speaker-1: Posting is nothing. Posting is nah nothing. Arguing online. Nothing. Nothing at all. Find something to join. ⁓ find a group to join in your local community. There is a meeting in your neighborhood. I don't give a sh if there's two people there, right? Go be the third. You do on some level need to be the change.
speaker-0: I'm Dr. Dana Fisher. Welcome to the Apocalyptic Optimist Podcast. We'll talk about what's broken and how we, and yes, even you, can actually fix it. Welcome back to the Apocalyptic Optimist Podcast. Real talk about what's broken and how to fix it. ⁓ today I am delighted to be speaking with comedian, writer, political activist Adam Conover. I have had the pleasure of joining Adam on factually a couple of times to talk about resistance to autocracy, to how we're gonna save ourselves. And I am so Honored and delighted that he agreed to join me today to talk with us here about his personal brand of apocalyptic optimism and what keeps him going. So so that's where we're going, Adam. There's your warning.
speaker-1: Very happy to be here and and I ⁓ I appreciate the the sign for the hazards up ahead but I feel well equipped. ⁓
speaker-0: You're well known as the guy who ruins everything. ⁓ by correcting the record, and more recently in terms of exploring how government works for better or for worse in the G word. ⁓ at what point did you realize that exposing the truth and having the right facts wasn't enough to stop the systemic problems that are plaguing our society? Just a little softball question for you.
speaker-1: I remember when I started doing ⁓ Adam Ruins Everything and you know, I I took such delight in saying the things we were saying and debunking the things we were debunking and and you know, doing so forcefully and and incontrovertibly. I remember we did one on ⁓ lie detector tests, how lie detector tests are are truly, truly fake. I mean the idea that ⁓ you measuring a small electrical impulse as like ⁓ on someone's body as they speak would somehow detect whether or not they're lying is like on the face of it ludicrous. That's like something maybe people would believe in the 40s. It's literally like what L. Ron Hubbard believed. But like, you know, it's used in ⁓ you know interrogations and and the criminal justice system all across the country. And so we did like a really, you know, solid debunk of this. And I remember feeling all proud of myself. Yeah, the episode came out. Yeah, we did it. ⁓ we really s we really ⁓ issued a smack down to them. And then I remember thinking, ⁓ yeah, but people are still gonna use lie detector tests, aren't they? Like they're still gonna use polygraphs. Like we're not ⁓ my episode came out, they're still gonna use them. Like what actually happened, you know. Like I actually maybe educated a couple hundred thousand people about the lie detector test. That's not nothing, but ⁓ you know, it doesn't by itself change things. And ⁓ that that's the moment which I realized, ⁓ yeah, there's a gap between media. and action. ⁓ and it's really hard to jump over. And I also that was around the same time that Jon Stewart was retiring the first time. And ⁓ I remember thinking, ⁓ that's that's probably part of why, you know, because you know, he spent over a decade on air lambasting, you know, Fox News, Fox and Friends, right? And like they're still on the air despite, you know, lying and and ⁓ you know deceiving people for money. ⁓ and you know, I I sort of imagine that Stuart was a little bit like, Well what's the what's the point of that? I mean, I said it, I said it a thousand times, I said it every day. If w nothing's gonna happen, then you know, why bother? ⁓ so I I understand that that more apocalyptic point of view.
speaker-0: Yeah, we're gonna get a little more into your apocalyptic point of view too, ⁓ before we before we turn towards and pivot towards the optimism. To just I I wanna ask you about ⁓ the work you've done. You've gotten really vocal about political corruption and the role that technology is playing in kind of spreading right-wing ideology. And I was hoping you could kind of take us down that rabbit hole a little bit.
speaker-1: Well, the the version that I tell for me is that, you know, via the tech industry, the ⁓ right wing has just sort of taken over the entire American media. ⁓ you know, the the tech companies, which are really media companies, if you look at them, with the exception of ⁓ you know, Apple sells hardware, Amazon sells, you know, goods via retail by undercutting other retailers. The rest of them are media companies. You know, Meta is a media company. X now is as it's called is a media company. Instagram, well, also media company, TikTok media company. ⁓ what are these people competing with? They're competing with traditional legacy media. You know, they're this is what people do instead of watching a morning show, right? Well, you know, the right wing has alleged for years, for decades, that the traditional media had a left-wing bias. they were largely right, if you agree as I do that. ⁓ left wing viewpoints are closer to reality on average than ⁓ yes the traditional media has a left wing bias because you know ⁓ values such as you know reporting reality is liberal according to them so they created an all and science right science is a left wing value right ⁓ clearly as you can see now that they're in power they're destroying all of science and academia because they believe that
speaker-0: forget don't forget science, Adam.
speaker-1: That science and academia and knowledge are counter to ⁓ right wing goals. ⁓ they they believe that pretty explicitly. So they created an alternative media ecosystem where they didn't have to play by those rules, didn't have to play by the rules of journalism, didn't have to, you know, ⁓ listen to the FCC, didn't have to ⁓ do anything reputably. and that that was where they placed their bet. And they spent 10 years building that ecosystem. ⁓ and then the tech companies came and they destroyed legacy media. Now that legacy media is is largely decimated and dropping every year, the media that people are watching is the right wing media is podcasts, is ⁓ Instagram, TikTok. Those are the places where the right wing dominates. Not all podcasts, but if you look at the top if you look at the top ten to the top hundred, you know, they're they're generally podcasts that that espouse left wing viewpoints. I mean what, Pod Save America's number twelve or something. Great. ⁓
speaker-0: Podcast Adam. Let's just click
speaker-1: ⁓ so you know, because ⁓ they they were able to more successfully take advantage of the tech industry disruption ⁓ to create a ⁓ media ecosystem in which they now dominate. ⁓ and then of course there's the degree to which the people who run the various ⁓ platforms have ⁓ you know ⁓ avowedly right wing views, you know, Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk and and Peter Thiel and all that sort of thing, you know, ⁓ which is so just part of the water now, it's I'm almost bored talking about it, you know.
speaker-0: Have you personally felt the effects of that in kind of in your work?
speaker-1: I mean, the the disruption more than the ⁓ the than the politics of it, ⁓ because like the kind of comedy that I do, the traditional media companies just stopped making. They just don't do it anymore. ⁓ like if I wanted to do a late night show and you know, imagine I'm more famous than I was ⁓ than I currently am, right? ⁓ people know me, but you know, imagine I'm one of the most famous comedians in America and I wanted to go around and and pitch, hey, I want to do a great late night show. People love this format. We're gonna get amazing guests, you know, the pitch is perfect. There isn't a single buyer for that in media. You know, nobody at Warner Brothers, nobody at Paramount, nobody at Netflix would buy that. I mean, you know, Netflix literally had John Mullaney, ⁓ that's the most recent ⁓ attempt at a talk show, is John Mullaney. ⁓ he did eight episodes of non-political comedy a year ago. That's how much they gave one of the biggest comedians in the country to do. You know, essentially a late night show, right? And that's the kind of comedy that I do. I have other interests. You know, I'm working on pitches and proposals, you know, about narrative stuff, ⁓ like any any good ⁓ Hollywood writer. But ⁓ you know, what I what I'm known for is topical comedy, comedy about the world that you actually live in, comedy about the real world. ⁓ and they just don't make it anymore. ⁓ because ⁓ the ⁓ people don't talk about this that much. ⁓ the traditional media companies, the Warner Brothers and the Netflix, if you want to include them, they gave up huge swathes of Of what television formerly was to YouTube. YouTube is now the number one streaming platform on television sets, right? It's not Netflix. People spend more time watching YouTube on their television sets, the 60-inch screen in their living room that their couch is pointed towards, than they do Netflix. And YouTube is ⁓ that is YouTube's biggest platform, is the television set. And what are people watching on there? ⁓ you know, if they want to watch high-end narrative scripted, right? If they want to watch You know, The Last of Us or whatever, they go to HBO Max or they go to Netflix, right? If they want to watch any but remember about the re the rest of television, whatever happened to the news, the talk shows, the food shows, the travel shows, the lifestyle programming, right? ⁓ everything else, it's all YouTube. That's where you go to watch all of that stuff. When people want to channel surf, they open YouTube, right? ⁓ let me just watch what's on. I'll I'll watch the YouTube algorithm. And ⁓ that means that the those traditional media companies have shrunk massively because they've stopped making that type of content. And among that was political commentary. ⁓ and so, you know, there there's ⁓ ten years ago when I pitched Adam Ruins Everything, we pitched a dozen different networks. Now there'd be zero meetings. They'd all say, We're not even in that business. Why are you trying to talk to why are you calling us? ⁓ like all we make is high end narrative scripted and you know, nothing else. ⁓ so ⁓ for me it's been all right, I I have sort of been pushed into the same ⁓ you know, quote unquote new media. It's been new media for 20 years now, ecosystem. And I'm I'm, you know, building my own business and my own platform on YouTube, which is, you know, it's dicey, right? ⁓ you have to play with the algorithm. The algorithm doesn't always prioritize the kinds of viewpoints that I want to say. But that's, you know, I'm a creature of the media, and that's that's all we can do is go where the eyeballs are and go. Go where the structures of media tell us to go.
speaker-0: All right, that's pretty apocalyptic there, Adam. Thank you. You took us. I think you took us as low as we need to go for today. But here, now we're gonna lift, we're gonna go up. So from here, there's nowhere but up to go anyway. So so here's a question. And I I know that you have a lot of thoughts and ideas about this and experiences with this. So so how do we empower the little guy to push back against right-wing hegemony, to push back against the capitalist creep that we're seeing all over in so many different components of our lives? I mean, I wanted I I wanted to.
speaker-1: No problem.
speaker-0: To push you to talk about your work as an organizer with the WGA and the ways that you've been platforming and supporting other workers, other, you know, unization in other contexts. I know you just did a show about that recently. ⁓ you know, tell us about this pivot and and what's working and and how it's working for you.
speaker-1: Well, ⁓ yeah, I mean, I I do a lot of ⁓ I I guess you'd call activism in the real world. Well, I think of that as being active in my community. You know, I'm part of the Hollywood community of writers. ⁓ when I joined it, ⁓ when I started working in this industry, I was well aware that the only reason I have a good health insurance program, the only reason I have a good pension, I I'm I'm literally vested in a pension plan, right? When I retire, ⁓ presumably I make it that far, I I'll you know, I'll receive a pension plan. That ⁓ my grandfather got one of those, you know, ⁓ but it's they're vanishingly rare today. ⁓ I get residuals, you know. I still occasionally get a check for a couple pennies when, you know, one of my ⁓ shows is washed on an airplane somewhere. ⁓ and it used to be more than that. I used to receive a a good portion of my income was in residuals. Why was that? It's because I'm a member of a strong union that's been fighting for 90 years. And, you know, a couple of years back, ⁓ I want to say around twenty ⁓ nineteen. We had a big fight ⁓ with the agencies, which are these giant private equity backed corporations. ⁓ I won't get into the details, but we had to pick a fight with them. And I got involved in it because I believed in the fight. And, you know, there was a p we had a political process in the union over ⁓ you know, not everybody wanted wanted to do the fight. Some people, you know, want to be a little more ⁓ friendly to the companies. And, you know, we had to organize ⁓ internally to make sure the fight was one that we wanted to take on. And I got involved in that. And ⁓ you know, from there I sort of joined the leadership group and I'm I'm on the board now. I've been elected three times to the Board of the Writers Guild. and that wasn't me going, I want to do activism and make the world a better place. That was just me being a part of my community, right? And and trying to make the the world better for me and for the people around me. ⁓ I've also got involved in LA local politics for the same reason. I I ⁓ around twenty nineteen around around the same time actually. I ⁓ you know, LA has a famously ⁓ brutal homelessness crisis. And I got sick of walking by ⁓ homeless people on my way to work every day. And I was like, why is there a barrier? Why can't I talk to these folks? You know, why why is this is these are the I see the same person on under the same bus shelter every day. ⁓ and so I joined a group called CELA, it's a wonderful ⁓ homelessness services organization ⁓ that had just started in LA. When I joined it, it was literally just like 10 people meeting a parking lot. Who wanted to figure out how to support homeless folks in the in our area because there's almost no services. And we started going around with water and you know, snacks and stuff, and we figured out how connect people with services, ⁓ really working with them one on one. And now it's been ⁓ you know, seven or eight years, it's a it's a proper organization with 501c3 status and donors, and we do a fundraiser and all that. I'm really proud to have been a part of that organization for many years. But then also, one of the founders of that organization ran for city council. And I got involved in her city council campaign because, ⁓ wait, this is a lever. My city council district, the one that I live in, ⁓ there's a there's a person called a city councilman. And ⁓ they're very powerful. And I've never heard of the guy who's the city councilman. ⁓ because he doesn't want me to know who he is. Because he wants to just be a behind the scenes power broker and and the city of LA doesn't want you to think about it, right? But here now my friend is running as an activist and saying, no, look, this is a powerful position. We can do things if we actually put work into it. And we got her elected. We knocked doors. You know, we beat we beat she became the first person to beat an incumbent city council person in 20 years, right? and ⁓ once she became the city council person, homelessness numbers in her district star stop started dropping. She literally one of the people who I used to visit every single and this is a very small story, but you know, a woman who I used to visit in homelessness services every single weekend, very chronic ⁓ you know, cr mental illness and and and drug use and and every other ⁓ you know, disease of modernity that that ⁓ causes people to to live on the street. You know, we we worked with her so much and you know, she was out there for years, lovely person. my friend becomes city councilwoman and and she finally puts policies in place that helps her, right? And gets her into permanent treatment. And I've not I've actually not lost touch with her, but I haven't seen her on the street in my neighborhood in a couple of years. and so, you know, I saw the world around me get better. And now my friend, her name's Nithi Rahman. She's running for the mayor of Los Angeles, ⁓ on on the same on the same platform and and the same way that she ran for city councilperson. And I think I'm and I'm ⁓ volunteering on her campaign a lot because you know what? I'm pretty sure we can get her to f win. ⁓ because ⁓ we have done the groundwork and and you know, we we are the people in LA who have been trying to change the city, whereas everybody else ⁓ has been ignoring it. and so you know, does that solve every problem in LA? Does that solve every problem in in America? No. But does it make the my corner of the world a little bit better? Yes. And that's all that you can really do, you know. and the the lesson that I drew from all this is that, you know, I work in the media, I work in social media, I work on television, I work, you know, I I interview national politicians. There's a lie that we're told by all these systems that the only way that we can influence the world is by watching things by paying for things, voting with our dollars, ⁓ donating, voting once every four years or once every two years, and then that's it. You know, sit on the couch and let everybody else handle it. and, you know, withhold your money and and don't, you know, don't follow problematic people or whatever, you know, ⁓ as though ⁓ or or posting the right thing, you know. and all that stuff is ⁓ varying degrees of slightly helpful to meaningless. Voting, yes, good donating, fine. Posting, garbage, right? P bullsh, ⁓ nothing. Posting is nothing. Posting is na nothing. Arguing online, nothing. Nothing at all. It's it's to sh-
speaker-0: Do you don't feel like that's kind of contributes to our civic engagement and debate online, Adam?
speaker-1: Yeah, who gives a sh? Like, it doesn't matter. You know what matters is your presence at a meeting in person, right? Like you have power in your society that that they want you to ignore, that Mark Zuckerberg doesn't want you to think about. ⁓ and that that power ⁓ coheres in the social position that you have in your community, right? As a as someone who pays rent, as someone who pays taxes, as someone who has a body who can show up in a physical location. as someone who can withhold your work from an employer. ⁓ those are places that you have power that you can if you band together with other people, you can exert that power, you know.
speaker-0: Wait, wait, can can I break a couple of things down for a second? So you have said, and this is a quote from ⁓ from a piece you were in about your work on the WGA strike, you wrote, or you said the face-to-face conversation is the atomic unit of politics, which I just thought was was quite beautiful. And hacho really speaks to a lot of what you're talking about here. So what and and you're starting to kind of scale up in the way you're discussing this, but I thought we could just go back to this, you know, this face-to-face conversation. and how you've seen it work in your little corner of the world, in your corner of the universe, and how you've found to the degree that you have using media and your media presence to help expand that corner of the world, if you have.
speaker-1: ⁓ sure. I mean, so in the Writers Guild, right? The Writers Guild has ten thousand members. ⁓ the way that we make things happen, ⁓ if we want the you know, f well those of us in leadership are looking at the state of the industry and we're saying XYZ is happening, we think we need to take action. And the way we take action is by getting those ten thousand members to all do something, right? Even if it's just click vote yes on one of our online elections, right? Or maybe it's
speaker-0: Post about it but click something. Is that what you're saying?
speaker-1: Well well, click something in a ⁓ union election to vote on whether or not we will go on strike, right? And then to actually withhold our labor, right? Not voting on a f change.org petition, right? But voting on like a binding resolution with you and your other ten thousand members, right? The only reason a union is able to exert power is because those ten thousand people individually all make the individual choice to withhold their labor. If 3,000 of them decide, ⁓ I don't really want to withhold my labor. I I think I'll just keep working, right? We don't have a lever to stop them. We can't call the police to stop them. It's not literally against the law for them to do so. ⁓ and so the strike doesn't work, right? Because the employers go, well, I still got you know a third of the labor. So why why do I give a f you know? ⁓ and so how do you get those 10,000 people to all withhold their labor? Well, it's it's an individual decision for each of them, and you need to talk to each of them individually. And so what do we do? We reach out to all those people individually. We have a system in the Writers Guild where our sort of super volunteers are called captains. ⁓ and though we empower those people with sort of extra information. They have extra meetings that they're willing to go to. And then each of those people has a team of about a hundred people who they ⁓ give or take, ⁓ who they represent. ⁓ and they communicate with those people via email, but those people also call them on the phone. Those captains can call a board member if they want. And literally any any member of the writers' girl can call a board member at any time if they have a question. ⁓ and so, you know, they ⁓ if someone's I don't know if I want to go on strike, well, call me and talk about it, right? And and you know, we say you can make whatever decision you want, but here's how we see it, right? And we try to have that one-on-one conversation. ⁓ also, why are we able to go on strike on the first place? It's because we've talked to those ten thousand people and we know what they care about, right? We know what they need, we know what their pressures on them are. They're saying, Hey, the way the business has changed. In, you know, XYZ way is really fing with my life. And we say, okay, we think the only way that we can change that is if we all, if we are all willing to go on strike, if we all threaten to go on strike. And if we have correctly communicated with them and we know what matters to them, then we are able to ⁓ you know put a strike together because we've talked to them one on one, right? and so it's it's the willingness to have those 10,000 in person conversations. When we got people to vote for Nithya. In Los Angeles. We did it by knocking doors and by having conversations. Hey, I'm not somebody who's flown in from a different state to try to convince you to do something.
speaker-0: Parachuting and we like to say parachuting it.
speaker-1: Yeah. We turned it. And by the way, I've done that. I I did parachute door knocking for Kamala Harris in ⁓ 2024 because I was like, I got to do something here. And ⁓ you know, I saw the way people looked at me. They could tell I wasn't from, you know, the suburbs of Phoenix, right? But when I do that in LA, I'm like, hey, I live down the street. You know, ⁓ yeah, I live across the street from ⁓ Blah Blah Ba Middle School. And they're like, ⁓ yeah, my kid goes there. Okay, well, I'm knocking doors for this person. She lives down the block. Maybe you want to vote for her. ⁓ yeah, no, I've seen her around. Yes, no, okay, I I'll vote for her, right? ⁓ that is like ⁓ that is what gets people to do things. And and so having a system by which you have those conversations is ⁓
speaker-0: Let me jump in, you can tell me in a second. But so what you're describing is like the reality of local policy making and how local politics or all politics is really local, as we both know, right? So here's a question I have for you because like we are, you know, there's a bunch of folks who are very concerned about ⁓ the autocratic creep in our society, the poly crisis, the way that the climate crisis is basically, you know. Creating droughts and extreme weather and is going to get worse because we no longer believe in science in our country. So given that, there's a lot of discussion about trying to do stuff at the national level. And I was wondering, you know, for example, there's a call for a general strike coming up. There are a bunch of folks organizing around this. And I don't see this kind of local, you know, face-to-face component there. Do you have thoughts, advice, feelings about how that could be done in an effective way?
speaker-1: About a general strike specifically?
speaker-0: Sure. General strike.
speaker-1: I mean w ninety percent of the
speaker-0: Say you're against a general strike too, if you are, you're welcome to say that as well.
speaker-1: 90% of the time, I'm gonna be really brutally honest with you, Dana, Dana. Ninety percent of the time when I see people, quote, organizing for a general strike, I see people wasting their time. Because what are they doing? They're posting on Instagram, general strike, right? How many people is Mark Zuckerberg gonna show their image, even if it goes maximally viral, right? Couple million. That's not a general strike. And and and those people are gonna see a graphic on Instagram and they're gonna go. ⁓ okay, I'm not gonna go to work because I saw an Instagram graphic. I want you to think about like how many people would we need to do a general strike for it to be meaningful? 10 million, 20 million, right? Something like that. A national general strike, if we're really talking national, okay? So you need 10 million people to individually decide I'm not gonna go to work for one day. I'm not gonna buy anything. How many of those people do you think are actually gonna do that because they saw an Instagram graphic? I I know that you think that. As the organizer, maybe they should, right? But it doesn't matter what you think they should do. You need to get them to actually do it, right? Are they gonna do it because they were scrolling on their phone and they saw general strike Instagram graphic? No, right? Why would someone actually participate in a general strike? Because their community is also participating in it, right? So why in minneapolis was there a local general strike, right? It's because businesses Organizations, right? unions, ⁓ local political groups, ⁓ local nonpolitical groups were also individually affected by what was happening in the city, right? ⁓ my God, my neighbor has been taken. And we are talking about this at my church. And then my pastor said, There's a general strike. Would you join me? I'm going to be marching, right? That is why people join in action. It's always because of something in their lives. When you look at the history of general strikes, you know, they all go on general strikes in France all the time. Sure. It's not because people are posting on Instagram. It's because those people are members of unions. They have been organized year round. And those unions are part of a national group that says we're going to call a general strike. Right. So, ⁓ you know, this idea of like, ⁓ we're just going to say it. We're just going to say general strike and people will do it. Is nonsense. That's not organizing, right? That that's that's like pseudo-organizing. Now, and actu actually organizing for a general strike, when you see ⁓ you know, the the head of the UAW say, Hey, let's have multiple national unions sync up our contract expirations so they all expire on the same day, so that we can call a general strike. He's talking about the leaders of, you know, may let's say ideally a dozen unions, right? Him, the flight attendants, the writers guild, the Teamsters, right? And they all have a conversation and say, let's all mobilize our people to all go on strike at the same time strategically for a specific end, right? That's how you get an actual general strike going. ⁓ or you have you know a crazy local incident like happened in Minneapolis that causes sort of spontaneous organization, right? never get o you can never get around org the need to organize. It's always about that.
speaker-0: Even able
speaker-1: It not just local, face to face organiz organizing.
speaker-0: All right. So not just local, you need face to face organizing. It sounds like ⁓ your take is that a general strike, even if a bunch of unions are involved, but it's not connected locally to local actions, is not something that could be effective in this moment. Am I am I right in interpreting it that way?
speaker-1: Correct. And it's not so much ⁓ local, it's not strictly geographical. It's like your community and what matters to you. Okay. ⁓ no. So so you in your life, right? You have actual connections to actual other people in your life, right? To your place of employment, to your ⁓ to the your neighbors, right? ⁓ to ⁓ if if you if your kid goes to a school to ⁓ the other parents in the school. To your church, if you're a member of a church, right? These are people who matter in your lives. They're either dependent on you. Like if you imagine you died at this moment, right? They would lose some money because you wouldn't show up to work. They would be sad because they have an actual social connection with you. ⁓ maybe the the church would be missing an usher because you do that every week, right? Those are actual, like real connections that have weight to people. Okay. The way that you exert pressure on the world. Is through those connections. And the way that you can be motivated to do something is through those connections, right? So if you wanna, if you wanna help a general strike, go to your church where there's 50 people who might listen to you, right? If you want to start a general strike, talk to a pastor who knows 50 people who can get them to do something, right? That is the reason that people do things. That is where we have power. ⁓ and so when you are looking at what do you do to change the world, right? ⁓ and you watch the news and you're like, ⁓ my God, fascism is so big and I hate what a senator from a different state is doing. You know, what do I do about it? Well, the truth is, nothing. Yeah, you do nothing because you have no power. You have no power over what happens. Yeah, you have no power over Donald Trump. You have no power over Joe Manchin or whoever the f you're mad at, right? You have no power over whatever it is Rachel Maddow is telling you to be mad about. And so if you want to make the world better, look at what is happening in your own community that you have power over and what you can show up to. Like there I guarantee you, no matter where you live, there is some politician who is doing something that you fing don't like and ⁓ and you have power over them. And you can show up at a meeting at which they are present and say, Hey, I don't like that. I'm your constituent. Or you can vote for somebody else, or you can donate to somebody else on ⁓ on your local left. You have to look at where you actually have power and exert that power, not have a fantasy of, you know, doing something To somebody who has nothing to do with you. If enough of us do the problem in America is that we've stopped doing this. It's the bowling alone effect. We've stopped going to church. We've stopped participating in our schools. We've stopped being a member of unions. When we do all those things, now we're a member of a web, web of organization that actually does go nationally. If you're a member of a union, you're a member of a local, which is maybe part of a national, which maybe has an elected president, right? Who might be the president of UAW, who's a progressive guy or you know, the progressive ⁓ or the the head of the flight attendance union, Sarah Nelson, who's a wonderful national activist. And they might decide, hey, let's get all of our people to do something, and you're one of those people and now you're a part of an organized structure of people who is do who are doing things together. ⁓ and that is how we actually make change.
speaker-0: Yeah, no, I mean, I think you're talking about a lot of in my world, we talk about that as kind of civic infrastructure and you know the connectivity of our social lives and our, you know, the social networks in which we are embedded. And now I want to pivot back to LA politics. Right. Sure. So you you gave us a whole you gave us a blueprint about ways to get inv involved, the ways that communication matters. Tell us how you're doing that and how that is working with ⁓ with Nydia's campaign that you're working on in LA.
speaker-1: I mean, ⁓ you know, Nithya has you know, built ⁓ progressive political infrastructure that didn't exist before she ran the first time. Literally there was no progressive elector electoral politics to speak of in Los Angeles at all. ⁓ and she built ⁓ you know, both a constituency of people who realized, ⁓ wait, I can, you know, do something at a local level. ⁓ I voted for you four years ago and things got better, you know. Or I voted for you six years ago was the first time she ran. ⁓ And you know, a movement of other electeds who, you know, benefited from the same seat change who who swept into office. So now we have ⁓ you know, she was the first person to sweep aside an ic incumbent in 2020. Since then we've had three or four more. And on a very small city council of, you know, a little over a dozen people, which is we have a very powerful city council with a very low number of elected leaders in LA. ⁓ you know, we have a good you know, four or five who are now progressives. ⁓ depending on, you know, ⁓ I would say three of them are strong progressives and then two more, you know, get ⁓ on the right day. You know what I mean? Which is great. That's a that's that's approaching a coalition, right? because you need those people who only agree with you half the time to get something done half the time. Right. There's been real changes to the city as a result that people have felt. ⁓ and there has been a, you know, we've built a a political machine that is able to get people elected that didn't exist before.
speaker-0: Which is
speaker-1: The old political machine is based on backroom deals and, you know, established power centers like developers, some of the the very, you know, old line public employee unions, like the ⁓ the the firefighters and the police unions, right? ⁓ they're used to, ⁓ we anoint someone and then they win, right? Because we send out a lot of mailers. They're not used to, ⁓ hold on a second. 10,000 members of a progressive union went and knocked 500,000 doors, right? ⁓ they don't know how to fight back against that. ⁓ and when you bring a new kind of strategy like that, you can you can win. Now it does Yeah, I mean as as much as possible. It's a very fast election, Nithya decided to jump in at the last minute because no but no other progressive ⁓ who was who was you know running a a a a plausible campaign ⁓ had jumped into the race. ⁓ and she saw Elaine and said, I I think that, you know, people are ready for change in the city to move in a progressive direction. So she jumped in very late.
speaker-0: Sorry.
speaker-1: ⁓ and so we have a limited ⁓ limited amount of time to knock doors, but yeah, that's what we're doing. ⁓ there's of course, you know, that we're doing advertising, we're doing social media, et cetera. But ⁓ it it does come down to ⁓ making people feel that there is something that they can do in their own community, right? You need to involve people in the movement if you want them to actually give a sh and turn out and vote.
speaker-0: So I know that there has been this discussion about how the number one way to address the climate crisis in LA is through housing. And I was wondering if you can talk a little bit about that for a minute and about how you see those connections.
speaker-1: The crisis that we have in LA is is primarily a housing crisis. You know, the city was built on the idea of being an endless suburb where everyone would have their own ranch home, and that resulted in a city that, first of all, is is far too big and spread out. ⁓ traffic is terrible, ⁓ results in huge amounts of emissions for transportation, ⁓ and a lot of human misery. It's sort of a thing that people thought would be attractive in the forties and they turned out to be dreadfully wrong about. And it's also resulted in ⁓ huge amounts of wildfire risk because the zoning laws are such that you cannot build up in the city. So you have to build out. And so they end up building more into the wilderness. and you know, when you look at the communities that burned down ⁓ a couple of years ago, they were built up right up against, you know, the wilderness, right up against ⁓ wildfire prone ⁓ forests, essentially.
speaker-0: was actually out in February 2025 ⁓ in Altadina, right after the wildfires subsided. I mean, and my observation was that it absolutely is right up against the wilderness. And in fact, I do some work with ⁓ the LA Conservation Corps, which ⁓ basically gets young people involved in helping to build these wildfire breaks where they basically try to cut up areas so that the wildfires can't travel. Because the problem is if there isn't a break there, the wildfire can jump, which is a real problem.
speaker-1: Yep. Yeah. I mean it ⁓ the the pattern development in LA is is a big part of the problem. I mean there's plenty plenty more that can be done in terms of mitigating the wildfires in the wilderness itself. but ⁓ it's it it's about how LA was built, you know. If we want ⁓ housing to be cheaper in the city, ⁓ we need more of it, we need to be more dense and and that's a huge issue in the mayoral election right now and ⁓ our progressive candidate is, you know, supporting much more dense building throughout the city.
speaker-0: Cool. Okay. So this ⁓ podcast is gonna go out to a lot of people and they're gonna be like, I get it. I'm not supposed to be on my computer so much and I can't just like things on Instagram. So I'm wondering if you had to tell people one thing they could do, what would be the number one thing that everybody should just do to to raise it a little bit more, to lift the boat?
speaker-1: Yeah. ⁓ it's it's find something to join. ⁓ find a group to join in your local community. ⁓ and it should be a group that you actually care about. ⁓ you know, ⁓ in my case it was a local homelessness group group in my union, right? I was very lucky that other people started that group. I wouldn't have had the wherewithal to do it myself, but it was just started by by members of my community. and ⁓ but ⁓ for other people that might be your church, it might be a school. ⁓ a school group, etc. ⁓ a a a really good example of this is your local Democratic Party organization, right? Like the assuming that you're ⁓ you know left center on this. ⁓ well yeah that there is one everywhere, right? And the party is in fact made up of these local groups which affiliate into state groups which affiliate into the national group, right? Although a lot of local groups
speaker-0: Have have a lot of democratic groups have really eroded and unfortunately the Democratic Party at the national level has not invested the time and energy to build that level of infrastructure. I mean, so in some places you're right, but in some places it's very, very weak and there's not much there there, you know?
speaker-1: You can't wait around for someone else to build the infrastructure for you, you know? ⁓ Chuck Schumer didn't let me go to a meeting. Like, what are you talking about? Right? There is a meeting in your neighborhood. I don't give a sh if there's two people there, right? Go be the third. Right. You you do you do on some level need to be the change, right? Why is ⁓ are those local democratic groups moribund? ⁓ well, sure. It's the national leadership not investing in them. It's also the electorate not showing up to them, right? ⁓
speaker-0: She wrote a whole book about this Adam. We could talk about it at some point.
speaker-1: Well please. You you I'll talk about it. It's your podcast.
speaker-0: No, I mean I just would say I mean but you're but you have it right. So, you know, you're doing you're doing a great job here. I mean, but yeah, it the local has been eroded. But I mean, I also would argue that the Democratic Party, and I I have argued in books like Activism Inc., that the Democratic Party has shortcutted a lot of local connections and replaced it with these, you know, get votes fast techniques that involve ⁓ Relying on digital ties rather than building, you know, real grassroots strength. And we've seen it over and over and over again. I mean, the book Activism came out in 2006. And ⁓ I highlighted that and I talked about how the outsourcing of grassroots campaigns was causing problems in America and was also ⁓ making young people feel turned off and disconnected from the party. And unfortunately that issue and those the problems that I talk about there still exist in the Democratic Party. In fact, they're a lot worse because there have been a lot more digital tools that have been made available so that you just can donate with a button and you can all get harassed with those annoying text messages that I'm sure if you haven't figured out how to get your spam control under you know to do it, it's the constant, you know, today's the day. If you don't give your money, democracy follows ones.
speaker-1: Yeah. And the fact that, you know, the the political system, and I know like not I know most Democrats even elected leaders hate those texts, right? But the fact that that is how most people are hearing on their most intimate device, right, from Democrats supposedly, is such a sin on the part of the people who run the party, right? but here's the thing, Dana. We can sit here all day and say ⁓ the Democratic Party should have done this or that differently. And unless Chuck Schumer is listening to the podcast or whoever else is in charge of the party, right? That like we don't want to tell a message as media professionals that is just for them, right? Like, ⁓ here's what you guys need to do, because they're not gonna do that, right? ⁓ or or we
speaker-0: But the people who are who the people who are listening, they could change that system.
speaker-1: Exactly, right? The people who are listening are the average people who want to do something, right? And so w the the reframe that I'd say is yes, it's a mistake on the part of the party and the national liberal establishment to not make use of the power of individual people in their local communities and organize them to make change in a national scale, right? If if you are listening to this message though, you need to recognize you have that power, whether they harness it or not. And so when the question is, what do I do as an individual, you go f use it anyway. Don't wait for them, right? Go find a place to use it in your community. ⁓ and then it will grow. You know, like the power does filter upwards. ⁓ and even if it doesn't filter upwards, well, at least you've made your corner of the world a better place. And when you die, you can die with a smile on your lips because you know that you've done all you could do, right? ⁓
speaker-0: You're building and you are building power. Whether the power doesn't trickle up, flow up, I don't know, evaporate up or whatever. There are a whole bunch of channels for that. But you're wrong. I mean, I think that's that I think one of the important messages here, which is an optimistic message, is that power is all about building it in your community and building yourself. And you shouldn't be waiting for somebody to tell you how to do it. Right. Although I guess Adam Conover just told you how to do it, right? There it is. That's you build
speaker-1: I mean that's that's a slight spur to action, but all I want people to do is like, you know, Google, you know, local group in my area that I care about and then show up to the to a meeting and then my part's over, right? Just keep showing up to the meeting.
speaker-0: Right. But mean that actually brings us to to my last drill question, which is so we're sitting here it's spring twenty twenty six, right? We got a lot of issues happening. We got their midterm elections coming up in the fall, you have a primary coming up in June. ⁓ so why is this specific conversation about like local labor, like local labor, local politics, local power, city level action? How is this more urgent today than it might have been, you know? when we spoke a year ago, for example, or two years ago. I mean or do you think it's the same?
speaker-1: I think it's always equally urgent. I think that it you know, I'm a little bit of a Buddhist about it, right? It's like the only moment is the present moment. The only thing you can do is the thing that you can do. You know, all you can ever all you can ever do in this life, right? Is you wake up, you feed yourself, you feed your kids, you secure the resources you need to feed yourselves tomorrow, right? And then in the time you have left in the day, you say, What can I do? To make the world a better place today. You don't say, How do I solve the climate crisis? Because you can't. You don't say, How do I end fascism? Because you can't. You say, What is the action I can take today? That action is almost always something in your community. The national media is constantly trying to get you to focus on stuff and be angry about stuff that you do not have power over. ⁓ and yeah, you should know about what's happening in the world. I'll watch the news and go, ⁓ man, that's sure that fucking sucks, right? But like If I make my local community better, it'll it'll trickle upwards. And and that's that that is what you if you can turn your attention back to that in the Buddhist sense, turn your attention back to the present moment, right? Over and over again. That's sort of the soul of mindfulness, right? You will actually be contributing to the only thing which has ever changed the world.
speaker-0: Well, that's a wonderful, that's a wonderful way to end. I do have the final thing, since please you just wrap that up so nicely, is we're trying this idea of a lightning round. Okay. So here's how it works. ⁓ I'm gonna list a bunch of issues and I want you to respond by just saying if today you are feeling apocalyptic about it or optimistic about it. Ready? ⁓ democracy in America.
speaker-1: Optimistic.
speaker-0: The fall twenty twenty six election.
speaker-1: Optimistic.
speaker-0: ⁓ union unions and labor in America. ⁓
speaker-1: Optimistic.
speaker-0: Could you? Okay. ⁓ youth political participation. Yeah. Today. ⁓
speaker-1: I'll say apocalyptic.
speaker-0: All right, and I we'll we'll wrap it up since you know you live in a land of wildfire and there's a horrible drought. ⁓ climate action.
speaker-1: ⁓ climate action. ⁓ apocalyptic.
speaker-0: All right, well, so that's what I've got for you today. Thank you so much for taking time to talk to us and ⁓ for joining the Apocalyptic Optimist Podcast.
speaker-1: No problem. Thank you for having me, Dan. It's been wonderful being here.
speaker-0: Thank you for listening to this episode. I hope you're feeling a little less apocalyptic and a little more optimistic now. I'm Dr. Dana Fisher and I'll see you next time. If you like this episode, like, subscribe, and even pass it to a friend. Thanks.
speaker-0: I'm Dr. Dana Fisher. Welcome to the Apocalyptic Optimist Podcast. We'll talk about what's broken and how we, and yes, even you, can actually fix it. Welcome back to the Apocalyptic Optimist Podcast. Real talk about what's broken and how to fix it. ⁓ today I am delighted to be speaking with comedian, writer, political activist Adam Conover. I have had the pleasure of joining Adam on factually a couple of times to talk about resistance to autocracy, to how we're gonna save ourselves. And I am so Honored and delighted that he agreed to join me today to talk with us here about his personal brand of apocalyptic optimism and what keeps him going. So so that's where we're going, Adam. There's your warning.
speaker-1: Very happy to be here and and I ⁓ I appreciate the the sign for the hazards up ahead but I feel well equipped. ⁓
speaker-0: You're well known as the guy who ruins everything. ⁓ by correcting the record, and more recently in terms of exploring how government works for better or for worse in the G word. ⁓ at what point did you realize that exposing the truth and having the right facts wasn't enough to stop the systemic problems that are plaguing our society? Just a little softball question for you.
speaker-1: I remember when I started doing ⁓ Adam Ruins Everything and you know, I I took such delight in saying the things we were saying and debunking the things we were debunking and and you know, doing so forcefully and and incontrovertibly. I remember we did one on ⁓ lie detector tests, how lie detector tests are are truly, truly fake. I mean the idea that ⁓ you measuring a small electrical impulse as like ⁓ on someone's body as they speak would somehow detect whether or not they're lying is like on the face of it ludicrous. That's like something maybe people would believe in the 40s. It's literally like what L. Ron Hubbard believed. But like, you know, it's used in ⁓ you know interrogations and and the criminal justice system all across the country. And so we did like a really, you know, solid debunk of this. And I remember feeling all proud of myself. Yeah, the episode came out. Yeah, we did it. ⁓ we really s we really ⁓ issued a smack down to them. And then I remember thinking, ⁓ yeah, but people are still gonna use lie detector tests, aren't they? Like they're still gonna use polygraphs. Like we're not ⁓ my episode came out, they're still gonna use them. Like what actually happened, you know. Like I actually maybe educated a couple hundred thousand people about the lie detector test. That's not nothing, but ⁓ you know, it doesn't by itself change things. And ⁓ that that's the moment which I realized, ⁓ yeah, there's a gap between media. and action. ⁓ and it's really hard to jump over. And I also that was around the same time that Jon Stewart was retiring the first time. And ⁓ I remember thinking, ⁓ that's that's probably part of why, you know, because you know, he spent over a decade on air lambasting, you know, Fox News, Fox and Friends, right? And like they're still on the air despite, you know, lying and and ⁓ you know deceiving people for money. ⁓ and you know, I I sort of imagine that Stuart was a little bit like, Well what's the what's the point of that? I mean, I said it, I said it a thousand times, I said it every day. If w nothing's gonna happen, then you know, why bother? ⁓ so I I understand that that more apocalyptic point of view.
speaker-0: Yeah, we're gonna get a little more into your apocalyptic point of view too, ⁓ before we before we turn towards and pivot towards the optimism. To just I I wanna ask you about ⁓ the work you've done. You've gotten really vocal about political corruption and the role that technology is playing in kind of spreading right-wing ideology. And I was hoping you could kind of take us down that rabbit hole a little bit.
speaker-1: Well, the the version that I tell for me is that, you know, via the tech industry, the ⁓ right wing has just sort of taken over the entire American media. ⁓ you know, the the tech companies, which are really media companies, if you look at them, with the exception of ⁓ you know, Apple sells hardware, Amazon sells, you know, goods via retail by undercutting other retailers. The rest of them are media companies. You know, Meta is a media company. X now is as it's called is a media company. Instagram, well, also media company, TikTok media company. ⁓ what are these people competing with? They're competing with traditional legacy media. You know, they're this is what people do instead of watching a morning show, right? Well, you know, the right wing has alleged for years, for decades, that the traditional media had a left-wing bias. they were largely right, if you agree as I do that. ⁓ left wing viewpoints are closer to reality on average than ⁓ yes the traditional media has a left wing bias because you know ⁓ values such as you know reporting reality is liberal according to them so they created an all and science right science is a left wing value right ⁓ clearly as you can see now that they're in power they're destroying all of science and academia because they believe that
speaker-0: forget don't forget science, Adam.
speaker-1: That science and academia and knowledge are counter to ⁓ right wing goals. ⁓ they they believe that pretty explicitly. So they created an alternative media ecosystem where they didn't have to play by those rules, didn't have to play by the rules of journalism, didn't have to, you know, ⁓ listen to the FCC, didn't have to ⁓ do anything reputably. and that that was where they placed their bet. And they spent 10 years building that ecosystem. ⁓ and then the tech companies came and they destroyed legacy media. Now that legacy media is is largely decimated and dropping every year, the media that people are watching is the right wing media is podcasts, is ⁓ Instagram, TikTok. Those are the places where the right wing dominates. Not all podcasts, but if you look at the top if you look at the top ten to the top hundred, you know, they're they're generally podcasts that that espouse left wing viewpoints. I mean what, Pod Save America's number twelve or something. Great. ⁓
speaker-0: Podcast Adam. Let's just click
speaker-1: ⁓ so you know, because ⁓ they they were able to more successfully take advantage of the tech industry disruption ⁓ to create a ⁓ media ecosystem in which they now dominate. ⁓ and then of course there's the degree to which the people who run the various ⁓ platforms have ⁓ you know ⁓ avowedly right wing views, you know, Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk and and Peter Thiel and all that sort of thing, you know, ⁓ which is so just part of the water now, it's I'm almost bored talking about it, you know.
speaker-0: Have you personally felt the effects of that in kind of in your work?
speaker-1: I mean, the the disruption more than the ⁓ the than the politics of it, ⁓ because like the kind of comedy that I do, the traditional media companies just stopped making. They just don't do it anymore. ⁓ like if I wanted to do a late night show and you know, imagine I'm more famous than I was ⁓ than I currently am, right? ⁓ people know me, but you know, imagine I'm one of the most famous comedians in America and I wanted to go around and and pitch, hey, I want to do a great late night show. People love this format. We're gonna get amazing guests, you know, the pitch is perfect. There isn't a single buyer for that in media. You know, nobody at Warner Brothers, nobody at Paramount, nobody at Netflix would buy that. I mean, you know, Netflix literally had John Mullaney, ⁓ that's the most recent ⁓ attempt at a talk show, is John Mullaney. ⁓ he did eight episodes of non-political comedy a year ago. That's how much they gave one of the biggest comedians in the country to do. You know, essentially a late night show, right? And that's the kind of comedy that I do. I have other interests. You know, I'm working on pitches and proposals, you know, about narrative stuff, ⁓ like any any good ⁓ Hollywood writer. But ⁓ you know, what I what I'm known for is topical comedy, comedy about the world that you actually live in, comedy about the real world. ⁓ and they just don't make it anymore. ⁓ because ⁓ the ⁓ people don't talk about this that much. ⁓ the traditional media companies, the Warner Brothers and the Netflix, if you want to include them, they gave up huge swathes of Of what television formerly was to YouTube. YouTube is now the number one streaming platform on television sets, right? It's not Netflix. People spend more time watching YouTube on their television sets, the 60-inch screen in their living room that their couch is pointed towards, than they do Netflix. And YouTube is ⁓ that is YouTube's biggest platform, is the television set. And what are people watching on there? ⁓ you know, if they want to watch high-end narrative scripted, right? If they want to watch You know, The Last of Us or whatever, they go to HBO Max or they go to Netflix, right? If they want to watch any but remember about the re the rest of television, whatever happened to the news, the talk shows, the food shows, the travel shows, the lifestyle programming, right? ⁓ everything else, it's all YouTube. That's where you go to watch all of that stuff. When people want to channel surf, they open YouTube, right? ⁓ let me just watch what's on. I'll I'll watch the YouTube algorithm. And ⁓ that means that the those traditional media companies have shrunk massively because they've stopped making that type of content. And among that was political commentary. ⁓ and so, you know, there there's ⁓ ten years ago when I pitched Adam Ruins Everything, we pitched a dozen different networks. Now there'd be zero meetings. They'd all say, We're not even in that business. Why are you trying to talk to why are you calling us? ⁓ like all we make is high end narrative scripted and you know, nothing else. ⁓ so ⁓ for me it's been all right, I I have sort of been pushed into the same ⁓ you know, quote unquote new media. It's been new media for 20 years now, ecosystem. And I'm I'm, you know, building my own business and my own platform on YouTube, which is, you know, it's dicey, right? ⁓ you have to play with the algorithm. The algorithm doesn't always prioritize the kinds of viewpoints that I want to say. But that's, you know, I'm a creature of the media, and that's that's all we can do is go where the eyeballs are and go. Go where the structures of media tell us to go.
speaker-0: All right, that's pretty apocalyptic there, Adam. Thank you. You took us. I think you took us as low as we need to go for today. But here, now we're gonna lift, we're gonna go up. So from here, there's nowhere but up to go anyway. So so here's a question. And I I know that you have a lot of thoughts and ideas about this and experiences with this. So so how do we empower the little guy to push back against right-wing hegemony, to push back against the capitalist creep that we're seeing all over in so many different components of our lives? I mean, I wanted I I wanted to.
speaker-1: No problem.
speaker-0: To push you to talk about your work as an organizer with the WGA and the ways that you've been platforming and supporting other workers, other, you know, unization in other contexts. I know you just did a show about that recently. ⁓ you know, tell us about this pivot and and what's working and and how it's working for you.
speaker-1: Well, ⁓ yeah, I mean, I I do a lot of ⁓ I I guess you'd call activism in the real world. Well, I think of that as being active in my community. You know, I'm part of the Hollywood community of writers. ⁓ when I joined it, ⁓ when I started working in this industry, I was well aware that the only reason I have a good health insurance program, the only reason I have a good pension, I I'm I'm literally vested in a pension plan, right? When I retire, ⁓ presumably I make it that far, I I'll you know, I'll receive a pension plan. That ⁓ my grandfather got one of those, you know, ⁓ but it's they're vanishingly rare today. ⁓ I get residuals, you know. I still occasionally get a check for a couple pennies when, you know, one of my ⁓ shows is washed on an airplane somewhere. ⁓ and it used to be more than that. I used to receive a a good portion of my income was in residuals. Why was that? It's because I'm a member of a strong union that's been fighting for 90 years. And, you know, a couple of years back, ⁓ I want to say around twenty ⁓ nineteen. We had a big fight ⁓ with the agencies, which are these giant private equity backed corporations. ⁓ I won't get into the details, but we had to pick a fight with them. And I got involved in it because I believed in the fight. And, you know, there was a p we had a political process in the union over ⁓ you know, not everybody wanted wanted to do the fight. Some people, you know, want to be a little more ⁓ friendly to the companies. And, you know, we had to organize ⁓ internally to make sure the fight was one that we wanted to take on. And I got involved in that. And ⁓ you know, from there I sort of joined the leadership group and I'm I'm on the board now. I've been elected three times to the Board of the Writers Guild. and that wasn't me going, I want to do activism and make the world a better place. That was just me being a part of my community, right? And and trying to make the the world better for me and for the people around me. ⁓ I've also got involved in LA local politics for the same reason. I I ⁓ around twenty nineteen around around the same time actually. I ⁓ you know, LA has a famously ⁓ brutal homelessness crisis. And I got sick of walking by ⁓ homeless people on my way to work every day. And I was like, why is there a barrier? Why can't I talk to these folks? You know, why why is this is these are the I see the same person on under the same bus shelter every day. ⁓ and so I joined a group called CELA, it's a wonderful ⁓ homelessness services organization ⁓ that had just started in LA. When I joined it, it was literally just like 10 people meeting a parking lot. Who wanted to figure out how to support homeless folks in the in our area because there's almost no services. And we started going around with water and you know, snacks and stuff, and we figured out how connect people with services, ⁓ really working with them one on one. And now it's been ⁓ you know, seven or eight years, it's a it's a proper organization with 501c3 status and donors, and we do a fundraiser and all that. I'm really proud to have been a part of that organization for many years. But then also, one of the founders of that organization ran for city council. And I got involved in her city council campaign because, ⁓ wait, this is a lever. My city council district, the one that I live in, ⁓ there's a there's a person called a city councilman. And ⁓ they're very powerful. And I've never heard of the guy who's the city councilman. ⁓ because he doesn't want me to know who he is. Because he wants to just be a behind the scenes power broker and and the city of LA doesn't want you to think about it, right? But here now my friend is running as an activist and saying, no, look, this is a powerful position. We can do things if we actually put work into it. And we got her elected. We knocked doors. You know, we beat we beat she became the first person to beat an incumbent city council person in 20 years, right? and ⁓ once she became the city council person, homelessness numbers in her district star stop started dropping. She literally one of the people who I used to visit every single and this is a very small story, but you know, a woman who I used to visit in homelessness services every single weekend, very chronic ⁓ you know, cr mental illness and and and drug use and and every other ⁓ you know, disease of modernity that that ⁓ causes people to to live on the street. You know, we we worked with her so much and you know, she was out there for years, lovely person. my friend becomes city councilwoman and and she finally puts policies in place that helps her, right? And gets her into permanent treatment. And I've not I've actually not lost touch with her, but I haven't seen her on the street in my neighborhood in a couple of years. and so, you know, I saw the world around me get better. And now my friend, her name's Nithi Rahman. She's running for the mayor of Los Angeles, ⁓ on on the same on the same platform and and the same way that she ran for city councilperson. And I think I'm and I'm ⁓ volunteering on her campaign a lot because you know what? I'm pretty sure we can get her to f win. ⁓ because ⁓ we have done the groundwork and and you know, we we are the people in LA who have been trying to change the city, whereas everybody else ⁓ has been ignoring it. and so you know, does that solve every problem in LA? Does that solve every problem in in America? No. But does it make the my corner of the world a little bit better? Yes. And that's all that you can really do, you know. and the the lesson that I drew from all this is that, you know, I work in the media, I work in social media, I work on television, I work, you know, I I interview national politicians. There's a lie that we're told by all these systems that the only way that we can influence the world is by watching things by paying for things, voting with our dollars, ⁓ donating, voting once every four years or once every two years, and then that's it. You know, sit on the couch and let everybody else handle it. and, you know, withhold your money and and don't, you know, don't follow problematic people or whatever, you know, ⁓ as though ⁓ or or posting the right thing, you know. and all that stuff is ⁓ varying degrees of slightly helpful to meaningless. Voting, yes, good donating, fine. Posting, garbage, right? P bullsh, ⁓ nothing. Posting is nothing. Posting is na nothing. Arguing online, nothing. Nothing at all. It's it's to sh-
speaker-0: Do you don't feel like that's kind of contributes to our civic engagement and debate online, Adam?
speaker-1: Yeah, who gives a sh? Like, it doesn't matter. You know what matters is your presence at a meeting in person, right? Like you have power in your society that that they want you to ignore, that Mark Zuckerberg doesn't want you to think about. ⁓ and that that power ⁓ coheres in the social position that you have in your community, right? As a as someone who pays rent, as someone who pays taxes, as someone who has a body who can show up in a physical location. as someone who can withhold your work from an employer. ⁓ those are places that you have power that you can if you band together with other people, you can exert that power, you know.
speaker-0: Wait, wait, can can I break a couple of things down for a second? So you have said, and this is a quote from ⁓ from a piece you were in about your work on the WGA strike, you wrote, or you said the face-to-face conversation is the atomic unit of politics, which I just thought was was quite beautiful. And hacho really speaks to a lot of what you're talking about here. So what and and you're starting to kind of scale up in the way you're discussing this, but I thought we could just go back to this, you know, this face-to-face conversation. and how you've seen it work in your little corner of the world, in your corner of the universe, and how you've found to the degree that you have using media and your media presence to help expand that corner of the world, if you have.
speaker-1: ⁓ sure. I mean, so in the Writers Guild, right? The Writers Guild has ten thousand members. ⁓ the way that we make things happen, ⁓ if we want the you know, f well those of us in leadership are looking at the state of the industry and we're saying XYZ is happening, we think we need to take action. And the way we take action is by getting those ten thousand members to all do something, right? Even if it's just click vote yes on one of our online elections, right? Or maybe it's
speaker-0: Post about it but click something. Is that what you're saying?
speaker-1: Well well, click something in a ⁓ union election to vote on whether or not we will go on strike, right? And then to actually withhold our labor, right? Not voting on a f change.org petition, right? But voting on like a binding resolution with you and your other ten thousand members, right? The only reason a union is able to exert power is because those ten thousand people individually all make the individual choice to withhold their labor. If 3,000 of them decide, ⁓ I don't really want to withhold my labor. I I think I'll just keep working, right? We don't have a lever to stop them. We can't call the police to stop them. It's not literally against the law for them to do so. ⁓ and so the strike doesn't work, right? Because the employers go, well, I still got you know a third of the labor. So why why do I give a f you know? ⁓ and so how do you get those 10,000 people to all withhold their labor? Well, it's it's an individual decision for each of them, and you need to talk to each of them individually. And so what do we do? We reach out to all those people individually. We have a system in the Writers Guild where our sort of super volunteers are called captains. ⁓ and though we empower those people with sort of extra information. They have extra meetings that they're willing to go to. And then each of those people has a team of about a hundred people who they ⁓ give or take, ⁓ who they represent. ⁓ and they communicate with those people via email, but those people also call them on the phone. Those captains can call a board member if they want. And literally any any member of the writers' girl can call a board member at any time if they have a question. ⁓ and so, you know, they ⁓ if someone's I don't know if I want to go on strike, well, call me and talk about it, right? And and you know, we say you can make whatever decision you want, but here's how we see it, right? And we try to have that one-on-one conversation. ⁓ also, why are we able to go on strike on the first place? It's because we've talked to those ten thousand people and we know what they care about, right? We know what they need, we know what their pressures on them are. They're saying, Hey, the way the business has changed. In, you know, XYZ way is really fing with my life. And we say, okay, we think the only way that we can change that is if we all, if we are all willing to go on strike, if we all threaten to go on strike. And if we have correctly communicated with them and we know what matters to them, then we are able to ⁓ you know put a strike together because we've talked to them one on one, right? and so it's it's the willingness to have those 10,000 in person conversations. When we got people to vote for Nithya. In Los Angeles. We did it by knocking doors and by having conversations. Hey, I'm not somebody who's flown in from a different state to try to convince you to do something.
speaker-0: Parachuting and we like to say parachuting it.
speaker-1: Yeah. We turned it. And by the way, I've done that. I I did parachute door knocking for Kamala Harris in ⁓ 2024 because I was like, I got to do something here. And ⁓ you know, I saw the way people looked at me. They could tell I wasn't from, you know, the suburbs of Phoenix, right? But when I do that in LA, I'm like, hey, I live down the street. You know, ⁓ yeah, I live across the street from ⁓ Blah Blah Ba Middle School. And they're like, ⁓ yeah, my kid goes there. Okay, well, I'm knocking doors for this person. She lives down the block. Maybe you want to vote for her. ⁓ yeah, no, I've seen her around. Yes, no, okay, I I'll vote for her, right? ⁓ that is like ⁓ that is what gets people to do things. And and so having a system by which you have those conversations is ⁓
speaker-0: Let me jump in, you can tell me in a second. But so what you're describing is like the reality of local policy making and how local politics or all politics is really local, as we both know, right? So here's a question I have for you because like we are, you know, there's a bunch of folks who are very concerned about ⁓ the autocratic creep in our society, the poly crisis, the way that the climate crisis is basically, you know. Creating droughts and extreme weather and is going to get worse because we no longer believe in science in our country. So given that, there's a lot of discussion about trying to do stuff at the national level. And I was wondering, you know, for example, there's a call for a general strike coming up. There are a bunch of folks organizing around this. And I don't see this kind of local, you know, face-to-face component there. Do you have thoughts, advice, feelings about how that could be done in an effective way?
speaker-1: About a general strike specifically?
speaker-0: Sure. General strike.
speaker-1: I mean w ninety percent of the
speaker-0: Say you're against a general strike too, if you are, you're welcome to say that as well.
speaker-1: 90% of the time, I'm gonna be really brutally honest with you, Dana, Dana. Ninety percent of the time when I see people, quote, organizing for a general strike, I see people wasting their time. Because what are they doing? They're posting on Instagram, general strike, right? How many people is Mark Zuckerberg gonna show their image, even if it goes maximally viral, right? Couple million. That's not a general strike. And and and those people are gonna see a graphic on Instagram and they're gonna go. ⁓ okay, I'm not gonna go to work because I saw an Instagram graphic. I want you to think about like how many people would we need to do a general strike for it to be meaningful? 10 million, 20 million, right? Something like that. A national general strike, if we're really talking national, okay? So you need 10 million people to individually decide I'm not gonna go to work for one day. I'm not gonna buy anything. How many of those people do you think are actually gonna do that because they saw an Instagram graphic? I I know that you think that. As the organizer, maybe they should, right? But it doesn't matter what you think they should do. You need to get them to actually do it, right? Are they gonna do it because they were scrolling on their phone and they saw general strike Instagram graphic? No, right? Why would someone actually participate in a general strike? Because their community is also participating in it, right? So why in minneapolis was there a local general strike, right? It's because businesses Organizations, right? unions, ⁓ local political groups, ⁓ local nonpolitical groups were also individually affected by what was happening in the city, right? ⁓ my God, my neighbor has been taken. And we are talking about this at my church. And then my pastor said, There's a general strike. Would you join me? I'm going to be marching, right? That is why people join in action. It's always because of something in their lives. When you look at the history of general strikes, you know, they all go on general strikes in France all the time. Sure. It's not because people are posting on Instagram. It's because those people are members of unions. They have been organized year round. And those unions are part of a national group that says we're going to call a general strike. Right. So, ⁓ you know, this idea of like, ⁓ we're just going to say it. We're just going to say general strike and people will do it. Is nonsense. That's not organizing, right? That that's that's like pseudo-organizing. Now, and actu actually organizing for a general strike, when you see ⁓ you know, the the head of the UAW say, Hey, let's have multiple national unions sync up our contract expirations so they all expire on the same day, so that we can call a general strike. He's talking about the leaders of, you know, may let's say ideally a dozen unions, right? Him, the flight attendants, the writers guild, the Teamsters, right? And they all have a conversation and say, let's all mobilize our people to all go on strike at the same time strategically for a specific end, right? That's how you get an actual general strike going. ⁓ or you have you know a crazy local incident like happened in Minneapolis that causes sort of spontaneous organization, right? never get o you can never get around org the need to organize. It's always about that.
speaker-0: Even able
speaker-1: It not just local, face to face organiz organizing.
speaker-0: All right. So not just local, you need face to face organizing. It sounds like ⁓ your take is that a general strike, even if a bunch of unions are involved, but it's not connected locally to local actions, is not something that could be effective in this moment. Am I am I right in interpreting it that way?
speaker-1: Correct. And it's not so much ⁓ local, it's not strictly geographical. It's like your community and what matters to you. Okay. ⁓ no. So so you in your life, right? You have actual connections to actual other people in your life, right? To your place of employment, to your ⁓ to the your neighbors, right? ⁓ to ⁓ if if you if your kid goes to a school to ⁓ the other parents in the school. To your church, if you're a member of a church, right? These are people who matter in your lives. They're either dependent on you. Like if you imagine you died at this moment, right? They would lose some money because you wouldn't show up to work. They would be sad because they have an actual social connection with you. ⁓ maybe the the church would be missing an usher because you do that every week, right? Those are actual, like real connections that have weight to people. Okay. The way that you exert pressure on the world. Is through those connections. And the way that you can be motivated to do something is through those connections, right? So if you wanna, if you wanna help a general strike, go to your church where there's 50 people who might listen to you, right? If you want to start a general strike, talk to a pastor who knows 50 people who can get them to do something, right? That is the reason that people do things. That is where we have power. ⁓ and so when you are looking at what do you do to change the world, right? ⁓ and you watch the news and you're like, ⁓ my God, fascism is so big and I hate what a senator from a different state is doing. You know, what do I do about it? Well, the truth is, nothing. Yeah, you do nothing because you have no power. You have no power over what happens. Yeah, you have no power over Donald Trump. You have no power over Joe Manchin or whoever the f you're mad at, right? You have no power over whatever it is Rachel Maddow is telling you to be mad about. And so if you want to make the world better, look at what is happening in your own community that you have power over and what you can show up to. Like there I guarantee you, no matter where you live, there is some politician who is doing something that you fing don't like and ⁓ and you have power over them. And you can show up at a meeting at which they are present and say, Hey, I don't like that. I'm your constituent. Or you can vote for somebody else, or you can donate to somebody else on ⁓ on your local left. You have to look at where you actually have power and exert that power, not have a fantasy of, you know, doing something To somebody who has nothing to do with you. If enough of us do the problem in America is that we've stopped doing this. It's the bowling alone effect. We've stopped going to church. We've stopped participating in our schools. We've stopped being a member of unions. When we do all those things, now we're a member of a web, web of organization that actually does go nationally. If you're a member of a union, you're a member of a local, which is maybe part of a national, which maybe has an elected president, right? Who might be the president of UAW, who's a progressive guy or you know, the progressive ⁓ or the the head of the flight attendance union, Sarah Nelson, who's a wonderful national activist. And they might decide, hey, let's get all of our people to do something, and you're one of those people and now you're a part of an organized structure of people who is do who are doing things together. ⁓ and that is how we actually make change.
speaker-0: Yeah, no, I mean, I think you're talking about a lot of in my world, we talk about that as kind of civic infrastructure and you know the connectivity of our social lives and our, you know, the social networks in which we are embedded. And now I want to pivot back to LA politics. Right. Sure. So you you gave us a whole you gave us a blueprint about ways to get inv involved, the ways that communication matters. Tell us how you're doing that and how that is working with ⁓ with Nydia's campaign that you're working on in LA.
speaker-1: I mean, ⁓ you know, Nithya has you know, built ⁓ progressive political infrastructure that didn't exist before she ran the first time. Literally there was no progressive elector electoral politics to speak of in Los Angeles at all. ⁓ and she built ⁓ you know, both a constituency of people who realized, ⁓ wait, I can, you know, do something at a local level. ⁓ I voted for you four years ago and things got better, you know. Or I voted for you six years ago was the first time she ran. ⁓ And you know, a movement of other electeds who, you know, benefited from the same seat change who who swept into office. So now we have ⁓ you know, she was the first person to sweep aside an ic incumbent in 2020. Since then we've had three or four more. And on a very small city council of, you know, a little over a dozen people, which is we have a very powerful city council with a very low number of elected leaders in LA. ⁓ you know, we have a good you know, four or five who are now progressives. ⁓ depending on, you know, ⁓ I would say three of them are strong progressives and then two more, you know, get ⁓ on the right day. You know what I mean? Which is great. That's a that's that's approaching a coalition, right? because you need those people who only agree with you half the time to get something done half the time. Right. There's been real changes to the city as a result that people have felt. ⁓ and there has been a, you know, we've built a a political machine that is able to get people elected that didn't exist before.
speaker-0: Which is
speaker-1: The old political machine is based on backroom deals and, you know, established power centers like developers, some of the the very, you know, old line public employee unions, like the ⁓ the the firefighters and the police unions, right? ⁓ they're used to, ⁓ we anoint someone and then they win, right? Because we send out a lot of mailers. They're not used to, ⁓ hold on a second. 10,000 members of a progressive union went and knocked 500,000 doors, right? ⁓ they don't know how to fight back against that. ⁓ and when you bring a new kind of strategy like that, you can you can win. Now it does Yeah, I mean as as much as possible. It's a very fast election, Nithya decided to jump in at the last minute because no but no other progressive ⁓ who was who was you know running a a a a plausible campaign ⁓ had jumped into the race. ⁓ and she saw Elaine and said, I I think that, you know, people are ready for change in the city to move in a progressive direction. So she jumped in very late.
speaker-0: Sorry.
speaker-1: ⁓ and so we have a limited ⁓ limited amount of time to knock doors, but yeah, that's what we're doing. ⁓ there's of course, you know, that we're doing advertising, we're doing social media, et cetera. But ⁓ it it does come down to ⁓ making people feel that there is something that they can do in their own community, right? You need to involve people in the movement if you want them to actually give a sh and turn out and vote.
speaker-0: So I know that there has been this discussion about how the number one way to address the climate crisis in LA is through housing. And I was wondering if you can talk a little bit about that for a minute and about how you see those connections.
speaker-1: The crisis that we have in LA is is primarily a housing crisis. You know, the city was built on the idea of being an endless suburb where everyone would have their own ranch home, and that resulted in a city that, first of all, is is far too big and spread out. ⁓ traffic is terrible, ⁓ results in huge amounts of emissions for transportation, ⁓ and a lot of human misery. It's sort of a thing that people thought would be attractive in the forties and they turned out to be dreadfully wrong about. And it's also resulted in ⁓ huge amounts of wildfire risk because the zoning laws are such that you cannot build up in the city. So you have to build out. And so they end up building more into the wilderness. and you know, when you look at the communities that burned down ⁓ a couple of years ago, they were built up right up against, you know, the wilderness, right up against ⁓ wildfire prone ⁓ forests, essentially.
speaker-0: was actually out in February 2025 ⁓ in Altadina, right after the wildfires subsided. I mean, and my observation was that it absolutely is right up against the wilderness. And in fact, I do some work with ⁓ the LA Conservation Corps, which ⁓ basically gets young people involved in helping to build these wildfire breaks where they basically try to cut up areas so that the wildfires can't travel. Because the problem is if there isn't a break there, the wildfire can jump, which is a real problem.
speaker-1: Yep. Yeah. I mean it ⁓ the the pattern development in LA is is a big part of the problem. I mean there's plenty plenty more that can be done in terms of mitigating the wildfires in the wilderness itself. but ⁓ it's it it's about how LA was built, you know. If we want ⁓ housing to be cheaper in the city, ⁓ we need more of it, we need to be more dense and and that's a huge issue in the mayoral election right now and ⁓ our progressive candidate is, you know, supporting much more dense building throughout the city.
speaker-0: Cool. Okay. So this ⁓ podcast is gonna go out to a lot of people and they're gonna be like, I get it. I'm not supposed to be on my computer so much and I can't just like things on Instagram. So I'm wondering if you had to tell people one thing they could do, what would be the number one thing that everybody should just do to to raise it a little bit more, to lift the boat?
speaker-1: Yeah. ⁓ it's it's find something to join. ⁓ find a group to join in your local community. ⁓ and it should be a group that you actually care about. ⁓ you know, ⁓ in my case it was a local homelessness group group in my union, right? I was very lucky that other people started that group. I wouldn't have had the wherewithal to do it myself, but it was just started by by members of my community. and ⁓ but ⁓ for other people that might be your church, it might be a school. ⁓ a school group, etc. ⁓ a a a really good example of this is your local Democratic Party organization, right? Like the assuming that you're ⁓ you know left center on this. ⁓ well yeah that there is one everywhere, right? And the party is in fact made up of these local groups which affiliate into state groups which affiliate into the national group, right? Although a lot of local groups
speaker-0: Have have a lot of democratic groups have really eroded and unfortunately the Democratic Party at the national level has not invested the time and energy to build that level of infrastructure. I mean, so in some places you're right, but in some places it's very, very weak and there's not much there there, you know?
speaker-1: You can't wait around for someone else to build the infrastructure for you, you know? ⁓ Chuck Schumer didn't let me go to a meeting. Like, what are you talking about? Right? There is a meeting in your neighborhood. I don't give a sh if there's two people there, right? Go be the third. Right. You you do you do on some level need to be the change, right? Why is ⁓ are those local democratic groups moribund? ⁓ well, sure. It's the national leadership not investing in them. It's also the electorate not showing up to them, right? ⁓
speaker-0: She wrote a whole book about this Adam. We could talk about it at some point.
speaker-1: Well please. You you I'll talk about it. It's your podcast.
speaker-0: No, I mean I just would say I mean but you're but you have it right. So, you know, you're doing you're doing a great job here. I mean, but yeah, it the local has been eroded. But I mean, I also would argue that the Democratic Party, and I I have argued in books like Activism Inc., that the Democratic Party has shortcutted a lot of local connections and replaced it with these, you know, get votes fast techniques that involve ⁓ Relying on digital ties rather than building, you know, real grassroots strength. And we've seen it over and over and over again. I mean, the book Activism came out in 2006. And ⁓ I highlighted that and I talked about how the outsourcing of grassroots campaigns was causing problems in America and was also ⁓ making young people feel turned off and disconnected from the party. And unfortunately that issue and those the problems that I talk about there still exist in the Democratic Party. In fact, they're a lot worse because there have been a lot more digital tools that have been made available so that you just can donate with a button and you can all get harassed with those annoying text messages that I'm sure if you haven't figured out how to get your spam control under you know to do it, it's the constant, you know, today's the day. If you don't give your money, democracy follows ones.
speaker-1: Yeah. And the fact that, you know, the the political system, and I know like not I know most Democrats even elected leaders hate those texts, right? But the fact that that is how most people are hearing on their most intimate device, right, from Democrats supposedly, is such a sin on the part of the people who run the party, right? but here's the thing, Dana. We can sit here all day and say ⁓ the Democratic Party should have done this or that differently. And unless Chuck Schumer is listening to the podcast or whoever else is in charge of the party, right? That like we don't want to tell a message as media professionals that is just for them, right? Like, ⁓ here's what you guys need to do, because they're not gonna do that, right? ⁓ or or we
speaker-0: But the people who are who the people who are listening, they could change that system.
speaker-1: Exactly, right? The people who are listening are the average people who want to do something, right? And so w the the reframe that I'd say is yes, it's a mistake on the part of the party and the national liberal establishment to not make use of the power of individual people in their local communities and organize them to make change in a national scale, right? If if you are listening to this message though, you need to recognize you have that power, whether they harness it or not. And so when the question is, what do I do as an individual, you go f use it anyway. Don't wait for them, right? Go find a place to use it in your community. ⁓ and then it will grow. You know, like the power does filter upwards. ⁓ and even if it doesn't filter upwards, well, at least you've made your corner of the world a better place. And when you die, you can die with a smile on your lips because you know that you've done all you could do, right? ⁓
speaker-0: You're building and you are building power. Whether the power doesn't trickle up, flow up, I don't know, evaporate up or whatever. There are a whole bunch of channels for that. But you're wrong. I mean, I think that's that I think one of the important messages here, which is an optimistic message, is that power is all about building it in your community and building yourself. And you shouldn't be waiting for somebody to tell you how to do it. Right. Although I guess Adam Conover just told you how to do it, right? There it is. That's you build
speaker-1: I mean that's that's a slight spur to action, but all I want people to do is like, you know, Google, you know, local group in my area that I care about and then show up to the to a meeting and then my part's over, right? Just keep showing up to the meeting.
speaker-0: Right. But mean that actually brings us to to my last drill question, which is so we're sitting here it's spring twenty twenty six, right? We got a lot of issues happening. We got their midterm elections coming up in the fall, you have a primary coming up in June. ⁓ so why is this specific conversation about like local labor, like local labor, local politics, local power, city level action? How is this more urgent today than it might have been, you know? when we spoke a year ago, for example, or two years ago. I mean or do you think it's the same?
speaker-1: I think it's always equally urgent. I think that it you know, I'm a little bit of a Buddhist about it, right? It's like the only moment is the present moment. The only thing you can do is the thing that you can do. You know, all you can ever all you can ever do in this life, right? Is you wake up, you feed yourself, you feed your kids, you secure the resources you need to feed yourselves tomorrow, right? And then in the time you have left in the day, you say, What can I do? To make the world a better place today. You don't say, How do I solve the climate crisis? Because you can't. You don't say, How do I end fascism? Because you can't. You say, What is the action I can take today? That action is almost always something in your community. The national media is constantly trying to get you to focus on stuff and be angry about stuff that you do not have power over. ⁓ and yeah, you should know about what's happening in the world. I'll watch the news and go, ⁓ man, that's sure that fucking sucks, right? But like If I make my local community better, it'll it'll trickle upwards. And and that's that that is what you if you can turn your attention back to that in the Buddhist sense, turn your attention back to the present moment, right? Over and over again. That's sort of the soul of mindfulness, right? You will actually be contributing to the only thing which has ever changed the world.
speaker-0: Well, that's a wonderful, that's a wonderful way to end. I do have the final thing, since please you just wrap that up so nicely, is we're trying this idea of a lightning round. Okay. So here's how it works. ⁓ I'm gonna list a bunch of issues and I want you to respond by just saying if today you are feeling apocalyptic about it or optimistic about it. Ready? ⁓ democracy in America.
speaker-1: Optimistic.
speaker-0: The fall twenty twenty six election.
speaker-1: Optimistic.
speaker-0: ⁓ union unions and labor in America. ⁓
speaker-1: Optimistic.
speaker-0: Could you? Okay. ⁓ youth political participation. Yeah. Today. ⁓
speaker-1: I'll say apocalyptic.
speaker-0: All right, and I we'll we'll wrap it up since you know you live in a land of wildfire and there's a horrible drought. ⁓ climate action.
speaker-1: ⁓ climate action. ⁓ apocalyptic.
speaker-0: All right, well, so that's what I've got for you today. Thank you so much for taking time to talk to us and ⁓ for joining the Apocalyptic Optimist Podcast.
speaker-1: No problem. Thank you for having me, Dan. It's been wonderful being here.
speaker-0: Thank you for listening to this episode. I hope you're feeling a little less apocalyptic and a little more optimistic now. I'm Dr. Dana Fisher and I'll see you next time. If you like this episode, like, subscribe, and even pass it to a friend. Thanks.
