What Will It Take?

United States of America for the next four years. At eleven twenty four am Eastern Time, CNN called the president election for Joe Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris. Within twenty minutes, every major network followed suit. The race was over. But even as one question was answered, another still loomed large. Well America now finally be able to move forward and tackle the hard problems facing the country and the world. My name is Eric Lander, and I'm

the host of Brave New Planet. When we began planning the seven episodes of Brave New Planet more than a year ago, I never imagined we'd be wrapping up in the days just after a presidential election. We'd originally planned to complete and release this series in spring twenty twenty, but as with so many things, those plans were upended by the pandemic. Somehow, though, the timings turned out to

be fitting Brave New Plant. And it's about amazing science and technology that also poses hard challenges, But it's also about how we're going to need to come together and work together to make wise choices in many areas. Yes, scientific problems, from the current pandemic to climate change, but also societal problems from economic security to racial justice. Brave New Planet has tried to show smart, thoughtful, passionate people who agree on the facts and even agree on the

societal goals, but who disagree on solutions. Yet nonetheless they grapple with complex problems, argue with respect, occasionally even change their minds, and make some progress even where there are no easy answers. To my mind, it's the only path forward. Brave New Planet's mission is to invite everyone into these conversations. So today's big question, what's it going to take to do more of this as a society, to find common

ground on goals and argue productively about solutions. As I thought about this question, it occurred to me that scientists aren't the only people who spend their days gathering information to try to help society solve problems. Journalists do too, So I thought that a conversation between a scientist and a journalist about the common challenges we face might be enlightening.

I reached out to journalist Nila Boodoo. NILA's worked for Reuters, the Miami Herald, and in public radio, where she's hosted shows on WBEZ Chicago. Now she's the host of Axios Today, a new daily morning news podcast. Nila Boodoo, Welcome to Brave New Planet. Hi, Eric, thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. Oh, it's

great to have you. So, Nila, I'd love to start with how scientists and journalists can with the public, At least in science, I think there's often a real problem with humility and trust. You know. For example, when scientists talk about what do we have to do to make progress on problems, one of the first things people suggest is more science education. That doesn't get me wrong, I'm

not opposed to more science education. I teach. I love it, But I think there's an underlying assumption there that the problem is that people are just ignorant, that if they just got more science education, they'd know the facts or accept the facts and fall in line with the solutions. And I don't think that's the right place to start. I mean, scientists do spend their days swimming around in facts, but I don't think that's a reason to be looking down on people. I think there's ever a reason to

be looking down on people. It's not a good posture. We might have been able to get away with it in the science of the nineteen fifties and sixties. You know, the authority of scientists in the White Lab Code or something, but scientists don't have a monopoly on the insights that are going to matter. I think, you know, we have to go in feeling we got something really important to contribute, but it's only part of the puzzle. Yeah, I'm wondering, Nilot,

do you see that same issue in journalism? Well, I think it's the same thing you said, right, Like, so you said that, you know the idea that scientists in the nineteen fifties or sixties or whatever, there's this idea that scientists where its sort of the end all be all of information. Journalists were like that too right. We used to think that we were in charge of broadcasting out the information to people, and I think, certainly in

my career as a journalist, we've seen that shift. With the advent of social media the way that information flows, journalists play a role. I think journalists play a very important role in moderating, in sifting through, in amplifying voices that don't have an opportunity to do that. But we are not the source of I mean, we do not

broadcast information out to people anymore. And I think when you talk about trust, which is a really important thing that comes up in journalism, do people trust what we do? I think a major reason why a lot of people don't trust what journalists do is because of the way that we go about doing it, and I think not having a humble attitude. Now, I will say, when you look at the data about this, people don't trust the media. And first of all, I will start with the premise,

I'm not quite sure what the media is. So I always say that first, like that's kind of my first phrase to everyone is what is this media? I'm not sure what you mean? And when you break it down, I think people who have relationships, for example, with local journalists. Those institutions score very high. People trust those local institutions, local journalists as accurate and credible sources of information. I think when you look at the national level, that's where

you see more of a breakdown. What do you think about that question of trust? I wonder how important that is as well when we're thinking about journalism and in your case science. Oh boy, So look, trust, I think is the next layer up over humility. You got to come in with a humble attitude. But what do we

mean by trust the scientists. There's maybe two kinds of trust that are worth distinguishing between this kind of blind trust, that nineteen fifties nineteen sixties thing of just deferred to me as the scientist because I know better than you. I think there's actually instead a different kind of trust, and I might call it like earned trust. Earned trust is I'm going to be if I'm the scientist or the doctor. I'm going to be transparent about the evidence

we have. I'll tell you why I believe things, and every bit is important. I'm going to be transparent about what we don't know. I don't trust people who don't say I don't know. Some of the time, I don't trust people who can't explain to me why they believe

the things they believe. So I think we are shifting and maybe it's true for journalism as well, but certainly in science, to the idea that people should be asking questions, they should be probing, and if scientists should bring doubt about other people's results in evidence, why shouldn't the general public bring doubt. But again, it's worth distinguishing two kinds of doubt. There's kind of the cynical doubt. I just

don't trust this science stuff. You know, the diet studies keep contradicting each other, or you can't trust science because they can't make up their minds, And I think that's a very cynical, nehalistic kind of doubt. I think there's a kind of doubt that I would love to see more of, which is empowered doubt. I'm not going to believe you until you give me the evidence, show me

hard evidence. So that's the kind of empowered doubt that you know, we want to have because that gets people like properly at the table as peers in this thing. I fantasize about, you know, how the FDA might go

through its drug approval process for coronavirus vaccines. Just this week, Feisser issued a press release saying it had really positive results from its vaccine trial, and the press release didn't have a lot of details, which was, you know, some people noted and they're gonna have to come forward with those details. But I'm imagining how do we get the

country involved in the drug approval process. And so you can imagine like a Reddit Ama where you know, the country's sending in questions and folks at the other side, maybe both the drug company and the FDA are trying to answer them. And now I don't I don't know all effects. I'll just make this up, so don't don't take these numbers to be exactly right, but it might

go something like this. The company starts by saying, well, we ran a clinical trial with forty thousand people and half got the vaccine and half got a placebo, and then we waited until ninety five people had gotten infected and shown symptoms. And we looked and we found that ninety out of those ninety five people were people who got the placebo, and only five of them were people who got the vaccine. And so it looks like the vaccine is doing a pretty good job of protecting people.

But then people will write in and they'll say, okay, well, tell me what do you know about elderly people, people over seventy did they get protection? What about men? What about people who have serious health complications? How long is this protection gonna last? And are there side effects? Some of the times the answers are going to be we just don't know. We haven't got enough data yet, we haven't run long enough to see how long protection might last.

I think people are smartan they can take the information what we know and what we don't know, and make decisions based on that. So I think that's really the foundation of trust. Earn trust is to be direct and transparent about what we know and what we don't know. Yeah, so do you think the credibility then you sort of build the credibility and trust with the government regulator and in having for example, the CDC or the FDA be

incredibly transparent about the whole process. Well, the government is here to represent the people, and it's got to do that job in a way that actually works. Given the tensions around all these things and skepticism that has occurred and conflicts, I think the more transparent we can be,

the more that we earn trust. So I think transparency is one thing, but then also the actual message and the knowledge, because I think oftentimes we tend to see this as a binary choice of it either has to be simple and easy to understand, or it's we're going to get the full information and it's complex. This is inherently the problem I think with science communication, and this

is something as a journalist we struggle with. How do you distill something down into a way in my case that someone is just hearing it, so they're not even going to read it, they just hear it. How much can they really take in at that point? Well, it's interesting. I think Axeos talks about sort of smart brevity. Yeah, that's a thing. So I think communication is a really important thing, and in general science has not mastered the art of communication. Putting things in such complete detail that

they're incomprehensible is not very helpful. I don't know how often you take the package insert out of a drug and read that big thin piece of paper when you unfolded and look at all of the background data on this drug. But I bet you know, maybe that's as often as you read the click license on a piece of software. Actually, you know what I was going to say.

My mother's a pharmacist, So I just ask her. And actually, that I think is the key, Right I ask someone who I know has the knowledge and I trust, and I think she will distill it down for me. So your mother plays the role of good scientific communication and good journalistic communication. And the problem is most people don't have your mother, And so how do we manage to get things clear without pulling the wool over anybody's eyes

without oversimplifying? Albert Einstein famously said, and it's one of the things I quote very often. Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler, finding that happy medium of saying there is nothing about this vaccine approval or many other things that can't be explained clearly without oversimplifying. I think communicating with honesty and clarity is the heart of it. And I'll say the one leg up I feel like I have is at MIT, I teach freshmen

freshman holds your feet to the fire. They want to know, but they want it clearly, And so I think this is something we all have to aspire to if we're going to get a country that's involved in making wise decisions, whether journalistically or scientifically. So Nyla, let's turn to this question of bringing people together. Many people feel like they just want to give up on the prospect of bringing people together. Everybody's in their tribes. Okay, maybe, but this

isn't gonna work in the long runs. So how do we find common grounds or at least find meeting ground where we can meet and talk with each other. Because I do think most people deep down do want the same thing things. They want their family to be secure. They would like to have a healthy planet, you know,

a healthier life for themselves, more peace. I was struck in the election coverage that there were instances where people tried not to go head on saying I want to convince you to vote for my candidate, but instead to ask what's bothering you? What's on your mind? What are you worried about? By listening and establishing what are common goals, when may be able to circle back and say, okay, if that's the goal, what are the ways we might

get there? Now I realize I may seem like a hopeless optimist here, and it's not like I'm I'm unrealistic about it. It's just I don't see anything else that works other than trying to find that kind of meeting ground amongst people, and any kind of change has to start by finding something that shared. So I don't know

what your experiences has been with this. I think that what I have found as a journalist, and this kind of goes back again to communication, but I think it also goes back to this idea of humility is language is really important here because I think that the way that you frame something tells people how to think about something. So, for example, as a journalist, when I am interviewing someone, I always ask them a question, which seems like a

very simple thing. But actually, if you listen to a lot of journalists when they're interviewing people, they don't ask them questions. They make statements or they say, tell me about something. Well, if you tell someone to tell you about something, they're going to tell you about something. Oh that is so interesting because I hadn't actually processed before that tell me about something is not really asking a question.

And so this is my pet peeve as a broadcast journalist and as a host, that you should never say tell me about something to someone you shouldn't because you can always ask it as a question, because I actually think our brains hear that differently and they process that differently.

And I think that's just one example of how language can be so important when we're thinking about And this is of course we parse every word, you know, as journalists and as a broadcast journalist, and on our podcast it is not live, and so we literally do parse

every word. And I wonder for you how you've seen language is important to you, especially as you think about brave New planet, right, And when I think about, like you have this idea, I want to ask you, like this whole idea of like stewards of the brave New planet. That's an interesting choice of word that you have, stewarts. It's a very deliberate one. Stewards of the Brave New

Planet was chosen very intentionally. I think across the political spectrum, from religious conservatives to very progressive people, there is some shared sense of stewardship in Eastern religion, the idea that people are stewards of the planet, you know, that's fundamental and biblical. We all feel like we have an obligation to be and want to be stewards of this planet, and so it dawned on me one day that this was a word that we didn't have to argue about.

And if we have the common mission of being stewards, we can now have a serious discussion about how can we be the best stewards. But we start by being on the same side. And so let's be optimistic and say that we have established a common ground and that we're working on building trust. We've been talking about the pandemic we've had. You've had some really practical solutions for that.

Because I remain I would say, as a journalist, I am an optimist, but I'm always a skeptical journalist, and I remained very concerned about our ability the country to unite around the science of the pandemic. I share your concern. We all should be very concerned about it and therefore work hard to try to overcome it. But then when we think about other issues that are just as big, arguably bigger, like climate change, I wonder, how do we do that well. I think that's a great example to

think about climate change. We went through a long period of time when the argument is climate changing. I think we've largely moved past that. The question now is what do we do about it? What worries me is how many people feel overwhelmed, pessimistic that there's no prospect of doing anything without wrecking the economy and dramatically changing daily life, you know, banning hamburgers and airplanes. I think it's provoked many people across the whole political spectrum to just throw

up their hands. I think it's terrible. We don't want people to feel fatalist, stick and pessimistic and overwhelmed. You know, the ultimate answer, it's a climate change. It's actually pretty straightforward. The only thing that will work in the long run is to make renewable energy that's cheaper than fossil fuels. The minute that happens, the market will move to renewables on its own. So the answer has to be innovation. It's just how do you get that innovation. Now, we've

already seen a lot of progress. The cost of solar energy and wind energy has been dropping dramatically. In some places, that's cheaper than burning oil. Now, we still need a lot more better battery storage and better electrification, but there's every reason to think we can do it. So the national goal ought to be for America to lead the world in inventing and producing and selling new energy technologies. And you know that way, addressing climate change and promoting

economic growth don't have to really be in conflict. There's actually a great historical example. One of the reasons America became the leader in semiconductors and computers is that the government created huge incentives for the semiconductor industry. Way back in the nineteen fifties. The military bought huge quantities of semiconductors even when they were too expensive to be commercially viable.

They called it pump priming. So on climate change, I think we have our incentives completely backward right now, and I think most Americans could get together around the idea of using incentives to unleash American innovation. How much do you think that inertia for lack of a better word, whether we're thinking of big things like changes in technology and innovation with climate change, but I'm also really thinking more on the individual level about people feeling overwhelmed and

pessimistic and sort of resigned. How much of that do you think results from the way that we communicate, And by that I'm talking primarily about social media. I think that's a significant issue. Looking back. There was a time that I think most Americans thought America could do anything could put its mind to. I don't think people feel that as much as they should, but there was a sense not that long ago that we could tackle any challenge.

I don't think the kinds of wars that people get into over social media and takedowns, I don't think they're really conducive to letting people have big aspirations. I think there are amazing things we can get done. Look at what's gotten done over the last fifty years, everything that's

been able to be transformed. We can still do that because I see this as something where people on the left and people on the right both know that that's true, and they you know, some may come from a market orientation, some may come from from a research orientation, but we know we've pulled things like this off in the past, and so I'd like to reorient the discussion. So on that note, how if we're thinking about the stewards who are listening, what is your final advice or tips for them?

Do something doesn't matter what Go make a curriculum for schools on some topic that you care about or that we talked about in the program. Go organize the discussion, Go talk to you know, a local legislator about it. I think the key is to start. The point is, if you feel pessimistic, if you feel overwhelmed, if you feel paralyzed, that's terrible. Do something something will lead to

something else. Now, no one person changes the whole world, but together changing our attitude that we can make change. That is really important. It's the basis of science. When people set out to try to cure cancer, they say, oh, my god, that goal is so huge, how am I going to do it? And yet scientists, step by step, they take a piece of the problem and they make

progress against it. And so we go from the nineteen seventies when nobody had a clue what cancer was about two people understanding, oh, cancer is caused by genetic mutations, and then discovering, oh, sometimes we can make drugs that block the effects of those mutations. Oh, we can harness the immune system to make therapies. You know, any given week, any given months, you might feel pessimistic because you don't

really see progress. But if you step back and look over the course of a decade or two, it's breathtaking how much progress can happen. I think science and society are pretty similar in this regard. You can take on huge challenges that of enough people are moving that forward. Oh, we end up making a big difference. Well, thank you. I'm glad that we found common ground, and I appreciate so much that you were willing to sit down and talk to me about all of these things. It's an honor.

I appreciate it. Thank you, well, thank you, Nila. It's been great to talk. And to all the listeners out there, I hope you'll check out NILA's podcast Axios today. So there you haven't stewards of the Brave New Planet. It really is time to choose our future. There are so many amazing opportunities ahead and so many challenges to getting this right. We can't just throw up our hands and leave it to others to decide. We all of us have responsibility to make sure that we make wise choices.

It's going to take a lot. It's going to take a commitment to renewing the compact between science and society and to following the evidence. It's going to take humility. Science is an amazingly powerful way to create new possibilities, but we also have to ask what could possibly go wrong. It's going to take trust and doubt, not blind trust,

not cynical doubt. It's going to take earned trust and empowered doubt where anyone can raise questions and we're all transparent about what we know and what we don't know. And it's going to take engagement from everyone. Government, university, scientific against its corporations, unions, faith groups, student organizations and geo's all willing to debate in good faith about hard questions. I'm an optimist, but a realistic optimist. It's going to

take a lot of work, but what's the alternative? And getting this right as great rewards. I'm committed and I hope you are too. I look forward to continuing the conversation utopia or dystopia, It really is up to us. Thank you for listening. Brave New Planet is a co production of the Brode Institute of Might and Harvard Pushkin Industries in the Boston Globe, with support from the Alfred P.

Sloane Foundation. Our show is produced by Rebecca Lee Douglas with Mary Doo theme song composed by Ned Porter, mastering and sound designed by James Garver, fact checking by Joseph Fridman, and a Stitt and Enchant special Thanks to Christine Heenan and Rachel Roberts at Clarendon Communications, to Lee mc guire, Kristen Zarelli and Justine Levin Allerhand at the Broade, to mil Lobell and Heather Faine at Pushkin, and to Eli and Edy Brode who made the Brode Institute possible. This

is brave new planet. I'm Eric Lander.