Science Friday - Ebola Outbreak, Climate Play, Navajo Energy. May 24, 2019, Part 1

Episode Date: May 24, 2019

What would it take to power a subsea factory of the future? Plus, other stories from this week in science news. Then, as the last coal-fired power plant plans to shut down at the end of the year, the Navajo Tribe is embracing renewables.  Next, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, distrust of the government and healthcare workers are hampering efforts to contain the current outbreak. Finally, in a new climate change play, a playwright explores what kinds of narratives we need to stir action on climate.  Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. Later in the hour, the current Ebola epidemic in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is the second largest outbreak. We'll hear from a first responder on the ground there. But first, offshore drilling of oil and natural gas has always had its technical challenges, the first one being, of course, where do you put the pumps in the processing plants when you're out in the middle of the ocean? Well, right now, that equipment sits on huge floating platforms. And until companies start building underwater factories, which could make drilling technology more productive, energy efficient, maybe even safer. Here to share that story with us as well as other short subjects in science this week is Amy Nordrum,

news editor for the ICCLEE Spectrum. Good to see it again, Amy. Thanks, Ira. So let's talk about it. So companies are looking to put their equipment underwater instead of on top of it. That's right. The oil and gas industry has for years been talking about moving more of its oil and gas drilling and processing equipment down to the seafloor, instead of having it on these big expensive platforms

where they have to, you know, helicopter workers out to maintain and run it. And so they've been, you know, in the process of working on this step by step, and they have moved some equipment down from platforms to the seafloor in the past. But for every piece of equipment you put down there, you have to string a power line down to it because it's really hard to generate power that far underwater. So the next step really is to put an actual power distribution station down on the seafloor that would work underwater, be there for 30 or more years, and be able to distribute power. from one power line to other pieces of equipment on the seafloor.

So there's two companies, A, B, and B and Siemens, that are getting pretty close to this goal. So they've got versions and prototypes of this kind of station that can now operate in shallow water. And then within the next couple of months to a year, they're hoping to put this in a real-world site that's actively drilling oil and gas and that would serve as sort of a pilot or a test project of this idea.

If they're not people there at the underwater site, are there people controlling it either, or is it artificial intelligence that's doing it? Yeah, one idea is that this would actually be safer because instead of having employees out there on an oil platform, you wouldn't actually need any workers. This would be remote controlled, so there'd still be an operator somewhere at a facility, you know, perhaps on shore nearby or perhaps on a boat, and they would have access and be able to communicate with that underwater equipment, and there would be nobody actually on site anymore. You know, when we think about offshore drilling rigs, and we think about, I think about saltwater. I'm a sailor. I know what saltwater can do to things. I mean, it seems like things can go wrong with water, underwater.

Will it be harder than to get down there and fix it if, unless it was a raised platform? Oh, yeah, that's the big catch. I mean, in theory, this could save money because you don't need the labor, you know, to maintain this equipment. And perhaps there'd be other, you know, positives. You'd be able to not use so much energy on transporting stuff up to the platform. So maybe it'd be more power efficient. But it's a lot harder to get this stuff to work underwater than it is above ground. In fact, the research labs involved in creating this equipment had to certify every individual component and make sure that it would work underwater in the way that they intended and then basically build this thing from scratch and test the whole thing because all this stuff had been shown to work above water before and air but never underwater in this particular way.

Just like they do in spaceships, right? You got to certify all those little parts. Exactly, yeah, make sure it works. Okay, let's move on to things that are different stories. Another story coming to us from the sea this week. Scientists have discovered a new underwater volcano. That's always exciting. Yeah, it is exciting.

And this actually solves kind of a mystery that they've been looking into for almost a year now, where there was a sudden spade of tectonic and seismic activity off the coast of Madagascar, between Madagascar and Africa. Really, that started about thus time last year. All of a sudden, residents on nearby islands there were experiencing earthquakes almost on a daily basis after having basically no seismic activity for centuries. And so they were wondering, you know, what was up with this. And one island in particular was actually slowly shifting to the east and seemed to be sinking.

And they didn't really know what was behind this. And so then scientists in the last couple of months have deployed a bunch of seismometers on the ocean floor there to take a better look at the seismic activity going on. They were able to kind of pinpoint this one particular area that was showing a lot of action. And then they sent out a ship and started surveying it with acoustic scans that bounce sound waves off the bottom of the ocean and back up to the ship. ship. And after four or five days of moving around in a grid doing these acoustic scans, the team found what they now know is a brand new underwater volcano that was actually kind of mid eruption and putting out this plume of material as they observed it. So they were just made an announcement earlier this month that they had found this,

and they have a peer review paper in the works for it. That's interesting. So it's something new. They felt the shaking and they went looking for the source. Exactly. Yeah. It's kind of the first time that they've really pulled off this detective work with a big unknown seismic event and then tracing it back to a new underwater volcano in this way. That's cool. Next up, scientists are solving the problem of how to send vaccines to other countries safely. Always been a problem about heat and things like that, right? Yeah, a lot of vaccine transport. It's a big problem. I mean, making vaccines is hard enough, but then you've got to get them to the places that need them. And in order to do this, many vaccines need to be properly cooled and refrigerated along the way.

This is always tricky, especially in places where you don't have access to refrigeration. and electricity. And so scientists and researchers have been working for a while on trying to make more temperature-stable vaccines. So a group from McMaster University in Ontario recently announced a new technique that they came up with. It involves mixing two sugars together and then mixing the ingredients of a vaccine in with those sugars, drying it into kind of a flat, thin film, and then transporting that film, which is very temperature-stable and helps the vaccine survive, you know, high-end,

and cold temperatures over a long journey. Then once you get to your destination, you're able to dissolve the sugars away and extract the vaccine. Just add water. Finally, one of their experiments, researchers at Slack, the Stanford Linnar Accelerator,

accidentally created the loudest sound ever recorded? Yes, I wish we could play it, but it would hurt very much to ever hear that. It would not be something I actually want to hear. Yeah, so this was actually at the Slack Laboratory in Stanford. They're using a powerful x-ray laser, and they're sort of on the cusp of upgrading a lot of these x-ray lasers that are in place around the world to even more powerful x-ray lasers. But they have kind of a question in mind, which is like what would these more powerful lasers actually do to the samples that we're studying?

Many times these samples are suspended in a jet of liquid. It's like an easy way to present a sample to these lasers to be studied. And so they decided to do a simulation with their existing laser of what these more powerful lasers might do to sample suspended in a jet of liquid. So they beamed it at a jet of liquid, a bunch of tiny jets, actually, and then they observed what happened. And they saw a shockwave take place in the middle of one of these jets. They actually have a movie of it that you can watch. And the shockwave created a bunch more shock waves, and they were able to kind of measure the power of this shock wave and equated it to about 270 decibels, which is louder than like a rocket engine taking off. So extremely, extremely powerful sound, so powerful that if it had been much greater,

it would have actually boiled the water itself. So next I'll have to figure out, you know, is this going to damage samples in future x-ray laser experiments? Or figure out if they want to make tea or not. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you, Amyneudrum News Editor for the I, AAA Spectrum. Now it's time to check in on the state of science. This is KERNO.

St. Louis Public Radio News. Iowa Public Radio News. Local science stories of national significance. For decades, the Navajo tribe in New Mexico has relied on the coal industry for jobs and revenue. Three generations have worked for the West's largest coal-fired power plant, but that's all about to change, because at the end of this year, the Navajo generating station will shut down as energy companies turn away from coal towards natural gas. So what does the future look like for the Navajo tribe that once ran on? coal. Now they're leaning to embrace solar energy and learning how to do that. Here to tell us more

about that story is Laurel Morales, reporter with KJZZZ's Fronteras Desk. Welcome to Science Friday. Hi, Ira. How are you? Nice. Thank you, Laurel. So how did the Navajo tribe get mixed up in coal? So northern Arizona, parts of New Mexico and Utah are rich in uranium and coal. And during the Cold War era, mining companies blasted uranium out of the ground. Then in the 1960s, coal companies leased the land from the tribe and utilities to build the Navajo generating station, the West's largest coal fire power plant, and they took coal from a nearby mine. And for decades, the extraction industry has provided hundreds of jobs for the Navajo. Brett Isaac grew up in that economy. You know, the Navajo economy had been kind of built upon resource extraction.

I still have an uncle that works for the Peabody Energy Company. I've had, you know, other uncles and cousins and friends. And you had a lot of people who that's the only industry and the job they ever knew. So all of that is going away now. What's going to happen? How are the lives of the Navajo tribe change? The great thing about Cole is it provided jobs, some of the best-paying jobs. But the not so great thing is it's expensive and it pollutes.

And the plants about 40 miles from the Grand Canyon, many Navajo have complained about the health impacts and not to mention that the power lines actually bypassed many Navajo homes for Phoenix and Las Vegas. One in 10 Navajos are still without electricity today. So what's happened is utilities have discovered that natural gas is so much cheaper than coal. And so the tribe initially looked at purchasing the coal-fired power plant, the Navajo generating station. But the cost outweighed the benefits. So the Navajo have a more progressive president and council these days. As one council member put it, it's not all about the money. We need to think about the health and environment for our kids and grandkids.

So they're moving towards solar now. Can they create a sustainable situation? With solar? Yeah. Arizona is one of the sunniest states in the country. Several nearby states, including New Mexico and Nevada, are passing legislation to go carbon-free in the next two decades. So the tribe has built two solar farms so far and has one more in the works. The Navajo president proclaimed renewable energy, the Navajo Nation's top energy priority.

But while it takes about 300 workers to construct, one solar farm after it's built, the sun does most of the work. So they're looking at ways to create permanent jobs. You can't compete against China in manufacturing solar waferes, but the Navajo could do solar assembly, taking the cells, putting the backing and panels together. That's interesting. That's an interesting. That's the future. I want to thank you very much, Laurel, for taking time to be with us today. My pleasure. Thanks so much for having me. You're welcome.

Laurel Morales is a reporter for the KJZZ Frontierist Desk. We're going to take a break and we'll look at the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It's a, well, say the least, it's in a politically unstable region, which means it's very, very dangerous. We'll talk to a health care worker on the ground about how we can take care of all these people. The clinics are under attack.

How do you work in a war zone to try to combat Ebola? We'll talk about it after the break. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. The second largest Ebola outbreak has killed over 1,000 people in Africa, sweeping through the North Kivu region in the northeastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. During the last outbreak in West Africa, the question was, could enough vaccine be produced? Well, for this outbreak, the good news is over 100.

thousand people have been vaccinated in the area. The bad news, this outbreak comes amidst the background of political unrest in the area, and the violence is spilling over into clinics responding to the outbreak. There have been 131 attacks on clinics. So how do you contain an outbreak in a war zone? That's what we're going to be talking about. Let me introduce my guess. John Johnson is the emergency coordinator for Doctors Without Borders based in Goma, Democratic Republic of the Congo. He joins us from the field. Welcome to Science Friday. Thank you, Ira. How are you? Nice to have you with us. Lori Garrett is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author. She's founder of the Anthropos Initiative based in New York. Could have you back, Lori. Hi, Ira. Let's talk about the

outbreak. There was another outbreak, Lori, earlier this year in the DR Congo that is now under control, but this one in the Northwest is more difficult. Can you give us a brief overview of what's going on in the country that's affecting this Ebola outbreak? Well, no country in the world has had more experience with Ebola than the Democratic Republic of Congo. The first known cases were in 1976 in the country when it was called Zaire. And as recently as last summer and spring, there was an outbreak in a very different part of the country. And all the resources mobilized quickly. DRC showed tremendous competence and capabilities.

and brought it under control in just a few months. But one week after they were able to declare that that first 2018 outbreak was under control, boom, a new outbreak. Clear on the other side of the country, a very, very different situation. And this one now has been unfolding since August 1st, 2018. So we're in 10 months of outbreak. We're approaching 1900 identified cases. and at any given moment, you have to assume there are many more cases that have not been identified,

because fewer and fewer people are actually coming forward to the medical system to be diagnosed and treated. And 1,241 have died so far. And what is the cause of all this distrust that's going on there and the attacks on the clinics? I think there are many sources of it, but the bottom line is nobody has ever tried to fight this disease, frankly any really frightening hemorrhagic disease with a high mortality rate, in a war zone, and certainly not in a war zone, the likes of this one. In 1994, we had the tremendous genocide in Rwanda, and the population that had been responsible. for the genocide, much of it fled about a million people into this region, into North Kivu of the Democratic Republic of Congo. And it started a cycle that has continued ever since. We've had war in here that has involved as many as nine other nations' armies. At any given

time, the number of militias or armed organizations operating in this area can be counted certainly well over 30 and some security estimates put it as high as 130. They range from small groups of armed almost bandit-like groups all the way to very sophisticated armed forces. And they are some of them quite well funded based on resources available in the area to exploit, to mine, and also want support from neighbor governments. It's a border area. It's an extremely porous border. And the whole epidemic is lapping at the edges of GOMA, which has for decades been kind of an explosive center for the entire region because it's a major trading area, mining area, you name it, that affects Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, Democratic Republic of Congo.

So it's all quite volatile. And honestly, looking at it from a distance and having been in three Ebola epidemics myself, but not this one, I would say that we've rarely seen performance from WHO any better than what we're seeing today. And the courage shown has been tremendous. And for the first time, we have an African CDC. that is on the ground and a lot of African

expertise from all over the continent the, you know, the forces should be with us. We have a vaccine and yet the violence is really disrupting everything. Let me talk to John Johnson who is there with Doctors Without Borders.

How are you doing? Lori Garrett talks about just how despicable the conditions are. How are you doing? Are you safe? Give us an idea of what it looks like and how you are working despite the turmoil there? So yeah, like Lori said, this is an area that's had a long history of violence over the past 20 or so years. It's nothing new, and which you see probably as the most effective use of resources and that people that are making the most

ground are the local doctors and nurses and health centers that are able to keep working. And they're the ones that should be really appreciated. The Ministry of Health, they've done an excellent job continuing despite the ongoing attacks. I think, like you said, the count is something like 130 attacks between August 1st and now. But every time there is an attack on a health center or on the Ebola response, that certainly slows us down. And you see a several-day lag where contact tracing is no longer being carried out, where vaccination gets stopped because of insecurity. And that really hampers the outbreak response. What we're doing is, you know, picking things back up and moving back in as soon as we can. But certainly these attacks on health centers make it very, very difficult to work.

Do you need more medicine or equipment, or is that not the problem in this case? You know, there's the treatment for a contagious disease is really two things. It's prevention and treatment. And what we have right now is for the prevention. Everything that always goes along with that, hygiene, prevention in health centers from spreading nosycomal infections. The vaccination is a huge store for preventing. And again, we vaccinated over 114,000 people in this epidemic. And then the treatment is actually better than it's ever been. We're testing new drugs in Ebola response under the compassionate use protocol.

and they're randomized clinical trials. Some of them are very, very promising. And so from a technical point of view, these things are actually going quite, quite well. Your question about, what do we need more of? Do we have enough drugs? You know, we're not talking about between August 1st and today. We're talking about 1,88 cases.

It's not the quantity of drugs. On the other hand, the number of vaccines is actually quite a very positive effect that it does prevent Ebola, and it certainly prevents your risk of death if you're vaccinated. And that is not produced today in quantity sufficient to do a large mass vaccination campaign. So we're sort of limited to vaccinating contacts and people at high risk for Ebola. John Johnson is on the ground there with doctors without borders coming to us directly from the Democratic Republic of Congo. So adding, I guess, to your problems is the fact that there is a distrust about the treatment and the aid workers, correct? What approach are you taking to get people treated?

How do you engage them so they're not fearful to work with you? Yeah, so, I mean, this is something you've seen in other irritable outbreaks in the past. It's certainly normal that fear in different communities. it's a very lethal disease. Over 50% of people that catch Ebola will die. So we've seen historically lots of resistance. And really the problem that we have is that the disease spreads faster than we can spread the message about it. And really the way to go about it is to engage with community leaders, pastors, members of the civil society, politicians, people that have groups of youth or women's groups.

and really begin to work with them and let them buy in to the response and let it be their community that's running the response and not, you know, me, I'm not from the United States. It's not that the outsiders that come in should be in charge of this, but really that the local community should buy back the response for themselves and be in charge of their own prevention and stopping this epidemic. And that's where we saw things turn around in 2014. Well, speaking of past outbreaks in the past, health workers would go to homes and find and treat people there. Can you do that here? Absolutely. It's nothing new. In fact, Congo is probably the place where this has been done the most in different outbreaks like Tickwit.

People have actually been successfully taken care of at home. Today, we are not at that stage, but we're looking at how we can, you know, propose new strategies to sort of be as decentralized as possible because up until now the response, like I said, it's been very successful from a technical point of view, but we haven't been able to expand as fast as the epidemic is. And what we need to look at now after 10 months where it's covering a very large geographic zone is to think of this, you know, the sort of endemic aspect of this response and how we need to be able to respond in local health centers. as much as possible. And that's going to be a very decentralized approach. This is something that

needs to be discussed and bought into O.C. as well by the Minister of L. These are things we're working on. Laurie Garrett, the U.S.'s Center for Disease Control has withdrawn its workers from country because of fear of safety concerns. So is the U.S. doing anything? What is the U.S. doing in terms of this outbreak? Well, I want to correct you. They haven't withdrawn from the country. But Secretary of State Mike Pompeo ordered back in August when the outbreak was spotted in North Kivu said, look, this is a high security area. We're not allowing U.S. government personnel on site. And so about a dozen CDC personnel are like 1,500 miles away in the country's capital,

Kinshasa. And this is a real loss because there's a tremendous depth of bench. at CDC of people who have been in multiple Ebola outbreaks, many, I mean, well over a thousand CDC personnel, were on the ground in West Africa in 2014, 2015, even into 2016, working at the country and local level. And many of the things, you know, that are questionable, what works, what doesn't work? What are the worst sites of infection and contagion? How lethal is a dead body compared to a living person with the virus? These are the kinds of things that the CDC was right smack dab in the middle of and has a very, very deep bench of expertise, but they're not

permitted by the U.S. government to go in. And then on top of it all, so far, the U.S. has only committed $11.7 million to the entire response, which is a pittance compared to the well over a billion that we put into West Africa in 2014-15. And there's a giant yawning funding gap for WHO alone in this response, nearly 60 million short of its need to cover its on-the-ground activities. I think the most important thing that was learned in West African experience, was that, first of all, the body of a recently deceased individual for up to three or four days has more virus on the outside of the body than is on the outside and potentially contagious of a living Ebola patient. So the body burials are absolutely crucial, interrupting the funerals,

safe burial of bodies. But this is very sensitive without war, without mass suspicion, without a contested war zone. I've been to multiple burials of people would succumb to Ebola, and families and relatives don't like it any better than you would if your father were dragged out of your home, put in a plastic bag, and buried by people wearing security gear that look like outer spacemen. I have to interrupt and remind everybody that this is Science Friday from WNYC Studios.

So just to continue, Ira, the problem is, These are always going to be difficult interventions to make necessary, pulling people out and putting them in quarantine, necessary. But they're always sensitive, culturally, sensitive, and politically. Now you add to it active disinformation campaigns, active lying, claims that there's no such thing as Ebola or claims that the foreigners are injecting Ebola into people. And then you add one more layer on top of it, and that is a stolen national election. It's no coincidence that this surge in violence, which started the surge in cases, starting roughly in mid-March, comes right on the heels of the final announcement of the election results when the Catholic Church of Congo said, without a doubt, one individual took about 70% of the vote, but Kabila, the former dictator of the country, engineered a deal whereby the guy who actually came in third was named the president.

Okay. And this region was forbidden to vote. All right, Lori, I'm running out of time. I'm running out of time. I want to ask John Johnson before our line goes down. Are you feeling optimistic about the outcome, John, on the ground there in the Congo? Well, I think we have a long ways to go. optimistic that it's going to end quickly.

I don't think so. I think we still have quite a long time and quite a lot of work ahead of us. But I am optimistic about the response, about the technicity of it, about the new strategies that are being proposed, and the fact that everybody's really been working together quite well to move forward. But, you know, it is right now at its worst period. The last two months have been the worst two months of the epidemic. Each week, we've had more cases.

than any other week in the epidemic. And this poses a lot of problems for us. And we're hoping to see that the peak of the epidemic is behind us, and we're going downhill. But at this point, it's still going up. All right. Thank you so much for taking time to be with us today, John Johnson. Stay safe. John Johnson, emergency coordinator for Doctors Without Borders, based in Goma, Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Good luck to you. And thank you, Lori. Larry Garrett, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author who covers epidemics and founder of the Anthropos Initiative based in New York. We're going to take a break, and after we come back, we're going to talk about a new play about climate change. It's first that I know of about climate change. How do you tell a good story? Get the message about climate change and not bore people to death. This play does all those things.

We'll talk about with the playwright, best. wall who'll be with us right after the break. Stay with us. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. In a world where the globe is warming rapidly due to human activity, a mad eco-terrorist has a brilliant idea. Make a bomb that would trigger a tsunami that would kill millions and finally wake people up to the danger of climate change. And my movie trailer voice there, or at least that's the plot of a blockbuster movie being filmed in a new play continuity. The play which opened at the Manhattan Theater Club last week

appears behind the movie camera at the personal dilemmas of the actors, a director who just wants to tell a good story, and a science advisor who ultimately questions the merits of any of it. Here to explain is Beth's Besswald, the playwright for continuity. She's here in our studio in New York. Welcome to Science Friday. Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Did I summarize the play at all and come close to it? It's about making a movie, but it's really talking about climate change, right? Yeah, it's about a group of people in Hollywood trying to make a movie that will increase public awareness and engagement with the issue of climate change. So well-meaning Hollywood people who sort of go astray in the making of their movie. And you have great caricatures of all the people in them, you know, and the director of this movie isn't really happy with how sensational the studio has made everything,

because the studio has its own idea about how to entertain people. The tsunami bomb, for example. She just wants to tell a nuanced, convincing story, right? Yeah, she's trying to make a smart movie about climate change, and the studio keeps sort of pulling threads and shifting it and making it more and more commercial. Did you find that yourself, that problem, as a writer in making the craft.

the play that the producers wanted you to go in a certain direction that you didn't feel, you know, very comfortable with. Well, it was funny making this play because I found that the dilemmas of my characters, the screenwriter in the play, became my own dilemmas as the playwright. You know, how do you tell a story about climate change that's also entertaining without completely avoiding the truth or selling out? So I definitely related to that question of balancing truth and entertainment. telling a story that gives the audience hope, but also gives them a dose of reality. Because it has a love triangle in it. It has great humor. I mean, it's like comic relief going throughout. You purposely put that in. I did because I felt like the issue of climate change is so devastating and so hard to think about that I felt like it was really important to balance

it with some humor and give the audience a reprieve from the devastation of the whole. whole topic. Because as you say, you're sort of playing yourself in the film, in the movie in the film. And in the play, the screenwriter character says at one point, do you know how hard it is to get the science of climate change on point? The news changes every day. A species gone. Another species gone. Is he speaking this playwright, how you feel about climate change and the problems of keeping it up today? Definitely in the making of this play, that line came right out of my own struggles writing the play. And, you know, I've been working on this for a number of years. And in the years that I've been working on this, the conversation about climate change has really

evolved rapidly. Well, that's what I was going to ask, because what took you, how many years to write the play? It took me. The first workshop of it was in 2017. So we're talking two years when it first started going. But our evolution about talking about climate change has rapidly changed. I mean, I'm thinking of 2016 when it wasn't even mentioned as part of a campaign issue, and now it's near the top of the list on people's minds. Has that helped you advance your play? It's changed the story that I've wanted to tell in the play. When I started it in 2017, the idea that climate change was something that we should be alarmed by, felt sort of like a new and groundbreaking idea in the mainstream. And of course, now,

everyone or many more people are alarmed. So the play has pivoted to really be about how do we tell stories about this, what is helpful in the storytelling around climate change and what is not helpful balancing all of those questions. And the idea that this is happening is no longer the point of the play. I'm going to ask you to tell me what is helpful and what is not. But first, I'm going to give out our number 844-724-8255, if you'd like to talk with Beth's wall, playwright, author of continuity here in New York. 844-724-8255. So what's helpful and what's not helpful? I wish I had the exact answer to that. I think a lot of people who know a lot more than me are debating that. But, you know, one thing I found as I talked to scientists and researched this play was there was a sort of debate over whether it's helpful to really alarm people or whether it's helpful to be optimistic and give people hope. And I think that's one of the questions in the play and the different characters come down. on different sides of that, the science advisor who works on the Hollywood movie and the play is pretty pessimistic.

And the screenwriter and the director and the actors are more hopeful. And the question is, is that hope sort of Hollywood ending that's fictional or is that hope actually the one thing that will sustain us? And speaking of the science advisor in the play, he really comes out at the end of the play. I'm out giving away anything about the play. he's really questioning whether what you're doing by creating a movie is helpful at all to advancing people's knowledge about climate change. Yes, and of course that was my question as a playwright also. You know, is the making of this play advancing people's understanding or as the science advisor in the play says, you know, are you making people think they've done something by watching your play or movie when really they haven't done anything at all?

And he says really the most important part of climate change is, is not the sensational parts, but it's the boring little details that people don't pay attention to. Yeah, the more boring a thing is, the more effective it is, is one of his lines. And, of course, if you're trying to make a piece of entertainment, that's actually the opposite of what you're looking for. You're looking for the exciting part. So, you know, the question of how we should be talking about this is a big, big piece of the play. One of those lines, those phrases in the play, refrigerant management. Tell us what that was all about.

Well, that came from research that I did, a website, Project Drawdown. That is their top solution to climate change. They have a wonderful list of solutions and ways that people can help. And one of the ideas in the play is that these seemingly boring solutions are the thing that can move the dial. Did you find any other climate change play in your research for doing it? Not a lot. Not as many as you would expect, given the scope of the scale. this problem and how urgent it is.

And that was one thing that really fascinated me was why aren't artists engaging with this more in the theater? And I have my own theories about that, but I really was curious about whether it was possible to do a play about climate change and wondering why nobody was. You know, and you got very good placement for your play. The Manhattan Theater Club is big-time Broadway, you know? I mean, were you surprised yourself that they were receptive? after you heard so many people saying, you know, you've got to make it, if you make it here,

you'll make it anywhere, but you've got to make it a little more entertaining. Yeah, well, one thing that one theater said to me, not the Manhattan Theater Club, but one person who runs a theater said, don't tell anyone your plays about climate change, because people's eyes glaze over, you know, they disengage. And so I was really heartened to see that for all of the resistance to talking about it, there's also this great hunger to talk about it and to create a space for us to think about these things, because we have to think about them. Let's go to the phones.

844-724-8-25-Ean in Duluth, Minnesota. Hi, welcome to Science Friday. Hey, guys. Hope you're all doing pretty well today. Go ahead. Well, I just brought up the question. I myself am an actor, and when you have a show that deals with this sort of thing

that is unfortunately, that is political regardless of how you talk about it, was there any response in the workshop rooms with the actors, with casting directors, that was producers, that sparked you to change anything in the script. Yeah, it's a great question. There definitely was a lot. The actors had a huge impact on their characters, and less about the science, but more about the humanity of the characters and making sure that they were playing multidimensional people, and also just as human beings giving me their perspective on this issue. The script evolved up till opening night.

We were putting in changes on the day that we opened. Well, it's interesting, though, is that the main character who has a shirt off more than he has it on, the buffy guy, he knows more about climate change than anybody else in the play. Give us the idea behind that. Well, that was important to me, you know, that that character who could at first glance seem sort of like the typical, you know, buff Hollywood actor who knows nothing, be actually a really smart. engaged person who has done a ton of research and, you know, really has a lot to say about climate change. And that's something I'm always trying to do in my work is sort of set up an expectation of who that

character is going to be and then slowly unpack it and reverse it and surprise people. And it's interesting also at the end of the play, we see this physical dismantling of the iceberg movie set. Is there a hidden meaning or in that imagery that you're creating? Subliminal, I guess, is what I'm saying. Well, you know, obviously the actual icebergs are falling and melting. So to me, there was this sort of poetry in watching them dismantle this styrofoam iceberg that they've been shooting on and watching it fall. And, of course, it's just the fictional one falling.

But I think it resonates with what's actually happening in sort of a playful and fun way. Have you run this past scientists themselves? Have they seen it and their reactions to it? I absolutely have. I had my own science advisor on the project, which was funny because she was very different from the character of the science advisor in the play. She would have to be. She was very different.

Nothing in common. But, you know, she was involved and other scientists that I spoke to. And as I did workshops of it, one of the early workshops was at Cape Cod Theater Project, which is right near Woods Hole. And, of course, that's a big scientific community. And so a lot of scientists came from Woods Hole, and I learned a lot from them and actually stole things that they said and put them in the play. So why did you give us a weird, nerdy-looking scientist as a science advisor instead of your woman-type friend? Yeah, I really don't know.

I think I knew that I wanted the science advisor to feel like he was from a completely different world than the more sort of groomed actors who were in the Hollywood. world. I wanted him to feel like he had just walked in from another planet so that there was a real discrepancy between the way he presented and the way everyone else in the play presented. And I think I was interested in him not caring about anything except the science. So. Yeah. And so how did you arise? You must have come as a point as a playwright. Do I make it a hopeful ending? Or do I make it a doomsday ending? Not giving away. when you said, how do you decide? Did you, in your research, figure out which is more memorable or influential?

I really struggled with how much hope to leave the audience with. And, of course, the screenwriter in the play is also, you know, he has a line, a good story has to end with some kind of hope. And I think I believe, as a playwright, that you do need to let people walk out of the door with something that will sustain them. at the same time, you want to provide something truthful. So hopefully the ending of the play sort of walks that line. I'm Ira Flater.

This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. Talking with the Best Wall, who is playwright, author of continuity. You're running here in New York for what, until one week in June? Yeah, until early June. We hope you get. Well, here, I have a tweet from John who says, Is Miss Wall's script published? I'd love to use it as reading in my environmental sciences class, please.

Oh, how cool. Well, it will be published. It's not published yet, but it will be published once this run is over. And some other people are interested in their theater. So, you know, maybe the time is right for a play, you know, because as an observer of the scene, things really have turned over in the last couple of years about people's interests in this. I think people are hungry for ways to engage with this and think about this because it feels so overwhelming that anything, that can provide a space for conversation, I think, is meaningful to people right now. Now, I was wondering for a while where the play was going because there's so much wonderful physical humor in the play and recurring sight gags that come over and over and over again. I guess you did feel like you need to pull back a little from the message about climate change so people can exhale a bit.

Yeah, it's that balance. You don't want a play to feel completely like eat your vegetables because no one will come and no one will have a good time. At the same time, you want to say something real. So I did feel like, and to me the two things go hand in hand. I think life is full of ridiculousness and comedy and absurdity and also very serious things. Let's see if we can get a phone calling from Mike in Buffalo Grove, Illinois. Hi, Mike. Hi.

So I just wanted to say that I saw the workshop of this play at Goodman Theater, I think, in 2017. Oh, right. And I think the comment of the scientist at the end, I think it's really effective because when it's, the idea that just watching a play or a movie about climate change doesn't necessarily change anything. because I feel like that now sort of haunts my thinking when I'm thinking about what's the right thing to do about climate change. So I feel like the play was fun and enjoyable, but that line still kind of haunts me in my thinking. So it keeps it sort of in the back of my mind all the time,

whereas before I might have forgotten more about it. Well, yeah, good line. Yeah, that's great to hear. Thank you. Yeah, I think about it myself because I think, you know, is it enough to write a play? about climate change, no, you have to actually do things. So it's sort of a message to myself as a writer as well.

Well, it's a great playbess, and I hope everybody gets to see it at the Manhattan Theater Club before it closes, and maybe you'll get on there. Maybe some people will listen and say, hey, let's open up in our city. Yeah, I would love that. Thank you so much. You're welcome, Best Wall, a playwright for continuity here in our studios in New York, and it runs through June 7th at the Manhattan Theater Club. condolences today at the passing of physicist Murray Gellman at the age of 89.

He was one of the centuries great thinkers. He is best known for coining the name Quark, you know, after predicting their existence and winning a Nobel Prize in 1969 condolences to his family. Well, last thing before we go, I've got a pop quiz for all New York area listeners. What has science beer and yours truly making bad science puns all night? It's Science Friday trivia. We're bringing the party to Brooklyn next Wednesday, May 29th at the Bell House, where we've been before. Join us for Racas Laffield Night at the nerdy science trivia as you compete for the title of geekery grandmaster champion. Go to ScienceFriiday.com slash trivia for tickets.

That's the Bell House next Wednesday, May 29th in Brooklyn. And if you're saying, but what about an event near me? Well, visit the events page on our website, ScienceFriday.com. slash events, sign up for our events newsletter, and you can find out when we might be in your neighborhood, Brooklyn next Wednesday, May 29th at the Bell House. We'll see you there. Charles Berkowitz says our director, senior producer Christopher and Taliatta. Our producers are Alexa Lim, Christy Taylor, Katie Feather, Rich Kim, Sarah Fishman, and Kevin Wolfe, who are giving us technical and engineering help today, and we're on Facebook all week in all kinds of ways, so

every day now is Science Friday. great and safe holiday weekend. I'm Ira Flato in New York.