A local environmental podcast has gained international attention for their limited series “The Scales of Change”. We talk to them about the project and how they earned one of the internet’s highest honours.
A local environmental podcast has gained international attention for their limited series “The Scales of Change”. We talk to them about the project and how they earned one of the internet’s highest honours.
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Disclaimer: This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Jackie: My name is Jackie Lamport. Today is Friday, May 14th. Welcome to the Capital Daily Podcast. A local podcast series has taken on the ambitious topic of the dragons of climate inaction, and their work has earned them a place as an honoree for the 2021 Webby Awards. Today, we speak to the creators about how they tackled this topic, how it's connected to the University of Victoria and how their small local project gained international attention.
Future Ecologies is a podcast series that was started by Adam Huggins and Mendel Skulski while Adam was attending the University of Victoria. Adam holds a Bachelor of Science in Biology and Environmental Studies, with a Diploma in the Restoration of Natural Systems, from the University of Victoria, and works as the Restoration Coordinator for the Galiano Conservancy on Galiano Island in British Columbia.
Mendel calls themself a recovering industrial designer and mushroom nerd. They are an organizer with the Vancouver Mycological Society.
Their podcast focuses on connecting us to the ecosystems and life around us. It’s currently in its third season. The team also creates limited series on the side under the Future Ecologies brand. One of these series is Scales of Change. Scales of Change is a collaboration with the University of Victoria. It focuses on University of Victoria professor Robert Gifford’s concept of the dragons of climate inaction.
The series was incredibly well-received, not just locally but internationally. It earned a spot as an Honoree for the 2021 Webby’s Science & Education award in the Podcast/Limited Series & Specials category. The Webby’s are, as described by the New York Times, the “Internet’s highest honor.” Today we’re joined by hosts and producers Adam Huggins and Mendel Skulski. But before we get to that, here’s a supercut from the series.
[Compilation of quotes from the podcast Scales of Change]
“In this series, the kind of wildlife we're looking for can't be seen.”
“That's right because we're looking for dragons. The dragons of inaction are a series of psychological barriers, justifications, rationalizations, reasons why people could do something for the environment, pro-climate behaviour, but are not doing it.”
“We tend to think about climate change in very, very large terms, in terms of the global in terms of weather patterns; I think we experience climate change in very local terms. What we're doing right now by burning all this fossil fuel is the biggest geoengineering experiment that we've ever done. You're in it, and you’re part of the lab team.”
“And I would say, as someone who's worked in environmental communications for a long time, we were actively using fear and shame and guilt. But what's emerging much more now is things like pride really matter. When you feel like we have collectively done something, it reminds us of our capacity to act.”
“The daily decisions that people make are not made consciously. They're not calculating, you know, what is the best and cheapest way for me to get to work today.
I mean, I know that most days, it's driving, but maybe today, I should take the bus. So these are like cognitive shortcuts that people make to decision making that impact our day to day behaviour, because of something called bounded rationality.”
“And so it becomes a habit, and you don't have very many opportunities to change those habits. What you need to get people to do is just to consider making a change. Individual action is only going to go so far, and working towards tipping points in collective action absolutely has to be the goal. And that's why something like a podcast or a film can be great touchstones to bring people together.”
“When you talk about hope, people think you don't know. I really know. But it's saying even in the face of what I know; I’m going to act in the best way I can.
“I wasn't afraid. You know why? It's like, if it were only about me, I would be afraid. Of course, I would worry, but this fight is for everyone.”
“Yeah, you got to slay those dragons, honey, because those are what's holding you back.”
Jackie: Thank you both for joining the podcast today.
Mendel: It’s fun to be here.
Adam: Thanks for having us.
Jackie: First, before we get into the Scales of Change, can you tell me what Future Ecologies is?
Mendel: I would say Future Ecologies is a nature show. That sounds really good.
Jackie: Very descriptive. How did it all get going?
Adam: I was actually doing a school project for the University of Victoria that was kind of open-ended and decided to do a podcast for it. Mendel was an acquaintance of mine at the time, and my partner actually suggested that I asked them to make it with me. And they did. It was actually a really easy conversation. I said, “do you want to do this fun thing with me? And Mendal said, “hell yeah.”
Mendel: Sounds great. Sounds like a lot of fun.
Adam: Yeah, we did that project, and then we decided that we liked it enough that we would try to make a whole podcast out of it. And now we are just finishing up our third season.
Jackie: Wow. You both do that remotely because, Adam, you're on the island and Mendel, you're on the mainland. So you've been doing this kind of virtual work thing since before COVID?
Mendel: Yeah, we’re pretty used to it.
Adam: Yeah, to a certain extent. Usually, in the past, we've been able to actually get together to record the thing so that we can talk in person. So we've been really missing that. It's, as you probably know, hard to record really good engaging conversations remotely.
Jackie: It's different for sure. You were at UVic when this started, but it kind of evolved into something else. And then UVic approached you with another project proposal. Can you tell me about that?
Adam: That's right. They sort of got wind of what we were up to and that I was a UVic alum. And they had this professor named Robert Gifford, and they really wanted to highlight his work on the dragons of climate inaction. To their credit, they thought podcasting would be a really interesting format for them to explore in terms of doing that, and we thought so too. We were actually already familiar with Robert’s work and were interested in putting together an episode on it. And with you, Uvic's support, we were able to turn that episode into a series.
Jackie: That's awesome. That's incredible. How is working with UVic been different from your regular episodes?
Mendel: I mean, I would say that because of the structure, the dragons that we inherited from Professor Gifford and UVic that we were constrained but constrained is the wrong word. We took on a series that needed kind of more, figuring out from the beginning and creating this arc and creating this kind of cohesive narrative that we knew we could take from start to finish and have it still be this thing and pieces that people could dip in and listen to an episode that may be the most relevant for them and their situation, but also something that held together as one series.
Adam: Working with UVic was really nice. They gave us more or less complete creative freedom to do what we thought we needed to do and just provided a lot of support in terms of giving us access to a lot of academics through UVic, that we're working on things that were related to the dragons that we could interview, and providing us with ideas and helping promote the series and helping editorially in terms of making sure that everything was not only correct but also made sense. So that was helpful because it was a sprawling project. And we wanted to both cover all of Robert’s work well and try to trace some of the threads that come out from Robert, whether it was his students or completely unrelated projects that kind of spoke to those dragons.
Mendel: I like that answer better.
Jackie: Climate change is an issue that has been covered a lot. It is something that’s only becoming more and more important, but to tell the story is getting more and more difficult. How did you find making this a narrative that felt new and ingestible and something that wasn't already out there?
Mendel: I mean, the series itself represents a kind of meta-narrative on the idea of climate messaging. So we were exploring what are the inevitable tropes and pitfalls of talking about climate change in terms of some really dreamy stuff, and sort of motivating through fear and motivating through this urgency? And then the flip side of that is also trying to figure where are the messages that we can derive some amount of hope from and look forward to possible futures? It's really like adapting to climate change and changing, changing ourselves, and recognizing that the world will change around us and find specific strategies to do that. So that was our kind of continuous effort to relate that to the dragon because the dragons represent that story. Atomically every situation might have a dragon that you can point to and say this is the reason why climate action isn't taking place in that particular frame.
Jackie: There's another aspect of the podcast, and that's making it local to Vancouver Island, Vancouver, mainland specific areas. What was it like taking something, so you know, like something that said that affects the entire world and making it something that still felt local?
Adam: I think that's the only way to actually work at these issues, right? I think we do have to take in that whole global picture, but we have to act on it locally. And I mean, thankfully, we're both kind of really plugged into a lot of the things that are going on locally are at least aware of them. And people were willing to talk to us and, in some cases, allow us to, to sort of follow along with what they were doing. I think one of the most exciting parts of this series for me was getting to embed a little bit with the ṮEṮÁĆES Climate Action Project. That was a collaboration with the W̱SÁNEĆ First Nation, doing incredible work getting people back out on the land, but also talking about climate change in the process, and thinking about ways to address it that aren't simply based around, you know, improving our solar capacity or something like that. Right. There's stuff happening all the time locally that and we were only able to highlight a few things, but we thought that that was important to do.
Mendel: I would say that idea too, that the stories that we tell ourselves are always situated in a place and usually situated in our local community. And how we even think about and refer to those places is an important part of how we look forward to the future of what they can become.
Adam: I mean, we do call our main program Future Ecologies for a reason; we are definitely focused on imagining through positive solutions. What kind of relationships can we have with the natural world and trying to get away from just focusing on the issues that we face? We definitely cover those, but we're interested in solutions, journalism. We’re interested in presenting those kinds of positive threads that people can follow.
Jackie: Do you get a lot of people responding positively to that, you know, being able to ingest information about climate change that doesn't necessarily feel like it's just depressing?
Adam: Yeah, we get a lot of great feedback. In fact, Mendel created a little ecosystem for the people that support the podcast on a Discord server. And we're in constant conversation with one another on all sorts of different globally to their people in Australia, and people in Europe and people locally, people in the States are on there. And so it's just a microcosm of the people that listen to the podcast. Obviously, there are people that aren’t willing to support us financially, but they're all over the world and doing all sorts of really interesting things. And I absolutely love hearing from them about the controlled burn that they're doing down in California or in Australia, or the essays that they're writing or the photos that they're taking the things that they're doing in their local communities. So yeah, there's a lot of people that are attracted to those kinds of presentations of positive ideas and things that maybe aren't being covered, you know, in the mainstream press quite as much.
Mendel: Yeah, it's really inspiring to see all the different art-based responses to climate change as a kind of the ultimate representation of ecological urgency and action.
Jackie: When you started making this series, which is more of a mini-series compared to your regular seasons. Did you expect it to end up the way it did and get the response that it did?
Adam: I think we created a series that I think presents the dragons quite well and presents the work that Robert Gifford has done in a format that’s to his work, but also highlights maybe some of the critiques of the dragon’s framework and also highlights some really positive examples of people overcoming those dragons. We definitely didn't want to just present all the reasons people don't do things about climate change. We wanted very much to highlight the way that people are confronting those barriers that we face and going right through those. That was the goal. I think we definitely achieved what we wanted to achieve with it. I do think that the interesting question is, you know, with all of the work that we're all doing on climate change, it is a huge issue, and it's hard to know exactly what impact you're having with any given project that you do. We certainly have received a lot of positive feedback. But obviously, we haven't stopped the climate crisis yet. So there's still more work to do.
Jackie: Ambitious goal. When you received notice that you were an honoree, what did it feel like? What was your initial reaction?
Mendel: I was really excited. It's an honour, truly. The Webby’s are an important place where we're media work is recognized. So I'm psyched to be able to say that we made this thing and that we are honoured.
Adam: It's pretty cool to see who we’re featured up against, right. We're just a little tiny indie podcast, and there are some big names up there, even on the science charts. So, it was cool to be featured along there and recognized, although I will confess, I didn't know what it was and that we were on it. But I live on a tiny island under a rock, so that's me.
Mendel: I will also add, I can't remember; I think we weren't recording at this point. But it's nice to be an honorary as well because that means that we don't have to spend the next few weeks asking people to vote for us. We just get to say, “we did it, and we're on the website.” So from a promotional standpoint, it makes it a lot easier on us.
Jackie: And have you seen any more interest in Future Ecologies as a whole?
Mendel: I would say, one is back to your previous question about the reception of it because I would say t I've been touched to see how well it's been received and how much has come out of it in terms of people's own responses to climate change, and also, how it's allowed us to grow as a podcast and to reach new people and to get this message out even further. So that's been really exciting. I think the Webby Award itself is maybe too recent to really know what the impacts are. But it's very exciting.
Adam: I was gonna say we we we get supporters over time pretty regularly. But we probably don't have numbers yet to reflect like any Webby bump. As you probably know, podcasting numbers are notoriously tricky.
Jackie: Yeah, that's very true. Thank you both for joining our podcast today. We really appreciate it.
Mendel: My pleasure.
Adam: Thank you for having us.
Jackie: You can find their podcast at futureecologies.net. And in today's Capital Daily news review, the new tiny home village in the Royal athletic Park parking lot is set to welcome its first ten residents today. The village built out of converted shipping containers had originally been scheduled to open on Wednesday, but the opening was pushed back after the delivery of fire alarm panels was delayed. The remaining residents of the 30 units will move in on Saturday and Sunday. Each of the 160 square foot units have a bed desk, hotplate and refrigerator. The village also has shared common shower and washroom facilities. Thank you so much for joining us on another “good news Friday.” If you enjoyed the podcast, please share so that more people can find us and also rate and review. And don't forget to subscribe so that you don't miss any episodes going forward. We post new episodes every Monday to Friday. My name is Jackie Lamport. This is the Capital Daily Podcast.