How do you create original content in the carbon removal space?
In its podcast content, the Nori creative team looks for unique voices, encouraging guests on Reversing Climate Change and Carbon Removal Newsroom to explore nuance.
As for their carbon removal memes, the writers are currently mining the movies they watch with their kids and popular online satirical humor (think The Onion and Reductress) for ideas.
On this bonus episode of Reversing Climate Change, Ross sits down with his colleagues in the Nori Meme Lab, Siobhan Montoya Lavender and Asa Kamer, to discuss why ascribing agency to CO2 is funny and describe how they look for meme potential in cinema—not to be confused with Krysten Sinema, though they have insight on her too.
Ross, Siobhan, and Asa offer stories of celebrity sightings and consider who qualifies as a ‘climate celeb,’ sharing examples of the academics and podcast guests they’re guilty of gushing over.
Listen in to understand how we showcase productive disagreement in both Nori podcasts and get in on the Meme Lab team’s latest ideas for carbon removal meme threads, including ClickHole-style headlines and recaptioning existing satirical content.
More from the show
Ad-free episodes and other benefits come with a paid subscription.
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.
Resources
Carbon Removal Memes for Climate Restorative Teens on Twitter
Carbon Removal Memes on Instagram
Dennis Baldocci on ResearchGate
Elizabeth Kolbert on Reversing Climate Change S2EP50
Mark Bittman on Reversing Climate Change S2EP69
David Ho on Carbon Removal Newsroom S3EP41
Stubborn Little Leisure Lords on ClickHole
Let’s Rank the Religions on ClickHole
Full Transcript
Ross Kenyon: You’re listening to the Reversing Climate Change podcast by the team at Nori, the carbon removal marketplace. This is a show about the innovators and entrepreneurs developing solutions to climate change.
I’m up for Zoom calls, and that’s what really matters. Zoom calls look real nice, I don’t know. Yeah, I liked it. Out of nowhere you just came out and nailed that Nathan For You template I put up, which was like — Asa, I don’t know where, just drops this in, and I was like, oh, this is perfection here. I’ll read it out for you if you haven’t seen it yet; link is in the show notes. Okay. The plan: we build a DAC plant that looks like a tree, so the CO2 comes in thinking it can re-enter the atmosphere in 60 years. [unclear]
What I love about this joke, in the same way that the [unclear] one makes me laugh, is I love ascribing agency to molecules. I find this line really funny, about CO2 having a preference.
Asa Kamer: Is that what’s funny about it? I don’t even know.
Ross Kenyon: Yes, it is. Anytime we anthropomorphize CO2, I’m sold, because we also had another one — the CO2 resting comfortably once it’s mineralized, which is Tony Soprano laying in the kid’s bed, resting happily. So does the CO2 want to be mineralized or not? And how do you know which it is? Is it both simultaneously? Doesn’t matter, it’s whatever serves the joke. Whatever serves the joke, [unclear]. Do you agree with that, Asa?
Asa Kamer: It’s definitely like a good place I like to go back to. Just referring to it — I don’t know why, but it’s just funny to think of CO2 like really wanting to be in the atmosphere and like causing warming, and like getting removed and stored permanently as like what it doesn’t want. Which I guess makes sense, because it’s like really hard to remove and store. So it feels like you could imagine it having that, like, agency, that preference. But it’s funny to think of carbon removal being about like tricking CO2, like it wants — just like, I’ll go into a tree so that I can, you know, it’s okay because I’ll be back in the atmosphere in a few decades, but I don’t want to be mineralized. So I don’t know, that’s, that’s, I guess, how I thought of it.
And there’s certainly that sort of Nathan For You twist on that, of just like something, like some trickery, some like fakery. But also like — some, it’s very absurd.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, we did that one another time. I think we should keep hammering on this theme because it’s clearly funny — Shooter McGavin from Happy Gilmore, of the CO2 molecules thing. I guess I’ll just live out my half-life in the atmosphere, and then just, as [unclear], and doing like the Shooter. Like, I think this might become a running theme, of the agency of molecules and what they do or do not want. Well, then stick that in there with the ice ages and all these other running gags that we have.
Yeah, I like the word — developing threads. You know, we have these reoccurring humorous themes, so it’s fun to get to that point. I think so, for sure. Also Nathan For You — I’ve been, well, I’m going to wait till you both see it, and I want to talk about The Rehearsal on the show, because I’m just four episodes in right now as of recording, and it’s like next-level genius. I love Nathan Fielder, and Nathan For You is so funny. Have you — you guys have both seen that, or no? No? Nope. All right, we have to educate.
Siobhan Montoya Lavender: I haven’t seen all of Nathan For You. I’ve seen some good ones, and I’m excited to see The Rehearsal and your inspiration.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, there’s so many shows like that that are amazing but have not been memed, or there’s not an easily retrievable format that is legible to someone who hasn’t seen the show — or even if they have seen the show, it’s like, why? Why this image? And I don’t know that I saw any in The Rehearsal. Yeah, and there might just not be memes of it yet.
Siobhan Montoya Lavender: Are you to that place where, whatever content you’re consuming, you’re constantly thinking, oh, that would be a fun meme? Because I feel like I cannot watch Disney without just seeing like a screen after screen of meme potential. So were you watching Emperor’s New Groove? Is that what — tell ya.
Ross Kenyon: I was — well, my kids are watching it, I popped in, and that’s where that meme came from. Absolutely. We — I watched it recently too, mostly because we were trying to have a family movie experience, and I was like, what would annoy me the least? It was like, which of these childhood movies do I want to watch? Because it’s [unclear] Disney is aiming for parents these days.
Siobhan Montoya Lavender: Like Disney Pixar — they try to make it somewhat enjoyable for adults as well, because a lot of those jokes I feel like the Disney put out there are clearly not targeted for kids.
Ross Kenyon: No, I mean the genie in Aladdin is doing Peter Lorre impressions and Groucho Marx, and like, his kids are like, oh my God, it’s the funny eyebrows and ’stache guy. I’ve seen that like in Halloween shops. But I feel like they’ve known for a long time — you don’t want the parents to walk out or hate it, right? I don’t know, [unclear]. Well, I don’t know if you watch live TV — you could probably not yet, huh, Asa?
Asa Kamer: You know, we’ve made an effort to not. You know, she’s still kind of a little too young. On the plane we had a few moments of like, let’s give her the phone and see if this distracts. It didn’t work very well — she was kind of going crazy, kind of didn’t really work, though. It must feel like she’s too young to like really get what you’re doing. And then when she was — yeah, it’s so, so we tried and kind of failed. But sometimes looking at pictures on the phone, like pictures of the family, really — I guess that’s simple enough that it kind of grabs her. But we haven’t ventured into cinema yet. I don’t quite know where to start, but this is helpful.
Siobhan Montoya Lavender: So thinking about it — it’s a slippery slope. I think I started screen time with my eldest when I was pregnant with my younger child, because I was so nauseous that I would just lie on the floor and put on Elmo on YouTube. To this day, the sound of Elmo singing makes me feel nauseous, because I have like this, yeah, Pavlovian reaction.
Ross Kenyon: I don’t know, it makes me nauseous, but please. And then what Asa’s doing, which is start with cinema. So choose your favorite Fellini film, and then this is a movie later. The person, Asa — Sinema.
Siobhan Montoya Lavender: Are you just thinking about Kyrsten Sinema? Is that what you’ve got? What happened?
Ross Kenyon: I am, I am. Ranking my favorite politicians, and she just comes to the top of mind. I met her once, because I’m from Arizona, and I [unclear] a group workshop thing. And I remember having like a little bit of a back-and-forth with her when she was, I think, in the state house or something.
Siobhan Montoya Lavender: Tell us more. Were you hammering a climate agenda, or what was the conversation about?
Ross Kenyon: I remember saying something extremely libertarian to her and she was just like, what the hell — but probably even anarchistic. And I remember saying something like that to her, and that’s all. But then flash forward 10 years down the line, I’m like, oh, everyone knows this person now. She’s a big deal, wearing outfits and pissing everyone off.
Asa Kamer: So yeah, she voted for that, for that IRA, right? Yeah. So it sounds like she has like a long history of like befriending and working to fight people on the far right of the bodies that she’s working in. It’s kind of interesting. I don’t really understand it. I mean, you know, not against it, but I feel like she’s kind of this enigma and like draws the ire of people, but I don’t know. I feel like there’s stuff going — like, I just don’t really get her at all.
Ross Kenyon: I’m out— making sure there was no tax on, like, you know, millionaires making money from private equity at the last minute, and like, economists are like, there’s absolutely no policy reason to do this. That was a little cynical, I don’t know, but it’s definitely an interesting one.
Siobhan Montoya Lavender: Yeah, I think people just probably want to hold her to a higher standard. She’s the first openly bisexual member of Congress, I think — first, whatever. She’s quite prominent, she has a spunky style, and is also, you know, a Democratic senator from Arizona. It’s kind of an unusual set even to say. So you would think. But yeah, whatever, I don’t know that I have a lot of like great policy or political analysis of this, except for — meeting celebrities is always a pretty banal story.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah. One time — one time I got a— a number of us live in LA, so there’s a lot of celebrity stories, but they’re always bad. They’re never good stories. Like one time I got a breakfast burrito in Malibu and I was behind Pamela Anderson in line. That’s it. I got a breakfast burrito near a celebrity, a television star, a former sex symbol, you know, extremely famous person. [unclear]
Although one time I also, in Malibu — one of my wife’s friends was visiting from out of town and she’d never seen anyone, and Adam Sandler came into the restaurant. I was like, this never happens. This is like an amazing sighting. Whereas normally it’s like you see a C- or D-lister who was like a small character on Lost and then went on Big Brother, and that’s the guy that you see.
Asa Kamer: It’s true. It’s true. Siobhan and I both went to college in LA County, and I spent some time in like Santa Monica and stuff. We’d go to the farmers market on the weekends — it’s like the Santa Monica Farmers Market. I see more celebrities than anywhere else.
Ross Kenyon: That’s probably a great place to spot any. Are there any stories equal to or better than mine, or are they all like, I saw Paul Rudd and his skin looked great?
Asa Kamer: There’s no— I don’t think there’s anything worth [unclear].
Ross Kenyon: It’s terrifying that I spooked you. Did you— I thought you probably had a story that I now [unclear] you out of.
Asa Kamer: No. I truly don’t.
Ross Kenyon: Hey, so you’re just above all of this? You’re just going, no?
Siobhan Montoya Lavender: I’m trying to think, I’m trying to think if I then had any interactions. I briefly met Colin Farrell, he was very friendly, and after, it’s just like, I should like talk to— because there was a situation of kind of standing in line, so I could have, like — but I don’t know, I felt shy. And then I also was in an elevator with Melissa McCarthy.
Ross Kenyon: That’s a good one. That was a good one.
Siobhan Montoya Lavender: That was a good one, and I’m trying— yeah, I don’t know. I don’t think I have any other. There weren’t any real interactions. I want to be like a climate celebrity, you know? That’s what I’m excited— like, I don’t know. Robert Downey Jr., somebody I could be like, let’s talk about carbon removal, Roberts.
Ross Kenyon: Okay, he’s a climate celebrity now, is an actor. Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert Downey Jr. rated above others who are like, let’s recycle, you know, which we should, and I value them saying that, but you know, there’s a spectrum here. Who is there? A sort of climate celebrity, I guess. The only person I could think of that comes from that world is Greta Thunberg. Is there anyone?
Siobhan Montoya Lavender: Yeah. Al Gore, for starters. I’ll go Al Gore, [unclear], but I feel like he was a politician. He was already true famous and [unclear].
Ross Kenyon: Yeah. But when you think of Al Gore, do you think of him as a vice president? Or do you think of An Inconvenient Truth? That’s the first thing that comes to mind. But 30 Rock cameo — that’s what I think of. It is like, mmm, I have to go, I hear a whale crying. Oh, that’s right, yeah.
Siobhan Montoya Lavender: I’d like— there’s, you know, like carbon removal celebrities, but they wouldn’t necessarily— I don’t know. I don’t know if the industry is large enough to merit the term celebrity for anybody who’s well-known, or, you know, any prolific authors within the carbon removal sector. But you know, I would be excited to see any of those people in real life too.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah. Carbon removal is still so bush league that if you saw someone and fanned over them — maybe like, I tweet and I do research and I have a company that only has a couple million dollars, like many companies, and I’m working. I feel like, yeah, if you fanned out over them, they might think you’re blowing smoke or something. [unclear] I don’t know. I think you two are about six months from being carbon removal celebrities.
Asa Kamer: This includes yourself, and just in general, you know, personas and being out there, being out in the world.
Ross Kenyon: I don’t really like being out in the world. I think, if I had— I don’t know. I like separation. I like to engage and play and do things, but I find too much attention makes me feel pretty uncomfortable.
Asa Kamer: It makes sense. I would say that you’re certainly a household name within the industry. I remember when you posted— the first time I met you, Ross, was because you posted on AirMiners and were like, hey, I don’t know if this is smart or stupid or if I’ll regret this, but here’s my Calendly link. Like, who wants to talk to me? And I was like, oh sh*t, I want to talk to Ross. And that’s how we met.
Siobhan Montoya Lavender: This is evidence of your celebrity status, or, you know, mediocre celebrity status in carbon removal, because I remember meeting you and you don’t remember meeting me. That’s pretty big time, almost.
Ross Kenyon: It’s been so long at this point. Where was it? But even when that— I don’t know, a year ago, a year and a half? It was like 2020, maybe. [unclear] But I feel like we’ve been in touch for so long at this point. But I sort of— there’s a continuum of this. [unclear] I was pretty tired. Nowadays, getting me to take a general meeting on a lark with someone — I’m like, I would maybe, I don’t want to be rude, but also I’m very tired.
Siobhan Montoya Lavender: So it’s because you’re a dad now. I think that has been— there. Yeah.
Ross Kenyon: You certainly— I guess we’re all parents. You have to be much more selective once you’re a parent. Those having six hours of alone time at the end of every day is no longer available to you. So you’ve got to make that 45 minutes count, and I don’t want it to be on a general meeting that goes nowhere.
Asa Kamer: Yeah, that’s a good point, for better or worse. I mean, yeah, I guess we met out of that. I think I’ve met a bunch of people out of that, but I guess now it’s the same thing. We’re all— it blurs together for me. Yeah, COVID in the last couple of years. But it’s kind of— I’m part of this group called Founders Summit and they do random pairings for like general meetings, and I think, you know, a high percentage are like a value-add, but then they, yeah, they just start to blend together. And it’s cool to meet with other founders, it’s cool to get advice and help them where I’m at or where they’re at. But yeah, there’s only so many you can really take before I feel like I’m just like a groundhog doing it a little bit, you know?
Ross Kenyon: I think finding ways to introduce some entropy into life, or some chance of random good things happening, is valuable. And the downside of it’s pretty small — you wasted half an— a couple half hours. The upside is you meet a co-founder, a future spouse, someone that you do business with. So my default is to say yes to meeting people, even if it isn’t immediately instrumentally valuable. But there’s definitely times where I’m like, I thought that was poorly spent. But of course you meet other people, sometimes you’re like, oh my God, we’re buds, and this is good right now.
Siobhan Montoya Lavender: Yeah, yeah. I tend to like to meet people. [unclear] If you want to get on a call, I’m available. Well, not— but not after my kids get back from school.
Ross Kenyon: Fourteen-minute window that you can talk to Siobhan. Enjoy.
Siobhan Montoya Lavender: I guess we met— you started memeing, we talked about this one before, your meme skills [unclear]. Although I wouldn’t be surprised if I also took you up on that open invite. I’m sure that— I’m sure we talked that way at one point too, Ross. But yeah, I mean the meme channel in AirMiners was instrumental in me meeting a lot of people who I still talk to about carbon removal.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, great.
Siobhan Montoya Lavender: I have to say, I still kind of feel like that assumption you’re talking about, Ross. Like, I’m still kind of calibrating that, because a lot of times for the Carbon Removal Newsroom, when I’m reaching out to people to be on the show, I guess I’m still always surprised that people say yes. And I don’t— I think I shouldn’t be, like, on paper or objectively, they’re known — like the guests we have and the quality of the show and the reach of the show, like, it makes sense that people would want to be on it.
But most likely it’s when there’s someone who, you know — speaking of like being a fan and geeking out on people — there’s someone I might be like, oh, I read their stuff and they’re so smart and they’re so cool. And then I’m like, they want to be on our show? And then, you know, they respond same day and I— yeah, sure, yeah, I’d love to come on the show. It’s like part of their job, it’s no big deal. But yeah, so I’m still kind of adjusting to what my confidence level should be when I just sort of open up to random people, like, you want to be on the show?
Ross Kenyon: And how many people have said no?
Siobhan Montoya Lavender: I mean, you know, a few people haven’t responded. Fewer people have said no for various reasons, but most people said yes. So like, I have to kind of— use for that. But then again, you know, the people we’re asking, and we are in a very small niche field.
Ross Kenyon: Do you know what it’s like to be an academic, where many of these papers will get— if getting a couple citations is considered success? And same thing, it’s like someone wanting to talk about your paper or your research — that’s a pretty nice offer to give some of these people, unless they go to conferences and have read a paper or something.
Siobhan Montoya Lavender: That’s it, you’re right. It can feel very like— I even had a professor in graduate school who— our assignment was to pick a peer-reviewed journal author in our field, a professor in our field, and kind of do a report on them. And the professor was assigning— they said, hey, but I don’t want this to sound like a fangirl report, like oftentimes in grad school students get really excited by all the cool research that’s being done by this individual and you think of them as the celebrity, and they’re just like me or like anybody who went to school, like they’re, you know.
But I understand that sense of like, I read everything Dennis Baldocchi has ever written on atmospheric carbon fluxes. Like, for sure, I read anything. Shout out to you, Dennis. And if I were to meet him, I don’t know how I would react. I would be pretty excited.
Ross Kenyon: He’d be weirded out by it. Can you tell his disposition— he’d definitely be weirded out by it.
Siobhan Montoya Lavender: No, I can’t tell his disposition by his academic writing. Not necessarily. But I feel like the rational human would be weirded out by somebody being so excited about their research. It’s hard to give a compliment, frankly.
Ross Kenyon: I remember, I had a blast— [unclear] having Elizabeth Kolbert on. You guys ever read her? New Yorker author. Yeah, definitely. The line— [unclear] in the show when she was on. And what I’ve always said about her is that she’s one of those writers you read who makes it look easy. She’s such a— always graceful is the first thing I think of with her, and I’m so happy. This makes me want to write, even though I know it’s like decades of experience, like such gifted prose writing. But that’s how you know it’s a good writer — well, one of the ways.
And I remember even like trying to offer that compliment, and she just— thank you. She took it kind of graciously, but there’s something that’s really kind of obnoxious, or expecting of someone, by offering them such a piece of praise. Even if it’s sincere, it’s hard to deliver that feedback in a way where they can do anything with it or metabolize it in some productive or helpful or thankful way. I don’t know, I’ve not figured it out.
Siobhan Montoya Lavender: One example — have there been others where you felt like you really were kind of gushing over the guest, or were excited about the guest and didn’t know how to kind of deliver the compliment or contain it?
Ross Kenyon: Well, is there other examples of that— I try to bring it back to our core humor-loving center here. I try never to ask questions like — did you ever see the Chris Farley sketches on SNL, where he’d have like Paul McCartney? The famous one was like, do you remember that time you were in The Beatles? Oh, my— [unclear] Like, yes. I— you know, it was good. Wow, that was awesome. So, someone in The Beatles, she’ll be like — never. Well, I’ve had guests sometimes say things like, was there a question in there? And that’s like the most deflating retort imaginable.
So like, you never ever want a guest— I’ve had, I could have— have say that to me. It was somebody who was prominent or semi-prominent, and it was rapier-like, right to the heart. It’s like that feels terrible. So anyways, I try not to leave these like massive compliments. I always try to make sure there’s tagged on the end some sort of actionable response. But it isn’t like, thank you, I appreciate it. It’s just hard to even deliver in response.
Siobhan Montoya Lavender: Who was that?
Ross Kenyon: Oh, I think it was Mark Bittman. I think actually I left it in the show, too. I said Mark Bittman as well. [unclear] It was funny enough — together, like, we always are the judge: is it more funny than embarrassing? All right, then print it. [unclear] As we’ve been saying to Siobhan — but still wounding. Have you ever been wounded by a celebrity chef, semi-prominent recipe author? I will say now that no one will care. [unclear]
Asa Kamer: But now that you mention it, there is like this— the one category of people that we have more trouble with is academics, because there’s more of this, like — I mean, in my personal experience, compared to the policy or the business categories of guest, there’s more of like a sense of like conflict of interest, or sort of like people maybe not wanting to, you know. I feel like in academia there’s more this ethos of like, you know, I’ve proven this so I can say that with certainty, but it’s harder to generalize. And it’s like that takes a certain approach to like get into media and be interesting, and obviously a lot of people do it, do it well, but I don’t know.
I just— since I said that, I’m like, well, we have had some trouble with some certain like science folks that we want to have on, that are kind of like not as interested. So anyway, just to be clear on the level, I’ve been turned down. I have to come clean [unclear]. Yeah, I think that’s the most common.
Ross Kenyon: Well, first— most common. I think I’ve had a hard time this season of Reversing Climate Change. I’ve had a number of guests where they were reaches and are people of note that go on book tours, or people listen to them when they speak. They weren’t just random academics where it’s like easier, more accessible. And then you’re competing, because they’re like, oh, what’s your reach like, and who is it, and geographically where is it located? And I’m just like, I’ve got to phrase this in the right language. Number high enough for you?
But I always had to compensate, be like, look, I will read every book this person has ever written and I will ask questions no one else will ask, and it’s the only thing that I’m good at, so you better send this person on the show. Because the numbers don’t really speak for it purely — even though the numbers themselves, I think, are pretty reasonably good for podcasting.
Siobhan Montoya Lavender: Was that— was there a question in there somewhere?
Ross Kenyon: [unclear] Siobhan, too witty for your own good today. I hate you. People do say no for other reasons. Like, I had someone, like a very, very renowned Michelin-star chef whose work is exceptional, but on Chef’s Table — would love to have her, wrote a great book, and I got all the way to her personal agent, the publicist signed off on it, and then he never even got back to me after I told him the numbers. You only have to do something like, every show gets like 500,000 downloads or something to be worth her time.
But anyways, like, the second most common reason someone says no is oftentimes because they feel like they’re in a place of decision-making or taste-making within carbon removal, and that even being on the show itself is maybe legitimizing certain positions of Nori — which, why would they feel that way, because they could come on and say Nori sucks and here’s all the reasons why. And if they were good enough to be on the show, I would still have them on to do that, assuming it would make for good radio. But I think that like conflict of interest kind of vibe, I think that is pretty common. I think it’s because Nori’s a private company, they sense that.
Siobhan Montoya Lavender: That’s your take— 100%, 100%. And it’s hard, I think, once you’re at the point of trying to convince someone or explain, like, what— you can say whatever you want, we’re totally game for that. If you’re already at that point, I think there’s probably already like less of a comfort level and people are maybe kind of less interested. You know, it’s hard, it’s hard to come back once there’s that initial hesitation.
I mean, there’s some who I’ve, you know, had a bit more of a dialogue with and then they decided to come on. Like, I’ll give a lot of credit to David Ho, speaking of carbon removal tastemakers from the internet. He’s got a pretty good reach, but he’s someone who’s very skeptical — well, I don’t want to characterize him, but I think he’s expressed skepticism of certain carbon removal methods, and maybe the motivation of certain forces within carbon removal that are maybe not as interested in decarbonization.
I don’t want to characterize— but, you know, his opinions are pretty well out there. But let’s just say yes, he has strong skeptical opinions within carbon removal, and I think was maybe like not sure, but he came on and gave opinions that I think were at some points challenging, either to Nori or maybe some of the things, like some of the questions that I posed. And he very much entered into the sort of spirit of it — not being like, coming on being like, this means I agree with everything. Like, I probably don’t, and I’m like, here’s why. And you know, he was pretty direct about some of that stuff, but I thought it was a really good show.
Ross Kenyon: And [unclear] is really important within climate tech in general. Nuance is critical. So yeah, bring on the nuance, bring on the educated differing opinions.
Siobhan Montoya Lavender: I agree. And for me, my goal is to make the show as interesting and engaging and educational as possible. And I think that when someone’s willing to come on with that, they’ve taken it pretty far along towards like it being a good episode, you know? Someone smart and interested in the subject who’s willing to kind of lean into that — it makes my role actually really easy. So I kind of appreciate when someone’s like, yeah, let’s get into it.
Let’s, you know — I’m not, I feel comfortable to say what I, you know, maybe have some different opinions than people on the show or Nori or whatever, which is like, does not enter my mind. I’m not going into the show being, well, Nori’s position is this, so people, the guests, need to say that. And I understand why people don’t know that right away, because they have no idea how our production works, and it’s fair to assume. But I always feel like I want to explain that to people — like, I’m really not thinking about that, and I don’t expect you to think about that. And there’s no like pressure from above to be like, these are the carbon removal points of view that we support on Carbon Removal Newsroom. No, not at all. That is not how it goes down.
Ross Kenyon: It would be so boring, too. I get worried if everyone in the room all agrees on everything, and I start feeling like I need to throw out something. [unclear] We’re all just going to like pat each other on the back about how right we are, and that for the purpose of truth-seeking is bad, but for the purpose of listenable radio, double bad. Probably like beyond a shadow of a— like, I agree.
And as soon as— I don’t— like a little more spice, almost, in carbon removal. Like, but how can I agree with this point? But should I disagree? What do I say about that? Asa, you’re supposed to be the meta one. You can’t let Siobhan— [unclear] I don’t think I can compete with you on that. [unclear] Siobhan naturally takes the counterpoint, which I like about you.
Siobhan Montoya Lavender: You can just say thank you to that compliment. Thank you. It can be obnoxious at points, though, and it depends if I’m broken-fasted or not that day, just how annoying I am about it. But I try to be pretty neutral, or, you know, scout out exactly where the fault lines are on things. I think that’s more fun than being a little bit too— light, or too— yeah.
Ross Kenyon: But sometimes, like, I think you even do it in the Meme Lab, and I’m not even sure you agree with your own perspective, but you’re like, hey, somebody needs to disagree with the general direction here. But like, sometimes it creates funny new dynamic content, you know? So it works.
I don’t always think— someone— like, Christie’s very good at pushing back on certain things, and especially the captions that go out that are actually in the meme, that are the associated text in Twitter. Like, [unclear] I’ll oftentimes want to make some my-comedy-nerd in-joke, and she’ll be like, that’s super, super niche and obscure. Yeah, I’m like, the five people who like carbon removal and Tim and Eric are going to love this caption. She’s like, this doesn’t work, how about something like this? So even today, she came up with the Nathan For CO2 caption, which was brilliant. I’m like, thank you for sticking your neck out. I always try to thank people for sticking their neck out like that, dude.
So there was— like, took my word for it, I feel like it would be much weaker. And yeah, good job, Christie. Shout out to Christie.
Siobhan Montoya Lavender: Agree. Yeah. Christie’s getting more and more comfortable.
Ross Kenyon: Some might say too comfortable. [unclear] We’ll have a private chat about that later. Christie is [unclear] when we were talking about how— for CRN. Because, you know, we had Holly Buck on as a regular guest or regular host, and hopefully one day she’ll return. I’m not going to say she’s gone.
Siobhan Montoya Lavender: So hope so. I miss Holly. I haven’t heard from her in a long time either. I’m not even really over it, but she did have to leave for another position. But she was like so perfect for our show, and she’s, you know, of a certain— like, on the left politically, but has very idiosyncratic— and like, means she uses, and often takes a second position you might not expect, or at least brings in information you might not expect. And so I thought she was really good for kind of like a left-right kind of counterpoint with Chris Barnard.
Not— that’s how it always is. Not just— hopefully we can [unclear]. Sometimes it was like so idiosyncratic and I’m like, oh, you guys ended up in a similar place, dang it.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, totally, totally.
Siobhan Montoya Lavender: Yeah. I don’t want to pigeonhole either of them, but I’m just saying that’s kind of the general thing. But that being said, when she had to go, we were trying to think of other people. And Ross, I remember you being like, you know, we don’t just necessarily want like a run-of-the-mill like climate progressive, because that point of view is like really well represented and can be boring — or not the point of view, but it can be boring. I don’t know, I think there’s a certain point of view within climate that is really well represented, and that is [unclear] your way of putting it.
I mean, and so yeah, I just thought that was like a good challenge, to be like, let’s not over-represent something that’s like pretty well represented out there. And maybe that goes to the sort of not wanting it to be too, too agreeable and too kind of, we’re on the same page. And yeah, I don’t know, I just thought that was a good directive. And yeah, what I want is to be productive disagreement, too. I wouldn’t want to just find someone incendiary and just kind of— it would be spicy. That sounds like Fox News, a product, you know?
Ross Kenyon: No kidding. Who’s gonna— who’s gonna yell the loudest? But yeah. Well, thanks for saying— I thought that was— your way to go. I think one of the ways I think about it is that we’re trying to grow carbon removal overall, and a lot of the progressive, like kind of straightforward progressive climate voices are pretty well established. I don’t think it’s like a growth area. So how do you bring people in? What’s the additionality of one more progressive climate podcast? Like, probably not that high — they’re there already. How do you do something like Chris, or you get Holly’s idiosyncratic Marxism? Like, that combination doesn’t exist anywhere, it’s only here. We’re the only people with that weird thing.
So that’s how I think about communications products in general — how do you make something new or worth listening to? Like what we have done. If there was already a really well-established meme culture, I probably would have just skipped it and been like, let’s just go right to TikTok, or go to some other platform that doesn’t exist yet — carbon removal VR. I don’t know what that is, but it’s going to happen one day and we’re going to be doing it.
We actually had an idea recently. Paul’s wanted to do this for a long time — maybe introduce ourselves? I don’t know how— where I’m going to do this moment, we will just ignore it. But anyways, Ross Kenyon here from Nori. It’s way too late for that. But our CEO and co-founder of Nori, Paul Gambill, has long wanted to do a satirical newspaper, something like The Onion, ClickHole, PatriotHole, The Babylon Bee, The Beaverton, [unclear] — any of those rags — and do it for climate and carbon removal.
I mean, think about how to do it. And one of our marketing people, Heidi, is like, I only ever read the headline, really, for Reductress, and then see the image. I said, why don’t we just do memes like that? Why do you want to write an article — which, by the way, writing anything is extremely onerous and annoying, for the most part.
Asa Kamer: Fair point, because I feel like when I read The Onion, I never click on it. I just read headlines. Some of them are worth clicking on, but mostly not — mostly the headline is 90-something percent of the joke.
Ross Kenyon: The one exception is, I saw one that was ClickHole, that was called like Little Leisure Lords — how to get your leisure-loving son out of the sauna, really, a slideshow appraisal. Little Leisure Lord — perfect, perfect alliteration. So funny. So that’s one of the only ones I had to read through the entirety of, but I love ClickHole. That’s probably my favorite website.
Asa Kamer: ClickHole, yeah. Just as an aside, I think my favorite one that I always think of — it still makes me giggle — is just, let’s rank the religions. It just cuts out like someone just pitched it in a meeting, and probably said it exactly like that. It’s just absurd.
Ross Kenyon: I think we should do— we should come up with like a— we could just put it on the carbon removal memes account, but have like a masthead of like, I don’t know what the title, the name would be, and then that could just be like one of the formats we do. Paul wants to call it The Warm-Up, which was his preference.
Siobhan Montoya Lavender: The thing that is different about those, from our account, is that they often are like very snarky, and like usually there’s like a very specific butt of the joke. So I wonder, like, who exactly would we be making fun of? Because I know we try to like avoid some of that, like tribalism and sort of like fighting against different groups and stuff. So we might have to think about how that would work.
Ross Kenyon: Can always make fun of ourselves.
Siobhan Montoya Lavender: It’s very true.
Ross Kenyon: I wrote one for— I got ghosted by— Seattle has a satirical newspaper, it’s called like The Needling or something like that. What is it called? I haven’t seen it in a while. But I wrote one— my apartment used to overlook the fisheries. And so in our early days, and I wasn’t sure if we were going to get funding or if this was going to work, I would look out the window and be like, if we ever fail, I can just go out there and get a job as a fisherman. I wrote an article about like a startup failing, and then like the guy trying to become a fisherman and how he was received by the fishermen already down there.
Siobhan Montoya Lavender: I thought— really poorly is the end of that story, right?
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, very. I’m not cut out for a life on the fisheries. And they never responded to me, though. I thought it was actually quite a funny piece. But anyway, I’ve wanted to do something like this for a while.
We can also— I mean, Heidi’s pitched a couple here, we can even pull them up real quick. We can start wrapping up, or even cut this— [unclear] to put the juices— and work the squeeze here. Maybe you should come out and hang with us sometimes, Heidi. But she says it’s like the original Reductress image was a woman and her dog, and it says, dogs are a reflection of their owners, says woman whose dog also doesn’t know what a Roth IRA is. And so Heidi’s pitch was the same beginning, but says, woman whose dog also doesn’t know the difference between carbon offsets and removals. Boom.
Like, I feel like you could do that, keep the Reductress branding and tagging and the same image, and now it’s a meme. And then it’s a meme. I love this idea of re-captioning — these are changing into their output, because it does most of the work for you. The, like, Mad Libs form of the joke is presented and you fill in carbon removal. Is this a good idea? I can’t tell.
Siobhan Montoya Lavender: I think— I think that’s [unclear]. Yeah, chill.
Ross Kenyon: Another one that was pretty funny, which was— it was just an image of like a New York subway. Original caption was, good for her: train being held momentarily. And then it’s, good for her: after being traded five times, carbon credit finally retired.
Siobhan Montoya Lavender: [unclear] Yeah, yeah. I like the brutality of that one.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, yeah. We’re gonna get some good pitches from people lately.
Siobhan Montoya Lavender: How would we do this — would you actually like wipe the text and rewrite it, or would you do that thing where you kind of like black over the text and then make it clear that we’re adding onto an existing image?
Ross Kenyon: I think we do it from scratch, but you still keep the Reductress tag or now. Yeah, image. But like the text— because I think sometimes it’s funny to just like paste over, but I think with this format it’s already creating a joke, and I think we’d make it with their own kind of font. [unclear]
Is this too meta, Asa? Here, read a satirical newspaper that’s making fun of reality, and then you’re using that to make a second-tier joke. This is like the Nathan For You Rehearsal, Synecdoche, New York, nested realities. And like, life is but a stage kind of thing.
Asa Kamer: I certainly think it’s worth a try. I don’t think the stakes are too high, but anyway, we have a loyal following on social media for our memes and they’ll go with us to this new place.
Ross Kenyon: It keeps growing, and it’s growing— been trying to like conceptualize how important or relevant this kind of is. Did you ever hear— I was doing research on— who said that? I think it was Brian Eno saying this about the Velvet Underground: it’s like they only sold 10,000 records, but everyone who bought one went and started a band.
Asa Kamer: Yeah, I’ve heard that one.
Ross Kenyon: That’s like what carbon removal memes feel like to me. It’s like, I look at the people following it and like every single one of these people is like working on policy, or has a company, or will start a company. Just like us.
Siobhan Montoya Lavender: Yeah, love it. You’re the Lou Reed of carbon removal, Ross.
Ross Kenyon: I don’t know that I want— that was not an appropriate complimentary way. [unclear] Well, and this seems like a natural place to start even wrapping it. I feel like if we wanted to, we could have wrapped it a little bit ago. But anything else? Any last, last thoughts?
Asa Kamer: I think that’s good. I agreed to kind of settle around and find out if like these kind of shows are better in like a half hour. This is the longer format, I don’t know.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I guess we’ll see. You’ll only ever know if it’s good or bad if it is really good or really bad, and most of the— you’ll never hear about. So that’s what it will be like — it was fine. Or they’ll think you’re terrible, or they’ll think it’s amazing. So this is a bonus episode, too, so we’re trying to keep the cadence of the regular shows on Tuesday and then have something fun for Fridays. That’s a little deep— think that’s a good strategy, probably.
Asa Kamer: Yeah, I’m not sure. Still a work in progress.
Ross Kenyon: Okay, let’s end it. Asa, Siobhan, thanks for coming on.
Siobhan Montoya Lavender: Thanks for having me. [unclear]
Ross Kenyon: [unclear] Even let myself off the hook, doing a typical sign-on. And you know what to do — give us five stars, write something nice about us on one of those platforms, tell a friend. I just did it. I just did a worse version of it. So anyway, bye-bye.
Thank you so much for listening. If you could please subscribe and give us a great rating and review on Apple Podcasts, or a rating on Spotify, that’d be much appreciated. It helps us get our content out to more people. You can sign up for our newsletter at nori.com. Follow us on social media. We will catch you next time.
