This one you should listen to. I listen to a lot of podcasts, especially on climate and energy (policy, politics, etc) and they are mostly very very mid (at best). Here’s a recent rant about the whys of that.
This one (and another, to be reviewed soon) was the exception and perhaps almost exceptional.
It’s by a bunch of 17 year old Americans. To repeat myself , smart 17 year olds are potentially a very good source of info because they
a) have more skin in the game re: 2nd half of the 21st century
b) haven’t had obedience beaten into them by The System (“man”).
It’s a podcast by City Atlas. Who they? Well, City Altas
“was founded to help New Yorkers and the public everywhere understand and prepare for the future, as described in the reports of the IPCC, C40.org, and the New York City Panel on Climate Change (NPCC), and to strengthen the democratic process towards equitable responses to climate change. Our emphasis is on building public energy and climate literacy as a way to create support for a fast transition to a zero carbon world.”
They interview a guy called Professor Adam Aron, (personal website here) who was on one academic track (cognitive neuroscience) and has recently jumped to another (the psychology of collective action).
They interview Aron about, well, building social movements and for once from an academic it isn’t banalities, generalities and apple pie.
The transcript (not quite tidy and unhyperlinked – I have added those) is here.
The first bit that made me sit up and take real notice was this
“There’s a very beautiful example of this, given there’s a book called Let This Radicalize You by Haber and Kaba, two women of color in Chicago. And in one of the chapters, I think, Kelly Hays describes how they’re busy, Miriam tries to bring her into a struggle to try and get restitution for victims of torture by the Chicago Police. It’s called reparations. Now this is back in 2014 and in that chapter, Kelly explains, you know, I didn’t think we could win. There’s no way that we would win this thing, but I nevertheless joined Miriam in her struggle anyway, even though I very much doubted we could win, in fact, they ended up winning. They actually ended up getting restitution from the Chicago Police. Kind of amazing story. So why did Kelly join Miriam? And she says, Well, I joined Miriam because I thought it would be meaningful and generative. We had a history of trust. I thought I would have an adventure. I thought that I would learn things by doing the process. I thought that I would discover sort of the limits of my courage. I would develop new skills. So I think this phenomenon of social obligation to each other and how we build that in small groups is kind of a key part of how to get the larger social mobilization.”
On the barriers facing academics (YO, THIERRY!)
“we actually published a paper last year in 2024 with first authors, Fabian Dablander, a brilliant young guy from the Netherlands and colleagues. And it was a survey of over 9000 academics and scientists, sort of trying to understand, you know, what are the barriers to them acting”
Aron isn’t pollyann-ish about the difficulties facing us as a species, and the barriers facing social movement organisations.
“But I think more broadly, there’s a whole suite of issues, the sort of lonely, atomized and fragmented reality in which we find ourselves. I referred to that earlier. This kind of I’m all alone and with my family in my house, or, you know, everything society is telling me, I just need to get ahead and get my brand and develop myself as an entrepreneur, I’m kind of deterritorialized from the place, I don’t belong anywhere. I’m a consumer. I’m locked in this kind of, you know, hyper-consumption machine, and I just need to kind of selfishly take care of myself. I mean, there’s enormous pressures on people to have that attitude psychologically. I think that is one of our major barriers, and one of the major reasons people aren’t acting, but I think also people don’t know what to do, even people who completely get that global heating is caused by the burning of fossil fuels, who understand, as many adults do, who have children, that this is really a threat now to people’s livelihoods and wellbeing and their kids lives in the next few decades, people don’t know what to do. I think that’s a really that gets back to a bigger question you asked me about, how do we mobilize the wider society? Because there’s myriad things people can do, but we really need them to act together towards really strong policy.”
Sure, he doesn’t talk about emotacycles or the smugosphere, or ego-fodderification, but what kind of depressive maniac does that anyway.
Does the interviewer always follow up on the interesting stuff Aron says? No, she sticks to her list of questions but a) that’s okay and b) they are good questions. Over time, I suspect she will develop the skills and confidence start to go down (and come out of) rabbit holes with interviewees. (NB there is absolutely nothing wrong with what she is doing now).
Is this podcast worth your time? This episode, hell yes, and I have high hopes for the others in the series.