Reversing Climate Change
Reversing Climate Change
(A Spotify video podcast!) What goes into making a carbon removal meme?—w/ Nori's Memelab
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(A Spotify video podcast!) What goes into making a carbon removal meme?—w/ Nori's Memelab

Nori's Memelab on what actually goes into making a carbon removal meme, filmed rather than just recorded.

What goes into the making of a carbon removal meme? How many pitches does it take before magic comes out? Why do some many captions end up as emojis?!Nori's Memelab: Ross Kenyon, Siobhan Montoya Lavender, and Asa Kamer film their writer's room meeting on a lark to show how we go from a notion to something we think worthy of sharing with our community. Listen in to learn more, and also, respond to the survey in this episode to let us know if you like video podcasts, meme shows, etc. It is an experiment! Thanks for hanging with us.

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Carbon Removal Newsroom, the news show that ran alongside this one, is over. Its episodes are still up, on the feed Climate Workers Anonymous now uses.

Carbon Removal Memes is still going.

Full Transcript

Ross Kenyon: Well, that’s a podcast — called a podcast, called — is probably not, but okay. Yeah, this is the Reversing Climate Change podcast, a video podcast. You know, we’re here where we weren’t sure what to do this week. We didn’t have a guest lined up, and we thought — we’ve tried to do this before, where we were editing memes live and I try to work on them, but we never did a visual component of it. I wasn’t sure how well it worked, but what we’re going to do today is more fun when you can see a meme. I mean, you know this for sure, because if anyone’s interested — is there any — you don’t see the meme? I don’t know.

It’s like you go to a bar, or you tell your spouse or something, like, oh, I saw a meme today and it was so good, it was like this, and there’s a second panel — like, no one, no one really wants the audio version of a meme. So we’re going to do a live version. Also, this is what we look like. Hey, I’m Ross Kenyon and I’m one of the co-founders of Nori. That’s Asa Kamer over there, producer of Carbon Removal Newsroom. Siobhan Montoya Lavender, thanks a ton. And also, we’re just, like, meme people — carbon removal meme people. That’s what we did, literally just our regular meeting. We were just, like, in the middle of a meeting, like, hey, let’s work on captions.

Yeah, I always feel kind of weird having a reputation as doing that. I like that I have a creative vibe outside of Nori, but sometimes — I mean, you guys know, I do strategy as well, right? Like, I’m a proper business man, a businessman. Take me seriously. I don’t just make podcasts and memes. Even though — you know, I don’t know if you guys ever have that, or maybe since it’s less of your daily routine or daily career thing. I don’t know. Do you have that?

Siobhan Montoya Lavender: Humor is what I’m most proud of, is what I bring to CDR. Yeah, I definitely don’t mention it, like, right off the top, when someone asks me what I’m working on. You’ve got to, like, build a little trust, make sure they understand you have some other things going on, and then it’s like, yeah, I make a few memes in there as well.

Ross Kenyon: Try explaining it generationally, or tell your parents or something — like, someone is paying you to make memes. There’s a gasp, like, I’m done with the world, let me off. People are earning money making this garbage? Yeah, and then you’re like, you have no idea, it’s way worse than you think. Oh yeah, like, we also do regular stuff. There’s people doing full-time influencer stuff that we don’t even get into. Is there a full-time carbon removal influencer out there? How long until that happens?

Siobhan Montoya Lavender: How long? You could be the first one, Ross.

Ross Kenyon: I just — I don’t like being the center of attention this way. Even having a video camera pointed at me right now for this purpose is already, like — do you like a disembodied voice a little bit more, listeners? How much of this visage do you need? But yeah, anyways, enough about me. This is changing the [unclear].

Asa Kamer: It’s just the knowledge of it being recorded. Yeah. Someone might be seeing this. Being observed changes things.

Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I usually can’t help it. That’s true. Yeah, we’ve got a Heisenberg effect here. I think it’s on Spotify — I think that’s where you can watch this. I’m not sure if it publishes out to regular podcast apps. So anyways, if you do want to see it on YouTube—

Siobhan Montoya Lavender: Sorry to interrupt. Yeah, YouTube. Well, why not, why not throw it on YouTube as well?

Ross Kenyon: But yeah, let’s do it. I guess Shiv is going to share her screen and we’re going to work on some memes here. I don’t think this is going to be a super long episode, unless it turns out to be the finest content out there — in which case, we’ll have to let it roll.

Siobhan Montoya Lavender: I felt the pressure to, like, start with a good one, but I feel like there’s some kind of crappy ones in the hopper and — ah, let’s roll here.

Ross Kenyon: You’re just showing the people the truth. Let’s let them see how the crappy memes go, to make sure — I’ve got this — you’re not all winners, people. Are you not? Okay. All right, here we go.

Siobhan Montoya Lavender: This week — ignore my [unclear]. Okay, so this one. I think I gave you a couple versions of this one, Ross. This is the Gordon Ramsay.

Ross Kenyon: Oh yeah, I need to decide.

Siobhan Montoya Lavender: Like, which is — we’re trying to make it funny, the type of, like, we’re trying to point out that it’s an LCA, and I don’t know if we should do that in the top or in the bottom panel.

Ross Kenyon: I think I liked it better in the top this way. Yeah. What do you got? I’m just giggling. I’m really enjoying the full fleshed-out version here. Yeah, I love Kitchen Nightmares. It’s one of my favorite, favorite reality TV shows, both the British and the American version. I think I’ve seen them all at least once. I just love the idea — it makes me think running a restaurant is easy, because it’s always the same advice. Like, you know, simple menu, fresh ingredients, don’t buy frozen things, and then make your food well, and voilà, you have a successful restaurant. It’s not that simple, I don’t know, but it’s basically just saying rustic, simple ingredients.

Siobhan Montoya Lavender: Like, 100 euro. The meme came in from that, like, backed up. So I feel like it works better with that LCA in the top.

Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I think so. It makes the meme a little bit more niche. One of the recurring debates you’ve probably heard from us making this is how niche to be. If it’s broad, it’s kind of cool, it might appeal to people outside of carbon removal, but I like the idea of pitching them right over the plate for people who are already within carbon removal. They deserve their own jokes that are customized to their level of knowledge, I’d say. But also, yeah, running a restaurant is a lot like running a waste biomass energy or carbon removal operation. The LCA matters. How far away did it come from? Blah, blah, blah.

Siobhan Montoya Lavender: Yeah. What did you land on? This looks pretty good, except — looks like there’s maybe another version, but I think this is my favorite. So yeah, I think it’s a nice one.

Ross Kenyon: Oh yeah. Well, I feel like in the first and third there’s two adjectives, and then in the second there it’s a good, honest, efficient transportation. So what if it was just two of those? It might make it a little more symmetrical, because it’s like local, rustic, simple, modular, honest, efficient, or something like that. Your cadence [unclear] in terms of keeping them—

Siobhan Montoya Lavender: Yeah, yeah, I think that’s right. Yeah, I like that. Honest with him. Okay, this is good to go.

Ross Kenyon: But the question I have — hard to tell. It really is. So I feel like, you know, we don’t know what you like. Please tell us what you like. We just guess, man. And sometimes we think you’re going to love it and there’s, like, no interaction, and sometimes we’re like, meh, we’ll throw this one out there, and people love it.

Siobhan Montoya Lavender: So yeah, I think it’s just like the overthinking thing. The ones that we put a lot of thought into, or are, like, really cheeky and clever, you’re like, cool, eight likes. Okay.

Ross Kenyon: This one — you have a caption for this already? Now, what would the caption be? All right, though — option B. This is where a lot of good memes go to die, or we endlessly debate until we give up and throw an emoji on it. Help.

Siobhan Montoya Lavender: I also wonder — my concern for this one is, like, I don’t know if the waste biomass crowd, it doesn’t have the same, like, fanbase necessarily that some of the other types of CDR do. Like, they have, like, a dedicated group on Twitter that, like, are really working on that, and I don’t know that we have that for waste biomass. I feel like that maybe is a type of CDR that exists more, like, in climate plans than, like, as advanced, you know, investment and, like, actual deployment. Am I wrong? I don’t know. Maybe I only hear about it in BECCS, but also I’m biochar, too.

Ross Kenyon: Yeah, we’re just, like — anything that uses — I’m thinking of, there’s one that I [unclear] on the podcast years ago, but they were taking, just, like, fallen, fallen branches out of the forest around, like, Reno, and, like, California, like, headed towards Nevada. They’re trying to, like, turn that into some sort of product that was carbon negative.

Siobhan Montoya Lavender: But yeah. So what would you change waste biomass to?

Ross Kenyon: No, no, I don’t want to change it at all. I’m just saying, as we think about what’s going to be popular or not, sometimes that would be one thing I’m not sure about. But then again, it seems like I have no idea which ones are going to be popular or not, so it’s such a crapshoot. I think the winner here is going to be, do people know the Gordon Ramsay voice and that he said this? Then it’ll be funny for them.

Siobhan Montoya Lavender: I feel like you have to know, like, the clip, and might not get the humor. But it’s quite funny if you think about, like, how he speaks constantly about food. It is just like this.

Ross Kenyon: Yeah, there’s a couple. I mean, like, people always think of the idiot sandwich one. But he does — I also want — one of the other things that I wish there was a supercut of on YouTube — there maybe is one — is the most common. I’ve seen him deliver, “You’ve lost your passion. Where is your passion?” And then, like, it’s true, a lot of people are, like, serving slop that they think is good but know in their heart is bad. So I thought I’d be able to do something like that at some point in an evening — then, a “Gordon Ramsay, you’ve lost your passion” meme.

Siobhan Montoya Lavender: Yeah. Okay, so, like, caption — I’m going to be the caption police. It could say, could be, “Where’s your passion?” “You’ve lost your passion.” But this is, like, the only people who are going to get this are people who watch Kitchen Nightmares. I don’t think that’s a common refrain. Idiot sandwich is pretty popular. I like “But you’ve lost your passion,” exclamation point. Okay. All right, moving on, let me see. What about this really stupid dog one that you should all judge me on?

Ross Kenyon: You really — stupid dog — [unclear] how they got some sort of genius. Hey, this is done and perfect. Yeah, I don’t think I would change anything. Publicly. Okay, what would the caption be? The dog emoji. I was — should it be, like, “scientists doing”? Okay, or something more specific than “people”? Okay.

Siobhan Montoya Lavender: Yeah, I don’t know if it matters, where it’s just, like, a bit of a filler word. Yeah, “helpers” is kind of long. But, or if it was just “ocean alkalinity enhancement”—

Ross Kenyon: Look, I think “scientists” is better. Just OAE. Okay, this is good. I like it, so good. This doesn’t really make sense, but my thought on the caption was hashtag too blessed to be stressed.

Siobhan Montoya Lavender: Yeah, that’s where my heart is. First thought, best thought. It might be nice just to get us through the mix. I feel like the captions can be, like, kind of irreverent and, like, not exactly in sequence with the joke, like it just sort of funny, and I don’t know, immediately doing that way. So, all right, let’s keep believing that.

Ross Kenyon: Yeah. Okay. Look — [unclear] — this is at the end of the last episode, two episodes ago, where they did, like, some sort of mini documentary about the making of that show. And it just struck me — I think it struck everyone as being, like, one of the most pretentiously funny things ever. So I thought it made sense dramaturgically.

Siobhan Montoya Lavender: The only thing I want to say about this, though, is, like, if it was “dramaturgically,” should it be, instead of Doc 3.0, should it be, like, Act 3 of Doc?

Ross Kenyon: Yeah, or is it a silly thing, too smart, like expecting people that they need to know about act structure and how stories work? Is this, like, a screenwriting, playwriting convention that doesn’t make sense here? Because — Asa is nodding, so that’s bad. I just feel like sometimes we put too many references and jokes in one panel, and it’s like, yeah, we don’t want — you don’t need to. I don’t know that for sure.

Siobhan Montoya Lavender: It’s hat on a hat. Exactly.

Ross Kenyon: Maybe. There’s — it’s really pretty good. So sorry, I’m sorry. No, I just think it’s really — I just like it already. I thought maybe there’s an Act 3 joke, maybe that’s part of the caption. Are you meaning — but that would be, we point out that stupid something, like the third act of Doc? I’m not — see, this is my — I feel like I’m trying to force a joke. It’s like a “look how smart I am” kind of joke, and I don’t feel like those are funny jokes. So, but yeah. “Does it make sense dramaturgically to you?” Question mark.

Siobhan Montoya Lavender: Okay. It’s okay. What, something better than that? Is there a Jeremy Strong emoji we can use?

Ross Kenyon: I should be out to be — do I really want to say that F-word on a podcast here? I think it’s, like, the most common Succession phrase, is, like, “F off.” I feel like that’s the thing that everyone always says. We can write that. I mean, that’s probably what we all should say to someone who proposes tubes to space. First of all, how dare you.

Siobhan Montoya Lavender: What about, like, was it crossed, like — okay, that’s nothing, but I’m just trying to think of a reference to, like, it being crossed out or underlined. You guys watch Succession this week?

Ross Kenyon: I haven’t seen the one from Sunday. That’s not a spoiler, but it’s a reference to it. You make a joke about — yeah, we could compare someone or some company in carbon removal to a character, or Waystar Royco, or Pierce, or someone else from — but the thing is, like, method: the comparisons are favorable. Like, yeah, who’s the Logan Roy of carbon removal? Like, one of, like, the older generations, I’d be like first-gen tech, and there’s not that many people to choose from. Logan’s smart, but he’s scary.

Siobhan Montoya Lavender: I think we sometimes, like — we always try to go for that joke of, like, some absurd joke about, like, people who have been working in carbon removal for a long time, but then we get caught up because we don’t want it to be insulting. We want it to be, like, a reference to, like, a niche, like, interest group, and that can be fun. But then sometimes you’re not sure if people take it as, like — will they get it? What’s the joke? And there’s only, like, really a handful of people that are, like, sort of widely known enough that it even works. So I feel like this is a dead end for us.

Like, it’d be so funny to reference so-and-so, but then we kind of don’t want to, because it’s not clear how it would land, or come off as disrespectful. [unclear] — please let us know. We want to be — yeah. Amen. Always thinking about who’s going to have a sense of humor about this and enjoy it versus — I don’t want to do it if it’s going to bother someone.

Ross Kenyon: What about, like, the only safe people to compare yourself to in Succession? I’ve seen a lot of people identify with Roman, with Kieran Culkin’s character, and then Greg. And so maybe we should, like, have a poll, like, is our meme account more like Greg or more like Roman?

Siobhan Montoya Lavender: Yeah, we need to do more polls. Yeah, that’s — yeah, we should do more. I don’t know if we’ve done any polls.

Ross Kenyon: Yeah. What if we just said, like, internal — or, help us settle a debate: is our — is there a meme account — what even is the right way to say that? Is our meme account more Greg or more Roman? Because we’re definitely not Shiv, Tom, Logan, Kendall. Make a call. I mean, I feel like people have really taken to Shiv, probably calling you that in the last three years, huh? Has that happened, or not really?

Siobhan Montoya Lavender: I suppose. I mean, people call me Shiv sometimes before — but it is, it is helping me with, like, getting the name out there, you know. It’s a tricky one, so it helps that there’s, like, a character, and so people, when they see it, they’re like, oh, that’s Siobhan, right? Like, it is not — it means — it is not “Sigh-oh-ban.” It is Siobhan. It’s “Shiv-awn.”

Ross Kenyon: Yeah, well, well, we can’t. Okay, so, so far the caption to be: “Doesn’t make sense.” Um, “Does it make sense dramaturgically to you, too?”

Siobhan Montoya Lavender: No, I think we — I think we should — are you thinking of it subtweeting the poll?

Ross Kenyon: Yeah, that would be the caption. The poll would be the caption. You can’t caption the poll, can you? Oh, like a literal poll. Yeah, that’s fine, let’s just do it that way then. Let’s see what else you got going here, of social media savvy here.

Siobhan Montoya Lavender: Okay, this one — that’s, you’re right. I don’t know why I friggin’ wrote carbon market. That’s pedantic.

Ross Kenyon: No, to be, like, “carbon market” shouldn’t be — careful, as this is — this is Clueless. What is this, Ross? It’s Clueless, right? We’re gonna have to cut that. Yeah, I like — actually, I’ve been thinking about watching it, because I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen it.

Siobhan Montoya Lavender: It’s good. It’s all good. Okay. Wow. Okay. We’re losing followers by the moment, because you’ve never seen Clueless. Alicia Silverstone stans here are gonna rage quit. This is, like, one of those ones that is very simple, and there’s not, like, some elaborate joke tied into it, but oftentimes it does really well, right?

Ross Kenyon: Yeah. Sometimes I feel like the simplest ones land, and I feel like they’re not that clever and they’re not that interesting, but sometimes they land. So, they’re not that well designed, they’re not that smart, the person who made them is — cool. Option B: they’re — a Clueless reference. I don’t think I know any. Yeah, I just remember, like, trying to, like, learn how to drive on the freeway. Is that something — those are, like, references I can remember. What if you made a 10 Things I Hate About You caption, just to piss everyone off? That actually is kind of funny. That I expect [unclear], because then we also get engagement, that people would correct this.

Siobhan Montoya Lavender: Yeah. But if it was just, like — this is so exposing, to pitch in front of an audience, because some of them are bad. But, like, here’s, like, the bad pitch: “I hate the way you remove carbon.” That’s my bad 10 Things pitch.

Ross Kenyon: I don’t think it’s explicit enough that — sometimes I was, like, okay. Yeah, I think we could have just Julia Stiles standing with the paper and just be, like, “I hate,” and, to be honest, who we hate about carbon removal, or something.

Siobhan Montoya Lavender: Yeah. What about — I know you can be overwhelmed and underwhelmed, but if you’re just be whelmed? Is that too obscure to people? Which movie is that from?

Ross Kenyon: That’s 10 Things I Hate About You. What if it was just, like, “10 things,” “10 Things I Hate About carbon markets,” or “10 things” — some other buzzword from within? I feel like this is so — that’s more provocative than anything else we’ve done, actually, about carbon removal.

Siobhan Montoya Lavender: I’m like, yeah. All right, you guys thought — let’s pull it back. But if it was just, like, “10 Things I Hate About VCMs” or something like that. It sounds good, but I wonder if, like, people might think that we’re just going for ’90s movies, rather than, yeah, intentionally misidentifying this on purpose.

Ross Kenyon: See, right here, right — when we — was listening to this — we’ll never know I got a Clueless reference in them. Yeah, I got a little too broad on that one, I think. Sorry, it’s — “full-on back to reality.” What about — I don’t think the execution’s sticky.

Siobhan Montoya Lavender: Yeah. Okay, how about “As if”? That’s her most famous.

Ross Kenyon: Works for me. All right, let me — let’s see. Okay, I think these are going to be something this week. I don’t think I posted this one either. My — just think a lot of — I don’t know if there’s any funnier. I like the concept of, like, everything, every single light being on, like, broken. Good. I like this one.

Siobhan Montoya Lavender: You just — yeah, that — you posted it, though. I didn’t like this. This is the kind of, like, general content but is also CDR intersecting, that could do well.

Ross Kenyon: We need to talk about — “planet Earth” should be capitalized, since we’re on that. Ah, never mind, cut that out. The audience doesn’t need more capitalization cutting. We’re all right. What were we wanting done today? Sorry. Yeah, I like him. Yeah.

Siobhan Montoya Lavender: It’s also topical. I feel like this is a big — well, maybe, I bet — but there’s somewhat of this debate happening on Twitter and kind of coming up recently.

Ross Kenyon: Okay, so we’re back here. That means we are topical over here, and you’re supposed to be really topical with the caption. Vroom, vroom. If you thought the first idea, it’s bad, and empowers everyone else to step on your face. Okay. What about something better than that? You have something better?

Siobhan Montoya Lavender: How about, like — big, like that? It’s not binary. You can — something about it not being binary. Binary. Something about cars that has nothing to do with, like, the joke about, you know, the debate between decarbonization and CDR. Could be just, like, go to the mechanic.

Ross Kenyon: So the binary thing just made me think of — have you ever seen They Live?

Siobhan Montoya Lavender: No. What is that?

Ross Kenyon: It’s like an ’80s movie where you get glasses that help you see what advertising is actually trying to say, and in terms of a big conspiracy, it’s a planet run by aliens. Movie, it’s cool. It’s John Carpenter, from back in the day. But he has a line in there — Rowdy Roddy Piper, the wrestler, stars in it. I mean, “I came here to kick ass and chew bubblegum, and I’m all out of bubblegum.” That’s not moving, because that’s such a famous thing.

Siobhan Montoya Lavender: Yeah. Did you like all the prelude that led up to it? Explaining the — yeah, I did. I thought it made sense dramaturgically, too.

Ross Kenyon: But yeah, it’s like that “binaries” kind of made me laugh. We should — we should do that. But the way we should do the kick asses — yeah, let’s go. Car emoji.

Siobhan Montoya Lavender: Are we doubting ourselves here? Now people are going to know that every time they see an emoji, it’s because we couldn’t think of a clever caption.

Ross Kenyon: Being vulnerable with you, listening watcher. Won’t you just — I want you to see sometimes defeat is okay. It’s good enough. I think we should put ourselves out there and do the car emoji. Vroom vroom. Yes.

Siobhan Montoya Lavender: Let’s just throw it all at the wall. Okay, let’s pull up some of the ones from the folder. Okay, hang on. Okay, all right. How about this one? I think it’s good to go, we just need to caption it, right? Can you see this now, or—

Ross Kenyon: No, it’s not pulling up.

Siobhan Montoya Lavender: Stop sharing research every time. I want to, like — yep, over-share your personal files and such. We said no editing, so it comes up.

Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I love this. This is great. Good job on this one. Related. Okay. Caption — this is a — definitely egg emoji.

Siobhan Montoya Lavender: Yeah, that’s okay, because his — this character is named Greg, and other characters make fun of him by calling him Greg the Egg.

Ross Kenyon: All right, [unclear]. Okay, here, like a movie. All right, I’m happy with that. Or should we say, “Gotta break a few eggs to make an omelet”? Yeah, just also from the show. All right, do that. But [unclear], because you can’t expect Siobhan to do that. Okay, yeah. Where do I send it to you?

Siobhan Montoya Lavender: Grab it. Isn’t that — isn’t that the Bernie Sanders character? Actor. Reads that out? Yeah, yeah. I haven’t watched any of it.

Ross Kenyon: No, it’s really good. So good.

Siobhan Montoya Lavender: People say that, and it almost makes me want to watch it less, because it means, like — it’s like a commitment, you know. It’s like, I’m gonna like it, and that’s — kind of watching it at all.

Ross Kenyon: And it’s like, you know, yeah, I get that. And let me explain again — you just, like, that just so much, because it’s just that Armstrong, the creator of it, is a Peep Show co-creator, and so it’s really easy for me to try to sell Peep Show to them. They’ll be like, Succession — you’ve got to go back. Hey, here’s another one. This is the whole — someone. Yeah.

Siobhan Montoya Lavender: What’s up? [unclear] my face. I’m sorry, go ahead, Ross.

Ross Kenyon: No, it was just — it’s nice to celebrate our peers and friends out there. Yeah, this is good to go, tag him, unless the caption — you know, you agree. Yeah, yeah, tag him and something. Yeah, like that. Like old — old way of doing it. It was like, “RT if you agree.”

Siobhan Montoya Lavender: Yes, let’s do that. Guaranteed way to get me not to retweet something. But sure.

Ross Kenyon: Okay, so that’s okay. Is it doing it intentionally? So, like, does it change that? Or is it so bad? Is it worse? So bad. Next thing, you’re going to send me a chain email that says, you know, you’ll lose all your friends if I don’t forward it to 20 people.

Siobhan Montoya Lavender: There is another, yeah. Okay. Well, are we doing it, then, or you want us to do something else?

Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I’m fine with that one, I guess. See what else we got here. What if we just tagged him in there, like, “keep doing what you’re doing” or something like that, just make positive — makes me want to do, like — what, feel like, you know, the old GIF of the kid at the computer who, like, looks over and gives the — yeah.

Siobhan Montoya Lavender: [unclear]. I wish there was that, but I could caption that.

Ross Kenyon: At that — that’s something we could put: the thumbs up emoji, and then in parentheses, for those listening, you’d, like — we are not out of ideas — to give him the thumbs. Okay, sure, sounds good.

Siobhan Montoya Lavender: No, no, I think that’s — that’s hat on a hat territory as well. Hmm. Why not just tag him and do the thumbs up emoji? I think that’s fine.

Ross Kenyon: Yeah. Okay.

Siobhan Montoya Lavender: These are — I just want to say, these are my favorite type of memes that we do, that are just, like, unabashedly enthusiastic about people working in carbon removal, and just being supportive. And I always — this is, like, the only kind I actually want to do. But then my, like, cynicism sometimes, like, takes over, and you want to do, like, negative ones, to, like, express some of the, like, frustrations about the world and climate change, and I, like, “well, actually” here, and just kind of be, like, snarky about it. And I’m like, no, I don’t want to be snarky. I don’t want to put that out in the world. I just want to, like, support the people doing cool stuff. So whenever I do one like this, I’m like, yes, this is why I got into this business, you know what I mean?

Ross Kenyon: Oh, speaking of snark — but we’re snarking ourselves, which is always allowed. What about the Gwyneth Paltrow one that was pitched? “I wish you well.” This is a — sure. I feel like we had it because he was suing her. So does this imply that we’re, like, against the people actually doing it? But I don’t know that it needs to be read into like that. It’s just kind of funny as it is, and then the caption could be “We wish you well.”

Siobhan Montoya Lavender: I like that. It’s, like, in the ear, you know. It’s almost like they don’t want to retweet it necessarily, but — their closet exists, it means it is coming along. Sure, let’s do it. I like that. You’re calling them dignified carbon removal — that’s the best part. Okay. And then caption: “We wish you well.”

Ross Kenyon: “I wish you” — what, “we wish you well”? “We appreciate your wishing us well”? Yeah. What do you mean, like, this is wishful thinking, or this is aspirational, or some sort of comment like that? What we’re wishing for? Let’s see. Why not just “We wish you well”? Let’s get the reference in there. Okay. Anything else you want to start out with?

Siobhan Montoya Lavender: I think the only other one was just the announcement that Frontier is now, like, over a billion dollars committed, and we should just retweet that with just the image of Dr. Evil doing this thing when we ship it. No, no text, just that. We gotta bring Austin Powers back.

Ross Kenyon: Listen, I agree. Okay. All right.

Siobhan Montoya Lavender: Well, there’s a bunch I can put up for the next week and a half or so, so we’re good to go.

Ross Kenyon: All right, that was fun. We’ll see how people like it. I hope — I hope you enjoyed doing a video show. Let us know. This is very spontaneous, people. Yeah, we were doing just the writers’ room and then just, like, what if we just did this now instead of later, and did it this way? So, anyways, an experiment. Speaking of — like Tobias, “let the great experiment begin.” Arrested Development memes? Yes, we do.

Siobhan Montoya Lavender: Oh, well, yeah, there’s been a bunch of them. I was seeing other people post them too, not just the — “what could it cost, $10?” Also soon they’ll, like, opening the Dead Dove bag: “I don’t know what I expected.”

Ross Kenyon: Something that we didn’t want to — trying to throw the [unclear] back into the ocean. Yeah, I love it. It deserved more. Yeah, I wish we could do things like that — videos and GIFs work better, too, because so many of you — so much of the humor of Arrested Development, beyond just the smartness of the intersecting jokes, is the music. I also find myself singing songs from that show just walking around sometimes, and I wish there was a way to make memes that were more inclusive of that, because every time we’ve done it, it’s sounded — done poorly.

Siobhan Montoya Lavender: Does the algorithm just not like it, or what? Sounds like TikTok. Sounds like — probably just need to do it.

Ross Kenyon: Okay. Yeah. Twitter is not getting any better, by the way. So, in favor of TikTok. I’m just saying, this is good.

Siobhan Montoya Lavender: It also probably pairs more nicely with our Instagram flow, anyways. Love that. It was purely video stuff.

Ross Kenyon: Yeah, well, let’s talk about it. And I know you’re really peering under the hood listening to this. This is fantastic, fantastic logistical content that you crave. Hey, thanks for listening, though. It was fun, hopefully you enjoyed this. If you like the show, if you like what we’re doing, give us a great rating and review — helps us get this to more people. It’s weird watching myself saying my little rehearsed outro in front of my own face. Well, thanks for hanging. You could listen to, like, lots of podcasts. I don’t always listen to climate podcasts, I’m sick of it, frankly. So thanks for choosing to spend your free time with us. Okay, everybody. Okay, everybody.

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