The science intersection
This podcast is on a range of issues but generally they fit into one of four categories. The four categories are: Climate change, alternative economic systems, diversity and health. On occasion the podcast has episodes which don't fit into any of these.
The podcast is a mix of science and social science and other elements which impact on well-being.
The science intersection
From Climate Anxiety to Joyful Resistance—with Nicole J. Levin
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
When Nicole J. Levin received a message about a frightening climate report while working 70-hour weeks in a television writers’ room, she froze. Her growing climate anxiety eventually led her away from entertainment and into environmental activism—but giving everything to the cause brought its own consequences.
In this episode, Nicole talks about activist and nonprofit burnout, internalised capitalism and the pressure to sacrifice yourself for work that matters. She explains how fiction helped her express anger, imagine parallel lives and explore questions that activism alone could not answer.
We also discuss why climate communication need not revolve around panic and shame, how boundaries can make activism more sustainable, and the potential of humour, music, creativity and collective joy as forms of resistance. Nicole concludes by reading an extract from her new book, Diary of a Mad Girl: Me Vs. the Oil Industry Vs. My Nonprofit Job, in which an environmental campaigner finds herself in possession of an oil-company chief executive.
Find and buy Nicole’s book here:
https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Diary_of_a_Mad_Girl.html?id=W7r70QEACAAJ&redir_esc=y
Content note: This episode discusses climate anxiety, depression and burnout and contains some strong language.
With thanks to everyone who has supported The Science Intersection so far. Your donations help cover the costs of recording, hosting and producing the podcast.
If you would like to support future episodes, you can donate here:
https://ko-fi.com/rachelm_thescienceintersection
Would you like to be a guest on The Science Intersection? If you have relevant expertise, research or lived experience that you would like to share, you can contact me using the form at:
https://www.thescienceintersection.com/
It kind of allowed me to express some of the more like darker, trickier issues that I was holding. And legally, I'm not allowed. I have a story which I think I'll read later, in which my character kidnaps the CEO of uh an oil industry of the, you know, spoiler. And I'm not allowed to do that. Obviously, I can't do that. So fiction allows me to also like explore these more radical sides of myself, the angry sides of myself, these parts that you can't legally. And I love fiction. You get to do things that you're not allowed to do in real life.
SPEAKER_00So that was the author and environmental campaigner, Nicola Veen, talking about writing her book about the climate crisis. So I'm talking to her on this podcast about the harsh realities of non-profit burnout and how fiction and surreal writing became her ultimate survival tool.
SPEAKER_02In this book, my the character Joelle, you know, she's super burnt out and she does a ton of shrooms. Has this massive shroom experience where then she's able to see like the doors to parallel universes and then goes into them and they're kind of they kind of read a short fiction, but they all tie thematically. And these parallel universes explore like themes and issues that I'm thinking about. So in one parallel universe, I have the superpower to teleport because toxic radiation from the oil drilling like gives you that superpower. And that one's more about being present and like the character, you know, loves teleporting, but also keeps accidentally teleporting during sex and can't stay present and grounded. Teleportation is the power that I want the most. If I was able to be at all places like that, life would be so much easier because my family is so spread out. Um, so it was kind of like a way for me to do a thought experiment to see what that would be like. I have another parallel universe where I never left entertainment. So I had moved out to work in entertainment. That's what brought me to LA. And I quit because of my climate anxiety and like because I wanted to do climate activism. So in that story, I like have stayed in entertainment. What does that state look like? I have another story where uh I'm haunted by the ghost of my great grandfather. Another one where I'm this one's fun, where me and all the other parallels are coming together to try to stop AI from taking over the world. So they're just different thought experiments that helped me to explore like what if. And ultimately, I was like, this world is good enough, you know. It's a bit like the Midnight Library. I really liked that book by Matt Haig about like a very depressed girl who she kills herself and then she goes to this library, and and she's able to go back to all these different versions of herself, like to see if like her life would have been better. And so it it was it was somewhat inspired by that, also inspired by Carmen Maria Machado, her her book in the dream house, and also Diary of a Wumpy Kid, because there's illustrations. All those different universes let me explore like themes, and I didn't realize that I had so much. Those stories just came out of me. They just flew out of me. Oh, there's one story where I get Botox in the throat and I have to say no to everything, and that one really helped me with my boundaries. So it was a good way of exploring, and I I I kind of feel like all these universes like they do exist. Um, I do really feel like I tapped into something. It was very therapeutic for me to write them, and I think they're fun and therapeutic to read.
SPEAKER_00One of the things I was kind of thinking about is just sort of the impact of capitalism. So talking about the sort of themes around burnout and the impacts the work has on you and the fact that we're kind of overexploiting the planet by doing things like drilling for oil. So kind of it's all just exploring the damaging effects of capitalism, I suppose, as well.
SPEAKER_02Oh, definitely. And I think this book really explores internalized capitalism too, because like there's a lot about my perfectionism, how I'm so hard on myself. Like, we are all exploiting ourselves and our jobs. And when I wrote this book, I think I was really on this like we need to work less kick. I did not mean I wanted AI to take our jobs to be mere. Now I'm like, we deserve to work. It's gotten messy, like the framing. This book really explores like how capitalism has like found its way into like the deepest recesses of our psyches. And as I'm like untangling in the community, I'm also untangling in myself and in my art.
SPEAKER_00Your art.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah. I mean, I've self-published. I some of this book is about like looking for validation from others for your book. I it was almost called in my search for more validation. Character puts out a book, which is my first book, and she gets some accomplishments, but they never feel like enough. So it kind of explores that. And at like at what point does do we become successful? And it does kind of point to this like never-ending treadmill to like nowhere, right? And even with this book, I'm really feeling like I've had success, and it does feel like the target is always moving. Like I'm having a book event at my favorite bookstore in LA, and that was like my main goal. And now I'm like, what's next? You know, that's just like, and that's capitalism being like, what's next? And like, how many numbers? How many people are gonna buy this book? What are my Instagram like numbers like? And that sucks because art is not about numbers and making money, art is about expression and and sharing and connecting with others. So I'm struggling and working on, I think I'm doing a pretty good job of like staying present, of not losing myself to this uh capitalist monster. I did have a story that I did cut about work. There was one where there's a capitalist monster and time slows down, it gets really slow, and it's too slow, and we all start to go crazy, and then we can really hear the TikTok of capitalism more clearly when time is that slow. And when we're able to hear it, we're like, oh, I don't want to listen to this guy. That was a cutting room floor because it was too too similar to my story where I'm in a punk band and I get everyone to work less, and then we break capitalism that way.
SPEAKER_00Potentially do work that's a bit more meaningful because everyone gets their universal basic income and you don't need to take work that is not great for society, and you also have a better work-life balance. So that's my my my my kind of dream at the moment.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean, I think we saw that in COVID in 2020. People in America were given the best unemployment insurance ever. It was like livable for once. And what happened, everyone ended up on the street demanding structural change, an end to like police brutality and systematic racism. And I don't think our government liked that. You know, everyone I talk to, they're like, oh wow, you have a job where you like are fighting for something better. I want a job like that. I feel like my job is like meaningless. And I'm like, if you can get one of those jobs, that's great, but like they're rare. And I so I do feel like people want to be doing things that are valuable, but we've gotten rid of so many of the valuable jobs, and it's often not paid. Like most capitalism doesn't care about helping the planet.
SPEAKER_00So you're talking about um helping the planet, um so the author's note describes the book as being about saving the world, one act of selfish resistance at a time. So, how has your understanding of activism changed, particularly in relation to personal boundaries, like collective action and pressure to sacrifice yourself for a cause?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, um, and I think this one ties into another question I know you had, which is how I got into organizing. And so I'll answer them both. But I moved out in 2015. I grabbed, that's when I graduated. I moved out to LA. I studied environmental science and I wrote humor. And so I moved out to LA. I was like, I want to write about issues that mattered. Five years later, I'm on a television show as an assistant, working 70 hours a week, crying every day in my car, and working on a show about cops. And it wasn't the worst show, but I it felt like it did not align with my values. And I was in the writer's room taking notes on my laptop, you know, we were trying to figure out the car chase at the end of Act Two when my friend sends me a text and it's the UN's I the UN's IPCC report, that like very terrifying report that says, we have 12 years to change everything, or like it's too late for the planet, essentially. And I just froze. And I looked around at my coworkers and I said, Did you see this? And they're like, ah, there's nothing you can do. And I panicked and I cried in the bathroom, and uh one of the writers gave me a hug, and then I went back to work, and it wasn't like a smooth transition, but eventually the show ended, and that anxiety and panic in my brain just got louder and louder and louder, and I could not ignore it. And this is when I started writing my first book, Diary of a Sad Girl, or My Quest to Find Love on a Dying Planet. And that book was really like I needed support. I needed to listen to my higher self, and I think she talked to me through my writing. And when my character's like, I'm really anxious about climate change, oh, there's a green peace meeting that I'm like randomly invited to. I'm gonna go to this meeting because like that's what my character needs to do. So becoming a character in my book, I was able to like get myself out of a really, really dark, depressed place and find climate activism, which was so healing for me. And that's kind of what the first book is about. It's also about dating in LA. It's funny too. It's more of a rom-com, you know, standard rom-com coming of age, which I thought that the rom-com structure would make these issues about existential dread and like the end of the world kind of easier to digest, both for myself and for readers. And so this part's not in the book, but I found myself doing Sunrise Movement. It was a youth-led movement, still around, working to fight for a Green New Deal. And I was surrounded by people who were all working to like fighting for survival. And we really believed if we can get our elected officials to invest in green jobs, then we will be okay. And this was like 2018, 2019. Like we had hope, like it was possible, and it felt like we had time, and you know, hope is so amazing. And like I was like, I am giving my body to this class. And so that's when like my all my friends were in sunrise. I was dating someone in sunrise, like I ate and breathed sunrise. I had another job that was also nonprofit organizing. I was working 60 hours a week, and like everything I did was for the survival of the planet, and and I burned out. And I think as an organizer, a climate organizer, burning out is part of it. You have to give too much so that you can like learn how to scale back. It's all about balance. So I was not giving anything that felt wrong. I was giving everything that also felt wrong. And like my body told me I got sick and COVID happened. So I think COVID was a real time where it was like you cannot give everything because it's impossible to be in person. And so like I still gave a ton from home, but I was at my parents' house, I was outside more, I reconnected to like my inner artist, I worked on my book again. Um, I've kind of discovered balance. And I think balance is so essential for sustainability. And I think again, like this giving everything for a product, in this case, the product is survival, is still kind of capitalist. You know, it's still like, how can I like be a tool for something instead of like how can I live? So now it's less about like, and it's also, I think I've learned that the solutions are never gonna feel like enough. Like, same with my book, Never Feeling Like Enough. And so, what do you do when nothing ever feels like enough? You give more and more and more, but that's still not enough. So you kind of you learn to love the process, you learn to like love the act of resisting. And I think that's so important for organizers. And I think especially like under the Trump administration and in the United States, it's really tough because the things that we're witnessing are devastating, and our wins feel really small in comparison, and we're really defensive right now. And I think that the tide will shift, you know, the pendulum swings. We can actually be more aggressive in terms of like supporting survival, but for me, integrating yoga, which this book is a bit about, and like actually tending to my body as I tend to the earth was really essential for me learning this balance. And I did yoga teacher training last year with my local yoga studio, yoga vibe, and I really loved it. And we learned about these eastern values. The thing that was most meaningful for me was like learning about the eastern values that kind of underpin yoga. Yoga is just like the way we do it now is like you're just kind of exercising, but like really the exercise is meant to get you to like a state of meditation. It's only one eighth of the whole thing. So learning about those other limbs of yoga and learning about this other non-Eurocentric, non-capitalist way of viewing the world was really helpful. Like the values of like Santosha, contentment, nonviolence, and these are also values that I learned at my my synagogue, which I've gotten more involved with, and that kind of happens in the book too, had really grounded me in not burning out and taking care of myself. And now I feel like my organizing, it fuels me and like it supports me as a human because it connects me to others. And I do think like we have so much collective trauma, we need collective action as a way of soothing it. Like I, as much as I'm giving, I'm receiving. So it feels like really nice and natural. And I make sure sure that I care for my body first. And when I'm like overwhelmed, I allow myself to not be everywhere at once because there are like way too many problems, and literally everything is on fire. So, how can I actually still like love my life? Because this is still my life, and this is the one life I get to live, unless there are parallel universes, which is part of why I wrote those. It was a lot of pressure to have one life.
SPEAKER_00I personally do activism, but I actually play music, so I I do drumming. It's like a way to do activism, but do you feel like you're not sort of like trying to give people message, you're just getting their attention. So I play drums and someone else hands out the leaflets.
SPEAKER_02I love that. I think that's what we need to be doing more of. I think so much of our like organizing, especially on Instagram, is like organizing around shame, around panic, and I'm like, let's stop doing that. That's not fun, that's stressful. We should be organizing around like joy and fun and like rebellion. And so I'm actually doing a punk band for my book release. We're writing a song. I have a metal song about the oil industry. It's gonna be really fun, and I want it to be like a party because I mean, I'm so tired of like going to these really dry events or like depressing protests. Like, I think protests are usually not that depressing, they do a good job in LA. But I do really think gathering around joy is so powerful, and like we all need to be in this for the long haul. And like music is so joyful, it's so communal, and that's so cool. And like, if you lived in LA, I'd be like, let's get a band together. You're already in one, but that's cool. You're a drummer. I played keys. I feel like music is where I'm moving, and I'm really trying to integrate the music world with the organizing rule world. It's like, how can we bring these like calls to action to where the people already are?
SPEAKER_00Any plans to release. So I was gonna say any plans to release anything.
SPEAKER_02Um, I don't know, maybe. That'd be fun, but I don't like the way I sound recorded.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_02I'm more of a live girly. But maybe once I get better. I do want to make an album of like 20-second songs. That's on my Q, my docket, but I've been busy releasing my book, so I'm not very good at music, which is why it's fun. I am good at writing, so it's no fun anymore, you know?
SPEAKER_00So coming coming back to the writing, could you read like an extract?
SPEAKER_02Oh yeah. This is one of the parallel universes. Can I curse on this?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's fine.
SPEAKER_02Okay, cool. There's just a little profanity in the story. I'm sorry. Okay. If you have children, just a couple F F bombs. That's it. The universe in which my boyfriend and I can afford a two-bedroom apartment. What the fuck, Joelle? My boyfriend asks. He's home early, holding two bags of Zangku. Ick. Doesn't he know what the garlic sauce does to my stomach? Nina, our sweet child dog, runs up to him, jumps on his leg demanding affection. He swats her away. Don't swat the dog, I chide him. Say hello, and then she'll calm down. Didn't you have practice tonight? I did. But then Jay got a cramp and well, wait, why am I the one explaining myself? What the fuck is going on here? A pan across our gorgeous two-bedroom mid-century modern apartment. Crown moulding, a royal blue couch. Large bay windows overlook a park. An old growth oak tree visible. A massive kitchen table, perfect for crouching under in the event of an earthquake. A set of four chairs, one of which is holding a polite looking old man, hogtied and gagged. Who the fuck is this? Robert What? Robert makes a muffled noise. A cry for help, perhaps. Bob, we can't understand what you are saying. I turn to my boyfriend, who has now dropped our takeout on the floor. Fries falling on the hardwood. Oof, I just swept. What the fuck is going on? My boyfriend repeats himself. Sometimes when I'm overstimulated, I have a hard time answering his questions. I take a deep breath and ground myself in the sanctuary of our apartment. My mother's prints on the walls, a massive sunflower rising above a flooded city, a mother and child holding hands on its petals. Joelle, his tone is sharp. So here's what's ha what happened, I tell him. Well, I'm not entirely sure how it happened. But I have come into the possession of the current chief executive of Chevron. The what? Okay, fine, I do know how it happened, but I think for your protection, it's best that you maintain the ability to plead ignorance. Um possibly now is a good time to get married, so that you won't have to testify against me when this inevitably goes to court. Are those? You'd think my boyfriend was the one gagged, because he can't find his words. Are those my socks? God, baby, I'm sorry, my socks weren't big enough for this guy's massive mouth. Bob's a screecher. And fuck, he just ended up here. I promise I'm not planning any like eco terrorism or anything. But I'll tell you, this old guy is responsible for a lot more pain than almost anyone else on the planet. Bob grunts. I just wanted to talk to him. I wasn't going to hurt him. He's got grandchildren. And look at those big blue eyes. We both look at Bob. His big blue eyes are watery, tearing up. I thought I could read him some of my poems about the planet he destroyed, you know, the one about the cremation smog, or the one about all the people in Ecuador he murdered. Maybe ask him a series of leading questions about his grandchildren, the first time he really connected with a tree. And yeah, I have some shrooms I was gonna try to figure out how to give him, passively, generously, so that he could maybe work with me to take down the industry from the inside. My voice trails off. I see my partner's face. Disappointment, concern, my plan, so flawless before, falls to the ground between us. Limp. A noodle. A gluten-free noodle. No one wanted to eat this in the first place, and now it is on the ground, and who will swiffer if I'm in jail? Will you clean the floors if I go to prison? I ask him. But my boyfriend doesn't answer. He looks around the room, our beautiful two bedroom in the hills of Los Filas, for which we are somehow only paying twenty one hundred a month. His music studio is in one room, our king bed in the other. The small backyard, the dishwasher, the central AC, the in unit washer dryer. We have two parking spots, goddammit. Yes, the oil industry has ruined everything and stolen our future. But wow, what a great little nest we have assembled. Was this how you were really gonna ask me? To be an accomplice? I still deny the accusation. No. To marry you. Oh. I mean, he sighs. Is it just because you made me an accessory? Or did you like want to? And at that moment, warmth passes through me. I am reminded of a power so much stronger than extractive capitalism. Love. Even Bob seems to calm down. Or perhaps that's the ketamine I shot into his thigh. Of course I want to. And yeah, this isn't how I wanted to ask. Bob grunts as I attempt to pry the wedding ring off his saggy finger. It's stuck. Probably for the best that I don't add grand theft to the kidnapping charges. As I kneel, I admire the incredible, incredibly soft and classy rug beneath the kitchen floor. Perfect for rolling up a body. In theory.
SPEAKER_00Thank you to Nicole Levine for joining me. Her story leaves us with an interesting question. Can enjoyment, creativity, and resistance all be part of the same response to climate crisis? You can find out more about Nicole and her book through the links in the episode description. If you enjoyed this conversation, please follow the science intersection and share the episode with someone who might find it interesting.