Startup Series: Climate Town
Today’s guest is Rollie Williams, host and creator of Climate Town.
The topic of climate change can be dark upon initial exploration. While some find inspiration in innovation and action, many folks struggle to get beyond the pervasive desperation and doomerism that dominate the conversation. Climate Town takes a totally different approach and uses humor to unpack complex climate topics while offering suggestions for how audiences can take meaningful action. In the past two years, the Climate Town YouTube channel has amassed 393,000 subscribers, several millions views, a handful of awards, and has spawned an engaged Discord community of climate-focused-yet-delightfully-regular people.
Rollie is a Brooklyn-based comedian and video editor, and he holds a graduate degree in Climate Science and Policy from Columbia University. He’s also the former creator and host of the monthly comedy show 'An Inconvenient Talk Show' doing sketches and comedic deep dives by pairing comedians (SNL, The Daily Show, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, etc) together with climate scientists (NASA, MIT, Harvard).
Rollie and Cody have a great conversation about his background, the role of comedy in climate communications, what he's learned about communicating complicated topics to mass audiences, and what's next for Climate Town.
Enjoy the show!
Get connected:
*You can also reach us via email at info@mcjcollective.com, where we encourage you to share your feedback on episodes and suggestions for future topics or guests.
Episode recorded on August 10, 2022.
In today's episode, we cover:
[5:41] And overview of Climate Town and how it came to be
[13:32] How climate is being communicated today, its complications and direct opposition
[18:18] Rollie's goal of making comedy videos while sharing facts and CTAs
[22:25] Importance of taking action on the local level and where to start
[28:20] Rollie's comedic influences
[35:56] The future of the Climate Town community
[46:41] Why context and learning helps keep people grounded
-
Jason Jacobs (00:01):
Hello everyone. This is Jason Jacobs.
Cody Simms (00:04):
And I'm Cody Simms.
Jason Jacobs (00:05):
And welcome to My Climate Journey. This show is a growing body of knowledge focused on climate change and potential solutions.
Cody Simms (00:15):
In this podcast, we traverse disciplines, industries, and opinions to better understand and make sense of the formidable problem of climate change and all the ways people like you and I can help.
Jason Jacobs (00:26):
We appreciate you tuning in, sharing this episode, and if you feel like it, leaving us a review to help more people find out about us so they can figure out where they fit in addressing the problem of climate change.
Cody Simms (00:40):
Today's guest is Rollie Williams, host and creator of Climate Town, which makes comedy videos about the climate crisis. Climate Town's YouTube videos have covered topics such as who actually controls gas prices, fast fashion is hot garbage, it's time to break up with our gas stoves, what your bank really does with your money, and the suburbs are bleeding America dry. These videos have collectively received millions of views. Rollie brings a John Oliver-esque style to his videos going super deep on a given topic and adding elements of humor to help them find mass audience appeal.
Cody Simms (01:16):
I was looking forward to today's conversation with Rollie because I believe humor to be an under leveraged tool in climate communications. The topic of climate change can be dark upon initial exploration, and for me at least, I found inspiration in innovation and action, but many folks struggle to get beyond the initial desperation and doomerism that is pervasive and much of climate news and information. Climate Town takes a totally different approach using humor to unpack how and why things are the way they are and offering some suggestions for audiences to do something about it. They also are somewhat of a bizarro world MCJ in that in addition to their media arm, they have a very active online community that's housed in a Discord channel, just like the MCJ member community that lives in Slack. Rollie and I have a great conversation about his background, the role of comedy in climate communications, what he's learned about communicating complex topics to mass audiences, and what's next for Climate Town. And I learned that I've been misusing the word flouting for years, darn it. Rollie, welcome to the show.
Rollie Williams (02:20):
Cody, you got some nerve showing up like this after what you did.
Cody Simms (02:27):
So I've been super intimidated by this because I don't think I'm very funny and you're pretty funny, and now I feel pressure.
Rollie Williams (02:33):
Well, I feel pressure because you said I'm pretty funny. I feel pressure to make you think I'm very funny by the end of this.
Cody Simms (02:39):
All right. Well, let's work on that.
Rollie Williams (02:40):
We're both under the gun here, man. For the record, I think you're funny. I think you're a funny guy.
Cody Simms (02:44):
Well, thanks. So tell me this. You did a sketch comedy show in New York where you were Al Gore. Is that on stage with an actual audience, people paying money to come see you be funny?
Rollie Williams (02:56):
Yeah, the minutia of the comedy breakdowns would beg me to say it wasn't sketch comedy, it was more of a variety show, but otherwise, yeah. It was called An Inconvenient Talk Show. I was portraying America's sexiest grandfather, Albert Arnold Gore, as if he had written a sequel to An Inconvenient Truth and titled it An Inconvenient Truth 2: Listen Up You Fugly Dipshits. That was the premise, he was sick and tired of being polite and he was just getting ready to ... gloves are off, warts and all kind of Al Gore. And we invited comedians from SNL and Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and these kind of people. And they came on along with climate scientists from NASA and the Smithsonian and that sort of thing. And we did interviews and it was sort of a variety fun pack, I suppose.
Cody Simms (03:48):
How did you get that going? Doing your own show in New York is no small undertaking I'm sure.
Rollie Williams (03:53):
So I moved to New York to do comedy. I was in Denver and I decided I had hit something of a wall. I was doing a lot of improv and a little bit of sketch and I was listening to a lot of great comedy coming out of New York and I decided to move to New York and study at the UCB. And so when you're in New York, it's not that hard to put a show up. It is hard to put a show that's good up. So I put a lot of real shit-storm shows up that not a lot of people came to, that weren't very funny. And just doing enough bad comedy leads you to figuring out what works for you. And so eventually I came upon this show and it wasn't terrible. So that was a nice little feather in my cap. And you probably can't see this, but I'm wearing a cap with a feather in it, and I'm pointing to the feather that I was referring to.
Cody Simms (04:47):
I guess it was kind of around the time of Between Two Ferns and all of that to some extent too. I don't know if that was an inspiration for the format or not.
Rollie Williams (04:55):
I mean, I love Zach Galifianakis. He hasn't been up to much recently. I don't know what he's been doing lately, but I certainly loved him at that time. It wasn't so much a factor. I think it's just a really fun and easy thing to do, a late night setup because it's just so rinse and repeat. You have a desk, you have a guy, you do a monologue, you have a couple of guests, you have a interview, then there's a big finale and that's it, and it's an easy thing to do. And I was trying to pitch a show around and it just felt like a natural pitch.
Cody Simms (05:27):
And to some extent now with Climate Town, you're also following a little bit of a late night format. Instead of the desk and interview format, it's the John Oliver segment type of format, I guess. Maybe walk us through how that came to be.
Rollie Williams (05:41):
Sure. And just for the 95% of listeners who have no idea who the fuck I am, maybe even higher than that, I don't know. I don't know your audience Cody, but I can't imagine that people are like, "Oh yeah, I know that guy." I have a YouTube series that's called Climate Town. You can Google it, I suppose, if you have nothing better to do today. I do a series of comedy deep dives into various parts of the climate crisis. For instance, BP pumped millions of dollars into publicizing the concept of the carbon footprint and it subsequently wrong-footed the public into thinking that maybe they were the problem or that shrinking their own carbon footprint could some way make a dent in carbon output, these sorts of things, kind of like gotcha and corporate malfeasance focused. And I write and host and shoot and edit a lot of that stuff. I did it all myself for eight months or so, or had friends come in and shoot parts of it, and then I would edit all of it, but I've since expanded. And so now we are ... Man, I'm sorry, Cody, what was the question? I just got off on a rant about Climate Town. It was how-
Cody Simms (06:52):
Oh yeah, I said, how did it come to be?
Rollie Williams (06:52):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Cody Simms (06:53):
Like it's sort of that late night segment, John Oliver segment type of thing.
Rollie Williams (06:56):
So it was born out of the pandemic. I was doing my comedy show in New York up until February of 2000, and then everything shut down and it was wildly irresponsible to try to do a comedy show in a basement in Manhattan in March of 2020. So everything moved online. I tried to do a live version of the show and it was, you don't get the same vibe when you're just shouting at your screen in your own room as you do when you're on a stage and people are actually there. So I had been meaning to do longer videos for a while, but I just never had the time between ... At the time I was in school at Columbia studying climate science and policy and doing this show. And so when the show was over, I would just pivot to making this YouTube series. And because it was COVID, you couldn't really be inside anywhere, so a lot of it happens outside. It's kind of a quasi travel log that will cut back to the desk where I'm editing, whenever I need to correct something or I didn't get something, I didn't shoot it right, and I can just edit it in post.
Cody Simms (08:00):
Or put yourself in front of the screen of Hulk Hogan, should that need to happen, right?
Rollie Williams (08:04):
That's right. And that actually, one really wonderful thing that happens is I'll go out and shoot all this stuff and then I'll find that a lot of the shit that I said that I thought was so super funny was not funny and I'll just cut a lot of the jokes. And then there's a third of the jokes in there so you got to add more jokes in. And so then I go back through the footage and try to find times when I said something wrong or a bystander walked into the shot or said something or stopped us as we were filming, and I try to weave that in to the final product. And one of the things that was happening, I guess that week, I was just saying brother a lot like, "Hey brother, thanks so much for your help." Or I'd go to order a coffee and I'd be like, "Thank you so much, brother, for getting the coffee." I don't know why I was saying that, and I guess I still say it sometimes, but not that often. But I just said it a lot and I realized, oh, I could probably use this. And I think Hulk Hogan says brother so I went and found some footage of Hulk Hogan and stitched a lot of that in, and it just became this weird runner and people were like, "Oh yeah, when did you write the Hulk Hogan thing?" And it was like, "No, it was just the first draft was not funny so I had to add in a bunch of Hulk Hogan bullshit to spice it up."
Cody Simms (09:14):
I want to spend a bunch of time talking about comedy and storytelling as it relates to climate communication, but maybe before we do that, share more about your background. I think I saw in LinkedIn, were you a chemistry teacher? Walk us through how you went from a kid in Denver to, I don't know if you call yourself a YouTube star or whatever you want to call yourself.
Rollie Williams (09:34):
I certainly do not call myself a YouTube star. Wow, that is just begging to get punched in the neck. So I guess I think of myself as a comedian or a YouTuber, or YouTube guy kind of thing.
Cody Simms (09:51):
For the record, not a YouTube star, but a YouTube guy?
Rollie Williams (09:54):
Yeah. I think adding the word star, editorializes it to a degree that I'm uncomfortable with saying. I think it would be tough to be. If you tell anyone you're a blank star, it's like you're setting the bar high, and I don't like to do that. I like to give myself the benefit of the doubt. I went to the University of Puget Sound. I was majoring in biochemistry and theater and I really liked the biochemistry aspects of it. And when I moved to New York, I wanted to do comedy, but I also wanted to eat and sleep in a apartment. So I got a job as a chemistry tutor and a biology tutor for high school and college kids.
Rollie Williams (10:37):
If you don't know this, tutoring pays the bills. Tutoring will pay your bills. So if you want to go into tutoring. I'm not sure if it's true in every city, but you could probably do it remotely, but you can make 30, 40, 50 bucks an hour, probably more if you're better than I was. So I was doing that for a long time and then got some jobs in digital media. I got a job working for a billiards company and subsequently made a bunch of billiards videos. That was my first love. Basically, I'm just hoping that climate change can get fixed so that I can go back to making billiards videos. This is a genuine desire I have, but it doesn't feel like we're on track at the moment, but you never know.
Cody Simms (11:19):
Not to rat hole on billiards, which I'm sure we could do, but-
Rollie Williams (11:22):
Rat hole? That is the least kind way of saying let's talk about billiards. I've never heard of rat hole.
Cody Simms (11:30):
Is it rabbit hole? I don't know, maybe it's-
Rollie Williams (11:32):
Rabbit hole, rabbit hole.
Cody Simms (11:33):
Rabbit hole. Yeah.
Rollie Williams (11:33):
Yeah, rat hole sounds like unclean, although I'm sure rabbits are hardly less dirty than rats, but who knows. Rat hole. Let's go down this rat hole, Cody, and see what there is to see.
Cody Simms (11:44):
You're right, that doesn't sound very appealing. I would have to imagine that talking to kids and teaching them chemistry concepts helped you figure out how to communicate complicated topics, particularly around science. Is that an accurate assumption?
Rollie Williams (12:01):
If that has occurred to me, I have since forgotten it, but I think that's a very shrewd observation. I think probably being able to convey information that is complex forces you to really understand it inside out. And in fact, I literally had a panic attack. I've only had one panic attack in my whole life and I had a panic attack when I was trying to teach this person for an AP bio test. And I was trying to teach this person a thing and I realized, as I was teaching it, that I didn't understand it. And I was so jacked up on caffeine and I was just like, "Oh yeah, let me run to the bathroom for a second." I ran to the bathroom and I was like, "Wow, this is what everyone is talking about when they say panic attack." That put the fear of God in me or whatever theologically specific supreme being you believe in, if you do. That really changed how I went about preparing for lessons. And yeah, I think it's like, you really have to know it in order to create a good metaphor for it.
Cody Simms (13:04):
Thinking about communication as it relates to climate change, you're coming at it from a comedy angle. What are your observations about broadly how climate is communicated today? You went through a master's program in climate, I think, so you've seen how it's communicated from an academic perspective. And I'm curious how that observation and just being a comedian in general have influenced your view of what needs to be different in the world of climate coms broadly.
Rollie Williams (13:32):
It is a complicated subject. It's very vertically integrated. You have to understand a lot of molecular chemistry to really get what makes a carbon dioxide molecule particularly good at absorbing infrared light, why this is important. These are all building blocks to understanding the physical way the greenhouse effect actually works. And once you get there, you're at step zero because it is so much bigger. It gets into modeling. There's so much math and science behind it that it's complicated to the point of being a little boring, unless you're psychotically interested in it. And so this is a fundamental problem with communicating it because trying to talk about any part of it requires you to either simplify it, omit information, or take the audience on a contextual journey of a year in order to get to wherever you want to get. This is tough.
Rollie Williams (14:30):
And then on top of that, there is a billion dollar industry trying to further confuse the public. And I fucking get it. If I was the oil and gas industry and my profits were based on people not fundamentally understanding how disastrous it would be to continue using oil and gas, then I would probably pump that money in too, if I was in their position and a dirt bag. But there's a lot stacked against climate scientists and everyone is always like, "Man, climate scientists don't know how to communicate." And I think that's so fucking wrong. I've spoken to dozens and dozens of climate scientists and every single one of them is extremely eloquent and very personable, and they're very good at communicating on a personal level.
Rollie Williams (15:20):
But I think the world that we live in is so digital and so mass communication oriented that, that is the disconnect. And it's like climate scientists are sort of expected to be studying and in lab and teaching and then to be social media superstars and experts and be on every platform and be constantly combating disinformation as it comes in. It's a crazy bar. And so I think that is maybe where a lot of people who are like, "Oh, I want to help. I want to get involved," I think that Rubicon between actually accurately conveying the science on a level that is both understandable and widely disseminable ... Is that a word, disseminable? Disseminatable?
Cody Simms (16:15):
We made it here first, folks.
Rollie Williams (16:17):
Hell yeah. We're the Lewis and Clark of the English language. It's a really difficult problem, and it would be difficult even if there weren't a direct opposition and there is. Luckily, the opposition is a bunch of fucking hacks. They don't know what they're doing. I mean, they know what they're doing, but they're not particularly good at it. They just have the hill and are defending the hill. But I think there are ways to poke holes in their defensive line.
Cody Simms (16:45):
So I'm hearing you say really three big challenges in communication, the technology, the economics and money side of the problem, and then basically straight up disinformation, two universes of alternate truths. How have you approached those? I mean, most of your videos tend to be more focused on the economics side of things, if I'm unpacking them. I don't know if you would agree with that, but I'm curious, which of those angles you feel is most important to communicate to people?
Rollie Williams (17:18):
My prime goal is to make comedy videos. This is the point of these videos. And therefore when I do that, the entry point for me is like, what is this weird, ironic or funny element to plant a flag in and then, how do I build out from there? So I'm not so much going at it from a particular angle besides, oh my God, the fucking ExxonMobil lobbyist got caught on camera admitting to all this shit that he wasn't supposed to admit to. That's amazing. That is so fundamentally funny to me. What is this like? Oh, this is kind of like that Shaggy song where it's like, she caught me on camera, oh, you just say it wasn't you. No, but I have identifying features on my shoulder. Oh yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, just keep saying it wasn't you. So that's funny to me, so that became the backbone of that video.
Rollie Williams (18:18):
And then I think my preference is just, here are the facts, here's a very logical way that the facts stack up and then you, the viewer interpret these facts however you see fit because I think people are generally smart and capable of interpreting data correctly, when the data is not put in a way that is disinforming them. And so that's the angle where I'm like, okay, what's the funniest thing. What do I want to convey with this thing? How do I give the right context and tell this story of this funny thing and then leave the audience with the onus to come to their own conclusion, which I hope is the same conclusion that I have, but if it's not, it's not.
Cody Simms (19:06):
Not to say this is good or bad, but to be fair, your videos also often have a call to action at the end. You give people resources, you give them ways to go either learn more or do more. How important to you is driving people toward climate action to use an overloaded phrase?
Rollie Williams (19:21):
It's becoming more important, because the problem is becoming not more dire, but the appetite for action is more salient or tangible. No, what's the word? There's a good word here. It's like the word malleable, but it's not. More ... Oh Goddammit. Okay, editor, find the word and then do your best impression of me saying that word. I add calls to action because I think it's the right thing to do because at this point in time, once you get through the logical argument of the video, if you've decided, oh, this doesn't hold together or it does, then people tend to want to do something about it. And so I want to make that barrier for entry low by giving them the links or the resources that they would need if they wanted to get involved. But I think I always try to end it with whatever you do, just decide that you want to get more informed and go do that because that's a critical piece of this puzzle.
Cody Simms (20:25):
We're going to take a short break right now, so our partner Yin can share more about the MCJ membership option.
Yin Lu (20:32):
Hey folks, Yin here, a partner at MCJ Collective. Want to take a quick minute to tell you about our MCJ membership community, which was born out of a collective thirst for peer-to-peer learning and doing that goes beyond just listening to the podcast. We started in 2019 and have since then grown to 2,000 members globally. Each week we're inspired by people who join with differing backgrounds and perspectives. And while those perspectives are different, what we all share in common is a deep curiosity to learn and bias to action around ways to accelerate solutions to climate change. Some awesome initiatives have come out of the community. A number of founding teams have met, nonprofits have been established, a bunch of hiring has been done, many early stage investments have been made, as well as ongoing events and programming like monthly Women in Climate meetups, idea jam sessions for early stage founders, climate book club, art workshops, and more. So whether you've been in climate for a while or just embarking on your journey, having a community to support you is important. If you want to learn more head over to mcjcollective.com and click on the members tab at the top. Thanks and enjoy the rest of the show.
Cody Simms (21:34):
All right, back to the show. One of the things that I feel like I have noticed is many of the outcomes that seem to be at the end of your videos are related to local action, go to a districting meeting at your-
Rollie Williams (21:50):
Go talk to your dad. Yeah. Not that local, but yeah.
Cody Simms (21:55):
No, but seriously I'm curious how you think about the effectiveness of taking action in your community relative to pushing on larger, bigger federal issues, et cetera.
Rollie Williams (22:04):
I am going to coin this term here for the first time, think global, act local. And it's an original Rollie and Cody term that we are making up on this here podcast.
Cody Simms (22:15):
That's good because I was going to say the whole thing about your show is it's something like the medium is the message is what I would take away from everything about your video, and I just made that up too.
Rollie Williams (22:25):
And New York is a character in the show. So for one thing, if you've ever tried to call Joe Manchin, you didn't get through. Even if you live in fucking West Virginia and are his neighbor, I don't think you would get through. You're not influencing, aside from keeping up a pretty constant stream of pressure is great, but it's not the most effective use of everybody's time. And I think an effective use of everybody's time is the local level, changing on the local level, because that does a bunch of things. Number one, that allows you to actually change something and get involved personally and start to understand what the real estate of your local area for change is. And then it also gives you some wins.
Rollie Williams (23:20):
When's the last time tweeting at Amy Coney Barrett changed her mind? The Supreme Court is not something that you can really reach out and touch, but your town council is. You can go and rabble-rouse for lower income housing or stop a bunch of NIMBYs from being like, "No, that parking lot is an important piece of our community. You can't possibly put a high rise for senior citizens there." It's like, "Oh, you gather in that parking lot? You fell in love in that parking lot? This is obviously bullshit." And there just isn't the appetite for ... there hasn't been as many young active people at those meetings as there has been old crusty dudes, get off my lawn types. So balancing that out is really important and something that's very easy for people to do rather than drive to DC and protest outside the Supreme Court or something.
Cody Simms (24:17):
Are there specific starting points, you think? You have these recommendations in multiple videos at this point. Are there specific starting points you think are good for people to lean into?
Rollie Williams (24:27):
There's one thing that Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, I don't know if she made this, but I think she is really good at describing this Venn diagram of what do you like doing and what are you good at and how do you make that climate action? So I think one thing that people can do is do some soul searching within themselves that allows them to understand what can I offer to the movement, and that's nice. And then aside from that, I think any kind of ... Find out who your local representatives are, go to a meeting with them. Just go to one meeting. Go to one zoning meeting, go to one town council meeting, find out what your city does well and what it does poorly, and then see if there are groups that are trying to influence the things it does poorly and go meet with them. Go see them or get on the Zoom call or whatever. Just dedicate maybe an hour a week to going to do something like this and just see what you get out of it, and it's probably going to be something positive.
Cody Simms (25:33):
Well, let's get back to the funny stuff.
Rollie Williams (25:35):
Oh yeah. I got to convince you that I've got the chops here, Cody.
Cody Simms (25:40):
What have you learned about what works and what doesn't? You presumably went into shooting these videos with some hypotheses about either what would be funny, what viewers would like watching, what would get shared, what would get the most attention. What have you been surprised by and what has validated your early assumptions?
Rollie Williams (26:00):
One thing that I really am so happy to have discovered is that people like to learn shit and people like to have it presented in a deep way that is not just the quick, hey, this happened and this happened and now that's why America's roads are broken. They want to know who was responsible and what acts and what the order was.And I think you can make 23 minute videos and people will watch the whole thing, and that's a really cool thing. I used to make ... the videos were a lot shorter, like six and seven minutes. And they were also way easier to edit by the way. Like this video, I'm at 13,55, I'm adding clips and stuff, and I've got another 10 minutes of clips worth to add and it's just going to be a long night, but I like that my favorite thing.
Rollie Williams (26:51):
So I loved the John Stewart era Daily Show. And I think what I loved most about that was just the times he would be like, he'd show a clip of somebody, some politician saying some bullshit like, "I can't believe they would act like this. This is the worst way a human can act and they're depraved." And then it's like, it cuts to John Stewart and he just goes, "Oh, well, there couldn't possibly be a clip of Senator Pat Toomey, I don't know, doing that exact thing, could there?" And then there's that, oh yes, hook it up to my veins, I love this. I really, really loved that, and so I wanted to just be that. It's a case of you see your icons doing a thing and you just want to copy them, and so this is just me trying to copy that oeuvre.
Cody Simms (27:41):
The folks that come to mind for me with Climate Town are John Stewart, John Oliver, Samantha Bee, obviously. So that whole Daily Show group. And then I don't know why, but for some reason, Sacha Baron Cohen comes to mind as well a little bit. I don't know if that's an influence.
Rollie Williams (27:57):
Wow.
Cody Simms (27:58):
But who makes you laugh the hardest? What are your comedic influences and how have they influenced your work?
Rollie Williams (28:02):
Wow. Seamless integration of a Twitter question, Cody, very nice. Also to say that I remind you of Sacha Baron Cohen is extremely high praise and all those other comedians you listed. I am really trying to emulate them as hard as I can, so I'm really happy to hear you say that. I've been thinking about this recently, I think my favorite comedian might be Julia Louis-Dreyfus. I don't know what it is, but I think she's so fucking funny. Nathan Fielder is up there with just the way he commits to stuff. I think I like a really committed ... Charlie Day. Charlie Day, the whole cast of Always Sunny is out of control funny. I really love them. So I think there's something about just really trying to do a bit, go for something, commit to a bit really hard. And I just think that's so funny and great. So those are some of my comedy icons, I guess.
Cody Simms (29:00):
And how have you tried to channel them?
Rollie Williams (29:02):
When I did stand up a couple years ago, or years and years ago, I remember listening to a standup set and then writing standup. I listened to Mitch Hedberg, an hour of Mitch Hedberg, and then like, okay, now go into the writing phase, and it just was nice. It was like, oh yeah, this is a funny way to say a thing and you could write it like this. And so I just charged up on that comedy and then let it influence me as I wrote. So I think that's more than knowing anything specific from what they do that I like, I think it's more just letting it marinate and then trying to write in my own voice and inevitably some of their voice kind of peeks out.
Cody Simms (29:44):
Man, I have to say, personal confessional here, standup comedy is the thing that I feel would be the most difficult thing in the world to do. I literally can't imagine something more difficult. Being an astronaut, whatever, no big deal, being a brain surgeon, whatever, you study a lot, being a standup comedian, man, it just sounds terrifying.
Rollie Williams (30:02):
I mean, I think it's certainly scary. It is easy to be a standup comedian, it's hard to be a good standup comedian and I think that's the problem. And it's also hard to tell if you are good or you just have too much confidence from a childhood that wasn't screwed up. It's a weird line to toe and standup comedy ... Good standup comedians are unbelievable and I don't know how they do it either, frankly.
Cody Simms (30:30):
Well, back to you flouting your creds, how much research time would you say-
Rollie Williams (30:35):
Back to me flouting my creds? Cody, I don't feel like I was flouting. Maybe I was flouting my cred. Flouting and flaunting are the same word too.
Cody Simms (30:47):
Flaunting, is it? Maybe I said it wrong.
Rollie Williams (30:48):
I think flouting is a word, I've heard that too and I'm just realizing it's so close to the word flaunting that I think somewhere 20 years ago someone said flouting and then he was in an argument with somebody and they're like, "You mean flaunting?" And he's like, "No, fucking flouting is a word." And then just a lie took off.
Cody Simms (31:05):
How much time do you spend researching these pieces, because I mean the amount of facts you jam into a 23 minute video is pretty intense?
Rollie Williams (31:15):
Yeah, it takes a fucking long time. The research never stops throughout the entirety of the piece. Like yesterday, I'm almost done with this Goddamn video, but yesterday, I had to listen to two or three hours of former EPA administrator Scott Pruitt speaking in 2015 when he was the Oklahoma AG. And it was so mind numbing, but it was worth it, when I found this moment when he talked about some bullshit about hating Chevron deference or something. And then also he's like, "You ever seen the movie National Treasure?" He's like, "Nick Cage, he's kind of like Indiana Jones. So you're talking about the constitution ..." It's amazing like, "Oh, you like National Treasure. You?" It's so weird to me.
Cody Simms (32:00):
Who doesn't like National Treasure? I mean, come on.
Rollie Williams (32:02):
I fucking love National Treasure.
Cody Simms (32:04):
They're great.
Rollie Williams (32:05):
They're really fun. But it's just the amount of papers that I have to read for the hope that there's something useful in them, and then inevitably there's not, and then I'm just like, "Well great. Now I just read the fucking Clean Air Act from 1963, not 1970, for no reason." But I think it'll help me in a future video. A lot of research hours go in, but they don't feel wasted that often. The research for one video can work for three videos, so it's hard to give an exact sense on how long it takes to research for any particular thing, but I would say several weeks.
Cody Simms (32:45):
So it sounds like you have a whole system where you're storing the research and making it referenceable for the future, et cetera.
Rollie Williams (32:52):
It's not a great system. It's a lot of, I'm pretty sure I saw that somewhere, and when was it? And then wasting a bunch of time trying to find it. But as we move into the phase two of Climate Town, we just signed a lease on an office space. So I've got a team of four, including me, who are either part-time or full-time working on Climate Town with me. We're sort of ramping up into a more organized and cohesive unit, and I really hope we have a better system of filing going forward, so that I don't have to watch another Scott Pruitt video for no reason.
Cody Simms (33:35):
I always used to wonder how John Stewart always had the perfect Fox News clip and you just-
Rollie Williams (33:39):
Yeah.
Cody Simms (33:40):
I mean, they must have timestamped literally every episode of Fox News for a decade.
Rollie Williams (33:45):
I think so. Also, apparently, there was some guy at The Daily Show who had a brain like that, who could just be like ... John Stewart would ask the guy like, "Hey, what is this? Anything?" He goes, "Yeah, I think Merrick Garland said something like that in this press conference. So let's go look it up." So I don't know who that guy was, but I'm not that guy. I don't have a guy like that. So I don't know how to do it.
Cody Simms (34:13):
So you mentioned phase two of Climate Town, what's phase one? You've built a YouTube channel. You have this online community, which we haven't talked about. You've got a Discord community where people are engaging around various topics, not just about your videos, but about the climate space in general. Tell me more. What has phase one been and where do you go after that?
Rollie Williams (34:33):
When you say you have a phase two that does imply that you had a phase one. We didn't have a phase. There was no phase one, it was just, hey, let's make some comedy videos about this shit that I'm studying at Columbia. And I think it blossomed into this really incredible little ecosystem that I have very little to do. This Discord server, there's thousands of people on it and every time I open it up, there's like another hundred comments, and I'm just like, "I don't know how to keep up with this. I'll just go to the threads that I like and read the threads that I like." And what that I think says is that there's just a big appetite for an organized, activated climate community. And they have created that by themselves without really me doing anything.
Cody Simms (35:23):
Was it started by fans, by members of the audience?
Rollie Williams (35:25):
I mean, I started it. I didn't do nothing, that was my big contribution. It has taken on a life of its own, for sure. So I think phase two is, oh, there are lots of pieces, now let's put these pieces together. That's the idea behind phase two.
Cody Simms (35:42):
Do you view this as being a business that you want to create that generates money and income and can pay people salaries and all of that? Or is it more of a mission? How would you describe what you're ultimately trying to create here?
Rollie Williams (35:56):
I think it's more of a community, but I like to make comedy videos and part of what you need for comedy videos is people to watch them. I think there's this nice thing happening in tandem that's going to be, I get to keep writing and editing and working on comedy videos, and at the same time, the fact that a community exists is informing how I address any given topic. So for instance, we're doing a video at some point about planned obsolescence. There's a lot of legislation coming up about planned obsolescence and rules and trying to curtail just single use electronics. And that community is certainly going to inform how we make the video. And so I think that's what we're hoping to do is create a, hey and next up, we're going to tweet this thing. We're going to tweet at this specific CEO and tell them what they're doing is bullshit and that we're not cool with it. And for some Goddamn reason, this is a world that matters. People don't like being called out for something that they're doing, even though it's wrong. So they'd probably rather do the right thing and not get digitally pilloried.
Cody Simms (37:20):
How do you keep funding your ability to do this?
Rollie Williams (37:22):
Oh yeah, we got a Patreon page. It is patreon.com/climatetown. And there's a bunch of people chipping in 2, 3, 4, $5 a month, some people giving 10, 20 bucks a month, some absolute beautiful human is given 50 or 100 bucks a month, and together that allows me to cut everybody who's working on Climate Town, a check, and it allows me to pay rent, which is great.
Cody Simms (37:52):
That's awesome. So it's not building a YouTube ad supported business kind of thing. The goal really is to harness the power of the motivated individuals to help fund your ability to continue to create essentially what is art, you're creating comedy here.
Rollie Williams (38:10):
I think ultimately it would be nice if we were also able to create some kind of a larger network where we could have people who are doing a newsletter and we could support someone who wants to do a podcast. I only have so much bandwidth and people probably don't want to hear me talk for more than 20 or so minutes. So people have been tuning out left and right from this podcast, Cody, because I've been freaking riffing. But there are a lot of people online who are super funny and super smart and better at doing what I do than me. And I would love to be a platform that could elevate them and get their voices in the mix as part of phase two.
Cody Simms (38:52):
And why isn't there a bigger mainstream media climate presence today? I look at the big environmental channels like Discovery, Nat Geo, they're not really focused on this topic. You look at the late night comedy shows, John Oliver will do a sketch every now and again on something to do with climate, but there isn't a large focus. And yet, it is especially among young people one of the top priorities that is on many people's minds. I'm curious what you think the gap there is.
Rollie Williams (39:29):
I think it hasn't historically been a very fun topic to talk about. And I think that is changing to some degree and it's just becoming too important to not talk about. And a lot of these legacy media companies are very slow moving. So I think the only reason why there isn't more is because it takes a while to develop platforms. Some platforms are popping up. There's a handful of different groups that are creating content around climate that are groups and not just individual creators that are trying to create platforms. And I think we're at the beginning of it, and so that's why there's not too many.
Cody Simms (40:12):
Could you see a Comedy Central show or the like in the future?
Rollie Williams (40:16):
Well, great question, Cody. My college entry letter essay was very explicit in saying, "I want to go to Columbia because I want to make a Daily Show for climate change, and that is why I'm doing this. And please give me more of a scholarship than $2,000 off because I cannot afford it." And they did, they gave me like $5,000 off, which, thank you so much. But that is, I wanted to do that. I think there's definitely an appetite for it. And if I want do it, I'm sure there's a lot more people who are also wanting to do it, who are, not definitely, but probably funnier than me and have the chops to speak on climate change from a perspective that's not from my kind of particular perspective. I think there's going to be a lot of people knocking at that door and I hope someone gets it. And candidly, Cody, I hope that someone is me, but it's just an honor to be nominated.
Cody Simms (41:18):
Well, you've got the body of work for it so far.
Rollie Williams (41:20):
I thought you were going to say, you've got the body for it, and I was going to be like, I don't think you should say that Cody.
Cody Simms (41:27):
I'll hold my editorial comments. I only can see your shoulders.
Rollie Williams (41:32):
I was shocked.
Cody Simms (41:32):
I can only see your shoulders up, my friend.
Rollie Williams (41:34):
But what about my shirt? Honestly say what you're seeing with my shirt.
Cody Simms (41:38):
Yeah, you're going for the 1970s with the chest, which is good.
Rollie Williams (41:42):
And check this out. So you see there's like a little bit of hair here, watch this.
Cody Simms (41:48):
I don't know if my screen's full resolution, but yeah.
Rollie Williams (41:50):
Well, I'll describe it.
Cody Simms (41:51):
It looks pretty bare-chested.
Rollie Williams (41:52):
I have what looks like some chest hair, if you have your shirt open to two buttons, but then right underneath it, it's blank. It's just a bare skin. And so I have a perfect V of chest hair that slots into any V-neck shirt and people are like, "That guy's probably got a hairy chest." No sail, it is as slick as a dolphin.
Cody Simms (42:12):
You just need some gold chains and then you're good, man.
Rollie Williams (42:14):
Oh, I have thought about it.
Cody Simms (42:16):
All right. Back to the topic at hand again.
Rollie Williams (42:19):
Yeah. Yeah. We went down another rat hole.
Cody Simms (42:22):
It's good. It's good. That one was definitely a rat hole. All right, I want to throw just some rapid fire climate topics at you and give me your two sentence answer on your thoughts. So nuclear.
Rollie Williams (42:34):
Excellent source of extremely low carbon energy. Typically, the dangers I think are extremely overblown given the output. Very difficult technologically to do and takes a long time. So a mixed bag.
Cody Simms (42:52):
Carbon capture.
Rollie Williams (42:53):
Every IPCC drawdown report includes some carbon capture. So it's not like it's just a pipe dream, but it is extremely difficult to do at scale. A mixed bag.
Cody Simms (43:07):
Doomerism.
Rollie Williams (43:09):
Oh, dumb. More like dumberism. It's completely useless. It's the sort of emotion that's like, let's say you're in a car and the brakes fail and you're on a little bit of a windy hill, do you just aim straight for the ravine because you might die? It's stupid. It's a useless emotion that people have, but it's unfounded, it's incorrect and it is not helpful. So kick it as soon as possible. Stop being so depressed. No seriously, it's a form of depression and I'm sorry, but try not to spread it around because I don't think it's super useful.
Cody Simms (43:45):
American energy independence.
Rollie Williams (43:48):
It's a stupid phrase that was come up with by I think a right wing politician to imply that we should be producing more oil. We will never be energy independent oil wise, I don't think. The idea that we were energy independent under Trump is a very hilarious misreading of the math. Solar and wind, that's American energy independence, hydro, that's American energy independence. But let's focus on being clean with our energy and not so much independent.
Cody Simms (44:22):
Dark Brandon.
Rollie Williams (44:24):
Oh yeah. I think it's kind of funny. I don't know. It's just the one joke that conservatives have and then it's just like, "Oh, what if we say Dark Brandon?" And then conservatives are like, "No!" It's just funny how thin the veil is. I also think the concept of Dark Brandon, I was thinking about it today when I was brushing my teeth actually that it's a really funny concept. If you don't know what it is, look it up. Dark Brandon, funny concept.
Cody Simms (44:48):
Private jet shaming.
Rollie Williams (44:50):
A symptom of a larger problem. I think it's probably good to nudge and shame, but I think if that's where you're focusing all your energy, the terrorists have won, basically.
Cody Simms (45:02):
What about consumer behavior change?
Rollie Williams (45:04):
There's two schools of thought. To one degree, a consumer who changes their behavior is somebody who's a little more informed and probably thinking about it a little harder, so that's good. But if that's the exclusive change that people are going to make, we're fighting the wrong battle.
Cody Simms (45:20):
Last one, gen Z.
Rollie Williams (45:22):
Great gen, a solid gen. Hopefully they're going to be the ones that save us. I think their voices are important and I think we should listen to gen Z. And gen Z, I think you guys should keep doing what you're doing.
Cody Simms (45:35):
Awesome. Well, Rollie, I super appreciate you taking the time to be on here, especially in the middle of a marathon editing session. Is there anything you can share about what your next video is going to be about?
Rollie Williams (45:45):
I'm covering the West Virginia versus EPA Supreme Court case and the implications. It's an entry point into the history of the EPA and why local and state level action is so important and easy to do. And the end of it is like, here's some resources and it's not hard, go get after it.
Cody Simms (46:04):
Do you have a sense of when it'll come out?
Rollie Williams (46:06):
Monday, baby. Well, when is this going to come out?
Cody Simms (46:08):
It'll be out after Monday. So that'll be a live video by the time this comes out. Great.
Rollie Williams (46:13):
I really hope it will be. I suppose there's a chance it'll bump back to Tuesday, but I give myself a deadline, even though if I blow it I'll feel bad, but it'll make me try to hit it harder. So Monday.
Cody Simms (46:23):
Well, any last things for anyone listening, who's intrigued by what you're doing, intrigued by the intersection of storytelling and climate comedy, community activation, whatever? Anything you want to call to action or share with people or invite them to do or think about?
Rollie Williams (46:41):
I think carving out time in your personal day. This is a really hard thing to do, but carving out time in your day to study just some of the facts of the climate crisis. Or I guess just learn about how the greenhouse effect works, learn about what historically has been done to try to mitigate it, or why America has failed at every turn to sign any real climate policy until just now. Context is key and context will ground you and make you feel less lost.
Rollie Williams (47:13):
A big reason why I was doing my comedy show and then decided to go to Columbia was because I kept feeling lost, and like, what the fuck? When was the Montreal Protocol signed? What is a emission trading system? What is any of this? And you don't have to go to college. I probably could have done all this education with as Goodwill Hunting says 70 cents worth of library finds and a bunch of ... I can't remember. That's a fun scene though. He did like apples in that scene, as I recall. Educate yourself and I think your whole world opens up on what you think, what you'll decide is the most effective way forward. And I think just blindly jumping into it is not going to help. So get educated first and then get activated.
Cody Simms (47:57):
Awesome. Well, thanks for your time. Folks, check out Climate Town on YouTube, you won't regret it. They're awesome. And Rollie, really appreciate your time today.
Rollie Williams (48:07):
I appreciate your time, Cody. Thanks so much for having me on. It's been a delightful time. Cody and I have never spoken before today. I felt like I was just talking to a buddy. So thanks for providing that, Cody.
Cody Simms (48:18):
I love it. All right, ciao.
Rollie Williams (48:20):
Ciao.
Jason Jacobs (48:22):
Thanks again for joining us on the My Climate Journey Podcast.
Cody Simms (48:25):
At MCJ collective, we're all about powering collective innovation for climate solutions by breaking down silos and unleashing problem solving capacity. To do this, we focus on three main pillars, content like this podcast and our weekly newsletter, capital to fund companies that are working to address climate change, and our member community to bring people together as Yin described earlier.
Jason Jacobs (48:47):
If you'd like to learn more about MCJ Collective, visit us at www.mcjcollective.com. And if you have guest suggestions, feel free to let us know on Twitter, @mcjpod.
Cody Simms (49:02):
Thanks and see you next episode.
