Stories connect. And if we want to motivate people to engage in climate advocacy, authentic communication is key. Risalat Khan believes in the power of people to inspire each other, realize the urgency and join the global civic movement to reverse climate change. But for climate activism to facilitate real transformation, we must reach more and more people in a story-driven way and leverage public momentum to influence policy.
Full Transcript
Ross Kenyon: Hey, this is the Reversing Climate Change podcast. If you like what we do, please share the podcast. Give it a good rating in your podcast app. Tell people what we’re doing at Nori and help us reverse climate change. I’m Ross Kenyon here with Christophe Jospe and Paul Gamble. We are in the financial district of New York. We are in a WeWork, which is cool. There’s always there’s fruit in the water. That is a thing that happens that I need to do at home.
Christophe Jospe: They don’t skimp on the fruit here.
Ross Kenyon: No, no, there’s a pineapple in there. There’s pineapple in there. And they have fresh fruit each day. Yeah, that is a nice perk. I like these co-working spaces.
Paul Gambill: They don’t reuse the fruit every single day.
Ross Kenyon: Yep, that’s important. Can you personally guarantee that with your reputation? They might recycle it, I don’t know.
Christophe Jospe: Where does the fruit go? I really hope that it is part of some kind of circular economy waste stream where it might be sequestering the carbon somewhere somehow. I’m worried it doesn’t. Probably does what New York does with all of its trash, which is ship it to New Jersey because there’s no space here. But without any further ado, let’s introduce our guest. Sitting across from us, we have Risalat Khan. He’s from Bangladesh. He is an activist in the climate space and much more. I had the pleasure Well, it doesn’t matter to you, the listener, because you’re listening to this way after we did the event.
But it was only two days ago that Nori hosted an event with Propagate Ventures, who is another Climate NYC Braintrust member. And we stayed in touch. I know... I noticed that Rizalat was doing a lot of really cool stuff and I’m sure that he has a story that we want to hear about. So without any further ado, Rizalat, we like to start with everyone’s story and basically how they got to where they are and which is right now here sitting on the Reversing Climate Change podcast. So tell us.
Risalat Khan: Yeah, thanks, Christoph. I appreciate being here. I think stories are really important. So I love that you start with that. My story, I guess, I was born in Dhaka City, which is a huge city in Bangladesh. It’s one of the fastest growing cities in the world, actually. Is it Dhaka, the capital? Yes, it is the capital. And it’s actually bigger than New York. That’s not a very widely known fact in terms of population. So yeah, so I grew up there. And I think when I tell my story, one of the most important elements for me has been...
The kind of upbringing I grew up with and the values that my parents instilled in me. I think my father particularly was a very good teacher, is a very good teacher. And he instilled a lot of values of caring about people, caring about society. He’s also an environmental activist. He was one of the founders of one of the biggest NGOs that works on environment in Bangladesh. So I grew up kind of watching him do various demonstrations and other events with civil society. So it was kind of the norm for me growing up.
And as I kind of went through my education, I was always socially minded. But in college, I decided to major in environmental studies and geology, which gave me a really good perspective. That was the first time I really understood and studied the science and understood it. Geology is not known for making people think of urgency. Yeah, it’s not. I think there’s an interesting duality there, having that perspective about deep time, but simultaneously knowing how fast changes can happen in the climate system. And there is... There is something about that duality that I think captured me.
And that set me on a path towards working on climate issues. Pretty soon after college, I found myself with the organization I’m working with right now, Avaz, which is a global I’m a global civic movement that does a lot of work on climate. I’m also involved with other different volunteer initiatives like the NYC Climate Brain Trust that you referenced, which is part of the Global Shapers community, an initiative of the World Economic Forum. So yeah, I feel like I got that upbringing that put me towards this path. And then I’ve kind of continued because I’ve learned about how important this issue is to all of us.
Christophe Jospe: He basically drank the Kool-Aid from a very young age. You know, when I think about the country Bangladesh haven’t visited yet, I hope to visit before it goes underwater or reverse the impact so that it doesn’t end up going underwater. But I think that’s something that scares me a lot and is very pronounced because it is a very flat country, correct?
Risalat Khan: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so Bangladesh is in many ways the poster child of climate change. Most of the viewers who have listened to or seen climate-related articles and so on would probably remember this. The sentence, Bangladesh is the most vulnerable country to climate change. And that’s for a reason. It is very flat. You know, right now there’s a big debate going on with the IPCC report that just came out, the scientists report on 1. 5 degrees Celsius, the 1. 5 degrees. So it’s a very pressing concern in Bangladesh for sure.
Christophe Jospe: And how do people talk about it there? Is it sort of, do people feel like this is a more urgent issue? Or is it kind of cognitive dissonance where no, everything’s fine and we’re going to go on with our everyday life?
Risalat Khan: It is. If you actually see, you know, what people in Bangladesh think, like most people know about climate change. It’s not like, you know, here in the States where people don’t often see it as a, you know, urgent concern. People, especially those who live in coastal areas, of which there are millions and tens of millions of people, for them it’s a fact of life. And Bangladesh has been doing climate-based adaptation, community-based adaptation work for decades. And there’s actually a lot of knowledge that has been developed over time because we have had to deal with these issues, everything from disaster reduction to how to do agriculture when you have salinity intrusion and you name it.
So one of my favorite facts is actually after Hurricane Katrina happened here in the States, Bangladesh actually sent a team over to kind of help FEMA with the cleanup efforts because it Wow. Being in a position like that where maybe you’re not on the UN security level, Yeah, UN Security Council.
Ross Kenyon: You don’t necessarily have the biggest voice in the world to talk. I’m sure you can get some lobbying done. But in that position, it seems like research into adaptation and preparedness is maybe the thing that many people must be resigned to do, which is bad. We’d like to reverse it so it isn’t necessary. But it sounds like people are taking steps there to be ready in case they need to.
Risalat Khan: Yeah, I mean, it’s you have to write like when the reason Dhaka, for example, is one of the fastest growing cities is because many of the people as much as maybe by some estimates half a million people per year have to move in because of climate related displacement. So that’s that’s just kind of like the fact of life. And you have to prepare for that. You have to kind of, you know, enable your people to be able to deal with these impacts. So it’s not it’s not neither or.
Paul Gambill: What’s driving that displacement? Is it changing abilities for agriculture or something else?
Risalat Khan: Many times it could be things like salinity intrusion that makes it impossible to grow like staple crops. So people are reserved to, if their homes are either swept away by floods or cyclones, that’s another big cause. So there can be a multitude of effects.
Christophe Jospe: So here you are and you want to do something. You feel called to do something and you’re doing something. It’s not about wanting to do something. And you see the opportunity to campaign around issues to sort of push the needle to create change. So what are some of those issues and how do you go about creating change?
Risalat Khan: Yeah, so that’s a big question. I feel like as a campaigner, I feel really empowered to look at problems like climate change and other problems as well and be able to engage in that rather than being a spectator. I think one One of, you know, probably the most memorable experience or set of experiences in my life have to do with when I was part of the campaigning around the Paris Agreement in 2015. So I was with Awaz then. We globally spearheaded the People’s Climate March and the Global Climate Marches along with many other organizations.
And we were able to, you know, get 1. 5 million people on the streets over 2014 and 2015 in over 2000 cities. And also build a lot of public momentum, work with negotiators, do advocacy and, you know, support the champions to really get ambitious long term goal in Paris of 100% clean energy. So, you know, I was I was there in Paris when the actual Paris Agreement was gaveled. I was in the room and that was definitely one of the most inspiring moments of my life. So I think, you know, there are many ways to make change and every situation calls for, you know, Different set of tools and tactics and skills and resources.
But I think what’s important is the choice of hoping and also engaging. Because without that fundamental choice of engagement, you I think for each of us, especially at this time when we see a lot of challenges facing us, it’s very easy to give up or think that it’s too big and we can’t help do anything. But rather than doing that, I think the fundamental choice is to engage and see what comes.
Ross Kenyon: With activism, this is in some ways quite a facile and Yeah. Cool. Like, who cares? So what makes it effective? Because being cynical, there’s a line I think from, it’s either Kierkegaard or Dostoevsky said something like, prayer doesn’t exist to change the mind of God, but to change the person praying. And so I wonder sometimes if it’s about more of the people going there and having experience and them being changed by it more than something external, which is possibly a good thing. But how do you ensure when you’re doing protests, it doesn’t just make people feel good, but it’s actually getting results?
I’ve never understood why some work and some seemingly, there’s always protests, but those issues never happen in the way that they want.
Risalat Khan: So let’s look at climate, right? So what the People’s Climate March in 2014 did was that showed politicians across the world that people were actually marching on the streets for climate, right? It happened right before So politicians are essentially, at least in democracies, they are It’s like showing you’re going to vote ahead of time or something like that. So yeah, I think power comes from people. I think people are a fundamental force in the world. And if people actually come together in whatever cause, I think nothing is impossible.
Christophe Jospe: I agree. I also think that one of the signals that activism provides is to say, as you said, you know, there’s a pent up demand. People want this. They say, we must do this. And it doesn’t necessarily say it’s a solution to You don’t end by just marching in the street, but it does signal that there’s this, we need more because I wouldn’t be marching in the street if we’re on track to fixing climate change. And so I think it’s definitely going in the right direction. One, I noticed a couple months ago, there were some Facebook pictures that you were sharing of you up in the Arctic.
And I’ve never been to the Arctic. I want to go there before it all melts. But what was that like?
Risalat Khan: Yeah, I had this really incredible opportunity, which I’m really grateful for. It’s with a new initiative called Future Talks, which essentially is trying to understand what are the biggest questions that we face. Right now when we look to the future and it’s trying to answer that start to start to kind of build some progress towards that by bringing together a diverse set of people in a conversation around discussing those questions and they We also have an important focus on climate, on youth, on the future. So the team being from Norway wanted to pick a spot like the Arctic where they brought together 100 people from around the world, from all ages, from different fields, From different countries.
In Norway? Now you are always like you see everyone on their cell phones, on their devices. So when you’re at a place where there’s, you know, you don’t have the option of doing that, that unlocks a different kind of connection. So that was also one of their intentions, which definitely happened. And Yeah, actually, it was quite emotional for me because as we went, you know, we went beyond 80 degrees north and it was, we saw very little ice. Like there was, you know, at one point we were sailing through open seas that were...
You feel the crunch of it. Yeah. And it was quite emotional, especially kind of relating that to, again, sea level rise and what that means for so many people in Bangladesh and so many other coastal areas. And it was a powerfully connecting moment to the changing climate as well.
Christophe Jospe: Sounds like it. Another powerful moment. I was watching a video where you were sitting on a stage with Al Gore and a few other climate leaders. And I mean, awesome. First, I wonder what was that like, but also... As you brought up, you know, it requires a diverse collective of people to really create solutions. And here we are, the four of us on our mics, we’re all millennials, and we sort of see the agency in our hands and have to take the bull by the horns, literally, because the Wall Street bull is like right outside.
But what was that like? And what was the message that you delivered to some more senior climate leaders? Yeah.
Risalat Khan: Yeah, that was another incredible opportunity that I was very fortunate to have. Algor, obviously, like many of us, has been a hero for me, like watching Inconvenient Truth way back. I don’t know when it came out, but as a kid. So yeah, I think it was really powerful for sure. And I, as you said, there were, you know, several senior leaders present there. And I saw it as an opportunity to be more provocative, because I think, you know, young people can bring that to the discussion. So I basically said that, you know, throughout my lifetime, I’m 28 now, 30 years of decisions have been made that have put us in this place where we’re kind of in a cliff.
We have to reduce emissions. So I essentially said that the last 30 years, global decision makers have in many ways... We are now in a moment where by 2020, in the next three years, by 2020, we have to bend the curve of carbon emissions. Which is a tough job, but I think that’s the kind of urgent situation we’re in right now. And what was really amazing and surprising to me was that Governor Jay Inslee of Washington State was there and he really picked up that issue. So, yeah.
Christophe Jospe: Yeah, that’s great. And also for Nori, you know, we hope to build something that will enable the mayors and politicians and governors and really anyone who makes a commitment without the slightest clue of how to get there. Which is quite common. Which is quite common. And oftentimes, actually, if you track back and look at all the proclamations that mayors have had and then say, well, I’m going to now hold you accountable. None of them have ever met it. And so we want to say, hey, you know, you said you were going to be carbon neutral by X.
And the only way to do that is to say, well, you need to have taken the carbon back out of the atmosphere that you previously emitted. You were saying something earlier about generations. I wanted to say a quote that actually I heard yesterday from a presentation that Paul Hawken gave. There’s a climate establishment. And then, so he said, the good thing about the establishment is that they carry the ball. The bad thing about them is that they breathe the gas. And so it’s... So it’s one of those, we see this sort of rather connected climate community, maybe even a climate cartel that has an almost myopic view of how climate change must happen and then there’s activity happening.
And so I just commend you for taking that brave role. But I also want to ask you, how do you see additional force? Because it’s going to take force that goes way beyond the climate establishment. How do you see that additional force influencing and really creating the change that we need to see?
Risalat Khan: I think right now, I’m just going to be honest, I’m pretty worried. I’m a very hopeful person, but I also look at the science and I look at the political currents that we have seen over the last couple of years. And it is a worrying situation with, you know, with President Trump saying, you know, like he’ll pull the US out of the Paris Climate Agreement. The leading far right candidate in Brazil, Bolsonaro, right now is echoing similar words. So it is a worrying trend. And I think ultimately, I’m a believer in the power of people, as I mentioned before.
And I think there are people all around the world who really care about this issue. And who are much more responsible than the politicians in realizing the urgency that we face. So I think it will in many ways come down to social movements to create the political conditions where acting on climate is not You know, not something you can waver on that essentially holds leaders accountable no matter what political stripe they come from. And I think in the next few years, I very much hope and I’m happy. And I’m hopeful we will see this, that people kind of rising, doing more civil disobedience kind of actions.
These are happening in communities around the world already in blocking fossil fuel projects. Just this month in Germany, 50,000 people marched in Hamburg Forest. So I think more of those need to happen and I’m hopeful they will happen and that we can hold our political leaders accountable.
Ross Kenyon: It’s a tough thing to do. I think one of the ways Nori intersects with some of this is that if you can make it easier for some of these states that are dependent on their revenues coming from coal or oil is if we can find a way where Carbon removal can have a place there that is monetized. Maybe at some point they might be able to make up enough where the incentives wouldn’t be all there to preserve this way of doing things, which is a concentrated benefit, but the cost is diffused through all.
I do want to put out one caution though.
Risalat Khan: There has been this movement from people who don’t want the economy to change away from fossil fuels to kind of point towards carbon removal as the solution that will save us all. And I just want to caution that I think we need to take a very kind of wise line where, yes, we need to be investing in solutions like Nori, and I love what you guys are doing, but at the same time, not be also distracted by that or, you know, Don’t bet everything on this thing showing up. Yeah, exactly.
Because it’s not really at scale proven in the way that actually it can get us out of this mess. So we need to be transitioning as fast as possible away from fossil fuels. Simultaneously, solutions like NARI will help in making that transition smoother and basically keeping the carbon lower in the atmosphere. Yeah.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, we get really excited about all the clean energy costs coming down so much and that’s no longer a political issue in many places either. It’s just better business to buy solar, to buy wind. And yeah, we can’t just I don’t think it would be responsible to do nothing and wait for carbon removal to show up like Batman at the last second and fix everything.
Risalat Khan: Yeah, and that’s a great opportunity for emerging economies like Bangladesh. If you look at many African countries, for example, there’s so many countries that don’t have any landline infrastructure and have moved directly to mobile phones. So the same applies to fossil fuel infrastructure. So right now, we don’t need to be investing in the technology of the past. We can go directly to solar and renewable and have it actually compete on cost and beat out other fossil fuel energy.
Ross Kenyon: Leapfrog right to it. Yeah. Yeah. That was quite exciting. I would like to see that.
Christophe Jospe: I’m optimistic. I mean, just to comment on some of the things you were saying about carbon removal. No, of course, it’s not a silver bullet. And absolutely, it’s a yes and, right? We need all of it. And I also think one of the values that Nori provides is as the token is issued and has a freely floating price and it becomes a reference price, essentially, we like to draw the metaphor. It’s like... If you call CO2 garbage, Nori is like the garbage collector who shows up with the bill and is like, well, do you want to pay this bill?
No, I don’t want to pay it. Well, good. Then don’t put the garbage out into the street and put clean energy or reduce the garbage as much as you can. So it becomes that motivation and it kind of all fits together. And coming from the carbon removal space, I think maybe I feel a little bit stepped on at times because...
Ross Kenyon: I could feel that energy just bursting off of you. Mm-hmm.
Christophe Jospe: Yeah. I just want to pick some booms. No, it’s okay. I get over it. You know, I have a very good shrink. But I actually don’t. I know. Why would I lie on our podcast? But anyway, I guess what I was trying to say was, you know, it can all fit together. But traditionally, a lot of the narrative in the climate space has been around mitigation. And it says mitigation first, and then we’ll think about this carbon removal thing later. But finally, in the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, it actually had said no.
We cannot get there unless we remove CO2 from the atmosphere. And I actually think that the moral hazard argument, which has been made against carbon removal that says, well, if you can remove the carbon, then you’re just going to continue burning fossil fuels until the end of time. It’s not saying we’re here to enable the burning of fossil fuels until the end of time. We’re here to remove the 1 trillion plus tonnes of CO2 in order to say it’s not even about living in a 1. 5 degree Celsius warming world.
It’s saying let’s get back to zero. Let’s restore the climate to a place where we can live healthily and happily and for many, many generations to come.
Risalat Khan: If we could, that would be amazing. But the fact is we’re not there yet, right? So I think how I would see the moral hazard argument is that we need to do work so that we don’t get to a moral hazard situation, right? I think it’s not like, all right, there’s a moral hazard or there is not. It’s more like, how do we make sure that it’s not a moral hazard? I think I would frame it that way.
Ross Kenyon: Are you content with that, Kristoff?
Christophe Jospe: I’m content with that. Yeah, I think that’s fair, but that’s not how the world sees it yet, which is part of the reason why we do this podcast, to put ideas in people’s heads who want to maybe think about framing a little bit differently. And it truly is yes and. We need everything. And there are two ways to stop climate change. Very simple. Pull the CO2 back out, which we’ve already put there, and don’t put it there in the first place. It’s so simple. So let’s just go ahead and do it, right, Ross?
Yeah.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I think having options going. Man, this is like every third podcast. Someone says more shots on goal. We’re just happy that the more projects there are trying to solve this, the better in different approaches. And we don’t always see things the same as everyone else. But if we did, we’d all be pretty bored, I think, anyways.
Risalat Khan: True.
Ross Kenyon: I’m sure there are times when you walk out of a meeting or whatever and you’re like, that was the most echo chambery thing I’ve ever heard. Was there much intellectual? Are we all just phoning it in at this point? And I find whenever I’m in a meeting like that or in a room like that, I think I start to get pretty bored.
Paul Gambill: Well, maybe that’s another good direction to go. From the advocacy and activism side, what do you think needs to be improved or changed about the way that people approach this?
Risalat Khan: I think this is not just limited to activism and advocacy, but I think more broadly, we need to realize that we are an extremely interconnected planet that is facing extremely interconnected global challenges. And climate, being a huge challenge that it is, is not the only challenge we face. Right now, we have a biodiversity crisis that we need to meet, like extinction levels that are so far beyond the natural background levels. Simultaneously, there are so many other global I think we need to reach this. That kind of collective understanding that we all have a part to play in the ecosystem and we all need to work together to really put our planet, our society, our people first.
Is that plausible? I think so. I think we have a long way to go to do that. This is not me just being provocative, but I actually think that it might be a matter of survival. We’re dealing with extremely powerful forces, and we need to get to that place where we can manage them effectively.
Ross Kenyon: Have you thought at all about how climate activism and environmental sentiment generally can reach people that are right of center? Have you thought about how one might engage people over there? We think about that a lot and find it quite interesting. I think we’ve had some degree of success in those that we know and we approach it and the way that we frame things tend to be intrigued in a way where conventional rhetoric from the environmental side hasn’t worked as effectively.
Risalat Khan: Yeah, I think there are effective ways. Like, for example, right now, there’s a bipartisan initiative that’s making its way through the US political system about revenue neutral carbon tax, right? The fee and dividend. It returns the money to people that’s raised, which is a, you know, kind of conservative philosophy. Yeah, Naomi Klein wouldn’t like it. But it has bipartisan support, right? And in a time that is so politically divided in the U. S. that is saying something, Similarly, I recently watched a documentary I can’t quite remember the name of, but it was about essentially the ex-military leaders and generals kind of talking about the security dimensions of climate and how...
Ross Kenyon: Is it like the anatomy of something? Or someone sent me a documentary recently. Is it on Amazon Prime? I’m not sure. Yeah, I don’t remember. We’ll put it in the show notes and we’ll figure it out.
Risalat Khan: Yeah, please do. Yeah, I really liked it. Obviously, it’s a security issue because it’s a matter of resources, it’s a matter of infrastructure, security, and all of that stuff. So that kind of security dimensions often... So I think there are effective ways to communicate climate and it is such a big issue, right? Like you can connect to it from so many different angles. Yeah, there’s a lot there. Yeah, but it’s so politicized in the US, but it’s not necessarily so politicized in other countries, right? So there has been a history of politicizing the issue, and then people get stuck in their own...
We have our own kind of filter bubbles and follow certain ideologues maybe that make this a divisive issue, but it’s not, right? It doesn’t have to be, and it’s not in many other countries. Like in Bangladesh, it’s not really a divisive issue. Whatever political stripe you come from, you can still act on climate, even though there are still questionable energy choices that are made. But the facts of climate change and the need to adapt, those are incontrovertible.
Ross Kenyon: Sure. And I’ve seen some military reports from secondary sources, journalists writing about them. But I can imagine if Bangladesh were to go underwater and you had millions, millions of people who were hungry and angry and coming into countries who may not be ready to absorb waves of people like that, that could... I can imagine conservatives not liking that very much. That sounds like a tense situation where there could be intergroup struggles. People are flashing. That’s not good for anyone. At least of all people of Bangladesh.
Christophe Jospe: Can I rephrase what you’re saying? That fear of climate refugees is going to drive people who are right of center to care about climate change?
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, that’s probably what I’m trying to say. And you can say that’s not the most humanitarian or not the most just reason to care about it. But I could see that getting through to some people, like even some of the more hardheaded ones you don’t think even have a chance to. And that might not be, I don’t know, it might not be the most important reason to care about climate change. It’s a little sad to think about. Yeah, that’s like, that’s finally the thing that got you.
Paul Gambill: One of the people who need your help are on your doorstep. I don’t. I don’t know. That doesn’t make me sad to think about it. I mean, you were speaking about it sort of callously, but the thing...
Ross Kenyon: I wasn’t trying to be. I was putting myself in there.
Paul Gambill: Well, it’s just coming through the Ross lens. So, the...
Ross Kenyon: And I feel bad. Am I going to sound like an idiot for that one?
Paul Gambill: No, no, no. I’m about to agree with you. So the thing that has scared me the most as I started to learn more about climate change over three years ago and started doing more research into it, the thing that scared me was it’s not necessarily the sea level rise itself. It’s not necessarily the species loss itself. It’s the changing rain patterns, the inability to grow food where people need it. It’s the recognition that The refugee crisis that’s happening in Europe right now really was influenced significantly by climate change.
Ross Kenyon: And then also the right-wing backlash against refugees. Yes, like all these things suck.
Paul Gambill: They’re terrible. They’re really, really bad. We don’t want more of this. And that’s the thing that inspired me that this is a significant problem that if I can do anything about it, I want to and I will. So yeah, I do think that is a good problem. Approach to take to people who aren’t necessarily capable of being appealed to on other value systems.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, it’s a sordid one though. Yeah, if you’re that far downstream ethically where that’s the one thing that gets you. People who are desperate need your help and you don’t want to have to help them later. And it’s cheaper... Are you offended by that idea?
Paul Gambill: Well, it’s like I would rather live in a world that doesn’t have constant war and strife. That sounds really shitty. Desperate people, that’s a better way to frame it.
Ross Kenyon: That’s a better way to frame it. Okay. We got our rhetorical council here.
Christophe Jospe: I mean, I think, you know, when we’re talking about change and people changing, we always need to drill down on motivations and motivations is a key part. And so you must think about this a lot of us because that’s, you know, constantly what you’re thinking, like what is going to motivate these people to do X, right? And so how do you see it? What do you think some of the key drivers are in motivating people to change?
Risalat Khan: I think in terms of motivating people in my work as a campaigner, and a lot of this I’ve learned at Avaz, is essentially just communicating authentically. We try to source our own inspiration on a campaign, really connect to the Emotive core of it and then try to write it and communicate in a way that really connects for us. And we see that’s most often it connects for other people. And it’s true, right? When, you know, that’s whatever are the most powerful... Nourishing relationships that we have in our lives are the ones where we feel really connected to people, right?
And when you see things go viral on social media, like things that really spread like wildfire, Often those are moments of vulnerability, moments that people really speak truth, people really speak authentically. Those are the things that connect to people. And I think that’s how we make change. That’s how we communicate to people about the urgency of different issues, break down differences, and really break down the walls that have divided us for so long.
Ross Kenyon: Have you ever noticed that if you disagree with someone online, even if you know this person in real life, you’ll often just hate this person, but then you’ll hang out and be like, we could probably be friends. We could probably work through this. But there’s something about that dimension of distance that makes it really hard for people to connect with.
Paul Gambill: You know what I do 90% of the time is I’ll see something like that and I’ll start typing something out and then I’ll stop. I’ll read it. Then I’ll erase it and close it because it’s just not worth that effort. Yeah. It’s just going to cause harm in the relationship.
Ross Kenyon: It’s like Abe Lincoln said that about when you’re mad. I think you write a letter and throw it away.
Paul Gambill: Oh, it’s not even that. It’s not necessarily cathartic for me. It’s that I realize how pointless this is and this is just going to make this person dislike me.
Ross Kenyon: It’s just the first of many comments that you would have to write. Yeah.
Paul Gambill: God, am I going to commit to two straight days of following this post? Yeah.
Ross Kenyon: I very rarely get baited these days, but once in a while I will. And I often have just deleted it in a very awkward fashion. Sometimes there’ll be a response. I’d be like, no, I just deleted it. There’s just a hanging comment now. I don’t want to deal with it. Yeah, I think what you’re saying is that these stories are quite powerful and even if people can sometimes feel quite heart of heart, they can be moved to tears or moved to connection by things like that. Mm hmm. Yeah, I totally agree with that.
Stories connect. Stories connect. Yeah. Who would have thought?
Christophe Jospe: I like stories.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah.
Christophe Jospe: Well, this has been a lot of fun. I don’t know if you want to leave our listeners with any final thoughts or words or sort of the things that give you hope.
Risalat Khan: Yeah, I think as I said already, I think people give me hope. Don’t we depress you though? Yeah. No, I think you guys are hosting this amazing podcast about climate change. Those are the choices we make to engage, right? Everyone engages in a different way. And it’s not going to be the same way for everyone. But ultimately, it’s about choosing those acts, right? It’s not about calling out your friend and being like, oh, you’re not a vegan, hence you’re a horrible person, right? That doesn’t work. And that just... You know, kind of makes relationships and those connections toxic.
But everyone has different ways to engage, but let’s inspire each other to engage in ways that are the most meaningful for us. That we see are needed with respect to the situation that we find ourselves in this moment of urgency. So whether that means for some people signing a petition, for some people donating to an organization of your choice, for some people becoming vegan, for some people it might be marching on the streets. Those are all individual choices and I think it’s just about the fundamental choice of engagement and trying to move the ball forward.
Christophe Jospe: Absolutely. And if you are listening to this podcast and you enjoy what we put out, one choice you could make is go to republic. co slash nori and invest in nori and learn all about everything you need to know on that website there.
Ross Kenyon: Good job. You remembered to do a plug. I did mine at the beginning. This is heavily self-advertised. Well, thanks for taking time to come meet with us. This is a lot of fun. Of course. Thanks for having me. Thank you.
