The doctor will see you now … for climate anxiety

Make Me Smart August 2, 2023 Transcript

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Kimberly Adams

Good to go when you are good, sir.

Kai Ryssdal 

I’m ready.

Kimberly Adams

And so is Jay!

Kai Ryssdal

Jay, I was just gonna say, Jay Siebold, you’re not messing around.

Kimberly Adams 

Not at all. Hello, I’m Kimberly Adams, welcome back to Make Me Smart, where we make today make sense. It is August the second.

Kai Ryssdal

I’m Kai Ryssdal. Thanks, everybody, for joining us coming back to the pod, if you’re a first time listener, welcome. If you’re like a mini time listener, well, welcome to you too. Anyway, today is Wednesday, which means we’re gonna do some news, some smiles and then get out of your hair, let you get on about your day. So we’ll jump right in. And Kimberly, what do you got?

Kimberly Adams

I got two. First of all, it’s just a link to the Department of Justice’s indictment against former President Donald Trump and it’s 45 pages of glory, I believe it’s 45 pages, I don’t need to talk about it, I can’t really add much more to it than the many, many, you know, billions of gallons of ink and digital imagery of letters that have been spilled and talking heads on television. But I would encourage folks to read the indictment and go to the original source and the evidence presented and read it. Because this is an important moment for our country. And I think it’s worth looking at the original documents. So we will have a link to it on our show notes. So that’s all I have to say about that.

Kai Ryssdal

Hard agree. You bet.

Kimberly Adams

Yeah. Okay, the other one I have is what I thought was a really fabulous piece in The New Yorker, about climate emotions, how we deal with our emotions related to climate change, which we’ve been doing a lot on the show the last couple of weeks. And the stress and anxiety and the feelings of hopelessness that come with the you know sense that it’s bad, it’s getting worse, and it feels like it’s hard to do anything about it at this point. And it’s an interesting piece exploring sort of how we deal with these feelings, how different we process these feelings in the West, when it’s, as one of the people quoted in the article said, it’s hard to make decisions about you know, dealing with climate change from an air conditioned room, and how different it is for us as we process it, compared to in parts of the world where people are already dying from the heat from extreme weather who are actually seeing their communities sink into the ocean. And the sort of privilege it is to be able to sort of stop thinking about it for a minute. But there was an interesting passage in here. And I’ll just read some of it talking. They were talking to a climate therapist. There are actually therapists now that are that are trained and are training others to help people deal with anxiety related to climate change. And it says, “climate anxiety differs from many forms of anxiety a person might discuss in therapy, anxiety about crowds or public speaking, or insufficiently washing one’s hands, because the goal is not to resolve the intrusive feeling and put it away. It’s not a keep calm and carry on approach.” Thank you Yuki. It’s not a keep calm and carry on approach said this therapist. “When it comes to climate change. The brain’s desire to resolve anxiety and distress often leads either to denial or fatalism. Some people convince themselves that climate change is not a big deal, or that someone else will take care of it. Others conclude that all is lost and there’s nothing to be done.” And Davenport, this therapist pushes her clients to aim for a middle ground of sustainable distress, becoming more uncomfortable, becoming more comfortable with uncertainty, remaining present and active in the midst midst of fear and grief. And I think that’s a good solution, remain present and active in the midst of fear and grief and also elsewhere. You know, they recommend that if you’re having these feelings, you know, can you decide that here’s the chunk of the day that I am going to process these feelings chunk of the week I’m going to deal with these feelings at this time and accompany that was some action of doing what I can do. And you know, such as you know, throw a cat out the window. So yeah, it’s a good piece. It’s a little bit of a long read. And it’s actually from back earlier in July. I just happen to stumble across it today. But yeah, it’s totally that’s my thing.

Kai Ryssdal

Totally interesting. So two thoughts before I move into my item-ish thing. Number one speaking of fear, and anxiety and your admonition for people to just read the indictment. It is well written, it is a story well told. But here’s my fear and anxiety about that. And it was prompted by an interview on Morning Edition this morning. An interview that might have been Leila Fadel might have been A, I don’t even know with with Sarah Longwell, who’s a Republican strategist, talking about how little difference this indictment makes to Trump voters. And I don’t know what to do with that. I don’t know what to do with it.

Kimberly Adams

I may have told you the story about being in a taxi, once or Uber with a guy who was hell bent on convincing me that January 6 was not that bad, nobody was really injured. The only person to die as a result of it was the woman who was shot. And that everybody was blowing it out of proportion. And I kept pointing him to evidence after evidence after evidence of, you know, he was like, “You got to believe, listen to the you know the police who were on their side.” And I’m like, there were all these police testifying that they were being attacked. And there’s video and, and finally I said to him, I said, “what piece of information from what source would make you believe differently than you do?” And he was like, “to be honest, nothing at this point.” Right. And that was hard for me to hear. Right. What I took from that is that’s a lost cause. So what else can we do? Right? What else can we do? Either give information to people who are still willing to hear it, or if there is going to be a cohort of people who refuse to believe the danger to democracy and refuse to acknowledge the evidence and the same thing with climate change. What can we then do to counteract that? What can we do as engaged citizens of the democracy to protect what’s left? Right? Okay. That’s what we got it.

Kai Ryssdal

Right, right. Okay.

Kimberly Adams

That’s what we’ve got to do.

Kai Ryssdal

Okay. So look, I grant you and in many ways, I admire your what can we do about it instead of attitude, which is in direct contrast to mine, which is God, this is just so buggered up. And, you know, all that other stuff. Right? We differ on that. But look, it’s entirely possible that the Republican nominee for president by the time the nominating conventions come around, will be a convicted felon, or if not convicted, then certainly deep in trial on two or three or however many of the 78 counts for it.

Kimberly Adams

Probably four at that point.

Kai Ryssdal

Right. Exactly. And, and look, we’re still short one looming indictment and we’re already at 78 felony counts, but assuming Donald Trump is the president, the Republicans presidential nominee, it is a toss up as to whether he gets elected or not. And as I’ve said before, on this podcast, it was somebody on on Pod Save America, either Tommy or Dan, Tommy Vietor, Dan Pfeiffer, who said, you know, this presidential elections are determined by fewer people than fit like in the big house at the University of Michigan, which is a football stadium for those of you who don’t know, which is just perilous. And if you have half the country give or take, that believes Donald Trump should be the president United States what, what do we do with that?

Kimberly Adams

I don’t think it’s half the country. I think it’s the majority of Republican primary voters, which is

Kai Ryssdal

Well, they for sure believe so. But the guy did get 70 something million votes and Biden got 80 something million and let’s not go down that little rabbit hole, but tens of millions people. And what the Bleep Bleep Bleep Bleep do we do with that? That, I can’t process that, truly I can’t. And I’m a guy who believes in in, in, in in democracy and informed citizenry and look in all of my speeches that I give. I have a whole riff about how if you listen to Fox News, if you read the New York Times, you have to read the Wall Street Journal editorial page, if you watch MSNBC, you got to watch Fox News. But that is breaking down. And I honestly don’t know what to do with that.

Kimberly Adams

I will, you know, call me Pollyanna. I’m going to try to keep picking something to give me hope in the world. You are starting to see more Republicans granted, they’re never Trumpers start to push Republican donors to pull money back from Republican candidates running for president who don’t really have a chance to beat Trump in the primaries. So Mitt Romney’s come out and said this. Some folks in the Senate I believe are getting on board where they’re telling Republican donors “stop giving money to primary candidates who cannot who don’t have a real chance to win. And by x date to stop giving them money, so that we can really mount a meaningful challenge and have a candidate who is not Trump. Because if it’s Trump, we’re going to lose,” because that’s what they think. And I’m, and I think that there are more of those conversations happening amongst establishment Republicans than we think. And I’m going to latch on to that.

Kai Ryssdal

All right, fair enough.

Kimberly Adams

Pulled that one from the archives. The dark places.

Kai Ryssdal

I love when Jay Siebold is in charge. All right. So I’ll tell you what, let’s just move this miles because I didn’t want to climb on one. And who needs more bad news? All right, go ahead. What do you got?

Kimberly Adams

Mine is, today’s dose of perhaps AI won’t just destroy us. Because I’m trying to find these moments. Again, my my effervescent optimism. There’s a story in Politico, the EU, the European Union version of Politico, that AI has improved breast cancer detection rates by 20%. It is study in Sweden, showing the potential of using artificial intelligence and mammography. And I think that’s great news, I’m happy to start seeing applications of AI that aren’t just purely to make, you know, tech companies more money, or to, you know, destroy the world or whatever. And this is, this could potentially if these findings hold up, I think that that could potentially save people’s lives and scale in places where there aren’t as many doctors, you know, to be able to do these detections. And I think that’s fantastic.

Kimberly Adams 

I think medicine is ripe for, as many fields are, but medicine in particular is ripe for disruption by AI, radiology in particular. I think if you’re in medical care,

Kimberly Adams

Because you just have to stare at pictures.

Kai Ryssdal

Exactly, exactly. If you’re in medical school now and you’re thinking about being a radiologist. And look, if somebody out there listening thinks I’m wrong, tell me but I think radiology is is not long for the medical specialty, because computers are gonna be doing it. You know.

Kimbelry Adams

And anything where you have to, like, even look at, like blood samples under a microscope and look for things.

Kai Ryssdal

Yes, you bet.

Kimberly Adams

I’m glad you knew the word for it. That’s what I got.

Kai Ryssdal

Okay. All right. So here’s mine. This one came across my Twitter feed, and it is from and yes, I was actually on Twitter, because I’m not gonna call it X.

Kimberly Adams

But don’t you mean X? It is still twitter.com.

Kai Ryssdal

No, I don’t mean X. I will not. I refuse. That’s true. It, so this is from April, the fifth 2023. It’s a presentation to the 8th annual Planetary Defense Conference in Vienna, Austria. And it’s a slide deck titled “Prospects for Future Human Space Flight Missions to Near-Earth Asteroids.” And this is NASA, laying out how they could get up to a near Earth asteroid and like, dock on it and send people there, it’s a crew of three, right. It would be 152 days, it would be a departure date of give or take 2039. They’ve got an asteroid in mind. 2001 FR85. It’s about 20 to 85 meters large. It’s crazy. It’s wild. They’re talking about like, like transferring propellant in low Earth orbit and then boosting up to high Earth orbit and then going after this asteroid we’ll put it on the show page it’s very dorky, but it’s kind of cool it’s kind of cool.

Kimberly Adams

There’s, but they’ve got like a picture of like the spaceship I guess that they want to use. And a starship starship I’m sorry. And then there’s this wonderful like graph of like how they would do everything up there. That’s so cool. I love this. The starship propellant depot remains in Earth’s orbit. Like we are living in Sci-fi. I love it, I’m happy.

Kai Ryssdal

We are going there. Sign me up. That’d be so cool.

Kimberly Adams

I would totally do it. You know I’m ready to retire on the moon. I’m here for it. I’m ready. And despite you saying I’m too old I still believe it’s a possibility because they’re gonna need old people on the moon to like see what happens to old age on the moon. Okay, because you’re gonna want to see what happens to people as they age in you know low gravity and in all those spaces and I volunteers as tribute. Man I love that. All right, that’s it for us today. We’re gonna be back tomorrow please keep sending us your comments and questions. We’re at 508-U-B-SMART or you can write us at makemesmart@marketplace.org

Kai Ryssdal

I volunteer as tribute man. Make Me Smart is produced by Courtney Bergsieker. Ellen Rolfes writes our newsletters. Today’s program was engineered by Jason Siebold, I see him across the glass there. Our intern is Niloufar Shahbandi.

Kimbelry Adams

Ben Tolliday and Daniel Ramirez composed our theme music. Our senior producers Marissa Cabrera. Bridget Bodnar is the director of podcasts. Francesca Levy is the executive director of Digital.