 We certainly need to be nimble and I'm trying to do that with the limited resources I have in trying to come up with new ways of communicating, with engaging with the public. But generally speaking, I just think that I'm a big believer in exploring creative ways to engage with the public. As a scientist, I fully recognise that science is necessary but insufficient to fully engage with the public. Scientists need to be working with creative people, with artists, with the arts and with technology. I think we really need to bring together art, technology and science together. And it's only when you take the lessons of science and the best practices from research, package them in creative, engaging ways with artists, but then use technology to deploy them at scale that you can really ship the needle in meaningful ways. Dr. John Cook is my guest on this episode of Inside Ideas. John is a research assistant professor at the Centre for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University. He obtained his PhD at the University of Western Australia studying cognitive psychology of climate science denial. His research focus is understanding and countering misinformation about climate change. In 2007, he founded Skeptical Science, a website which won the 2011 Australian Museum Eureka Prize for the Advancement of Climate Change Knowledge. And in 2016, the award friend of the planet from the National Centre for Science Education. John authored the book Cranky Uncle versus Climate Change that combines climate science, critical thinking and cartoons to explain and counter climate misinformation. He also coauthored the college textbooks Climate Change, Examining the Facts and Climate Change Science, a modern synthesis and the book Climate Change Denial, Heads in the Sand. In 2013, he published a paper finding 97% scientific consensus on human cause global warming, a finding that has been highlighted by President Barack Obama and United Kingdom Prime Minister David Cameroon. Thank you so much for being on the show. John, I welcome you. I'm glad to have you here. Thanks, Mac. Thanks for having me. I know I could go on and on about your biography. There's many other places are passing you have been over the years. Is there anything that I left out or that you would like to touch upon or that maybe is important for our listeners to know? Well, it was a pretty long introduction. Maybe we should jump into the conversation. Great. So I've got your your book here, Cranky Uncle versus Climate Change. I loved it. This is not the only copy I have. I actually purchased 10 copies. And I gave four away to my friends who are climate activists, climate leaders. They're well versed in climate science and how to communicate about the climate crisis and the rest I gave to my cranky uncle, so to say, the deniers are those who were very skeptical. And believe it or not, some of those had also been climate leaders in the past or had gotten some training in climate training. And you mentioned you'd like to know maybe a little bit of the stories of how those were received. Absolutely. I'm I used to be the Germany and Austria country coordinator for Al Gore's climate reality reality projects. So the leader leadership training. And in Berlin, we did this big leadership training and Germans. We had people from all over the world who came to this training. But for some reason, Germans are the ones that worried the worried the most about running in to climate deniers. What are they going to say? What if they ask this question? What do I say? How do I respond? I'm so worried. And in my whole time, and you mentioned this in the book, as a climate leader, I can maybe count on one hand, maybe two, three times I've been asked a real real bad question or something I didn't know or something I couldn't defer or somebody who wanted to bash an argument with me. Hardly ever run into that. But Germans seem to just they want to be prepared for everything before they go forward and talk about it. So they love the book that helped them, even though their main language is German. But those are the ones I gave it to. And they really, really liked it. So I thank you for that. But how did the book come about? How did you get on this path and journey started to to write this? Can you tell us a little bit about that? Sure. So I guess the journey began when I started skeptical science. And the point of the website was debunking climate misinformation with peer-reviewed science. I had a physics background. So I was coming at it really as a physical scientist. And my understanding was if you just give people the facts, that should be enough to debunk misinformation. And a couple of years into the website, I received an email from a cognitive scientist sharing some research with me that showed that if you debunk misinformation in the wrong way, it can it can either be ineffective or sometimes in some cases it can even backfire and reinforce the myth. And that really opened my eyes to the science of science communication. I started a PhD researching science denial and debunking and came out of the PhD with the understanding that the key to fighting misinformation is inoculation. You build people's resilience against fake news by exposing them to a weak form of misinformation by explaining the different techniques that are used to mislead people. And so after my PhD, my next question was, well, how do you do that in practice? And I started working with some critical thinking philosophers and they helped me develop a methodology for deconstructing this information and identifying reasoning fallacies in bad arguments. And during that collaboration, they said something interesting to me. They said that there are a lot of techniques that philosophers use to explain bad logic. But one of the most user friendly and accessible ways of doing it is parallel argumentation. Take the bad logic in a misinforming argument and transplant it into an absurd situation. And usually the more absurd it is, the more obvious it is to see the floor in the original logic. And I realized that cartoons are the perfect delivery mechanism for that type of communication technique. And having had a background in cartooning before starting my PhD, I started drawing cartoon parallel arguments, taking climate myths and transplanting them into absurd situations and drawing cartoons of them. And over time, I was building up this collection of cartoons and eventually I collected it all and wrote this cranky uncle book as a way of using cartoons to make not just the science of climate change, but also the critical thinking of climate misinformation, just making that a lot more entertaining, but also more accessible to people. Thank you. That's a perfect setup. Was there, which I kind of understood from the book, too, and from some other talks that I've heard from you, was there a cranky uncle, a dad or someone close to you that was a climate denier or someone that was difficult to hear the messages? I've got a few cranky uncles in my life, but probably the main one is my father-in-law. Not my uncle, strictly speaking. They're playing that role because it was getting into arguments with him that's about climate change that really inspired me starting skeptical science in the first place. We would have family lunches. He would throw these different arguments at me and I would go away and research what the science actually said about these different arguments. And in anticipation of the next family get-together and hearing more arguments from him, I started building a database of all the most common myths about climate change and then collecting the peer-reviewed science about each myth. And so this began as his personal resource as a son-in-law determined to be super prepared next time he got into an argument with his father-in-law. And eventually I realized that other people might find this resource useful as well. So I turned that into a website, Skeptical Science. But also I've got into arguments with my own dad who was also used to be a climate denier. Then one day he magically changed his mind and certainly he accepted that humans were causing climate change. And at this point I was deep into my PhD studying science denial. So this was like, it's kind of like Jane Goodall, like amongst the climate deniers with the opportunity to study them up quest. So I casually said to dad, oh, what changed your mind dad? And he said, oh, I've always thought this. I'm not gonna get a straight answer out of him. And it turns out that being in denial about your science denial is, it's almost part and parcel of the denial process. Do you believe that that is because it's such a big thing? It's hard for the human mind, our consciousness to fathom this big, huge elephant in the room. This, how do you tackle it? I just kind of want to deny it because if it is real, what do we do? Or does any of that play into it at all? It's funny, you just, that question just reminded me that the very first draft of the book, the very first page, I started with an elephant and saying, it's an aisle being the elephant in the room and it ended up not making the final cut. And instead, what the first page of the book does is it addresses that very question. It explores how climate change is this psychological perfect storm. It's global in scope, it happens over decades and centuries and it's caused by everyone. It's not caused by a single source. And psychologically, that's really hard for humans to get their minds around. It's not impossible, but it's really difficult because our brains evolved to deal with immediate threats. And so our brains are hardwired to react to a predator jumping out of the bushes rather than graphs and statistical results that are coming out of scientific data. It's hard for us to understand that and be concerned about it, and especially to act on it. Yes, I love that part of the book as well, but I think some denial is just a great fear that if it is true, what if, then it's just what are we gonna do with that information? It's kind of like once the light goes on, it's hard to turn it back off because you know you have to be active speaker, so you're involved in many, many different areas, you know, not only at university level, but I see this fabulous course from the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network in edX, the mass open online course on making sense of climate science denial. And from, I haven't been through the course yet, I have signed up for it and I've watched portions of the videos, but it looks like there's a star studded Sir David Attenborough and some other people that you actually speak to in this. Can you tell us a little bit more about that, how it came about and what was your choice to move forward with that? Did it just make sense with what you're already doing in other universities? Yeah, sure. So firstly, just a little fact check, it wasn't done with the United Nations, it was done with the University of Queensland. And while I was halfway through my PhD and I was at the University of Queensland and I just had a casual conversation with the director of the Institute, the Global Change Institute where I was working. And I said to him, just, we're just having a coffee and having a chat. And I said, you know, really, I'm really loving the MOOCs that the University of Queensland are producing and down the track after I finished my PhD, you know, it would be cool to do a MOOC about climate misinformation. I was about a year or two away from finishing my PhD at that time. And within a few weeks, someone came up to me and said, hey, I hear you're doing a MOOC. And the director, so I like that idea that he'd already trained me and got it all organized without me even knowing. And suddenly this MOOC was this freight train that was rolling forward. Fabulous. And basically it put my PhD on hold for a year. Oh no. Which I'm really happy we did. It was the opportunity of a lifetime to put it together. It was just a little bit unexpected. That's wonderful. You know, I'm belongs to you. I'm an adjunct professor with the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. And it's one of the courses available in their plethora under the SDG Academy, whether you know it or not. It's part of that library of massive open online courses. And I think it's just because it fits. And the main partner of that is edX. It used to be Corsia was in charge of that portal. And then it went to edX. And so most of the people, oh no, that's fine. But most of the people I know from the UN and that I work with, they're like, wow, this is fabulous. This is amazing. So, and I didn't see it before. It's fairly recently that it popped up. So, but yeah, it's under that portal. But I'm sure you can get into it through edX and some other avenues as well. They're really good about that. The other thing is, is that really popped up during this period of time? And that leads to the next question. This time of pause and the pandemic and the things that have been going on. Things like MOOC courses have just skyrocketed because people are at home, they're trapped, they're confined. If you need to get that, go ahead, I'll pause. I think it was a spam call, I just canceled it. Sorry, if you want to review. No, that's fine. So if people are at home, they're trapped, they're confined in their human zoos. Now they're looking online, not only in the bad ways where they're probably watching every series they can get available streaming to their house, but they're taking courses on our world, our biome, on our atmosphere, our climate, the environment. And they're really out there. And so the SDG Academy, the UN, STSN, and edX, Corsi and many others are just skyrocketed with information. The question is, during this time of the pandemic and this pause as the world economic form is calling it the great reset, how have you weathered the storm? How has it been for you? How has it been for the teaching that you do and things, your book launched at the beginning almost, right, of the pandemic? So I'd like to kind of get an update and how have you weathered that? How has it been? What lessons have you learned? I want to know it all. Well, the book launched and we had our book launch events in Arlington, just outside of Washington, DC. And it was right on the edge of the cusp of the pandemic. Because I remember a few people were doing the elbow bump at that time, but it was the last physical event that I've been to. I haven't actually been around people pretty much since that book launch. And it's been really tough. So I mean, at that time, we were planning to go around the country. And even I was planning to go to Italy and Ireland to do events. And one thing that inspired me actually doing this book was seeing the way Naomi Rezquez used her book. She came to Australia a number of years ago and did a series of book events around her book, Merchants of Doubt. And what really struck me about her tour was the book was really just a prop for her to start these conversations about climate change and about climate misinformation. And so she would give talks and there would be a lot of Q&A and it was just a great way to raise awareness of the issue. And I really liked the way she was using her book as a way to start these climate conversations. And that's what I was hoping to do with the Cranky Uncle book when it came out. And in the pandemic, completely scuttled all of those plans. So I had to try to be adaptive and come up with a plan B. And what I did was I was invited to give a talk to a university in Seattle about climate misinformation. And I decided the way I would do that talk was use the cartoons from the book and animate them and try to create a basically an animated video explaining misinformation. Basically animate the book. So I started creating these series of short videos which was so much work and it was probably a foolish idea. But yeah, I just had this two month period of trying to create as many short videos just addressing different myths each time and using the cartoons to try to make it as colorful and eye-catching and hooking as possible but as well as try to cram that information. That's the dual purpose of the book and also these videos to try to be as entertaining as possible while also trying to get as much information across as possible. And so over the last, I guess, how long has it been now, like three or four months? I've been trying to change the way that I engage with the public. Now it's through videos and it's still the same kind of content. It's still about trying to promote critical thinking and build public resilience against misinformation and COVID misinformation is rife at the moment. So there is a lot of opportunity to address misinformation and build critical thinking at the same time. But obviously it's a very unique situation right now. So I'm trying to find new ways of doing it. I wanna go back to that, but since you brought it up about COVID, you've also done some news reports or been on some different reporting about COVID and about masks. Can you tell us a little bit about that? What that's been, why you've done it? What the thought process was behind that? So I started, well, what struck me about COVID misinformation was I was seeing all the same denial techniques and logical fallacies that I'd been documenting in climate misinformation. And I'd spent the last decade not only documenting the fallacies in climate misinformation, but developing solutions, developing responses. And Cranky Uncle was one example of responding to misinformation. And so I thought, well, given that, A, everyone is thinking about and talking about this issue and B, people are more aware of misinformation now than ever before because misinformation about COVID-19 can kill you. It actually causes people to behave in ways that can help spread the virus if they ignore the advice of experts. So there's this public awareness of the danger of misinformation in a way that's never been before. And so I thought that this could be at least an opportunity to promote critical thinking about one issue, COVID-19. And what my research has found is if you inoculate people about denial techniques in one area, it actually conveys this umbrella of protection and gives them resilience against those same techniques in other areas. So if my goal was to inoculate the public against climate misinformation, inoculating them against COVID misinformation achieves that same goal. So I started creating this, well, firstly, I was writing blog posts, I was publishing cartoons and then started over the last two months I've been putting together videos that address key myths about COVID-19 and what are the logical fallacies and denial techniques being used in those areas. Great, well, thank you. So to go back, I've seen those about the mask and a lot of it is the misinformation coming from the US president, the Trumpocalypse. But I wanna go back to your book and how it came out at a time and how you kind of quickly pivoted and changed presentation style and animation. We have a lot of creatives who listen to the podcast and the videos and who are my friends who do different things. I know you created an app for skeptical science, was it for that as well? And are you involved in that as well as well as the website? But I would love to see this that was one of the first things before I purchased the book. Is there like an e-book, an animated version or some kind of an animation of it? So I could get it because there's a lot of difficulty during this time to pass out physical books and distribute and so you have to kind of, what's the future of reading? What's the future of communication? You're well versed in communication and the psychology there of how do you think that progress towards communicating in the future with fake news and all these things is going to change or adapt with emerging technologies or other techniques to get it online to combat with streaming Netflix and Amazon Prime and Hulu and all the others out there that you're competing against to get the same information. One interesting thing, I had the similar thing. I was in a documentary last year that was supposed to release right at the beginning of the pandemic as well. It was called Now and now I'm telling the distributors of that documentary that they should have called it yesterday because they weren't prepared for the future of distribution. They didn't have a streaming platform. They didn't have another way to get it out there. And so now that critical message which was a movie called Now because it's timely information about climate change, the crisis and things that is almost wasted now production because it's not going to get out there saying, oh, maybe in November we'll be able to release if movie theaters or we get some other options of distribution. It's just insane. So that's kind of changed. It will change. I think it will occur more in the future. Are you preparing for that? What are your thoughts on that? That's kind of what I'd like to know. Yeah, I mean, we certainly need to be nimble and I'm trying to do that with the limited resources I have in trying to come up with new ways of communicating with engaging with the public. But generally speaking, I just think that I'm a big believer in exploring creative ways to engage with the public. Like as a scientist, I fully recognize that science is necessary but insufficient to fully engage with the public. Scientists need to be working with creative people, with artists, with the arts and with technology. I think we really need to bring together art, technology and science together. And it's only when you take the lessons of science and the best practices from research, package them in creative engaging ways with artists but then use technology to deploy them at scale that you can really ship the needle in meaningful ways. So, trying to practice what I preach, that's what I'm trying to do at the moment. Like you mentioned animation and new ways of reaching the public. And also you mentioned our Skeptical Science app. What we're working on now is a Cranky Uncle app. So it's a game, a smartphone game that uses cartoons, uses humor. Hopefully we can get some animation in there at some point. But mostly it uses gamification and engaging cartoon humor to, that's basically the kind of sugar to help the medicine go down, to incentivize players to keep going into the game and the more they play the game, the more they're practicing critical thinking and building up their resilience against misinformation. So it's, as a smartphone game, it's the kind of thing that can scale up to millions. Oh yeah, I've already signed up for it. So I cannot wait and I'm rooting for you. My listeners will, those who are creatives and animators and doing things with apps and emerging technologies, this is their chance to reach out to you to see about turning this project into reality or helping in any way should you need it. Definitely would like to see it come forward and we need more tools in the toolbox to help us with this communication, climate denial communication, climate crisis communication to get people activated and empowered to have given tools in their hand of what they can do. So thank you very much for that. I am looking for an abated breath to receive some updates on that. Now you're studied in Australia. Are you originally from Australia? Yeah, yeah. I thought the accent might give it away. Yeah, yeah, that's what I thought. So I have some family in Auckland, New Zealand and some family and also in Sydney, Australia. So I love that. Are you consider yourself a global citizen and how would you feel about the removal of all borders, walls and limitations on our world and what is your views or understanding of this with this critical mindset you have? Can you share your views, your thoughts with us? Wow, that's a big question. So I'm really given much thought about the issue of removing countries but my immediate thought when you suggested is I think that psychologically, humans are just tribal, they're social animals and we form our tribe, we form our social identities automatically in any situation. Like you watch these reality shows, like my wife and I've been binging survivor during the pandemic and it's struck, to me it's this incredible social experiment where you randomly assign people a color or just something to link them to one group or another group and those tribal links form and then they can't undo that programming. And so I think that you're always going to have this tribalness in society because that's how human brain is hardwired. So I mean, yeah, so there's probably a lot more complex political consequences of what you're suggesting and that's a bit outside of my area, I'm afraid. Yeah, I mean, well, part of it is just who you are. You're not from the US but you're actually there working and you're doing a lot of different things and I had a stepfather from Auckland, New Zealand who was a road scholar and was at Cambridge and professor at Cambridge and things and so there's a lot of this global citizenry. So you interact with different cultures and peoples you're actually traveling around and there's benefits. So the United States is benefiting greatly for having you there in my opinion and Australia is suffering because you're not there. Good thing you probably have contact and travel back and forth went aloud but it's, you know, my father was American, my mother was German, my grandmother was Austrian, my grandfather was German cousins from Spain and Italy and right from birth that we grew up this global citizen but yet in our political world, this could be controversial. Now we've got these nations and borders and the divisions and people of one nation making decisions that affect us all over the world and the air I breathe in Germany is the same air that's burning in Brazil, you know, and affects many other things in our world and so that's kind of why I asked the question of you to see if you had some strong feelings or if you wanted to get into some rough territory. I know you don't mind debating with climate deniers or sharing your thoughts and that's why I asked you that. So I'm also an expert for the world economic form in several different areas and the big discussion since the pandemic is the great reset, not going back to normal, not the new normal, but the great reset and have you heard anything about this? What are your thoughts or feelings of this? What's next moving forward after this pandemic? Do you have anything you can share with us there? Yeah, I have a concern about that. As someone who over the last decade and a half has been researching and fighting against climate denial and misinformation, I can very much see that we're in this world where you have, like people who are trying to get climate action, trying to get progress and try to reduce emissions, try to transform society towards a clean renewable society. And at the same time, you have the powers of status quo who are misinforming the public, trying to counter public engagement efforts, trying to counter climate communication and education efforts and trying to delay any policy for as long as possible in order to continue to keep burning fossil fuels. So I've also noticed in the academic world a kind of reluctance to acknowledge that reality, because it's ugly to engage with climate deniers and misinformation is unpleasant. I can attest to that from personal experience, but to not do it, to not engage with misinformation is to leave the misinformation unchallenged and that leaves the public vulnerable. I'm seeing a similar dynamic now, like there are people saying, hey, there could be this reset, we could try to rebuild structures coming out of the pandemic that are much more environmentally friendly and this is a wonderful opportunity. And this is true, this is all true. But at the same time, there are groups, organizations and industry who are having all their meetings and all their strategy planning to promote their agenda. And they are being just as active or more active right now in trying to lock down the status quo and pursue their political agenda or their industry agenda. And so I think that again, it's not just a matter of imagining what could be, it's being aware of what is happening and countering that because if we don't do that, they're gonna continue to push their agenda and that's happening even now with the US government and you see right-wing groups and you see industry trying to push their agenda and trying to get regulations pulled back, trying to get safeguards that are stopping pollution and trying to safeguard people's health, getting rolled back, which puts people's health in danger and puts the environment in danger. And these things are actively happening right now during the pandemic. I agree and thank you for that insight. I believe that your work for misinformation and things you're doing are going to evolve in many different facets of a complete system, politics and pandemics and just this misinformation and clearing up a lot of things. So I'm glad you're here and part of that. Have you ever been involved in any activities of the United Nations, the Conference of the Parties, the COPs or any general assembly events? Have you been at any activism movements or anything, World Economic Forum, World Trade Organization, World Health Organization at all with your work? I was at the Paris COP meeting in, I think it was 2015. So that was certainly an experience. I was just there as an observer as part of the University of Queensland delegate. Beautiful. I've been involved with the United Nations only tangentially from a communication point of view. I was invited to give a talk to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. They had a communication meeting on how best to structure their future IPCC reports. And it actually didn't go there. I would say that... Frustrating. I would say that they were the second toughest audience that I've ever spoke to. The toughest audience being an audience in Bristol that was packed out with climate deniers. The IPCC was the second toughest and it was a close second because I was basically talking to a room of physical scientists. And I know someone who originated as physical science before moving into social science. I know how they think. And I was basically trying to communicate the message to them that the IPCC reports already were addressing misinformation to some degree. But the way they were doing it was not in line with the best practices from social science research. So I was encouraging them to be more proactive in how they debunk misinformation because as the authoritative voice on climate change, they were the best source to do that. But also to be more, I guess, cognizant of what all the social science and psychological research into debunking has found already because they were basically doing the opposite of what the research was saying. And they didn't care for that comment. I believe it, I believe it. They've improved a little bit but not much. They still have a lot to go by the next report. I'm hoping there'll be more clarifications and understanding that came out. The last report, the AR6 was really interesting how they finally started to do kind of an executive summary and some kind of charts and graphs and visualizations. So that, you know, because it's not always the politicians and the scientists that are going to save us. It's nice if there's the people that it impacts behind that also have a little bit of understanding and seriousness and can find out the facts as well. And then say, oh, I didn't know that, you know, or why haven't I been told this and to act upon that? I would love to, I attend all the cops and I would love to, if there's any opening, I was invited to a cop meeting last year was really interesting. So it was supposed to be in Brazil then it was turned down because of Bolsonaro and then it was supposed to go Santiago, Chile and then because of unrest and some protesting that they changed it to Madrid. And then within like four weeks they pulled off a climate conference and it was also turned out to be a disaster because nothing was agreed upon. It went into overtime and things like that. And now there's a lot of things that are happening now not only because of the pandemic as the COP26 was supposed to happen in Glasgow moved to next year, but it would have normally fallen at the same time of the election of the US presidency which if you know from the sidelines viewing that COP22 Marrakesh the second day I believe it was on Tuesday when the announcement was made that Trump became president. That was it at the Marrakesh COP22 meeting and that's the only conversation that was all that was talked about people were wailing and crying and said, what are we gonna do? But you know, the US has this non climate, this climate denier, this president that's got some bad things in store for our climate and our planet. What are we gonna do? And that was the consumed the entire meeting. There was nothing really accomplished majorly there. There was some things so I can't be too negative but the majority of people were like it was the most depressing meeting ever. So I don't want to- I wasn't at Marrakesh but I was at San Francisco a week after for the AGU full meeting, the American Geophysical Union full meeting. So it's probably the biggest gathering of climate scientists and out scientists in the world. What was it feeling there? Everyone was in shock. It was like, it was, yeah, it was that kind of pull of maybe not quite so much wailing and crying because scientists are too- Yeah. But that was kind of a motive displays but certainly there was this kind of air of shook silence around the whole week. Yeah, that's too bad. So I'm very optimistic and hopeful that COP26 next year will be great that we've learned from this great reset, whatever we're gonna call it. I truly believe that we're going through a form of metamorphosis kind of the caterpillar to the butterfly and we're in the gooey stage and there is no going back. We cannot go back. We cannot have business as usual or do bailouts. We have to fundamentally change the system. As you may know, I'm an advocate for the Sustainable Development Goals and speak about them quite a bit. I believe that they're set a historical precedence that the world's first ever global moonshot the first time in unheard of precedence that 193 plus countries came together and agreed upon anything. I mean, they have trouble deciding on where they're gonna go to lunch, two countries, let alone a roadmap for our future. With that, do you believe that the Sustainable Development Goals are a good plan, a road to 2030, that if we follow them that we're going to reach them? Do you have any cartoons or visions or thoughts about the sustainable development goals and to raise awareness? Can you kind of tell me your insights and your thoughts and feelings on that? I probably don't have much of the way of insight into them. My main interest in the Sustainable Development Goals has probably been the educational elements and the public engagement aspects of them. And other than that, like, I mean, in general terms, yeah, I certainly support them and I think that we should be aiming for them. But I'm not an expert on whether, on how achievable they are on our current trajectory. You would certainly know a lot more than I do. Yeah, they are achievable. So the beginning of this year, we stepped on the exponential roadmap onto achieving them. We've had some setbacks, we've had some negative things, but we've really taken exponential paths, not only with businesses, with countries and achievements that we've made there. It is a requirement that we have this exponential roadmap to achieve them by 2030. We're already five years in, we're at the decade of action, and that's how this year started out. Some things that I can tell you that are very interesting that most people wanna know, what's the proof? What's the profit? Why should we follow the SDGs? Are they for companies, countries, cities? Who are they for? Are they for me? Not sure how to understand them. They came up with back casting through dynamic modeling. There's a certain dollar amount behind them in order to achieve them. There's targets and indicators that are needed to achieve them. It's, they're all a system. So it's virtually impossible just to focus in on one sustainable development goal and only work on that and not touch on the others because they're all tied together as a system, which is as the term says, sustainable development goals. So the development, if you look at that in regular terms of development of infrastructures or cities or communities or even housing development, it's like a foundation. It's a developmental structure. And that's how the sustainable development goals are this transition to a sustainable future and the goals and the actions, the targets and indicators that we need to get there. I very optimistic and I truly believe we can achieve them by December, 2030. I also wrote the sustainable development goal manifesto for the United Nations and speak about that a lot as well because like you with your cartoons, I believe that humanity needs a vision of what it would feel like in December, 2030 to stand there having achieved all the goals, what that world would feel like and envision it because, and I might be wrong, but I think you're also kind of a nerdy, maybe Star Wars, Trekkie guy, technology guy, future guy in some respects. And if I'm wrong, you can, yeah, you can tell me about that. But the way the Star Trek or Star Wars envisioned a different type of future or the future of technology, hologram, tricorder, smartphones, 3D food printers on and on, we've been able to achieve most of those things or kind of model and iterate those because there was a vision, whether it was sci-fi or not. We currently today don't have any shows, any series, any real big movies out there that give us a vision that's non-dystopian of this resilient, desirable future or even a sustainable development goal future, what that looks like, what it would feel like. And if we don't have that, we don't know what to do to achieve it. We can't engineer architects or create it. And so that's why I wrote that. And that leads me to the question I wanna ask you and there's four major questions I ask in every interview and that is the burning question WTF. And it's not the swear word that you might think, what's the future? Do you have a strong vision of even 2030 of 2050 for you? I don't wanna know for politicians or Trump or anybody else, what's the future for you? Well, I can tell you the pie in the sky feature that I'm, I guess the moonshot that I'm aiming for. That's what I wanna hear. And whether I get there or not, shoot for the moon and if it's a little less than, it's still a lot of progress. My vision is eradicating science denial. And the way you do that is not change the mind of every science denial. I think a better model is how we've managed to almost completely eradicate polio, which is an incurable disease, but we've done it through inoculation, through vaccination. And I think that the way you can eradicate at least specific examples of myths, but then broaden it to misinformation and science denial in general is through inoculation. And if you inoculate enough of the public against misinformation, then you achieve herd immunity and those myths no longer spread and become eradicated. So what that requires is inoculation that is ubiquitous enough that enough of the public get inoculated to achieve herd immunity and to achieve that you need scalable technological solutions that are engaging with the public. For example, using cartoons is one way of engaging, but are also based on social science research and best practices from the science. So yeah, in my, I guess a short answer is eradicating science denial. That's a beautiful one. I like that a lot. So I also feel that, you know, there's gotta be, I think there will always be a balance, the good and bad, the yin and the yang and that there will always be little division, but how can we have a better balance to create a nice future so that we can have the ability to collect facts and have the understanding and the sense making to make the right decisions? Well, getting all Star Wars nerd for a moment then. Yes, yes. I guess the comparison would be, because you were talking about balance and then it reminded me of the balance between the dark side and the left side. Like you have moments when the dark side were in the shadows and had no influence on society, when your Sith Lords were just, you know, off in the corner and the Jedi were presiding over a safe galactic or not empire, but the galaxy. Then you have a time where the dark side is in dominance when you have the empire and the emperor running the place. Right now it feels like we're in the sort of dark side where you have science denies in positions of power and science denial is in a much more prevalent place at the moment. And so I think that we need to work towards a point where science denial is politically irrelevant. We will never change the minds of all the science denies. They are a very persistent group in terms of their attitudes, but they're a very small minority. They just happen to be a very vocal minority and sometimes some of them become president. But that's not always the way. Do you, you know, and that's I've kind of taken you on a journey to this point with the questions. Also, that's why I spoke about global citizenship or global citizens and that thought because right now, and I don't know if you're feeling about it. I'd like to know your views and your thoughts. I feel this great unrest with our world that a lot of things aren't working for us, whether it's the Bolsonaro's, the Trumpoclipses, the Shays, the Putin's, the Du Blartes, the Erdogans, the Brexit, whatever it is that these current civilization framework, these models that we have that of governance to help us that they're not working for everybody. They're not working for humanity. Some dictators are craziness going on in those systems. And that could there be a global operating system if you're nerdy and techy and into this sci-fi and into, you know, this future thoughts or future studies or foresight modeling or future sciences, complexity science that you maybe think, okay, there eventually is going to be a collapse. This new, this current framework is not going to be around and we've got to have some kind of a great reset, a new model that works for everybody globally. And so I guess to focus in on a question, do you feel that we're in an unrestful place potentially collapse that there could be a new civilization framework? Do you, how do you feel about our current frameworks? And that's also kind of the secondary question of why I asked you, you know, the burning question, what's the future? About a decade ago, I read a study that found that as impacts like climate change disrupted society more, it would actually predispose populations and society towards more nationalistic policies. And I found that was one of the most depressing studies I've read because I was, my hope was that as climate change became more obvious, it would actually move people towards more, well, we need to have these global solutions. We need to have things like the Paris Accords where 190 countries all come together and agree to work together to fight climate change. And instead, all these impacts and disruptions push us towards these nationalistic, well, the rise of these, the kind of leaders that we're seeing become more powerful at the moment. And this was, I read this many years ago and God, please let that not be, but it seems to be, it predicted exactly what we're seeing now. So it's a very concerning thought from a sociology point of view, from a psychological point of view. That means that politically we're fighting, again, we're fighting upstream to be able to try to move us towards more equitable solutions. But to really answer your question, I'd like to be honest, I don't think I can really have an answer to it. The issue of climate change is such a big issue to solve. I made a strategic decision very early in my career that the best way for me to make a contribution was to focus on one thing, one very tiny slice of that pie and try to do that as well as possible rather than try to do everything and spread myself too thin. And the problem with specialization is you tend, this is a interconnected problem that requires solutions and I'm going the specialist route. It does allow me to make progress on that one area. And I think you kind of need that as well. But as the further I get into my work and trying to work towards goals like eradicating science now, I'm learning that I do need to be more interdisciplinary. And so I work with app developers and critical thinking philosophers and computer scientists and political scientists in trying to develop these more holistic solutions. But I don't really think that I can answer your question. I love that you answered it that way. That's perfect and there's nothing, absolutely nothing wrong with that. I think that's perfectly fine. Many of us all around the world pick specialties and focus our efforts in one area. The entire world, all international organizations in 2018, beginning right in January, switched from this linear siloed approach to solving global grand challenges to a systems view of life approaches, systems dynamic modeling approach to solving grand global grand challenges. All their websites were changed, all their reports and things were changed that they were trying to push that out there. It's kind of an old thing. So 1972, the book, The Limits to Growth written by the Club of Rome and the Volkswagen Foundation was the world model three from MIT and the research about systems thinking from Donnella Meadows and York Randers and Denos Meadows has been around for a long time. And it was very controversial in the beginning of this publications but now it's kind of become the climate Bible, the study of future, not really predictions but how scenarios will evolve if we look at the facts and the figures and the models out there. But basically that shift from, if we just focus in on one area you realize just like the SDGs that you're going to need the app developer, the creator, this other person to actually truly solve the entire thing. So I like that. I wanted to, because of your techy, nerdy mess I thought I would jump in there and see if you've had some bigger thoughts or views on that on how to solve that there was something that you also talked about this balance and the dark side. This is maybe the tech or the nerd in me. I've heard it many times in the last few years but they say it actually has to be both things at the same time. So we have to have that balance. It has to be both things at the same time and there's this thing with emerging technologies or quantum computers where you say the quantum state. How do you explain that to someone? And as someone who has a PhD and is very knowledgeable about these different fields of science and this, if I were to explain someone the quantum state and I'm no enough to be dangerous so I'm not an expert. So with that caveat, what I understand is both on and off at the same time it's both ones and zeros or zeros and ones at the same time and that's a very rough thing but it's both states at the same time in some respects and that's something I can't fathom that is also for me a way of looking at systems thinking, complexity science on how we solve these global grand challenges. What if we were to have in the future an operating system like distributed ledger technology or decentralized autonomous organizations which is a twist off a blockchain or Ethereum or hyper ledger, these smart contracts that were trustless systems based on emerging technology, machine learning or AI blockchain that had a nonfallible system or operating system globally for the earth that these politicians, this bipartisanship, these crazy people running our nations and our earth that they couldn't make some of the same mistakes that were in the past and they could also not make mistakes in certain countries and nations that actually affect us all around the world like take for example, the burning of the Amazon rainforest. So I don't know if I've formulated a question but I would like to know your thoughts as a techie and nerd as somebody who has maybe more insight on where, if we don't have that vision, what's the future? I don't think we're gonna reach it and we need some kind of a plan. The only plan I currently know about are two one is the sustainable development goals and the Paris Agreement, the 2030 agenda and another one that I'm working on for 2050 with the UN called Resilience Frontiers but is there another plan? If do we need to focus in on those visions so that we can reach them? Give me some hope or optimism from the future or just say, hey, this is way over my head, I can't but I wanna get your views and insights on this because your book, The Cartoons, The Things We Talk About is not just about dispelling climate denial or critical thinking, it's about now that you know what's our plan? Where are we going? What's the future gonna be? Is it should we just, we give up because it's a doom and gloom situation or is there a plan out there? One of the golden rules of climate communication is don't just communicate the doom and gloom. If you give people the problem without giving them a solution that can actually result in a denial response like people are like, well, what's the point? If they have no hope, if they have no efficacy so you really do need to provide that efficacy in those solutions and I kind of break that rule with the book. It's mostly about here is the problem but it was kind of intentional because I wanted this book to focus on science denial and misinformation and then leave myself room to do a whole other book on solutions. Oh great. So I kind of broke that rule knowing that hopefully I can redress that sin down the track but I think that, I mean, you alluded to this before as well, I think the hope, I think the way that we do inspire people and create support and create social momentum which leads to political momentum is by painting the vision of what this could look like because, and this is actually just a basic fundamental cognitive law of debunking. You fight sticky myths with stickier facts. So if you want to dislodge a myth or a bad way of thinking or dislodge a bad system, a societal system you need to not just tear it down or prove it wrong or argue against it. You need to replace it with something else positive. So if you're debunking a myth you need to replace it with a replacement fact. If you're trying to replace a system you need to replace it with a positive system but you need to tell the story of what that system looks like. So I think that it's not just about having that vision for what it'll be like in 2030 or 2050. We also need to tell those stories. I think that's why Star Trek was so powerful and why it resonated. It was actually back then and even now it was an outlier because most futuristic stories are at this topium to paint a picture of this utopian society where humanity got rid of war. They even got rid of money, I think. It was just this idealic society. That story is just never told. It's so untold that the new generation of Star Trek episodes have even got rid of Jig and Rotterberry's idealistic future and they kind of tend to be more dystopian now which is a shame. Yeah, it's a shame. There is a great book I would recommend for you and also to my listeners is called Trekonomics and it's the economics of Star Trek and how they don't have any money. They don't have any really monetary system or they have a different form of economics altogether and it's very futuristic and the book really breaks it down nicely on how to view it, how to envision that, how it can work and it also comes from a nerdy, tricky fan and somebody who likes emerging technologies. I think he's a lawyer from Israel but yeah, so there are some fabulous things out there to give us this vision of hopeful different types of futures. I want you to know and if you don't mind, I'd like to mention it just again for my viewers that during this time of pause and reset and I wanna know your thoughts and feelings if you agree with me or if you disagree or if you think this is true. This environmental social governance is kind of the next phase past corporate social responsibility, it's past compliance, it's past this health, safety and environmentalism. It involves the sustainable development goals but those companies who have put the sustainable development goals in their business models who have started investing and divesting from fossil fuels and investing in sustainable transition and especially what they're calling the ESG investments and divestments have all come out so much better during this pause and reset not only in the last quarter of, quarter four of 2019 but this first quarter of 2020 there's some fabulous, some fabulous proof. So with all businesses especially for shareholders and investors the whole backer delivery of sustainability to the sustainable development goals is always the question, well or complaint this is expensive, is it truly a better business model? And the bottom line question is will we get the returns or profit that we need to by doing this sustainable development or this divestment into a different direction? And for this answer we really don't have to go very far there's a couple of things that I'd like to touch upon one is we just look towards the New York Stock Exchange the NASDAQ, the S&P 500, the S&P Global the Stocks Europe, 600 Benchmark the Collar Capital, the NICI Index the Goldman Sachs or HSBC Research Reports of this first quarter of 2020 sustainable index funds lost less than conventional index funds seven out of 10 sustainable equity funds finished in the top halves of their Morningstar categories and 24 out of 26 environmental, social and governance tilted index funds outperform their closest conventional counterparts public traded companies who take sustainability seriously seem to be significantly outperforming the markets across various geographies and fossil fuels are truly stranded assets Goldman Sachs says the only other commodity looking as precarious as oil is livestock ESG risk factors leave companies and people exposed to global shocks and so not only is the proof and the putting in the money and that's why I mentioned that to you but in this time of pause last year our Earth Overshoot Day was July 29th, two, two and a half weeks ago the Earth Overshoot Day was released for this year and it's August 22nd so we've gained what 30, 32 more days I think that could also be a controversial number or how that reset is and if it's truly the pause has helped us because of less travel and movement and things but it's just a better model for our future and so with that in mind I don't know if you've ever heard about that or if you've ever looked into those what would your feelings or thoughts be? Do you agree? Do you think that there's somewhere that I need to be cleared up on my thoughts or thinking on that type of a communication that it's actually a better model to operate on for our future? I think that it comes back to what we were just talking about a little earlier which is we need to be telling positive stories and the climate story can't just be about deprivation and depriving ourselves of things or lifestyles in order to save the environment we need to say that by acting sustainably we're being more resilient and there are a lot of co-benefits that come with sustainable living that actually end up, it's a better way of living we're not depriving ourselves it's actually moving in a more positive direction and so by framing climate action and sustainable living in a positive way and emphasizing the positive elements that come from it that is the way to counter the status quo frame which is that they're trying to take away your lifestyle they're trying to take us back to the stone ages or whatever negative framing they put on sustainable living we need to replace that myth with all the positives the greater resilience and the co-benefits that come with sustainable living. I have three more big questions for you that I'd like your thoughts and insight you've already probably answered a little bit of this one what can we look forward to from the compound cook and from your universities and your teaching is it something besides the app and the development of the animations or is there some more coming that we can you kind of tease the second book idea as well what else can we look forward to coming from you? I kind of have a few possible ideas but which comes of fruition I'm not sure the one thing I know is definitely happening is making sure that we launch this game within the next month and launch it make the game as solid as possible so that's my key practice right now is to really stick the landing of this quirky game because the potential of a scalable game to inoculate as much of the public as possible is so great that it's really taking up the bulk of my attention right now. Beyond that, well not beyond that but adding to that I think that it's not just about having a game but it's about getting it into classrooms I've become increasingly convinced over time that while I tend to be short term in my strategic thinking and trying to get public engagement programs that immediately raise people's awareness I'm also seeing that to get really lasting impact and deep impact you need to be promoting these same strategies in the classroom so it's about adapting all this inoculation work into misconception based learning type lessons so it's inoculating students and building their critical thinking in using curriculum, using classroom, education or resources so over the next six months I guess most of my focus will be on bringing up a game adding to the game, expanding it and making it more powerful but also adapting all that content and providing a lot of scaffolding around it for teachers and college professors to use the game to teach critical thinking in their classrooms. Other than that, there are a few ideas using Cranky Uncle to take on COVID misinformation in a more structured way doing the Cranky Uncle versus Climate Solutions book somewhere down the track. It's just a matter of finding the hours in the day. Exactly, that's where your system's thinking and multitasking that's where that probably really comes in. What sleep do you sacrifice and the work life family balance so I'm your biggest fan anything I can do to help and promote or see that you're successful in your endeavors because I like the results of what I've seen so far the quality and the interest and the factualness of what you release is beautiful, wonderful and I enjoy it so I'll be your biggest fan and cheerleader and if I can let all my listeners know that to support or help you in any way I will do what I can. I have two more questions for you. This next one's probably the hardest one and I think it's one that you in some respects maybe have already answered. What does a world that works for everyone look like for you? You should have sent me these questions before the interview. Thought about my answers a little bit more. I guarantee if I ask you tomorrow or next month that it probably will be a different answer. I asked all my guests this question and it is one that surprisingly I've asked the thousands of people this is different for everyone and there's really no unified answer which goes back to the thing is we don't have a vision of the future and our leaderships are not giving us that and so I want to know if you've made the thoughts about that and if you've had thoughts about this before because how can we unify? How can we change our future? How can 193 plus countries come together and agree upon a roadmap for our future and we don't know anything about it. We don't know what the future holds or what a world looks like that works for everyone. So again, the question, what does a world that works for everyone look like for Dr. John Cook? I'll narrow my answer to probably a scope more fitting for my area but one thing that I've realized that I've been taking for granted all my life is democracy and I only realized over the last couple of years just how shaky and fragile democracy is and how easily it can just be undermined and even topple quicker than you might realize and sneak up on you without you realizing it and the reason why I've been thinking about it a lot is because really might the whole assumption underlying all of my work about addressing misinformation is that a well-informed democracy, no, sorry, let me start again. A well-functioning democracy requires a well-informed populace and if the population is being misinformed and they're basing all their decisions on wrong information then that's the floor of democracy is exposed. It means that they can make decisions that take society in dangerous directions and we're certainly seeing that in the US at the moment where the public are being misinformed about COVID and making bad decisions and we're seeing COVID cases sparking as a result. It's like an immediate demonstration of that principle. So I guess in the idealistic utopian world the Star Trekking and Gene Roddenberry world that I would like to see it's a world where people all agree to abide by the same reality and abide by facts and reason and they can disagree on policies but their policies are based on the same foundation of reality and just saying it out loud that sounds so naive and ridiculous. No, it doesn't sound naive or ridiculous but I think it's a rabbit hole that you and I could dive deep into and probably explore in many different ways. I don't know how much time you have but I would like to kind of maybe try to go down a little bit and maybe pork our heads into the rabbit hole. So this kind of what we do or our paths with education educating humanity, empowering humanity with this knowledge to make sense of things is well, not only it's a big task but it's very complex. There is a form of noise when we communicate that we have to have low noise or high noise or we have to kind of get it into a low noise and then we have to remove these pre biases and then get into the sense making of things. I like to look at big history like this overview effect this cosmic perspective like Carl Sagan kind of give like the first astronauts that kind of by accident turned back and looked at the earth and gave us this earth shot this overview effect that creates of our world and I see it as a big picture or big history of our world. Starting with that, not only do I believe we're all star stuff like Carl Sagan said but I believe that there are seven, well, no, I know that there was eight hominid closest relatives to us, cousins Homo erectus, Homo neanderthalus, Homo africans and so on and in November, 2018, they just found the eighth new hominid in a cave in the Philippines, Homo lutsanus. I can't even say it right, so please forgive me for brutalizing that name that are no longer here on this earth. Homo sapien is, we are still here on this earth but those eight other close relatives that had families and language and traveled together and had tools and all sorts of things, they're no longer here. I always kind of tease, I have a lot of neanderthal in me somehow but they are no longer here. So why would we think that maybe we couldn't be here as well and there was a professor on the second project I'm working on with the United Nations, it's called Resilience Frontiers. It's the roadmap from 2030 to 2050, what happens after we've reached the sustainable development goals? What's the next plan? And it's really based off of resilience. Now that we've got the sustainable development goals and a solid springboard or foundation that we can go into resilience to make sure that no matter what climate catastrophes or problems our world sees that we have that resilience built in there globally to not just adapt or mitigate but actually eat tomorrow, have energy tomorrow and resiliently live but in resilient desirable futures. That brings me to not only are those those eight hominids no longer here but at Songdo, Korea where we started this resilience frontiers project there was a professor at the National Adaptation Planning Expo meeting or program Expo meeting that we had this resilience frontiers, Professor Chin and he spoke that humanity needs an evolution and we need to call it homosymbiosis that we kind of evolve to a unified humanity and that we become an integral part of our symbiotic earth kind of a symbiotic earth and a new type of evolution of homosapiens into homosymbiosis more interaction with other species and our nature and our planet. Goes back to the statement that I made earlier about the civilization framework and unrest that we see and we feel that we know that we might need something different. There in this big history, we know that there are more than 12 civilizations early Mesopotamia, early antiquity, Aztecs, Incas Mayas the ancient Greece, ancient Rome more than 12 ancient civilizations that are not that far back and not as far back as the other hominids that existed that all collapsed except for two of them, I believe and I may be wrong on this, so don't call me. They all fell because of an ecological or an environmental collapse and other choose were because of a conflict or some other, maybe another resource conflict or collapse but they're not here anymore and it wasn't that far back. So now bringing us forward to where we're at in this rabbit hole, you know what does a world that works for everyone look like for us? The reason we have ruins and ancient civilizations and mythology and Greeks that we just see the ruins or hairs because they collapse and I do not believe that this even though I'm a nerd and techie that computers and technology can save us from a collapse. Matter of fact, it can maybe even catapult as sooner into that. I want to know that, you know what you said and what does a world that works for everyone look like for you poking our heads into that rabbit hole of big history and maybe some evolution of humanity. Do you have anything that you'd like to add your thoughts or that has opened up in that which I've discussed that make you look at things differently or do you think that that's the true facts and the big history that I'm talking about but it has nothing to do with us in our current search situation? When I started looking into the climate issue it was a somewhat abstract issue. It was more out of scientific interest than to be honest feeding my father in an argument. But when the issue became real to me and I got real fire in the belly about it was when I realized that climate change affected the people who contributed to the list. It affected them the most. So the people who are contributing the least to causing climate change were the ones who were being affected the most by it. And so I saw that this wasn't just an environmental issue it was actually a it was a justice issue it was a very human issue. And that's when I am really took it on I guess as a cause as a life's mission. And so I think that I don't think that humanity I'm optimistic enough to not to think that humanity is gonna be wiped out but I also recognize that different people are disproportionately affected and the bulk of humanity will be adversely affected by climate change. And we're already seeing many deaths from it and that will only increase as the impacts increase but you do have the Uber rich who have the resources to protect themselves and they're the ones who have insulated themselves from climate change. And they're also the ones who are trying to prop up the status quo and our destructive way of generating energy now. And so I think that and this comes back to your previous question about how do we how do we make how do we build a society that works for everyone? I mean, this is kind of a tautological answer but we do need to reduce that inequality because by having a society that has such strong inequality that results in these destructive impacts on the environment. And so again, now I'm starting to stray outside of my area into much broader areas than my area of expertise but as a general principle having social structures and political structures that favor unequal situations also results in environmental degradation and unsustainable policies. So I don't have the solution. I think that's fine and as a scientist or as a professor the tendency is is you don't wanna stray outside of your area of specialization or what you're focused in on and that's totally understandable but as a homo sapiens as a human you have the right to think and thinking is free and you can use your critical thinking the tools that you have and you've created and you offer people in your book to really think about any subject and topic in the world because we cannot rely on others to think about it in your studies of the book and putting together the book in your courses and the things you do there's not enough of us that are thinking enough about the future we're too caught up in the moment and not preparing well enough of where for future generations and for everybody who doesn't have your book you need to get it but I also love this introduction and that's the one that you mentioned earlier you know we have this fight or flight tendency as humanity were a bear or a wild beast comes at us but then if a graph, a chart or a fact or you know climate science or the IPCC report you say oh another graph, okay this unrest or this unease that we feel is becoming for me and maybe it's because I just saw the New Tesla and so now everywhere I see the New Tesla because I saw the Dragon Falcon rocket now everywhere I see these type of things maybe it's that phenomenon but I really think it is that empowerment that awareness, the lights go on that we need to think about the future and about some future governance or policies or structures of what does a world that works for everyone look like and we saw it not only with the pandemic but later with Black Lives Matters but I think we've poked our head enough into the rabbit hole and you've answered it beautifully I'm so sorry if I put you on the spot or made you uncomfortable that wasn't my point I just want everyone to know that they have a seat at the table at the United Nations and that we're all members crew members of spaceship Earth so that there's we're not passengers we all can put our hand on the steering wheel and guide it wherever we want and so I would really like everyone to feel empowered that no one is too small no action is too small to take to make a better future and the future is plural in my mind it's a futures because it's different for indigenous people and different people at different parts of the world with cultures, religions and thoughts that those don't need to go away we need the diversity I can make one point then you can hear a lot of the themes that we've talked about especially if as you say a lot of your audience tend to be people who are more creative artists or storytellers so like in that first cartoon of the Cranky Uncle book and it points out this flaw in human thinking that we're susceptible to short-term dangers and have trouble visualising the long-term problem or we have trouble making sense of abstract concepts or scientific data but the one thing that we can I guess one thing we can I guess resonate with or take advantage of that's probably a bad way of putting it but one thing that we I think need to focus on is that there is one way that we can engage the public and grab their interest and grab their support is through storytelling people think in stories we remember in stories and we share information in stories so if you want to tell a message if you want to get an idea across that gets attention gets people listening to you and then gets them sharing it with other people and excited about the idea and remembering it tell your information in the form of a story and so if you have created people or if you have artists and storytellers listening to this who want to make a difference who want to promote the sustainable development cause communicate the vision of what a sustainable world will look like in the form of stories and in creative artistic ways and that's a way to engage the public and build public support which then leads to political action I totally agree and that really goes to what I was saying we need more media or non-dystopian media visions of what the future, what we can hope for what we can engineer for, create so that we can reach it and I think that through movie magic and Star Trek or Star Wars or whatever we saw in the past when I'm dating myself I don't know, I don't want to date you but I think that we had these things that said, wow, that's cool and then we tried to figure out how to get there and a lot of people did and I think a lot of things we've achieved now we need that next vision, visuals and the stories and the narratives that we can say, oh, now I can get it it's not Mad Max, it's not Waterworld it's not this dystopian fighting over gas or whatever that it can be much different I mean, I could speak to you for hours and I would love to because I have I think that we could have some nice other exchanges and maybe some more I would tease you into some pulling some more insights or revealing some more of your thoughts or feelings towards sorts of different things whether it's a neo-darwinism, neo-liberalism or how you feel about survival of the fittest but I won't and I will end it with the same question I end with everyone else if you could go up to each individual on our planet individually in one-on-one and give them one message Dr. John Cook's message that would empower them and change their life or be your message that you want them to hear I mean, I think that's partly why we do books or why we release videos or whatever as we have a message we want people to hear but if you had a captive audience you go up to each one individually one, would it be the same message and two, what would that message be? How long am I allowed to talk for? However long you want, I'm just glad to have you Well, if it's as long as I want I maybe I'll probably just read them the cranky uncle book Oh, great! If I was getting on an elevator and I had like two flights to tell people one thing about climate change it would probably be that there's 97% agreement amongst climate scientists that humans are causing global warming but I guess if I had the opportunity to communicate anything to people it would probably be critical thinking and how to assess arguments because I conceptualize critical thinking as the universal vaccine against misinformation if you learn a misleading technique in one topic you can see it across all topics and so it's quite like I've been inoculating people in climate change but that inoculates them against COVID misinformation now I'm inoculating people against COVID misinformation and that inoculates them against vaccine misinformation and so I think teaching people to think about how we think would be the one thing that I would try to talk about Thank you so much that is beautiful beautifully put together Is there anything you'd like to ask me or any final words besides that? I feel like we covered a lot I have a lie down man Yeah, great I appreciate it and I want to thank you we'll end it there Thank you so much, John I appreciate it and I look forward to speaking to you and seeing these new products and things come out that'll be more tools for our toolbox of understanding and sense making Thank you very much, John Thanks a lot, Mackens Great to have you Great to talk to you