Hello, it's Welcome to Episode 565 of Geek's Guide to the Galaxy. I'm David Barr Kirtley, author of the book Save Me, Please, and other stories. Publishers Weekly says, visceral settings and robust characters will have readers marveling at how much Kirtley is able to fit into a limited page count. For SFF fans with no time to sink into a door stopper, these concentrated doses of John Regunis will hit the spot. And Kirtley's refused rights. Kirtley and Poisharp can
size-prose that complements his puckish sense of humor. The author's passionate voice breathes life into this wonderful way of tales. So again, the book is called Save Me, Please, and other stories. And it's available now on Amazon.com. And our guest today is David Sirota. He's the editor of the Political News site, The Leopard, and his writing has appeared in
Jacobin Magazine and the Guardian. He served as Bernie Sanders speech writer during the 2020 presidential campaign, and his podcast Meltown, about the 2008 financial crisis, was named to one of the best podcasts of the year by The Atlantic. And in this interview, we'll be discussing his work on the Netflix movie Don't Look Up, about vacuous elite to ignore the danger of an approaching comet. And his book Back to Our Future, How the 1980s explain
the world to be living now, our culture, our politics, our everything. And now here's our interview with David Sirota. Alright, so we're here with David Sirota. Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Okay, so in your book Back to Our Future, you talk about how as a kid, 80s pop culture was almost like your religion. So tell us about that. Yeah, so I grew up watching like everybody, a lot of TV, a lot of movies, and they weren't
they were build as a political these TV shows movies. I mean, we're talking about everything from the Cosby Show to Ghostbusters to, you know, all the all the iconic movies. And they they they weren't build as political content. They were they were considered pop culture. And they were pop culture. But the point of the of the book that I wrote was that they were obviously sending very political messages to lots and lots of kids, lots and lots of
people. And that those political messages ended up reinforcing a set of ideological principles that I think still stay with us today. And we can go into some some examples. But I mean, as an example, one easy example is as I wrote about in the book, the whole story, for instance, you think about the story of Ghostbusters, right? What is the story of Ghostbusters, one of the most famous iconic movies of the of the era? Well, the story is that there
is a security problem in New York City. The government is inept, can't deal with it, it has to hire a set of private for-profit contractors to fix the problem. And that the real villain in the movie is a guy from the EPA, the bureaucrat, who's overly zealous in enforcing environmental laws. I mean, there's a lot of ideology in there. Yeah. Well, when you talk about these these ideological assumptions, I mean, so the
way I would phrase it is, so there was four that I kind of highlighted. So one is that the 50s were an idyllic time, whereas the 60s were violent and chaotic. Two problems are solved by talented superstars, not by government. Three, the US military is awesome. And four racism is the thing of the past. Do you think that's a pretty good summary? Is there anything else you can add? Yeah, I mean, those are those are those are that's
a lot of them. And I think I should add that I think a lot of the the military stuff in the 1980s, you know, it was deliberate selling of ideology. There's a really in my book, there's one of the chapters that I enjoyed writing the most was a chapter about the so-called military entertainment complex. And it was all about how back in the early in mid 1980s, all had really soured on the idea of military adventurism in the aftermath of the Vietnam
more. And there were a lot of Vietnam more movies that good ones that that rightly lamented the specific decisions to go into Vietnam, et cetera, et cetera. So the military, it wasn't that it wasn't respected. It just it was looked at more more with more circumspection by the population than it is today. And so the military realized it had kind of a branding
problem. And so the movie Top Gun as an example, when it came out and it was so popular, and it's obviously a celebration of military of the military and military adventurism, the Pentagon made a big thing about the recruiting tables outside of the movie theaters. The Pentagon helped make that movie. So what I'm getting at is that the Pentagon and Hollywood
actually forged a very close relationship starting in the 1980s. I mean, there had always been a relationship, but really forged a much closer relationship starting in the 1980s, where the Pentagon was trading access to military hardware, access for filmmakers, as long as the filmmakers would submit their scripts to line editing by the Pentagon effectively
to make the military and military adventurism look good. Yeah. And that definitely out of the mid examples in the book, that really seems wrong to me that these are, you know, these aircraft carriers and jets and everything are public and we're paid for by taxpayers and use of them should not be contingent on having a particular public relations spinner
or ideology. So I don't know if anyone's working on that. But I mean, but the particular example that struck me the most was you talk about this movie 13 days about the Cuban Missile Crisis, where the Pentagon complains that the script made the generals look like war mongers and the studio responds, well, here's the White House tapes. We're just taking the dialogue exactly as it happens in history. And even that wasn't good enough to get past
the military sensors. I mean, it's an incredible story that that particular story I'm glad you keyed in on it. It's really an incredible story. This story of how they were trying to make a movie about what happened and the Pentagon tried to try to obstruct them because they were telling a story that was factually accurate that the Pentagon didn't like. It was verifiably demonstrably accurate. So again, it goes to this relationship between Hollywood
studios and the Pentagon. And I want to be clear, that's not a relic. That exists stronger than ever today. It boggles the mind that people are walking into movie theaters or streaming movies in which the Pentagon literally line edited the script. And people are not all that well aware of this, if at all. Right. And you talk a lot in the book about movies like Red Dawn that had an explicitly intentional right-wing message. But then a lot of these
movies I would imagine didn't have an intentional message. I mean, Hollywood is sort of famously a liberal. I don't know what you think about that. But I mean, it doesn't seem likely to me that, you know, when you're talking about movies like Ghostbusters or Back to the Future that people were sitting down intentionally intending to make them shift politics to the right. So kind of, I don't know, do you agree with that? And if that is the case, how
did that happen that it added like left-wing Hollywood? You got all these, this right-wing cultural shift in the 80s? Well, first of all, I actually don't think Hollywood is all that left-wing. I mean, so maybe socially liberal, I guess. I don't think it's all that economically lefty or progressive. I don't think on national security issues it is at all. I actually tend to think that Hollywood is like everything, like other industries in America. Essentially, A, political and willing
to do, when willing to be mercenary, to make as much money as possible. So I agree with you that a lot of what has produced, most of what's produced and has been produced by Hollywood even back in the 80s, was not designed to, there weren't guys in a smoky room saying, how do we move people to the right? I don't think that's what was going on. I think what was more going on was, okay, the political zeitgeist of the moment in the Reagan era, this
and this, these themes are popular. People are voting for them. Politicians are echoing them. We want to get people into the seats to pay tickets to go see movies. So let's just amplify that more. I mean, you talk so much in the book about just loving all this stuff as a kid, being such a super fan of all this pop culture. So when
did you start looking at something like Ghostbusters or back to the future? When did it first occur to you, like that there might be something that concerns you about movies like that? And to be clear, I still love all this stuff. I mean, I still all rewatch Ghostbusters of its own. I mean, the A team has a similar kind of storyline. I love all this. I guess what I'm saying is I'm not a party pooper here. I love this stuff. It's entertaining. I
see the value in it. I think when I got a little older, I started saying, all these stories are, I mean, I was talking to like college, like, yeah, probably in college and a little bit beyond probably when I first started working on Capitol Hill, I was like, you
know, because what you could see is when I started working on Capitol Hill in the late 90s and early 2000s, I remember realizing that a lot of the story lines that I had heard and been exposed to through pop culture growing up, they were being baked into our politics of the time of the late 90s, early 2000s, especially after 9-11, talking about the militarism and all that. I mean, it all came kind of full circle and I was like, you know, all this
stuff, I think, tends to land. I mean, the government is bad. The individual is the savior. You know, military might is to be revered. I could go on and on. That all of these themes are landing when politicians say them. They're resonating when politicians say them.
In part, because a whole generation has been taught them for years and years and years in their brain's most developmentally important period of their lives, when they're kids, when they're growing up, when they're first learning about how to look at the world. Actually, I really liked this quote. You say, the human mind is not a vapid, doss prompt, waiting to be programmed by pop culture. It's more like a boulder in the middle
of a river anchored, but also slowly sculpted over time by a persistent current. I thought that was a really eloquent way of putting that. Thank you. I think that's the way pop culture really works. It's not one television show, right? It's not one episode or one part of a movie. It's just a constant set of stories that were being told that reinforce a set of world views. I think we have to step back and ask ourselves, where did we learn to think this way?
Why did we learn to think this way? I think some things have gotten better since the 1980s. Some things have gotten a lot worse since the 1980s when it comes to what pop culture teaches us, but I think it's important to step back and think, where did I learn to assume, for instance, that the government was bad, bureaucratic, incompetent, can't do anything right? I mean, you could make, yeah, I mean, you could pick out some headline from the news today and say, oh, you know,
this government agency didn't do something all that well. But where did you really learn it? I would argue you probably in part learned it when you were a kid watching something like the 18 or watching something like Ghostbusters. By the way, the 18, if you really think about the storyline of that, it's incredible, right? I mean, the government is so evil in that show.
You have private mercenaries who are having to escape the government to solve the problems that the government won't deal with, and the mercenaries are rewarded with being effectively criminalized by the government. I mean, think about how incredible a story that is, and that really
was a child-focused product. Do you think that, is there any extent to which you think that kind of right-wing narratives just tap into our like mammal tribal evolutionary programming in a way that left wing narratives don't, and that it's just sort of easier, you know, to
to sell an audience on a, you know, for example, a story about a vigilante hunting down the criminals who murdered his family, then a story about a, you know, a sensible humane criminal justice system rehabilitating a criminal that there's just something more naturally marketable about a a right-wing narrative. I think there's something to that, but then I also think about previous eras in which different stories were the popular stories. I mean, take a, think about, for instance,
the Jimmy Stewart movie, the holiday movie. It's a wonderful life. It's a wonderful life, right? It's a wonderful life. It's the story of a guy who effectively has a problem with the local banker, right? And it's the whole story about the local banker and the essentially big business is the problem. And this is at a time, of course, this is in the sort of new deal era, or at least post-new deal era. Point being is that there were, there's always a competition in American politics for
who is the central villain? And we have lived through previous eras where the central villain is large accumulations of wealth, oligarchs, plutocrats, big business, etc., etc., where that is the central villain of the stories that we tell ourselves. Now, you can certainly argue that maybe those stories go too far, right? But that's a wholly different set of stories we were telling ourselves. Then the story of actually the real villain is not big business and oligarchs. The real villain is
the democratically elected government, right? Like there was a shift there. Now that shift is brought about by a lot of different things, not just Hollywood. Hollywood, I would argue certainly reflected that shift, amplified it, etc., etc., but I don't fully accept the idea that right-wing narratives are somehow inherently more compelling than other kinds of narratives because I look back on our country's past and know what has, what narratives have been the big narratives that are
different from that in our own history. I mean, when you talk about big business being the villain, I certainly feel like I was kind of programmed by Hollywood movies to just see all corporations it's evil. I feel like, you know, RoboCop or Aliens, just an almost every science fiction movie I can think of. The corporation is evil. And so I can imagine somebody writing kind of a right-wing equivalent to this talking about how Occupy Wall Street was as the result of all these Hollywood
movies telling us the corporations are evil and stuff like that. Do you think that a book like that would be kind of equally valid just focusing on different things? Or do you think it would just not be valid to look at the past few decades in that frame of reference? No, I mean, I think there are always anomalies. I mean, Paul Verhoeven to my mind was one of the great dissenters in the 1980s and into the 1990s. You mentioned RoboCop. He's the director creator of RoboCop. So I think
there have been, there's always dissenters. Nothing is a full monolith. And I do agree, James Cameron also. So I think there are examples of what you're talking about. But I also think that that the idea of the individual versus the collective really obviously in the Reagan era became the major story that we that we told ourselves. And it sticks, I really think it sticks with us today. I don't know if we're at a tipping point back. It's really hard to say where we are
in our own cultural story. But I do think this idea of whether it's the government, whether it's the community, whether it's the I'm using as a proxy the collective. The individual as the most important player in our society as opposed to the collective, the community as the most important entity in society. I think that became the dominant political and cultural paradigm
in the 1980s. And it's something that we still struggle with today. I think it's at the root of a lot of our problems today in that it makes it harder for us to act collectively even though many of the problems we faced are a collective action problem. Can we drill down a little bit on back to the future? Because I think if people haven't read the book, it's maybe clear listening to this why Top Gun or something. Maybe push this a pro-America right wing pro-military agenda. But
can you talk a little bit more about why is back to the future? What is your concern with a movie like that? Well, back to the future is one of the great movies. I think it's one of the top, I think I've read somewhere it's considered one of the the 10 perfect movies ever made. And I love it. I mean, I don't even have to watch that movie on rerun. I can just close my eyes on my mind. I've seen it so many times. I think the story that was told there and I don't necessarily
have a problem with this story. I just think it's interesting and important to understand what it was telling us was here you had a kid in the at that point portrayed as the sort of chaos and decay of the present moment back then the mid 1980s who has to flee back into the allegedly idyllic perfect world of this past house in era of the mid 1950s. And so the ideal idealizing the 1950s I think is an important thing for us to understand what was being idealized.
That this this was the the safer better time allegedly when America was great. And these themes I mean Ronald Reagan really really truly ran on these themes he was a I mean just to look at him he looked like a 1950s figure I mean he was an actor a big actor in the 1950s so when he was running for president he kind of personified and physically embodied this idea. And also on the campaign trail was echoing quite literally the make America great phrase the idea of restoring
America back to a kind of 50s ideal. And that's what back to the future I think that's what a lot of that story really was. And so and so I think recognizing that and of course the the important part well why is that a political message? Well it's a political message because the 1950s in a lot of ways weren't ideal. They it was I mean America to start with was essentially on apartheid state in the 1950s right I mean it was like Jim Crow era was you know it was
it was not a perfect country at all. Let me just read this this is from my book I think this sums it up succinctly it says Lynch mobs religious bigotry burning crosses chauvinism union busting and smokestack pollution are all yeah some of the downsides of this right but this is been papered over into the ideal that we should want to resurrect. And I think understanding that that is a at best a highly political ideological selective way to look at the 1950s that's
important and it identifies for us. Wow we we really were being sold something that is political under the sort of guys of it being a political now I want to be clear I'm not taking issue with the with the filmmakers or the writers I think it I really do think it is a wonderful movie there's
a it's an amazing comedy there are a lot of great messages in there I'm just saying if we want to understand what we were sold how we were sold it without impugning or alleging motives of the filmmakers that's a good movie to look at and say hey what was it selling to us what was it what story was it telling us on a deeper level to identify for us the sort of larger issue which is that whenever we sit down and watch movie or TV and whenever your kids are watching movies and TV especially
they are being sold messages and and it's important to be sort of cognizant of that. Well I I definitely remember an impact of the future the scene where he gets back to his own time to 1985 you know those streets are covered in trash and there's the homeless guys looking on a bench
and he's like oh this is great I'm back you know everything's so great you know and it's such a clear contrast to the you know the queen streets that he just left that even as a kid to me that was you know the message to the things that regressed since the picture is explicit yeah
okay so one thing I'm sort of torn about is that you talk about how how cartoons like he man and transformers and thunder cat stuff like that were all made possible because the FCC relaxed regulations on basically you know episode length toy commercials and but I loved all those shows so I don't know how to feel do you do feel like the FCC shouldn't have relaxed those things in which case we wouldn't have human and transformers and thunder cats or how do you feel about that?
I'm glad you asked this I've thought a lot about this I'm not sure if the FCC rules were right but what we're talking about here is that there were FCC rules that basically said you can't take a toy essentially a toy commercial and turn it into a television program and those FCC rules were
removed which which essentially caused a boom in GI Joe transformers etc etc and I think you know yeah one level you can make an argument that when a when a kid sits down and watch TV watches TV commercial television it essentially all is a it's all a commercial at another level you could say
you know maybe it's not good that our culture is so focused on commerce and selling things that were literally sell trying to sell we're trying to have television programming that is designed to sell children on something rather than to educate children you know I don't know where I come down
on that it's I see the I can see an argument on both sides hey listen when you when your kid watches TV it's an inherently commercial situation I can see the other side which is like you know when my kids sits down to watch TV I especially young kids you know preteen kids I want television to be
more educational I don't want it to be focused on selling them on buying things or selling them political messages it's a tough question yeah yeah no I'm really I'm really torn on that I mean I guess it's hard to compare because we can't see the alternate history of what you know
you know we're only looking at the things that we remember in love and we can't look at the alternate timeline in which that you know there would have been other things presuming sure I mean I think you can I think you can compare though I think you can you can compare what Sesame Street or the
electric company or three to one contact was like or even Mr. Wizard with what GI Joe or the Transformers are doing now look I love GI Joe I love the Transformers etc etc but it's it's it's doing something different and it's trying to do something different to the child's brain
then Sesame Street the electric company three to one contact you know more PBS entertaining but educational television yeah so I thought it was interesting this book back to our future it has a blurb on the back from Adam McKay this is back in 2011 the book came out so I just curious
how how far back do you go with Adam McKay did you know him at the time that he he bored the book I did I met Adam McKay he was in the in the bush era um I think he had read something that I had written which which bush era the I'm sorry the the George W Bush era so in the in the 2000s I had
written something I think it was about NAFTA actually and he reached out to me and it was before he had done he had made his kind of pivot in his movies you know he kind he he sort of pivoted to a different style of movie when he did when he did the big short um but so I I got to know
him a little bit in the anchor man era so when I did the book I was like oh you know he's kind of perfect to blurb the book and that he does somewhat political stuff uh and he actually hustles in a lot of politics through his pop culture products I mean anchor man does have a lot of politics
it uh and and it's great uh and so I thought he would be a really good person to to blurb the book um do you know a lot of people in Hollywood is that sort of a scene that you move in or is it mostly you're commenting on it from the outside um you know I've gotten to know more folks in that
industry um certainly through uh getting to know Adam I mean Adam McKay is one of my best friends at this point um uh I also happened to know I grew up with Adam Goldberg uh who is the creator of the ABC show the Goldbergs uh so I I have a couple of random uh contacts in in in that world and
and obviously I did work with Adam McKay on uh don't look up uh but but I still feel I still feel kind of like an outsider in that world even though I've done some work in it uh I I'm always when whenever I go there I'm always I'm typically when I'm introduced to people I'm introduced as a
journalist in the acknowledgments one of the people you think is Fred Savage is that the actor Fred Savage or a different Fred Savage yes yes the actor Fred Savage yes so how do you know him I know him a little bit through Adam Goldberg uh Adam Goldberg and and and he have known each other
actually for a crazy long time um since they were uh kids I think those in their kids going to uh the Northwestern Cherub program which is a program for high school students uh in acting and writing and and and and and such so so Fred Savage read your read back to our future and draft or
he I think I bounced them I I bounced some ideas off him or I I asked him a few maybe I you know I think I interviewed him for it was maybe I interviewed him I mean it's a while ago so I'm thinking I'm remembering I might have interviewed him for part of the the the the research I did
on the Wonder Years which of course the Wonder Years actually think was one of the one of the more mature um shows that actually struggled with uh in an honest way uh the the the the transition from the 1950s to the 1960s and did it in a way that wasn't cartoonish at all uh I mean I think it
you know there was a lot in the 1980s about how you mentioned it before about how uh the tropes of the the the 60s were an out of control chaotic time and the left got out of control and and and and the hippies etc etc that's how the 60s were basically portrayed uh in a lot of pop culture
products in the in the 1980s but I think the Wonder Years was kind of anomalous in that it it it it had a more nuanced view of that it really presented and by the way it was it was it was a show for families and pho and with a with a young an audience of teenagers and the like and I think it
actually took it a lot more seriously it didn't it didn't really uh uh uh just just put forward tropes um if anyone listening doesn't know Fred Savage by name uh he's the little kid in the frame story in the princess bride I'm sure everyone listening to this has seen that so um that's really
cool though okay so yes you mentioned that you you sort of worked with Adam McKay on don't look up so kind of how to what was the initial like inspiration for that or how did that come about in the first place yeah so so I was um I was I think it was the mid 2018 I was working as a journalist um
it was before I went to work for Bernie Sanders 2020 presidential campaign and I had been writing some stories about climate uh and Adam was very focused on climate at that point uh and I had said something uh uh at well at one point it was it was after he had done the movie vice and I said you
know I think you should I think you should do something uh on on climate and he said I know I've been thinking about that I just I don't want to do something kind of mad Maxish post apocalyptic et cetera I you know I don't know what the entry point is and so he would he and I have been kind
of talking it over a lot informally uh and at one point I had said I published some story about a climate issue and I said you know I don't know why these stories don't land why do they don't travel why they don't go viral why they don't get more attention it kind of feels like
there's an asteroid headed towards earth and nobody cares and a couple days later he came back to me and he said you know I wonder if that's there's something there I wonder if that's the movie idea I've been you know sort of uh trying to find and so I said well let me let me like write something
up I'll write up like a you know a way to do this where there's an asteroid headed towards earth and nobody cares even though everyone should care right because in the I and I think I made some joke about how like in the disaster movie the asteroid heads towards earth and everyone panics
and it's like you know it's like Armageddon like the world comes together we're gonna stop it I think it kind of feels like the like we live in a world where if you're in Armageddon nobody would care that it was coming and so I I wrote up a treatment and I sent it to him and
off to the races you know he called me a couple months later and said you know I were I were really going to do this I think and I was I and as I've said I kind of was like yeah yeah right we're really going to do like you know like I've heard it I've heard oh we're going to make this we're
going to make that from people in Hollywood all the time and you know 99 percent of that stuff it never actually happens and you know with the force of will and and his amazing screenwriting and directing it it became real yeah and it's a it's a fantastic movie I mean and it's hilarious
I laughed so much watching it if you work you can listen we did a review of it if anyone's curious but if you haven't if anyone listening hasn't seen it I would definitely recommend checking it out are there any sort of highlights or like when you think back on the movie you know being made
and coming out and everything are there any highlights or moments that stick out in your mind well the main highlight is that a lot of the feedback we received was from scientists who who basically finally felt seen and heard and I think that was really important to us which
which I think there have been a lot of people who've been working on the climate issue not just scientists but a lot but specifically scientists too who've been working on the climate issue and feel like they've been sounding an alarm and that nobody has been listening to them and so I think
the movie certainly elevated their frustrations their understandable frustrations and I think that was psychologically boosting to them and I think I hope that it if if if momentarily and hopefully a little bit longer term it grabbed the viewership by the lapels
and said we have to listen to these people we can't allow our desire for entertainment and distraction and tribal partisan infighting make us not focus on and support the people who are warning us about scientifically verifiable disasters
top of mind being climate change so I felt like that was a real highlight to hear that feedback from those people that's the point of the movie and obviously the highlight is that it got what was it then the second largest audience in the history of the world's largest streaming platform
which means a lot of people actually saw the movie and look it it created a lot of debate some people hated it some people loved it right and and that's what it was for I mean you know I I sure at some at certain points I was annoyed by some of the criticism I felt like some of it was
in bad faith I think some of it was in was just people just honestly didn't like it and that's fine but my point is is that I'm glad it spurred a conversation I do think that don't look up whether you liked it or hated it I do think it landed I do think it made an impact no pun intended
I mean are there any lessons that you took away that you could pass on to other writers filmmakers etc in terms of making some entertainment product that shifts the political conversation sure I think one lesson is is that I think we I'm gonna pat ourselves on the back a little bit
I think we did a decent job of not belittling and berating the audience if you watch the movie carefully you'll notice that the this is not a movie that says the average person is stupid that's not what our movie does in fact our movie if you look at the quote unquote average work
at a people characters in the movie they are they know what's going on they can sense something is wrong and the heroes the central heroes are trying to get the word out and the villains are the people who have lots and lots of power in media in the political sphere obviously and so my point
is I think the reason that the movie resonated not just with people who consider themselves climate activists or progressives or liberals and it actually did transcend and resonate with people who are independent conservatives etc etc we got a lot of feedback positive feedback
I think they did that because it didn't belittle people it didn't belittle the the the the viewership and so I hope that's one takeaway for people who were in the content creation business is not to is not to shame the average person shame the the viewership I will say this
I think it's harder and harder to get made movies and TV shows that struggle with the here and now that struggle with really serious political issues because I think the makers the big powers in film and TV are somewhat afraid of doing anything quote unquote political so I it's a caution
I one cautionary note is that if you're going to try to make things that are not set in at the distance of history right period pieces where it's sort of safe to deal with things if you're going to try to struggle in your production with the here and now of political controversy you have to
know it's going to be an uphill climb because the traditional producers creators funders of major TV and film products are a little bit skittish about about such content you know a few months ago I interviewed Andrew Yang and he was saying that when he started he just thought oh if I just
convince enough people that universal basic income is a good idea it'll happen and then he'd come to the conclusion that he had sort of you know that the conversation had shifted so that a majority people weren't afraid of it but still nothing was happening because the political system is throwing
up impediments to it and I was wondering if you see a similar sort of dynamic with climate change where you know you can make these movies that get people talking and shift the conversation and shift public opinion but as long as the political system is sort of standing in the way of anything
all that public opinion shifting doesn't equate you know doesn't lead to actual substantive change I mean I think it's both things are true I think that shifting public opinion alone in the short term will not automatically deliver real concrete substantive policy change
all in one fell swoop but I also think that and we go back to the stories we tell ourselves in movies I mean movies present to us stories where one single person saves the day and that the saving of the day is in one bold action saving the world that's not really how real society works
that's how a good story works but that's not how real society works the great successes in American history were successes that came about through years and years and years of work by millions and millions of people all different kinds of work part of the work is to change public opinion part
of the work is to take public opinion and organize it more cohesively around a specific campaign or a specific piece of legislation so I guess what I'm getting at is is that I see don't look up as an example of something that helped make hopefully make people more aware of how acute the crisis is
more aware of who we should be listening to more aware of who the real problem is and that that's not going to singularly change everything it is participating in the process of change that there need to be many more movies that do that then there need to be simultaneously organizing
campaigns and political campaigns that we have to deprogram ourselves from seeing ourselves as singular heroes or expecting that a singular hero will come at will come around and save us I think when you and look I know that and I struggle I talk about this in back to our future which
is this sort of great man theory of history right FDR was the champion of the new deal but the new deal as an example was brought about by labor activism and political activism over decades Martin Luther King was the great leader of the civil rights movement one of the great leaders
of the civil rights movement but he he I'm guessing he would say the same thing he would say I wasn't singularly responsible for the Voting Rights Act or any of the other triumphs of the civil rights movement that that that I participated in the civil rights movement and the civil rights
movement happened over decades with millions of people involved in it so I guess what a it's a long way of saying I think we like sure one thing one political campaign from a presidential campaign one movie is not going to singularly solve everything the question really is is it
participating in bringing about the change we ultimately want to see so I did also want to ask you about your podcast it's called lever time with David Sarota and one of the episodes I thought was really interesting that I wanted to talk to you about the title is billionaireis are preparing
for the apocalypse and you're not invited with Douglas Rushkov so kind of what what sticks out in your mind about that episode or is there anything anything you want to say about that that in you yeah I mean that was a that was a topic I'm fascinated with which is which is looking at how at a vision
for how we survive the existential crises we face and that episode was about a group of billionaires who are building bunkers who are building ways for themselves to in some cases get off the planet move to Mars etc etc that the that the inherent vision in that is a vision of every individual
for themselves that you can somehow survive these existential crises alone if you've got enough money or foresight etc etc and and I'm glad it's a good segue because we're talking about the individual versus the collective and what Doug Rushkov the author of a book about this
what was saying was that when he was asked to advise a group of very wealthy hedge fund guys about they were asking essentially how do I control the staff in my you know apocalypse bunker he said and I'm paraphrasing here but he said something to the effect of well the way to control them
or get what you want from them is to make them feel part of the governance and the decision making process and the part of the survival the community that's surviving not by you know putting I don't know ankle bracelets on them or threatening to withhold food from them
it's not through through top down power it's actually by making them feel like they're participating at an equal level in a community and so what I find interesting about this is when you look ahead to the existential crises we face I think it's fair to say that we as a society
are not going to survive these crises in the way we want to survive them unless we actually prioritize the idea that we are all in this together and that there is no single solution to save yourself individually from a collective problem I mean climate change you can
can you build a bunker yes you can you can build a bunker will it maybe make things better for you if in the event of a absolute catastrophe a nuclear war a climate catastrophe where there's no food or whatever sure it you may be able to survive a little bit longer but it's you're probably going
to have a better experience and everyone is going to have a better experience if instead you focus your energy on how do we get everyone to work together to avert the crisis rather than everyone scattering trying to save themselves with the crisis being a foregone conclusion right this
service so what happens with these billionaires in the book as he tells us is that you know they're like well you know we have like Navy SEALs you know who are going to fly out and protect us when civilization collapses and he's kind of like well why are the Navy SEALs going to do what you say
and they're like well we're paying them and he's like okay but the second civilization collapses you're not a billionaire anymore you're just somebody who doesn't know how to shoot and hunt and survive like you know what's to stop the Navy SEALs from just moving into your bunker and kicking
you out or doing whatever they wanted to so that's absolutely that's absolutely right and I think I go back to what Rushcoff said essentially that that in that situation there's no way to exert quote unquote control it's a situation that requires us to actually relinquish control or at least
some control relinquish some power and work together and I think unfortunately that idea has become a bit alien to American society it's become not it's become something that we we're out of practice in at best I think there's examples where we're getting as a society better in practice for that
I mean you look at at some of the recent activism and the labor movement and the like where workers really are working together really are making gains I think you see examples of of that working but I think culturally that democratic small the democratic spirit has been on the way in for a while
and it needs to it needs to go in the opposite direction needs to we need to really reinvigorate that now and then the other episode I wanted to ask you about this will probably be the last thing we have time for but it's called the scientific breakthrough that could end climate change with
Dr. Arthur Torell you describe yourself in this episode as a huge fusion fan do you want to talk out what do you what do you think about this idea of a scientific solution such as fusion power to climate change yeah I mean look I I think fusion power is something that if we can unlock
could be a true game changer it's not that what we need to do to unlock that is actually not a mystery it's just we haven't it's just how to actually unlock it is the mystery but we know that if we do unlock it it could be a game changer and it's an example of we as a society spend a
lot of our resources for example subsidizing the fossil fuel industry which is at the center of the climate problem and we aren't spending nearly as much as many resources on for instance trying to develop that solution even though we know if we are able to develop that solution it could be
an ecological game changer so I think a fusion as and look I'm sure people are who are listening this some people would say we're never going to get to fusion and I would argue we haven't really made a real try of getting there in the way that we have made try we have made attempts to get to
other things and achieve those things I mean obviously the cliche example is the Manhattan project the Manhattan project to develop vision energy and you know the nuclear vision weapon that was a major investment to get there and science did deliver of vision energy we have not made a
similar effort on fusion energy so we haven't made the try that I think something like that and other clean technologies deserve and it's not that we can't it's that we've chosen not to because we know we have enough resources at this point to make a much bigger attempt we just
politically and culturally haven't yet decided to do that and I think that goes back to something and don't look up I just think the climate crisis is still not yet at the level in public awareness it is physics physics wise it is as urgent as ever but in the public awareness and how we devote our public budgets it is not as urgent as the reality of the situation commands.
Yeah so on the one hand you have the people who say fusion will never happen and then on the other hand so I interviewed Malcolm Gladwell years ago I was curious to hear what you think about this quote this is what he told me he says I don't call global warming a problem it is a
technical problem that will be solved really smart people like Elon Musk who've just been talking about he and a thousand other smart people they're handling it we should just get out of their way don't put impediments in their path let them do their thing what do you think about that I mean I
mean I think he's I think he's right that you obviously don't want to put impediments on people who are trying to solve the problem sure but where where I and I didn't hear the whole context of the interview but where I guess I would take issue with that quote is I also don't think just
hey stay out of their way let them do what they're going to do and it'll solve itself no I that I don't agree with I think that that ultimately solving the climate crisis has already and will continue to come into conflict with the demand by oligarchs and corporations to make short term
profits and I think that there has to that where the public sector comes in has to be in encouraging and at times directing that resources public resources go into a focus on something longer term than just quarterly profits a focus on something climate wise that is a set of long-term
solutions that don't have to focus on answering to shareholders every every 90 days so and I think we can do that I think it's just a matter of political will yeah yeah absolutely all right so unfortunately this has been super fun but we are unfortunately all at a time so David you have any
any other projects are working on or any other final thoughts yeah I would I would encourage people to go check out our website the lever we do investigative journalism every day it's at levernews.com and I should just as a preview we have a major podcast documentary series coming out in the next
few months called master plan the first season of master plan it's the story of how corruption was legalized deliberately legalized in America over the last 50 years and we're working really hard on it there's a lot of incredible never before heard never before seen stuff in this project
that we're doing and I hope people will go check it out you can google it master plan google the lever you'll find it okay awesome yeah definitely look forward to that all right so we've been speaking with David Sarota about his book back to our future his movie don't look up and his podcast
lever time with David Sarota so David thank you so much for joining us thank you thanks so much for having me and that was our interview so big thanks again to David Sarota for joining us on the show geeks guide to the galaxy is made possible thanks to support from listeners like you so if you
enjoy the show and want it to continue please support us on patreon over at patreon.com slash geeks or via PayPal over at geeks guide show dot com slash crowdfunding all right so that was our show so thanks everyone for listening and we'll see you next time