Drama Queens - Earth Day 2026

Episode Date: April 22, 2026

An Earth Day episode that skips the doom spiral and actually tells you what to do? Yes, please! From nervous system hacks that prevent burn-out, to a climate scientist throwing literal dance parties for solutions, this is the mindset shift you didn’t know you needed. Plus, practical tips to help convince people in your orbit to care about the planet, too.Related reading:Five Simple Shifts for Climate Communication in 2026: https://potentialenergycoalition.org/2026-climate-change-communicators-guide-five-key-shifts/ Later is Too Late: Global report: https://potentialenergycoalition.org/later-is-too-late-global-report/ Potential Energy Coalition That's Interesting newsletter:https://potentialenergycoalition.org/newsletter/ Talk like a human communication guide:  https://potentialenergycoalition.org/talk-like-a-human-save-the-world/ Ayana Elizabeth Johnson’s book, dance parties and create your climate action Venn diagram: https://www.getitright.earth Project Drawdown – an independent nonprofit driving science-based climate action: https://drawdown.orgUrban Ocean Lab – a think tank for the future of coastal cities: https://urbanoceanlab.org Learn more about Kelly Corrigan: https://www.kellycorrigan.com Learn more from Gabby Bernstein: https://gabbybernstein.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Hey, everyone. It's Sophia. Welcome to Work in Progress. Welcome back to Work in Progress this week. Friends, and happy Earth Day. I know that the world can feel a bit stressful, but also the world, as in our planet, is a pretty magical place.

And I don't know about you, but after watching that Artemis Mission and listening to our incredible NASA astronauts, talk about what it felt like to be in space and just look back at the oasis of this place that we all live. It made me weepy. It made me feel so inspired. It made me feel so passionate. And so I wanted to mobilize that feeling and gather us for a special Earth Day episode to honor our planet as a real invitation to reconnect and reimagine and get inspired and really be reminded about what tools we have in our toolkit so we can take meaningful action together for this planet we all share. I know that that can feel really tough these days because climate headlines feel relentless and everywhere you turn

there's a fire, a flood, a blizzard, some sort of crazy extreme weather. It's really easy to swing between urgency and exhaustion and I don't know about you, but sometimes I feel like just putting my head in the sand and having a good cry. I care deeply, but I don't always feel like I know where to put that care first. And that's what made me want to speak to our first guest today. She actually does research on constant vigilance and the toll that that takes on our minds and bodies. And if we're in this for the long game, which, hello, I hope we all live a long time, so we better be, we need ways to stay grounded and productive and to remain hopeful and to be engaged in this fight and with each other. And so I decided to ask her and a collection of my own

super friends, each with a gift to help us build a meaningful, dare I say joyful, path forward for ourselves and the planet. Because real change isn't going to be born in burnout friends. It's going to come from clarity and community and action that we take as a collective that we can actually sustain. So first up, we are going to talk with a master storyteller who can help us see our role on this planet and what's going on on it right now, not as a crisis, but as a deeply human, multi-generational conversation with a powerful lens on love and family and how curiosity can move us from fear into meaningful action. Let's first dive in with Kelly Corrigan. Holly Corgan is here. I'm so thrilled. Your resume is long and impressive from New York Times

bestseller to podcaster to TED Talk giver to mom. Something that I really cherish about your work is the way that you speak to us. You make an audience feel included and thought of and seen. And you really remind us that the world that you've spent your life, writing about from the people you love to the moments that matter and how we show up for each other is truly what is at stake right now. And that's a big acknowledgement, but you talk about it in ways that feel hopeful instead of doom and gloom. And I'm curious how you've figured that out, how you've driven your communication in that direction. It's possible that I am saving my most panicked, infuriated reactions for my husband.

And so maybe a little bit when I'm kind of off the record with my girls, I feel like at least once a day, I'm like, I just can't believe it. I can't believe what's happening. And there's so much to create that sense of disbelief. And there's specificity in it that's so undoing. Like, there's visuals now. So, you know, if you're thinking about the climate and you see these visuals of subway stations flooding.

Like I remember seeing a quick clip of that. I wish I didn't have that visual in my head. Like the details are where I live and always have. I feel like on the plus side, you know, the best sentences I've ever written. are the most specific. You know, it's not that my daughter was singing in the shower. It was that she was singing, oh, I'll sing the ladies.

It's just a different story. Yeah, totally. So what I have come to believe is that for every minute that we spend despairing or noting the ways that we are in pain, like we have a stuffed up nose or our back hurts, or panicking about a future that may or may not unfold, we should devote as many minutes in a very literal sense to noting when we are not in pain. And when our back feels great, which my back feels great today.

And in our family, we have a rule that if you're feeling happy, you should definitely like slap the table and say, I feel happy right now. because we're so quick to acknowledge, like, I'm so frustrated. I'm so angry. So, and then definitely in terms of anxiety about the future and imagining the worst case scenario, I do think that it's probably essential to problem solving and forward motion individually and as a society that we redirect and do some positive imagining as well. So that's what it looks like if it goes wrong.

What would it look like if it goes right? Yes. Could you balance your, you know, your visualizations that way? Yes. And what would that unleash? Because the fact is that, you know, as soon as hope disappears or sunk. Because people just will not get off the couch. If you don't believe, say, that your vote matters, if you don't have hope, that your vote will matter, you just won't show up, of course.

And sometimes you have to show up in the rain or it's around the corner and there's a really long line. I mean, that's just to ask you to do it. And the engine for all forward motion is hope. So it's really has to be protected. And so if my sort of upstream process is to try to balance the minutes in both places, the place of despair, the place of hope, the place of negativity, the place of positivity, the place of pessimism, the place of optimism. You know, like try to get your levels right because both things are actually possible at all moments. Like this is the astonishing thing about balancing your media diet is that there are, you know, the negativity cells so that that will be what's easiest to find. But with just a tiny bit of digging, you could also find the most astonishing, equally astonishing stories of,

of somebody doing something for a stranger. Yes. That will sit you straight up. They'll put all the energy back in your body. You'll be ready again. Yeah. I think that's really important, you know, to consider the fact that what we focus on grows,

you know, what we water grows. Totally. And it's funny that you brought up that, What if it goes wrong? You know, what if it goes right? Later in the segment today, we'll talk to our friend and scientist, Ianna Elizabeth Johnson. And that's the premise of her new book. What if we get it right?

It's designing futures. And what I love is that really when you consider art, science, the idea that we might ideate as a community, the whole point is we can come up with solutions. We can invent things. We can change things. And even when you say, you know, that hope is, it's so essential to progress. You know, we saw in our last American presidential election that over a third of Americans just didn't vote. The SIEHOP worked to make them feel hopeless.

But then you see, you know, last week in Hungary, 74% of the people come out in the streets and defeat a dictator after 16 years. Amazing. We can do this. We just can't. We can't forget our power and we can't become apathetic that we don't have enough because we have more if we do it together. Yes.

Yes. And that, I totally agree about the Orban election. I was fascinated by it. I read all about the guy. I read about what made them break apart. I thought there were so many parallels. else. There was a corruption story. There was something about pedophilia in there. And there was also something about just not sort of fixing the situation for most Hungarians. Yes. You know, just getting

like food shelter at the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy sort of organized in a better way is unforgivable. And I thought that was thrilling, actually. Yes. That that's what they're demanding. It is a funny thing about voting. It's so, I think the lever that most people don't pull is to change their media diet. So right now I've been watching, I've been getting most of the story about the Middle East through the BBC. And there's something about that that I find kind of helpful. I don't, I don't know if it's that it's once removed. it makes me think like a citizen of the world rather than a citizen of the United States.

There also seems to be like more of a historical thread in all of their panel discussions. It just feels like the people in the seats are carrying history with them in a way that I don't often hear when I turn to a cable news in the U.S. So anyway, you are what you eat. Yeah. So like pick your, like set your table carefully because there's only so much information we can take in in a day. And if you're taking in a bunch of junk or taking in a bunch of biased stuff, left or right. I mean, you can fill yourself either way.

There's plenty at both buffets. You are asking for to be infuriated. And that is a. paralyzing state. Like fury is not where we want to be. No, because to your point, it, it destroys potential. But something I think is so interesting when you, you know, when you talk about changing your media diet, whether we're talking about politics or climate science, you know, our planet, the idea that protecting it would be anyone country's issue rather than like a whole human population's issue, I think about something I've been so touched by, which is the way you speak about how your daughter was really the one who pushed you on climate.

And when you think about the role of a parent, when you think about a child's diet, the routine of their day, it's a no-brainer for us to make sure they're eating food as good for them as possible, that their diet is balanced, that we're getting them outside in the sunlight and fresh air and moving their bodies. going to museums and learning things and reading before bed. And for some reason, we don't parent ourselves the way we're willing to parent our children. We get apathetic about the world around us. But when we think about what world our children are going to grow up and we get fired up again. And I'm curious, if you think about that, you know, what was it about what she said to you about the planet that was different than what you were reading in your own media diet. I've thought about this a lot about kids as this incredible incentive. Because sometimes I fantasize, if we're going to stay on climate as an example,

I fantasize about, say, an oil exec who is making it easier to drill baby drill. And if they had three 20-somethings, went out to dinner with them and said, I hate that this is what you do. I hate that this is your job. What could have more impact? I mean, there's no more naturally occurring incentive structure than a parent to crave connection with a child.

Yeah. So it's so powerful. It's like the Niagara Falls of emotions. And so we should maybe be trying to leverage it. Like I've actually been fantasizing about, I just have two daughters. I don't have any sons fantasizing about these mother-daughter retreats where they, we're not doing the talking, they're doing the talking. Yeah.

And we're sort of following them because I feel like I'm never more. more motivated to make a change or do a hard thing than when the incentive is coming from that direction. Yeah. You know? Yeah. That's really cool. I guess it's, you know, it's so on my mind because it's Earth Month and we're trying to focus on solutions and really, you know, I look around all the time and I'm like, is it everyday Earth Day? Like, and I think about that anxiety and that kind of paralysis that can happen when confronting something so scary and something that maybe feels unfixable. I'm so confused at how this most important conversation that should unify every person on the planet around the planet because we all live here often becomes one that makes people

want to ostrich and put their head in the sand and ignore like, oh, we're not on track for one and a half CEO. We're not. And people freak out. And do you think it's, It's that. Do you think it's the, I'm not through the fear and the idea of fix it or don't fix it makes me shut down? Yeah, this is where I like, we did a podcast series about the climate and we had teenagers who had done kind of extraordinary things around climate in their own little world. So like one of them was this kid who lived in New York City and she got her huge like 36-story apartment building where she lived. to start composting. Yeah. And it was super hard.

And she had to go to a million meetings. And she ran into all the bureaucracy and whatever. But at the end of the day, they couldn't resist this kid. You know, she was like 11. And so we put her on the podcast. There's another kid who figured out how to get like a bipartisan agreement about some recycling program in Indianapolis. And he went to the statehouse.

And then he figured out how to write the like mock up the legislation, a 78 page piece of legislation. This is pre-AI. So this was this kid. It was astonishing. because to go all the way back to the beginning, I so believe that good news energizes. So it's not only like creates little models

for small actions that are doable, but like a small doable action reminds you of your own agency and is so energized. And at the whole PBS show we did was just world positive people doing world positive work. And the whole thesis was there's enough people screaming, yelling, and arguing. So, like, let's put some people on the couch in front of everybody who are getting it done

day by day. Another source I really love for this sort of thing is David Byrne, who we interviewed for the podcast, the musician, and it's called Reasons to Be Cheerful. Ooh, reasons to be cheerful, yes, please. And he started it. And it's super specific, replicable moves. that, you know, from some little town who reduced emissions by blah, blah, blah, and then they tells you how they did it and it gives you the characters.

And it has that same effect on me of like, people are doing things. Yeah. People are doing things. People can do things. To know that it is being done and we can do more, I think, is really the crux of the whole thing. Yeah. I really appreciate you and I hope we get to do a big full hang soon. I would love to.

And now a word from our sponsors who make this show possible. I'm Cynthia Lois and I'm Josie Dye and we're done pretending we have it all figured out each week we laugh cry and talk our way through life's messiest moments things you think about but would never say out loud the questions you are always too shy to ask relationships regrets awkward moments and the stuff no one warns you about it's honest it's funny and sometimes it gets a little uncomfortable but that's kind of the point this is cynthia and josie's unmentionables listen on the free iHeart radio app or wherever you get your podcasts Okay, so to Kelly's point, if staying present, especially when it's uncomfortable, is where change begins, what actually moves us to act when it's time to lean in? It starts by acknowledging that we can't change anything on the outside if we are stuck or shut down on the inside. And thinking about that made me call a woman who I have been lucky enough to know for nearly two decades now, bestselling author and renowned spiritual teacher, Gabby Bernstein, whose work is

all about shifting from fear to love and tapping into what we care most about as the true engine for meaningful, lasting change. After hearing Kelly's reflections, I wanted to ask Gabby how we can bring it inward, how we can reconnect with ourselves one of one so that we can sustain ourselves as individuals to go out and be part of our community. Let's see what tips Gabby has for us today. Gabby, we've, well, first of all, I'm so happy you're here, which I told you before we were officially recording, but I'm so grateful, especially in this moment, especially in this month, you know, where everything seems scary and there's a lot of really overwhelming news. and every April we're supposed to celebrate Earth Day.

And I think so many of us are like, shouldn't every day be Earth Day? We all live here. And a lot of people, given the circumstances of Earth, have anxiety. Granted, I think we've had a real infusion of hope that we've needed. Thanks to the Artemis Mission, thanks to this moment where we remember,

like look up and remember where you are and remember we're all connected. but that's hard to hold on to, I think, without a practice or maybe without a toolkit. And you are a toolkit expert. Your whole body of work helps move people from fear into love. And it's why I'm really grateful you joined us today. I'm sure everyone expected me to be like interviewing Al Gore or something, but I'm like, we already know what he thinks.

What I want to know is how we can harness our joy, how we can harness like that space mission magic and start to make more room for love on this planet again so that we can show up for each other while we're on it. Yeah, that's a great place to start. How can we make more love in our own world and start to create more of it so that it can have that ripple effect,

which I believe is actually the mission of everything I do? And so that change agent inside of us has to be a priority right now because even when we feel justified, even when we feel like we have, we're in the right, we still have to ask, you know, how can I listen more? How can I show up better? Why? One, because we need more harmony in our, in our momentary moment relationships. But the more harmony that we create in these individual relationships, the more harmony that person creates when they head home that night. And then the more harm their child has a dinner and the more harm. And so that ripple effect is necessary now. It's really necessary right now. It always has been, but we don't have the safeties and the comforts

that we once had. And so with the just global upheaval of trauma and terror and chaos, we have to recognize our spiritual activism. And that's how we show up and how we show up in the energy that we bring. Well, you talk a lot about this. And it's a phrase I think about a lot. that fear paralyzes and love motivates. And when I think about fear and the kind of apathy it will cause or the inaction, how people can't quite motivate to get to the voting booth or go to do the fair on Saturday that's in town or whatever it is that would make them feel empowered or make them feel happy, but we're motivated by love.

Sometimes getting out being with other people or showing up for other people is the thing that is generative. So how do you think we turn the engine over? Like what's one of the first great steps you offer people in terms of getting their motivation activated again, getting that love instead of fear pumping through their body when so much of what we're surrounded by

is the imagery or energy of the fear part. Yeah, I think I has to start with your own perspective and your own language that you use daily. I know that I'm someone who's very connected to what's happening in the world, and I can notice when I see and witness and take in where my dialogue will go. And so I started thinking about that for myself.

It was like, you know, can I address the reality of what's happening and bring a hopeful, more optimistic energy to it? And I want to do that like in micro ways, right, like in my work relationships like I was sharing earlier, or in larger scale ways when I'm, you know, speaking on behalf of what, or, you know, at the dinner table with my in-laws and we start going down the road of, you know, AI or we start going down the road of war or whatever the next scary topic is. And what is my contribution to that storyline? And frankly, Sophia, it has not been a good one. Like, I'm like really, you know, on the fear side of things. But with, I've been in the fear dialogue around it, but I need to,

I know that I need to wrangle that more optimistic conversation. And it's not sort of overriding the reality. It's about, I believe, checking in with ourselves and seeing how can we lean into what's happening in real time from what's possible rather than what's scary. Yeah. I think that's really smart. You know, I find myself, and yeah, I mean, it's April. It's like I'm in the feedback loop of like the earth and what's happening. And I was on my high, high, you know, watching NASA. And then I turn it on the news. And I'm like, what do you mean? We're legalizing all the chemicals. What do you mean? We're taking away all the invites. environmental protection laws for the air and the water. What do you, what do you mean? Like,

and it, and it spins me into this, the way you feel with the in-laws around the dinner table, like doom and gloom and things are bad and I don't know what to do. And I guess I'm curious, you know, when the human brain or human heart often needs to see evidence that what we do matters, which sometimes with a big problem like artificial intelligence or climate change doesn't feel possible, how do you recommend that you satisfy that very human desire? Like would you say go outside, take five deep breaths, like ground in the grass? Like, I don't know. Is there something in your realm of the expertise of the human heart that you,

you would offer to anyone, whatever their tradition or language around this stuff might be. Yeah. You know, I've been a spiritual teacher for 20 years, and I've been my own student first. And so the practices that I have, you can, if you identify as spiritual, you can call them that if you just sort of identify somebody who wants to feel better. You can call it whatever you want. And I've been in the daily practice of surrendering these moments, right? So being the witness of something that's completely out of my control.

and something where I, you know, want to create change, but I don't know how to yet. And spending my disbelief by offering it up, by asking for inner wisdom to be revealed, by slowing down enough to listen to my intuition, by giving myself 24 hours of just witnessing, saying, okay, I can't fix this right now, but for the next 24 hours, I can do nothing and let the universe show me what to do. In 24 hours, we get, new inspired ideas. In 24 hours of us being in the absence of resistance, solutions start to orient. When we're in resistance and we're pushing and we're trying, we're actually deflecting the miracle or deflecting the inspired idea or the person who wants to help or the email that we would

otherwise miss because we're trekking through so hard. Instead, if we step back for 24 hours, not for five years, and just say, okay, I need to witness, I need to listen, I need to, to rewire my nervous system, then we can be in a receptive state to actually listen to our gut, listen to our inner guidance, and listen to the guidance that's around us and receive that guy. When we're in an energy of resistance, we actually deflect opportunities. We deflect the growth. we deflect the collaboration.

We get in the way. I see this all day long. It's a dance between saying, how can I take an action and stay out of the way? And so to really answer your question in those moments when you're feeling like you're in despair because of what you're seeing and because how powerless,

we truly are very powerless in so many of the things that are happening globally. Mentally, we are quite powerless. I mean, no matter how much we do. do, we still have powers at B that are leading us in the wrong direction. So that's real, right? Yeah. So how do we reconnect to our power? We have to give ourselves a moment to step back and get back into alignment because the only power we do have is when we're in alignment with our highest self. And that high self is calm and it's courageous and compassionate,

it, clear, creative ideas, it's confident. My training is in a therapy called IFS, internal family systems therapy, and this is what IFS calls self. And so particularly those of us who identify leaders in your case, leaders in the environment, or spiritual activists or or politicians or people who want to create change, we can't create change from fear and parts of ourselves that are activated. We can only create change from self. Yeah, I mean, even when you were saying that, and you started to list the qualities of self,

I literally took a deep breath. That felt so calming to me, because of course, of course, we have to maybe slow down and when something is stressful, instead of feeling overwhelmed and ignoring it, just sit with it. And then let this sort of better, aspects of our self, our whole self, marinate on it and think about what to do. And, you know,

when it comes to, as you said, the change stuff we want to make, you know, one of the things I did, which is not a self-practice. It's not like one of the things I'm trying to be better about, including like wake up and do 10 deep breaths instead of immediately look at my phone or whatever. But like I have an alarm in my calendar set for every Monday at 11 a.m. And I make my five calls. I call my representatives. I call about the thing that I'm like, don't think we're going to forget. And it's like it's one of those things where it's an act of self-care and community care for me.

And it's a good reminder that yes, me, myself, one human might be pretty powerless in the face of a lot of what's going on in the world. but then you look at something like what just happened in Hungary and you go, well, look at that. 74% of people motivated and they changed it. Yes. They did the thing people said they couldn't do and they did it. You're nailing it. There's power in numbers and there's power in small right actions in numbers of people. So think about what would happen if everyone in California was making that call on a Monday, you know, those calls.

Yes. And we can. Friends at home. You're listening. we can. Exactly. I think there's power in lots of little right actions. So when we feel overwhelmed or burdened by our powerlessness, we can reactivate our power

by taking small right actions. And so it might feel like, oh, I've got to be doing so much overnight, but it's actually there's extraordinary power in those five phone calls that you make on a Monday. Or there's extraordinary power in just changing your attitude when you walk into the office and recognizing that it has a ripple effect or whatever those attitudinal or actual actionable changes are, they make a difference on a much broader scale, even made in a small way. So we get our power back when we see our, when we get back into the small steps.

You know, I think that the other place that we can get our power back is by staying in a centered nervous system because what we're experiencing is collective trauma, right? So right now, it's so much access to so much information all at once. And you're right, you can see this gorgeous mission and be so hopeful and just so elevated. And then seconds later, see horrible news by environment or see missiles going off in Lebanon or whatever we're seeing. And we can be so, I think the only word I like to you is really assaulted, right? Yes. Moment by moment.

And then have this sort of friction between. wanting to stay informed, but also wanting to stay safe. And so that's why having a ritualistic practice of really regulating our nervous system. And so this is where the tools come in, Sophia. So the same way you'd spend an hour in the gym, spend at least a half hour a day doing something that regulates you. And so that could be, partially some of it could be in the gym, which is for me definitely. But even simple things, like if you relax your tongue to the bottom of your mouth,

you start to stimulate the vagus nerve and that starts to regulate the nervous system. Just everyone listening or watch it can just drop their tongue and relax your tongue. You can hum just like humming from a belly breath, just doing a deep belly breath can calm your nervous system. Putting your hand on your heart and your hand on your stomach, this is a hold that can calm your nervous system. Tapping on this like EFT tapping, tapping between the pinky finger and the, the ring finger, just right in that little meaty point of your skin right there, just tapping and saying, I'm safe. I'm safe.

These little adjustments, if done for five, six, seven minutes will calm your nervous system. Then in that energetic state, you show up to dinner differently. You meet your spouse at the door differently. You lead your team differently. It's important for us to recognize not just the actions that we take, but the and the ways that we pollute the planet to use your language, right? But how we energetically pollute the planet as well. And I'm taking my own own earthquakes all day long, you know, like, yeah, try to take care of my side of the street all day. Yeah. Well, then that's just it, right? You have to pay attention to

it because it's not, if this stuff came easy, we wouldn't be here. You know, our activism isn't just about what we do in the world out there. It's what we do in here. Because if you're doing the work inside, that you're creating a sense of inner safety and steadiness, it's going to be able to have a much bigger impact. I love that. Thank you. Thank you for this. And now a word from our sponsors.

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Pride. I feel it all year long. Let's go. With IHeart Pride Canada. I always feel more grounded in my own body after I speak to or listen to Gabby Bernstein talk. And feeling grounded makes me feel motivated. It makes me want to get out there.

It makes me want to double down on the things that I believe in, including collective action. And that makes me want to ask some questions to one of my favorite women to go to a march with, organize a petition with, or hit a dance floor in Brooklyn with my friend Dr. Ianna Elizabeth Johnson. She has spent her career at the intersection of science, policy, and storytelling, driven by a deep belief that the future of our planet is absolutely still ours to shape. and when she gives me a hopeful version of the future as a literal expert and a marine biologist, I feel like solutions are possible. And Ion is encouraging us all to remember, or perhaps realize for the first time,

that the most powerful climate solution isn't necessarily something new. It's what we actually choose to do. Her new book, What If We Get It Right, is asking us questions about how we're going to design a phenomenal future together. Hi. Hi, I'm so happy you're here. I'm so glad we could like synchronize swatches and be here. I just need to say how fun and cool it is for me to have multiple books that a friend of mine has written be New York Times bestsellers and have them in my home library. I'm just like, wow, I've really nailed it in my life. I mean, if you want to be judged by people you surround yourself with, you're doing a pretty good job.

I'm really excited you're here. I'm really excited to be having some time with people that I adore both personally and in the way they move in the world. Because I feel like obviously we're in a crazy moment for the ways our planet is at risk. But I also feel like so much of the conversation about that stuff is doom and gloom. And you're one of the people who keeps me feeling really hopeful about it. and your hopefulness is rooted in research. So it's real. It's not like a fantasy. And I think people need that. So just thanks for showing up to bring a little planetary joy. I mean, the planet brings the joy. I'm just witnessing it and being like, hey guys, over here. Like plants, photosynthesis,

magic. Yeah. We appreciate this. Like rainbows and octopuses. and lightning bugs and the Aurora Borealis? Like these are things that exist. Here, just to look at. And only here. Yeah. That was something I had some real planetary joy and emotion watching Artemis, I think, as we all did.

And one of the things that was so surreal to come out of it, you know, when the astronauts were talking about what it feels like to look back at Earth, to look back at the oasis, that it is out there in. space. Someone brought up something online, which I'm sure you knew, but I had never heard phrase this way, which is, you know, here on Earth, we think of certain things as rare and valuable, like diamonds. And actually, there are other planets in the solar system where diamonds literally rain down from the sky constantly. But we are the only planet with trees. And that

trees are this magical, I mean, once in a, once in a galaxy, thing and it really it made me feel so geeked about today i mean it makes me feel proud to be a tree hugger you know yeah like they're they deserve it they're worth it yeah can you tell me a little bit about how you decided to make joyful science the the root of the way you talk about climate you know your book is called what if we get it right it's literally an antidote to hopelessness so how did you figure that out? What is getting it right look like? So I love the way that you frame this question. I think it's not like it was a choice to me. Like you approach things through your personality. And you and I basically like met on a dance floor, right?

So like there's this sense of like how how we live the rest of our lives can also just be like how we do our work. I feel like I'm pretty much the same person in all contexts, which is why I'm throwing climate dance parties as my paperback tour. I'm like, we need to buggy. Like, the world is a mess. We need to blow up some steam. We need to meet each other. We need to network with the local organizations who are doing it.

I need to figure out, like, who cares about the same climate solutions and have that be the thing that brings us together. So if anyone listening feels like that's the thing. that they need will be at like the Monterey Bay Aquarium, the Librea Tar Pits, American Museum Natural History, Brooklyn Botanic Garden, the Wolf's Neck Center in Maine, San Diego's Birch Aquarium with DJs for Climate Action, a literal nonprofit organization. Obsessed. That's just like how do we, sure, like not just fine, but hold on to and celebrate together the work that we've done anticipatorily, I guess, the work we're going.

to do. But really, the celebration for me is that we have the climate solutions we need. Like, that's what makes it so easy to be excited about this work. It's the most exciting thing to hear because I think there's a real concerted effort by people or groups that make lots of money not fixing this. to say like, oh, it's too big a problem. It's, I mean, it's the whole planet. What are you going to do? We can't change this.

And when you say we already have all the solutions, we just have to implement them, can you give us a partial laundry list of what that looks like? I mean, there's obviously plenty of room for more innovation. Yeah. You know, air travel is one of those things. For sure, we haven't gotten that fully figured out yet. But when it comes to most other forms of transportation, we know how to decarbonize that. Same for greening buildings, the same for improving agriculture, the same for just the transition to clean energy.

Like we have solar and wind and geothermal and nuclear. And like we have all of these other options. Yeah. And we know how to protect and restore ecosystems, which is a huge part of the solution. Like it's not as complicated as I think people make it out to be. It really is a challenge of, as you well know, political will, the power of corporate lobbying, especially the fossil fuel lobby, is incredibly powerful. They're just dumping so much money into our elections that makes it really hard.

But we're seeing all over the place, all these examples of people being like, actually, there's a better way, right? Actually, green roofs are really a lovely thing to have. You know, electric cars are actually. better cars, induction stoves are great, right? Protecting and restoring our wetlands is just a wonderful thing to do. We support biodiversity and protect our coastlines from storms and absorb all this carbon, right? There's all of these incredible win-win situations that I think more and more people are learning about. I mean, biking is nicer than being stuck in traffic. Yeah. There's all of these

opportunities that we have to just improve our quality of life while improving the future potential for living on this planet. Yeah. It's interesting to me too when you start thinking about how the sort of moral of the story, save the earth, meets the math at this point. you know, we have cheaper, cleaner energy already. Solar is literally the cheapest form of electricity in history. It's creating all kinds of jobs. They're great jobs. You know, people don't have to go down into coal mines and die.

There are more jobs in solar than coal in America. Yes. Yes. And like, safe jobs, which I think people deserve. I think that's sort of the part of evolving, through history, that's what we're supposed to be doing, doing better year over year. And so it's, I think it's important to remind people that all the solutions that cut pollution are also the ones that save people money. Overall, the clean energy, the economics of it now pencil out

that it's cheaper. And with batteries, it's actually just as reliable because we can store it when there's extra and use it later. Yeah. And I think one of the examples, around that that always sticks with me is Texas is actually the state with the most solar and wind. Texas and Iowa and California are the top three. Wow. And it's not because there's a bunch of like hippies in Texas. Yeah. You know, there are some, but like it's because it's profitable.

Yeah. And it works. And it works. Yeah. And now a word from our sponsors who make this show possible. Megan Maroni live on her only Canadian tour date June 20th in Toronto Bill wants to send you and a friend with travel from trip central.ca. The smart way to book travel.

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So something I really like, obviously you know I love a data set and I like to be able to look at something and understand the big picture. And you have created, for our friends at home, a Venn diagram that explains how this all works. Because a lot of people think if we're going to fix the climate, save the planet, it's got to be some big, crazy radical change and maybe it's going to mess up their day-to-day life. And then you break down for everyone where people can actually fit these changes and how their Venn diagrams will work. So can you can you kind of walk us through? How did you figure it out and what does it look like? So basically, if you imagine a Venn diagram with three circles, the first one is what are you good at?

what are the skills, the resources, the networks that you can bring to the table, right? And that's different for everybody. I think that's really important because so often when people are talking to us about what we can do to help with the climate crisis, it's the same generic list for everybody. And those are things you should do, right? You should vote for candidates you get it. You should donate to organizations working on it. You should move all of your investments out of fossil fuels, right? you should absolutely, you know, reduce your waste, eat a plant-based diet, you know, think about your

travel, all of those things, protests, spread the word. But if that's all we're doing is the generic list, we're not leveraging our superpowers, right? The special things that each of us can contribute. And so figuring out, like, the specific answer for you of what are you good at is important. And then the second circle is what work needs doing. So there are hundreds of climate injustice solutions. And if people need inspiration on these, I suggest going to drawdown.org, this incredible nonprofit project drawdown has all the nerdy data sets your heart can desire, all the scientific foundations, but also is this very cool explorer for just exploring this great interface for

exploring all the solutions we already have and perhaps some warnings about the the things that the tech bros are telling us are the solutions that are like not really proven yeah but i find that to be so bolstering just going there and like seeing all these things we have at our fingertips already and then the third circle is what brings you joy so what are what are their sources of satisfaction and delight. And so for example, for me, as a marine biologist, who is a policy nerd and a Brooklyn native who's obsessed with design, I was really thinking about what are the risks for coastal cities. And so the problem that I wanted to work on was how do we help coastal cities adapt to the impacts of climate change? It's like one in eight Americans live in a coastal city and we are not prepared.

And what brings me joy is changing the rules of the game, changing policy. good design, implementation, collaborating with cool people across disciplines. And so I ended up co-founding Urban Ocean Lab, this policy think tank for the future of coastal cities. Now, obviously, that's different than what you should be doing to address the climate crisis. That's like my bespoke solution. But if people want some help thinking through their own climate venn diagrams, you know, there's a website, get it right.org, dot Earth, with all that information. And I gave a TED talk about this called Finding Joy and Climate Action. So people can get some support thinking through that.

Yeah. But of course we need, you know, teachers and graphic designers and artists and musicians and lawyers and policy wanks and accountants. Like we need everybody bringing their skills. Yeah. In addition to the more technical things we think of, like the engineers and electricians. Yeah. I love that. I mean, that circles us back as well when you said, you know, the third bubble is what brings you joy.

And you said near the top of the conversation, your book tour is also a series of climate dance parties. So incredibly sick that there is a whole group of DJs showing up for climate justice. Obviously, these are our people. I'm also just thinking as you're talking that the OG whipsmarties listening are like, we remember this. We've signed up for Urban Ocean Lab emails. It makes me really, really happy when I think about season one of this podcast. Yeah, those 2020, right? Like right before the world shut down, can you even believe?

But I just think about the joy piece, and then I think about how you're implementing it in your way. What is the goal from that part? We're bringing in local nonprofits in each city that do work people can get involved with, not just be aware of or donate to, but actually like, roll. up their sleeves and volunteer with. So they'll be spreading the word about what they're working on. The name tags will say my favorite climate solution is instead of my name is. Because the idea is that people will be connecting around like what they're interested in.

So if yours says composting, I'll be like Sophia to talk to me about composting. Like can we team up? Like which neighborhood are you in? Like what have you learned from doing it that I could maybe take to my neighborhood, right? So the idea is I don't live in all these places. It is to bring people together who really care about the future of life on this planet and figure out how to connect them in a way that's lighthearted and solution focused. There's also a costume competition.

You can dress as your favorite climate solution. The early prizes to further this idea of like maybe you'll meet your climate bestie on the dance floor just by seeing from across. the room that they're somehow dressed as a bike lane. Yeah. Who knows, right? Maybe some new romances will spark up around shared interests and climate solutions. This is like my actual dream for this paperback tour. But basically it's like, we need to stop taking ourselves so seriously.

We can take climate change seriously without being self-serious. And I feel like the environmental movement for very good reasons has been like, you guys, wake up. Like, this is bad. Like, ah, you know. And it's all true. The science backs up that statement, but it's not necessarily the most welcoming or the most durable long-term vibe, right? So I'm really interested in sort of balancing that with the focus on solutions, the what if we get it right?

The subtitle of the book is Visions of Climate Futures. And I just want people to think about what the future could look like if we get it. I mean, another one of my favorite what if questions is, you know, what if we act as if we love the future? What would that look like? How would that change our decision making if that were the lens through which we saw these opportunities, these options? And what if climate solutions are beautiful? Because they could be. Like, we're designing all this stuff.

And a stat that I learned while researching the book is that, 75% of the infrastructure that will exist in 2050 has yet to be built. So every day we're building the future that we're going to live in. And so there's this really interesting opportunity for architects, landscape designers, beauty, infrastructure people to just like build a world that's adapted to the changes that are already here, the ones we know that are coming. and yeah and figure out what getting it right could look like. Like we just, we don't give up. We don't get to quit.

No quitters allowed. Never. We're not quitters over here. No, ma'am. We're yes anders and we're dance party goers. There you have it. Yeah, I hope to see this podcast crew on the dance floor. People want to know when all that stuff is happening.

Get it right. Earth is the website slash tour. There's also excerpts from the book you can read for free. The playlist is there. There's tons of like just good free to the world info that can point us toward a better future and help us imagine the role that each of us could play in that. I think that's what's been missing. It's not been like this is for everyone. There's a place for you in this transformation. I love that. There's a place for us all. Well, thank you for bringing us some joy today. I'm excited. And I'm going to offline you about what of your parties I can come to. I'll see you on the dance floor, hot stuff. I can't wait. Let's do it. And now a word from our sponsors that I really enjoy, and I think you will too.

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We can't wait to hear how it goes and what actions you all get inspired to take in your own communities. Somebody who's an expert on action and how it's actually rooted in hope and in goodness. And yes, in love is our friend, John Marshall. He is the CEO of the Potential Energy Coalition. they are a nonpartisan communications-driven nonprofit that is shaping the global narrative on climate change. And that might sound a little heady. So let me tell you how I became a fan of John and then made him a friend. I discovered that a leading ad executive, him, was prompted by his son to take on the planet like it was a paying client of an advertising agency. And John realized the planet is really the thing that he leaves to his children.

and all children. And so he's done just that. He is giving us the research to back up our feelings, and he's finding that the path forward is actually filled with hope and love, and it thrills me in a way. I cannot explain. So I asked him to join us today to round out this conversation and give us a little bit of the inside baseball. What are the conversations we should be having about climate that actually make a difference, whether it's at home, in the office, around the water cooler? I, I wanted to ask an expert. And thankfully, John said he'd take the call. Let's dive in with John Marshall.

John, thank you so much for joining us today and for being part of our big Earth Day bonanza here on Work and Progress. You know, I so love the work that you do at PEC. I so appreciate the fact that you were inspired in the first place to do this because of a conversation, you had not at work, but at home. So can you tell us a little bit about how a fire was lit for you? Yeah, I'm happy to.

I'm happy to. And the potential energy coalition really came out of that. That's great. Well, yeah, I had a 30-year career as a marketing and advertising executive, and so I was selling soap and shampoo and credit cards to Americans for a long time. And I had a – my kid took a course on climate change, learned about it, came home one day and said, Dad, I'm locking you on that. house and I want you to do something about it. And so he called me a useless idiot for

focusing on the wrong stuff. So that was actually the conversation that caused potential energy to be born. And we sort of think of ourselves as, I would say, for lack of a better term, the marketing firm for planet Earth. Like we have one client, which is the, which is the, which is the earth. And we're trying to figure out how to use all those techniques from the Madison Avenue types to get, you know, to get people up and moving on climate change. So that's, yeah, that all happened from my 17 year old son, Henry. I love that so much. And you know, it's interesting because what you're doing is funny and charming as the story is you're really drilling down on a point that I think is so important for all of us

to make and frankly shout from the rooftops, which is no matter what we think, what we believe, what we have faith in, how we vote, what we argue about at home with our families. like the planet is the number one thing that we all have in common. Yeah. And it should be the thing, you know, we take care of the most. And yet a lot of people, to your point, have spent an awful lot of money, prioritizing clients, you know, big polluters, et cetera. And they've really muddied the waters on messaging.

Yeah. And we all know that it's really easy to start. having a conversation about, I don't know, disaster flooding or super storms or climate change and everyone's eyes glaze over and they're just kind of like, oh, God, the problem's too big, it's too intense, everybody fights about it. I think we can flip that script. Well, I'll tell you a little story that gives me optimism here on Earth Day. So you know there's like the big debate that a lot of people have is, oh, the, the fear versus hope or the problem versus solution. And so we did, we did like a massive amount of research to figure out like, should you be, you know, like,

what's the emotion, right? Okay. You should really be appealing to us. So you're having a conversation with your spouse or your kids or your uncle or whatever. And should I tell them the truth about what's happening? But that's pretty scary. Or should I sell them on this amazing, optimistic future? Turns out that neither seems to be the emotion. So after like terabytes of data and all this analysis and all those like marketing tools, the thing that the word that matters the most is actually love. And so the thing that always wins in the message testing is this one little phrase, protect what you love, whether it's the land you love or the kids you love or the ski hill you

love. And so and that kind of activates something deeper that we all share. And yes, those things are threatened, but those things are worth it. And so I think the key thing on this is to find whoever you're talking to, like, what do they care about? What do they love? And talk about that and say, this is worth protecting. And that's, that works equally well, whether you're, whether you're from the far right or the far left. We all agree we need to protect what we love.

And so I like the idea that loves actually the answer on this one. And it's nice to prove it analytically. And so, and that's all got me started. My kid, I love my kid. And so I said I have to. Totally. Well, you know what you're talking about? And this is something I speak to people about a lot because they'll ask me.

You know, why are you so passionate about activism and why are you so passionate about community organizing? For me, these issues are where the math and the morals meet. Yeah. When we protect what we love, our families, our environments, polar bears and their adorable little cubs, everyone loves those videos. We all know they track well. Like, it breaks through the noise. You know, even when I think about layering on not just what you love or not just what you know to be the right, you know, moral decision, which, you know, like issues of protecting the

environment actually turn out to be great financial decisions as well. They lower costs. They create jobs. The world's giving us a lot of good, good reasons to care about climate change, the price of the pump, you know, energy insecurity, the insurance costs that are going up because of, you know, extreme weather. Like a lot of Americans are seeing 20 to 30 percent increases. So we're just, we have so many kitchen table reasons to care about this issue. And so we don't need to go to the complicated, distant future economic concepts, all that kind of stuff. Oh, it's right now. There's so much stuff that we should be using that actually people really care about.

I like skiing and we had a rough winter in, you know, in Colorado. There's a lot to talk about here. I tried to plan a ski trip from my family this winter and we couldn't go. It was rough. So those are your climate conversation moments. It's on the ski lift. Yeah. You know, why did I just, you know, ski over a bunch of rocks?

It's actually because of a pollution blanket. You're right. It's our recreation. There's lots to work with. It's everything. So when we're giving people the toolkit for positive conversation, when we're giving them the hope that their feelings are backed up by the numbers, where do they go next? Where would you point a listener right now as we wrap up this big conversation and they're

saying, I'm inspired. I want to get involved. where do you send them first to make sure they take the next right step? Yeah. Well, I mean, I think your point about people feeling alone is a really important point. And people don't, we're not talking about it enough would be the first thing. You know, we did a global study. 87% of people in 23 countries say the government should do whatever it takes to address the trauma.

So people do care. And so I think the first thing is to let people know that people like you care a lot about this issue, whether they're, you know, whether they're, you know, school teachers or moms or farmers or whatever, people really do care about this. Secondly, that it's addressable, and it solves a lot of your problems.

It solves a lot of, you know, problems with air quality, with, you know, with your insurance bills, with your air conditioning bills, with, you know, with your gas bills.

Like, all of those things get solved by this. And you just need to get active in your community. I do think we kind of blew it with this sort of concept of global warming. No one understood what it was. And it's actually kind of confusing. and people want local.

Like, talk about Texas. You know, what are we doing in our town in Texas, you know, which is awesome. Texas has had a 42% growth in solar last year. So all of these, there are all these awesome success stories. Yeah. California had a whole bunch of days where the energy was solely provided by clean energy. And so I think talking about those success stories, saying those ways to get involved, those things you can do, like solar is growing like, you know, like crazy,

especially plug-in solar and rooftop solar. And so I think, I think, I think. talking about the fact that we're making progress, like in our town, in our community, in our county, in our state, getting out of the global complexity that people like me have, you know, been wrestling with a little bit and getting local, getting real, talking about consequences and, you know, sort of landing it. And it really works. And be confident to talk about it. Like, it's not that polarizing. In our, in our data, conservatives move just as much as liberals on it. You should do it the right way. You can't get to, you can't, you know, you should, you don't

think of political. You can just, it's a human issue. I love the phrase, it's not. It's political because as soon as you say it, it becomes not political. You're right. Even though, you know, this political dimension. So it's, it's going to swing back. I mean, clean energy is on the rise. You know, Texas is the leader in wind. There's just so many great things that we can start to tell on this stuff. Well, and you know what I love about that is it really, it pierces the veil that we don't all need, want or believe in the same thing. You know, you just compared California and Texas on their green energy. I love that. What that says to me again is that we, we are in fact, not just protecting, but investing in what we love, which is our communities. And we can do it locally and we can do it

nationally and we can do it globally. And I think it's great advice to remind people to get involved where they live first. That's a good first next right step. Yeah, this is awesome. I'm so glad to be with you, my takeaway for your listeners is don't be shy. This is an important issue. People care about it. Talk about what you love and put yourself out there and be personal. Be human, be real. Thank you. This is great to be here. Always good to be with you, John. Thanks for joining us on the pod. Thanks for all the organizing that you're doing. And for our listeners at home, I have to say, you know, what John is doing as a public good service, what you guys at potential energy coalition are providing the rest of us, with the just the lift and the assistance to bring, you know, some joy and also to have great research in the center of this advocacy work really is meaningful. So thank you for what you're doing.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you to your kid for giving you a kick in the ass so you can give it to all of us. I'll make sure he listens. Thanks, Sophia. Good to be with you. Great to see you, John. Happy Earth Day. Thank you. Thank you all so much for joining us on our round robin of Earth Day, conversations. I love making this podcast for all of you. I love gathering people together in community to learn from each other, listen to each other, be inspired by each other. And after speaking to this gaggle of incredible thought leaders and experts, I feel inspired to take action for you, for me, for the planet too. I feel inspired about the future and I think we all needed a dose of that. So if you want to join us, we have so.

so many resources in the show notes for you this week. You can find books and articles and places to take action and things to sign up for. So please make sure you check them out. We love you. We love our planet. And we love doing really, really rad learning and activism with all of you. I hope you all have a beautiful Earth Day. Let's remember, in fact, every day should be Earth Day. We're so lucky to live on this little oasis we call home. See you guys next week. This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed human.