Yessenia Funes:

You ever meet someone and just have this urge to keep talking to them? You find everything that they have to say utterly fascinating and enthralling? And no, I'm not talking about that feeling when you have a crush—though, if there were a climate scientist to crush on, it would definitely be this one. This was my experience when I first met Dr. Mika Tosca, a climate scientist and activist who works at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago as an associate professor. She's also an affiliate climate researcher at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. She has an incredibly unique look into the world of climate science. For her, climate science is another medium from which to create art. She works to bring artists, designers, scientists, and musicians together. She recognizes the role that the arts play in our fight for climate justice, and she brings her queerness into the work, too. She sees this fight as a revolution, as liberation. I really wish more people could have this lens. If you love sci-fi author Octavia Butler as much as we do, you're going to love this episode.

This is the Architectures of Planetary Well-being podcast. I'm your host, Yessenia Funes.

Hello everyone. We're here today with Dr. Mika Tosca, who is a climate scientist, a humanist, and an activist. She is an associate professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and an affiliate climate researcher at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Southern California. Her current research and public outreach explores the synthesis of art and climate science and posits that engaging with artists, designers, and makers is instrumental to solving the climate crisis.

Hey, Mika.

Dr. Mika Tosca:

Hey, how's it going? How are you?

YF:

You know, it's going alright. It is a Monday.

MT:

It is definitely a Monday.

YF:

Mika, I wanted to just open up the space for you to introduce yourself and maybe fill in any gaps that I might have missed when introducing you.

MT:

Oh, sure. Yes. I mean, you kind of covered all the big-ticket items, but I guess I'll just describe a little bit about what a climate scientist is doing at an art school. So I am a climate scientist; I have a PhD from UC Irvine in Earth Systems Science, which I got in 2012. And for a while, yeah, I was working full-time at the Jet Propulsion Lab as a researcher, and I really got kind of jaded and cynical by just the way that genesis of scientific knowledge was happening there. And so I started applying and looking around for jobs where I could teach. And I stumbled on this really great opportunity at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, which is an art school. We teach mainly students, undergraduate students, how to be fine artists. They all get a BFA or a BA in art education.

And so as a climate scientist, my job is to teach science to art students. And so they have to take 25% of their courses in academics and the liberal arts. And so science counts as one of those. And so, I'm one of the required classes. But since coming to SAIC and working with art students, I've really expanded my own scientific research and my own scientific practice to think about ways that art and science can sort of collaborate and synthesize as we try to solve the climate crisis. So that's what a climate scientist is doing at the Art Institute.

YF:

So cool. I feel like you have one of those jobs that I imagine is a dream job for many folks in this space.

MT:

Oh, it's definitely, I'm not complaining. I'm not complaining.

YF:

It feels really fitting that this is a podcast on architecture. And I think for myself, as someone who's still very new to the world of architecture, I think of architecture as a form of art, as a sort of art medium. I'm curious to hear your thoughts, Mika, on the role that art and architecture together play in solving the climate crisis.

MT:

Yeah. Well, architecture is definitely considered an art. We have a department at the school that's architecture and designed objects, and I forget what the other letters stand for, but it's a big, long acronym. So architecture is definitely considered an art, and we have a lot of architects who are training at the school. So you're right with that, for sure.More broadly, the role that art and architecture can play—I mean, there are many roles. So I think there are some really didactic roles that art and architecture can play. For example, how do we communicate very complicated concepts related to climate change and scientific components of the Anthropocene? That sort of thing. We can use art as a way of simplifying or just better communicating these really complicated concepts. But I also think there's a role for art that kind of goes beyond that, that's a little bit more abstracted; ways that art can inspire us or pique our imaginations to think about ways that we can solve the climate crisis that are maybe a bit more out of the box. I know that's a bit cliche to say, “out of the box,” but just out-of-the-box thinking—how can we be inspired in different ways by the things that we're seeing, and the artistic mediums that we're experiencing?Octavia Butler, who is a really well-known, speculative fiction, Afrofuturist writer, she writes a lot about post-environmental crisis worlds and how we build societies. And she often says that science fiction— which I guess could be more broadly applied to the world of art and architecture—science fiction isn't just about talking about the problems of the world, but also about solving the problems of the world. And so that really guides the way I think about these things. So, thinking about the role that architecture specifically can play when we think about solutions to the climate crisis, I think architecture can be really integral as we think about solutions, specifically green architecture, sustainable architecture, architecture that is socially responsible and assumes the responsibility that I think it plays in our society—because architecture is more than just what the building looks like or what the inside of the building looks like. But it's also how you interact with the space, how the space interacts with its own environment, and all of these types of things. So I'm moving into some new work that kind of centers this idea of solarpunk, and solarpunk is really important when we think about architecture specifically, because it's like, how can we combine human technological ingenuity with the natural world in a way that ensures that we have a really positive future? Yeah.

YF:

Yeah. Oh my gosh, you're getting at so many different topics here and ones that I all want to explore with. I guess just to backtrack a bit, some of the points you made about art and inspiration really resonated with me. It's a big part of the work that we do at Atmos, the magazine where I work, and because there's something about art, whether it's photography, illustration, that can really move people. And I think that there's no overstating the importance of that and how much we need that right now, that inspirational element to move people to get out of this paralysis I think that we're all collectively feeling, given the gravity of the climate crisis.

And so I just want to say, I really, really appreciated you saying that, because I think that that feels the—I don't know, I think to people who are interested in art, it feels kind of obvious, but it's something that I think we need to keep reminding folks of that inherent value, especially as we see efforts from certain politicians to keep certain pieces of art out of schools—just this, I think, lack of appreciation for that inherent value that art brings.

MT:

I often say if we want to build the future that we need and deserve, we have to imagine it first. And what better to help us imagine that future than art? I mean, art really reaches us as humans in ways that other mediums, other disciplines, even science itself, doesn't reach us. So art can really reach us in really important and interesting and unique ways.

And like you said, we're sort of surrounded by this apocalypse narrative. In the media, it's framed as this sort of end of the world. There's just so much despair and everything is horrible. And while that might be true, while things are not looking great necessarily in terms of climate change, there's always hope. There has to be hope, right? We're still here, we're still living. We're building worlds. We're existing within those worlds. And so we are going to get to the next world. And so let's make sure that that next world is a good one, that we address this crisis in the right way. And I think sometimes the framing of it as an apocalypse is almost intentional, and it sort of intentionally closes those doors and it closes us off to thinking about ways that we can actually approach this problem.

YF:

So Mika, you touched on a lot of interesting elements here around the world we need to build. And you talked about solarpunk, as well, a little earlier. And for those who aren't familiar, can you just describe and define what solarpunk is? I mean, it's something that I'm actually quite interested in, and we've been talking about writing about it a bit here at Atmos, but [I’m] curious how you would sort of define and describe the solarpunk?

MT:

Sure. Yeah. So solarpunk is… the sort of punk genre; it's not totally sort of dissimilar or divorced from other punks, like steampunk or cyberpunk. But the difference between those and solarpunk is that solarpunk is really… deliberately leaves behind this apocalyptic or dystopian framing, and replaces it with what I call a post-nihilist paradigm for imagining positive futures.

So it's this emerging movement in, I guess, speculative fiction, art, fashion, activism, et cetera, that sort of encourages us to imagine and embody what a sustainable civilization will look like and how we build one. And so it argues that as climate change and global warming and all these various environmental disasters get worse, society needs more than just warnings. We need solutions. And so the “punk” in the name comes from this idea that we should be centering the voices and the contributions of those who are typically and have largely been excluded from the status quo, like artists, for example. Also queer people; I'm a queer person. And so it's like artists, queer people, Black and Indigenous thinkers, et cetera.

And so it has to exist outside the mainstream, just like other punk genres like steampunk and cyberpunk. But like I said, it doesn't really sort of resign itself to this dystopian future, though I will note that it doesn't necessarily replace that dystopian future with a utopian one. It just sort of asks of us to demand a radical, imagining bold commitment to change, keeping hope alive even when it feels like the darkness is sort of closing in on us. It's that kind of energy, that kind of vibe.

YF:

Yeah. And the “solar” in the beginning of the word is also about the renewable energy, the clean energy future, that is so necessary to actually have this positive future. I'd love to hear a little bit about your own project because I know you have a project, Solarpunk Futures: Imagining Positive Eco Futures with Art. Talk to us about this project and how you see your own work in this realm, redesigning this response to climate change and the sort of narrative around climate change.

MT:

Yeah, totally. I mean, this is a really exciting project. And actually, it's perfect timing because—so a little bit of background, but I've been working with a young undergraduate artist on this project, and he approached me at the end of the spring semester and was just like, "I want to do something about this. I'm 22 years old. I feel really… I feel a lot of anxiety and despair about climate change. I'm a painter. I want to explore this idea of solarpunk." But he specifically said that he wants to make the idea of solarpunk “not cringe,” which I just love. Gen Z kids—everything is cringe. So I don't know what makes solarpunk cringe to a Gen Z; I don't think it's cringe, I think it's amazing. But he was really into this idea of, "Hey, Mika, I want to work with you and I want to think about solarpunk, but I want to think about it in this really abstracted, radical-imagination way."

And so we've been meeting all semester and we've honestly just been chatting. We've been chatting about the science, we've been chatting about climate change in general, how we build futures, what we need to do that. And all the while he's been creating a very abstract painting, which I haven't been able to see until literally today. So I was like, “you have to show me this painting before I do this podcast.” So he showed it to me, and it's honestly really beautiful. But what’s especially really cool about it is that there's no right answer, or there's no right way to read it. There's no right way to see this painting. And that's, I think, what we're kind of going for with this idea of solarpunk. We're thinking about how we can build worlds that aren't necessarily right or wrong or this or that, but actually just are sustainable and work for everybody.

So how can we get people thinking about hope amidst darkness, right? About the Earth and all of the sort of bounties that nature and our natural world give to us that we sort of discard or throw away or abuse or overextract, or whatever it is we do. I mean, it sounds really corny. I'm a millennial, so I guess I'm allowed to be corny and cringe, but how can we do this together? How can we actually build a better future in this period of metaphorical darkness? And so the painting itself is really beautiful, but it's actually… The project is more than just the painting. It's developing this language in art that allows us to branch out into maybe other mediums or more paintings or other ways of approaching this problem. So the painting is aptly titled Beginning, which Javi, my collaborator, my artist who has been working with me—his name is Javi Miller—and so he titled it Beginning. Yeah, sorry.

YF:

And I actually am looking at this because you must have uploaded this onto your website quite rapidly.

MT:

I did. I did.

YF:

Could you describe it a bit for our readers? I mean, I have my own reaction to this, but would love to hear yours.

MT:

Oh my gosh, I don't even know how I would describe it. So it's really abstracted. I guess if I had to be a bit reductive, it's giving kind of Impressionism vibes. It's a lot of brushstrokes and it's a lot of different vibrant colors. So there's a sort of greenish—it's greenish at the bottom. There's some reddish and orange interspersed without, and then some bluish in the upper right corner. It's actually really difficult to describe, which I think is somewhat the point. I've been asking different scientists, actually, who see this painting to give me some of their reactions. And it's really interesting, because some are really kind of broad—like “warmth” and “colorful” and “hopeful,” and others are really specific: “It's Chicago in the fall,” or “it's a satellite image of a forest fire,” or… So, just stuff that's just really… It's so different. It runs the gamut. And I think that's the point. It's like, what this painting can do, it's just a small little piece of the puzzle, and the way this painting allows our imaginations to run wild, it's something that we can apply to the broader conversation about solarpunk and, more broadly, how we're going to do this. What are we going to do to get to the next world?

YF:

Definitely. When I look at this painting, I almost sort of have this space on earth feeling like that little… There's this sort of blue, galaxial-type thing happening in the top that almost feels very… It feels very celestial to me, and yet it also feels very earthly, by the greens and the reds. But then I had another thought about forest fires. You could mention that. That's the other sort of reaction I had. I'm like, “it's just a forest on fire,” which I think is just the beauty of art, as you mentioned; we all have our own interpretations and reactions to it. But it doesn't feel scary. It doesn't give me a scared or frightened feeling. It gives me… It does make me feel warm. Even when I imagine this might be a forest fire. It doesn't feel alarming.

MT:

Yeah. It's like I asked a friend of mine too, who is not a scientist, but is more of an artist, and I asked him to explain it, and he said, "It's water, earth, fire, and air. ‘Long ago, the four nations lived in harmony. Then everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked,’ but the Earth Nation is the site of resistance." And then he went on to say, "It's also giving the release of 8 billion souls from their flesh prisons into the inevitable and ethereal plane of eternity." So it's doing a lot for a lot of different people, which was the point.

YF:

I would love to hear a little bit about how Octavia Butler has inspired your work, specifically this Parable of the Sower series that I know many of us, in this political era that we're in, have been quite attracted to. And you've mentioned her earlier, so just really keen on hearing sort of that connection you have with her work.

MT:

Yeah. So, it's interesting. Parable of the Sower, for those who have not read it, is kind of creepy in how similar it is to our current time. It's, of course, this speculative fiction about a world, a post- sort of environmental disaster world where we're rebuilding society; the main character—there's a lot of religious undertones, but the religion is one that's guided by and in tune with the Earth and the natural world, that sort of thing. And this particular quote has always stuck out for me because it's like, “The world is full of painful stories”—climate change, apocalypse, social injustices, environmental injustices—“and sometimes it seems as though there aren't any other kind. And yet,”—and I think we all do this—“I found myself thinking how beautiful that glint of water was through the trees.” Despite all of these sort of horrors, we keep going. We lead on, we lead our tribe, our people, our whatever it is, on, so that we can maybe someday get a glimpse of the glint of water. And so it's that glimpse of the glint of water that I'm really kind of going for. I also really love how—oh, sorry. Were you going to say something?

YF:

No, no. I was just responding to you.

MT:

Okay. Yeah, so I think sometimes another thing that Octavia Butler does that I just really, really love is things are never sort of black and white for her—I guess pun intended—but it's very much a lot of gray areas. So another book of hers that really inspires me—that almost you wouldn't expect when it comes to sort of climate change and this whole line of thinking—is Dawn. I don't know if you've ever read Dawn or if you've read the series of Dawn?

YF:

I haven't read that one. No, I've only read Kindred. And then the Parable series.

MT:

I highly recommend Dawn and the ones that come after it, Adulthood Rites and Imago; that's the series. And it's a bit different; not to ruin the story for anyone, but just to give a brief synopsis. It's basically, humanity essentially pushed itself to the brink of extinction through various environmental disasters, nuclear war, climate change, et cetera. And this sort of alien race came and saved us from ourselves, but in the process of saving us from ourselves, they created a hybrid sort of species that was both human and this alien species. And there's—there's so much gray area. Is that helping us or is it controlling us? The alien species has three genders that has the traditional male and female, and then also a third gender that's—I guess we would call it non-binary or something. Obviously, Octavia Butler didn't call it “non-binary” in the book, but it's this kind of gray area that… I love what she does because it really does… She's not telling us what the future can be. She's guiding us to what the future can be. And I think that's really what we need, and that's what I'm trying to do with my artists, with the work that we're pursuing. It's guiding us to the future, but not telling people what that future can be. But let's build it together. Let's imagine it, and let's figure this out, right? Let's get there somehow.

YF:

Yeah. And also just bringing together different perspectives and viewpoints or the sort of blending of this and that to create that nuance, to create that gray area, as you worded it. And I know that that's something that you do a lot of in your own work, this blending of seemingly separate works. You've been interested in intersections of queer techno, club culture, climate activism, which, to the average person, might feel so disconnected from one another. I would love to just hear you talk about the importance of focusing on these queer spaces, focusing on music in your research practice. And also, just what have you found throughout your research on this topic?

MT:

Yeah, thanks for that question. Bringing the queer angle into this—it's a relatively new direction that I'm going, but it's so important to me. As a queer person, right, as a trans woman who has existed in queer spaces for most of my adult, and just honestly my whole life, it's so important that I incorporate the perspective of queer people. I like to say that, as queer folks, and especially as a trans person, my sort of proximity to revolution, if you want to call it that—I'm pretty proximal to this idea of revolution and radical liberation, if you want to call it that. And so I often think of solutions to the climate crisis, to various environmental disasters, as a sort of liberation of the environment. It's a liberation of the natural world. And can we draw on experiences from queer liberation and queer resistance movements as we set out to think about how we respond to climate change? Are there perspectives and angles that come from queer existence and queer being and belonging that we can bring to the conversation about climate change?

And so to that end, there was a really cool opportunity this summer where a friend of mine was organizing a speaker series for… that was happening at this four-day rave in the forest that I go to every year, this queer rave in the forest where there's techno music, there's house music, there's yoga, and then there's these talks. And so I gave a talk on this, and I engaged with a lot of the folks there. We went on some nature hikes, and we talked about all these different problems, and it was just really important for me to bring this work and my own experience as a climate scientist into this sort of unconventional space to see what type of ideas it could generate.

And it really was a site of a lot of genesis. I've got a lot of DJs and aficionados and others who are, now, we're chatting and we're talking, and we're hoping to put together some kind of, let's call it a musical experience. Let's not call it necessarily “a rave,” although the idea would be sort of this sonic experience where we're thinking about climate change with our music. We were hoping to start this during the pandemic, but then of course, the pandemic closed down a lot of in-person things. And so we ended up doing a really cool panel that… We brought in some DJs who created these mixes for us that were inspired by climate change. They have lots of sounds that come or are drawn from nature, natural-sounding things or just music that, for whatever reason, is inspired by or has some link to climate change and the climate crisis. So this is definitely something we're still pursuing. I would really love to put together this sonic experience, and I'm hoping more DJs and other folks who are interested in this get in touch with me so that we can figure out what the next steps with this are. Because so far what I've done has gotten a lot of really positive reactions, and so I want to keep that going. It seems like, especially, the queer, techno, club, house scene is really interested in being a part of this conversation.

YF:

Yeah. And there's so many sounds to capture and so many sounds that you can bring into this music. I mean, I think about the melting of glaciers and how that has a sound that scientists have recently discovered, or the sound of a forest burning, that crackling sound of flames. And I don't know, I just think it's just so interesting and sounds so creative, bringing together these different sounds and immersing them in music. I know that this is also something you've been working on with your students, right? Exploring the ways that sound, sonification, techno music can all communicate and address the climate crisis? Can you share a little bit about the projects that you've been doing with your students?

MT:

Yeah. I mean, there's a really cool project which you can access on my webpage, which is called Plastic City. A student of mine, Eli, is this really talented electronic music producer, and they made a really cool sort of multimedia thing. There's a zine, there's a website, and then there's a whole album and there's several sort of music videos that you can watch on YouTube as part of this album. And the whole album, I think it's called In Water. And it's about this idea that in the future, maybe because of all the plastic in the oceans, we make our cities out of plastic and they're floating in the ocean. And so obviously that's… Is that going to happen? I mean, I don't know, maybe, probably not, but it's just this idea of imagining this radically different world that allows us to think about things in new, different ways. And so honestly, the album itself is really beautiful to listen to. I put it on in the background all the time when I'm working. It's hard to explain it. It's kind of like, it's soothing, almost. It has a lot of interesting sounds that aren't exactly natural and aren't exactly not natural. I mean, I think, in my opinion, they really embody solarpunk, this synthesizing of human technology with the natural world. And so that project is super cool.

There's also another project that I worked on with a student of mine, where he took Jimi Hendrix's version of “The Star-Spangled Banner” from 1969 Woodstock and superimposed onto it a sinusoidal curve in the sound that is derived from… Let me see if I can get this right. It's derived from a fourier transform of the carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere. So as the song goes along, it becomes louder and more dysphonic, right, as the carbon emissions increase. But there's a pattern to it. There's a sinusoidal pattern because carbon dioxide goes up and down over the annual cycle. And so there's a really interesting take on that, which is that we've got “The Star-Spangled Banner.” America, United States, is typically kind of, sort of, one of the worst offenders of climate change. We have very large per capita emissions. We've notoriously withdrawn ourselves from two climate treaties, the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement. And then there's something about Jimi Hendrix, a Black man playing this 50 years ago at this countercultural-type event. And there's just a lot of symbolism, which… I love symbolism. And then the math and the science put on top of it—it's just a really beautiful project.

YF:

Definitely. And symbolism, I feel, is just such a powerful tool within art that, again, sort of elicits some of that inspiration and curiosity and empathy and emotion at large that, yeah, we just need people to feel right this moment and to feel compelled to react to this moment and music as an avenue to do that. This feels right, and we actually have a little bit of that audio to share with you all today. Let's check it out.

I think that throughout your work, Mika, it seems that collaboration is a major theme, whether that's with students, whether that's with musicians and these DJs and these techno artists. Why is it important for us to work with one another, especially within the climate movement, especially given the urgency of the climate crisis?

MT:

This is such a great question, actually, and it kind of brings us back to more of the design side of the art and design conversation. And just to be really brief about it, I did this really cool project with a designer where we redesigned this scientific database with some data that I had worked on when I was still full-time at JPL. And during that redesign process, I learned a lot about not only the design process and the methodology that people use to create designed objects, but also just the idea of collaboration. So I think I'm in an interdisciplinary field as a climate scientist, earth science. We need atmospheric physicists, we need oceanographers, we need ecologists, we need people who look at rocks—geologists, sorry. And we need all these things and we need to sort of know how to talk to each other. But I do think sometimes the amount of collaboration that scientists think we do is a bit overstated.

And I say this because when I actually started working with designers and artists and others, I learned that what I was doing before, it wasn't real collaboration. It was a sort of collaboration, but it wasn't this sort of radically interdisciplinary approach. And something I learned above all else is that designers, at least, and artists especially, unlike scientists necessarily, designers are really interested in what people think about their work, obviously. I mean, you're usually designing something for a stakeholder, and I think of science in much of the same way, except that scientists don't often spend much time understanding, empathizing, listening, learning from people, from actual people, from stakeholders, from even each other. There's oftentimes this genesis of a hypothesis, some scientific project that we want to pursue, but there's very little actual collaboration in how that's going to work. Whether it's even, I hate to use this word, but sort of a “worthwhile” project, whether it's a project that we really should pursue, whether it's a question that anyone even cares about the answer to. In this sort of post-Enlightenment scientific project that we're all engaged in, it almost seems, sometimes, like scientists are just creating scientific knowledge for other scientists.

And I like to think that we should be creating scientific knowledge for each other, for the world to make things better. And obviously as a climate scientist, the problem of climate change is very sort of urgent and pressing, and so perhaps this is more important for that field or that discipline, but I do think it can be expanded to include all science. I think if we actually talk to each other, if we collaborate, we can generate ideas and ways of knowing and even knowledge itself that we might not have sort of generated if we hadn't done that collaboration.

YF:

Yeah. Hearing you talk about that makes me think a lot about the role that traditional ecological knowledge plays in climate science, the role that Indigenous knowledge plays in climate science. Finally, there's a space now for… There's a space being made within climate science where they're welcoming some of the ancestral knowledge that many Indigenous peoples hold and the collaborative changes that are happening within the field, and the collaborative transformations that are happening to make space for that knowledge, as well. That's what came to mind for me, hearing you talk about the need for more collaborative science, because yeah, it does seem like science has a specific way of functioning that has sort of upheld systems of oppression and systems of white supremacy, and it's based off of these colonial systems. Yeah.

MT:

Yeah. I mean, “Science TM” is how I like to call it. Capital-S “Science TM.” It's very colonial. It's a colonial project, honestly, and I don't think that means it's beyond saving or making better, but I think, like you said, we need to acknowledge that. And especially, sort of, Indigenous activists, thinkers, et cetera, have been really the vanguard of environmental justice movements. And I think that centering that knowledge, those voices, is critical. I don't know if I'm allowed to say this, but the film Don't Look Up–I really don't like it. I know it's supposed to be this allegory for climate change, but I feel like it really centers this white environmentalism that I don't know that it's really done that much… I don't know what the right words are. I don't know that it's helped that much in getting to the next step here.

The point of the movie is, "Oh, if we just listened to the scientists, we could've solved this." But it's like, I'm not actually sure that that's the case. I think a lot of people are listening to the scientists, but the problem is that science as it's currently sort of constructed isn't enough, actually. It's not enough to get us to what we need to get to. And the only way we can get to that is if we collaborate and listen to each other and actually draw on the knowledge and experiences of people that are outside of that mainstream sort of discipline. Hence the solarpunk idea.

YF:

Yeah, and that's actually a take that I like—I mean, as someone who enjoyed that movie, Don't Look Up. I really like that angle that you have, around like—

MT:

I mean, don't get me wrong. I really like the film. I think the film is funny, and I'm probably going to get in trouble here, but I just don't think it operates as a huge sort of vehicle for enlightenment on the climate crisis as it thinks it does.

YF:

100%. I mean, again, it sort of has that sort of doomist narrative. That's the narrative that it's perpetuating, right? We're all screwed anyway. Here comes the asteroid to kill us all.

MT:

Exactly.

YF:

I totally feel you. I mean, I just felt very seen watching that movie. No one else cares, and I'm just screaming into the void, but the ending was, was quite something. Hopefully everyone—

MT:

It was quite something.

YF:

—has watched the film, and we're not just spoiling it for the listeners. On that note, Mika, I think that it will be quite beautiful for us to end on an inspirational note. Was hoping that you might have a quote you can share with us today that helps you envision the world you want to see, the world you're hoping to create. I'm hoping this wasn't… Your quote wasn't the one that I shared earlier from you.

MT:

Well, I was going to say that that is usually the quote that I use as sort of my inspirational quote, but I've got lots of different quotes that can inspire us, and I also just have things I can say about this. So I'll start with the quote. It's actually an Ursula K. Le Guin quote from The Dispossessed, and I'll just read it: "You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit or it is nowhere."

And so I just want to remind people that this isn't the end of the world. It could be the end of this world, though, which might be okay because we have this radical and I think revolutionary opportunity to make the next world better, brighter, more equitable. But if we don't first imagine the future that we want, then we will never have the future that we deserve. And in order to get us to that next world, to that future, we must incorporate diverse voices.

YF:

Beautifully said, Mika. Thank you so much for being with us today and for sharing that really powerful quote. I definitely felt that one.

MT:

Oh my gosh. Thank you so much. This was honestly such a joy, such an honor. I love talking to you. This was great.

YF:

I love talking to you too. I hope we talk again soon.

MT:

Me too. We're going to save the world. We're going to do it.

Audio:

Architectures of Planetary Well-Being is a podcast of revisions, a media initiative supported by re:arc institute, a philanthropic organization committed to supporting architectures of planetary well-being. For more information on re:arc, please visit www.rearc.institute. This season is hosted by Yessenia Funes. For more information on her work, you can follow her online at @yessfun, Y-E-S-S-F-U-N, and in her work, The Frontline at Atmos magazine. This podcast is produced by Minah Kwon and Andi Kristins. Music by In Atlas.

COVER FEATURING ARTWORK BY DR. MIKA TOSCA & YOUSIF ALZAYED