How Do We Give Climate A Hollywood Ending?

In this episode, Dr. Sabrina McCormick provides insight into how her research shapes the kinds of stories she likes to tell. Then, she and Marcius explore the kinds of stories used in climate communication, emphasizing the importance of narratives that inspire agency and joy rather than fear and victimhood. Before she heads off to watch Project Hail Mary, Sabrina does a lightning round on how the climate story could into each of the seven plot archetypes. Finally, Producer Vish joins the show for the first time (!) to share his thoughts on the heroes and villains of the climate story.

Let us know what you think at podontherise@gmail.com

00:00 Understanding Climate Storytelling
00:45 Introduction to Sabrina Part 2
02:18 What Is Climate Storytelling?
04:32 The Big Environment Story
05:54 Heroes and Villains
07:43 Similarities with Truth And Reconciliation in South Africa
11:43 Sabrina's Approach to Climate Storytelling
15:38 Entertaining with Solutions Stories
17:27 Getting to the Happy Ending
20:34 Uniqueness in Climate Storytelling
23:32 Do We Have to Say Climate?
29:24 Project Hail Mary Film
30:00 The Seven Story Archetypes
37:15 Vish Joins to Share Thoughts on Heroes and Villains
51:34 Thank Yous and Play Out Music

Show Credits:
Vishrudh Sriramprasad, Producer
Claire Davis, Theme Music (Long Gone, Get It Right) | @clairedavismusic

Kheya Patel, Art | https://kheyapatel.com/

Contact: podontherise@gmail.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

I'll get straight to the key finding from our research, which a lot of people were saying things like you have to scare people into action, you have to make them angry, you have anger motivates people, da-da-da-da. What we found, and this is a very strong statistically significant finding, and we looked at everything. We looked at, you know, where you're from. This is all Americans, I should say. We looked at where you're from, your gender, your race, your income, you're all the things. And we found that the one thing that motivates increased climate-friendly behavior is the experience of joy while watching a piece of content. Joy.

SPEAKER_04 0:45

Hello, my friends, and welcome to the On the Rise podcast. I'm your host, Marcus Extavor. On today's episode, we continue our conversation with filmmaker, producer, and writer Sabrina McCormick. Sabrina's an award winner, she's a documentary film producer, she's a feature film writer and producer. She's many things. Also an academic scholar and researcher whose research directly informs her stories and her storytelling. If you love part one, you're gonna love this second part where we continue the conversation. The first one was focused a little bit more about the storytelling craft and the industry and how she approaches it and how she does her work, including the project she's working on right now, which she was quite tight-lipped about, I have to say. I tried to get her to give some details, but she was really holding the back. That's cool. In this episode, we get a little bit more into how do you tell climate stories? Not a touchy-feely, yay, kumbaya climate story, but just any climate story that's gonna resonate. How do you connect with people in a way that actually moves the needle forward or just even gets entertainment value from people? Sabrina is the type of person that knows how to do this. We talked about how the situation of South Africa after apartheid ended and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is actually connected to climate. That sounds like a crazy departure, but she actually connects it right in. We talked about the seven archetypal stories that have been with humanity, it sounds like for millennia. And we ask which one of these can actually be useful as a good climate story. So here's part two of a pretty great conversation with Sabrina McCormick, visionary, filmmaker, director, writer, and scholar. Here's Sabrina. What is climate storytelling and how are climate stories typically told today?

SPEAKER_02 2:25

Yeah, I mean, that's a really great question, and I'm so glad you're asking it because I think there is a really big misconception about what climate storytelling should be or is or how it works best or whatever. Um, and not to slam storytellers to date, well, although I'll put myself in that category. I think there's been a lot of really tough, not so helpful, problematic climate storytelling that has been super on the nose. You know, it's been really, it's really, I think, made people feel like climate is something, you know, out there, over there in another time period, affecting another person, doesn't have anything to do with me. And, you know, look, I'm a sociologist by training, and I see climate as something that just climate change, global warming, you know, that surrounds us. It's affects every aspect of our lives. And so I don't to me, a climate story, um, you know, is it like let's let's just talk about it, right? I think it's you know, a climate story, well, climate storytelling can be any, can, can surface any aspect of all of these phenomena that um these changes we've created is is fomenting. I I don't know. I personally really prefer climate storytelling that um helps us understand what's happening and what to do about it. Um, but I think there's a lot of storytelling that is not that.

SPEAKER_04 4:08

Well, okay, I think um, yes, this is a great place to start. I the way I've probably experienced climate storytelling, and I was um I trained more in the engineering and physical sciences when I was academic, and that was sort of that's just kind of my personality and how I think about a lot of things. But when I became aware of the climate thing, I didn't really consider myself to be an environmentalist, and I guess in a lot of ways I still don't. But the point is that was what I was familiar with as the climate story. Oh, the climate story is like a big environment story, and so that had touch points of like here's a big blue green earth ball. Or um, or like um don't litter, right? Don't litter was something I was this is like a child, you know, me in middle school. Oh yeah, don't litter, and that's kind of or the polar ice caps, that's global warming, and don't litter is something we talk about on Earth Day, right? It's also related to like composting and the garden. These are all things, these are all things I love. These are all things I love. Okay, so like that's one type of climate story. Um I think there's a more there's a more recent climate story.

SPEAKER_02 5:15

Composting. Wait, you've left out recycling. Why do you recycling?

SPEAKER_04 5:19

Why do you hate composting?

SPEAKER_02 5:21

I love composting. Oh my god, I love it so much. I'm a huge gardener, and composting is the answer for both methane reduction and everyone always gets gardening.

SPEAKER_04 5:32

No, I'm not I'm making fun. Everyone always okay. Look, enough okay, I believe you. We'll talk composting later.

SPEAKER_02 5:38

I'll show you my DIY composting bin. It's like so ugly, but it really works. You just take two of those big plastic bins, which we all will have too many of them, and you drill holes in the top one, and you drop it in the bottom one, you find it on YouTube, and it's just it works.

SPEAKER_04 5:53

Um, okay, that's one climate story. The blue the blue-green story. And another one, and I want you to tell me about some others. Another one that's I think more emergent is um someone has done something bad to you.

SPEAKER_05 6:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 6:06

And we gotta figure out who it was, and we gotta get them. We gotta stop it. Um again, I even though we're joking, I'm not trying to say these are right or wrong, but um do you think these are the classic climate stories? Are there other ones? And what's wrong with them if you say that there's a lot of climate storytelling that you haven't appreciated? Before we get into what you like, let's talk about what is or what you've experienced.

SPEAKER_02 6:30

Yeah, I mean, look, you always have to have a good guy and a bad guy. Okay, you know, you kind of do, or else what's the what's the tension and the conflict drive? I mean, it doesn't always have to be tension, conflict, and driving a story, but most people say it does. So you know, that means you have to have a good a protagonist and an antagonist. This is classic storytelling.

SPEAKER_04 6:53

But who's the protagonist and antagonist in that blue-green environmental gardening composting there? There's no there's no protagonist. I'm not gonna say it anymore because it's so good. For real. Who's the protagonist in composting? No, okay.

SPEAKER_02 7:14

No one, no one, no one.

SPEAKER_04 7:16

I'm ch I'm challenging the view that there always has to be a hero and a villain.

unknown 7:21

Really?

SPEAKER_02 7:23

You you just tell me of a of a film or a TV series or a book or anything that you like that doesn't have a protagonist and an antagonist. Tell me one.

SPEAKER_04 7:32

You're right. I can't.

unknown 7:33

You're right.

SPEAKER_02 7:34

Yeah, you can't, right, exactly. Not one.

SPEAKER_04 7:37

It's a good challenge. If I think of one, I'll speak up, but I cannot, so please continue.

SPEAKER_02 7:41

You won't.

SPEAKER_04 7:42

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 7:43

So so, but that is a really good point in the climate context, right? Because who who done it? Right? Who done it? I'll tell you who done it. We all done it. However, you know, there are lots of bigger players, you know, stakeholders, whatever you want to call them, that lied. Okay. That's bad. We all know lying is bad. Or, you know, took advantage of other people or killed people or, you know, all the things. And, you know, I think, I think that surfacing the truth and creating accountability around the ways that we have gotten to where we're at is vital to the process of moving forward. I mean, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa. Do you remember that? Of course. So I was at doing a summer of um service at the Martin Luther King Center for Social Justice. I'm sorry, for nonviolence social change in Atlanta, where I'm from, when the two guys from the MLK Center came back from South Africa and they had been training people in nonviolent social change in the process of that truth and reconciliation commission, which, if if for those who are listening or watching this, don't remember, was the process through which South Africans were undoing the trauma, the lived experience of apartheid, which is horrifically violent and and was decades long, was, you know, wasn't as bad, let's say, as climate change, which is a global, but but was like horrific for that country.

SPEAKER_04 9:23

If I yeah, I'd say it was like, and this took place in the early to through mid-90s, I think, even through the late 90s, and I would probably say the process is ongoing. And you're right, like it was this starting to be history, but never knows. But this was a let's call it an extremely deep fissure in the society.

SPEAKER_05 9:41

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 9:41

Uh, that then they were trying to find a way to heal and move on after what seemed like generations of just unhealable hurt and pain. I mean, that's there are other words you could use, but I think that's roughly what was happening and what we're trying to do, that's what's taking place at the time. So you were saying the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was a Yeah, and so it was a part of that process, right?

SPEAKER_02 10:02

Where that some of the people who had who had conducted the worst of it were coming, were held in public view, admitting and apologizing, which is fucking nuts to me. Like you, you okay, A, those people did it, and B, they weren't pummeled to death or or stoned to death or whatever in the process. And but I I I think about this a lot in regards to the fossil fuel industry, to be honest. And the money, the money that is being made in that industry, it is a lot of money. And who is benefiting and who is being harmed, right? And that's only gonna get a lot worse. And I think, like, could we hold the truth anyway? The point back to your um question about storytelling, which I don't even fully remember exactly what you asked, but I do feel like it's a possibility of it's a it's an opportunity for us to surface the truth, hold to account, and move beyond.

SPEAKER_04 11:04

You've said a couple things that I think are really interesting. I want to pick up and move forward. You've talked about how important it is. I sort of lightly challenged you need heroes and villains. You quickly prove that yeah, we really need that. Sorry, sorry. No, that's okay. Um, I didn't really believe it. I was just sort of looking for exceptions because they're interesting. Um, you also talked about um doing these kinds of things in public and being aware, and so um but also stories that you have seen and you think maybe have been damaging and is not exactly how you think about it. So bearing some of those things in mind, you've talked about different approaches to stories. What are some of the ways that you think about climate storytelling? What and how do you think they're effective for particular audiences? I know this is something you've done a lot of, but is there something distinct about your approach, or do you think you're just really bringing your own creative energy to traditional storytelling approaches?

SPEAKER_02 12:02

Well, I mean, I I think I am unique in the way that I am both a researcher and a and a filmmaker, and I'm not saying I am great at either, but I do both. And um one of the areas of um research that I have engaged in is how climate stories affect audiences, right? And so the first we we created something we call the impact tracker in order to really understand this on an individual level, not an aggregate level, which is an online platform. You enter it, we ask you questions, we watch you watch a piece of content. Now we ask you, we you know that we're watching you, we're using facial recognition software. So we track your second by second emotional response, and then we ask you questions afterwards. And then the first study did we did we ask you questions two weeks later and four weeks later. And so we can see how that emotional experience, well, first of all, what your emotional experience is, and second, like how that's related to changes in beliefs, attitudes, behaviors, change, all that stuff, all self-reported, so there's limitations to it. But, you know, uh just I'll get straight to the key finding from our research, which, you know, a lot of people were saying things like you have to scare people into action, you have to make them angry, you have anger motivates people, da-da-da-da. What we found, and this is a very strong statistically significant finding, and we looked at everything. We looked at, you know, where you're from. This is all Americans, I should say. We looked at where you're from, your gender, your race, your income, you're all the things. Um, and we found that the one thing that motivates increased climate-friendly behavior is the experience of joy while watching a piece of content.

SPEAKER_04 13:50

Joy. Say that again. The one thing that motivates positive or behavior is the experience of joy towards while watching climate content. Did I get that one?

SPEAKER_02 14:00

Yeah, so like I know it was totally surprising to me, but after a while I kind of got used to it, and especially when we dug into the qualitative pieces of it. It it's not it we want to be inspired, right? This is a really tough existential crisis that is deeply frightening for many people, myself included at times, right? Like, what is going on in am I and my family and everyone to be able to survive? In that context, right? People want to see a way forward. And if you show them a way forward and you give them the experience of being excited and enthusiastic and inspired by it, they're more likely to do something. I mean, I don't think it's that different than like dieting, right? It's like, I don't feel myself, I want to feel better, and then I'm gonna, oh, they showed me a way to do it. I'm gonna try it. You know, I can maybe I can do it too. So, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 14:57

I I'm biased because that's the kind of finding I want to know about, because that's the kind of thing I believe. That's why, you know, we're trying to do the show. But if that's true, then why is it why is there so little of that kind of climate content out there? And just going back to the hero and the villain, yeah, it's really important to expose the villain if in the truth and reconciliation framework they can realize for themselves in public where they were wrong. And I can see that's a super powerful thing.

SPEAKER_03 15:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 15:29

But why is there so little of the inspiring stuff if that's the thing that you have shown actually moves action?

SPEAKER_02 15:38

Well, in my experience, I have heard producers say regularly that solutions stories are boring. They're boring.

SPEAKER_04 15:49

Are they boring in the same way that good news is not news? Like, you know, I guess weather predictors correctly predict the weather again. You know, it's never a headline. New-level bureaucrat does her job with a plume, crisis averted, 10,000 row. Exactly. Exactly. That's not news. Is it like that? Or is it boring for some other reason? Is it boring because there's no tension and drama? What creative people like, and that's why the sequel is always the dark version instead of, you know, Batman gets darker. We're gonna redo, you know, your favorite childhood tale, but it's gonna be the dark version because I mean, is that is that cultural zeitgeist? Is that are they tapping into something that's real and true about storytelling that just works better and connects with us better than this inspirational, softy stuff? Like how does that square with your findings?

SPEAKER_02 16:45

Yeah, I mean it's something I'm struggling with or working with a lot. And we do have to bring the dog up now because she's really very determined.

SPEAKER_04 16:55

Uh here she is.

SPEAKER_02 16:56

Hello.

SPEAKER_04 16:57

Uh she may know.

SPEAKER_02 16:59

So what?

SPEAKER_04 17:00

She may know. She has ideas to configure.

SPEAKER_02 17:02

Well, let's ask her. She clearly doesn't know. Okay, she's she actually really wants to jump over on that. Okay. Um it's something I've been working, uh struggling with a lot because uh, you know, this project I'm working on right now, it um is oriented around this finding.

unknown 17:22

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 17:23

And I I keep people keep trying to talk me out of the happy ending, you know.

SPEAKER_04 17:32

Do you find that you get a lot of positive feedback? I think I know the answer to the inspirational side of things. Like if I absolutely okay, great. I mean, when I'm asking folks like, would you listen to a podcast? I mean, person after person after person just says things like, What are we supposed to do?

SPEAKER_02 17:50

Yep.

SPEAKER_04 17:50

And can you show us something that's actually happening or like positive?

SPEAKER_02 17:55

Yep.

SPEAKER_04 17:56

Um, and there will be people that but how do you get that kind of feedback for the inspirational side of what you're working on? Um how do you respond to it?

SPEAKER_02 18:04

Well, yeah, I mean, it's very person specific, right? But I feel like, yeah, I mean, I first of all, my whole career, people are like, I don't know what to do. Tell me what to do. Okay, okay. My whole career. And it used to be people, I would say, okay, well, here you can do XYZ. And they'd say, Well, the government will just take care of it.

SPEAKER_04 18:25

The difference between things to be done and what I need to do.

SPEAKER_02 18:29

Yes, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. They'll take care of it. And I will I have always been like, okay, I worked at EPA. Good luck with that, you know. So, but in any case, um I think people love, I'm not gonna give away too many details about my current project, but I think people love to see the character on screen with whom they are having an emotional connection, a cathartic experience. They love to see them struggle and overcome, right? Okay, but they're the overcoming is not interesting without the struggle, right? Because we're all, this is who we are as humans, right? Like we are fucking struggling. And sometimes we feel like we overcome. Mostly we don't, but sometimes we do. And God, do I want to see somebody else have a hard time so that I feel like I'm not the only one. But I also want to see how they do it so that I can figure out, yeah, maybe I can do it too, right? So when I say like happy joy, whatever, I'm not saying the whole thing is happy and joy. That's not, that's actually some of our research uh shows that that kind of Pollyanna stuff really doesn't work, right? So and I understand why.

SPEAKER_04 19:39

It doesn't seem real. It doesn't seem real. Exactly. It's fake. You know, like a toddler show, right? Where everything is happy, joy, joy.

SPEAKER_02 19:45

Yeah. Well, I don't, I don't really, I don't that would those be useful. I mean, it would be interesting to see.

SPEAKER_04 19:52

For children. They'd be interesting for you.

SPEAKER_02 19:55

Well, maybe for children. Yeah. I mean, that's a good question.

SPEAKER_04 19:59

Even older children have sort of started to figure out the world I was exposed to if you grew up in that world when I was three, four, five, is not actually the world. You start to become aware of the world of adults pretty quick, as as we've all figured out. Yeah. Um, I love the way you're, you know, in you had a brilliant answer to this question about why aren't there more of these inspirational stories? And you kind of brought it back around to comment that we really do, as people, want to follow a story or we like to follow a story of challenge and struggle and then overcoming, ideally, or you know, following a character on an arc. Um what I want to ask you now is do you think there are unique storytelling opportunities connected to the climate topic that you don't find that you can access with other topics? Is there something una-specific, or is it or is it perhaps really more about bringing some of the classic well-worn storytelling techniques that perhaps haven't been deployed in climate as much, some of the stuff you talked about, and trying to um make uh make a good trouble that way?

SPEAKER_02 21:04

That's a really good question. I don't know if I know the answer. I definitely think the second thing that you said is true. So let's just apply what we know about storytelling to to climate, like that for sure, is super important. And and I'm just gonna keep using the term climate, even though that's not really um accurate. And I'll just for what I think is important climate storytelling, and I'll just give you an example. I believe that one of the most important, if not the most important climate intervention is giving women access to family planning.

SPEAKER_05 21:42

Uh, okay.

SPEAKER_02 21:43

You know? And if we can reduce population growth, especially of high income countries, like well, I well, now it's less of an issue, but anyway, super important, not a climate story, right? But to me it is.

SPEAKER_04 21:58

Yes, okay. I was it. I just happened to be reading about population growth this morning just by random chance. Oh wow. Um learning some new things. But um maybe we could call it a story that is not typically considered a climate story.

SPEAKER_02 22:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 22:14

And I mean I I'm going there a little bit because that's um, you know, Vishrood and I talk about this a lot, but that's one of the ways we think we can really help people see and consider climate in a different way without being too preachy as to say, like, hey, there actually are a lot of stories we're already familiar with, or topics or ways of engaging with stuff. But hey, they actually kind of relate to climate. Like, you know, my you talked about um education of women and girls, uh, um sexual freedom, access to family planning. Um this is a bit of a non sequitur, but you know, uh energy and technology were sort of my main conduits into the climate topic.

SPEAKER_02 22:56

Yeah, sure.

SPEAKER_04 22:57

They're maybe not as far afield, depending on your perspective, but not every climate person automatically thinks energy or technology are part of the conversation. But there's a ton of people that think about those things, just like there's a ton of people that think about public health, um, you know, family planning for women and families, so ways to come at the topic. Maybe there are interesting stories there too. Um, so that's something we're gonna do. For sure. For sure.

SPEAKER_02 23:21

Yeah, and I mean, I just again to not like give it away, but the project that I'm working on now is it has a lot to do with energy and it has a lot to do with um health. And we don't say climate once in this movie.

SPEAKER_04 23:36

Is that well, I think what you do is intentional, but was that something that just sort of emerged from the way you're thinking about it, or did you kind of sit down and say, hey team, we just don't want to use the C word for reasons?

SPEAKER_02 23:47

Well, it's both, really. I mean, first, and there is this question. I'm curious what you think. Like, do you have to say climate change when you're talking to people about these issues? I mean, just in in terms of like, is your if your motivation is is solving the problems, you have to say it. And I I don't think you do, but like I we did purposely not say it. I think there was maybe one moment that I wanted to write it that we didn't. Um and it and then I like really thought about like, well, why do I need it? Do I need it? Why wouldn't I put it? And you know, part of the reason for not putting it is we really do want to reach a very diverse audience. And it's a politicized term, which let's also remember the origination of that term climate change was actually by a conservative strategist, right? So it displacing global warming and using climate change to neutralize the topic. So fuck it, right? Like, why do we need to use that term anyway?

SPEAKER_04 24:46

We don't need to use it. Um not just because we're in an era of language police a little bit, uh either it's state, or let's if if we don't call it language police, we'll say the term has gone out of fashion. But you know, I was a I wasn't really paying attention to the topic when it was called global warming.

SPEAKER_05 25:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 25:04

And I so I therefore was not worked up when I noticed that it was climate change.

SPEAKER_05 25:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 25:08

Um I have my younger self wanted to win the argument. And so my younger self would have said, Yeah, you have to say climate change because that's what it is.

SPEAKER_02 25:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 25:20

And F those people that are trying to tell you what to what words you can say and not say.

SPEAKER_02 25:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 25:24

Um, I don't really care about uh winning the argument anymore. Maybe I'm just getting old. Now I want to solve the problem. So now I'm a little bit more like, I'm gonna say whatever is going to connect to you. Right. And by, you know, the flip side of that is if there's a phrase that I like or a word that I like that is, you know, when I say it, when it comes out of my mouth, you're just like, I'm not gonna listen to another thing this dude says. I'm not gonna say it, because I'd rather communicate and have a conversation with that person. Um so that's that's a long-winded um answer. But maybe the a more succinct answer is um even if you're not trying to you know be cute with language or you know, connect to somebody really specifically that way, the the phenomenon of the changing climate is not something that I think we experience directly. It's something we experience indirectly, like why can't I buy fire insurance for a house where I live? Yeah, why is this land flooded? Why is this cost gone up? Why is this risk gone up? Why are people moving from this place to that place? Why can't we do the things we used to do? And so none of those things are gonna be called climate change because that's not what they are.

SPEAKER_02 26:39

Right.

SPEAKER_04 26:40

So for me, even without the thinking carefully about the language, that's it's another argument to be like, well, you know, call it what it is, the actual specific thing you're talking about, call it what it is. And if you are speaking actually about global climate systems, then it's gonna be people that are attracted to that language. But it's okay to use words to reach your audience. That's what I'm trying to say.

SPEAKER_02 26:59

I agree with you. And back to the question that you posed in regards to are there unique stories to be told in the climate context? I think one of the biggest challenges is connecting the cause and the effect, right? Which the climate is the mediator between cause and effect almost always. So I drive, well, my car's an EV, so I can't I, you know, I burn fossil fuel somehow, it heats the atmosphere, and then you know, there's a flood, right? So like there's so many steps. And I think that I'm certainly there are other global phenomena that are plagued by that level of distension between cause and effect, so chemicals and and contaminants, um, you know, other things. But climate is, I think, not unique entirely, but more difficult than many issues because of that, you know, distance. Um, and I think that while it's and and just to add another layer of complexity, the time, the temporal horizon, right? So it takes time, it's not I do it now, and then even in a week or a month, right? So like just to go slow moving thing.

SPEAKER_04 28:14

That means the problems crepe creep up slowly, the solutions take time to diffuse.

SPEAKER_02 28:19

And again, I mean chemicals are the same still, right? Or biodiversity loss or whatever. Those things are similar. Having said that, yeah, you know, I think I'm just thinking this as I'm saying it as I'm thinking it now, but I think, you know, it it's both challenging, but I I think it's a unique proposition to the human species. And this is unique to this moment in history, which is that we are becoming such an intricate Jesus Christ. Intricately related um community, right? I got it. Yeah, the small wins. Um community and the climate crisis is a wake-up call to how closely related we are to one another by what we do. And I think that like if we can accommodate that in storytelling somehow, that's like a huge, I don't know. I think that's a huge win.

SPEAKER_04 29:16

I love that sentiment. Okay, I've got our eye on the clock. We're gonna close it out here. This is gonna sound like a non sequitur, but on that note that you just ended on, and we were chatting about this before off air, you've got to go watch Hail Mary.

SPEAKER_03 29:29

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 29:30

This uh Sabrina doesn't know about Hail Mary yet, but um, she's about to. We were we were espousing our love for it recently.

SPEAKER_02 29:37

No, I was saying that the only thing I know about Hail Mary is the trailer, which I kept it kept getting pushed to me, and I kept thinking it was an SNL video. It's like at first glance.

SPEAKER_04 29:47

I was just like, okay, American Dude is the hero of a movie with technology. Like, you know, great, you know, add it to the 10,000 of those that I'll consider watching this year. But it's not quite that. Um, no more to be said. Last segment I want to hit. Um it's sometimes said there are only story, seven stories.

unknown 30:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 30:07

Only seven human stories. Do you agree with that just briefly that this you can boil all of our stories down to seven or some number of archetypical standard, or not standard, uh classic stories that we come back to over and over real quick. Yes, no?

SPEAKER_02 30:23

I mean, I have a hard time imagining any beyond the seven, right? That's my that's my problem.

SPEAKER_04 30:29

Okay. I once had a roommate. Well, maybe. Uh maybe I'll finally come up with an eighth that has no hero or uh or villain, like we were talking about earlier.

SPEAKER_02 30:40

Yep, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 30:41

I had a roommate that made me do the Myers Briggs test for the first time.

SPEAKER_02 30:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 30:45

And I hated it and refused because my thing was you can't box me in. There are not 16 personality types. Uh now I've done it a couple of times, and I'm sort of like, well, I mean, I can kind of see I'm definitely this and I'm definitely that, and like I've definitely met people. So, okay, but here are the seven, and the question is just kind of lightning round for fun. For each of these, could this be a useful climate story?

SPEAKER_02 31:11

Great, let's do it. How fun. Okay, I haven't looked at the seven in a long time, so this is gonna be really fun.

SPEAKER_04 31:17

Overcoming the monster. A hero must defeat an evil force threatening their world.

SPEAKER_02 31:22

Absolutely. Are you kidding me?

SPEAKER_04 31:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:24

I mean, you could conceive of the weather or weather disaster as a monster. It could be day after tomorrow, right? Like the ice age and the approaching, whatever, you know, all the things, the collapse of the thermohaline circulating pattern. That that's just one example.

SPEAKER_04 31:37

And like, don't look up. The movie was sort of a disaster movie. And that's also kind of overcoming. I was very mixed on that. I was sort of like gur me too.

SPEAKER_02 31:47

I actually wrote a piece in the New York Times about how problematic I thought it was, and they published it.

SPEAKER_04 31:51

Okay, everybody go read Sabrina's piece.

SPEAKER_01 31:53

No, no, I shouldn't have said that out loud.

SPEAKER_04 31:55

I will say that I hated the part where Leo looked right into the camera and just started shouting for five minutes. I'm like, what are we doing here?

SPEAKER_02 32:01

Oh, I don't remember that part. Okay.

SPEAKER_04 32:02

Okay, overcoming the monster. Check. Rags to riches. Started out low and poor.

SPEAKER_02 32:08

Absolutely, because you know what? This moment we are in is the biggest economic transformation in human history. Going from a fossil fuel-based economy to uh to a sustainable economy. It is fucking huge. And there are people ahead of this game and they are going to win.

SPEAKER_04 32:25

Okay, so it's going to be like succession, but for climate absolutely. Not even they're going to be like clean energy billionaire families arguing about how they work.

SPEAKER_02 32:34

Those people are well on their way to existing.

SPEAKER_04 32:36

Okay, two for that we're two for two. The quest. A hero seeks a specific object, location, or goal while facing numerous obstacles.

SPEAKER_02 32:45

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, especially, well, I'm not gonna, again, I'm not gonna tell my movie story, but my movie story falls into that. He really wants, he wants to fix something. Let's just say that. He wants to find something.

SPEAKER_04 33:00

As a nerd, I love quest stories, and so I want to believe that this one can be a good climate story too. Voyage and return. You go to a strange land, and then we come back, like The Wizard of Oz.

SPEAKER_02 33:13

Maybe now it's your turn. I'd get spit by the time.

SPEAKER_04 33:16

I was gonna say something about time travel. That's the first thing that popped into my mind.

SPEAKER_02 33:19

Oh, I like that.

SPEAKER_04 33:20

We go to the future. I'm mixing stories now, like the ghost of Christmas future. We go to the future, we see how, like, oh yeah, we actually solved all these problems, or most of them.

SPEAKER_02 33:30

Love it.

SPEAKER_04 33:31

And life continued to get better. And all the people that said it was unsolvable were wrong. And we knew they were wrong at the time, but now we've shown that they're wrong. And we're gonna take some tips back and do it a little more efficiently. That's it.

SPEAKER_02 33:41

Because you know the I love that. You know, the age of stupid is basically a hybrid doc that exists that's the opposite of that.

SPEAKER_04 33:50

Okay, what what is the age of stupid? I don't know anything about that.

SPEAKER_02 33:52

It's basically, you know, it's like vignettes of what we're doing today that, and then we jump forward to I can't remember the name of the actor who is in the future of a post-apocalyptic world, and he's like, Why didn't you do more of the good thing? Why didn't you, you know?

SPEAKER_04 34:08

A lot of sci-fi, as you know, the premise is the future is shit. And we're in the future sort of looking back on the past where the audience is thinking. Exactly. And we fuck this up. How do we? Yeah, it's hard. Okay, a couple more. Comedy, misunderstandings, confusions, happy endings. Gotta have happy ending in a comedy. This is a little closer to what we were talking about earlier about you getting pressure about not trying to say your thing is a comedy, but can a comedy be a climate story?

SPEAKER_02 34:36

I really want to introduce comedic elements to what I'm making. And you know what I'm really into is physical comedy. I just think it's hilarious, and why don't we do it anymore, really?

SPEAKER_04 34:45

There was a woman that pitched a TV show at your climate comedy pitch fest. By the way, are you doing that at New York Climate Week again this year?

SPEAKER_02 34:55

We we are not planning it right now because my shoot schedule is is moving and it may overlap with that, but it's TVD, so I can't plan anything else.

SPEAKER_04 35:05

I think you should do it. You're a busy filmmaker, blah, blah, blah. You're so busy filming, blah, blah, blah. But I think you should do it. No, no, I'm kidding. Um, I remember there was a woman that pitched, uh, and the physical, right? The premise was there's a lady going through menopause and she lives in a town called Hell and it's hot as hell. Isn't this hilarious? Isn't quite physical comedy, but it was a lot of like her having hot flashes in the office. It was an office drama.

unknown 35:26

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 35:27

Okay. Two more tragedy. A protagonist is undone by a fatal flaw or fate resulting in a loss or death.

SPEAKER_02 35:35

Um yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's kind of the no-brainer.

SPEAKER_04 35:41

That's kind of somber, but yeah. Yeah. It was funnier to laugh at the menopausal lady in the office than to think about tragedy, but that's real.

SPEAKER_02 35:48

That's real.

SPEAKER_04 35:49

That's real. Um the first chapter of the book, Ministry for the Future.

SPEAKER_02 35:55

Oh my God.

SPEAKER_04 35:56

Is tragic and stayed with me. I mean, it's been with me for years. I read it years ago.

SPEAKER_02 36:01

I read that first chapter and then I stopped reading it. I put the book down for a year and then went back and finished it.

SPEAKER_04 36:09

I put it down for a while too, not a year. After everybody reads Sabrina's um editorial about don't look up, everybody check out the book. But also the first chapter. The first chapter is very manageable. You may want to take a break after it. Rebirth, the last story type. We'll get you out of here on this. A character breaks free from dark control or redemption is achieved. Leading to a lot of people.

SPEAKER_02 36:29

Isn't that what we're all gonna be doing right now? We're gonna be broken free from like the hell, the potential hell of a 3.5 degrees C you know, world and fossil fuels and air pollution. And we're gonna be rebirthed. You guys, this is a great place to end on the thing. We are going to, I I fundamentally, I deeply believe that this transformation we are a part of is going to be more glorious, more stupendous, more amazing than we can ever imagine.

SPEAKER_04 36:59

Dr. Sabrina McCormick, the scholar, the filmmaker, the creative, the visionary. Thank you so much. This has been a treat. Really appreciate your time.

SPEAKER_01 37:08

So nice to see you. Thank you so much. This is so fun. I with the time flew by.

SPEAKER_04 37:12

Awesome. Well, that is a wrap. There you have it, part two of my conversation with Sabrina McCormick. I'd love to hear what you think. We'd love to hear your feedback about this one in particular. Sabrina is a real special guest and she's got a pretty unique opinion. But before we close today, I'd love to bring in somebody else who you'll get to know very well and who's also got some opinions about storytelling, about creative writing, about how to approach this kind of thing. This is our producer, Vish. Vish, welcome in. So I know you were excited about this conversation too with Sabrina, as somebody that thinks about creative writing and storytelling. Just curious what you thought of this conversation. How did it all go for you?

SPEAKER_00 37:51

Yeah, uh, thanks, Marcus. Um yeah, I really enjoyed the conversation with Sabrina. Um, I think these are the kinds of conversations around communicating about climate change and how do we get it into the broader media that we need to be having. And I thought some of her um insight into yeah, like how decisions get made inside of the of the film industry were also really interesting. One uh point that I really made me think was when you and Sabrina were talking about heroes and villains in in storytelling and and and particular in the climate story, and you were asking her, you know, what is in this blue-green environmental um story that we tend to tell? Like that's one of the stories we tend to tell about uh climate. Like who is the the hero and who is the villain? And you guys kind of moved off that point a little bit, but I was thinking about it, and for me, in that story, the hero is is the planet itself. The hero in planet Earth, the hero is not the cheetah or the deer, the hero is actually the ecosystem. Um, and it doesn't really matter to David Attenborough if the cheetah wins or the deer escapes. It's about you know the fact that this is all working together, and the villain is us, really. Like we're invading this natural ecosystem and um and and like you know, poisoning it or something. And and to be clear, I love Planet Earth, I love our planet. Um, David Attenborough is fantastic to listen to. Um, but in that story that we tell, that's the I think that for me, that's the dynamic. Um and in the other kind of story that you pointed out, where someone has done something to you, um, who's the hero and who's the villain? Well, the villain is the person that's done something to you, but you aren't the hero. You're the victim in that story. You're the person that the villain is doing something to, and the hero is someone else that needs to come in and save you. Might be the government or some corporation or or, you know, whoever's telling that story probably is the hero in their minds. And so we're not really telling a story of of you know, heroes and and villains where the the person watching it feels like they have a lot of agency to create positive change, is is kind of um what I was taking away from that. And so that comes to my the next question I thought of, which is what is a hero and what is a villain? Which is a hero is someone who saves today, villain wants to destroy the world. That's kind of the kind of the dichotomy. And we don't really quite have heroes and villains in the climate story, right? We you mentioned disaster movies earlier intro, and this isn't one of those where the aliens are coming in and they're the villains, and we and Will Smith are the heroes, or you know, in Star Wars where the Death Star is the villain and you know Luke Skywalker is gonna use the force and and um be the hero. Climate is so much more complex than that. It's a it's a bunch of different things happening at once and simultaneously to quote unquote save the day. But it's hard to put just like one person in that spot. And so for me, I don't think the hero-villain framing works as well for climate. What I would kind of put forward is like the protagonist-antagonist uh framing, which is not dissimilar, like heroes are a version of protagonist and villains are a version of an antagonist. Um, but protagonists are the people that the story focuses on who want to do something. They have like a goal, they're trying to, they have agency, they're moving towards that goal, and antagonists are the people who get in their way. And so when we're talking about climate as a as a story, it's not that we have like a villain that we need to be saying like this person is bad, because if you just switch the framing of a many stories that have protagonists and antagonists, you switch their roles as well. Um does that make sense?

SPEAKER_04 41:44

Okay. I think it does make sense. You said a lot of things. Let's uh let me let me get into it. I think I agree with some of them, I think I disagree with some of them. So let me just let's try. So antagonist, protagonist. Is that really different than hero and villain? It's still two opposing forces, and the central tension is what drives a story. Are they so different?

SPEAKER_00 42:05

I think so because I think you can have a protagonist who is not a hero. You can have and you can have an antagonist who is who is not a villain. Um because I think like uh if you told um the story of Superman from where like uh I forget um who the villain Superman is. Lex Luther, sure. And you focused the story of uh the Superman on Lex Luther and what Lex Luther was trying to do, then Lex Luther would be the protagonist, but he would still be the villain.

SPEAKER_04 42:40

Okay, okay. I think that's fair enough. Maybe something else that comes to mind for me is um uh, you know, we talked about fantasy writing sometimes. The Game of Thrones uh novels and then Smash Hit HBO show. First uh uh that was interesting and different from classic good and evil tales like Lord of the Rings and a million other fairy tales, because the good characters did bad things and the bad characters became good and they were more messy and complex, and so it was character development on an arc, but also surprising in a way that fantasy almost never is. It can be pretty cut and dry, even though I you know I love that genre too. And I think that's my actually it's probably probably not the only one thinks this. I think that's why it was such a smash hit. It broke out of the nerd universe and became a huge hit that people that just like TV dramas could watch, even though it's extremely dorky because it's this medieval swords and knights and chivalry play, right? It's wild. Um, so the the complexity of the characters. Um I think one of the things I was struggling with when we were talking about Sabrina, and coming back to something you said about um it's hard to find, it's hard to fit climate stories maybe neatly into the hero and villain, or the idea that the people are a victim and something is being done to us, and we need the hero to come and save the day. That thing we Are victims and we need somebody to come save they. For me, that is the most common narrative. Because and people recognize that there is a villain. Exxon, the oil and gas industry, the government, the Senate, this president, that president, like whoever you think it is, America, right? For somebody else in the part of the world might say uh the number one oil and gas exporter, let's not forget. Um so I'm not totally I I even though I don't quite agree with that framing, and I definitely, as somebody that thinks I have agency to actually work on solutions, I don't like the idea that we're just gonna sit around and wave signs and wait for somebody to come and save us. But I think a ton of people believe that. So maybe the only question I have back to you is I I think I'm saying I agree that climate stories are hard to fit into the villain hero framework. And that's why I was struggling a bit with Sabrina and I couldn't think of anything on the spot. But my last question is why do you think that framework is so appealing to a lot of people? Or if you don't think it is, you know, maybe why not?

SPEAKER_00 45:04

I think that that framing is appealing because it's um a story that's one easier to tell, but two also easier to follow. If you have um one or a few obstacles that a single person can overcome to save the world, if um if you have Luke Skywalker who just needs to learn the force well enough to be able to guide the missile into that one like ventilation shaft to blow up the Death Star, then that's a really easy story to follow for okay, this is how we solve this problem. And if it's makes us feel inspired.

SPEAKER_04 45:42

Yep, go ahead. Go ahead. I sorry to cut you off. It it makes us feel inspired, and it also I was gonna say, he it's something he can do alone. Or like he just has to like study and meditate with Yoda or whatever, and then he can do it. It's not like he has to like go build a coalition and raise some money and convince 10,000 people that he has a good idea.

SPEAKER_00 45:59

Right. It's it's that like we can see him make progress throughout that, and then he accomplishes his task and it defeats the villain. And that makes us feel that inspiration and that joy that Sabrina was talking about, and we're like, okay, now we can move forward. And that's why you talked about, I think you talked about don't look up in your earlier intro. That's why don't look up is an easy analogy. Like an asteroid hitting the earth is the single thing that's coming towards the earth that if we can just destroy this asteroid, then we've solved the problem. Um, and we can all focus in on this one mission to destroy the asteroid. With climate, it's I think much harder because there's so many different things and aspects. It has a bunch of different like that's what the show is about, is like all the different things that climate affects. It affects so many different things, it causes impacts, and so we need solutions from a whole different bunch of people. So, you know, imagine if Luke, you know, learned the force and he shot the missile into the ventilation shaft, and then 500 other things had to happen that we didn't see, but all the 500 things had to happen in order to blow up the Death Star. That feels less satisfying to us. It feels kind of like Deus Machina, where like the author's hand is coming in and saying, You saw this one story, but you actually don't know the entire picture. And so we feel kind of cheated out of like we earned that, we we used the force, and you know, so um with climate, there's all of these bunch of different things that need to happen. And a lot of the stories that that you referenced either in this episode or previous episodes are about individuals, it's about that woman in that city um who's experiencing hot flashes and her dealing with that, it's about um or you know, it's it's it's it's a single person that's experiencing those uh things that they have to overcome. So I think that's why it's so tough.

SPEAKER_04 47:47

I really hadn't thought about it this way. I like I like the kind of way you're framing it. I feel like you're hitting on I mean, maybe that's why we can't solve this problem, or it's so hard for us to come together to solve these problems, but maybe like less jokingly, um I think you're touching on why it's if it's true that it's easier for us to connect with that hero villain story, and this the villain or the bad thing is condensed into a singular avatar of the badness, like in the example you gave about the uh asteroid in Don't Look Up. If that is the kind of story that we naturally jive with, and climate doesn't easily fall into that because it's indirect of cause, you know, cause and effect is a little fuzzy, or it feels fuzzy to us and it's hard to explain, like sort like Sabrina mentioned, or it doesn't fit the paradigm like you mentioned. Maybe that's one of the reasons people have a hard time connecting with just the topic, and it makes it easier to dismiss, like, oh, this can't really be a real thing because real things that are acute can be expressed in this hero villain thing. I'm not sure, I'm kind of riffing on it, but you're making me think about it in a different way, even before we came into this conversation, where you know, we were like, okay, yeah, let's maybe let's unpack that hero villain thing a bit and see what we think. I didn't really expect it to go here, so that's interesting for me.

SPEAKER_00 49:02

Um I think another uh kind of like quick point I'll make is uh when we all need to unite behind one strategy and oppose that one force, like uniting behind that one strategy also feels more right, like when we're all coming together to achieve a thing. But with climate, and this is what I was kind of trying to get at with the protagonist-antagonist thing, we're not all trying to get behind one thing. Most of us agree that we need to address climate change, but there's you know a bunch of different ways that we can or want to do that. Do we uh just from like do we switch completely to renewables? Do we still use fossil fuels with carbon removal? Do we do renewables and carbon removal? Do we do solar geoengineering? Like, like, or do we do none of those and try to scale back? Like there's a bunch of different approaches, and there's like a gray area between all of those. And so if you're trying to get into this space, like there's a bunch of different stories, which a bunch of different protagonists, who do you find?

SPEAKER_04 49:59

I think some people look at that and think, uh, oh, what a disaster. Like I was, I was while you were saying that, I was like, well, this is not what we put on the poster because there's not one thing and it's a million different things, and you gotta do 50 things to make any progress. I think flipping that around is the way I often think about it, which is there's something for everybody. If you're a lawyer, you can lawyer on this. If you're an activist, you can activist on this. If you're an engineer, you can engineer on it. If you you know know how to talk to people, you can talk about it. Because all of those things are required. We climate people spend a lot of time arguing about no, it's really a messaging thing. No, it's actually about technology, no, it's about policy and law. No, it's activism, you've got to get people in the streets. All of those things have you know a role to play. Um, there's a role for all of us. Exactly. Even if we solve the energy piece, like the energy piece alone doesn't do it. And I'm like, I'm the type of person that's like the climate problem is kind of just the energy problem. That's my bias. I that's not entirely correct, but I see things that way. Biodiversity people are like, it's about nature, right? Etc. When you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail. But it's not about doing just a singular thing, it's a bunch of things that need to change to, you know, in the same way that a bunch of things change to get us to where we are. A bunch of different things have to change. And at least, you know, the way I think about it is like, well, great, there's there's not one thing we need to do. It's not just we've got to steal the plans to the Death Star and then blow up the Death Star. Um there's a bunch of things, and anybody can be part of it. Um, I love this. I appreciate uh you coming in to kind of share your thoughts and mix it up here. Um any last thoughts about the Sabrina episode you want to get off before we before we close out? I'm glad we did it, and I hope we have more of those conversations. Okay, well, on that note, thank you to our producer Vish for not only sharing his thoughts but putting this episode together. Thank you to Sabrina McCormick. That is Dr. Sabrina McCormick to you. Don't forget, she's an IPCC author and a scholar and digital filmmaker. And thank you very much to everybody for your early feedback on episode one on this episode. We love hearing from you. Always email us at pod on the rise. That's anytime, podontherize at gmail.com. You can find us on YouTube. We hope to actually start putting out shorts and clips from these uh conversations and episodes, a little bit easier to digest. And of course, you can always hear the audio version on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or wherever you find your podcasts. That does it for part two with Sabrina. Thanks everybody for tuning in. Here's the music of Claire Davis to take us home more soon, y'all.