It Could Happen Here - Soft Climate Denial Ft. St Andrew

Episode Date: November 29, 2021

Saint Andrew returns to guest host an episode about soft climate change denial. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadowbride. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, five-year-old Cuban boy

Elian Gonzalez was found off the coast of Florida. And the question was, should the boy go back to his father in Cuba? Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or stay with his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story on the iHeartRadio app,

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And also other questions, more meaningful questions than that, about, you know, things falling apart, fixing them, all that good stuff. With me today, as usual, Garrison and Chris, and as is currently unusual But will be more usual Every preceding month after this one Our good friend St. Andrew St. Andrew, take a bow Hey, what's happening? It's not quite a bow, but it's fine

How are you doing today, Andrew? I'm good, I'm good, you know, it's rainy It's chill, it's better than the Kind of hot weather we've been getting lately, so I'm good It's raining and chill here here but that's seven months of the year uh i think there's slightly different uh uh climates in portland oregon and trinidad probably yeah i've been told um so we have uh had you on a couple of weeks back to talk about solar punk and we're going to be bringing you back on uh about twice a month to talk about um whatever the hell you want to talk

about and so i'm going to now hand the episode over to you um and trust like a little lamb that you'll lead me somewhere beautiful and filled with good forage ah yes sunshine and rainbows the promised land you know okay so i think we've all noticed that uh the environmentalist movement kind of sucks i can't be jumping into it kind of sucks as in has not done the things that need to be done accomplished has been around for like over half a century or actually really more than that and you know where are we now yeah you know um of course we do have to confront and acknowledge that like there's the issue where oil companies literally suppressed a whole bunch of information and you know co-opted like a lot of the earlier movements and stuff.

But we've kind of known for a while now, and we are still here. So it's like, what gives? I think there's kind of an interesting phenomenon that I wanted to talk about today, known as soft climate change denial. So are you all familiar with that, or what do you all think it is based on first impressions? I mean, yeah, I've heard the term.

I would think it's sort of, I mean, a number of different things, including the idea that like, well, there's nothing we can do, so nothing should be done, you know? Hmm. Yeah, yeah. What about you, Garrison?

Yeah, most of my understanding of the term is like someone saying they know that climate change is a thing, they recognize that, but they are kind of more in denial of what solutions can be done to really change anything. That's generally my understanding of the term when I see it online or something. What about you, Chris?

Yeah, I usually see it with... It's usually in the context of people in the US. There's the whole... There's whole political factions whose entire thing is saying we believe in science and then they'll go talk about

like how much they believe in climate change and then two seconds later they turn around and are like signing the law and sign liberal authorizations yeah so that that's my understanding of it right yeah yeah so according to everyone's favorite source um wikipedia soft climate change denial is a state of mind acknowledging the existence of global warming in the abstract while remaining to some extent impartial psychological or intellectual denialism about its reality or impact and something i've spoken about on my channel in my most recent video where i was talking about the different um facets of solarpunk you know what solarpunk is what it needs um things that could probably potentially drag down the solarpunk movement and things that people have been using to try to drag it down because solarpunk is kind

of building in popularity and with anything that builds in popularity there are attempts from all sorts of angles to co-opt it and to repackage it and commodify it and all those things so i've kind of noticed with the solopunk phenomenon that there's this effort by people who profess to care about the climate and stuff to try to push it away from more radical directions towards something more appealing and appeasing to the status quo and to the system um and i mean according to the wikipedia definition you know it's they call it a state of mind but i think it's also like an implicit philosophy that undergoes like entire groups

and entire movements you know so like for example obviously you know it affects individuals where you know people will um miscalculate its risks and think that climate change is just extra storms or something um but then they also like people or really the movements that would neglect its urgency with just these platitudes and these um directionless actions that just serve like this kind of middling reformism um like they underestimate the extent of social change required to like mitigate climate change so they basically don't seek to change the start of school but just to sort of tweak it ever so slightly. So like capitalism with a carbon tax or something.

And then, of course, there are people who kind of straddle that fence, or maybe it's more of a spectrum, between soft climate change denial and hard climate change denial, where they might overestimate the extent of scientific uncertainty. where they might overestimate the extent of scientific uncertainty. So they might think that, oh, well, you know, yeah, global warming is happening, but we don't exactly know how much it's going to change the climate or how much it's impacting our lives and that kind of thing. So they basically turn it into something that is still up for debate, you know? And that's why I say it kind of straddles that line between soft line and hard line, because obviously the hard climate change nihilists,

they're just like, oh, well, you know, it doesn't exist. Or if it does exist, humans don't cause it. If humans do cause it, there's nothing we can do. That kind of thing. Have you all had, like, experiences with soft climate change denial, like, in your own personal organizing? Oh, yeah.

Yeah, I would say so i've encountered um i mean it's kind of a thing you encounter constantly in american politics because it's it's really like oftentimes your best option uh in in terms of like it's that or the people who say that talking about climate change is socialism. Yeah. You know, so I was an environmental studies major for most of college, and then I decided not to do it. And then I got like a minor instead because it was like seeing it there because like you know there were basically like two possible reactions to learning that one was like people who you know okay one was you get incredibly depressed and that's what i did or and then the second one was people would you know and these

people who like actually you know you know i mean these are verbal studies majors right like these people had spent a lot of time studying this stuff and they kind of like i don't know this is almost like like this kind of intellectual retreat where you you could see people basically just like convincing themselves that like somehow this would be okay and they'd like i don't know people would just they get like completely obsessed with like electoral maps and you're like no no no no okay okay if we win exactly this number of seats in this year then like uh we can we can start doing carbon credits or like i don't know it was it was it was really interesting to watch because it was like it was it was i mean because i like i think i think there's there's like there's very there's bad faith versions of it and then i think

there's also versions of it that are just sort of like people do not want to accept what's necessary to stop this. And so they sort of like... Or they can't even really think about what's necessary. Because of how the education system works. And trust me, I could go on long rants about the education system.

It really limits people's ability trust me i could go on like long rants for the education system yeah it really it really really um it really limits people's ability to think outside of like this very very strict box of possibilities because you know so much is left out of um for example history classes and so much is left out of um really all the subjects there's this very clear um ideology that you're expected to come out of the education system with and so even when you reach you know academia and higher education and stuff you're still stuck with that mode of thinking and even as you're presented with all this new information because your brain can't really like handle like the great extent of what climate change is you know it kind of retreats into this sort of simple kind of oh we just need to vote because

voting is all i know voting is all i've been told to do voting is politics and politics is voting that's the extent of it right yeah it's like this weird form of self-preservation that people need to do in order to kind of like keep them from, in their mind, you know, like spiraling out of control. This is the only thing that, you know, they need to focus on their own life right now and their own current problems.

And if they think about this large looming threat too much it just freaks you out right and you have if in order to in order to just keep going on with your life a lot of people like segment off this type of thing in their own brain so that you know manifests in a lot of cases in this kind of soft denial so that you can just keep on going yeah yeah i see it with with friends i see with family you know obviously there are the handful of people who still at least in my experience who still deny climate change but then there's like a bigger portion of people whose whole understanding of climate change is just this oh well we just need to recycle and we just need to like switch to electric vehicles and

yeah once we do that you know we'll be okay um we just tweak a couple things get some solar panels and yeah you know the understanding of it has been completely limited to like this very restricted conversation yeah that is like um basically cultivated by certain interest groups and certain lobbying groups and that kind of thing. Yeah, only a certain amount of change is allowed and that's what we're allowed to think. So that's what we're shown for examples of in media, in pop culture, whatever. So this is kind of what all of the, like all of like the YouTubers who got money from Bill Gates

when Bill Gates wrote his climate book, right? All of the things that they were talking about is like this kind of stuff. Because the only way for Bill Gates to keep his money while, you know,

talking about climate change is to have these kind of half-assed like solutions that are actually deny the impending reality and deny that, no, the only way to actually fix it is by taking all of his money. Which he's not as

big a fan of. Yeah, I mean, have you all seen the Kurzgesagt video on climate change? The what video on climate change? Kurzgesagt, in a nutshell. It's like this YouTube channel. Could you spell that so people can find it?

Oh gosh. No, but people will, I think people know, I think a lot of people know what it is or you can just search in a nutshell on YouTube.

In a nutshell, okay. It's K-U-R, I'm going to try, I'm going to try. K-U-R, no, it's K-U-R-G,

what is it? K-U-R-Z. Yeah, I think it's K-U-R-G. Was it K-U-R-Z? Yeah, I think it's K-U-R-Z-G-E-S. A-G-T. A-G-T, right. It is a weird one. But are you talking about the Can You Fix Climate Change video? Yeah.

Where the whole thesis is basically vote with your ballot and vote with your wallet. Yeah. That's the only thing that you're really allowed to do. Those are the options. Yeah.

And I believe this is one of the videos sponsored by Bill Gates. Yeah, they did. Yeah, it was. And then they had this whole line about some people think

we need to change our system from capitalism. But we're not so sure about that. We don know the answer so basically like shrugged towards or maybe system is from with the system but they basically gave it no attention you know but their channel is literally about like going deep into research about things so it's very obvious that if they spent no time like doing any kind of research into why people have the systemic critique, that obviously Bill Gates' hand is very deep in their pockets. Yeah.

Because I believe the researchers actually kind of know that, but they just can't say anything. They're not allowed to. Yeah. I think they're making the bargain a lot of people make where they're like, okay, well, if we can push for the immediate necessary changes, we can worry about stuff like that later on. It's just important to get

something done. And so we'll compromise and we'll not call for what we know is actually necessary to deal with the problem. We'll just go with a half measure because at least it's something. We got to do something now, right? The thing that's always been very grim about that to me is like you look about how how that plays out right and it's always like well okay so our half measure is going to be uh we're gonna we're gonna just like put put put a monetary value on indigenous forests so that governments can like steal them and get paid for taking the land and it's never stuff like why don't we like make more marshes which is you know if you're gonna talk about stuff that like could actually be done right it's like okay well look but we'll do remarshing do we want like that's that stuff like is easy and doesn't need you know

you don't literally have to overthrow capitalism to get people to, like, restore marshes. But it never happens because this, that's, you know, the whole basis of this sort of soft denialism stuff is not actually, you know, it's not actually an attempt to solve climate change, they just want to make money. And it's extremely grim. Yeah. Yeah.

There's this video that the storyteller, this YouTuber, he did recently on co-opting movements and he was explaining that um with the march in washington right during the civil rights movement um that was an organic movement that you know the people had come up with right but obviously a mass movement the fbi isn't going to just sit back and let that happen right so they brought in these leaders um they're called the big six and um the storyteller was explaining that basically they were paid to co-opt the march to basically become its figureheads and its leaders they hadn't organized

it themselves but they came on afterwards and became the leaders in the march and read the speeches that they were supposed to read and that kind of thing and so that sort of mass movement was basically defunded like that i mean obviously, reforms were made and, you know, Civil Rights Act was passed. But then, you know, after all that happened, an MLK got

disillusioned by the system as a whole and wanted to start pushing even harder against capitalism

and whatnot. That's when, oh well, coincidentally, he got a bullet. You know? So I think it's interesting that these movements, they're comfortable with these movements up to a certain point.

And they're comfortable with these leaders going in these certain directions up to a certain point. But then when you actually start posing a threat to the status quo, that's when you become a problem in a major way. Not to say that MLK wasn't a threat to the status quo, but just to say that they have certain limits that they don't want people to cross. cross yeah capitalism one of the things that's that makes it such a robust system in terms of its ability to to not get overthrown or destroyed is that up to a certain point it loves dissent it loves anti-capitalism because you can market that very easily like there's a lot of money in in anti-capitalism there's a lot of money in being criticalcapitalism. There's a lot of money in being critical of the system. It's just when you hit a certain point, then it becomes the CIA or the FBI or some person who's no longer accepted, but quite a bit of criticism and even like agitation to change or end the system can be accepted because it's monetizable.

And speaking of that, you know what time it is? Time for an ad? It sure is. It absolutely is. Oh, boy. Time for an ad or that's the CIA at the door. We won't know until we come back from break. Welcome.

I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows

as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how Tex Elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search,

better offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field. And I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough, so join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts.

Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez.

Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba.

Mr. Gonzales wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly.

I am talking to a felon right now, and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house.

So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it. Ah, we're back. It wasn't theia this time good news guys thankfully i mean the fact that they flew all the way down just to meet me i'm honored honestly oh i mean they've gone to trinidad for oh that's true yeah yeah but like we were saying right there's this whole

issue of these movements being able to go in a certain direction but only up to a certain point and I think it's something that Peter Galalus also talks about

in how non-violence protects the state in the sense of you know these people are able to once they get a certain level of attention all of a sudden you know you're invited to speak at these events and you're invited to go this place and that and you basically get consumed into the get consumed into the workshop machine the NGO machine the climate conference machine kind of thing so you end up with all these figures these organizers these activists who go from like genuinely trying to organize their communities and their spaces and then before

you know it they're like at such and such conference because well they think it's an opportunity to like actually make like a bigger change but in reality you know they're just there to be defanged you know so like for example what immediately comes to mind is like greta thunberg i mean i haven't looked that deeply into her past or anything um i know there are certain Red Wingers who are very obsessed with her. But I know that she recently said that she's kind of done with politicians. Because when you think of how she basically came up, you know, right, exactly. When you think about how she basically came up, it was like, you know right exactly you think about how she basically came up it was like she is talking at these events and you know people are inviting her to things because you know look at

this cute little girl um yelling about climate change right and she basically becomes this spectacle you know and that spectacle is entertained up to a certain point. And people make big event out of her, you know, like breaking down in front of these politicians and stuff. And you know what? They just go right back to normal. I think it was COP26 was like last week or the week before. Yeah. And representatives from, I think the Prime Minister of Barbados was there, and she had this, you know, big, great speech about how the Global North needs to do more for, you know,

these countries in the Global South because, you know, they have responsibility, that kind of thing. Cool. But at the same time, you know, there's, like, developments going on in Barbados to basically bring in more tourists and to bring in more resorts, buildings, and that kind of thing. That basically add to the emissions and add to the negative impact on the environment. Same thing with Trinidad's government. negative impact on the environment. You know, same thing with, like, Trinidad's government. You know, like, certain representatives of Trinidad went to COP26, including the Prime Minister.

And, you know, they're all about things changing and, you know, the climate movement and climate change being real and actions need to be taken. And then, like, this didn't make it in, like, like, mainstream news, of course, but in local news basically right after um prime minister trinidad tobago dr keith rowley he went and met up with like shell yeah

like representatives at shell to like basically bring the country and company closer together you know um because you know trinidad is reliant on oil and that kind of thing you know um because you know trinad is reliant on oil and that kind of thing so obviously these sort of leaders and these sorts of movements they only go up to a certain point and even then so much of it is just this performance yeah and this um act basically act, basically. I'm putting together a thing on COP26 right now because I think it actually does demonstrate a lot of the soft denial stuff that you're talking about.

The biggest thing to come out of COP26 in terms of actual deals is just progress on carbon markets and carbon offset credits. That's really the only thing we actually got. And I say we, but not like us, but the people in charge. They got this.

And the quote they gave was being able to buy carbon offset credits, meaning that you don't actually make emissions differences. So instead you you buy pretend emissions differences from other countries that actually did make changes um so that you don't get penalized so that's why it's buying the credits far but they said they said buying the credits can potentially unlock trillions of dollars for protecting trees expanding renewable energy and other projects to combat climate change and that's just the thing right tax the fuckers like don't the climate credits it's like um it's the same as saying like hail marys because

you you sinned and you went to your priest and confessed it's like ah i've i've i've done bad things to the environment tell me like how many times i need to go through this ritual in order to in order to cleanse myself of having pumped carbon into the atmosphere. You know what? Exactly. I think it's bleaker than that in a lot of ways. It's the climate version of the World Wildlife Fund having death squads. Okay.

Now, Chris, you are very anti-death squad, and I think we need to deal with that at some point, because hashtag not all death squads yes I will need to be able to account for my strong anti-death squad stance this is a yeah you say that now but you're gonna get a death squad

to fight the death squads and then where are you gonna be see another death squad section they get like death squad section. They get a death squad to fight your death squad. And then it's like, they cancel each other out.

So then you have to get another death squad. And then so you're going. Ah, Marxist Leninism. Yeah. It's a number of other things too, to be fair to Marxism another thing that might make you kind of question the integrity of COP26

is that there were more delegates at COP26 from fossil fuel companies than there were from any individual nation that makes sense yeah but then right, that's like another thing right because you're talking about COP26 and where

climate change denial gets into that but I don't think I think soft climate change denial can only be applied so far when it comes to

those sorts of big spectacles and those big major events because even if they themselves really truly understand the depths of climate change and

trust and believe like these oil barons and stuff and believe like these oil barons and stuff they know like they have all the info yeah right present front of them they've done they've already done their like cost benefit analyses and like risk assessments and kind of thing so they know exactly like what the impact is going to be they have the money to have access to the scientists right but it's not soft climate change denial for them it's i'm a capitalist i'm going to do

what a capitalist does you know it's ultimately a fun way they're operating within a system you know so soft climate change denial um it is like sort of a psychological phenomenon but we also have to keep in mind that there's also like a structural component to it so that even if that a person does not face self-climbing change now isn't experiencing self-climbing denial that alone even if they like fully confront the issue that's just an individual you know and there's still like a whole structure around that individual that will still incentivize certain behavior and then of course with the incentives of certain behavior comes like the psychological justifications for that behavior so it kind of almost becomes

that they end up justifying themselves into self-climax denial you know i mean so it's kind of like yeah it's like a flow without it's like a feedback loop that reinforces its own existence. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that honestly, like the feedback loop model is where we have a lot of our problems with climate change. They're all very much linked to the feedback loop model of things trying to justify their own existence. of things trying to justify their own existence and then you know certain and then on the reverse side of things you know when certain changes in the climate happen those create their own feedback loops which create more changes to happen it's like everything yeah everything is just one one massive loop yeah which kind of gets me to like this the discourse around

climate change and stuff is like halted and diverted and immobilized by soft climate change denial. Discussions of the very real, very current, very near future, and very violent impacts of climate change are just basically softened. Like when you try to throw a punch in a dream. Yeah. Like you're trying to like push and then it's like you know it's like this kind of soft um or like you throw something in space i guess it's just you put all this effort into it and then you go in another direction that kind of thing um i don't know where i'm going with this analogy so i'll just keep on going um basically

that there's an issue with the conversation where the discourse has just been you know harmed by the psychological phenomenon but then of course there's the other side of psychological phenomenon of self-climbing denial not the hard kind of denial side but rather the i'm so on the opposite end of self-climbing denial that I'm like an inconsolable and like illogical and can't even imagine the possibility of anything happening kind of doomer. Yeah, yeah. The kind of extreme doomerism

where you recognize that climate change is bad, but then you see it as such a massive overwhelming thing that it basically shuts you down from being able to do anything else. And you just learn there's really no point to do anything if it's going to be this bad. It's such a hard capitalism and the systems that are working to keep it going are such a hard thing to overcome that it seems like the best thing to do is just sit down and do nothing. Yeah. And that's the thing, right? These are slash collapse people, right? thing to do is just sit down and do nothing yeah and that's the thing right like these r slash

collapse people right um i mean i appreciate that they don't shy away from like the really difficult stuff yeah but then they also stumble into this kind of like hopeless doomers um like this dramatic kind of we are screwed we're all going to be fighting this mad max style arena like that's not how you know climate change is going to play out you know it's not a movie you know like things are going to break down in certain places and other places are gonna um lock down in certain ways but it's not going to be like this sudden global devolution into madness like that you know that's not really how social change that's already how collapses have yeah you know function in history you know of course we live in a like a global civilization and previous

collapses have been fairly localized but still you know climate change is both global and local so there are certain changes that will only affect certain localities. This is something that actually the book Desert addresses fairly well. And I find frustrating. Yeah, that's what I'm drawing from. Yeah, because I find it really frustrating because especially on the online left, there's people who treat Desert like the gospel, or at least they say they do. But they're actually extreme doomers who fetishize collapse. And they're like, oh, everything'sishize collapse um and they're like oh

everything's hopeless read desert yeah but then you but then you read desert but you read desert desert is like explicitly anti-collapse and saying collapse isn't going to happen collapse is a fantasy you tell yourself yeah to keep you going and for those kind of like the secular haven't heard of desert desert is a book that's available for free online about what's coming um it's titled desert because of an old quote about how empires um leave nothing but deserts in their wake basically like that's it's it's just like a thing that that uh empire i think the exact quote is like empires make a desert and call it peace yeah um and it's it's basically discussing the fact like not just literal desertification but like um that that's more of a more of a better picture of

like our future under climate change than kind of these these mad max dreams this like slow dissolution of of resources and uh uh environments um and that that's kind of the yeah it's it's a good book you can read it yourself and it's it's quite influential online um but yeah as as garrison pointed out there are people who kind of take it in a in a direction that i don't believe the authors i mean clearly the authors didn't mean because they directly called out that kind of thinking yeah yeah it's kind of like some people treat like collapse and stuff as basically the secular version of like revelation in the bible yeah yeah or it's or it's like the

non-marxist version of like the revolution it's like it's like this this kind of mythical event to like prepare for and almost be excited for but like it's it's fake it's a fantasy it's something we tell ourselves to keep ourselves going as things are bad but it's not it's it's not real yeah like any day now the trumpets will sound in the heavens and the scrolls will be broken and yeah the great the great beast will arise from the sea and, you know, all that vibe. Yeah. Welcome. I'm Danny Trejo. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora.

Shadows, presented by I Heart and Sonora, an anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time.

Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech

from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things

that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts.

Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story

is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now, and I cannot decide if I like him or not.

Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents.

Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head. Search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it. And I don't know what the solution is for that. I don't know how – both on like the soft climate denial side of like how do do you go about, how do you go about, it's like the only thing we can really do is the people, you know, we know. How do we go about and tell them that, hey, things are probably going to be a bit worse than what you're preparing for. But how do we tell the people who are doomers, hey, it's not going to be like this weird dystopian thing that you're thinking of either. not going to be like this weird dystopian thing that you're thinking of either it's like it's it's it's interesting because like they're both veering off in two opposite directions but it both kind of leads to the same point of kind of doing nothing but one version is one

version of nothing is basically you know voting for stuff that's not that's never going to happen the other version is not just not doing anything in general. Yeah. And I don't know how to reach those types of people very easily. Yeah. Which kind of brings me to like push like campaigns on people. I think it's going to be like a very personal sort of journey that each person has to go through. Right. Because each person is different.

Each person is like has different worries and dealing things in a different way. You know. and dealing things in a different way you know um so like you want to keep in mind like people's mental health and sort of fortifying your mental health and helping people fortify theirs because when it comes to mental health with regard to like climate change doing it in isolation in my experience has not really worked out i think what has worked best for me is when i am with i am connected with a group of people or even just one other person and when i'm feeling down about climate change because despite all my you know messages about solarpunk and you know we can do this like that that's basically the message of my youtube channel you know i still experience

you like those sort of thoughts and feelings. All the time. I'm just not public about it. Yeah. But what I try to do is, when I'm feeling those things, I try to be with people who are not currently feeling that. You know, so we're not feeding off of each other's next of energies. Yeah.

So, like, when I'm in a bad spot, you know, I have people around me who could lift me up and when they're in a bad spot vice versa because it kind of comes in waves you know yeah absolutely no yeah it's it's silly to deny those thoughts exist because they do

like they're a very easy neutral state at least for me to slip into and the way to get around that is by doing chores at a farm and shoveling poop and taking care of animals and cooking for people that's like the way that i can get out of that kind of mindset and you know i'm not not to be too hard on all of the kind of doomer nihilists because there there is a sect of doomer nihilists

who use the actual definition of nihilism, which is like, if things don't really matter, we should probably fuck some stuff up. And that's very useful, right? If you're on that train, you're like, yeah, you should be tree spiking. If you're okay with, if you think nothing matters, and you want to be an actual nihilist, then yeah, you should be tree spiking if if you're okay with if you think nothing matters um and you are you

want to be an actual nihilist then yeah you should make you should make destroy um just make sure it's focused on the people with actual power uh because if you're willing to do that then great we need we need as many as many people like that as possible but it's certainly easier to do that once you have friends and once you're not stuck in this super depressed state all the time. Yeah. And I think there's a – again, we do take a look at like some of the criticisms people have of the show online. And I know one that's come up a bunch is people will listen to like our – when we'll talk about the severity of the problems and then we'll talk about things like you know mutual aid collectives and small guard seed bombings and all that stuff they'll be like well that's not

a solution and no of course that's not going to solve the global problem of carbon emissions from a civilization of seven billion humans what it does do uh focusing on stuff like that focusing on building soil um focusing on building community resistance, in addition to like having an immediate impact on the number of people in your community, it builds a sense of power for the individual. It gives you something to do that isn't just thinking about how bad things are. And that puts you in a mind state that's more useful to actually potentially dealing with the bigger problems at some point. You have to have a sense of your own agency that feels real if you're going to actually change anything. And you can build – it's a muscle, right? You can build it up by doing things that are not bigger but are part of the solution. Yeah, exactly. And it's valuable to do that for your own mental health.

Because then maybe you, if your friend group, if your affinity group, whatever you want to call it, the people you are hanging out with, if some of them are always engaged in something productive, I call it the people you are hanging out with. If some of them are always engaged in something productive, then when you're in a doom spiral, you can find someone who's working on something and vice versa. Yeah. And it doesn't just help your mental health, but it also contributes to the prefigurative activities that we need to

actually make a switch to a different system. You know, like revolution is something that happens overnight or in the far future. It's something that's supposed to be happening all now because as we build those systems, you know, we are building up power. You know, it's kind of like how the Black socialists in America describe dual power, you know. It's that we are building these systems and putting these things in place so that we can push towards like a fundamental transformation of the system and it's iterative but as more people build on top of that you know that's how the transformation happens we all have something to contribute i mean i think it's it's it's important to talk

about this both to acknowledge like it's a thing that happens and we all deal with. We all have our moments of overwhelming despair over what's happening. And some moments of unrealistic optimism too. Yeah. Every once in a while. And the unrealistic optimism needs to be encouraged as long as it's not the kind of well we don't need to do anything because someone's i guess there's toxic optimism and there's helpful a toxic optimism would be like reading an article about some new carbon capture technology and being like oh cool well

i don't need to worry um but but most optimism i think is is positive um and it i think it's good to build a capacity for optimism by by building your your personal sense of of agency and power by by doing shit that helps um and i i think that accepting that you can do things that are meaningful um and that uh there are things to be done that can help the situation is a critical way of fighting against you know this uh uh uh soft climate change denial which which is a um a major threat because there's i think honestly at this point more people who are subscribing to some form of soft climate change denial than there are people who are uh just denying climate change in its entirety.

And that's, I think, where a lot of the effort has to go. So, yeah, I think this is a really important thing for people to understand and to be vigilant against. Absolutely. Yeah. All right. Well, Andrew, where can the audience find you outside of here right now? Yeah, so you can find me on my YouTube channel,

St. Andrewism, and you can find me on Twitter at underscore St. Drew. Excellent. Well, you can find us here where you just found us. We'll be here tomorrow, unless this is a Friday, in which case we'll be here on Monday. Have a good

life. Have a good life. Take care. out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me, Danny Trails, and step into the flames of riot. An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturno on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, five-year-old Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez was found

off the coast of Florida. And the question was, should the boy go back to his father in Cuba? Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or stay with his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso

as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to

Sniffy's Cruising Confessions sponsored by Gilead now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get real and dive straight into todo lo actual y viral. We're talking musica, los premios, el chisme, and all things trending in my cultura. I'm bringing you all the latest happening in our entertainment world and some fun and impactful interviews with your favorite latin artists comedians actors and influencers each week we get deep and raw life

stories combos on the issues that matter to us and it's all packed with gems fun straight up and that's a song that only nuestra gente can sprinkle listen to gracias come again on the iheart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast