The Impact Of Climate Storytelling With Maiya May & Trip Jennings

Welcome to the show, a Circle B show. Each week, I invite you to care more so that we can create a better world together. As summer drifts into fall, we are seeing heat waves and stronger storms around the globe. The devastating potential of global warming is on full display. Fires blaze on the West Coast. In the Southeastern states, we are struggling to recover from Hurricane Helene.

Climate scientists agree that this pattern will continue, given the amount of greenhouse gases that are presently in our atmosphere and our present rate of deforestation. To help us better understand all of these weather challenges, PBS has released the fifth season of a climate-focused show called Weathered: Earth's Extremes. I'm joined by the show's host, Maiya May, and the director, Trip Jennings.

‐‐‐

Thank you both so much for joining me. I'm thrilled to have you here.

Thanks for having us.

It’s great to be here.

Trip Jennings

I want to start first with Trip. You are a seasoned director and producer with nearly two decades of experience behind you in this particular climate storytelling world. You've led Weathered through the creation of something like 50 episodes, which I believe started first on YouTube and was picked up by PBS. What made you decide to dedicate your life to exploring this topic through film?

Climate is the most or one of the top 2 or 3 most important issues of our generation at this time. It's something that we'll touch and already is touching almost every person on earth. Honestly, at a very young age since high school, I have been fascinated by the weather. In high school when I was young, I was like, “The extremes are so interesting,” and then I realized that those were changing and affecting people's lives,

What I wanted to do was something I didn't see out there. It was about how we can sometimes combine the grim details or the real deal of climate science of “Here's what's going on” with ways that we can adapt and survive at this moment as weather and climate change, and then also look at real core solutions. That's what we've pulled together. I'm proud of this one. This season is the first broadcast season. It's a longer format. We got to go on location with Maiya all over the place. This one is the biggest deal season for us. We’re so happy to have it out.

 

Maiya May

All six episodes are streaming now on PBS.org as well as on the PBS app. I plowed through them. I have to tell you that it was entrancing, interesting, and still hopeful, which is the thing that is hardest for us to keep in a central frame when we have these devastating moments like what happened with Hurricane Helene on the East Coast. It feels prescient. The timing of this release feels wow. Also, to have that silver lining continually be there is powerful. Thank you for bringing this to life. Maiya, I'd love to hear the same perspective from you. What made you decide to dedicate your career to this exploration of climate change?

It’s rooted in my love of nature. I started as someone who was aspiring to be a broadcast meteorologist. I did all the internships in college. I got the internship that I always wanted at the Weather Channel. When I was there, I was like, “I don't think this is what I'm supposed to be doing.” I grew up in nature. I was exploring a lot during that time. I was like, “The best thing for me to do at this moment is to use my creativity to still tell stories about weather, climate, and nature in general, but do it in a way that I can be a little bit more creative and be more of myself.”

What was the tipping point in my decision to pursue making documentaries was that I didn't see people who looked like me. I went to parks and state parks. When I was at the University of Missouri, I would drive aimlessly to try to find cool new places to take pictures of. It was striking that I never saw people who looked like me when I was out exploring.

My friends knew that I did this. It was very well-known that I was the girl that went out in nature on campus. Amongst my friend group in my community, that's odd. It's different. I wanted to change that. I figured the best way I could do that was to use my skills and the things that I do best creatively, which is through photos and videos, and try to make nature-related documentaries. It so happened that I had a background in weather because up until that point, I was pursuing becoming a broadcast neurologist. I decided to focus on weather-related topics.

Everything that I have done since has led me to this point. It's been, in a lot of ways, a very spiritual journey. I'm here now. I know that this is what I'm supposed to be doing. Everything that has happened, even the way that I got this job of hosting this show, felt like it was supposed to happen. It feels like I'm supposed to be here in this moment telling these stories. I'm proud of the work that we did on this particular show.

You brought something up I'd planned to ask a bit later, but I'll ask it now. It can be challenging to be that trailblazer, whether it's you're the odd duck in your social group doing something different, especially when you're talking about working in the sciences or being in this broadcast journalism space. You are committing to doing something where there aren't very many representations of yourself. There aren't many women in STEM, let alone people of color at the same time. How did you navigate that world to also emerge with strength in the space of climate change and broadcasting? What did you learn along the way, and how might people tuning in apply that to their own paths?

I always relished this idea of being different, in a way. I don't care what people think about me. My friends are like, “You're out hiking on a mountain. I would never do that.” I’m like, “I enjoy it.” It is truly what I enjoyed. I grew up on a nature preserve called Davidson-Arabia Mountain Nature Preserve. The core of my childhood memories are me and my friends on this farm enjoying ourselves.

They eventually built a bike trail that led to the high school that I would eventually attend which was an environmentally and STEM-focused high school. This is something that I've always done. I've always enjoyed being out in nature. I don't care if people think it's weird or not. This is what I want to pursue. I've always been headstrong in the things that I want to do. That's still who I am now. All that said, that is what has gotten me to this point.

It's important to have representation in fields where there typically isn't a lot of diversity. When I was in college studying atmospheric science, in my atmospheric science classes, most of the time, I was 1 of 2 Black people in the class. That can change by someone watching a show like this and then seeing someone who looks like them. That is so important. I hope that little girls who look like me, if they tune in to the show and see me, they believe, “I can do this thing.” It has been a journey. I've learned a lot. It has been great. I’m happy to be here.

Production Experiences

I know too with your background as an on-air presenter, you have to be prepared for things to go perhaps a bit as you didn't plan them to go. I wondered if in the process of filming, especially going on location, either of you have stories to tell specifically that relate to that, perhaps what surprised you the most and how you responded to those challenging moments to ensure that we got to see the great work on the other side.

Trip, you start. I'm interested to hear your story. I know what my story is going to be, but I'm interested to hear your story.

I think about production in numbers. You do the best that you can do. When we're doing verite production out in the world, you do the best that you can do. You do the best planning you can do, and then you go out in the field, see what happens, and get lucky, hopefully. You don't get lucky every time. Sometimes, there are big mistakes or things happen.

 

If things are going great, I'm like, “Be ready.” I have to say that we got lucky almost this whole season. We were so lucky on so many of the things and so many of the trips. That's not something that you can normally say with changing weather, climate, and the way that it is, so I'm super grateful for all the things that went so well.

We got rain when it was hard, We got heat when it was hard, but this is a show about weather and climate. We were filming in Miami on the highest record heat index ever in the city. We were on a boat and people were getting heat exhaustion, throwing up off the side, and so on and so forth. That was the first shoot. I feel like it got easier from there. I'll let you take the most exciting part of that story.

I'm from Atlanta. I'm from an area that deals with a lot of extreme heat. It's the same type of heat that you get in Florida. It was so hot during that shoot. There was a little bit of shade on the boat but not a lot. We were shooting directly in the sun. I've been on many boats and I've never gotten seasick. Trip was like, “Do you want some Dramamine before you get on the boat?” I'm like, “I'm good. I do this all the time.” I get on the boat and we're doing our thing, and I'm struggling. I did get seasick for the first time. I was not happy with myself.

Throughout this series, I've always said I want to be the next David Attenborough or the Issa Rae of nature documentaries and do this thing where I’m posting on location. This was the first time I've done that to this scale. I learned a lot. I learned how hard it can be at times in the elements but also talking to scientists who spend their whole career studying a particular topic. They know all the things and are using all the jargon and you have to absorb all this information and be able to spit it out in a way that normal people or lay people will be able to understand. It was challenging in a lot of ways, but I learned a lot and I'm better for it. At the end of the day, we have a great product and I'm proud of it. I hope people learn a lot from it.

I also want to say that this crew rolls with stuff well. We still got great footage that same day that Maiya got seasick.

Also, please tell Corinna about how we lost that drone footage.

I don’t know if I can talk about that. I did crash a drone and it did have the card that had a day's worth of drone footage on it. I had to go back and buy a much cheaper drone, which we were three hours from the city, and then drive three hours back and re-record as much as we could. Losing a drone in the middle of nowhere is hard.

Those are the challenges of doing this type of work. Before I got the show, to build my portfolio, I was doing self-funded nature documentaries. I did one in Belize about coral reefs. I was like, “It's okay, but we need to step this up and do something a little bit better and get better cameras.” We did that. We decided to go to Utah and tell a more light story about how weather changes our physical landscape over time. We were all so excited about it.

We get back to Atlanta. My director of photography calls me over to his house and is like, “Maiya, I have bad news for you. We lost all of the footage.” All of the money that we spent going on that trip went down the drain. We still had great photos. Those are the challenges of doing this type of work. Luckily with this project, nothing to that extent happened. In doing documentary work like this, you do have a lot of challenges like that.

I live in Santa Cruz County and I'm a scuba diver. The first thing that comes to mind for me when one of those drones goes down is how many that my friends or even I have brought up from the seafloor because they get a little bit out of range or they have a complication in flight and they go down. Sadly, there are a number of quite expensive drones that are wasting away with all that captured footage. The cards can still work sometimes if they're encapsulated within that compartment well enough and they don't get corroded. I wondered when you said that if anybody tried to go and get it.

We tried. It was a lot of private property and a lot of fences. We were in a desert in Arizona.

I felt bad.

I felt very sad for a moment. You're going to lose stuff. Stuff is going to happen. The thing is how you move forward and keep the vibes. It's so much more difficult to have a positive mental attitude in the crew than it is to get new equipment.

Climate Migration

You roll with it. You learn too. I have to say that speaks volumes for the crew you put together and the output. It shows in the output. Much of what you did film was on location. You visited communities around the globe. I wondered if there was a particular spot or a particular community that you visited that stuck with you or that story that left its mark. If you have one, I'd love you to share it.

I can go. In episode two, we talk a lot about climate migration. It is an episode about climate migration. The community that we went to is an island off the coast of New Orleans called Isle de Jean Charles. We met with Chris Brunet who is a member of the community. This is one of the first communities in the US to undergo a federally funded relocation due to climate change. Since flood insurance is federally subsidized, it made more sense to build a new community and have this community relocate versus having to continue to rebuild after repeated floods.

It was inspiring to see that the community members were involved in the process. Chris was very candid with us in telling us that although it was federally funded, it was hard to make the decision to pick up and leave. It took him a while to get to the point of saying, “It makes the most sense for me to make this move.” You get so attached to where you grew up. I go back to where I'm from quite a bit. It's 30 minutes from where I live. The feeling that I get when I'm around the places that I grew up walking around and developed my core memories is special.

For a community to have to pick up and leave everything that they've known for generations, it's not that Chris and his family just moved there within his lifetime. His family, his dad, and his grandfather grew up in the same area. We saw how hard that decision is, but it's also a good example of how climate migration can be done in a thoughtful way that still involves the community members and that still allows them to make decisions about their livelihood moving forward and in such a sensitive time. It's a great example of how it could be done. For me, that was the story that hit home. Trip, I know we both feel the same. That was a great story.

One of the most powerful moments of the entire experience of filming was in New Orleans. We were filming with a social scientist who'd been down there working with the community as they were moving. She lived in New Orleans for a long time. She moved out of New Orleans because her homeowner's insurance quadrupled. She felt like the writing was on the wall and it was time to go.

We went back to her neighborhood. She had left. Her old neighbor came out and started chatting with us. He was like, “I lived in the Ninth Ward before Hurricane Katrina. I moved to this neighborhood after a stint elsewhere.” He has seen the total disintegration of a community in the Ninth Ward that was generations deep of people, and then he has seen that same thing happen all over again as people's insurance doubles, triples, quadruples, or 10Xs.

I know people are dealing with this from Hurricane Helene and fires in California and all over the place, “What is the cost?” We never put numbers on the financial benefits, much less on the emotionally important ties that we have to our community. He was like, “There was a kid with developmental disabilities. He lived on our block.” He was a teenager. He was very mobile. He said, “If people would find him 3 or 4 blocks away from his house and in trouble, they would be like, “We'll help you get home.”

The point he was making was how much would it cost to have a caregiver who always knew where a teenager was or that could get that person, help them, and bring them home? When storms and fires roll through these communities and people leave, that's the thing that you lose. That's what's at stake in these decisions that we make. It's the bonds. It's living next to your family. Also, even thinking about the economic cost of that and the value of that, it is not something we ever put a number on, so we don't value it as much as we should.

That was a huge deal for me and all of the neighbors as well as not having insurance still. That's something that people are going to be going through with Hurricane Helene, the third hurricane to hit the Big Bend area of Florida in such a short time. What do we do? How do we deal with not having insurance? How do we deal with high insurance premiums? Do we stay? Do we go? How do we go? Those are questions we're going to have to answer as we move forward in this new climate. That's what we tried to explore and tease out from people who are experiencing it in that episode.

The same is true in California. We were evacuated because of the CZU Fire Complex that hit the Santa Cruz mountains. Some of our friends lost their homes. Their homes were too close to some of the lightning strikes and there was virtually no time to get out. They lost animals. They lost their properties. What we found is that the fire insurance premiums have not only gone up significantly, but mine has raised 10% every year no matter what. At the end of ten years, you're paying double what you were before.

I'm on the perimeter of an open space preserve. It sounds very much like where you grew up in a way, Maiya, because there are trails there and all the wildlife you can explore directly from the bottom edge of my property. When you have all these homes built into the crevices of these mountains, because real estate is at such a premium here in California, then there was nowhere to go quickly. Often, there is only one road in and out. Much of the mountain space in North Carolina that got hit by Hurricane Helene is very similar in that capacity, perhaps 1 road in and out or maybe 2.

When we run into these situations, it's challenging from a human perspective. This came rapidly and we didn't have much time. We thought perhaps it wasn't going to come this far inland or we thought perhaps that fire was going to stay on the other side of the ridge or the other side of that highway. The wind changes, and suddenly, you're confronted with something so big and overwhelming that it is emergent.

It's not only from that life perspective and that community perspective but, at the same time, it feels like there's no economic protection in place and not the government saying, “We're going to guarantee that you have the ability to get some insurance so that you're able to stay in your home.” It is very stressful. I resonate with every single one of those challenges.

If I may, I'd love to add. There's a fourth wrinkle to what you said, and that is there is so much that we can do. We cover this in episode two and we cover this throughout. We've talked about this in Weathered a lot. There's a lot we can do to our homes to make them safer. We can't hurricane-proof, flood-proof, or fire-proof our homes, but every hurricane is not a Category Five and every fire isn't a campfire. There's a lot that we can do. It is about numbers. That's, unfortunately or fortunately, what insurance thinks about as well.

We can retrofit our homes. We can build new homes that are ready for fire. We can build communities with fire in mind when that's the danger. We don't build communities with one way out. We build communities with multiple ways out. We build communities with wide shoulders on the roads that go in and out so we can increase the traffic and get a flow going in both directions.

As homeowners and even renters, we can do a lot that's very affordable and easy starting with Saturday weekend projects. I interviewed someone who went through the park fire. His neighborhood was really on top of doing the home hardening and the defensible space work. You can't just do one or the other. They saved almost all of their community even though the fire ripped right through. That's true with hurricanes. You can do a lot with hurricanes as well. A lot of homes get the roofs blown off and they flood from the top. The water rains in, mold grows, and the home has to be taken down to the studs or taken down completely. We're not like sitting ducks, and we don't have to be.

At some point, some people in locations that are particularly risky are going to have to make a call, “Is it worth having myself, my pets, and my family in this risky place or is the risk low enough that we can do a lot to prepare and live with the rest of it and have a go-bag ready?” That's the other thing that's important that we try to talk about in our show. How do we make those calls? Where are those lines? Let's think about and learn about what's coming, what we're experiencing, and how it's going to change in the future so we can make informed decisions to keep our families and ourselves safe.

We have to make the call whether the places we live in are safe or not, as well as how it will change in the future. This way, we can make informed decisions to keep our families and ourselves safe.

I love that. Knowledge is the key to figuring out how to move through this and navigate this crisis. When you know better, you do better. People ask me, “What are you going to do now that you've done this show? What are the things that you're going to do now?” For me, it's going to continue to educate myself, take that information, and give it to whoever wants it or gives it to the community. People need to know what to do and what's happening. If you're not aware of what's going on, you're not going to prioritize things like voting for people who are going to put policies in place to make it easier for you to make that decision in the future. I love that. Knowledge is key.

Favorite Episodes

You have six episodes out on PBS.org or via the app. Throughout the show, you cover nature-based solutions as well. Some of what you're talking about when it comes to the environment we live within, some of those solutions can be nature-based. You plant more trees on perimeters of properties so that you have a natural windbreak. You go ahead and introduce more fire breaks and defensible land. If you are in a space that is likely to be ravaged by fires, you can plant mangrove trees along our coastlines to protect those coastlines.

You also really dive into some of the technology that we have and how we're presently even looking at the past to learn from the past by sampling ice cores and things like that. I enjoy the breadth of the exploration, but I wondered if through this lens you each have perhaps a favorite episode, something that stands out, or something that surprised you that you learned that was new that you could share.

I feel like that's twofold. I can share my favorite episode. That's hard because all of the episodes are so good and extremely informative. The episode that hits the most home for me is the one about extreme heat. We talk about a nature-based solution in that episode, which is planting more trees. I live in a very hot place, which is Atlanta aka Hotlanta. Heat is the reason why I decided to pursue making a climate documentary. In 2019 here in Atlanta, we experienced the most 90-degree days on record. We had 91 days reaching 90 degrees or more. It was at that moment that I was like, “This is a problem that I need to focus on making climate-related content.”

A lot of people don't realize that extreme heat is the most deadly form of weather. Some people are at higher risk. If you're 75 years or older, 4 years or younger, or immunocompromised, you're at an even higher risk of dying from heat. We all know people who fall into those categories. In a warming world, this is going to continue to be a problem. The fact that the US is losing trees in the most vulnerable areas, the areas where you have more people who are older and more people who are immunocompromised and can't cope with this type of weather, was very concerning to me.

The US is losing trees in the most vulnerable areas where more people are older and cannot easily cope with the warm weather.

I was excited to go to Medellin and explore a city that is figuring out a way to build and develop its city around the big trees that provide a lot of shade that are already there instead of clear-cutting the trees, building buildings and apartments, and then planting smaller trees afterward. Those trees take time to grow and provide the shade that you need to mitigate during a heat wave.

It was great. Extreme heat hits home for me. It was great to see a nature-based solution to that and figure out how we can start to mitigate the effects of extreme heat. I do have another point or another a-ha moment that hit home for me, but I'm curious to hear Trip’s favorite episode. I don't think heat is his favorite episode but that was mine.

I love that episode too. We got to go to Colombia. We got to explore a different place. Colombia was fun. My favorite episode is episode five. That's because it's hard to believe and internalize what we're getting at in episode five. I've been working in the climate space for my entire adult life. I've been thinking about this a lot.

I've been in some dark places where I was like, “I don't know if we're going to be able to do this in time.” A lot of people around the world feel the same way when we see commitments made and promises broken in terms of policy and preparations. It’s so hard and expensive for individuals to make the changes that we need to happen, but in the last handful of years, that has changed and shifted.

I am surprised by the fact that after a year of traveling all over the country internationally to understand where we are and where we're going in this moment of extreme change, I am far more hopeful than I've ever been. That is not because there's this technology, that technology, or this billionaire funded this thing, or whatever. What has happened and what has to happen?

Maiya asked the director of Rewiring America, “How do we solve climate change?” I loved it. He was like, “It's simple. We electrify everything. We get that electricity from low-carbon sources.” I hadn't understood it in that way, but what's happening now is finally, low-carbon sources are cheaper. Our short-term incentives line up with our long-term survivability on this planet. That has never happened before. We've never seen a world where we can push the gas pedal down because it's very hard to decide to build a coal-fired power plant if it's more expensive. Also, it's dirtier and we're going to kill people with the exhaust and the air pollution.

 

Maiya and I got to go watch a coal-fired power plant be blown up with this massive mushroom cloud fireball. Nothing says energy transition like a good explosion. If you don't believe it, watch the episode because the numbers are exciting. We are experiencing exponential change in a good direction. California has doubled its battery capacity a couple of years in a row. That is an amazing adoption. We're not going to get where we need to go without pushing harder. It's not done. That's maybe one of the most important messages, but we have to celebrate our wins. We're on a winning streak when it comes to decarbonizing.

A Path Of Hope

Trip, that was going to be my next point. I said I had two things. That was the second point or episode that I liked. That was the main a-ha moment for me as well, especially when we laid out the different climate scenarios that are often referred to in popular media. The worst-case scenario is it's business as usual. The episode is called Not Business as Usual because that is not the path that we're on with everything that's happening with the energy transition with electrification. We're not on that path.

The common portrayal of the dystopian and very apocalyptic future where humanity can't survive on this planet, with the exponential rate of change that's already happening and that's going to continue to happen in the clean energy space, that's not going to be our future. Is there a lot that needs to be done? Absolutely, but we are on a good path.

I’ll add one more thing. If you've been involved in climate activism or you've been paying attention to environmental politics, you've been lied to a lot and have been misled a lot. If you've been paying attention, that has happened over and over. People are not ready to hear or believe that we're making the progress that we are. I want to acknowledge that for a lot of the people who are watching it. You might see this and feel challenged. I was. You might feel confused too. We've been told, “Don't worry. Elon Musk is going to take care of it.”

I have to laugh.

You have to laugh. No billionaire is going to do this for us. It has taken a lot of pushing and a lot of work for decades. I don't think it's okay and productive for us to pretend that we're not making progress because we are.

Solar panels are so much less expensive than they used to be. A solar farm is less expensive to run than a coal farm, which is what you're speaking to. It makes sense.

The cost of solar panels has gone down 90% in the last couple of decades and it's still dropping. It's much more like computer technology which is trending toward zero. It used to be so expensive to buy an external hard drive with a bunch of gigabytes. The cost of storing that knowledge is trending towards zero. It’s not that it's going to be free anytime soon, but it's moving in that direction and so is low-carbon energy.

Battery technology is moving at the same rate solar technology has in terms of more efficiency, cheaper, more environmentally efficient, and less destructive, which is great. For the first time in all of our lives or the experience of being human, we have the potential to live in a sustainable way. We have a path to get out of this alive. That's exciting.

I do want to add something, Corinna. I'm sure some of your audience are probably going to feel like, “You guys are gaslighting me.” A lot of good things are happening. We are in an election year. We don't get into this for the sake of not getting too political, but it is important to note that voting is the single most important thing that anyone can do to solve the climate crisis.

 

Many of the things that create the climate crisis are huge systemic political-related issues. That's a fact. I feel like that is the elephant in the room. I've seen some of these comments come in. It's important to know and address that. We're on a great path, but to continue that, you're going to have to get out and exercise your right to vote.

Unfortunately, there's a lot of spin doctoring that happens too. Suddenly, you hear that Hurricane Helene was man-caused somehow. Democrats caused the storm to happen. I'm like, “Where are people even getting these ideas?” We do need to approach this from a bipartisan perspective of the fact that climate change is something that is going to affect all people and that the Inflation Reduction Act put money in the right places to drive innovation so that from a technology perspective and even from a nature-based perspective, we can fund more projects.

We forget these things too soon after they're in the rearview mirror that the effect of something like the money that is going into these programs is going to be positive. It is going to be good for people. It is going to create jobs. It is going to help retrain people from something that is phasing out. People are concerned if they are truckers or long-haul drivers, for example. Those jobs are likely to be replaced as technology improves and as we have autonomous vehicles. People are afraid, but they could be retrained for jobs that are relevant today, tomorrow, next year, or next generation and that are climate-wise. I'm encouraged by those things.

You, in your last episode, episode 6, covered the eVTOL space or electric Vertical TakeOff and Landing. I have to bring this up because my husband works for Joby Aviation. He's in the eVTOL space. I get to hear in my home about the technological improvements that are going to result in a future aviation world that won't be as taxing on the environment either because for every lane trip we take and every package we have delivered, we are increasing the carbon cost of our daily lives.

These innovations take time to develop safely because they're complicated. They need funding to be driven. In the case of Joby, they went public with a SPAC and had an initial investment from Toyota for something like $600 million before that even happened. Big change takes big money behind it too. Some are investing in these new technologies that will change the way that we live in the future in a very positive way. Your show ended on that hopeful note where you're covering things like, “Here are all the green technologies that we're seeing today.” It was beautiful. I love the way you ended it with episode six. I wanted to share that with everybody.

It's a pleasant reminder. I know things have happened that make certain groups disillusioned. There's been a lot of money put in the right places and it's exciting to see. I feel like it was a reminder of the great things that are happening in the climate space. Trip, I'm sure you can add to that.

The other thing we tried to do with episode six and throughout the whole series is we painted this picture which is where I believe we are. We are somewhere in this weird moment where the impacts of climate change are increasing exponentially and the technology, the shift, and the transition to low-carbon energy are also happening at an exponential rate.

We have a fighting chance but we don't know who's going to win this race. There is potentially a future where the impacts of climate change ramp up faster than we can mobilize low-carbon energy. It is up to us. No matter what happens, the next generation is going to have a world that is fundamentally different from the world that we live in.

We are at this point where we have so much more choice in what that looks like than we ever have. That's very exciting, but it's not a done deal. The impacts of climate change are making it more difficult to do a lot of these things, like an increase in convective storms, more hail, and more challenges to large solar farms. It's a race. The more that we do in our own personal lives to speed that transition up in big policy, the more the good side is to win it.

To have a future we can be proud to live in. It's attainable too. Some days, it feels daunting. Sometimes, there's a discouraging moment, week, or month that comes your way because natural disasters continue to ravage our populations and our landscapes. I'm hopeful that the mangrove will keep growing ahead of the pace of that little bit that the sea levels keep rising each year, as I learned about through the show.

Planting more trees and doing something as simple as that even in your own yard can be part of the solution. I thank you both for joining me. I wanted to know if there was any perhaps lingering thought you wanted to leave our audience with. If there was a question that I haven't asked that you wish I had, you could ask and answer it. I'll start with you Maiya and then go to Trip.

We covered it all in this great conversation. The biggest takeaway that I want people to leave with after watching the show is that I get that things can seem bleak sometimes and there's still a lot more that needs to be done, but there are a lot of good things that are happening and there are a lot of great reasons to be hopeful. I'm a positive person. I like to think when you think positively, you affirm that and then you attract that. I'm proud of the show. I'm glad we were able to tell the story from a very positive lens.

When you think positively, you will attract exactly that.

I want to add that we produced a climate show and people have said, “What a powerful time for it to come out after this devastating hurricane.” Sadly, you don't have to be prescient or you don't have to even try to time it if you're releasing a climate show to come out at the same time as a climate disaster. Something is happening so frequently. I have a lot of friends in Western North Carolina who lost so much of their personal belongings and their homes. I know people are going through that in Florida and California.

I want to say that I hate it when we release this media at a good time or when people are interested in this topic. I'm ready for that to stop happening. I'm ready for us to not have to be so interested in this every time because it does feel like we often are releasing a show that has to do with hurricanes and right when a hurricane comes out, and that sort of thing. I hope everybody who's watching the show is able to stay safe and we are able to do everything we can in the immediate term to help the people who are facing some of the most difficult moments of their lives.

I have to ask myself and ask you. If this weren't your life's mission, what would you do? Let's say the climate crisis is in the rearview mirror. Are you going to still produce films? If so, about what?

I would shift to housing and access to housing. That's the other thing I think about a lot and am passionate about. I don't mean to always be thinking about the problems, but that's maybe one of the other most important challenges of our time, making sure everyone has a home in this world where there are so many people. We live in a beautiful world and it's a fascinating time to live in it, so I would be out as much as I could enjoying and documenting that. I love documenting the beauty.

Closing Words

Spoken like a true documentarian. Thank you both for joining me. This has been my distinct pleasure. I look forward to hearing from all of my audience about what they think of your show. I'm sure many will be running right from this episode to go watch the trailer or the first few episodes. It's binge-worthy. You'll learn a lot along the way. I know I learned bits of pieces along the way. Even to hear the perspectives that you shared helped to add new color and get me thinking differently about the problems too from more of a solutions mindset perspective, especially on days where I might be feeling a little bit bleak. Thank you for the work.

Thanks for having us. This was a fun conversation.

Thank you. It’s great to meet you and great to be here.

‐‐‐

Episode Wrap-up

To find out more about Weathered: Earth’s Extremes, visit PBS.org or pull up the PBS app. While you visit our site, I encourage you to sign up for our newsletter because, for every new subscriber to our circle, we're planting another tree through our partnership with ForestPlanet and 1% for the Planet. Join our circle and let's build that greener world together. Visit CircleB.co. Thank you, everyone, now and always for being a part of this show and this community because together, we can do so much more. We can care more. We can be better. We can grow back our forests, decarbonize our atmosphere, and do the hard work of reversing global warming together. Thank you.

 

Important Links

• PBS
• PBS - Weathered
• PBSDS - Instragram
• PBS Digital Studios - Facebook
• @PBSTerra - YouTube
• @PBSDigitalStudios - TikTok