April 16, 2024 • 38 mins
Ophira talks to CNN's climate correspondent Bill Weir about how to talk to our kids about the state of our planet, how there's hope for us and his new baby, and his short stint as a standup comedian.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
It used to be chair, so let them stung.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
I think of sales fun pantos A joke.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Hello listeners, this is parenting is a joke in honor
of Earth Day. I'm a soggy, compostable straw named o
Fira Eisenberg zipsip. On the show, we bring together professional
funny people to talk about their career being creative and
how they are managing those two things. The unpredictability of
a creative career with the unpredictability of raising kids. How
(00:31):
the fuck are they doing it? I just watched my
very smart child stare at two mismatched gloves. They were
both left, and he just stared at them for at
least four full minutes, the greatest attention span I've seen
in a while, and then just said, I don't know
what to do. And you know what I told them
to do? Where to left gloves? Yeah, the little grippy
(00:55):
part on one is on the outside. Cool. And then
I said that, mom Fang, I said, if you keep
losing your belongings, this is what happens. This is the consequence.
Did that sink in? Did he learn from that?
Speaker 2 (01:06):
No?
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Will this be the story he tells people when they
interview him in the future about being effortlessly ambidextrous. Unlikely,
but it's what we did to get to school on time,
and that's all that matters. To celebrate Earth Day, I
have an amazing guest today. Not only is he CNN's
climate correspondent, but he gave me hope Bill Weir. And
(01:32):
Bill Weir also revealed to me that he, for a
very short stint, was a stand up comedian.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
And the one bit that worked with the most from
me was we're trying to decide whether to start a family,
you know, my wife and I. Yeah, she's talking about it.
The clock is ticking and all that. I say. No,
don't get me wrong, we love kids, but we also
love sharp objects, open flames, find dining, business class, vomitory clothing, lego,
(01:58):
free floors, on censor, profanity, busy intersections, lead based paint, miniblind, skydiving, motorcycling, convertibles,
free time, sex and silence.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
More with me and Bill Weir. Right after this break
Earth Day is here. I hope my son becomes a
climate scientist. I mean, the whole generation should be focusing
on the environment right now, right but my son says
(02:29):
he wants to become a video game designer. Actually that's
not true. He wants to become a beta tester. He
figured out that job title, which means he doesn't have
to do anything, just play the games. So smart. So
maybe he'll design a game and also beta test a
game where you're on a quest to find solutions for
(02:52):
carbon emissions. Yeah, and then you shoot down big polluters.
That would be something good, you know. So even in
our home unit, we are trying to just instill the
value of we all need to contribute all the time.
Things aren't chores. They're part of being a team. This
is how we live harmoniously. And so we've been asking
(03:14):
our son to ask us before he can play or
get his screens, do you need help with anything else?
It's super cute hearing his little voice say that when
he remembers is do you need help with anything else?
It's so cute, Oh my god. And I've given him
some things, but I've often said no, why because what
(03:35):
I really need help with is above his age and
expertise level. But I was thinking of a list of
what's really going on in my head when I'm asked
that question, do I need help with anything else? Here
are some top ones. Yes, yes, please? Can you plan
the meals for the entire week with things that you
(03:56):
are guaranteed to eat and take into account variety, complex carbs,
lots of vegetables and all the meals to take under
thirty minutes to prepare. Then create a grocery list while
cross referencing what we have in the fridge. Awesome. Can
you also go through all of the videos of you
on my phone and delete like ten or twenty of them,
(04:18):
the SOSO ones. You know what I'm talking about, because
I'm running out of storage and let's admit not every
bit of footage of you is a banger? Okay, but
I can't bring myself to delete it.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
You do it?
Speaker 1 (04:29):
Please? Also get on developing an I cream that makes
me look and feel like I had nine hours of sleep.
Haven't had that in twenty years? I think I'd like
to feel what that feels like. Yes, I know you're eight. Also,
can you tell me that I'm a great parent?
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Okay?
Speaker 1 (04:47):
Now do it again like you mean it?
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Okay? For you.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
You can read more on this topic on our Parenting
is a Joke substack. Hey, what do you need existential
help with or real help with Could an eight year
old do it? Because I'll get them on it seriously.
Dm me on any of my social media platforms at
ofira E or Parenting is a joke at Parenting as
a joke, and you can also leave us a voice memo.
(05:16):
You want to find out how to do that, just
go to our website Parenting is a jokepod dot com. Also,
I just want to make sure you know this. I'm
going to Austin, Texas. Friends and Parents for Parenting is
a joke live show as part of the Moonterwor Comedy Festival.
It's on Saturday, April twentieth. Right now booked Amazing People
(05:37):
SNL writer rosebud Baker and her hilarious comedian husband Andy Haynes.
They are both new parents and they'll be more added
to the list, so make sure you come to that show.
You can go to Austintheater dot org to get tickets
or just my website ofire Eisenberg dot com. Okay, so
coming up here is a fantastic talk because I'm sure
(05:59):
you can relate to a lot of this. I am
always looking for good ways to talk to my kid
about the climate and the future and what we can do.
Bill Weir has some great advice and you know it.
It's not just mope around hopelessly. So check it out everyone.
I got to tell you this. I felt like when
(06:20):
I received the pitch to talk to this person, it
was so well timed, and so I'm so excited to
have Bill Weir with me today. He's a anchor, writer, producer,
a host who started at CNN in twenty thirteen after
a decade of award winning journalism at ABC News, and
then in twenty nineteen, he was named CNN's first Chief
(06:43):
Climate correspondent. And he just wrote a recent book called
Life as We Know It. Bracket can be Bracket and
it's out right now. Bill, thank you so much for
coming to the studio.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
It's my pleasure.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
Okay. Every episode we start by asking tell me the
ages of your two children.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
I have a twenty year old daughter, Olivia, and I
have a son who's about to turn four. And get this,
my brother and I are sixteen years apart. And if
you had told me you're going to repeat that lunacy,
you know, when I was even ten years ago, I
would have scoffed at you. But life happens.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Well, let me tell you something similar. I feel like
to you and your wife's story. My mother she had
me at forty two, and I thought, well, first I
thought I'll never have kids, and then I thought, well,
I certainly won't do that. That's exactly what I did.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
Yeah, oh you did that at forty two.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
I have one child. But at forty two.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Sure, It's like we end up becoming our parents in
certain ways, right, we learned nothing? Yeah, yeah, I got
two baby mamas. That's how mine works out.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Okay, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
My second my partner, now, she was forty three and
down to one good Ovary and didn't think it was
even in the car.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
It's not crazy, you know.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
And so it had when we kind of told around
with IVF because she really really really wanted to be
a mother, and here you go.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
You know, is she Canadian?
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Okay, I am Canadian.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
You're the really the most superior humans I think. I mean,
she's from Toronto, but she's this stereotypical Canadian like ball
of sunshine. I never thought the idea that my son
is behalf Canadian is a comforting thought, right, Yes, River
is my son. He was born at the height of
the pandemic April of twenty twenty, and you know, came
(08:31):
into a world on lockdown. I had just come back
from wildfires. I was about to go cover the George
Floyd protests in the streets, and I would hold this
little dude and think about the idea that this kid's
going to live to see the twenty second century. Yeah,
you know, knockwood and I'm so sorry, you know, like,
(08:51):
and the idea that gave me comfort was like, Okay,
if we actually walked to the Canadian border, could I
hand you across to your grandpa? You know, like having
these distoping ideas because society was shut down outside the
window now, you know.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
Usually I'm interviewing stand up comedians about that mix of
parenting really in terms of like how do you do
this work? And two things I want to talk about
that with you. But one is your work I talked
about with stand up communities because the schedule and the
kind of work you have to do is really marry
so poorly to being a parent and a kid's lifestyle
(09:27):
and the routine, especially with travel. But then I was
thinking about your life and the kind of travel you
have to do and the length of the assignments as well.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
I can tell you about this. I'll preface it with
sort of a jaw dropper that it cost me my
first marriage, the travel and the way I handled it.
It didn't you know, I'm not blaming the travel. It
was I was out exploring the world. I was shooting
in this show called The Wonder List, where I got
to go to the wonders of the world and wonder
what will be left of them for my daughter. Was
inspired by my daughter when I realized she was going
to turn my aid in the year twenty fifty, while
(10:00):
I was out there gathering all these amazing, you know,
lessons in Bhutan or Iceland, and I would come home
and we had a little cabin on a lake in
New Jersey, and I just wanted to take them and
go out there and just veg out, you know, with
no sense of community, no sense of building connection, none
of the social fabric that we now need to thrive
and survive that I had always sort of taken for granted.
(10:21):
So I was having these grand adventures, unable to share
them with them, and then detaching. So anyway, I write
about that a little bit. Yeah, But what's funny is
I tried to be a stand up comedian for a while.
Like the way a lifetime ago, I came up through
as a local sportscaster. I either wanted to be Peter
Jennings or David Letterman, and I started as a sportscaster
because it was just creative shtick and I could do whatever,
(10:43):
and I worked my way up through. I was doing
a morning show in Chicago that was very personality driven,
audition for the Daily Show and Craig Kilbourne left Wow,
and really thought that was the pinnacle for me. Was
like a late night thing. And then I signed with
a station in LA that they promised me a development deal,
which they did and really had no intention of keeping.
But I just had this fantasy about the scriptor world.
(11:04):
All my friends are actors and stand ups, and so
my contract ended. I'm like, I'm doing this, and my
ex wife as I go for it, you know. And
I would go up on like four o'clock on a
you know, on an afternoon on a Tuesday, at the
comedy store or at the laugh factory out there, and
the one bit that worked with the most from me,
I had to bring it up on my laptop because
I can't remember it anymore great. The only joke that
(11:27):
ever and part of my deal was we're trying to
decide whether to start a family, you know, my wife
and I, Yeah, she's talking about it. The clock is
ticking and all that. I say.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
No.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Don't get me wrong, we love kids, but we also
love sharp objects, open flames, find dining, business class, vomitory clothing, lego,
free floors, on censor, profanity, busy intersections, lead based paint,
mini blind, skydiving, motorcycling, convertibles, free time, sex, and silence.
(11:57):
To my defense, I hadn't met my kids yet, and
you know, seem funny, selfish, self absorption. And I go
to these development meetings and actually pitched a show once
about a reluctant father, like, you know, a guy who
didn't want kids becoming you know, being changed by the experience,
and the executives like, yeah, you know, we have a
(12:17):
real time selling shows that the dad doesn't like their kids.
There's too much of that going on in the real world.
And I was like, oh, okay, because I had no perspective,
right none.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
I mean, that is very funny, but why did you
lease stand up?
Speaker 2 (12:32):
I just didn't have the DNA. I knew it. I
tasted enough of it to know what the hunger, what
the hunger is, and what the payoff is, but also
the people who are in it for the right reasons
and those who aren't. And found out my wife was
pregnant with Olivia. Wow, And got a call from the
head of talent at ABC that they're starting Good Morning
America and she had been following me for a couple
(12:53):
of years, and so there's like the planets aligned, and
it's like, oh, I actually have a bridge back to
legitimate network news. I never thought I had because I
was the goofy sports guy and that was it. And
that that call changed my life.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
Wait, seen, what were your you have a little tiny
kid at home? What are your hours for doing it?
Speaker 2 (13:11):
Was? I would go and well, so I only did
the morning show on the weekends. Okay, still but still
up at three forty five or something, and so it
completely changes your math and all that. And so yeah,
my daughter was you know, new city, new experience. And
also I was just at the mercy of whenever they
would call and say, go, you know, my parents are
(13:32):
in for like we're getting ready to cook Thanksgiving dinner,
and they're like we're sending you to Venice you know,
or something you know, and I would have to say yes,
And but I love saying yes. And to my ex
wife's credit, she always like, oh, you know this is
this is important, important for you. But in hindsight, I
could have I could have balanced it better.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
Did you, you know, as just even starting your career
or even when you were, you know, a young man,
did you think all, I want to have kids in
my life?
Speaker 2 (13:58):
To be honest, I I didn't. My first marriage was crazy.
We eloped after a couple three months or something, you know,
and and it lasted almost twenty years, so a testament
to that. But in the first we were sort of
dating for the first five years and we were just
like you know, those obnoxious yuppies without kids who wake
up at ten and go hike runing canyon. I'm like,
(14:19):
why would we ruin this? So but I knew it
was so fundamental of an experience, and I knew I
would want to experience it at some time. But I
was not the kind of like I've always been like
you ready to get pregnant, okay, you know, just sort
of like going going with the flow whatever, the sort
of life set up for me. My first wife wanted
(14:42):
very much to have a second child, and I was
resistant to that because I was an only kid, Like,
I'm just trying to get us back to like what
it was before the baby showed up, realizing that those
days were gone, you know, not understanding that yet going
through that process again with my little boy. Does he
need a sibling? That's the price of not planning, I guess.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
I mean, you know, but even as we say best
laid plans, right, you know, you don't know. But you
were an oldly kid. Yeah, give me a rough idea
of what your home was like. Was it very structured?
Speaker 2 (15:13):
No, So it was the opposite of that. So my
parents were divorced when I was two, and when I
was about four, my mom had a really fierce conversion
to Pentecostal evangelical Christianity. She had joint custody with my dad.
We're living in Milwaukee. My dad was a cop. She
was like working as a secretary, and she just became
more and more zealous about this. And then when I
(15:35):
was about nine, she announced at breakfast that she had
a dream from God and God wanted us to leave Milwaukee,
moved to Texas, and she didn't tell me. She wanted
to be a televangelist and she wanted to go to
Bible schools. She told me, but there's horses and cowboys there.
Don't you want to go. I'm like, yeah, I'm down,
you know. And she actually put me on the phone
with my dad to negotiate out of joint custody. Like, dad,
Mom wants to move to Texas, is it cool? And
(15:58):
she says, she what, we'll give up alimony. I don't
know what that means, but you know, it was just yeah,
and he let me go. He insisted on flying me
home for all every break and paying child support and
all that. But the dreams kept coming. So I went
to seventeen different schools in six states, mostly in the
Bible Belt. My mom was the most fiercely independent person,
(16:18):
like you know, and just had like the courage of
a pioneer. And we get a little bored, I think,
and like through her lens it was a difference in
theology with the pastor or something or just some wander
less like here Albuquerque's night, you know, And she would
use this divine right to go or in a U
haul and move to Albuquerque. And when you're a kid,
you don't know any different, you know. I was the
(16:39):
perpetual new kid, and then would spend my summers with
this atheist outdoorsman you know, in Colorado, my dad, And
so bouncing between those two worldviews was turned out to
be great training for this gig, you know, because you
learn how to read a room and empathize. And I
got best friends in red states and blue states.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
And I can imagine though there were there were times
where you did you ever go, I refuse, I'm not
doing it, not really, Okay.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
No, I didn't really have that agency with her. She's
very strong but also loving, and you know, we've been
a strange for a long time. She when we asked
her not to cast the demons out of Olivia when
she was till about five, she sort of checked out
of our lives at that point. Yeah, and I always
had my dad, you know, like if I was year
round with her, maybe it would have been different. She
(17:28):
remarried when I was maybe twelve and had my brother,
and we're very close and he has a similar relationship
with her. Yeah, it was. It was the most non
traditional upbringing, and what I learned in writing this book
is that, you know, because there's a lot of sort
of self reflection and trying to, like as we all do,
teach our kids not to make the same mistakes or
(17:49):
try to break the patterns and just think about things
more holistically. But growing up in that that way and
then becoming a journeyman in TV where you just it's like, Okay,
I'm here for two years and then we're onto the
big market. Like you're never thinking about permanence, right, rolling
stones that gathered no moss were cool, you know that.
But it turns out that moss is an indicator of
(18:09):
a healthy ecosystem, and we need moss in our lives.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
It needs to be green and.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
It needs to be green, and it's because it indicates
the health of the air and the water. And I
sort of threw out the baby with the bathwater, you know,
with my mother's her version of Christianity, you know, turned
me off so that I never took my daughter to church.
I never thought about it and what it offers us
and what congregation and community and you know, regular gathering
(18:38):
around a higher idea regardless of the you know what,
you want to debate that whatever the particular dogma is
that's hugely valuable.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
I was raised Jewish, We didn't go to synagogue very much,
especially after my dad died as kid. But to your point,
she started going to synagogue more and I did. I remember,
and my mother, very pragmatic, kind of raised me with
the feeling of like, oh, yeah, you think that will work. Prayer,
good luck, good luck with that. Yeah, go pray was her.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
Shot.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
She was raised during you know, World War two and
very different feeling about the world. And so but I
remember saying, Mom, do you are do you you're going
to synagogue all the time? Now are you more religious?
And she was like, no, great, coffees there we go
for lunch, and I just realized it was like, oh,
this is the community exactly.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Yeah. Yeah, and we have, you know, brilliantly engineered isolation
to make it so so sexy and attractive, right exactly.
We live at the golden age of disconnection and self absorption.
And now now when we all start wearing these headsets,
you know. But as somebody who's sort of a kind
of an introvert, it took me this long to realize no, no,
(19:54):
like real eye contact.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
And realising you're an introvert.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
I am yeah, Like, given the choice, I'd rather be
home than on a party. I enjoy parties and all
of that, but it's just not my I wouldn't lean
into that. But yeah, there's a thing in positive psychology
around communal exuberance, like we evolved to do things hard,
things in nature with other people and see the fruits
of that as it works, right, and so whether it's
a bar and raising or a combat troope or or
(20:21):
a gardening club or whatever, like that's how we evolved
not to order food on our phone and have it
left outside the.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
Door now and then how did you find your way
to go? I'm switching all of this to a focus.
We don't have a lot of climate reporters in my
memory growing up. I don't remember one person that was like,
here's our environment guy, yeah, or some weather person.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
That's all you have exactly. Yeah. Yeah, that's and part
of that is just our mind our cultural mindset around it,
and I never thought about I was at ABC for
about ten years. I went from Good Morning America for
six years, went to Nightline, and I was doing long
form magazine pieces and what I really loved, like the
best gift I ever got other than getting The first
job was after a few years. Diane Sawyer liked my
(21:06):
storytelling and my writing, and she said, you know, I
here's some interesting things are happening in China. Why don't
you go explain China to us? And with that kind
of currency, you know, at the time, it was the
first time that I could just Okay, I want to
go to the Great Wall, but I also want to
go to a Nike shoe factory in shen Zen, and
I want to do you know, and just follow your
curiosity and then come back and explain like a macro
(21:28):
economic story. It was still a novelty that they had
a free economy and what was wed what I had
grown up was red China, right, you know. And so
I did that and I was successful, and they started
sending me more and more internationally, and I moved to
the CNN. They said maybe you should just, you know,
go do an original series. And they said what would
you do? And I said, I know exactly what I
want to do. I want to go to the wonders
(21:50):
of the world and wonder what will be left of them,
you know, when our kids are our age and they're like, oh,
that's great, yeah, go there before it's gone. I love it.
Go go do that. And so we literally just got
put a little team together and hung a map on
the wall and like, hey, I wonder what's going on
in you know, Botswana and so, and we would frame
seasons around just big questions. Sometimes I went to Iceland
(22:13):
because I read that they lead the world in unwed mothers.
Three out of four kids born in Iceland their parents
aren't married. Because it's one of the most feminist countries
in the world. Women start families when they want to.
There's no social or moral stigma, but there's no incentive.
They get insane childcare leave, so this huge safety net.
So I thought, that's interesting, what does a culture look like?
Speaker 1 (22:32):
You know?
Speaker 2 (22:33):
That is let go of that idea. It was the
greatest job. And so we shot that in like twenty
six countries, three seasons of that, and then it was
just a matter of finding my next niche and they
said maybe we should create a climate desk. And I
had resisted. Interesting, I had resisted a beat my whole
career because I love politics. I don't want to eat
it every day, or entertainment or you know. I wanted
(22:55):
to be able to taste from the whole buffet of
human experience. But then I realized that climate is the
one beat that includes everything. It's the whole fen restaurant,
foreign policy, economics, healthcare, food, travel, clothing, shelter. Everything in
our lives was created and exists in a world built
(23:16):
with a certain balance, with a certain ecological homeostasis that
just doesn't exist anymore.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
Well, and I think this is also why, you know,
so many people had such a hard time. It's just
so overwhelming. It's just like, well, I can't do anything.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
My original working title was those Last Chance Diaries. And
then somebody in the sales departments like, sounds like you're dying,
Like this is some terminals.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
You get last chance for the earth. Oh okay, but
you go to.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
A place like Venice will probably be underwater regardless of
what happens, you know by twenty one hundred. But Machu
Pichu managed properly doesn't have to be turned into another Venice,
you know. And so it was like, what right some
places are being loved to death? Oh, you know, by
too much. Some places were just opening up. I wanted
(24:04):
to see, is there an island? Is there like a
Bali without burger kings? Or just the Hawaiian hot hotels,
what's left, and went to Vaniwatu in the South Pacific
and found these just gorgeous, unspoiled islands where they had
just gotten cell phones, they had just gotten Facebook, and
now suddenly it's like, wait, it looks pretty good. Fast
food looks pretty good, you know, like and and so
(24:25):
trying to understand that mindset and how we got to now.
You know, we've literally changed the sea in the sky
and the chemistry of both. But the same frontal lobes
that wrote the stories that created the you know, currencies
and corporations and religions that got us here can get
us out, you know, and we have an amazing capacity
(24:47):
to adapt for the better.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
I agree.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
Yet.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
Okay, so you start your current book with basically a
letter to your son, Yeah, about an apology for the
world you were handing off, which honestly you cry. I
was like, oh my god, crying on the subway platform again,
you know, and so just curious. Was it a series
(25:14):
of letters you actually wrote beforehand?
Speaker 2 (25:16):
It actually started. Yeah, The idea started when when my
little boy was brand new, so he was born right
before Earth Day, and they wanted an essay for CNN
dot com or on Earth Day, and it just took
the form of a letter like you can frame it
with the idea that he's going to read this when he's,
you know, turns thirty and was wondering, Hey, what were
(25:36):
you guys doing when this whole thing was going up
in flames? So I wanted some record of that that
there was some really thoughtful people out there thinking about
those questions and coming up with these solutions. But it
was also a way for me to reckon with my
own choices and the way I had thought about things.
I used the Maslow's Pyramid of Needs as my structure,
(25:58):
and Maslow said that the America can kids they rely
too much on their parents' love. They're too codependent. Whereas
at the Blackfeet Nation he would watch them pass a
baby around, right, well, aunties, aunties, aunties, and it spreads
that wealth around. So if the relationship with mom breaks down,
the kid still has all this love in his life.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
Well, I mean, I feel like even in New York,
I always say like, here's a super dense place, and
yet we all are in our little apartments feeling so singular,
especially if you have kids, and I was like they say,
it takes a village turns out not the East village,
wrong village, wrong village. And then you know, just you know,
as we are talking about this, and you know your
bookstarts off to talking about your son, we're talking about
(26:39):
like community. Because all of these parents, that especially the
ones that work on the show, we all talk all
the time about we have these little kids who are
learning about climate change in school, but they're little. They're
in grades two, grades three, and it's a lot of
complex stuff to be thrown at them. How do we
(27:02):
start to talk to our kids about this?
Speaker 2 (27:05):
That is the that is the grand question that I
wrestle with all the time. Yeah, and when you when
you have my job, like and you have a new baby,
I've got every climate change for baby's book you can
possibly imagine, you know how many are there Baby's first
extinction list, Like.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
You know, yeah, it's like we're slamming all these little
wild animals down their throats to these books. I'm like,
I don't know if you'll ever meet one of these animals.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
But that's the thing is and whether it's you know,
genetics or or nurture and nature. Because his wall is
covered with influences. My little boy is obsessed with animals,
all kinds of wildlife. He'll watch written at Richard Attenborough
like the way most kids watch Papa Pig. There's a
thing called shifting baseline syndrome in ecology, which is you
(27:53):
take your kid to a beach where you grew up
on you like, you know, when I was a kid,
there was lots of starfish on this beach and now
there's not. Oh well. Or when I walked through this
forest when I was a little girl, the bird song
was like a racket, and now it's quieter. And that's
so that generation, that's their baseline, right, and so when
(28:14):
they take their kid on a walk, it's even less
right and it goes. And so to fight that, to say,
there were once buffalo from Florida to Maine, from Texas
to the Canadian Rockies, millions of them, you know, and
and but to instill that sense of awe, and we
(28:34):
made some really stupid decisions. We almost killed them all,
but we brought some back. And now here's the other
people trying to you know, bring them back. Yeah, And
it's proof that nature can bounce back. And telling stories
of recovery, you know. Honestly, the best advice I dedicated
the book in this way. The best advice I got
was mister Rogers, who said when he was a little
(28:56):
boy and would see something scary on TV, his mother
would say, look for the helpers. There's always helpers in
these scenes of destruction, and focus on the fireman, focus
on the and I want I just try to spread
that message, not just the first responders I see going
into disasters, but the people live in lives of quiet service.
The scientists who are helpers who are trying to figure out,
(29:20):
you know, a way to save that endangered rhinos, you
know DNA and one day bring them back in a
way we maybe haven't figured out yet. But there are
helpers everywhere.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Okay, so let's just talk about actual impact. We want
to encourage our kids to be mindful of their impact
on the planet. My kid was like, Mom, should I
just litter less? And I want to say yes, But
because these problems, like you said, are everything. It's foreign policy,
it's local government, it's value of a gross national product,
(29:59):
it's all of the stuff I can say my son
will never let's not use any single use plastic. Well,
let's really talk about how to be the most recycling
we can.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
But I think that all of that matters only in
that it extends what your story is. Right. And so
if you're the kind of family that's looking for compostable diapers,
you know, because you got a new baby, Yeah, went
down that road, and you realize, oh, there's some growing options,
and maybe I want to support these guys, you know,
(30:28):
because they're they're doing the right thing. And or maybe
you do investigations and you realize, Okay, what I thought
about bamboo isn't as great as it turns out. It's
just being invested in the in thinking about the bigger
costs of all our decisions.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
You know.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
I mean, I fly more than anybody, and I get
that all the time. Okay, captain planets, what's your delta status?
You know, I'm like, I get it, and I've and
I've tried to allay my guilt by buying offsets for
over the years and you know, counting up all the
but then that whole market is really falling apart the
more we investigate it, right, and you can't offset your
(31:03):
way out out of a problem. I like to think
that the stories that I'm telling on these trips are
adding up to something that is in that positive you know, Like,
but we're all living on a steady diet of rationalization
of our choices. Sure, but what's happening right now is that,
especially for younger generation, there are so many better options
now that doing the right thing is actually a relief
(31:25):
because you don't have the tyranny of choice of five
thousand you know items on Amazon. Well, if I just
choose the ones that I know are at least doing
something solid for the balanced ecosystems or local economies, I
want to support them.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
As I was researching, you made mentioned that you get
like whatever, five thousand emails in your inbox a day,
you know, from everyone that's like I want to talk
to you about my book, to people who are like
in my kitchen. I think I invented the answer exactly.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
Oh, I get a bunch of those really Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
I mean, like, you know, you can't wade through them all, obviously,
but I.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
Try to encourage it, you know, I love that, you know,
there's you know, I was covering the Maui wildfires and
guys saw me do a live shot and then came
over and met me. He's like, I have an idea,
like you know he had written on for for a
clean energy thing. I just need to talk to people
and I try to, you know, help them out. Sometimes
I don't even understand it. You know, one guy was
(32:24):
trying to sell me on his invention for carbon capture
that you put on a tailpipe. I'm like, it can't
be that simple, Like somebody would have thought of.
Speaker 1 (32:31):
That, like a little screen or something exactly shake it out,
you know, sock with a coffee filter. I don't think so. Okay,
be honest, what kind of diapers and wipes did you
use just because you had a little kid? Of course
now for a little bit different, but every new parent
(32:52):
is overwhelmed by the waste they are adding to this planet.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
We use diaper d y P E R. Which or
these bamboo we did? Yeah? Yeah, And it was a
service where they would come pick them up like every
couple weeks and take them and compost them. You know.
It's I was using terra cycle to like try to
recycle all of the plastic stuff that you don't put
in the recycling bin.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:17):
Nothing drives me crazier than they when they individually wrap
bananas in plastic. But just trying to trim it down,
and you can't do it all. You can't be a perfectionist.
I mean we we finally got composting in New York City, yep,
but I haven't got my act together and get a
composter yet for the kitchen where I can start taking advantage.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
Yeah. It's hard in an apartment life too, I mean,
depending on what size of apartment exactly.
Speaker 2 (33:41):
Yes. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
And then my friend was like, well, you got to
buy worms, and I was like, I can't also take care.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
Of worms unless you can write them off as a dependent.
It's overwhelming. And I can see how people just like,
okay enough, you know, I just want to buy these
cool jeans. I want, you know, and not feel guilty
about it. And I think that's okay. Like tying us
ourselves and knots over that sort of thing is missing
(34:06):
the big picture. The thing that excites me most recently
is the Civilian Conservation Corps, which is this thing that
hopefully works out where you got young people from Maine
and Texas and Brooklyn rebuilding a trail system in a
national park or working on mangrove restoration somewhere. Yeah, you know,
(34:27):
and sort of a peace Corps for the planet, because Wow,
we really need to get this generation to fall in
love with the best parts of life on Earth and
get them invested into.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
Rather than just VR headsets exactly and check out I
love it. Okay, final question, Yes, would you ever go
back to a stand.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
Up only for you know, like a charity one off?
I have such respects for your craft and the people,
the grinders around you know.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
There's been many different situation where they're like, come in
and could you do a bunch of jokes that are
funny about climate change. I'm like, nope, but you can
do other funny stuff.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
But here's the thing though, I would say, do it
we need that's right. Yeah, the thing and what you're
mocking is human behavior exactly. I really think that how
we shape the story. Doctor King didn't say I have
a nightmare. We already they were living the nightmare. It's
I got a dream think about how it could be
if we can sort of color our climate conversations with that,
(35:31):
we can do this.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
Oh my god, you're gonna cry again, I started, and
then I thank you so much. Bill. Everybody go grab
this book to give yourself education and hope. Life as
we know it bracket can be Phil Thank you so much, thanks.
Speaker 2 (35:50):
For having me.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
Hey, thanks so much for listening. Send this to your
friends on Earth Day. Why not do your part. If
you haven't yet, subscribe to this podcast, stop by Apple
Podcast and post review. I saw a bunch of new reviews.
Thank you so much and it really helps us. So
if you get a chance, that would be wonderful. You
can follow us on Instagram, TikTok and Facebook at Parenting
(36:14):
as a Joke on ex Parenting Joke. Subscribe to our
substack with different content every week. You'll love it. If
you haven't checked it out yet, go to substack search
for Parenting as a Joke. Come see me live in
New York all the time or I'm doing Yale University
Everybody in New Haven on Thursday, April eleventh, doing an
(36:34):
hour set as part of the Jewish Women's Conference. Then
off to Texas, San Antonio. Come see me do a
headline set on Tuesday, April sixteenth as part of Texas
Public Radios Creekside Sessions. And then I'm going to be
in Austin for Moontower Comedy Festival, including a live taping
of Parenting as a Joke on April twentieth. You can
(36:55):
get all of those details at my website ofire Eisenberg
dot com everywhere at ofira E and I have a
recommendation for a podcast, The Puzzler with Aj Jacobs. AJ
is a friend for a very long time, and he's
got a great daily podcast where he and Greg Pliska
just give short, funny audio puzzles to celebrity guests. They've
(37:19):
had on all kinds of people, Neil Patrick, Harris, Hey,
they've had me okay, And it's just a great way
to have a little fun in your day daily podcast,
so you will love it. We also interview Aj in
a few weeks, so check out his podcast now and
then you can hear them on ours coming up. This
episode is produced by me and Julie Smith Klem. Our
(37:40):
editor is Nina Porzuki. Our sound designer is Tita Toby Mack.
Our digital marketing is done by Laura Vogel. Our video
editor is Melissa Weiss. Our overqualified intern is Jeffrey Kaufman.
Thanks to all of the engineers at Citybox and to
inspire you to act on Earth Day, I'll leave you
with the sounds of Glacier's melting,
It used to be chair, so let them stung.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
I think of sales fun pantos A joke.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Hello listeners, this is parenting is a joke in honor
of Earth Day. I'm a soggy, compostable straw named o
Fira Eisenberg zipsip. On the show, we bring together professional
funny people to talk about their career being creative and
how they are managing those two things. The unpredictability of
a creative career with the unpredictability of raising kids. How
(00:31):
the fuck are they doing it? I just watched my
very smart child stare at two mismatched gloves. They were
both left, and he just stared at them for at
least four full minutes, the greatest attention span I've seen
in a while, and then just said, I don't know
what to do. And you know what I told them
to do? Where to left gloves? Yeah, the little grippy
(00:55):
part on one is on the outside. Cool. And then
I said that, mom Fang, I said, if you keep
losing your belongings, this is what happens. This is the consequence.
Did that sink in? Did he learn from that?
Speaker 2 (01:06):
No?
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Will this be the story he tells people when they
interview him in the future about being effortlessly ambidextrous. Unlikely,
but it's what we did to get to school on time,
and that's all that matters. To celebrate Earth Day, I
have an amazing guest today. Not only is he CNN's
climate correspondent, but he gave me hope Bill Weir. And
(01:32):
Bill Weir also revealed to me that he, for a
very short stint, was a stand up comedian.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
And the one bit that worked with the most from
me was we're trying to decide whether to start a family,
you know, my wife and I. Yeah, she's talking about it.
The clock is ticking and all that. I say. No,
don't get me wrong, we love kids, but we also
love sharp objects, open flames, find dining, business class, vomitory clothing, lego,
(01:58):
free floors, on censor, profanity, busy intersections, lead based paint, miniblind, skydiving, motorcycling, convertibles,
free time, sex and silence.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
More with me and Bill Weir. Right after this break
Earth Day is here. I hope my son becomes a
climate scientist. I mean, the whole generation should be focusing
on the environment right now, right but my son says
(02:29):
he wants to become a video game designer. Actually that's
not true. He wants to become a beta tester. He
figured out that job title, which means he doesn't have
to do anything, just play the games. So smart. So
maybe he'll design a game and also beta test a
game where you're on a quest to find solutions for
(02:52):
carbon emissions. Yeah, and then you shoot down big polluters.
That would be something good, you know. So even in
our home unit, we are trying to just instill the
value of we all need to contribute all the time.
Things aren't chores. They're part of being a team. This
is how we live harmoniously. And so we've been asking
(03:14):
our son to ask us before he can play or
get his screens, do you need help with anything else?
It's super cute hearing his little voice say that when
he remembers is do you need help with anything else?
It's so cute, Oh my god. And I've given him
some things, but I've often said no, why because what
(03:35):
I really need help with is above his age and
expertise level. But I was thinking of a list of
what's really going on in my head when I'm asked
that question, do I need help with anything else? Here
are some top ones. Yes, yes, please? Can you plan
the meals for the entire week with things that you
(03:56):
are guaranteed to eat and take into account variety, complex carbs,
lots of vegetables and all the meals to take under
thirty minutes to prepare. Then create a grocery list while
cross referencing what we have in the fridge. Awesome. Can
you also go through all of the videos of you
on my phone and delete like ten or twenty of them,
(04:18):
the SOSO ones. You know what I'm talking about, because
I'm running out of storage and let's admit not every
bit of footage of you is a banger? Okay, but
I can't bring myself to delete it.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
You do it?
Speaker 1 (04:29):
Please? Also get on developing an I cream that makes
me look and feel like I had nine hours of sleep.
Haven't had that in twenty years? I think I'd like
to feel what that feels like. Yes, I know you're eight. Also,
can you tell me that I'm a great parent?
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Okay?
Speaker 1 (04:47):
Now do it again like you mean it?
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Okay? For you.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
You can read more on this topic on our Parenting
is a Joke substack. Hey, what do you need existential
help with or real help with Could an eight year
old do it? Because I'll get them on it seriously.
Dm me on any of my social media platforms at
ofira E or Parenting is a joke at Parenting as
a joke, and you can also leave us a voice memo.
(05:16):
You want to find out how to do that, just
go to our website Parenting is a jokepod dot com. Also,
I just want to make sure you know this. I'm
going to Austin, Texas. Friends and Parents for Parenting is
a joke live show as part of the Moonterwor Comedy Festival.
It's on Saturday, April twentieth. Right now booked Amazing People
(05:37):
SNL writer rosebud Baker and her hilarious comedian husband Andy Haynes.
They are both new parents and they'll be more added
to the list, so make sure you come to that show.
You can go to Austintheater dot org to get tickets
or just my website ofire Eisenberg dot com. Okay, so
coming up here is a fantastic talk because I'm sure
(05:59):
you can relate to a lot of this. I am
always looking for good ways to talk to my kid
about the climate and the future and what we can do.
Bill Weir has some great advice and you know it.
It's not just mope around hopelessly. So check it out everyone.
I got to tell you this. I felt like when
(06:20):
I received the pitch to talk to this person, it
was so well timed, and so I'm so excited to
have Bill Weir with me today. He's a anchor, writer, producer,
a host who started at CNN in twenty thirteen after
a decade of award winning journalism at ABC News, and
then in twenty nineteen, he was named CNN's first Chief
(06:43):
Climate correspondent. And he just wrote a recent book called
Life as We Know It. Bracket can be Bracket and
it's out right now. Bill, thank you so much for
coming to the studio.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
It's my pleasure.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
Okay. Every episode we start by asking tell me the
ages of your two children.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
I have a twenty year old daughter, Olivia, and I
have a son who's about to turn four. And get this,
my brother and I are sixteen years apart. And if
you had told me you're going to repeat that lunacy,
you know, when I was even ten years ago, I
would have scoffed at you. But life happens.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Well, let me tell you something similar. I feel like
to you and your wife's story. My mother she had
me at forty two, and I thought, well, first I
thought I'll never have kids, and then I thought, well,
I certainly won't do that. That's exactly what I did.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
Yeah, oh you did that at forty two.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
I have one child. But at forty two.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Sure, It's like we end up becoming our parents in
certain ways, right, we learned nothing? Yeah, yeah, I got
two baby mamas. That's how mine works out.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Okay, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
My second my partner, now, she was forty three and
down to one good Ovary and didn't think it was
even in the car.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
It's not crazy, you know.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
And so it had when we kind of told around
with IVF because she really really really wanted to be
a mother, and here you go.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
You know, is she Canadian?
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Okay, I am Canadian.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
You're the really the most superior humans I think. I mean,
she's from Toronto, but she's this stereotypical Canadian like ball
of sunshine. I never thought the idea that my son
is behalf Canadian is a comforting thought, right, Yes, River
is my son. He was born at the height of
the pandemic April of twenty twenty, and you know, came
(08:31):
into a world on lockdown. I had just come back
from wildfires. I was about to go cover the George
Floyd protests in the streets, and I would hold this
little dude and think about the idea that this kid's
going to live to see the twenty second century. Yeah,
you know, knockwood and I'm so sorry, you know, like,
(08:51):
and the idea that gave me comfort was like, Okay,
if we actually walked to the Canadian border, could I
hand you across to your grandpa? You know, like having
these distoping ideas because society was shut down outside the
window now, you know.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
Usually I'm interviewing stand up comedians about that mix of
parenting really in terms of like how do you do
this work? And two things I want to talk about
that with you. But one is your work I talked
about with stand up communities because the schedule and the
kind of work you have to do is really marry
so poorly to being a parent and a kid's lifestyle
(09:27):
and the routine, especially with travel. But then I was
thinking about your life and the kind of travel you
have to do and the length of the assignments as well.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
I can tell you about this. I'll preface it with
sort of a jaw dropper that it cost me my
first marriage, the travel and the way I handled it.
It didn't you know, I'm not blaming the travel. It
was I was out exploring the world. I was shooting
in this show called The Wonder List, where I got
to go to the wonders of the world and wonder
what will be left of them for my daughter. Was
inspired by my daughter when I realized she was going
to turn my aid in the year twenty fifty, while
(10:00):
I was out there gathering all these amazing, you know,
lessons in Bhutan or Iceland, and I would come home
and we had a little cabin on a lake in
New Jersey, and I just wanted to take them and
go out there and just veg out, you know, with
no sense of community, no sense of building connection, none
of the social fabric that we now need to thrive
and survive that I had always sort of taken for granted.
(10:21):
So I was having these grand adventures, unable to share
them with them, and then detaching. So anyway, I write
about that a little bit. Yeah, But what's funny is
I tried to be a stand up comedian for a while.
Like the way a lifetime ago, I came up through
as a local sportscaster. I either wanted to be Peter
Jennings or David Letterman, and I started as a sportscaster
because it was just creative shtick and I could do whatever,
(10:43):
and I worked my way up through. I was doing
a morning show in Chicago that was very personality driven,
audition for the Daily Show and Craig Kilbourne left Wow,
and really thought that was the pinnacle for me. Was
like a late night thing. And then I signed with
a station in LA that they promised me a development deal,
which they did and really had no intention of keeping.
But I just had this fantasy about the scriptor world.
(11:04):
All my friends are actors and stand ups, and so
my contract ended. I'm like, I'm doing this, and my
ex wife as I go for it, you know. And
I would go up on like four o'clock on a
you know, on an afternoon on a Tuesday, at the
comedy store or at the laugh factory out there, and
the one bit that worked with the most from me,
I had to bring it up on my laptop because
I can't remember it anymore great. The only joke that
(11:27):
ever and part of my deal was we're trying to
decide whether to start a family, you know, my wife
and I, Yeah, she's talking about it. The clock is
ticking and all that. I say.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
No.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Don't get me wrong, we love kids, but we also
love sharp objects, open flames, find dining, business class, vomitory clothing, lego,
free floors, on censor, profanity, busy intersections, lead based paint,
mini blind, skydiving, motorcycling, convertibles, free time, sex, and silence.
(11:57):
To my defense, I hadn't met my kids yet, and
you know, seem funny, selfish, self absorption. And I go
to these development meetings and actually pitched a show once
about a reluctant father, like, you know, a guy who
didn't want kids becoming you know, being changed by the experience,
and the executives like, yeah, you know, we have a
(12:17):
real time selling shows that the dad doesn't like their kids.
There's too much of that going on in the real world.
And I was like, oh, okay, because I had no perspective,
right none.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
I mean, that is very funny, but why did you
lease stand up?
Speaker 2 (12:32):
I just didn't have the DNA. I knew it. I
tasted enough of it to know what the hunger, what
the hunger is, and what the payoff is, but also
the people who are in it for the right reasons
and those who aren't. And found out my wife was
pregnant with Olivia. Wow, And got a call from the
head of talent at ABC that they're starting Good Morning
America and she had been following me for a couple
(12:53):
of years, and so there's like the planets aligned, and
it's like, oh, I actually have a bridge back to
legitimate network news. I never thought I had because I
was the goofy sports guy and that was it. And
that that call changed my life.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
Wait, seen, what were your you have a little tiny
kid at home? What are your hours for doing it?
Speaker 2 (13:11):
Was? I would go and well, so I only did
the morning show on the weekends. Okay, still but still
up at three forty five or something, and so it
completely changes your math and all that. And so yeah,
my daughter was you know, new city, new experience. And
also I was just at the mercy of whenever they
would call and say, go, you know, my parents are
(13:32):
in for like we're getting ready to cook Thanksgiving dinner,
and they're like we're sending you to Venice you know,
or something you know, and I would have to say yes,
And but I love saying yes. And to my ex
wife's credit, she always like, oh, you know this is
this is important, important for you. But in hindsight, I
could have I could have balanced it better.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
Did you, you know, as just even starting your career
or even when you were, you know, a young man,
did you think all, I want to have kids in
my life?
Speaker 2 (13:58):
To be honest, I I didn't. My first marriage was crazy.
We eloped after a couple three months or something, you know,
and and it lasted almost twenty years, so a testament
to that. But in the first we were sort of
dating for the first five years and we were just
like you know, those obnoxious yuppies without kids who wake
up at ten and go hike runing canyon. I'm like,
(14:19):
why would we ruin this? So but I knew it
was so fundamental of an experience, and I knew I
would want to experience it at some time. But I
was not the kind of like I've always been like
you ready to get pregnant, okay, you know, just sort
of like going going with the flow whatever, the sort
of life set up for me. My first wife wanted
(14:42):
very much to have a second child, and I was
resistant to that because I was an only kid, Like,
I'm just trying to get us back to like what
it was before the baby showed up, realizing that those
days were gone, you know, not understanding that yet going
through that process again with my little boy. Does he
need a sibling? That's the price of not planning, I guess.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
I mean, you know, but even as we say best
laid plans, right, you know, you don't know. But you
were an oldly kid. Yeah, give me a rough idea
of what your home was like. Was it very structured?
Speaker 2 (15:13):
No, So it was the opposite of that. So my
parents were divorced when I was two, and when I
was about four, my mom had a really fierce conversion
to Pentecostal evangelical Christianity. She had joint custody with my dad.
We're living in Milwaukee. My dad was a cop. She
was like working as a secretary, and she just became
more and more zealous about this. And then when I
(15:35):
was about nine, she announced at breakfast that she had
a dream from God and God wanted us to leave Milwaukee,
moved to Texas, and she didn't tell me. She wanted
to be a televangelist and she wanted to go to
Bible schools. She told me, but there's horses and cowboys there.
Don't you want to go. I'm like, yeah, I'm down,
you know. And she actually put me on the phone
with my dad to negotiate out of joint custody. Like, dad,
Mom wants to move to Texas, is it cool? And
(15:58):
she says, she what, we'll give up alimony. I don't
know what that means, but you know, it was just yeah,
and he let me go. He insisted on flying me
home for all every break and paying child support and
all that. But the dreams kept coming. So I went
to seventeen different schools in six states, mostly in the
Bible Belt. My mom was the most fiercely independent person,
(16:18):
like you know, and just had like the courage of
a pioneer. And we get a little bored, I think,
and like through her lens it was a difference in
theology with the pastor or something or just some wander
less like here Albuquerque's night, you know, And she would
use this divine right to go or in a U
haul and move to Albuquerque. And when you're a kid,
you don't know any different, you know. I was the
(16:39):
perpetual new kid, and then would spend my summers with
this atheist outdoorsman you know, in Colorado, my dad, And
so bouncing between those two worldviews was turned out to
be great training for this gig, you know, because you
learn how to read a room and empathize. And I
got best friends in red states and blue states.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
And I can imagine though there were there were times
where you did you ever go, I refuse, I'm not
doing it, not really, Okay.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
No, I didn't really have that agency with her. She's
very strong but also loving, and you know, we've been
a strange for a long time. She when we asked
her not to cast the demons out of Olivia when
she was till about five, she sort of checked out
of our lives at that point. Yeah, and I always
had my dad, you know, like if I was year
round with her, maybe it would have been different. She
(17:28):
remarried when I was maybe twelve and had my brother,
and we're very close and he has a similar relationship
with her. Yeah, it was. It was the most non
traditional upbringing, and what I learned in writing this book
is that, you know, because there's a lot of sort
of self reflection and trying to, like as we all do,
teach our kids not to make the same mistakes or
(17:49):
try to break the patterns and just think about things
more holistically. But growing up in that that way and
then becoming a journeyman in TV where you just it's like, Okay,
I'm here for two years and then we're onto the
big market. Like you're never thinking about permanence, right, rolling
stones that gathered no moss were cool, you know that.
But it turns out that moss is an indicator of
(18:09):
a healthy ecosystem, and we need moss in our lives.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
It needs to be green and.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
It needs to be green, and it's because it indicates
the health of the air and the water. And I
sort of threw out the baby with the bathwater, you know,
with my mother's her version of Christianity, you know, turned
me off so that I never took my daughter to church.
I never thought about it and what it offers us
and what congregation and community and you know, regular gathering
(18:38):
around a higher idea regardless of the you know what,
you want to debate that whatever the particular dogma is
that's hugely valuable.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
I was raised Jewish, We didn't go to synagogue very much,
especially after my dad died as kid. But to your point,
she started going to synagogue more and I did. I remember,
and my mother, very pragmatic, kind of raised me with
the feeling of like, oh, yeah, you think that will work. Prayer,
good luck, good luck with that. Yeah, go pray was her.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
Shot.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
She was raised during you know, World War two and
very different feeling about the world. And so but I
remember saying, Mom, do you are do you you're going
to synagogue all the time? Now are you more religious?
And she was like, no, great, coffees there we go
for lunch, and I just realized it was like, oh,
this is the community exactly.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Yeah. Yeah, and we have, you know, brilliantly engineered isolation
to make it so so sexy and attractive, right exactly.
We live at the golden age of disconnection and self absorption.
And now now when we all start wearing these headsets,
you know. But as somebody who's sort of a kind
of an introvert, it took me this long to realize no, no,
(19:54):
like real eye contact.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
And realising you're an introvert.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
I am yeah, Like, given the choice, I'd rather be
home than on a party. I enjoy parties and all
of that, but it's just not my I wouldn't lean
into that. But yeah, there's a thing in positive psychology
around communal exuberance, like we evolved to do things hard,
things in nature with other people and see the fruits
of that as it works, right, and so whether it's
a bar and raising or a combat troope or or
(20:21):
a gardening club or whatever, like that's how we evolved
not to order food on our phone and have it
left outside the.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
Door now and then how did you find your way
to go? I'm switching all of this to a focus.
We don't have a lot of climate reporters in my
memory growing up. I don't remember one person that was like,
here's our environment guy, yeah, or some weather person.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
That's all you have exactly. Yeah. Yeah, that's and part
of that is just our mind our cultural mindset around it,
and I never thought about I was at ABC for
about ten years. I went from Good Morning America for
six years, went to Nightline, and I was doing long
form magazine pieces and what I really loved, like the
best gift I ever got other than getting The first
job was after a few years. Diane Sawyer liked my
(21:06):
storytelling and my writing, and she said, you know, I
here's some interesting things are happening in China. Why don't
you go explain China to us? And with that kind
of currency, you know, at the time, it was the
first time that I could just Okay, I want to
go to the Great Wall, but I also want to
go to a Nike shoe factory in shen Zen, and
I want to do you know, and just follow your
curiosity and then come back and explain like a macro
(21:28):
economic story. It was still a novelty that they had
a free economy and what was wed what I had
grown up was red China, right, you know. And so
I did that and I was successful, and they started
sending me more and more internationally, and I moved to
the CNN. They said maybe you should just, you know,
go do an original series. And they said what would
you do? And I said, I know exactly what I
want to do. I want to go to the wonders
(21:50):
of the world and wonder what will be left of them,
you know, when our kids are our age and they're like, oh,
that's great, yeah, go there before it's gone. I love it.
Go go do that. And so we literally just got
put a little team together and hung a map on
the wall and like, hey, I wonder what's going on
in you know, Botswana and so, and we would frame
seasons around just big questions. Sometimes I went to Iceland
(22:13):
because I read that they lead the world in unwed mothers.
Three out of four kids born in Iceland their parents
aren't married. Because it's one of the most feminist countries
in the world. Women start families when they want to.
There's no social or moral stigma, but there's no incentive.
They get insane childcare leave, so this huge safety net.
So I thought, that's interesting, what does a culture look like?
Speaker 1 (22:32):
You know?
Speaker 2 (22:33):
That is let go of that idea. It was the
greatest job. And so we shot that in like twenty
six countries, three seasons of that, and then it was
just a matter of finding my next niche and they
said maybe we should create a climate desk. And I
had resisted. Interesting, I had resisted a beat my whole
career because I love politics. I don't want to eat
it every day, or entertainment or you know. I wanted
(22:55):
to be able to taste from the whole buffet of
human experience. But then I realized that climate is the
one beat that includes everything. It's the whole fen restaurant,
foreign policy, economics, healthcare, food, travel, clothing, shelter. Everything in
our lives was created and exists in a world built
(23:16):
with a certain balance, with a certain ecological homeostasis that
just doesn't exist anymore.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
Well, and I think this is also why, you know,
so many people had such a hard time. It's just
so overwhelming. It's just like, well, I can't do anything.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
My original working title was those Last Chance Diaries. And
then somebody in the sales departments like, sounds like you're dying,
Like this is some terminals.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
You get last chance for the earth. Oh okay, but
you go to.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
A place like Venice will probably be underwater regardless of
what happens, you know by twenty one hundred. But Machu
Pichu managed properly doesn't have to be turned into another Venice,
you know. And so it was like, what right some
places are being loved to death? Oh, you know, by
too much. Some places were just opening up. I wanted
(24:04):
to see, is there an island? Is there like a
Bali without burger kings? Or just the Hawaiian hot hotels,
what's left, and went to Vaniwatu in the South Pacific
and found these just gorgeous, unspoiled islands where they had
just gotten cell phones, they had just gotten Facebook, and
now suddenly it's like, wait, it looks pretty good. Fast
food looks pretty good, you know, like and and so
(24:25):
trying to understand that mindset and how we got to now.
You know, we've literally changed the sea in the sky
and the chemistry of both. But the same frontal lobes
that wrote the stories that created the you know, currencies
and corporations and religions that got us here can get
us out, you know, and we have an amazing capacity
(24:47):
to adapt for the better.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
I agree.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
Yet.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
Okay, so you start your current book with basically a
letter to your son, Yeah, about an apology for the
world you were handing off, which honestly you cry. I
was like, oh my god, crying on the subway platform again,
you know, and so just curious. Was it a series
(25:14):
of letters you actually wrote beforehand?
Speaker 2 (25:16):
It actually started. Yeah, The idea started when when my
little boy was brand new, so he was born right
before Earth Day, and they wanted an essay for CNN
dot com or on Earth Day, and it just took
the form of a letter like you can frame it
with the idea that he's going to read this when he's,
you know, turns thirty and was wondering, Hey, what were
(25:36):
you guys doing when this whole thing was going up
in flames? So I wanted some record of that that
there was some really thoughtful people out there thinking about
those questions and coming up with these solutions. But it
was also a way for me to reckon with my
own choices and the way I had thought about things.
I used the Maslow's Pyramid of Needs as my structure,
(25:58):
and Maslow said that the America can kids they rely
too much on their parents' love. They're too codependent. Whereas
at the Blackfeet Nation he would watch them pass a
baby around, right, well, aunties, aunties, aunties, and it spreads
that wealth around. So if the relationship with mom breaks down,
the kid still has all this love in his life.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
Well, I mean, I feel like even in New York,
I always say like, here's a super dense place, and
yet we all are in our little apartments feeling so singular,
especially if you have kids, and I was like they say,
it takes a village turns out not the East village,
wrong village, wrong village. And then you know, just you know,
as we are talking about this, and you know your
bookstarts off to talking about your son, we're talking about
(26:39):
like community. Because all of these parents, that especially the
ones that work on the show, we all talk all
the time about we have these little kids who are
learning about climate change in school, but they're little. They're
in grades two, grades three, and it's a lot of
complex stuff to be thrown at them. How do we
(27:02):
start to talk to our kids about this?
Speaker 2 (27:05):
That is the that is the grand question that I
wrestle with all the time. Yeah, and when you when
you have my job, like and you have a new baby,
I've got every climate change for baby's book you can
possibly imagine, you know how many are there Baby's first
extinction list, Like.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
You know, yeah, it's like we're slamming all these little
wild animals down their throats to these books. I'm like,
I don't know if you'll ever meet one of these animals.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
But that's the thing is and whether it's you know,
genetics or or nurture and nature. Because his wall is
covered with influences. My little boy is obsessed with animals,
all kinds of wildlife. He'll watch written at Richard Attenborough
like the way most kids watch Papa Pig. There's a
thing called shifting baseline syndrome in ecology, which is you
(27:53):
take your kid to a beach where you grew up
on you like, you know, when I was a kid,
there was lots of starfish on this beach and now
there's not. Oh well. Or when I walked through this
forest when I was a little girl, the bird song
was like a racket, and now it's quieter. And that's
so that generation, that's their baseline, right, and so when
(28:14):
they take their kid on a walk, it's even less
right and it goes. And so to fight that, to say,
there were once buffalo from Florida to Maine, from Texas
to the Canadian Rockies, millions of them, you know, and
and but to instill that sense of awe, and we
(28:34):
made some really stupid decisions. We almost killed them all,
but we brought some back. And now here's the other
people trying to you know, bring them back. Yeah, And
it's proof that nature can bounce back. And telling stories
of recovery, you know. Honestly, the best advice I dedicated
the book in this way. The best advice I got
was mister Rogers, who said when he was a little
(28:56):
boy and would see something scary on TV, his mother
would say, look for the helpers. There's always helpers in
these scenes of destruction, and focus on the fireman, focus
on the and I want I just try to spread
that message, not just the first responders I see going
into disasters, but the people live in lives of quiet service.
The scientists who are helpers who are trying to figure out,
(29:20):
you know, a way to save that endangered rhinos, you
know DNA and one day bring them back in a
way we maybe haven't figured out yet. But there are
helpers everywhere.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Okay, so let's just talk about actual impact. We want
to encourage our kids to be mindful of their impact
on the planet. My kid was like, Mom, should I
just litter less? And I want to say yes, But
because these problems, like you said, are everything. It's foreign policy,
it's local government, it's value of a gross national product,
(29:59):
it's all of the stuff I can say my son
will never let's not use any single use plastic. Well,
let's really talk about how to be the most recycling
we can.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
But I think that all of that matters only in
that it extends what your story is. Right. And so
if you're the kind of family that's looking for compostable diapers,
you know, because you got a new baby, Yeah, went
down that road, and you realize, oh, there's some growing options,
and maybe I want to support these guys, you know,
(30:28):
because they're they're doing the right thing. And or maybe
you do investigations and you realize, Okay, what I thought
about bamboo isn't as great as it turns out. It's
just being invested in the in thinking about the bigger
costs of all our decisions.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
You know.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
I mean, I fly more than anybody, and I get
that all the time. Okay, captain planets, what's your delta status?
You know, I'm like, I get it, and I've and
I've tried to allay my guilt by buying offsets for
over the years and you know, counting up all the
but then that whole market is really falling apart the
more we investigate it, right, and you can't offset your
(31:03):
way out out of a problem. I like to think
that the stories that I'm telling on these trips are
adding up to something that is in that positive you know, Like,
but we're all living on a steady diet of rationalization
of our choices. Sure, but what's happening right now is that,
especially for younger generation, there are so many better options
now that doing the right thing is actually a relief
(31:25):
because you don't have the tyranny of choice of five
thousand you know items on Amazon. Well, if I just
choose the ones that I know are at least doing
something solid for the balanced ecosystems or local economies, I
want to support them.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
As I was researching, you made mentioned that you get
like whatever, five thousand emails in your inbox a day,
you know, from everyone that's like I want to talk
to you about my book, to people who are like
in my kitchen. I think I invented the answer exactly.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
Oh, I get a bunch of those really Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
I mean, like, you know, you can't wade through them all, obviously,
but I.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
Try to encourage it, you know, I love that, you know,
there's you know, I was covering the Maui wildfires and
guys saw me do a live shot and then came
over and met me. He's like, I have an idea,
like you know he had written on for for a
clean energy thing. I just need to talk to people
and I try to, you know, help them out. Sometimes
I don't even understand it. You know, one guy was
(32:24):
trying to sell me on his invention for carbon capture
that you put on a tailpipe. I'm like, it can't
be that simple, Like somebody would have thought of.
Speaker 1 (32:31):
That, like a little screen or something exactly shake it out,
you know, sock with a coffee filter. I don't think so. Okay,
be honest, what kind of diapers and wipes did you
use just because you had a little kid? Of course
now for a little bit different, but every new parent
(32:52):
is overwhelmed by the waste they are adding to this planet.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
We use diaper d y P E R. Which or
these bamboo we did? Yeah? Yeah, And it was a
service where they would come pick them up like every
couple weeks and take them and compost them. You know.
It's I was using terra cycle to like try to
recycle all of the plastic stuff that you don't put
in the recycling bin.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:17):
Nothing drives me crazier than they when they individually wrap
bananas in plastic. But just trying to trim it down,
and you can't do it all. You can't be a perfectionist.
I mean we we finally got composting in New York City, yep,
but I haven't got my act together and get a
composter yet for the kitchen where I can start taking advantage.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
Yeah. It's hard in an apartment life too, I mean,
depending on what size of apartment exactly.
Speaker 2 (33:41):
Yes. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
And then my friend was like, well, you got to
buy worms, and I was like, I can't also take care.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
Of worms unless you can write them off as a dependent.
It's overwhelming. And I can see how people just like,
okay enough, you know, I just want to buy these
cool jeans. I want, you know, and not feel guilty
about it. And I think that's okay. Like tying us
ourselves and knots over that sort of thing is missing
(34:06):
the big picture. The thing that excites me most recently
is the Civilian Conservation Corps, which is this thing that
hopefully works out where you got young people from Maine
and Texas and Brooklyn rebuilding a trail system in a
national park or working on mangrove restoration somewhere. Yeah, you know,
(34:27):
and sort of a peace Corps for the planet, because Wow,
we really need to get this generation to fall in
love with the best parts of life on Earth and
get them invested into.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
Rather than just VR headsets exactly and check out I
love it. Okay, final question, Yes, would you ever go
back to a stand.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
Up only for you know, like a charity one off?
I have such respects for your craft and the people,
the grinders around you know.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
There's been many different situation where they're like, come in
and could you do a bunch of jokes that are
funny about climate change. I'm like, nope, but you can
do other funny stuff.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
But here's the thing though, I would say, do it
we need that's right. Yeah, the thing and what you're
mocking is human behavior exactly. I really think that how
we shape the story. Doctor King didn't say I have
a nightmare. We already they were living the nightmare. It's
I got a dream think about how it could be
if we can sort of color our climate conversations with that,
(35:31):
we can do this.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
Oh my god, you're gonna cry again, I started, and
then I thank you so much. Bill. Everybody go grab
this book to give yourself education and hope. Life as
we know it bracket can be Phil Thank you so much, thanks.
Speaker 2 (35:50):
For having me.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
Hey, thanks so much for listening. Send this to your
friends on Earth Day. Why not do your part. If
you haven't yet, subscribe to this podcast, stop by Apple
Podcast and post review. I saw a bunch of new reviews.
Thank you so much and it really helps us. So
if you get a chance, that would be wonderful. You
can follow us on Instagram, TikTok and Facebook at Parenting
(36:14):
as a Joke on ex Parenting Joke. Subscribe to our
substack with different content every week. You'll love it. If
you haven't checked it out yet, go to substack search
for Parenting as a Joke. Come see me live in
New York all the time or I'm doing Yale University
Everybody in New Haven on Thursday, April eleventh, doing an
(36:34):
hour set as part of the Jewish Women's Conference. Then
off to Texas, San Antonio. Come see me do a
headline set on Tuesday, April sixteenth as part of Texas
Public Radios Creekside Sessions. And then I'm going to be
in Austin for Moontower Comedy Festival, including a live taping
of Parenting as a Joke on April twentieth. You can
(36:55):
get all of those details at my website ofire Eisenberg
dot com everywhere at ofira E and I have a
recommendation for a podcast, The Puzzler with Aj Jacobs. AJ
is a friend for a very long time, and he's
got a great daily podcast where he and Greg Pliska
just give short, funny audio puzzles to celebrity guests. They've
(37:19):
had on all kinds of people, Neil Patrick, Harris, Hey,
they've had me okay, And it's just a great way
to have a little fun in your day daily podcast,
so you will love it. We also interview Aj in
a few weeks, so check out his podcast now and
then you can hear them on ours coming up. This
episode is produced by me and Julie Smith Klem. Our
(37:40):
editor is Nina Porzuki. Our sound designer is Tita Toby Mack.
Our digital marketing is done by Laura Vogel. Our video
editor is Melissa Weiss. Our overqualified intern is Jeffrey Kaufman.
Thanks to all of the engineers at Citybox and to
inspire you to act on Earth Day, I'll leave you
with the sounds of Glacier's melting,
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