speaker-0: think part of the answer, it doesn't have to be the whole answer, but part of the answer is appropriate anger. We have been lied to, right? We have been put in positions where our lives, our property, our health are put at risk by companies that are laughing all of the way to the bank. And we should be angry about that. And then we should turn that anger into ambition and the ambition into action.
speaker-1: 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. Today I'm speaking with professor, writer, and mythbuster, Naomi Oreskis. She's a professor of the history of science at Harvard University, the author of eight books, including Merchants of Doubt. Professor Oreskis is well known for her research that dismantles assumptions around science and the free market. Her work combines history, storytelling, and extensive data. I'm thrilled she agreed to join me today to talk about her personal brand of apocalyptic optimism and what keeps her going. Thank you so much for coming on today, Naomi.
speaker-0: You're welcome. Great to be with you.
speaker-1: ⁓ so you spent years studying how science gets captured and exposing the denial of evidence. At what point did you realize that just exposing the truth and having the facts out there wasn't enough to stop the systemic problems that you were exposing?
speaker-0: Yeah, that's a good question. I guess it was about twenty years ago. So in two thousand four I published the first paper of mine that kind of became a thing, which was my paper in science magazine on the scientific consensus on climate change.
speaker-1: We're gonna talk about that later. Let's talk about it now. Go ahead.
speaker-0: The story begins. So when I published that paper, at that point, I was still operating under the assumption that climate change denial was, you know, public understanding of science, scientific illiteracy, confusion, and particularly journalists who were presenting it as a he said, she said, that they just didn't know that there was, in fact, a consensus. And so I naively thought that if I wrote a short focused paper that laid out the data and the evidence that people would say, ⁓ that's great. And we could move on to the conversation about what to do about it. Well, here we are, twenty two later. Right? Yeah. So I think it was in the process of doing that work because what happened was the paper came out, got a certain amount of attention, I wrote a op ed piece for the Washington Post, and then I started getting hate mail. That I always say that was my Alice through the looking glass moment. When suddenly I was in a different world. I was in a topsy turvy world where it wasn't about evidence. And where by talking about evidence, facts, data, I somehow became the bad guy.
speaker-1: Yeah, and like basically the paper is all about looking at the peer reviewed literature and the way that there is overwhelming consensus within the peer reviewed literature. Well, there was even back in two thousand four, let alone, you know, NAFT.
speaker-0: I didn't I didn't think that should be a particularly controversial claim. I just thought people didn't know and that, you know, I mean, how would you know if you're not in the scientific community, right? So I think that was the moment that I realized that I was in some parallel universe where this wasn't about the facts, the evidence, it was about something else. And so the whole journey to writing Merchants of Doubt was really about trying to figure out what that something else was.
speaker-1: So you've worked a lot to expose patterns of denial, patterns of delay, and unpacking the mechanisms that are happening there. I'm wondering if you can tell us a little bit about ⁓ you know, if there are specific patterns that are continuing to be underestimated that you feel like we need to pay more attention to.
speaker-0: Sure. Well, I think a couple of things. I mean, one thing that's going on now is a lot of people, including people I like and respect, will say, ⁓ no one really denies climate change anymore. Now it's just about delay. I don't think that's actually true. I mean, certainly in certain respectable quarters, the CEO of XL Mobile no longer denies climate change outright. So it is true that in certain quarters the conversation has shifted, and that's important to understand because Delay is a kind of denial, right? Because the scientists tell the science tells us that if we don't act promptly, we have the potential for these irreversible adverse consequences. So delay is a kind of denial. But it's also the case that outright denial is still alive and well on the internet. And ⁓ particularly we one of the things we're seeing now is targeted advertising on the internet, where some of the overt denial claims are still alive and well. So depending on where you are, who you're talking to, what kinds of claims you may need to counter would would vary and be different.
speaker-1: So that it's being fed through certain algorithms or something? Is that what you mean?
speaker-0: Yeah, I mean, I'm not doing that work myself. A lot of that work's being done by my former postdoc, Jeffrey Soupran. But yes, they're tracking what's going on on the internet. And we know there's targeted advertising, right? That's an established thing. And so Jeffrey and other people have pretty strong evidence that we're seeing targeted messaging regarding climate change. ⁓ and it may be based on zip code or it may be based on what sites you've visited before. Again, I'm not an expert on that, but there are still plenty of places where that's going on. And we're also seeing places where the arguments that I've written a lot about about freedom are still being used. So when New York State tried to pass ⁓ laws to limit gas stoves, the gas industry funded a whole campaign to say this is denying your freedom to decide, you know, what kind of house you want to live in, what kind of cooking you want to do, ⁓ but of course leaving out that, but is there also the freedom of the gas company to destroy the planet? Freedom of the gas company to poison you in your own home. And we we've been, you know, cooking for decades with gas stoves, really not understanding the pretty substantial hazards in indoor air pollution that those stoves create. And ⁓ now people are talking about it. And so the gas industry, of course, is upset and pushing back about that.
speaker-1: Yeah, I actually figured that one out myself just because my asthma got really bad. So after COVID, my asthma got much worse. And as a result, I became sensitive to the gas in our house. And so we had to transition off earlier than we financially necessarily wanted to, but we transitioned off of natural gas because it was off gassing in the house and it was really, really irritating my asthma. Interesting. ⁓ so let's talk about the current moment. Since the Trump administration came back into office in January 2025, I'm gonna list a bunch of horrible things now. ⁓ they've dismantled repair, they've dismantled scientific infrastructure, they push for fossil fuel expansion, they have paid out companies to stop r renewable energy deployment, and even invoked the Defense Production Act to demand that companies boost production of the cancer-causing roundup, which I know you have recently written about. So what wanna know is in your opinion, are we repeating history? Are we or are we in a fundamentally different moment? How do you see what's going on now in relation to these processes that you've studied for so many years?
speaker-0: Well, I think we're repeating history, but we're not repeating US history. So we're repeating the history of the Soviet Union and of Nazi Germany. So when I was in graduate school, there was a big literature about what people sometimes refer to as science under siege, that authoritarian dictatorial governments often viewed science as a hostile force because science is an independent source of intellectual authority. And scientists can represent A challenge to authoritarian governance. And so we saw that in the Soviet Union. ⁓ the most famous example was the suppression of evolutionary biology in Soviet Russia, of which there was a large literature already, you know, when I was in grad school back in the Stone Age. And also in Nazi Germany, right, where attacks on science were one of the early things that the Nazi ⁓ government did. So this was a well known phenomenon. And we were taught that this was a characteristic of dictatorships of totalitarian countries. So I think very few of us thought that could happen in America. But now we're seeing it as happening in America. And in a way, you know, there have been debates recently about well, are we or are we not living under an authoritarian government? And I think if you have any doubt about it, the attacks on science are a pretty compelling evidence that this government is behaving In a manner that is consistent with how we've seen authoritarian governments behave in the past.
speaker-1: Well, it's interesting 'cause I haven't heard anybody talk about this component of similarity, right? I mean seen a lot of discussions about targeting immigrants, targeting black and brown people, but you know.
speaker-0: Think about Nazi, you think about Nazi Germany. I mean, think about the images of the early years, Kristal Knock in nineteen thirty-three. What did they do? They burned books, right? I mean, I teach a class called Burning Books Fighting Facts. There's a reason why dictators burn books, right? And so burning books, attacking science is part of this larger pattern of burning books, attacking intellectuals, attacking independent thought, and attacking facts. I mean, this is what George Orwell, of course, wrote about so brilliantly back in nineteen eighty-four. I mean in his book nineteen eighty four, he wrote about it the nineteen
speaker-1: My son just read it in the on it in his middle school crazy
speaker-0: I know apparently sales of nineteen eighty four have skyrocketed, which is good. ⁓ but you know, the idea that independent thought is a threat to totalitarian governance makes science a target. And we're seeing that right now. And as as we've you mentioned just a moment ago, it's not just even targeting individual scientists, but it's a targeting the whole structure, the infrastructure of science, dismantling whole agencies. ⁓ trying to eliminate NCAR, the National Center for Atmospheric Research. I mean NCAR is a jewel in the crown of American science. Anyone who believes in science would think NCAR would be the last place that you would cut, but it's actually one of the first places that this administration has gone after. And that's tells you everything you need to know. They don't want to know the facts about climate change and they don't want a group of scientists be in a position to explain those facts.
speaker-1: Right. And I know that they the administration just dismissed, I guess it's called the entire National Science Foundation board. Personally, I was working a lot with a number of different agencies leading up to 2025, I guess, towards you know when the new administration took office. But I was working with, you know, scientific scientists in various agencies to help do kind of evaluation stuff with them. And At this point, I think that I only know three scientists of all the scientists I was working with who are still working for the federal government. And this is across various agencies. And you know, and the the folks who I worked with at the ⁓ US Forest Service, I worked with a number of scientists there because they had a really strong vibrant field of social science that they were doing out of there. And just about all of them with the new efforts are are losing their jobs or being told they have to move to some, you know, crazy places. Where they won't be allowed to do science anymore. So yeah, it's just a crazy time. All right. So we're in a fundamentally different moment for the United States, but not f in a fundamentally different moment for the world. So I guess then there were lessons. Are there lessons from the history of science that we could use to help get us out of this?
speaker-0: think so and they're probably the same lessons of political history, in many ways I suppose are the same lessons that Tim Snyder has been emphasizing in his work, which is that ⁓ you can't really negotiate with dictators that accommodation doesn't work and that when you try to accommodate dictators, it just emboldens them and you end up in a weakened position. But that said it's also hard because if you're just a scientist or an academic, you're vulnerable if your job depends upon Government financing, ⁓ you're vulnerable. Certainly one of the reasons scientists in Nazi Germany were so vulnerable was because they were civil servants. And you know, one of the first laws that the Nazis passed was the so-called law for the restoration of the civil service, right? So what were they restoring? Well, they were restoring some ideal of German Aryan dominance, and that so-called restoration involved the elimination of Jews from academic positions. And many of those people, because they were in fact civil servants, were in a very difficult position to do anything about it. So one lesson I think for the United States, and I hope the presidents of every university in America are listening to this, is that private universities have a particularly important role to play in standing up against this sort of thing. Because private universities, we are not civil servants, right? We don't work for the government. ⁓ Many of us have f funding from the government that makes us vulnerable in certain kinds of ways. But the bottom line is that if you teach at Harvard or Yale or Princeton or any private university in this country, including sectarian universities, you don't have to capitulate to the to this administration. You might lose funding and that would obviously be painful, but you won't lose your job and you certainly won't lose your life. ⁓ so we're actually we're vulnerable, but we're not nearly as vulnerable as our counterparts were in Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia, where you really could have lost your life. And so it upsets me to see so many of our colleagues kind of capitulating, thinking, ⁓ we have no choice. And I want to say, actually, we have a lot of choices. We have many more choices than people had in these other situations. And so we should appreciate that and do everything we can within our power to stand up against ⁓ these these attacks and and such. And and it's I have to say it's been a disappointing moment in many ways too, because we've seen how many university presidents seem to be completely incapable of defending the concept of a university. It's kind of a shocking thing. And and also, or when they do, it's a very utilitarian argument about the next cure for cancer. And I and I'm sitting there thinking That's the only explanation you can give for why we need a university. And if that's the case, then why do we have history and English and anthropology and music and art and theater? I mean, we could easily be reduced. ⁓ But I mean, unless you are prepared to stand up and make the case for why universities are universities and not just technical institutes, ⁓ you know, we're we're in a bad place, right? So that's my message to colleagues is to say. And also the other big message is is, you know, united we stand, divided we fall. We have to defend each other. The people who think, ⁓ we can let music and art go and think that somehow they will be safe. No, the lesson of history is they may come for the artists first, but they'll come for the scientists next.
speaker-1: Yeah, no, I mean I was just thinking about ⁓ the fact that I think that a lot of universities, it seems like that that a lot of them are worried about being targeted as being woke and then being attacked because the idea of teaching young people to how to fra think freely, how to understand and appreciate, you know, broad components of culture and society may not, you know, maybe as weird as it is, may seem, you know. Too evolved and too woke for other people. I mean, I it's it's interesting hearing you talk about this because so I'm at a private university, so American University is a private university. ⁓ so in some ways I have the same freedoms. But I mean, I so I run a center which, while we do have some funding from the university, the university is not wealthy like a Harvard or a Princeton. And so I have four or five people on my staff who are funded by a federal grant. From an agency that is or is not about to disappear. So it's a very interesting and fraught moment because the university, while they originally said they would cover folks' salaries if we lost our funding, they no longer are saying that.
speaker-0: Right, 'cause they probably realize they they probably can't do it for everyone. So it is tricky for sure. then on the other hand, you know, there's a lot we can do. I mean, I don't want to say that it's fine if we don't have federal funding. I'm not saying that.
speaker-1: No, no, I know. I still think that, you know, for me I made the decision not to put my neck out as much as I probably naturally would, but at the same time also I'm not I'm not capitulating. I'm waiting for I'm waiting to get that email. And
speaker-0: Right. Sometimes you have to pick your battle. There's so many things going on right now that it's not it's not unreasonable to say I have to really think hard about which are the particular places where standing up would be meaningful and effective. So yeah, I'm not criticizing anyone who's not jumping into the, you know, ramparts on every issue, but we do have to think hard about where we have the capability and the capacity to push back. ⁓ and that might be legally. I mean, obviously there's all kinds of ways in which So many of the things the current administration are doing are clearly in violation of the law and there've been already successful lawsuits and there will be more and we have to keep pushing back whenever and wherever we can.
speaker-1: For sure. I mean, I have to say that one of the things that this moment has made me appreciate more than I think I had historically is the importance of the law and lawyers, right?
speaker-0: Yeah. ⁓ well I've been loving lawyers for a long time, but that's because I've worked once year tobacco. If it weren't for lawyers, I would never have been able to write Merchants of Doubt because so much information comes out in lawsuits.
speaker-1: ⁓ yeah, okay. So it's through through the discovery process, is that how you get the data?
speaker-0: Because, you know, one thing I often say one of the things that's difficult about working about on fraud and deception is people don't advertise when they're committing fraud. They try to keep it hidden. So how do we even learn about it? How do we even find out? And it turns out one of the major ways we learn about it is through lawsuits, ⁓ through the documents that become available. And that's one reason why we know a lot about fraud in the tobacco space. We also know a fair amount about fraud, ⁓ In biomedicine vers related to drugs and medical devices. We know much less in other areas. And so it becomes one of the things that's hard for me. Like I'll sometimes be asked, well, how widespread are these practices? And it's hard to tell. It may be that they're only in these specific areas because there are certain economic stakes, right? I mean, there's not much incentive for fraud in paleontology. Or it might be that we just don't know. That there is actually fraud in paleontology, but nobody's ever had a lawsuit about it. My guess is that actually there isn't a lot of fraud in paleontology, but it's hard to know for sure.
speaker-1: For sure, unless Jurassic Park and the science behind it becomes a reality, in which case I feel like you'll see a lot more fraud.
speaker-0: Well that could be that could be.
speaker-1: So ⁓ so I want to shift a little bit to the work around ⁓ you know, your work that documented how ExxonMobil knew, or that that turned into the whole ExxonMo new movement, if you want to call it that, about climate change, which basically goes back as far as, you know, the 1970s is what you found in your work. ⁓ and that ExxonMobil was misleading the public. ⁓ and I was wondering if you could ⁓ talk about How you connected climate inaction to misinformation and the economics of the free market. Briefly I know there's a very large and very, very comprehensive and good book criteria that I'm pointing at that people can read. But if you could do like a kind of a
speaker-0: the book off the shelf 'cause I don't think the audience can see the book very well.
speaker-1: You want me to grab it? I can grab it. Okay, let's see. Right here between margins of doubt and dark money is death, which has been very well loved.
speaker-0: Yeah, I couldn't see Thank you. well, first of all, let me just give credit where credit's due. It's not true that our work started the Exxon New movement. That really came out of work by journalists, particularly the journalists at Inside Climate News and the Los Angeles Times. So they really get the credit for kind of opening up this whole space of analysis. We got involved because ExxonMobil attacked me. And it was the weirdest thing. And it I feel like it was a mistake on their part. And I always tell other people this, you know. The mistake they sometimes this is a David and Goliath story. So how does David win? Well, Goliath has a vulnerability. And one of the vulnerabilities is arrogance. So after the Inside Climate News and LA Times work came out, Excel Mobil attacked me and they said this is the work of activists like Bill McKibben and Naomi Oreskus. I have no idea why they judge that to be a useful tactic on their part, but it was a weird thing for them to do because in fact I had nothing to do with that work. But then they said in on their website, they had a a thing where they said, you know, the these claims are false, but don't take our word for it. Read the documents. And then there was a link to a page. Well, they put out the document. Correct. And I remember this very, very clearly. You know, screenwriters are always asking you to like remember moments. And of course, most of life isn't moments. Most of life is just getting up and going to work, right? But this was the moment because I I was It was my postdoc Jeff Jeffrey Soupran who called my attention to this. And I remember looking at his laptop and saying, Well, we know how to read.
speaker-1: So how many so all the what that's where all the documents
speaker-0: Well, it turned out it wasn't all of them. It turned out it was it was actually a link to a document whose meta label was Haroon's C V. It was the C V of one scientist at ExxonMobil, Haroon Keshke, who was one of two or three or four scientists at ExxonMobil who actually worked in a sustained way on climate change. ⁓ but that led into a larger universe of documents, and that's what led us to then do our analysis of what Exxon knew privately what their scientists were saying, what they were writing in internal documents versus what they were saying in public, and showing that there was a big discrepancy between what they were saying in private and semi private ⁓ correspondence versus what they were saying in advertisements that were public facing.
speaker-1: Okay. Well, I mean, that's great. And so since then, ⁓ have you thought through or do you have perspective on what you think is the best way to move past this and to solve this intractable problem, given that we see good, you know, denial, misinformation at every corner at this point?
speaker-0: Well, it's very hard to know. And you know, as you know, I'm not a political scientist, I'm not a sociologist. I got interested in your work because I felt I needed to learn more about social movements and social change. ⁓ and because it seemed kind of amazing to me that there's actually so little consensus about social change. ⁓ but I I think right now, if I would argue one thing, I would argue that we should actually be angry, that we should be appropriately angry. And I get really, really tired of c interviews and I'll give you this warning so you don't end with it. Interviews that end with what gives you hope? I just feel
speaker-1: That's not what I have at the end, okay.
speaker-0: Okay. I don't wanna I don't want to offend people who I've you know ha done interviews with before, but I feel like it's really facile. And whenever I'm asked, you know, after a serious conversation where we talk about all these terrible things that have happened, deception, lying, you know, pollution, things that are killing people, ⁓ then someone says, ⁓ so what gives you hope? And I feel like it's like the children are asking me to be mommy and to say, Don't worry, children, it's all going to be okay. Right? But the reality is not going be okay if we don't do something about it. So what's going to motivate us to act? And I think part of the answer, it doesn't have to be the whole answer, but part of the answer is appropriate anger. We have been lied to, right? We have been put in positions where our lives, our property, our health are put at risk by companies that are laughing all the way to the bank, that are making historic profits even as we speak. And we should be angry about that. And then we should turn that anger into ambition and the ambition into action.
speaker-1: You know, I love that you said that. And I love that you said that particularly because actually in the research that I do on mobilizing people to participate and engage in social movements, one of the biggest emotions that we see that is an effective motivator rather than people who lose hope and become despondent and have climate anxiety, for example, is anger. Anger is the best. Yeah. So so look at that. It comes full circle. So I mean when you do an analysis, like one of the things that we ask people about is what are the emotions that they feel around climate change, around climate change exacerbated extreme events. And those who feel anger are much more likely to be engaged, involved, and as a result, they actually have more hope. They see that they have the sense of efficacy, right?
speaker-0: ⁓ that's Right. Well will you start talking about that? No, no. Please send me something on that because this is kind of how I feel instinctively. So it's good to know the science is backing up my instincts. And I think also maybe it could also be like a sense of indignation. And maybe my sensibility on this comes my own parents were active in the civil rights movement. And I feel like civil rights leaders understood this, right? It was an indignation about the indignities that black people in this country were subjected to, and an appropriate anger, but channeled into appropriate action, right? So just sitting with anger by itself obviously isn't enough. But then figure out what's the appropriate action to take. So ⁓ yeah. So and and if it then makes you feel empowered, because that is obviously really important too. It's so easy to feel disempowered in this space. So anything that makes you feel that you're not completely disempowered, that you're not just a victim of this situation, I think is really important.
speaker-1: Yeah, I mean so American resistance, which I wrote before saving ourselves, was all about how people during the first Trump administration, individual citizens channeled their outrage and into enthusiasm and were channeled into actual electoral political an electoral political strumble that led to the blue wave. Right. And so I I tracked the folks who did that and how the outrage did that. So it's one of the pivots. But ⁓ but I have some other stuff I'll share with you.
speaker-0: Good. I mean I did read that book, so probably it penetrated my brain in some way too, or reinforced some thoughts that I was also having. So
speaker-1: Yeah, maybe, maybe. Yeah. So I mean I the thing that's interesting is that the outrage, it's the outrage is different now, right? There's not an easy quick fix. Like the last time it was like, ⁓ this is a blip, it was a mistake. And we'll just have to get through this. We just have to get to the election. And, you know, if we know anything about what's going on, you know, I'm guessing your parents are probably not alive. I know I don't want to make assumptions. But, you know, if they were having seen what, you know, the Supreme Court just decided, right, with regard to the Voting Rights Act, it's just Yeah, I mean it's just crazy times we're living in. ⁓ there's a lot to be outraged and angry about for sure. Okay, so so Merchants of Doubt came out as a documentary in two thousand fourteen. So given what you know about climate storytelling, ⁓ is there some advice you would have for climate storytellers or something that you think that even though they're well intentioned, that they're getting wrong when they tell the story in terms of trying to communicate what's going on with climate change and climate science?
speaker-0: Well, a few things. I mean, I have to say I get a little uncomfortable with the whole framework of storytelling, even though I understand it, because we're talking about communication and people communicate and people understand many things in life through stories. ⁓ but I worry that when we talk too much about storytelling, it ⁓ almost might seem like, well, it's just a story and that's your story, but I've got my story. So I do think that there's gotta be some way that we do keep the facts foregrounded. And that's tricky because we also know that facts are not enough. And we also know that part of the problem of the whole climate situation is that for too long we focus too much on the science and not enough on the consequences, the social dimensions. So it's a very tricky space. But I guess I feel like the things that I've learned, and this is really just from experience. ⁓ you know, I have no professional training as a communicator. Sometimes I get introduced as a science communicator. That's like really weird, but no, maybe it's not. Maybe it's that It's not about your professional training. It's about what you have ended up doing in the world. the most important thing is to be authentic, right? Because I think people have very sensitive radar for BS and for dissembling. And I think too many people they they read something about how they should communicate, or they hear someone say, ⁓ you, you know, you should do this or you should do that. And and I'm sure the things they're reading are well intentioned and possibly grounded in evidence and possibly correct in some situations. But I feel like if there's any lesson of communication, and it's the same with writing, it's about, you know, who's your audience? And the message isn't going to be the same for all audiences. So you have to be sensitive to who am I speaking with in this moment and what I'm going to say to these people might be different based on their concerns, their experiences, ⁓ you know, what's affecting their lives in this moment. I mean, I feel like there was a time when I heard all these, you know, scientists, natural scientists, climate scientists talking about the economics of climate change. And the reality is they didn't really understand the economics of climate change, didn't really care about it. But they thought that an economic message would somehow be effective in a way that a scientific message wasn't. Well, I mean, I get that because just going on and on about parts per million CO2. Is not effective. But if you can connect the science to people's lives and explain, so what is 421 parts per million mean for you? What does it mean for a person living in Idaho or San Diego, California? Mixing apples and oranges. But that's really important. I one time was I one time gave a talk in ⁓ South Dakota a week after I had given a talk in San Diego. And in San Diego, I had done this whole thing about sea level rise and real estate and all the billions of dollars of California real estate that were stake and trillions of dollars of Navy infrastructure. And then I went to Rapid City and I thought, okay, I need to change this, right? I can't be in Rapid City talking about naval infrastructure, right? So I changed it to forestry and bark beetles. And fortunately I had a few days before my talk. So and the bark beetle devastation was everywhere. So I took photographs of the bark beetle devastation and I put it up and said, you guys know this. I'm not telling you anything you don't already know. But what I do but what I can tell you that you maybe don't know is how this is connected to climate change. So it's about making that connection to things that people can see with their own eyes. So I'm not asking them to just trust me, right? I'm saying, look, you know this, but let me tell you a little bit more about it. Let me deepen your understanding about why this is happening.
speaker-1: Did you find that ⁓ the audience it resonated with the audience?
speaker-0: Totally. Totally. Yeah. And I mean I mean this this is kind of my experiential learning that I've now had these kinds of experience in more than one place. I feel like it's it should feels like it should be obvious, but it's not about being empathetic with your audience. So one of my favorite stories was some years ago I went to Hayes, Kansas, a place that probably very few Ivy professors have been, but Fort Hayes State University, big important state university in ⁓ western Kansas, surrounded by wheat fields. And I did a book signing. At the end of the book signing, a woman came up to me. She grabbed my hand. She looked me in the eye and she said, God bless you for coming to Hayes. And that moment has stayed with me like forever. Right? Why because wherever you go, there are people who want they want to understand what's going on and they want to be part of the conversation, but often they don't get that opportunity.
speaker-1: And that's a very good point. So actually, so let's pivot up for a second. ⁓ you talked a little bit about talking to media and stuff like that. And I was wondering it is there, ⁓ is there a question you wish journalists would ask you, but they never do?
speaker-0: Hmm. Yeah, that's an interesting question.
speaker-1: I like that question 'cause I was always I'm always like, Why didn't you ask me a lot this? Like I've been doing all of
speaker-0: Sometimes, Carolist, do ask me that. When I used to sometimes do oral history, I would always end with, is there a question you wanted me to ask that I didn't ask? ⁓ Yeah, I don't know. I think maybe because I've written so much now, and usually journalists have at least read some of what I work. They're asking me about the work, so ⁓ so I don't generally feel like they're kind of missing the point. ⁓ I don't know, I'll keep that in the back of my head as we continue talking. Okay. I'll come back to it if
speaker-1: If something comes to you, gentle.
speaker-0: Obvious jumping out at me right now. You know. All right. Sometimes I enough I wanna say, can you ask me about my first book?
speaker-1: Well tell me about your first book, The OB and how is it re relevant to day I was gonna ask you about the dig myth. Well we can go backwards and then we can talk about the big myth.
speaker-0: ⁓ c'est-à-dire... Well, the thing that connects all my work, because sometimes people think the work isn't all connected, but it is, because it's all really about scientific evidence. And it's really about how we know what we know and why we believe the things we believe and why we find some kinds of arguments persuasive and not others. So my first book, The Rejection of Continental Drift, was about why scientists rejected the idea of moving continents in the nineteen twenties. Even though they had a lot of evidence to support it, and even though they had a mechanism to explain it, and then only 40 years later in the 1960s, they say, ⁓ not only is this true, but it's a giant breakthrough in science. And so that was a fun thing to work on, because it was almost like a controlled experiment and an opportunity to look at how scientists judge and evaluate evidence. And one of the arguments of that book is that just as we have preferences ⁓ we have a favorite color, we might have preferences in food, clothing, where we want to live. Scientists have preferences about evidence. And sometimes those preferences are grounded in deeply social considerations. And so they can influence how people weigh and judge evidence. And so that's
speaker-1: Can you give an example of that just for a for those of us who may not know what you mean, like what you mean by like the preference of evidence? Because for I'm thinking like you mean qualitative versus quantitative evidence, or you talking about other types of evidence?
speaker-0: Well, that could be one thing. It could be qualitative versus quantitative. It could be like there's a great line I quote in the book, Charles Richter, the seismologist who invented the Richter scale. He said all he said, some scientists believe in God, some believe in country, but all believe that their evidence is superior to everyone else's. But sometimes it's just about like the data that you personally collected, or that people you know collected. So in the book, I make this argument about what I call epistemic affinities. That based on how you were trained, you might have an affinity for certain kind of data. So it could be stratigraphic data, it could be evidence from fossils, or it could be quantitative data, it could be geophysical measurements of gravity. But you tend to think that that evidence is the best evidence. ⁓ or if you know the people, you might be more likely to trust their data. So there's this deeply social aspect of it. And that of course ramifies through the climate change debate. Because often people who are skeptical about climate change, it's not because they've really sat down with the evidence, but it's because someone they know and trust doesn't believe in climate change. Maybe their minister has said it's a hoax, or the leader of their political party. So many of us are making judgments based on our social connections and our social affinities. Obviously, this is something you know better than I do. ⁓ and that happens in science too.
speaker-1: I mean, so we ⁓ I you probably know about the work we've done around echo chambers and climate science and all of the ways that we if you look at how scientific information is basically cherry picked based on other care social characteristics of you know, in this case policy actors rather than scientists, but the scientists who are actually trying to influence policy actors do something similar in some ways, we see that. ⁓
speaker-0: I think part of the lesson of of my first book is to say, look, scientists tend to be very disdainful of people who they see as making judgments based on social affinities rather than the facts. But the fact is we do it too. We don't maybe do it as severely because we were trained we're trained to think that that's actually not right. And so we should resist it. And we have mechanisms for trying to resist it. But part of the point of my first book was to say, well, scientists ultimately did resist it. Ultimately they did. get this sorted out and they did come to a conclusion that we would now say was the correct conclusion. But it did take them 40 years. So we could have a little bit of sympathy and like basic human empathy for people who are grappling with that same problem and not be condescending to them. Because, you know, one big distinction that I make in all my subsequent work is I make a big distinction between the purveyors of disinformation for whom I have no sympathy versus people who have been influenced by disinformation for whom I have enormous sympathy. I don't think it's it's not our fault if we've been influenced by propaganda and disinformation, because that's the whole point of it. The point of it is to influence us. And we're all human. And so in different situations and different contexts, we may be influenced by disinformation or propaganda.
speaker-1: than starting projects looking at misinformation and how misinformation is affecting people's response to disaster, particularly climate exacerbated disaster surprise. ⁓ and I'm wondering, do you have ⁓ any insights into ways to get to help bake break people out of misinformation networks if they're in them and that's where the information they're consuming is
speaker-0: way this does bring us to the big myth, right? Because one of the things I found, and I think this is consistent with the social science research that people like John Cook have done, if you can expose disinformation as disinformation and also explain who are the people behind it, what is their motivation and how do they benefit from it, that I think can be empowering for people. So it gets back to the fighting back against if you just say, ⁓ you're an idiot, don't believe that. That's not effective. But if you say, look, Here are these people who are saying these things. Here's why they're saying them. And here's how they've promoted this idea, you know, across multiple media or across multiple decades. And then and then you say, so do you really like, I mean, you don't say this out loud, but the implication is do you really want to be the sucker who falls for this disinformation? I I have found it in my experience when I frame it that way, a lot of people are receptive. And I've even had the experience, you know. Especially with the new book, The Big Myths. I mean, some of the examples we have are so astonishing. I've given talks where I hear people in the room gasp, you know, and that's always this great moment because you realize, ⁓ people did not know this and they're shocked to learn it. And that's good because that's a moment then when you're essentially inviting them to reconsider something that they have perhaps taken for granted.
speaker-1: Yeah. No, I mean I thought it was ⁓ I mean, I really enjoy the big myth, and I enjoy the big myth because in a lot of ways it blows open the you know, a lot of the processes that led to a lot of different types of misinformation. ⁓ so in the end of the big myth, well, on page four hundred and three of Big Myths
speaker-0: You read the whole book. Thank you.
speaker-1: Gotta quote here. You okay, you wrote we will find a way to stop climate change, but the longer we deny the problem or insist that markets will solve it, quote, on their own, the greater the cost will be. So what I'm wondering is you wrote this book, I mean it came out in twenty twenty three. ⁓ you know, the paperback came out more recently. Are you more hopeful or less hopeful than you were when you were writing the big myth today? And why? Yeah.
speaker-0: ⁓ yeah, that's a good question. I mean, you know, I feel like this is ⁓ one of those glass half empty versus half full things. There's a lot to be hopeful about in the sense of what's going on in the rest of the world, right? So a lot of the world is making progress, particularly in renewable energy. Renewable energy is now the cheapest form of energy in most places in the world. It's part of why the Trump administration is having to do these insane things like pay total. not to finish a wind power plant that's nearly done, ⁓ bribe them effectively into going back to oil and gas exploration. So, you know, even in a world where fossil fuels remain extremely heavily subsidized, renewable energy is still winning ⁓ in the marketplace. So that's actually kind of great and amazing. And it tells us that one of the big obstacles to the energy transition, which was cost, is no longer a factor. So that's really encouraging. And if you look at electric vehicles, I mean, in the world today globally, I think electric vehicles are now more than half of all new car sales, something like that. You can check that fact. ⁓ but it's a lot. ⁓ so, and across the globe, you see people who understand that this problem is real and are demanding that their governments take action and are also taking action themselves on the state, local, provincial, city ⁓ level. The other thing that makes me feel Cautiously optimistic is most people in the world live in cities. Most economic activity takes place in cities, and that means that most carbon emissions are in cities. There's a, you know, there's this big chunk, like 40%, that is agriculture and land use, but 60% is mostly associated with urban activity. And cities tend to be ⁓ change-embracing places. ⁓ Big generalization, but broadly true. So I think there's tremendous potential for cities to take action, even if the nation state in which they're in is not. And we're beginning to see evidence of that in different places. So I think there's real opportunities for meaningful action ⁓ in that space. And I think we're we are seeing that in some places. So those are all kind of glass half full ideas that half empty is the United States, right? I mean, this country has gone backwards. in the last year year and half with you know really ⁓ you know functionally inexplicable policies except the idea that this administration is beholden to the oil and gas industry and will do everything it can ⁓ to support this industry. And I think the the lanes to which they're going show that actually how scared they are that they now know that they cannot compete in a market environment. That the only way they can survive is all this government protection, indemnification from lawsuits. So it's scary because some of the things the administration are doing are are really kind of desperate maneuvers and that they're willing to destroy democracy, they're willing to strip us of our legal rights to legal redress for damages. I mean, these are astonishing steps that this administration is taking to protect this industry. So I think it shows they're scared. I think it shows they're desperate. And so one could take comfort in that to show that, you know, this is like the lat you could say it's the last gasp of a dying industry, but my fear is that, you know, they bring down American democracy with them.
speaker-1: be the last gask of a of a nation state as well, right? ⁓ I mean it's apocalyptically optimistic, but I'm I want to go on anyway. I I I want a few more minutes of your time. I think we have a few more minutes I mean I think you're right. There can be hope at the subnational level. It's just a question of whether or not the nation state can really survive. I mean and that that's why I keep reading about revolution. See
speaker-0: Yeah. And this nation state may not. I mean that's the other thing. As a historian, I mean, you know, one knows that powerful countries and empires come and go. I mean I mean one thing that getting back to where we started with the attacks on science, if you think about Germany, Germany in nineteen thirty three was the world's leader in science. And they self immolated their own scientific enterprise and it took decades after World War Two for them to rebuild. But they did rebuild and Germany today is once again a scientific powerhouse. So that's not an encouraging thing to say to a twenty something who's trying to decide whether to have a career in science, say, ⁓ don't worry, we'll rebuild our science by the time you're ready to retire. Right. That's not
speaker-1: Just tell them they could probably get a free PhD in another country though.
speaker-0: Well, there's that. Right. So so it's well, I mean, it may well be that America will not be the world's leader in science going forward. And that's a sad thing for America. And it's a sad thing for American scientists. But as long as the scientific enterprise continues elsewhere, you know, maybe it's okay. That's feels like a weird thing to say. and I don't want to justify what's happened in the United States. I mean, we will be poorer. for it both intellectually and economically. There's no question that, you know, tons of evidence that money invested in science and technology pays us back. ⁓ scientists are pretty cheap compared to aircraft carriers, you know. ⁓ so it's a tricky it's a tricky space we're in now. And I think the other big worry in in a way, while we were talking about all my different books, I mean this was part of what we were getting at in the collapse of Western civilization. Humans will not go extinct from climate change. I mean, the chances of that happening are slim to none. But certain countries may collapse and other countries may thrive. And in that book, we imagine a future in which China dominates. That's kind of already happening, right? I mean, it's a little scary how much that was in that book has already come true eleven years later. ⁓ and so a world in which China dominates is not necessarily all bad. But it's not necessarily all good either. And certainly if you believe in democracy and if you believe in the values of liberal democracy, a world that's dominated by China and Russia is not one that we would necessarily think is an optimal.
speaker-1: Yeah, no, absolutely not. But ⁓ interesting, you know, it could be a little bit cleaner and greener, at least maybe.
speaker-0: Well, I mean, China is beating the pants off us in electric vehicles. I just saw a big piece about how they're make moving forward on wind power. And you know, wind power is like one of the best things you can do from a national economy standpoint because it's can't like outsource wind power, right? And many years ago, and again, this is one of the great things about traveling and talking to people. I sat at a dinner next to a guy who was an executive at a company that manufactured wind turbine blades, just the blade. And they were doing a former Maytag washing machine factory, and I forget it was Ohio or Indiana, but it was somewhere in the American Midwest. And I asked him about the economics. I said, How can you compete? So many other comp you know, businesses have fled to Vietnam or the Philippines or Mexico. And he said, Well, it costs a heck of a lot to transport a wind turbine blade. And
speaker-1: I've driven I've driven behind them on a tr in a truck. They're huge.
speaker-0: And he says there's a giant benefit if you can manufacture them close to where the ⁓ wind farm is. And I thought, well, how great is that? Like that's a story that should be more widely t told. And and it's kind of the same with solar power too, right? You can't really outsource solar power. And solar power installation is one of the fastest growing jobs in America today. ⁓ green jobs paywall, you know, they they're everywhere. They're they're not just concentrated in you know, New York and Los Angeles. So there's again, there's a lot of good news in the renewable energy story, but this administration is trying to crush it. And the only logical explanation for that is that they are beholden to the fossil fuel industry.
speaker-1: So I wanted to talk about ⁓ an anecdote you mentioned in the acknowledgments of the big myth. So you mention, ⁓ you tell a story about a dinner party that Tim Worth ⁓ hosted, and that helped you determine the follow-up book. And that's ⁓ so that was helping you determine the follow-up book after Merchants of Doubt, where you basically ended up deciding to write the next big myth. Sorry, the big myth. So I'm wondering if ⁓ If you figured out what's coming next after the big myth, or if maybe you had another there was another dinner party and if so, tell us about that.
speaker-0: There hasn't been another dinner party, but I guess I'll have to ask Tim to host that. ⁓ Exact. It's like he does owe me. No, I owe him. He's an amazing person. He's been a great inspiration to me. Someone who just continues to do what he can, where he can. ⁓ Yeah, we haven't started we haven't launched another book. But the Big Myth was a big lift. It was a hard book to write and it was complicated by COVID. There were archives we couldn't get to that we wanted to. So
speaker-1: He he owes you.
speaker-0: Once we finished that book, I think both Eric Conway and I felt like we needed to regroup. And then the whole current political situation obviously complicates things a lot, ⁓ because it shifts the sense of well, what would be useful in the present moment. I mean, there are all kinds of really interesting intellectual questions in science that I'd like to pursue, but I f feel like in the current moment that wouldn't really be ethical. ⁓ So what we're working on right now is a revised edition of the collapse of Western Civilization. Great. So we're going to add a bit about the, you know, the attack on renewable energy, AI and data centers, the that whole thing. But we also feel mindful. I had a really amazing conversation with my editor because in my entire life I have never, ever until now had an editor say, Write as much as you want.
speaker-1: That's great. That's I think that's great.
speaker-0: Expand this but I know I know. Wow.
speaker-1: Is there somebody who let you write this big book? How big is it gonna be there, Ami? Well,
speaker-0: We don't want to. I feel like part of the power of the collapse of Western civilization is that it's a very short book. So we're just trying to figure out how much more is enough.
speaker-1: I've been struggling because I also work on stuff and I try to figure out what is the timely thing that I really want it be focusing on at the moment. And, you know, it's a hard time. There's lots of things and trying to figure out what is the best story and the most useful story to tell. And that's when I I've been kind of sitting a lot with the the literature on revolution and thinking about, you know, thinking about the Green Revolution versus autocratic revolutions, you know. fascist revolutions versus bottom up revolutions and thinking about how that is related to like persistence of nation states and such. So I mean I'm I'm thinking about very similar topics. So I would love to to
speaker-0: So we can continue conversation. Yeah.
speaker-1: So ⁓ okay, so ⁓ so we've run out of time, but I wanted to ⁓ the way that we're trying to end things is we're going through what we call a lightning round. Okay. So the lightning round, and basically I'm gonna list a bunch of issues and you're gonna tell me if today, at the moment, you are feeling apocalyptic or optimistic about each of the following. See, I'm not gonna ask you what gives you hope. I'm just gonna ask you where you fit on it sit on each of these. All right.
speaker-0: Yeah. Okay. Got it. Okay.
speaker-1: Fossil fuel dominance.
speaker-0: Optimistic.
speaker-1: Climate action.
speaker-0: Optimistic.
speaker-1: Ooh. Science in America.
speaker-0: ⁓ apocalyptic.
speaker-1: Democracy in America.
speaker-0: Ugh yeah, that's that's I I I can't say. I feel like we're teetering on the precipice there.
speaker-1: All right. How about the fall twenty twenty six elections?
speaker-0: Cautiously optimistic.
speaker-1: Nice. ⁓ youth participation in politics.
speaker-0: Optimistic. I mean that's when I see like my students are so much more politically engaged now than they were ten years ago. And they think I'm not radical enough. That never happened to me before.
speaker-1: That's wonderful. ⁓ well and finally, Middle East peace.
speaker-0: ⁓ no comment. Although I can I can point say what my husband always says, you know, we've been fighting this since ⁓ Ishmael and Isaac. So, you know, maybe it's understandable that this feels intractable.
speaker-1: Maybe, yeah. Wise words. Wise words. And with that I wanna say thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me. It's always fun to talk to you and I always learn something. and ⁓ and I very much appreciate your brand of apocalyptic optimism. Thank you for sharing that with us as well.
speaker-0: Like why? You're welcome. Great to be with you.
speaker-1: 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-1: 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. Today I'm speaking with professor, writer, and mythbuster, Naomi Oreskis. She's a professor of the history of science at Harvard University, the author of eight books, including Merchants of Doubt. Professor Oreskis is well known for her research that dismantles assumptions around science and the free market. Her work combines history, storytelling, and extensive data. I'm thrilled she agreed to join me today to talk about her personal brand of apocalyptic optimism and what keeps her going. Thank you so much for coming on today, Naomi.
speaker-0: You're welcome. Great to be with you.
speaker-1: ⁓ so you spent years studying how science gets captured and exposing the denial of evidence. At what point did you realize that just exposing the truth and having the facts out there wasn't enough to stop the systemic problems that you were exposing?
speaker-0: Yeah, that's a good question. I guess it was about twenty years ago. So in two thousand four I published the first paper of mine that kind of became a thing, which was my paper in science magazine on the scientific consensus on climate change.
speaker-1: We're gonna talk about that later. Let's talk about it now. Go ahead.
speaker-0: The story begins. So when I published that paper, at that point, I was still operating under the assumption that climate change denial was, you know, public understanding of science, scientific illiteracy, confusion, and particularly journalists who were presenting it as a he said, she said, that they just didn't know that there was, in fact, a consensus. And so I naively thought that if I wrote a short focused paper that laid out the data and the evidence that people would say, ⁓ that's great. And we could move on to the conversation about what to do about it. Well, here we are, twenty two later. Right? Yeah. So I think it was in the process of doing that work because what happened was the paper came out, got a certain amount of attention, I wrote a op ed piece for the Washington Post, and then I started getting hate mail. That I always say that was my Alice through the looking glass moment. When suddenly I was in a different world. I was in a topsy turvy world where it wasn't about evidence. And where by talking about evidence, facts, data, I somehow became the bad guy.
speaker-1: Yeah, and like basically the paper is all about looking at the peer reviewed literature and the way that there is overwhelming consensus within the peer reviewed literature. Well, there was even back in two thousand four, let alone, you know, NAFT.
speaker-0: I didn't I didn't think that should be a particularly controversial claim. I just thought people didn't know and that, you know, I mean, how would you know if you're not in the scientific community, right? So I think that was the moment that I realized that I was in some parallel universe where this wasn't about the facts, the evidence, it was about something else. And so the whole journey to writing Merchants of Doubt was really about trying to figure out what that something else was.
speaker-1: So you've worked a lot to expose patterns of denial, patterns of delay, and unpacking the mechanisms that are happening there. I'm wondering if you can tell us a little bit about ⁓ you know, if there are specific patterns that are continuing to be underestimated that you feel like we need to pay more attention to.
speaker-0: Sure. Well, I think a couple of things. I mean, one thing that's going on now is a lot of people, including people I like and respect, will say, ⁓ no one really denies climate change anymore. Now it's just about delay. I don't think that's actually true. I mean, certainly in certain respectable quarters, the CEO of XL Mobile no longer denies climate change outright. So it is true that in certain quarters the conversation has shifted, and that's important to understand because Delay is a kind of denial, right? Because the scientists tell the science tells us that if we don't act promptly, we have the potential for these irreversible adverse consequences. So delay is a kind of denial. But it's also the case that outright denial is still alive and well on the internet. And ⁓ particularly we one of the things we're seeing now is targeted advertising on the internet, where some of the overt denial claims are still alive and well. So depending on where you are, who you're talking to, what kinds of claims you may need to counter would would vary and be different.
speaker-1: So that it's being fed through certain algorithms or something? Is that what you mean?
speaker-0: Yeah, I mean, I'm not doing that work myself. A lot of that work's being done by my former postdoc, Jeffrey Soupran. But yes, they're tracking what's going on on the internet. And we know there's targeted advertising, right? That's an established thing. And so Jeffrey and other people have pretty strong evidence that we're seeing targeted messaging regarding climate change. ⁓ and it may be based on zip code or it may be based on what sites you've visited before. Again, I'm not an expert on that, but there are still plenty of places where that's going on. And we're also seeing places where the arguments that I've written a lot about about freedom are still being used. So when New York State tried to pass ⁓ laws to limit gas stoves, the gas industry funded a whole campaign to say this is denying your freedom to decide, you know, what kind of house you want to live in, what kind of cooking you want to do, ⁓ but of course leaving out that, but is there also the freedom of the gas company to destroy the planet? Freedom of the gas company to poison you in your own home. And we we've been, you know, cooking for decades with gas stoves, really not understanding the pretty substantial hazards in indoor air pollution that those stoves create. And ⁓ now people are talking about it. And so the gas industry, of course, is upset and pushing back about that.
speaker-1: Yeah, I actually figured that one out myself just because my asthma got really bad. So after COVID, my asthma got much worse. And as a result, I became sensitive to the gas in our house. And so we had to transition off earlier than we financially necessarily wanted to, but we transitioned off of natural gas because it was off gassing in the house and it was really, really irritating my asthma. Interesting. ⁓ so let's talk about the current moment. Since the Trump administration came back into office in January 2025, I'm gonna list a bunch of horrible things now. ⁓ they've dismantled repair, they've dismantled scientific infrastructure, they push for fossil fuel expansion, they have paid out companies to stop r renewable energy deployment, and even invoked the Defense Production Act to demand that companies boost production of the cancer-causing roundup, which I know you have recently written about. So what wanna know is in your opinion, are we repeating history? Are we or are we in a fundamentally different moment? How do you see what's going on now in relation to these processes that you've studied for so many years?
speaker-0: Well, I think we're repeating history, but we're not repeating US history. So we're repeating the history of the Soviet Union and of Nazi Germany. So when I was in graduate school, there was a big literature about what people sometimes refer to as science under siege, that authoritarian dictatorial governments often viewed science as a hostile force because science is an independent source of intellectual authority. And scientists can represent A challenge to authoritarian governance. And so we saw that in the Soviet Union. ⁓ the most famous example was the suppression of evolutionary biology in Soviet Russia, of which there was a large literature already, you know, when I was in grad school back in the Stone Age. And also in Nazi Germany, right, where attacks on science were one of the early things that the Nazi ⁓ government did. So this was a well known phenomenon. And we were taught that this was a characteristic of dictatorships of totalitarian countries. So I think very few of us thought that could happen in America. But now we're seeing it as happening in America. And in a way, you know, there have been debates recently about well, are we or are we not living under an authoritarian government? And I think if you have any doubt about it, the attacks on science are a pretty compelling evidence that this government is behaving In a manner that is consistent with how we've seen authoritarian governments behave in the past.
speaker-1: Well, it's interesting 'cause I haven't heard anybody talk about this component of similarity, right? I mean seen a lot of discussions about targeting immigrants, targeting black and brown people, but you know.
speaker-0: Think about Nazi, you think about Nazi Germany. I mean, think about the images of the early years, Kristal Knock in nineteen thirty-three. What did they do? They burned books, right? I mean, I teach a class called Burning Books Fighting Facts. There's a reason why dictators burn books, right? And so burning books, attacking science is part of this larger pattern of burning books, attacking intellectuals, attacking independent thought, and attacking facts. I mean, this is what George Orwell, of course, wrote about so brilliantly back in nineteen eighty-four. I mean in his book nineteen eighty four, he wrote about it the nineteen
speaker-1: My son just read it in the on it in his middle school crazy
speaker-0: I know apparently sales of nineteen eighty four have skyrocketed, which is good. ⁓ but you know, the idea that independent thought is a threat to totalitarian governance makes science a target. And we're seeing that right now. And as as we've you mentioned just a moment ago, it's not just even targeting individual scientists, but it's a targeting the whole structure, the infrastructure of science, dismantling whole agencies. ⁓ trying to eliminate NCAR, the National Center for Atmospheric Research. I mean NCAR is a jewel in the crown of American science. Anyone who believes in science would think NCAR would be the last place that you would cut, but it's actually one of the first places that this administration has gone after. And that's tells you everything you need to know. They don't want to know the facts about climate change and they don't want a group of scientists be in a position to explain those facts.
speaker-1: Right. And I know that they the administration just dismissed, I guess it's called the entire National Science Foundation board. Personally, I was working a lot with a number of different agencies leading up to 2025, I guess, towards you know when the new administration took office. But I was working with, you know, scientific scientists in various agencies to help do kind of evaluation stuff with them. And At this point, I think that I only know three scientists of all the scientists I was working with who are still working for the federal government. And this is across various agencies. And you know, and the the folks who I worked with at the ⁓ US Forest Service, I worked with a number of scientists there because they had a really strong vibrant field of social science that they were doing out of there. And just about all of them with the new efforts are are losing their jobs or being told they have to move to some, you know, crazy places. Where they won't be allowed to do science anymore. So yeah, it's just a crazy time. All right. So we're in a fundamentally different moment for the United States, but not f in a fundamentally different moment for the world. So I guess then there were lessons. Are there lessons from the history of science that we could use to help get us out of this?
speaker-0: think so and they're probably the same lessons of political history, in many ways I suppose are the same lessons that Tim Snyder has been emphasizing in his work, which is that ⁓ you can't really negotiate with dictators that accommodation doesn't work and that when you try to accommodate dictators, it just emboldens them and you end up in a weakened position. But that said it's also hard because if you're just a scientist or an academic, you're vulnerable if your job depends upon Government financing, ⁓ you're vulnerable. Certainly one of the reasons scientists in Nazi Germany were so vulnerable was because they were civil servants. And you know, one of the first laws that the Nazis passed was the so-called law for the restoration of the civil service, right? So what were they restoring? Well, they were restoring some ideal of German Aryan dominance, and that so-called restoration involved the elimination of Jews from academic positions. And many of those people, because they were in fact civil servants, were in a very difficult position to do anything about it. So one lesson I think for the United States, and I hope the presidents of every university in America are listening to this, is that private universities have a particularly important role to play in standing up against this sort of thing. Because private universities, we are not civil servants, right? We don't work for the government. ⁓ Many of us have f funding from the government that makes us vulnerable in certain kinds of ways. But the bottom line is that if you teach at Harvard or Yale or Princeton or any private university in this country, including sectarian universities, you don't have to capitulate to the to this administration. You might lose funding and that would obviously be painful, but you won't lose your job and you certainly won't lose your life. ⁓ so we're actually we're vulnerable, but we're not nearly as vulnerable as our counterparts were in Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia, where you really could have lost your life. And so it upsets me to see so many of our colleagues kind of capitulating, thinking, ⁓ we have no choice. And I want to say, actually, we have a lot of choices. We have many more choices than people had in these other situations. And so we should appreciate that and do everything we can within our power to stand up against ⁓ these these attacks and and such. And and it's I have to say it's been a disappointing moment in many ways too, because we've seen how many university presidents seem to be completely incapable of defending the concept of a university. It's kind of a shocking thing. And and also, or when they do, it's a very utilitarian argument about the next cure for cancer. And I and I'm sitting there thinking That's the only explanation you can give for why we need a university. And if that's the case, then why do we have history and English and anthropology and music and art and theater? I mean, we could easily be reduced. ⁓ But I mean, unless you are prepared to stand up and make the case for why universities are universities and not just technical institutes, ⁓ you know, we're we're in a bad place, right? So that's my message to colleagues is to say. And also the other big message is is, you know, united we stand, divided we fall. We have to defend each other. The people who think, ⁓ we can let music and art go and think that somehow they will be safe. No, the lesson of history is they may come for the artists first, but they'll come for the scientists next.
speaker-1: Yeah, no, I mean I was just thinking about ⁓ the fact that I think that a lot of universities, it seems like that that a lot of them are worried about being targeted as being woke and then being attacked because the idea of teaching young people to how to fra think freely, how to understand and appreciate, you know, broad components of culture and society may not, you know, maybe as weird as it is, may seem, you know. Too evolved and too woke for other people. I mean, I it's it's interesting hearing you talk about this because so I'm at a private university, so American University is a private university. ⁓ so in some ways I have the same freedoms. But I mean, I so I run a center which, while we do have some funding from the university, the university is not wealthy like a Harvard or a Princeton. And so I have four or five people on my staff who are funded by a federal grant. From an agency that is or is not about to disappear. So it's a very interesting and fraught moment because the university, while they originally said they would cover folks' salaries if we lost our funding, they no longer are saying that.
speaker-0: Right, 'cause they probably realize they they probably can't do it for everyone. So it is tricky for sure. then on the other hand, you know, there's a lot we can do. I mean, I don't want to say that it's fine if we don't have federal funding. I'm not saying that.
speaker-1: No, no, I know. I still think that, you know, for me I made the decision not to put my neck out as much as I probably naturally would, but at the same time also I'm not I'm not capitulating. I'm waiting for I'm waiting to get that email. And
speaker-0: Right. Sometimes you have to pick your battle. There's so many things going on right now that it's not it's not unreasonable to say I have to really think hard about which are the particular places where standing up would be meaningful and effective. So yeah, I'm not criticizing anyone who's not jumping into the, you know, ramparts on every issue, but we do have to think hard about where we have the capability and the capacity to push back. ⁓ and that might be legally. I mean, obviously there's all kinds of ways in which So many of the things the current administration are doing are clearly in violation of the law and there've been already successful lawsuits and there will be more and we have to keep pushing back whenever and wherever we can.
speaker-1: For sure. I mean, I have to say that one of the things that this moment has made me appreciate more than I think I had historically is the importance of the law and lawyers, right?
speaker-0: Yeah. ⁓ well I've been loving lawyers for a long time, but that's because I've worked once year tobacco. If it weren't for lawyers, I would never have been able to write Merchants of Doubt because so much information comes out in lawsuits.
speaker-1: ⁓ yeah, okay. So it's through through the discovery process, is that how you get the data?
speaker-0: Because, you know, one thing I often say one of the things that's difficult about working about on fraud and deception is people don't advertise when they're committing fraud. They try to keep it hidden. So how do we even learn about it? How do we even find out? And it turns out one of the major ways we learn about it is through lawsuits, ⁓ through the documents that become available. And that's one reason why we know a lot about fraud in the tobacco space. We also know a fair amount about fraud, ⁓ In biomedicine vers related to drugs and medical devices. We know much less in other areas. And so it becomes one of the things that's hard for me. Like I'll sometimes be asked, well, how widespread are these practices? And it's hard to tell. It may be that they're only in these specific areas because there are certain economic stakes, right? I mean, there's not much incentive for fraud in paleontology. Or it might be that we just don't know. That there is actually fraud in paleontology, but nobody's ever had a lawsuit about it. My guess is that actually there isn't a lot of fraud in paleontology, but it's hard to know for sure.
speaker-1: For sure, unless Jurassic Park and the science behind it becomes a reality, in which case I feel like you'll see a lot more fraud.
speaker-0: Well that could be that could be.
speaker-1: So ⁓ so I want to shift a little bit to the work around ⁓ you know, your work that documented how ExxonMobil knew, or that that turned into the whole ExxonMo new movement, if you want to call it that, about climate change, which basically goes back as far as, you know, the 1970s is what you found in your work. ⁓ and that ExxonMobil was misleading the public. ⁓ and I was wondering if you could ⁓ talk about How you connected climate inaction to misinformation and the economics of the free market. Briefly I know there's a very large and very, very comprehensive and good book criteria that I'm pointing at that people can read. But if you could do like a kind of a
speaker-0: the book off the shelf 'cause I don't think the audience can see the book very well.
speaker-1: You want me to grab it? I can grab it. Okay, let's see. Right here between margins of doubt and dark money is death, which has been very well loved.
speaker-0: Yeah, I couldn't see Thank you. well, first of all, let me just give credit where credit's due. It's not true that our work started the Exxon New movement. That really came out of work by journalists, particularly the journalists at Inside Climate News and the Los Angeles Times. So they really get the credit for kind of opening up this whole space of analysis. We got involved because ExxonMobil attacked me. And it was the weirdest thing. And it I feel like it was a mistake on their part. And I always tell other people this, you know. The mistake they sometimes this is a David and Goliath story. So how does David win? Well, Goliath has a vulnerability. And one of the vulnerabilities is arrogance. So after the Inside Climate News and LA Times work came out, Excel Mobil attacked me and they said this is the work of activists like Bill McKibben and Naomi Oreskus. I have no idea why they judge that to be a useful tactic on their part, but it was a weird thing for them to do because in fact I had nothing to do with that work. But then they said in on their website, they had a a thing where they said, you know, the these claims are false, but don't take our word for it. Read the documents. And then there was a link to a page. Well, they put out the document. Correct. And I remember this very, very clearly. You know, screenwriters are always asking you to like remember moments. And of course, most of life isn't moments. Most of life is just getting up and going to work, right? But this was the moment because I I was It was my postdoc Jeff Jeffrey Soupran who called my attention to this. And I remember looking at his laptop and saying, Well, we know how to read.
speaker-1: So how many so all the what that's where all the documents
speaker-0: Well, it turned out it wasn't all of them. It turned out it was it was actually a link to a document whose meta label was Haroon's C V. It was the C V of one scientist at ExxonMobil, Haroon Keshke, who was one of two or three or four scientists at ExxonMobil who actually worked in a sustained way on climate change. ⁓ but that led into a larger universe of documents, and that's what led us to then do our analysis of what Exxon knew privately what their scientists were saying, what they were writing in internal documents versus what they were saying in public, and showing that there was a big discrepancy between what they were saying in private and semi private ⁓ correspondence versus what they were saying in advertisements that were public facing.
speaker-1: Okay. Well, I mean, that's great. And so since then, ⁓ have you thought through or do you have perspective on what you think is the best way to move past this and to solve this intractable problem, given that we see good, you know, denial, misinformation at every corner at this point?
speaker-0: Well, it's very hard to know. And you know, as you know, I'm not a political scientist, I'm not a sociologist. I got interested in your work because I felt I needed to learn more about social movements and social change. ⁓ and because it seemed kind of amazing to me that there's actually so little consensus about social change. ⁓ but I I think right now, if I would argue one thing, I would argue that we should actually be angry, that we should be appropriately angry. And I get really, really tired of c interviews and I'll give you this warning so you don't end with it. Interviews that end with what gives you hope? I just feel
speaker-1: That's not what I have at the end, okay.
speaker-0: Okay. I don't wanna I don't want to offend people who I've you know ha done interviews with before, but I feel like it's really facile. And whenever I'm asked, you know, after a serious conversation where we talk about all these terrible things that have happened, deception, lying, you know, pollution, things that are killing people, ⁓ then someone says, ⁓ so what gives you hope? And I feel like it's like the children are asking me to be mommy and to say, Don't worry, children, it's all going to be okay. Right? But the reality is not going be okay if we don't do something about it. So what's going to motivate us to act? And I think part of the answer, it doesn't have to be the whole answer, but part of the answer is appropriate anger. We have been lied to, right? We have been put in positions where our lives, our property, our health are put at risk by companies that are laughing all the way to the bank, that are making historic profits even as we speak. And we should be angry about that. And then we should turn that anger into ambition and the ambition into action.
speaker-1: You know, I love that you said that. And I love that you said that particularly because actually in the research that I do on mobilizing people to participate and engage in social movements, one of the biggest emotions that we see that is an effective motivator rather than people who lose hope and become despondent and have climate anxiety, for example, is anger. Anger is the best. Yeah. So so look at that. It comes full circle. So I mean when you do an analysis, like one of the things that we ask people about is what are the emotions that they feel around climate change, around climate change exacerbated extreme events. And those who feel anger are much more likely to be engaged, involved, and as a result, they actually have more hope. They see that they have the sense of efficacy, right?
speaker-0: ⁓ that's Right. Well will you start talking about that? No, no. Please send me something on that because this is kind of how I feel instinctively. So it's good to know the science is backing up my instincts. And I think also maybe it could also be like a sense of indignation. And maybe my sensibility on this comes my own parents were active in the civil rights movement. And I feel like civil rights leaders understood this, right? It was an indignation about the indignities that black people in this country were subjected to, and an appropriate anger, but channeled into appropriate action, right? So just sitting with anger by itself obviously isn't enough. But then figure out what's the appropriate action to take. So ⁓ yeah. So and and if it then makes you feel empowered, because that is obviously really important too. It's so easy to feel disempowered in this space. So anything that makes you feel that you're not completely disempowered, that you're not just a victim of this situation, I think is really important.
speaker-1: Yeah, I mean so American resistance, which I wrote before saving ourselves, was all about how people during the first Trump administration, individual citizens channeled their outrage and into enthusiasm and were channeled into actual electoral political an electoral political strumble that led to the blue wave. Right. And so I I tracked the folks who did that and how the outrage did that. So it's one of the pivots. But ⁓ but I have some other stuff I'll share with you.
speaker-0: Good. I mean I did read that book, so probably it penetrated my brain in some way too, or reinforced some thoughts that I was also having. So
speaker-1: Yeah, maybe, maybe. Yeah. So I mean I the thing that's interesting is that the outrage, it's the outrage is different now, right? There's not an easy quick fix. Like the last time it was like, ⁓ this is a blip, it was a mistake. And we'll just have to get through this. We just have to get to the election. And, you know, if we know anything about what's going on, you know, I'm guessing your parents are probably not alive. I know I don't want to make assumptions. But, you know, if they were having seen what, you know, the Supreme Court just decided, right, with regard to the Voting Rights Act, it's just Yeah, I mean it's just crazy times we're living in. ⁓ there's a lot to be outraged and angry about for sure. Okay, so so Merchants of Doubt came out as a documentary in two thousand fourteen. So given what you know about climate storytelling, ⁓ is there some advice you would have for climate storytellers or something that you think that even though they're well intentioned, that they're getting wrong when they tell the story in terms of trying to communicate what's going on with climate change and climate science?
speaker-0: Well, a few things. I mean, I have to say I get a little uncomfortable with the whole framework of storytelling, even though I understand it, because we're talking about communication and people communicate and people understand many things in life through stories. ⁓ but I worry that when we talk too much about storytelling, it ⁓ almost might seem like, well, it's just a story and that's your story, but I've got my story. So I do think that there's gotta be some way that we do keep the facts foregrounded. And that's tricky because we also know that facts are not enough. And we also know that part of the problem of the whole climate situation is that for too long we focus too much on the science and not enough on the consequences, the social dimensions. So it's a very tricky space. But I guess I feel like the things that I've learned, and this is really just from experience. ⁓ you know, I have no professional training as a communicator. Sometimes I get introduced as a science communicator. That's like really weird, but no, maybe it's not. Maybe it's that It's not about your professional training. It's about what you have ended up doing in the world. the most important thing is to be authentic, right? Because I think people have very sensitive radar for BS and for dissembling. And I think too many people they they read something about how they should communicate, or they hear someone say, ⁓ you, you know, you should do this or you should do that. And and I'm sure the things they're reading are well intentioned and possibly grounded in evidence and possibly correct in some situations. But I feel like if there's any lesson of communication, and it's the same with writing, it's about, you know, who's your audience? And the message isn't going to be the same for all audiences. So you have to be sensitive to who am I speaking with in this moment and what I'm going to say to these people might be different based on their concerns, their experiences, ⁓ you know, what's affecting their lives in this moment. I mean, I feel like there was a time when I heard all these, you know, scientists, natural scientists, climate scientists talking about the economics of climate change. And the reality is they didn't really understand the economics of climate change, didn't really care about it. But they thought that an economic message would somehow be effective in a way that a scientific message wasn't. Well, I mean, I get that because just going on and on about parts per million CO2. Is not effective. But if you can connect the science to people's lives and explain, so what is 421 parts per million mean for you? What does it mean for a person living in Idaho or San Diego, California? Mixing apples and oranges. But that's really important. I one time was I one time gave a talk in ⁓ South Dakota a week after I had given a talk in San Diego. And in San Diego, I had done this whole thing about sea level rise and real estate and all the billions of dollars of California real estate that were stake and trillions of dollars of Navy infrastructure. And then I went to Rapid City and I thought, okay, I need to change this, right? I can't be in Rapid City talking about naval infrastructure, right? So I changed it to forestry and bark beetles. And fortunately I had a few days before my talk. So and the bark beetle devastation was everywhere. So I took photographs of the bark beetle devastation and I put it up and said, you guys know this. I'm not telling you anything you don't already know. But what I do but what I can tell you that you maybe don't know is how this is connected to climate change. So it's about making that connection to things that people can see with their own eyes. So I'm not asking them to just trust me, right? I'm saying, look, you know this, but let me tell you a little bit more about it. Let me deepen your understanding about why this is happening.
speaker-1: Did you find that ⁓ the audience it resonated with the audience?
speaker-0: Totally. Totally. Yeah. And I mean I mean this this is kind of my experiential learning that I've now had these kinds of experience in more than one place. I feel like it's it should feels like it should be obvious, but it's not about being empathetic with your audience. So one of my favorite stories was some years ago I went to Hayes, Kansas, a place that probably very few Ivy professors have been, but Fort Hayes State University, big important state university in ⁓ western Kansas, surrounded by wheat fields. And I did a book signing. At the end of the book signing, a woman came up to me. She grabbed my hand. She looked me in the eye and she said, God bless you for coming to Hayes. And that moment has stayed with me like forever. Right? Why because wherever you go, there are people who want they want to understand what's going on and they want to be part of the conversation, but often they don't get that opportunity.
speaker-1: And that's a very good point. So actually, so let's pivot up for a second. ⁓ you talked a little bit about talking to media and stuff like that. And I was wondering it is there, ⁓ is there a question you wish journalists would ask you, but they never do?
speaker-0: Hmm. Yeah, that's an interesting question.
speaker-1: I like that question 'cause I was always I'm always like, Why didn't you ask me a lot this? Like I've been doing all of
speaker-0: Sometimes, Carolist, do ask me that. When I used to sometimes do oral history, I would always end with, is there a question you wanted me to ask that I didn't ask? ⁓ Yeah, I don't know. I think maybe because I've written so much now, and usually journalists have at least read some of what I work. They're asking me about the work, so ⁓ so I don't generally feel like they're kind of missing the point. ⁓ I don't know, I'll keep that in the back of my head as we continue talking. Okay. I'll come back to it if
speaker-1: If something comes to you, gentle.
speaker-0: Obvious jumping out at me right now. You know. All right. Sometimes I enough I wanna say, can you ask me about my first book?
speaker-1: Well tell me about your first book, The OB and how is it re relevant to day I was gonna ask you about the dig myth. Well we can go backwards and then we can talk about the big myth.
speaker-0: ⁓ c'est-à-dire... Well, the thing that connects all my work, because sometimes people think the work isn't all connected, but it is, because it's all really about scientific evidence. And it's really about how we know what we know and why we believe the things we believe and why we find some kinds of arguments persuasive and not others. So my first book, The Rejection of Continental Drift, was about why scientists rejected the idea of moving continents in the nineteen twenties. Even though they had a lot of evidence to support it, and even though they had a mechanism to explain it, and then only 40 years later in the 1960s, they say, ⁓ not only is this true, but it's a giant breakthrough in science. And so that was a fun thing to work on, because it was almost like a controlled experiment and an opportunity to look at how scientists judge and evaluate evidence. And one of the arguments of that book is that just as we have preferences ⁓ we have a favorite color, we might have preferences in food, clothing, where we want to live. Scientists have preferences about evidence. And sometimes those preferences are grounded in deeply social considerations. And so they can influence how people weigh and judge evidence. And so that's
speaker-1: Can you give an example of that just for a for those of us who may not know what you mean, like what you mean by like the preference of evidence? Because for I'm thinking like you mean qualitative versus quantitative evidence, or you talking about other types of evidence?
speaker-0: Well, that could be one thing. It could be qualitative versus quantitative. It could be like there's a great line I quote in the book, Charles Richter, the seismologist who invented the Richter scale. He said all he said, some scientists believe in God, some believe in country, but all believe that their evidence is superior to everyone else's. But sometimes it's just about like the data that you personally collected, or that people you know collected. So in the book, I make this argument about what I call epistemic affinities. That based on how you were trained, you might have an affinity for certain kind of data. So it could be stratigraphic data, it could be evidence from fossils, or it could be quantitative data, it could be geophysical measurements of gravity. But you tend to think that that evidence is the best evidence. ⁓ or if you know the people, you might be more likely to trust their data. So there's this deeply social aspect of it. And that of course ramifies through the climate change debate. Because often people who are skeptical about climate change, it's not because they've really sat down with the evidence, but it's because someone they know and trust doesn't believe in climate change. Maybe their minister has said it's a hoax, or the leader of their political party. So many of us are making judgments based on our social connections and our social affinities. Obviously, this is something you know better than I do. ⁓ and that happens in science too.
speaker-1: I mean, so we ⁓ I you probably know about the work we've done around echo chambers and climate science and all of the ways that we if you look at how scientific information is basically cherry picked based on other care social characteristics of you know, in this case policy actors rather than scientists, but the scientists who are actually trying to influence policy actors do something similar in some ways, we see that. ⁓
speaker-0: I think part of the lesson of of my first book is to say, look, scientists tend to be very disdainful of people who they see as making judgments based on social affinities rather than the facts. But the fact is we do it too. We don't maybe do it as severely because we were trained we're trained to think that that's actually not right. And so we should resist it. And we have mechanisms for trying to resist it. But part of the point of my first book was to say, well, scientists ultimately did resist it. Ultimately they did. get this sorted out and they did come to a conclusion that we would now say was the correct conclusion. But it did take them 40 years. So we could have a little bit of sympathy and like basic human empathy for people who are grappling with that same problem and not be condescending to them. Because, you know, one big distinction that I make in all my subsequent work is I make a big distinction between the purveyors of disinformation for whom I have no sympathy versus people who have been influenced by disinformation for whom I have enormous sympathy. I don't think it's it's not our fault if we've been influenced by propaganda and disinformation, because that's the whole point of it. The point of it is to influence us. And we're all human. And so in different situations and different contexts, we may be influenced by disinformation or propaganda.
speaker-1: than starting projects looking at misinformation and how misinformation is affecting people's response to disaster, particularly climate exacerbated disaster surprise. ⁓ and I'm wondering, do you have ⁓ any insights into ways to get to help bake break people out of misinformation networks if they're in them and that's where the information they're consuming is
speaker-0: way this does bring us to the big myth, right? Because one of the things I found, and I think this is consistent with the social science research that people like John Cook have done, if you can expose disinformation as disinformation and also explain who are the people behind it, what is their motivation and how do they benefit from it, that I think can be empowering for people. So it gets back to the fighting back against if you just say, ⁓ you're an idiot, don't believe that. That's not effective. But if you say, look, Here are these people who are saying these things. Here's why they're saying them. And here's how they've promoted this idea, you know, across multiple media or across multiple decades. And then and then you say, so do you really like, I mean, you don't say this out loud, but the implication is do you really want to be the sucker who falls for this disinformation? I I have found it in my experience when I frame it that way, a lot of people are receptive. And I've even had the experience, you know. Especially with the new book, The Big Myths. I mean, some of the examples we have are so astonishing. I've given talks where I hear people in the room gasp, you know, and that's always this great moment because you realize, ⁓ people did not know this and they're shocked to learn it. And that's good because that's a moment then when you're essentially inviting them to reconsider something that they have perhaps taken for granted.
speaker-1: Yeah. No, I mean I thought it was ⁓ I mean, I really enjoy the big myth, and I enjoy the big myth because in a lot of ways it blows open the you know, a lot of the processes that led to a lot of different types of misinformation. ⁓ so in the end of the big myth, well, on page four hundred and three of Big Myths
speaker-0: You read the whole book. Thank you.
speaker-1: Gotta quote here. You okay, you wrote we will find a way to stop climate change, but the longer we deny the problem or insist that markets will solve it, quote, on their own, the greater the cost will be. So what I'm wondering is you wrote this book, I mean it came out in twenty twenty three. ⁓ you know, the paperback came out more recently. Are you more hopeful or less hopeful than you were when you were writing the big myth today? And why? Yeah.
speaker-0: ⁓ yeah, that's a good question. I mean, you know, I feel like this is ⁓ one of those glass half empty versus half full things. There's a lot to be hopeful about in the sense of what's going on in the rest of the world, right? So a lot of the world is making progress, particularly in renewable energy. Renewable energy is now the cheapest form of energy in most places in the world. It's part of why the Trump administration is having to do these insane things like pay total. not to finish a wind power plant that's nearly done, ⁓ bribe them effectively into going back to oil and gas exploration. So, you know, even in a world where fossil fuels remain extremely heavily subsidized, renewable energy is still winning ⁓ in the marketplace. So that's actually kind of great and amazing. And it tells us that one of the big obstacles to the energy transition, which was cost, is no longer a factor. So that's really encouraging. And if you look at electric vehicles, I mean, in the world today globally, I think electric vehicles are now more than half of all new car sales, something like that. You can check that fact. ⁓ but it's a lot. ⁓ so, and across the globe, you see people who understand that this problem is real and are demanding that their governments take action and are also taking action themselves on the state, local, provincial, city ⁓ level. The other thing that makes me feel Cautiously optimistic is most people in the world live in cities. Most economic activity takes place in cities, and that means that most carbon emissions are in cities. There's a, you know, there's this big chunk, like 40%, that is agriculture and land use, but 60% is mostly associated with urban activity. And cities tend to be ⁓ change-embracing places. ⁓ Big generalization, but broadly true. So I think there's tremendous potential for cities to take action, even if the nation state in which they're in is not. And we're beginning to see evidence of that in different places. So I think there's real opportunities for meaningful action ⁓ in that space. And I think we're we are seeing that in some places. So those are all kind of glass half full ideas that half empty is the United States, right? I mean, this country has gone backwards. in the last year year and half with you know really ⁓ you know functionally inexplicable policies except the idea that this administration is beholden to the oil and gas industry and will do everything it can ⁓ to support this industry. And I think the the lanes to which they're going show that actually how scared they are that they now know that they cannot compete in a market environment. That the only way they can survive is all this government protection, indemnification from lawsuits. So it's scary because some of the things the administration are doing are are really kind of desperate maneuvers and that they're willing to destroy democracy, they're willing to strip us of our legal rights to legal redress for damages. I mean, these are astonishing steps that this administration is taking to protect this industry. So I think it shows they're scared. I think it shows they're desperate. And so one could take comfort in that to show that, you know, this is like the lat you could say it's the last gasp of a dying industry, but my fear is that, you know, they bring down American democracy with them.
speaker-1: be the last gask of a of a nation state as well, right? ⁓ I mean it's apocalyptically optimistic, but I'm I want to go on anyway. I I I want a few more minutes of your time. I think we have a few more minutes I mean I think you're right. There can be hope at the subnational level. It's just a question of whether or not the nation state can really survive. I mean and that that's why I keep reading about revolution. See
speaker-0: Yeah. And this nation state may not. I mean that's the other thing. As a historian, I mean, you know, one knows that powerful countries and empires come and go. I mean I mean one thing that getting back to where we started with the attacks on science, if you think about Germany, Germany in nineteen thirty three was the world's leader in science. And they self immolated their own scientific enterprise and it took decades after World War Two for them to rebuild. But they did rebuild and Germany today is once again a scientific powerhouse. So that's not an encouraging thing to say to a twenty something who's trying to decide whether to have a career in science, say, ⁓ don't worry, we'll rebuild our science by the time you're ready to retire. Right. That's not
speaker-1: Just tell them they could probably get a free PhD in another country though.
speaker-0: Well, there's that. Right. So so it's well, I mean, it may well be that America will not be the world's leader in science going forward. And that's a sad thing for America. And it's a sad thing for American scientists. But as long as the scientific enterprise continues elsewhere, you know, maybe it's okay. That's feels like a weird thing to say. and I don't want to justify what's happened in the United States. I mean, we will be poorer. for it both intellectually and economically. There's no question that, you know, tons of evidence that money invested in science and technology pays us back. ⁓ scientists are pretty cheap compared to aircraft carriers, you know. ⁓ so it's a tricky it's a tricky space we're in now. And I think the other big worry in in a way, while we were talking about all my different books, I mean this was part of what we were getting at in the collapse of Western civilization. Humans will not go extinct from climate change. I mean, the chances of that happening are slim to none. But certain countries may collapse and other countries may thrive. And in that book, we imagine a future in which China dominates. That's kind of already happening, right? I mean, it's a little scary how much that was in that book has already come true eleven years later. ⁓ and so a world in which China dominates is not necessarily all bad. But it's not necessarily all good either. And certainly if you believe in democracy and if you believe in the values of liberal democracy, a world that's dominated by China and Russia is not one that we would necessarily think is an optimal.
speaker-1: Yeah, no, absolutely not. But ⁓ interesting, you know, it could be a little bit cleaner and greener, at least maybe.
speaker-0: Well, I mean, China is beating the pants off us in electric vehicles. I just saw a big piece about how they're make moving forward on wind power. And you know, wind power is like one of the best things you can do from a national economy standpoint because it's can't like outsource wind power, right? And many years ago, and again, this is one of the great things about traveling and talking to people. I sat at a dinner next to a guy who was an executive at a company that manufactured wind turbine blades, just the blade. And they were doing a former Maytag washing machine factory, and I forget it was Ohio or Indiana, but it was somewhere in the American Midwest. And I asked him about the economics. I said, How can you compete? So many other comp you know, businesses have fled to Vietnam or the Philippines or Mexico. And he said, Well, it costs a heck of a lot to transport a wind turbine blade. And
speaker-1: I've driven I've driven behind them on a tr in a truck. They're huge.
speaker-0: And he says there's a giant benefit if you can manufacture them close to where the ⁓ wind farm is. And I thought, well, how great is that? Like that's a story that should be more widely t told. And and it's kind of the same with solar power too, right? You can't really outsource solar power. And solar power installation is one of the fastest growing jobs in America today. ⁓ green jobs paywall, you know, they they're everywhere. They're they're not just concentrated in you know, New York and Los Angeles. So there's again, there's a lot of good news in the renewable energy story, but this administration is trying to crush it. And the only logical explanation for that is that they are beholden to the fossil fuel industry.
speaker-1: So I wanted to talk about ⁓ an anecdote you mentioned in the acknowledgments of the big myth. So you mention, ⁓ you tell a story about a dinner party that Tim Worth ⁓ hosted, and that helped you determine the follow-up book. And that's ⁓ so that was helping you determine the follow-up book after Merchants of Doubt, where you basically ended up deciding to write the next big myth. Sorry, the big myth. So I'm wondering if ⁓ If you figured out what's coming next after the big myth, or if maybe you had another there was another dinner party and if so, tell us about that.
speaker-0: There hasn't been another dinner party, but I guess I'll have to ask Tim to host that. ⁓ Exact. It's like he does owe me. No, I owe him. He's an amazing person. He's been a great inspiration to me. Someone who just continues to do what he can, where he can. ⁓ Yeah, we haven't started we haven't launched another book. But the Big Myth was a big lift. It was a hard book to write and it was complicated by COVID. There were archives we couldn't get to that we wanted to. So
speaker-1: He he owes you.
speaker-0: Once we finished that book, I think both Eric Conway and I felt like we needed to regroup. And then the whole current political situation obviously complicates things a lot, ⁓ because it shifts the sense of well, what would be useful in the present moment. I mean, there are all kinds of really interesting intellectual questions in science that I'd like to pursue, but I f feel like in the current moment that wouldn't really be ethical. ⁓ So what we're working on right now is a revised edition of the collapse of Western Civilization. Great. So we're going to add a bit about the, you know, the attack on renewable energy, AI and data centers, the that whole thing. But we also feel mindful. I had a really amazing conversation with my editor because in my entire life I have never, ever until now had an editor say, Write as much as you want.
speaker-1: That's great. That's I think that's great.
speaker-0: Expand this but I know I know. Wow.
speaker-1: Is there somebody who let you write this big book? How big is it gonna be there, Ami? Well,
speaker-0: We don't want to. I feel like part of the power of the collapse of Western civilization is that it's a very short book. So we're just trying to figure out how much more is enough.
speaker-1: I've been struggling because I also work on stuff and I try to figure out what is the timely thing that I really want it be focusing on at the moment. And, you know, it's a hard time. There's lots of things and trying to figure out what is the best story and the most useful story to tell. And that's when I I've been kind of sitting a lot with the the literature on revolution and thinking about, you know, thinking about the Green Revolution versus autocratic revolutions, you know. fascist revolutions versus bottom up revolutions and thinking about how that is related to like persistence of nation states and such. So I mean I'm I'm thinking about very similar topics. So I would love to to
speaker-0: So we can continue conversation. Yeah.
speaker-1: So ⁓ okay, so ⁓ so we've run out of time, but I wanted to ⁓ the way that we're trying to end things is we're going through what we call a lightning round. Okay. So the lightning round, and basically I'm gonna list a bunch of issues and you're gonna tell me if today, at the moment, you are feeling apocalyptic or optimistic about each of the following. See, I'm not gonna ask you what gives you hope. I'm just gonna ask you where you fit on it sit on each of these. All right.
speaker-0: Yeah. Okay. Got it. Okay.
speaker-1: Fossil fuel dominance.
speaker-0: Optimistic.
speaker-1: Climate action.
speaker-0: Optimistic.
speaker-1: Ooh. Science in America.
speaker-0: ⁓ apocalyptic.
speaker-1: Democracy in America.
speaker-0: Ugh yeah, that's that's I I I can't say. I feel like we're teetering on the precipice there.
speaker-1: All right. How about the fall twenty twenty six elections?
speaker-0: Cautiously optimistic.
speaker-1: Nice. ⁓ youth participation in politics.
speaker-0: Optimistic. I mean that's when I see like my students are so much more politically engaged now than they were ten years ago. And they think I'm not radical enough. That never happened to me before.
speaker-1: That's wonderful. ⁓ well and finally, Middle East peace.
speaker-0: ⁓ no comment. Although I can I can point say what my husband always says, you know, we've been fighting this since ⁓ Ishmael and Isaac. So, you know, maybe it's understandable that this feels intractable.
speaker-1: Maybe, yeah. Wise words. Wise words. And with that I wanna say thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me. It's always fun to talk to you and I always learn something. and ⁓ and I very much appreciate your brand of apocalyptic optimism. Thank you for sharing that with us as well.
speaker-0: Like why? You're welcome. Great to be with you.
speaker-1: 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.
