Good Life Project - Arielle Duhaime-Ross | Shining the Light

Episode Date: July 9, 2020

Arielle Duhaime-Ross is the host of Reset, a podcast that re-evaluates the role of technology in our lives, from Stitcher and the Vox Media Podcast Network. Passionate about a breadth of topics from science and the environment to health and LGBTQ issues, Duhaime-Ross examines technology’s impact on humanity and reveals the ethical pitfalls of our connected lives, the power structures driving, or stalling innovation, and the dubious scientific claims that can creep into our collective psyche. Previously, Duhaime-Ross was the first climate change correspondent in American nightly TV news. She reported for HBO’s VICE News Tonight, an Emmy award-winning nightly newscast, and covered the politics of climate change, life-threatening instances of environmental contamination, and the effect that global warming is already having on communities worldwide. Prior to joining VICE, Duhaime-Ross was a science reporter at Vox Media’s The Verge, and has written for Scientific American, Nature Medicine, The Atlantic, and Quartz.You can find Arielle Duhaime-Ross at:Website : http://www.arielleduhaimeross.com/Reset Podcast : https://pod.link/reset-------------Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How do you go from studying classical guitar and zoology to being an on-screen science journalist, storyteller, and now podcast host? Well, for today's guest, Arielle Duem Ross, it's always been about following her fascination and deep love of learning. Passionate about a wide range of topics from science and the environment to health and LGBTQIA issues, Arielle examines technology's impact on humanity and reveals the ethical pitfalls of our connected lives, the power structures driving or sometimes stalling innovation, and the dubious scientific claims that so often creep into our collective psyche in her fantastic podcast, Reset.

Before that, she had actually thought that she might spend her world and her life in academia, but eventually realized she was more interested in telling stories about science, essentially becoming a bit of a science whisperer for millions than actually doing the science in a lab herself. That led her to a gig as a science reporter at Vox Media's The Verge before becoming the first climate change correspondent on American Nightly TV News reporting for HBO's Vice News Tonight. Now at the helm of her own podcast, Reset, she really shares stories about the human impact of

technology and science that are so often ignored, but are so important to our understanding of the world and how we live in it and the choices that we make every day. Super excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch,

getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday.

We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him! Y'all need a pilot?

Flight risk. I'm Francophone. I grew up going to school in French right up until college. And my mother is Francophone. And, you know, a big part of our culture is the two kiss greeting, la bise. And that's a really huge and hugely risky behavior to have in the middle of a pandemic. And I am worried about people really hanging on to it because it is so deeply ingrained in our culture,

right? You greet somebody, you don't shake their hand, you give them two kisses on the cheek. And I already hear resistance from my parents sometimes when I tell them, you know, that's going to have to change. I think they're coming around to the idea, but I feel myself having to repeat it because it is something that I think will make a lot of people very, very sad if that has to change. Yeah, it's so interesting how cultural signifiers like that, where people don't even, it's not even a part of the conscious thought process on a day-to-day basis. And it's not like it's something that takes up a significant part of your cognitive bandwidth or your day in any meaningful way. But it's a gesture that has so much built into it that if it shifts, it is fascinating to kind of think about how that ripples out. You know, like what are the sliding doors that that opens or closes?

And what does the ripple look like? You know, like 10 ripples out from there. Yeah. I mean, these small gestures, you know, I remember moving to New York, even just moving to Ontario when I went to college and thinking, wow, people hug a lot here. Like, that is so weird. Like, why? Like, I don't know you. And hugging felt so much more personal than just kissing somebody on the cheek when I met them. It just, it was such a, and of course, when I would tell people that they would say, are you kidding? A kiss is so much more personal. But yeah, a lot of these things are going to have to change. And I think greeting, how you greet somebody is, I don't know, if all of a sudden you cannot have any kind of physical touch with somebody, even after all of this is changed, because I think we're going to really rethink how we greet people. You know, I do wonder what that will do to social interactions broadly. Yeah, time will tell, right? I mean,

growing up in that culture, because your mom is from there, but your dad is from Trinidad. Yeah. Culturally, did you go back and forth or was he back and forth at all when you were a kid growing up? Was that culture part of your sort of like life? Yeah, culturally, yeah, the culture is definitely was a part of my life. I have been to Trinidad maybe four or maybe five times. So I have to admit that I haven't been in the last decade, which much a part of my childhood. The music, calypso, soca, the food, curry, roti, you know, those things are deeply, deeply important to me. My father, for some reason, was very fixated on making sure that we could eat spicy foods. It was like this kind of cultural signifier. Like as long as we could move our hips the right way and eat spicy foods, then he would be satisfied with us sort of being also like Francophone Quebecers. And don't get me wrong. He loves Quebec. He loves the culture there. But I think that was those were the two things that he was very, very intent on was making sure that we could move our hips and whine is how you would call dancing in Trinidad, that kind of hip movement. And also that we could eat spicy foods.

That's too funny. Yeah. You know, I guess, you know, in the scheme of things, pretty easy two things to check off while you're growing up. So your dad ended up going up there for grad school, right? And that's where your folks ended up meeting? Yeah, yeah. They met while they were doing their doctorate degree in Ontario. Yeah. So you end up growing up in a household where it sounds like intellectual rigor was really championed. I mean, they both ended up being professors. And it sounds like that was,

I would imagine your dinner table was the type of place where sort of like issues were thrown out and fiercely debated. Yeah, actually, that's a very, very good. That was a good guess. I don't know why we ate this early, but we had dinner at 5.30 p.m. every day. And we would sit around the table. And my father considered it a victory if by 6.30 p.m. we were still there talking. And he would always remark on it and always, isn't it so nice that we're all still talking around the dinner table? And he would, along with my mother, bring up things that were happening at the university.

You know, they were both marketing professors. But we would talk a lot about university politics and how he was dealing with things. He was the grievance officer for the union. And sometimes without giving any names, he would tell us a little bit about what was going on. And then we would give him our two cents. And I think that this was his way of exercising our minds, of making sure that we were aware of how the academic world works. And so I had a very favorable impression of it, but also I think a very realistic one because I knew even when I was in college that these professors were not these perfect people who never had any kind of workplace issues. I was very, very aware of those workplace issues. And yeah, we talked about politics as well. And I think I challenged my parents quite a bit on my world, you know, their worldviews. But it was always, it was mostly like very much healthy debates. And that might

also be part of the Quebec culture, you know, the Francophone culture. French people love a good debate and they love to protest in the streets. You know, they love to have themselves be heard. And I think that more so than the Canadian Anglophone culture, that is the world that I grew up in. you would challenge their worldview. I'm curious where those points of conflict or difference were that really stood out to you. It's like, oh man, you have to bring that up, right? You know, I think sometimes I... So my father grew up... It's complicated to think about, you know, when he tells me the stories of how he grew up, it is clear to me that he grew up poor. But I don't know that he would characterize it that way, because I think that he was relatively well off compared to a lot of the other families in his, you know, sort of the various, he moved around a lot growing up. So the various cities and villages that he lived in. But, you know, there are certain cultural signifiers that make me go like, oh, yeah, no, you grew up in sort of harder, much harder conditions than I grew up in. And he worked really hard to get to the point that he's at. And he's in many ways the like penultimate immigrant father who wants to make sure that his kids are very well educated and very well taken care of.

That is his central focus in life is to make sure that my sister and I are taken care of and that we are able to take care of ourselves, probably more importantly, more so than anything else. And we had a lot of conversations around the dinner table where I had to try and convince him that, no, you are like you're kind of rich now. Like you are you have a lot of money. And he'd be like, no, like we are we are like middle class.

And I would be like, no, bro, no, you are both academics, tenured professors. You are not. This is not it. And he's going to be, I don't know how he's going to react to what I'm saying now. But, you know, it was, I would have to remind him of the level of privilege that we now were benefiting from sometimes. And I think he would fight me on it a little bit. And yeah, sometimes those were the kinds of conversations that we would have where I would be like, no, like we are we are doing very, very well. And I think he has that mindset of

just wanting to save money and make sure that we again, that we are taken care of. Like he's very he's he doesn't spend a lot. He doesn't spend on himself at all. He solely spends on our family. And, you know, maybe in that respect, he just didn't experience his own wealth very much, honestly. It's amazing how the sort of the social identifiers and the assumptions about, you know, scarcity and abundance drop into our identities really young. And even though decades later, we can be living in really different circumstances, there's something which is still sort of almost like DNA deep, where you can look at the fact of the situation and acknowledge that that is in fact our day-to-day reality and still feel like, but no.

Yeah. This is, I hear what you're saying. I see the fact. It all makes sense, but no. Yeah, and that's just not how he approaches the world. And I admire it actually very deeply, certain aspects of how he views the world and his, you know, he's just so financially responsible. And I think that is just, it is, he's a model to follow. And also, there were points where I was like, no, we are, we are doing quite well. And I think that it is important for us to acknowledge that and be grateful and also understand that that has an impact on how we interact with the world.

Yeah. So, I mean, growing up sort of like around this and around these conversations and seeing what the world of academia brought your family and sounds like also really enjoying the type of conversation that you were having. Was there a moment where you thought to yourself, well, maybe I'll follow this path. Maybe I'll end up being a professor. Oh, oh, 100 percent. No, my sister and I and this this all sounds deeply privileged. And I definitely want to say that I am aware of that. But growing up, all my parents' friends were professors. Everybody had a doctorate degree. And so I think I was probably around 10 when I realized that not everybody has a doctorate degree. And by then, I had already decided that I was going to get one and I was going to be an academic and I was going to be a scientist and I was going that, that was a big deal for me. That was a big moment when I was like, you know, actually, I'm not going to be a professor. And in some ways, I still think that one day I might be. It might just be in journalism and it might be sort of a retirement plan of sorts, because there is something that is very attractive about that life. And I love to teach. So, you know, maybe. But yes, I was convinced. And my sister, in fact, did get a doctorate degree in economics. And she's not an academic. But, you know, she did do the thing. I'm the only non-doctor in my family. Yeah. But in an interesting way, right? If you look at the

fundamental qualities of what you looked at in the world of being a PhD or being a teacher or professor, you've kind of created your own container to do effectively that throughout your career. You've just said, I'm going to define the box the way that works best for me. And plus, it's really fascinating. I have sometimes similar thoughts to you. My dad had one job his entire working life. He was a professor and he actually ran a research lab for human cognition. And so I heard a lot of the similar stories. And I love teaching. And I wonder sometimes, because I'll occasionally get this, you know, like, well, it'd be so cool to be back in a classroom. Right. cool to be back in a classroom. And I wonder if by the time that I feel like, you know, my life is pointing me back in that direction, the world of education, especially higher education, will

look remotely the way that, you know, it's looking, I want to say now, but honestly, six months ago. Good point. Yeah, that's a huge question. I mean, it definitely doesn't look the way that it did when my father was, you know, at the peak of his career. You know, he was at one point with the dean of the business school in Montreal. And so, yeah, I think so much about academia has changed already. My guess is it will look a lot different in 10 years, in 20 years. And that may vary by field too, right? There once was a time where doing a bunch of postdocs was not at all common. And now, depending on your field, you might do three, which just sounds so exhausting to me. Yeah, I mean, but so that's probably also, you know, like the difference with you between being a scientist and the path that you've decided to explore. I mean, you, you end up going to university focusing on zoology, I guess, and then doing your master's, but basically realizing, I guess at some point, okay, so the being in the lab side of this, which would be the multiple postdoc type of things, there's clearly a deep fascination with big questions and how to unpack them and

how to deconstruct all sorts of different things around you. And it's interesting to me that you had that experience, that you pursued that academically. And then something like a switch gets flipped in you that says, I actually, I'm less interested in being the person in the laboratory and more interested in being the person that's out there having conversations with all of the people in the laboratories and effectively translating that for a larger demographic. Yeah. Yeah. I definitely had, you described it well, a flip of a switch where it was very much like a light bulb going on, going off all of a sudden, where it was one specific night in the lab just before my last year of my bachelor's degree. I was doing an undergraduate thesis and I was doing research and I was listening to podcasts, science podcasts, and I was doing work on salamanders because I

wanted to, I mean, they're amphibians, but I wanted to study snakes down the line. I happen to have an affinity for reptiles. And I was in the lab, I was doing my work, and it was very solitary. It was probably around midnight because that's when my salamanders were most active. And I just had a moment where I said, I would just realize that somebody was writing the stuff that I was listening to in these podcasts. There was somebody, they weren't just saying things, you know, there was a process. There was a research kind of process. And frankly, I probably could have realized it earlier because I was the only person in, whenever I did a group project or a lab report with the other

students, I was the only one who ever volunteered to do the literature review, where you have to read a bunch of studies and sort of summarize the state of a specific topic in science. And I loved that part. I loved reading studies. I loved coming up with a thesis. I love coming up with, you know, sort of connecting dots I just very much gravitated towards the writing portions of things. And the first program that popped up was the one that I ended up attending the next year at NYU, which is a master's in science, health and environmental reporting. And I'm very happy that I finally came to my senses and realized that what I wanted to do was communicate science. Part of it, though, it's not just about communicating science. I don't want to make it seem like I just want people to understand. Part of it is very much it is a selfish endeavor because

my attention span is not suited to science. I like bouncing around from subject to subject. And when you're a scientist, some scientists get to do this. But when they bounce around, they mean like every five years they change their focus. I want to do it every month, multiple times. I love learning new things. And I love talking to experts in their field. And science journalism gave me an opportunity to constantly learn and switch subjects, like just jump around all the time. And that very much suited my personality. Yeah. I mean, the world of science is when you are the researcher is so fiercely siloed. And I think a lot of people don't, outside of that

world, don't really realize like you sort of like you pick your lane and then you pick, you know, like the one eighth of an inch that exists within that lane. And then the expectation is you're just going to go narrow and deep for years, maybe decades. And very often the questions are so – they allow you to go that narrow and deep and they're so complex and so unending. And a lot of people love that. They love that part of it. But the way that you're wired it sounds like it really you were almost the exact opposite you know now you get to kind of say okay i'm

gonna go narrow and kind of deep on this one thing for this amount of time and then yes thing and then the next thing and then the next thing mayday mayday we been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him.

Y'all need a pilot? Flight risk. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10,

available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, Charge time and actual results will vary. When you sort of graduate out into the world of science and health journalism, I mean, what does that world look like? Like, who are the people who are sort of like defining the identity of the person who is in that world at that time? And did it look anything like you? I mean, there are so yes and no, in the sense that when I graduated, there were quite a few women in science journalism. But I would say that the big names and still to to this day to a certain extent, are men. And so there were, but increasingly the people who graduate from science journalism programs are women.

And so at some point there will be some kind of a turnover. Well, you will see that the big names are almost all exclusively women. So that'll be an interesting thing to see down the line. And there were also folks of color in science journalism as well, but it is a very white field by and large, especially if you're successful and at the top of your game. And as far as queer folks, yeah, there are queer folks as well in science journalism. But again, they may not be the voices that people think of or the writers that people think of. And so the fact that I am a combination of all three of those things, yeah, I don't really have a bunch of examples of people who are like me in this field.

So what I do enjoy, I love doing this, is I love actually going back to NYU. I've done this for other schools as well, but I love talking to students. I love showing them that there is a path for them in this field if they are a person who looks like me or who has identities that might align with mine. And so I try to, I make a point of doing it every year. And there's, you know, the first year students at the master's program that I go to, I talk to them every year. Yeah. I mean, I think it's so, I've talked to so many people, I'm sure you have over the years also, who have stepped into careers and just felt this and not been representative of a lot of, you know, the

people who made up that career, not seeing it as a bad thing necessarily, but also felt a sense of desire to then sort of like step back to the people who are looking at potentially those careers and saying, hey, this is what's possible. And there's a lot of shift that's happening and you can be a part of that. And I think it's such a, it's powerful to be in a place where you feel like you can actually play that role in somebody else's life. Yeah, no, absolutely. I get a lot out of doing that. And, you know, every time I do it, it reminds me that, yeah, maybe at some point I do actually want to teach. So that also is a, you know, it's a nice little reminder right there.

This one lecture was really fun, but a whole semester would be pretty cool, too. Yep. So you come out of school. You're stepping into the world. Was The Verge the first gig for you, or was there something that teed up before that? It was the first. Being a science reporter at The Verge, which is a Vox Media website that largely covers technology but also has a very robust science coverage mission, was my first staff job. Previously, I had done internships at Quartz, Scientific American,

and Nature Medicine. But it was my first staff job as a journalist, you know, no longer an intern and full-time writing. So when you go from there, doing a lot of research, doing a lot of writing, but still largely up on Vice. Yeah. And not just not researching behind the scenes, but like very forward facing. How does that jump happen? And maybe a bigger curiosity of mine is what made you want to do that? I still can't believe I did it. Still can't believe I did that. When I met my wife on our very first date,

she asked me, you're a journalist, you just graduated, you're, you know, you're looking for a job. I hadn't yet started my job at The Verge at the time. And she said, would you ever want to do TV? I said, there's no way. I had a a good public speaker. I get, you know, these red patches on my skin. You know, I get very splotchy and I, my hands shake. There's absolutely no way that I would ever, ever do that. And then, you know, cut to two and a half years later and I suddenly I'm working for a TV show. So I don't exactly know what changed. But when I started doing videos for The Verge, I think I got a sense that I could talk. It was interesting to be able to talk directly to the audience. It felt like a really challenging exercise. And I think in many ways I have had this pattern throughout my life where I have done things sort of because they scare me. And I don't know what's wrong with me, but I think that is a pattern. I previously before this,

in almost a different life, I studied classical guitar in between high school and college. In Quebec, we have something called CIGEP, and you get a degree out of that. And one of my focuses was classical music. I was a bad classical guitar player. I still am a bad classical guitar player. I don't understand why they accepted me into the program, but I made wonderful friendships there, and it was a really good learning experience. For the first time, I wasn't very good at school. And don't get me wrong, being good at school did not come naturally to me. I worked very hard to do it, partially because of the dyslexia. I failed a class for the first time when I was in music school. And I think doing video at The Verge was that as well. I think I did it because it scared the shit out of me. I don't know. And then I think there was an additional benefit, which is just the connection to the audience. And also, maybe it's I just got to have more fun.

Partially, I think I got to be less rigid, more loose. I think maybe that was part of it, too. And I don't quite know why Vice got in touch with me. I still don't really know exactly what they saw or how they heard about me. But they were launching this TV show called Vice News Tonight on HBO. And it was a nightly news TV show. And it hadn't launched yet. It was about, you know, maybe four months away from launching. And they tapped me on the shoulder and said, hey, we we'd like you to come and audition. And I had a blast doing the screen test.

I had the most fun I've had in a really, really long time just doing that screen test. And I think they they did these fun things, like they had me fake interview, they had somebody play the role of the CEO of Theranos, Elizabeth Holmes. And I had been reporting a lot on Theranos at the time, which Theranos, for people who don't know, was a startup that tried to make a rapid finger prick blood testing device that was a total scam. And I just got a kick out of finally being able to talk to this woman because I had been itching to ask her a bunch of questions. And of course, it wasn't actually Elizabeth Holmes, but the exercise itself was a total blast and talking into the camera and they were asking me questions about myself. And

I felt good. I don't think I was amazing at it, but I think they saw something and then they offered me the job. Yeah. I mean, I wonder as you're sharing that, that feeling that you got, I wonder if that, I wonder if you could trace that back in any meaningful way to the dinner conversations with your parents where you're just sitting around because it sounds like,

yes, it was rigorous debate, but it also sounds like you really enjoyed it. Like it was the type of thing where let's just go at it. Let's actually have this conversation. I wonder if sort of, you know, years, fast forward years

and you actually go like, oh, wait a minute. I get to, you know, years, fast forward years, and you actually feel like, oh, wait a minute, I get to, you know, I get to create this container where I sit down with somebody where I don't necessarily agree with their point of view or understand it. And let's get into it together. Yeah, I think I get a real high out of that kind of interaction. And I love talking to people that I disagree with. I, because I want to understand where they're coming from. And I also, you know, enjoy poking holes in their argument. Or also, I enjoy changing my mind. Not that I like being wrong necessarily, but I like the moment where I go, oh, like, that's what you mean. That's where you're coming from.

That moment is so beautiful to me. And it just, I don't know, I think it just every time I go, you know what, I'm better for this conversation. I've learned so much. I now have a greater ability to understand people who are very different from me. And those moments are moments that I cherish for sure. Yeah. I mean, it's curious that you said you enjoy changing your mind. And one of the things that makes me wonder is, is it more about changing your mind about, well, okay, so I, you know, like maybe I wasn't quite right on this issue or the assumptions that you make about the person who's on the other side of the equation and who they are. And,

you know, cause I think a lot of times, well, you know, this is one of the biases which has been documented, right? When we do something or believe something and let's say it causes harm to another person, we believe ourselves to be good people who just did something wrong. Right. But when we look at somebody who does the exact same thing who is not us, we don't say that's a good person who's done something wrong. We say that's a bad person. So when you have a conversation with somebody where they see the world very differently, I think there are two conversations going on, right? There's the conversation about who's right. And then there's the conversation about what led you to a point where in this moment in time, you see the world the way you see it and

you believe what you believe? Yeah. I think it's twofold. I think it's one, gaining a better understanding of an individual, but two, it is revising my assumptions and realizing that I made certain assumptions and sort of maybe this is the one part of like math that I like is sort of going back and saying, oh, why did I actually think that? And what were the steps that I took to get to this particular argument and this particular point? And revising my own assumptions is something that I it's a mental exercise that is so fulfilling and enriching for me yeah I just I you know I wish I could I could explain it differently but it really does I do get a high out of that moment where I go oh okay I thought this because that maybe that has something to do with the way that I experienced the world when I was very very young and maybe maybe where you're coming from also has

to do with the way that you experienced the world when you were very, very young. And I like sort of, even with people that I think are deeply misguided or are harming others, I do like trying to understand what may have happened to them when they were younger that got them to this point. I think that there's a lot of value in that and not to excuse any person's behavior at all, but it is valuable to sort of try and trace that back. Yeah, it's interesting. We had someone on the show, Tristan Angel Reese, who, so he's a trans man, burst onto the scene a couple of years back a quote pregnant man on the internet and took just massive massive levels of hate towards him in just a brutal brutal public way and but his job his full-time job was at the time he basically having conversations he was out canvassing and

having conversations with people who basically saw him as not just wrong, but the fundamental nature of his existence as being a violation of everything that they believed in. And his job was to basically knock on doors and have conversations with people and open their minds or see if he could have a conversation that would open their mind to a different point of view. And he kind of found himself having to catalog people as, you know, like, if you're in this bucket, you know, it's just, you know, we can't have the conversation. If you're in this bucket, we can't have it. And I remember he shared with me there was a whole science that they were trained in about how to actually have a conversation that has the potential to lead somebody to change their point of view. And it all starts with empathy. It all starts with, you have to first understand who they are and what led them to believe the things they believe.

Yeah. And that exercise is really valuable. I 100% agree with that. I think in order to change a person's mind, you have to be able to find some kind of common ground and you have to constantly be reinforcing the fact that you do have common ground. You both have perhaps the same goal, a similar goal. You maybe have similar values. There has to be something that you can fall back on to say we are not that different. And so this is a starting point for us to have this conversation. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Do you think it's possible to effectively and consistently change the minds of other people if you don't simultaneously hold yourself

open to having your own mind changed? No, because if you are not open to the idea that that person might also change your mind, then you approach the conversation completely closed off. And you have to demonstrate some kind of open heartedness in order to make that connection with an individual in the first place. So no, I don't think it's possible to change somebody's mind. Now, I will also say that I think that, you know, I spent three years as a climate change correspondent. And to be clear, I don't think I changed a bunch of people's minds about climate change. I might have changed a few minds. I might have opened a few eyes.

And that is valuable and worth it for me. But people who are convinced that climate change is a hoax or that it's not as bad as people say or what have you, it is very, very, very hard to change those people's minds. And I don't necessarily think that I am the person to do that. Sometimes I think that is that person's cousin or that person's family member that is more likely to be able to change that person's mind than I ever could as a TV journalist. Yeah. While you're out in the field and you're in front of the camera a lot, and you're doing this. And you're also, like you said, effectively talking about climate change, but also a number of other things that are polarizing for a lot of people. And part of that also is, it's not just the part of the conversation that you love, like the getting into it with people, the intellectual conversation, the your own learning, but also being so forward-facing and so visually forward-facing, there's a lot of exposure that you have just on a personal level, not just because of what

you're arguing, but because of who you are and what you stand for personally. I'm curious, so as much as people were looking at you as an amazing example and a champion of ideas that they believed in, you're also taking a lot of hate for a lot of different reasons from a lot of different people, sometimes with a screen between you, but also sometimes face-to-face when you're out in the field. I'm always curious how people, and in this case, how you just individually moved through that. So it's interesting because the period of my life where I got the most hate from strangers was actually when I was a science reporter for The

Verge. It was not when I was on Vice News Tonight, not when I was on TV, which amazes me to no end still today. But I think the, which is interesting now because I host a tech podcast, but I think the tech audience in particular was very hostile to any kind of conversation surrounding sexism or surrounding racism. And I'm largely talking about like five years ago here. But, and you know, that may or may not have changed, but that was when I got the most hate. I would get rape threats and death threats on Twitter. There was a period of my life where I had trouble sleeping at night. And I completely, you know, I made sure that I never mentioned my wife and I made sure that I never posted any pictures of her on Instagram. And I had my whole family suddenly start using,

you know, increasing their Internet security and just being very, very, very careful. I still have very high internet security, but I do have loosened up on a lot of things because I don't get as much hate as I used to now. And that could always change. But it was not TV. And I think part of it actually was the fact that when I wrote an article, that there's a little button next to the article that allows those people to follow me on Twitter immediately or tweet at me or send me an angry email. There's immediate accessibility. And the minute you go on TV, all of a sudden, there's just like an extra barrier to sending somebody some kind of angry comment. You really have to look that person up if you see that person on TV and you disagree with them.

Now, don't get me wrong. I do not look at any of the YouTube comments for any of my reports for Vice News Tonight. They are truly horrendous. A lot of comments on my appearance, a lot of comments on my sexuality, a lot of comments on my gender presentation, those kinds of things. Haircuts. But I didn't get nearly as much death threats or rape threats when I was on TV. And yeah, I think it's just that people get really trigger happy. And the minute that you just create an extra barrier, they have time to like rethink it, maybe calm down a little bit or maybe just say, you know what, it's not worth it. And so that always amazed me actually.

Yeah, that is really interesting. I mean, I wonder almost if to a certain extent too, when it's just print and then there's a, you know, a button or a way that somebody can easily respond. And they also don't really have a strong visual representation of you. It's almost harder to see somebody's humanity or you have to kind of work to, you know, like to really humanize them. So it's easier to just dehumanize them and respond in a really vitriolic way. Whereas if you see somebody on screen, you're like, oh, wait a minute. I don't agree with what they're saying, but they just seem like a decent person. They're actually a human being.

On the one hand, it gets harder to attack them. But then like you said, on the other hand, you get attacked for a whole bunch of different things, your gender presentation, the color of your skin, like your whatever it may be more sort of like it's almost like more visual representations of who you are rather than quality of your ideas. Yeah, no, absolutely. You know, I would get a lot of comments on YouTube saying, you know, that person really just looks like exactly what I think a vice reporter would look like, right? Because I have short hair and, you know, I'm gender nonconforming. You know, so these kinds of things would really grate on certain individuals. At the same time, I think they would also see me, a climate change correspondent, showing a lot of empathy towards coal miners, because I actually think that this country, the United States, has treated coal miners deplorably over many decades.

And that is something that I will argue to the death. I actually feel a lot for folks who work in the coal mining industry and not the coal mining companies, but the coal miners specifically. And, you know, those kinds of moments, I think, are teachable moments for a lot of people who would assume that I would shit all over coal miners, which I would never do. Yeah. So it's sort of like it allows somebody to really see a fuller spectrum of who you are and also be surprised by the fact that you genuinely are curious. It's more about the truth rather than saying, this is a point of view I'm going to try and get you to believe. Yeah. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're gonna die. Don't shoot him, we need him! Y'all need a pilot. Flight Risk.

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Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. so last year um you end up basically saying okay so enough with the um me being on screen and it's time to get behind a microphone you launch a podcast reset which is a fabulous show by the way um oh thank you and i'm curious about you know i'm always curious about the decisions where you know and there seems to be a pattern? So there's sort of like, you're curious and you love to jump between issues and kind of like continue to rotate through them, but also sort of like entire channels of research and representation, sort of like you lock into one and just devour it. And then you move into another, you spend a chunk of years there and then devour it. What's the thing that makes you say, okay, it's time to get behind a microphone. It's time to get into the next thing. That's a good question. I think it's a lot of things. And you're right. This is part of a pattern that I have where I like to jump from medium to medium. And I think this is probably another one of those things that scared me. And I wanted to challenge myself and teach myself something new because podcasting is so intimate.

It is, you know, I listen to a lot of podcasts and it is very much just having somebody in your ear. You develop a very close relationship to those podcast hosts that you keep coming back to. I would argue in many ways closer than a lot of TV correspondents or TV hosts. You know, maybe there are a few exceptions, but I think that it is a very, very intimate relationship. I think I wanted that with my audience. There were other circumstances as well. HBO canceled Vice News Tonight. And Vice News Tonight does still exist, it's now on a different it's a different TV channel it's on Viceland or what used to be called Viceland but you know that that but even before that even before HBO made that decision I knew that I wanted

to go into podcasting it was also probably wanting just a little bit more control over my stories, having more of a willingness to put myself out there more. There's something very interesting about documentary filmmaking where because because Vice News Tonight was a documentary news show where which is wonderful, actually, by the way, which is that the correspondent, at least the way that we did it, is you want to erase them as much as possible. You want the characters of the story to be the most present thing in any segment. And that is something that I strive to do very much so. But that also doesn't give you much of an opportunity to have a little bit more of an opinion, to present a little bit more of a worldview and an argument in your reporting. And so podcasting was a way for me to do that. Now, to be clear, that scares me a lot. It still scares me a lot because journalism in the way that we are taught to do journalism is not supposed to be something where

you even say that you have an opinion, that you even necessarily share your worldview, because that is contrary to, you know, the view from nowhere, this idea that journalists are supposed to be completely objective and, of course, none of their life experience ever has any kind of impact on their reporting. And I just don't believe that that's possible. I just believe that that is a lie that many journalists keep telling themselves. And in some ways that lie serves a purpose and it is valuable to a certain extent. And especially for politics reporters, I understand why they cling to this idea so strongly. But of course, your life experience has an impact on the kind of reporting that you do. And I want to be more transparent about that. I want to be able to say, you know, I come at this story from this place. And so, yeah, that has an impact on how I'm telling you this story now. And if you understand where I come from, maybe you will understand my reporting better.

And I think that that was one of the other things that drew me to podcasting just by virtue of changing this medium of having me be a host all of a sudden, which is such a strange title. I suddenly had that ability and I had maybe a little bit more control over the sources that we would use, which is very important to me. There are certain voices that I wanted to elevate. And that, yeah, that was sort of what drew me to it. It was partially the challenge and partially the control and just the ability to be more transparent about where I'm coming from. Yeah. I mean, it's so interesting you describe it that way. I had a chance to sit down with Alif Spiegel, who was one of the co-founding producers of This American Life, and then now Invisibilia, which is incredible. And she wrote a number of years back a manifesto rate, and she was referencing radio. She said, you know, there was, it was more of an announcer than, you know, it wasn't

a narrator. And the, the complete and utter disruption that Ira brought to that whole thing was that it, that person transitioned from being the objective person who basically just, you know, like pitched it to tape and then took it back and then pitched it to more tape to now like the narrator, actually they, they became, they moved from being the narrator or the announcer to the narrator. And then they effectively became a character in the story. And so like their being and their point of view was a part of it. It wasn't just tossing to tape. It was like, okay, so now like me and the way that I see the world and the way that I frame it

is actually a character in this entire experience. And completely agree i think you see that you know i think a lot of people have built on what they started in the beginning of this american life and you know you see in public radio and now all over podcasting and um and i actually i feel like it's a really good thing because not only do you get to know people better, but also like you said, it was always an illusion. You know, we're, we're human beings and, and we always have points of view and yes, I understand that you're trying to be, you know, in theory as objective as humanly possible,

but at the same time there's value in sharing your lens on a particular set of facts or circumstances or the way that a story is told and also being transparent about it and basically saying like you know me you know where I come from you know my background right how I feel and you get that in the world of podcasting and you can so take whatever I say, like with that. And ignoring the world that you may come from and never mentioning it, I think to a certain extent does a disservice to your reader or your viewer or your listener. And I feel like people want to know you these days in a different way. And there is that intimacy, you know, with not just podcasting, but audio where and especially these days, because most people listen to it with earbuds while they're walking around or doing something else, the voice is literally in people's heads. And there is no more intimate way to sort of enter somebody's media ecosystem. It's also, I mean, it's interesting, you know, you sort of shared how you wanted more freedom to explore different stories and have more control over that.

And, you know, when you look at the things that you've covered, you have covered some of the things that you've covered in the past. and more freedom to explore different stories and have more control over that. And when you look at the things that you've covered, you have covered some of the things that you've covered in the past, but then at the same time, there's a whole episode about your favorite bookstore in New York, the Center for Fiction, and how this moment in time is affecting it. So it gives you the opportunity to bring more of yourself to what you're doing in more like a meta level, too, in the stories that you're choosing and something that was very, very important to me. I growing up, my favorite place that I gravitate to. Library, bookstore is like sort of second best. And my favorite place in New York City, all of New York City, is the Center for Fiction, which happens to have both a library and a bookstore. The library is on a sort of membership basis. You have to pay a fee to be a member and be able to take out books from there.

But yeah, it felt really intimate to reveal my favorite place in New York City, to tell people about how much I love this particular business, this particular, it's a nonprofit, it's a literary nonprofit, but to open that up to people and tell them, yeah, this is a place that I go to a lot. I never would have done that a few years ago, partially because I got, you know, rape threats and death threats. But it felt important to talk about that for the podcast because I wanted people to understand why we were covering this on a tech podcast. And we had a tech angle for it. Don't get me wrong. But I wanted people to understand why this mattered to me. And part of that was revealing that the Center for Fiction in New York City is the quietest

place that I know. And it is the place where I just get to relax. I said it is the only place where I relax. There are probably two places where I fully relax in all of New York City. And the other one is my powerlifting gym. But like, I never would have been able to do that for TV. It just doesn't work. It's not that interesting visually. But in audio, it just it really did. And I'm love that your two favorite places to relax are like the quietest place in New York City and a powerlifting gym. Which is not quiet at all because people run and you got like plates getting placed and people are dead lifting and just like throwing the bar down. Yeah. Right. So you have these two just radically different ends of the spectrum and somehow they all blend together and make everything okay. Yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, I mean, I've been those are the two things that I've been doing to keep myself sane. And in the last few weeks is is I've been reading a lot. And I've been working out a lot. And, you know, I do it for the the mental benefits very much. So these are the only moments where I feel like my mind clears. And, you know, I know that

there's a pandemic going on and it's important for me not to forget that, not that I could, but that's when I feel like I'm meditating is when I'm focusing on lifting something that is very heavy. I love that. When you think about the podcast, is there something, and you kind of zoom the lens out a little bit, do you think about it in the context of bigger picture, this is what I want to accomplish by doing this? And like, this is the mission, this is the vision for it. And is it different from the things that you have done before in a meaningful way? So I think the vision for Reset, and there are a number of very wonderful tech podcasts out there, Reply All is a really good example. I think that for me, the vision was a podcast that felt more human than other tech podcasts that I know of that really focused on the people and not just, you know, the people who are making lots of money. I mean, the users. I mean,

the people who are maybe not benefiting from technology. And I wanted to talk about social dynamics and how technology and science impacts those social dynamics and impacts individuals. You know, because of the pandemic, we have pivoted to a certain extent. We're covering technology and science impacts those social dynamics and impacts individuals. You know, because of the pandemic, we have pivoted to a certain extent. We're covering internet security a lot less, and we are now talking about science a lot more, which actually is completely in my wheelhouse. So that works out very well for me. But ultimately, the thing that I wanted to do was to elevate certain voices that don't get heard from a lot when you look at tech coverage right now. And that to me is what I'm is partially what I mean when I mean that I want to make the most human tech podcast you've ever heard

is that means covering the full spectrum of humanity, which a lot of other places don't currently do. So what would be a sort of other places don't currently do. So what would be a sort of like an example or a story where you really felt like you were fully in in that aspect of it? I mean, I think there are a few examples, but part of it is, you know, we did very, very early on, we did an episode about Instagram's nipple ban and how female nipples are banned from the platform, which is why you will see men bearing their chest on the platform or what Instagram perceives to be men bearing their chest on the platform and what Instagram perceives to be women bearing their

chest on the platform, getting their images deleted or getting their Instagrams deleted. And, you know, we had Rain Dove, who is a model and who doesn't really doesn't adhere to any kind of gender norm. I think you might call Rain non-binary, but honestly, I don'tINN really cares at all what kind of gender or pronouns you might assign to them. And we talked about how Instagram with this policy, which isn't just, you know, anti-female body, but with this policy is also gendering people and misgendering people, which is a violent act for a lot of people. And so when pictures of Rain get taken down, that is a violent act. And those are the kinds of stories that I think people don't necessarily hear about from tech sources. And they maybe don't also get to hear that person out. And so we had Rain talk very beautifully about the impact of this policy on their life. That's, you know, that's one example that I think is, and it's not just queer things. I think we also have done some very notable coverage on folks with rare diseases.

There's this one mother named Amber Freed. Her son is named Maxwell. He is now three years old. He suffers from this rare disease. And we had initially in January put out an episode about how this woman had done something just so wonderful where she had convinced scientists to try and develop a treatment for his very, very rare disease. And she was pulling it off. And it was actually going to happen. She had managed to get these genetically engineered mice from China over to the U.S. so they could act as models for Maxwell's, for the development of this treatment. And things were going really well. And then very recently, we published a follow-up episode talking about how all of that has ground to a halt because of the shutdowns related to the pandemic.

The work is not being done now. There is no treatment being developed because those labs are closed. And again, I think that when you think about technology, for me, that is 100% a technology and science story. You know, we're talking about these genetically engineered mice and the really important role that they play in the development of this treatment. And then we are talking about the impact of these policies that are very much intended to keep people safe, but they have an impact. They are harming, to a certain extent, this boy who now will develop debilitating epilepsy very soon and who will suffer far more terrible consequences because this treatment is now not being developed. And that's what I mean when people think about a tech podcast. I don't think that's what they think about.

I think they think about Apple. I think they think about Google. I think they think about probably a bunch of men around a microphone. And that is not what I am interested in doing. Yeah. I mean, it's about telling the story differently, but it's also, it's really, it's not even about humanizing technology. It's about telling the stories that exist at the intersection of technology and the human condition that very often are are not told or not told in a in a way that really allows us to transfer into them i mean fundamentally i think if i look at the through line through everything

that you've done it certainly comes out in the more the most intimate way in the podcast you know it's a sweet spot between fierce curiosity and empathy. And it's an invitation for people to step into exploring their relationship with each other, with the world, with technology, with science differently and opening to the possibility that they don't know everything and that there are other points points of view and that also the things that they have looked at where it seems like you know technology or science are designed one way and they do one thing that there's a whole other world right to be explored and it's not just about you and in many ways this comes back to the way that I view journalism as well, because

technology exists the way that it does currently because of the people who made it that way and their lived experience. And again, I don't think you can cover anything without thinking about a person's background, without thinking about where they came from, without thinking of the assumptions that they might be making about the world. And if you're not thinking about those things, you're not covering something fully. And that is very much the DNA of Reset and just how I view the world generally. Yeah. I mean, it's like the stories about, you know, facial recognition and how it reflected the bias of the people who designed the algorithms where you're really good at representing one type of person, in illuminating the existence of bias, not just our own personal bias, but bias in the people who created the things that we interact with on a daily basis and sort of understand that there is no neutral.

And the best that we can hope for is just to be as informed as we can when we make the decisions about how we want to interact with the world. I think it's a powerful role to play, and especially through the medium of audio. Yeah. As we've talked about, I've bounced around from medium to medium, but I really love audio. And I would have said that of video a few years ago, so who knows where things will go. I'm also kind of running out of platforms here. Like, I don't know what else I would do. I may go back to TV. I may go back to writing one day. I may stick around in podcasting forever. I don't know. But right now, I really love what I do. And I'm very fortunate in that every year of my career, I have been able to say that and what that the do part is the part that has changed. And so I feel very fortunate.

How much of that do you this is a hard question. How much of that do you think is an outgrowth of your intentional actions versus luck. is it definitely I've been I've been lucky sure but when you are a woman a queer woman a gender non-conforming queer woman of color I hesitate to talk about luck because I want people to understand that I have worked very very hard to be where I am and I think that it's important to talk about that. This didn't just happen. This was hard work. That said, was it intentional or was it just kind of, I mean, I don't, I think I have been fortunate in that people recognized my hard work. And maybe that's what luck is, right? Is that because some people work very, very hard and never, never get to do the things that I've done. And they put out wonderful things. They just, those things just don't get noticed or aren't seen. And so it has to be a combination of both. But did I intentionally, you know, I, like I said, I didn't want to be in TV. I wasn't interested in it. Over time, I learned that public speaking isn't nearly as terrifying as I thought that it was, although I still have from thing to thing that has that has got me there. And so if it's if it's a factor of my personality, then it probably also isn't luck. But it maybe isn't intentional either. anxious, you know, and says, this is the thing I'm going to move towards rather than away from. So I often wonder, I think luck is such a loaded word also, but I, you know, it seems like,

like you said, clearly, you know, like queer, gender nonconforming, woman of color in a space where you have got to work fiercely nonstop for everything you have achieved. And at the same time, you have this unique wiring that goes beyond any of those, which says that you look at something that you haven't done that you may not be good at. And there's something in you that says, but it's interesting to me, I'm capable of rising to the challenge and I'm willing to actually step into it and, um, and start wherever I need to start, um, in order to see if I can make this work. Yeah. I, I don't know exactly where that comes from because I'm also very risk averse. I'm so deeply afraid of heights. It's actually a huge problem. Vice News Tonight once had me, you know, I

consented to this, but I've never had my heart pound the way that it did during that hour. But I had to climb a wind turbine, inside a wind turbine, and then poke my head out at the top. And this thing was so tall. And at the time, I was not powerlifting, so I didn't know how to use my legs to pull myself up. So it was all like arm work the whole time, which is just terrible. And I'm so scared of heights. You know, so I don't, I think I take very calculated risks. And while I am drawn to things that challenge me, I think that generally if I take up a challenge, it probably is because to a certain extent, I believe that I'm up to the challenge.

Yeah, it's probably a combination of both. But that doesn't take away from the fact that many of the things that I've done were quite scary to me at the outset. Yeah, no, for sure. It feels like a good place for us to kind of come full circle in our conversation as well. So hanging out here in the container of the Good Life Project, if I offer out the phrase to live a good life, what comes up? Listen. Listen to the people around you. I think that I am, even though my entire job is about listening to people, I think that's something that I have to constantly remind myself to do because we all have sort of selfish tendencies and the way that I combat those things

is by listening to others. And I'm constantly working at being a better listener. So I think that's probably, and you can interpret that in whatever way you want. I think if you're reading, you mean you're listening to somebody else too. But listen, yeah. Thank you. Yeah, thank you so much, you mean you're listening to somebody else too. But listen. Yeah. Thank you.

Yeah. Thank you so much, Jonathan, for having me on the show. This was a really interesting conversation. Thank you so much for listening. And thanks also to our fantastic sponsors who help make this show possible. You can check them out in the links we have included in today's show notes. And while you're at it, if you've ever asked yourself, what should I do with my life? We have created a really cool online assessment that will help you discover the source code for the work that you're here to do. You can find it at sparkotype.com. That's S-P-A-R-K-E-T-Y-P-E.com. Or just click the link in the show notes.

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