Pollutants, climate change stuff that we. We need to. To kind of come together on. But everybody's sort of isolated in their own little cocoon of their phone or whatever, and it. It just. I'm just. I'm very grateful for people that. That. That dedicate their life to speaking up, to. To calling shit out. You know, I mean, we live in a time where this idea of speaking truth to power, that's all well and good if you've got the. If you've got the. The courage or the wherewithal or even the. The facts to. To do it with, but now we're entering this time where power is speaking to truth. It's yelling at truth. And if power yells loudly enough at truth for a long enough time, truth kind of buckles and, you know, recedes and hides until it finds a gap through, until it finds a way through. And it's people like Aaron Brockovich that do this kind of work because power really doesn't want truth to be speaking to it. I mean, I guess that's the whole idea. I don't even know where that speaking truth to power came from. But now, like, in comedy, Jesus, man, you know, we're back in it. You know, I remember this from the. The first Trump term, you know, these weeks and months, the beginning of the administration. You know, you up on stage and you're taking it on, if that's where you're coming from, and you're making it funny. But these people, I'll call them, these people are very sore winners. They vote the guy in and they're like, well, good, now everybody can shut the fuck up. You know, there's a lot of loud power to truth people, and they're. They're still upset. They're still upset because it's so taxing for them to indulge or listen to or entertain or have any patience with anybody that thinks differently than them other than shut the fuck up or other than, like, I don't have to deal with you anymore. That's where we're at now. You make me uncomfortable, and I don't like it, and I resent you for it, and I disdain you for it, and it's just like. It's exhausting. You're just doing it. I'm just doing jokes. And some, you know, couple of drunky Trumpy people in the back at the store the other night just couldn't. Couldn't fathom that somebody was talking about their Leader in a. In a derisive way. And, you know, you get that sort of like, I thought you were supposed to be funny. And it's like, you know, I can just tell by your tone that your approval is not that important to me. And, you know, funny. It's pretty subjective. And the way this show is structured here at this club, you know, you just kind of waited out and you can't keep your mouth shut for 15 minutes until I get done. And now I have to engage with you. And I said, this is funny. There's a lot of people in here that were laughing. And she, she said, well, well, you were talking about freedom of speech, so I'm speaking up. And I'm like, yeah, but there's no freedom of speech here in this club where I'm the guy with the mic and the, the act on stage. It's a, you know, I'm, I'm talking. And that's, that's the context of this situation we're in. And I'm telling you, man, they had it had to take her out. And she was yelling. It's like, I know if it's getting me, but are you talking about politics? And it's just like, God damn, it's just an upward slog when you're working at these rooms where you're performing for everyone. And, And I get it, you know, I understand you're upset because you won't and someone's, you know, fucking with your buzz. And look, you know, I. I try to be as diplomatic as possible, but it does. You know, when the trend is for power to yell at truth or to tell truth to shut the up, it becomes kind of a different job. This weekend. I'll be in Santa Barbara, California at the Libero Theater on Thursday, January 30. San Luis Obispo, California at the Fremont center on Friday, January 31. Monterey, California at the Golden State Theater, Saturday, February 1. Iowa City at the Englert on Thursday, February 13. Des Moines, Iowa, at Hoyt Sherman Place on Friday, February 14. Kansas City, Missouri at the Midland on Saturday, February 15. Asheville, North Carolina at the Orange Peel on Thursday, February 20. Nashville, Tennessee at the James K. Polk Theater on Friday, February 21. Louisville, Kentucky at the Bomb Hard. Always love that one. The challenge is there for you. Bombard, which I hope I don't. Theater on Saturday, February 21. Lexington, Kentucky, at the Lexington Opera House on Sunday, February 22. March and April. I'll be coming to Oklahoma, Texas, South Carolina, Illinois, Michigan. I have some new dates to announce. This week. So check out my social pages and go to wtfpod.com tour for all of my dates and links to tickets. I'm very hung up on the. The idea of dehumanization through language and through tone. And I think there's something about the isolation we all live in, even among people because of our devices and how we take in information, that it trivializes the human component. I think that conspiracy thinking that, you know, as opposed to just dealing with the humanity of a situation, once you start speculating about the. The reason it happened or the intentions, no matter how far fetched, what you're erasing is the humanity of the situation. And I. Look, I know this isn't funny, but it's just some, some part of my brain is working on that. And I keep thinking about those, the Lenny Bruce pieces where he started doing all the slangs for all the different types of people, people for Jewish people, for Italians or whatever. And you start doing this idea about what language means and what words mean and that they're just words. And I get that, and I think that's true. But words through repetition that diminish the humanity of people or groups of people, you're taking away the idea or the reality that these are all separate, different people with different lives, different aspirations, different journeys to where they've gotten. They might be good people, they might be bad people, but whatever the case, they're individual human beings that are being lumped together under a label specifically to dehumanize them with language. So it's easier to not see them as people who are vulnerable. And I don't know that comes into play. All the things that we deal with in our life and how we get information and how repetition of certain labels and derisive and dismissive and hostile categorizations really enable people to not engage empathy and empathy. You have to, you have to work it. It's a muscle. You have to work. I don't think it happens naturally. I think in moments of crisis that people usually show up for each other because it's in those moments, seeing real suffering or tragic moments like fires or war or whatever, that people show up for people because they can see their own humanity and the humanity of others. But that's not a day to day occurrence. And the tone of commentary and culture and political speak is now operating at such an amped up level. Look, I used to do radio and I was thinking about this too, because when I did radio, I have to get into the mode of talking with a certain intensity without stopping. It's a focus that, that relies certain on a specific energy to drive it. And I think people are so amped up with their anger, their grievance, or their actual contempt or hate that the risk of taking a breather or being forced to take a breather because somebody is saying something contrary to what you believe, it's a frightening thing that they don't want to deal with. There's this. I think there's this condition where people have successfully disconnected themselves from their humanity for ideological reasons. And those ideological reasons happen at a very high kind of intensity. And that they don't want it to slow down because the risk there, not unlike a narcissist actually seeing himself. The risk there is that you'll be confronted with your own humanity. And I guess I think we need more of that, and we're going to need more of it going forward. Today's episode is sponsored by Squarespace. The best way to create a beautiful website. And now there are even more Squarespace features that will help you build your online presence. You get design intelligence from Squarespace, which combines all the platform tools that make Squarespace great. With cutting edge AI technology to unlock your strongest creative potential, anyone can build a beautiful, more personalized website tailored to their unique needs. There's also Squarespace Payments, the easiest way to manage your payments in one place. Onboarding is fast and simple. Get started in just a few clicks and start receiving payments right away while your customers get more ways to pay using the most popular payment methods. Check out wtfpod.com to see website powered by Squarespace. We've been using a Squarespace site for almost a decade now, and it's never let us down. Go to squarespace.com wtf for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code WTF to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That's squarespace.com WTF offer code WTF. So we're still talking about the fires. We just got rain here for a couple of days. Oh, my God. Thank God, if you believe in God. I mean, such a relief. And there's no breathing space between, you know, fire and rain. You know, the rains were coming on the, on the, you know, this after these monumentally horrible fires. And right away it's like mudslides. Look out for mudslides. It's just, just let's, let's just get wet. Can we just get wet, please? Make everything wet. So Erin Brockovich is a consumer advocate, environmental advocate, and she fights the good fight. And that is her life. Her newsletter is called the Brockovich Report, which you can subscribe to on substack. January 8th edition is titled An Unsettling Start to the New Year, which includes a lot of info about the fires. And it was a pleasure to talk to her and to be inspired in a way, because we all get into our own lives and our own lives are important, and we just hope the outside world doesn't crush us. And it's hard to know how you can help. And this conversation with Aaron was helpful to me. Maybe it will be to you. This is me talking to Aaron Brockovich. Okay, people, all you folks with growing families know this. The bigger the family, the more people there are who want the best seat in the family vehicle. But that's all changed with the 3 row Lexus TX. When the folks at Lexus made a luxury 3 row SUV that's in tune with every passenger, each seat feels like the best seat. The three row Lexus TX is loaded with innovative tech, plenty of legroom and intuitive features that anticipate everyone's needs. 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