Curiosity, Climate Change Engagement, and the Sweaty Penguin with Ethan Brown

Welcome back to Environmental Professionals Radio, Connecting the Environmental Professionals Community Through Conversation, with your hosts Laura Thorne and Nic Frederick! 

On today’s episode, we talk with Ethan Brown, Founder and Host of The Sweaty Penguin Podcast about Curiosity, Climate Change Engagement, and the Sweaty Penguin.  Read his full bio below.

Help us continue to create great content! If you’d like to sponsor a future episode hit the support podcast button or visit www.environmentalprofessionalsradio.com/sponsor-form 

Showtimes: 
2:03  Nic & Laura discuss annual reviews
6:39  Interview with Ethan Brown starts
9:19  The Sweaty Penguin 
17:34  Climate change engagement
20:55   Curiosity

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This podcast is produced by the National Association of Environmental Professions (NAEP). Check out all the NAEP has to offer at NAEP.org.

Connect with Ethan Brown at https://www.linkedin.com/in/ethanbrown5151/

Guest Bio:
Ethan Brown is a writer, commentator, entrepreneur, and the Founder and Host of The Sweaty Penguin, a comedy climate podcast presented by PBS/WNET's national multiplatform climate initiative "Peril and Promise" aimed at making climate change less overwhelming, less politicized, and more fun. The Sweaty Penguin has released nearly 200 episodes, interviewed world-renowned professors from 15 countries and 6 continents, and was named an Official Honoree at the 2022 Webby Awards and won a 2022 Signal Listener's Choice Award. Brown is also a Contributor for Young Voices, and his writing has been featured in the Orange County Register, Real Clear Energy, C3 Newsmag, and Counterpunch. He earned a dual degree in Environmental Analysis & Policy and Film & Television from Boston University.

Music Credits
Intro: Givin Me Eyes by Grace Mesa
Outro: Never Ending Soul Groove by Mattijs Muller

Transcript

Transcripts are auto-transcribed

[Intro]

Laura 
Hello and welcome to EPR with your favorite environmental nerds Nick and Laura. On today's episode, Nick and I discuss in our reviews, we talked to Ethan brown about curiosity, climate change engagement and the sweaty penguin podcast. And finally penguins are flightless, but they do leapt into the air prior to diving. The move releases air bubbles from their feathers, reducing drag and doubling or tripling their speed underwater. They do the reverse coming out of the water sometimes launching themselves nine feet into the air. I can picture them going in the water. I can't picture them coming out of the water.

Nic 
Thanks for PETA. I think exactly that sound is really cool thing. That's a great smell. Tara what would they look

Laura 
how they smell terrible. When they're packed together and hundreds in a zoo. It that music

[NAEP Event News]

Nic 
the International Association for Impact Assessment we'll be hosting their annual conference may 8 through 11th in Malaysia this year. If you are able to attend please check it out at www ia.org For more detail.

Laura 
All right we don't have a sponsor so you're ready to deal with 30 seconds or less gone through joke. Oh gosh. Because two three go. What's it gone?

Nic  
Yeah. Okay, so Wow,

Unknown Speaker 
would you like to be a vulture but everyone thinks you're an eagle.

Nic 
Welcome to the crested Kirakira the bird of birds. Today's sponsor is that bird because it is absolutely 100% a vulture but it looks exactly like an eagle. That's what we call PR folks. And yeah, so as the show is sponsored by that bird, there we go. I did.

Laura 
Now, sponsor applications at www.environmentalprofessionals radio.com.

[Nic & Laura discuss annual reviews]

Nic 
Let's get to our segment. Okay, so Sam is asking us a question about evaluations. And we do them how often and does it matter? Does it change based on privately or state or federal government? And the answer is yes. Whatever you think is correct. Or official evaluations. Most companies, I would say do a yearly evaluation as the, I guess, bare minimum or the standard. Unfortunately, I think there's a lot of companies that just do it once a year, you know, this timeframe, January ish timeframe, evaluation, and they go, Oh, this is what you did great. This is what you did poorly. You better do worse, whatever it is feedbacks, one of the most important things you can get as an employee. So a good company should be giving you feedback. Well, and when you don't, none of that should be a surprise on your big evaluation for, you know, potential raises or promotions or anything. And I would also guess every company does that a little bit differently. I don't know a lot of what your experience is with that, but that's kind of a nutshell for me.

Laura 
Yeah. Basically, they do all do it differently. They there are some similarities and like you said, most of them have an annual policy. more progressive companies are moved into more continuous opportunities for feedback. Ideally, any project that you're on there should be some sort of debrief. An opportunity. The worst case scenario is that you've done something wrong and no one tells you until your annual evaluations six months later, and then it's news to you that you've been doing something wrong repeatedly. And then it comes time to see if your review affects your raise and you're like I've never had a chance to fix this. But the point is is that you should be asking for feedback. If you're not getting what you need to make sure that you're doing a good job doesn't mean that you need to be needy about it. But just to say, hey, you know, is there anything that I could do differently the next time I'm out in the field and you're flying me across the country? And you know, did you hear anything from the client or the other Nick about how I did or whatever. So like for myself, personal experience. This is often the case to the intention for the reviews or to be annual but it keeps getting bumped down. In priority by the leadership because their powers that be aren't enforcing them to do it. So you may expect to get an annual review but you don't actually get one just terrible. So again, go get the feedback that you need.

Nic 
Some companies have to have incentives for that, where they have to say literally like hey, if you don't do your annual reviews of your employees, guess what, you can't get a raise kind of stuff and it shouldn't be a threat. But sometimes that's the motivation and certain people need to get things done. And to make it a priority because I think it has to be made a priority.

Laura 
Right? And what I was going to say, so Well, my boss always did and I would say don't let your boss get away with this. My boss would say keep doing what you're doing. Yeah. And then it's like, okay, great. I don't have to hear any actual feedback. He doesn't actually do any work. But then, you know, in my personal case, I find out later, everything that I'm doing is not kosher in the building. So let's make sure that they're giving you real feedback, too.

Nic 
Yeah. And what is it? One of the greatest examples of that is instead of being like, what am I doing? Good, bad or indifferent say give me something I'm doing that I can do better? Give me three things that I can do that is specific because it'll make people answer the question, and you know, that goes both ways. You know, you should also be providing feedback to your boss. That's one of the things that I tried to like insist on. It's like, Look, I know, we're a good group we get along great, doesn't mean we can't be better. These give me something that I can work on too. So, you know, that's important. It's a two way street. It should be a back and it should be

Laura  
it's not always so watch that if you're you don't have a boss who is welcoming the feedback,

Nic  
honestly, but like, like we talked about a lot on the show. That's good feedback for you. If your boss is like I'm doing everything right. That's not good. Yeah. That's not somebody you want to work for. You really should be work with. You know what I mean? Like, that's great like difference?

Laura 
By answering Sam's question, there is an expectation for an annual review. There is an expectation that your boss is going to do a good job at it, but they may not. So pay attention to that and don't do what I do and just accept the poor valuation, ask for more information and get what you need to do better. Like we talked about previously, it's your responsibility to better yourself. And so take that upon yourself to pay attention to how your view is. Cool. Let's get to our interview.

[Interview with Ethan Brown starts]

Nic  
Hello, and welcome back to EPR. Today, we have Ethan Brown, the founder and host of the sweaty penguin podcast. Welcome Nizam.

Ethan Brown 
Thanks so much for having me.

Nic 
So yeah, we're really happy to have you here. And you have dual degrees in film and television and environmental analysis and policy. So how do those two things fit together and what made you get into it?

Ethan Brown 
So I was going to college originally as a film and TV major. I explored some silly films in high school and was like, I want to do this and my parents were like, have you seen what you've made? But I was able to get into Boston University's film and television program I started taking it a little more seriously. After realizing I liked it that much. Kind of around the same time back in high school. I was learning about climate change. I was finding it to be very important. I found it very scary, but I wasn't finding it interesting. It wasn't something I wanted to learn about. But as a storyteller, I felt like I need to tell important stories. This is a very important one. And so I decided to take a environmental elective my freshman fall in college, and it was in that class that I started to grasp how nuanced climate change is how it's not just scary. doom and gloom headlines, but there's so many different solutions out there. There's angles to these issues that affect not just the environment, but also the economy, health, justice, etc. There was just so much more to it than I realized. And that kind of kick started my dual degree in environmental analysis and policy where I was able to really get into the weeds and that's formed what is now today my podcast, the sweaty penguin.

Nic 
Yeah. And it's a great brain arc. And so when people ask you what you do, how do you answer that question, then where do you even start?

Ethan Brown 
Yeah, so I usually lead off with my podcast. This was the penguin and I'm also a contributor for young voices, which is a nonprofit PR talent agency for young political commentators. So I do lots of climate op ed writing, I'll come on to radio and TV shows and do interviews. So I guess I would use a word like climate reporter or maybe climate commentator, I would not use the word activist because I think a lot of my work is more just presenting facts, presenting options and letting people think for themselves what solutions they would prefer. But anything along those lines or climate podcast or although I think as a white man in podcasting, there's sometimes a small stigma, so I tend to shy away from that a little.

[The Sweaty Penguin]

Nic 
Totally understand. So yeah, let's talk about the podcast a little bit like, aside from having like, one of the best names I mean, sweaty penguins pretty amazing.

Laura 
Title though this what do you do when and articles? How does podcast? Love it?

Nic 
Yeah, which is great. It's been going for like two and a half years and one of the year December episodes about mascots. You described it as just pulling the name out of the hat and talking about how it's affected by climate change. Is that an accurate representation of the show?

Ethan Brown 
Yeah, I think so. We do two types of episodes. The ones we've been doing for the longest since early quarantine when we started, were deep dives where we pick a specific topic and we go into how it affects the environment, the economy, health, justice, and then what are all the different solutions to whatever that issue is, and in those episodes, we also bring on a professor who researches the topic we've had on professors from 15 countries and six continents, which has been incredible, and we've done well over 100 of those deep dive episodes. So it can be on anything that we've done a lot of animals we've done a lot of foods we've done a lot of specific fossil fuel projects around the world which we can get into those are fascinating to me. We've done things like international accountability, ADHD housing, the list goes on. And then our other episodes are called tip of the iceberg. Those started about a year ago. And they're basically a shorter episode where we break down a whatever the big climate news story of the week was, kind of add some context around it. I tend to find there's always something missing from the conversation that I want to add. And then in the second segment, I'll answer a question from an audience member. And I'd love doing that hearing what people are wondering about so if any of your audience has climate questions, you can send them in to us and we'll get them on the show.

Nic 
Yeah, that's great. And I love hearing that too. And it's just an interesting list that you ran through, you know, like, the one that I have to ask you about it. So ADHD, and climate change, how did those related

Ethan Brown 
that was way back. So hopefully I can remember this. I think ADHD is kind of, okay, so I'll start with we did one on asthma as well. And that's actually fresh in my mind because of this whole guest of conversation right now. Asthma is about 50% genetic and 50% environmental. So with the environment, there are various pollutants out there that can contribute to respiratory disease. ADHD was, I think, a higher percent genetic than environmental. But there are studies that have shown that certain pollutants can show up with ADHD symptoms. So the expert we had on that episode was Dr. Luiz kloudio. From the Mount Sinai Icahn School of Medicine, and she had done research on the TEKS pollutants, benzene, toluene, ethyl benzene and xylene. Those four are neurotoxins and linked to ADHD like symptoms. They're also ones that are more commonly discussed like lead and mercury, which we've also done episode specific on lead and on Mercury, and those have effects on the brain as well.

Nic 
Yeah, that's really fascinating. And you know, even thinking about like, what? We're seeing that happening with permafrost, right where things are melting and suddenly the chemicals that are in the soils, that may not be great, but people are not coming out. So it's really, really wild.

Ethan Brown 
Yeah. And if you think about climate change, there's a number of ways of course, a lot of like trucks that will emit carbon dioxide are also emitting these detects chemicals, but you can even think about climate change, creating natural disasters, which can come into communities that have toxic waste sites. And when that happens, the chemicals that are contained in one place can then be dispersed into the community. Or if you think about like your basement might have asbestos in the walls or lead paint and then gets flooded and that so there's ways that these pollutants can be dislodged due to climate change as well.

Nic 
Yeah, absolutely. That's great. And so the show is going really well. And obviously humor is a big part of that show. So to you consider yourself a community. Yeah, I

Ethan Brown 
hope so. I actually ran my high school satire publication and then in college, I ran our college satire publication for two years along with my friend Maddie Schmidt. who's now working on the sweaty penguin as well. And in those two years, we were able to grow it from actually just myself when I took over it was freshman year and the current editor in chief was kind of bored of it and was like, Hey, do you want this and I was like, okay, then everyone laughed, and we grew it to a 90 person team. We were doing daily articles. We actually won an award from the university for her I won Outstanding Student Activities member of the year, which was really cool. So that was an amazing experience. And Matt, he's got a lot of the comedy chops. So she taught me a lot I was more the manager and idea person I guess, but I do love comedy writing. I did a lot with my film and TV major, and learned a lot from that experience. And so going into the sweaty penguin. I felt comedy is a great tool to make something that's overwhelming into something less overwhelming. And that's a lot of what satire writing is about too. And so of course, I wanted to use that for climate change given that I had always found that overwhelming in my early days

Nic 
question fascinating. And gosh, you have 1000 more questions. So I have to give you some credit like credit, starting from zero and getting a 90 APR is incredible. That's not easy. So how on earth did you do that? i

Ethan Brown 
It's hard to say. I mean, I think a lot of what it was is in our first semester, it was maybe cut to like maybe three or four or five of us. And basically we would just have writers meetings where we would come in everyone would write an article in that room and then we would publish them throughout the week. So pretty quickly, we were up to three or four articles a week. Just with that small group. And I think that putting out a level of consistency, getting people to recognize like, Oh, they're doing good work. Then the next year we pretty quickly we put out like a writing application and I think probably like 20 people signed up just with that, seeing what we were doing. And some of the people who we had on originally I was able to move into edit our roles, and then we kind of got going that semester. Then at the end of that semester, we had people from that pool that we kind of moved into editor roles and I think it was around then we actually the founder of it's called the bunion, the satire publication, the BU founder didn't want to be affiliated with the university because for obvious reasons, you don't want to be taking funding from them if you're satirizing them, but I was able to find a loophole where we could be recognized that we exist and go to the club fair and booked classrooms but not receive funding. So I was able to get us registered in that capacity. And then at the club fair when there's 10s of 1000s of students coming through we meet a lot of people, we built up an email list people started joining. And by the end we were I mean, we'd have like 53 applicants for 14 writers spots. Like it was pretty amazing to see how many people wanted to be a part of it. That's awesome.

Nic  
That's great.

Laura 
That is really awesome. I feel like I would wonder if it would be different now after COVID I feel like it's hard to get students to sign up for things from what I've heard from other students I work with, but maybe when you have just such a cool thing like that, it's still people still gravitate towards it. It's really awesome.

Ethan Brown 
Yeah, you have to ask them I was like a challenge.

[Climate change engagement]

Laura 
Oh, that's all really cool. And so you talked about tip of the iceberg, which is a shorter breakdown that you have, and the deeper dives. And so do you feel like you're really getting the messages across to the right people? Have you gotten good feedback?

Ethan Brown 
I hope so. I have been really encouraged. By a lot of the recognition we've received. I was mentioning before we got on we just won a signal listeners Choice Award this week. I'm thrilled about we are now a solutions journalism network climate beacon newsroom. That's the first inaugural version of this initiative where we were selected along with wrist and Telemundo and Sacramento D in Washington informer and a great group of newsrooms who are working on climate and trying to better their climate solutions coverage. So we'll be working together over the next year to kind of improve each other and then hopefully have lessons to share with the larger community. So there's been a lot of recognition like that that I've been so excited about, but I think what gets me most excited is talking to people who are not as engaged with climate change for whatever reason, be it political, the anxiety and actually bring them into the conversation because like I said, there is a lot more nuance to the issue. There's a lot more critical thinking not everything. Is politics. And if we can just kind of introduce them to climate change and make them start thinking about it. That's such an important step. So I hope that we are continuing to succeed in that effort.

Laura 
Yeah, it's a really great thing that you're doing and do you also do an Ask me anything so just curious if there a specific issues or questions that you get asked a lot and those

Ethan Brown 
I think they're different every time which is great. I did do a mailbag episode around New Year's Eve, because I didn't want our editor to have to work that week and I've had a few questions saved that were a little more on the, I guess you could say, skeptical side. I think they were well intentioned, but asking, like questions about how real is climate change and questions about certain energy sources and what the drawbacks of renewable energy might be like things like that. And I had a lot of fun going through those questions. Because I think very often they do just start an argument and that's not how I roll. I looked at them and I was like, Okay, let's assume this was in good faith. I'm sure it was. And let's actually break this down because people just might not know. And so I was explaining down to the molecular level, like how the greenhouse effect actually works. You have two carbon atoms and an oxygen atom and when infrared radiation hits it, the oxygen atom kind of isolate, or wobbles, and that creates energy. And then it's sort of like this pinball machine where when you have more of them in the atmosphere, there's more infrared radiation bouncing from one to the other. So actually getting into the weeds like that, I think was really fun. So those are I guess, some of the more memorable questions for me, but we do get a lot.

[Curiosity]

Laura 
Awesome. And how are you getting those people to engage who, you know, might not be believers or whatever do you feel like they're starting off like trying to defend their own viewpoints and then you know, they're looking for a debate, but then you obviously have your tactics for making it a worthwhile conversation. But how are you how are you able to? Are there any other tactics I guess, that you're using to engage people to pull them into the conversation that they were afraid to or not willing to have?

Ethan Brown 
Yeah, I think for me a lot is just I'm a very curious person. And I want to learn why they think what they think, really more than anything else. And so going into the conversation that way already, kind of prevents any debates because I'm not going to try I just want to know where they're coming from. And if I can help move them in a better direction, I will, but I'm not feeling a pressure to do that. From there. I think there's a tactic called disagreeing agreeably, that I learned from Dale Carnegie course, where, basically First off you want to avoid the word butt at all costs, or any fancy butts like However although all that one of the my classmates called it a button a tuxedo but then what you do is you repeat back what I said, and if you need to actually confirm like, so this is what you're trying to say. And that shows that you heard them and you listen to them and you internalize what they said. Then you present whatever evidence you might have. And then at the very end, you state your viewpoint. And if you're not using those buzzwords, that almost doesn't feel like you're getting disagreed with it feels like yeah, we're on the same page. And here's what I want to add. And very often you can be on the same page. I think people forget, there's no one who doesn't want clean air. Clean water and a healthy environment. It's, we need that to live. It's pretty basic. And from there, if you look at the economy, our economy is built on things from our natural environment. So you can go down a list and see that there's a lot of room to have common ground and then I just kind of can kind of peel back a little bit until I find where that common ground is and then go from there. There's so much more to it as well. I think people very often when they get overwhelmed by the politics or the solutions they might shut down and just try to deny a problem exists. But once you present solutions that they might feel a lot more comfortable with, they will immediately jump on the same page about the problem. So literally just an hour ago before we hopped on I was recording a tech talk about this gas stove situation where people are hearing about the prospect of gas stoves getting banned and immediately jumping to say no, we love gas stoves and I was saying okay, there are issues gas stoves do leak methane, which is a greenhouse gas. That's 20 times higher global warming potential and co2. gas stoves do contribute to asthma depending on the pollutants that they released. They don't cause it but they contribute. gas stoves are also just tougher to clean and they don't cook as well as an induction stove according to chefs, and they also leak methane when you're not even using it. So if you're not having your ventilator on 24/7, you're getting those pollutants out. So there are facts there. But at the same time bans are not the only option. You can look at market incentives for new homes. I had the idea this morning. I wonder if you could not just vent the carbon but figure out a way to actually capture it the way a scrubber would at a power plant. I'm not sure I just had the idea. But there's so many different options and I think once you present those options, then people can see oh, maybe I like that solution. And then all of a sudden all these facts don't seem so daunting.

Laura 
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And oh gosh, gas stove, they terrify me. I grew up without them. And every time I come into a home and someone's like, oh just use to get I'm like, do you want me to use this thing? I feel like I'm gonna blow your house up. Not only do they have pollutant hazards and all that, but I feel like man, the fire hazards. I just don't get it. But you know, I think there comes with a certain amount of romanticism our parents might have used them or you know, we feel like this is the way I've always done it and I like it this way. So I think it's hard for people to give up those traditions.

Ethan Brown  
And again, I mean, the way I started the tech talk today I was like, the best argument I've heard in favor of gas stoves is shut up. I like gas stoves. That's fine. Like something and you can say I don't want this taken away from me. But you also there are facts out there and we can talk about okay, if you want to keep gas stoves then how do we want to move forward on these issues? We don't have to. Those don't have to be two of the same we can separate that out and say okay, what do we want to do to make gas stoves safer if in fact you want to continue using gas stoves but I am hearing from every expert on cooking that induction stoves are not the crappy electric stoves they actually provide direct heat as opposed to indirect heat which cooks food better. So I'm happy to listen to that if that's what they say.

Laura 
Yeah, well, for example, I was cooking a Grilled veggie burgers at my boyfriend's dad's house a week ago. And he has a gas oven, gas range, whatever. And he had like for me, I feel like and it just like, it's either on or it's off. So it's either like burning the thing. It's on fire. Or it's, you know, where's your induction? You can set it a nice temperature low, high medium. I don't know someone can send me an email. Argue I need a gas oven. But I think there's parallel argument with like electric vehicles, right? I want my motorized car and I want to hear it and I want to feel the power and all those things. But then you got to ease people into the options and give them the option. So I think your protests are spot on.

Ethan Brown 
Yeah, for sure.

Laura  
So over the years doing the podcast, do you have any of your most favorite I know that Nick and I don't really feel like we want to call it our favorites like our children. But do you have any particularly good memorable episodes that if someone was going to jump off here and go check out maybe direct them to some good ones? Of course they're all good. I know that I enjoyed what I listened to,

Ethan Brown 
except for the very early ones when I was in my parents basement during quarantine. It's gotten good, I think I'll think of a few. The one that is obviously most memorable would be episode 100 Because we did a live recording at a comedy club in Hollywood, which was so much fun the episode was on penguins, unsurprisingly. And it was just so great to have a in person experience for the first time. One that I think was just such a clean episode and also had a lot of interesting angles was our episode on bees. I found that there was I was it. There was so much in there but there's actually an issue of beehive heists in Northern California because basically California has like all the almonds in the country and most in the world. And almonds need bees to pollinate them. And so every year around the same time, all the beekeepers in the country send their bees on trucks out to California to pollinate all the almonds for six weeks and there's been issues of people literally stealing beehives around the almond trees. And that was just fascinating to me. There was also another whole issue with I think it was Chinese honey being diluted with rice vinegar or something undercutting American honey in the US market. So there was just so much in there that is interesting to me. Another thing I would recommend we have a lot of episodes on carbon bonds which are specific fossil fuel projects. So this goes back to last May the Guardian published an investigative report where they were looking at future planned oil and gas exploration around the world and
______________
Ethan Brown 
In May the Guardian published an investigative report where they were looking at future planned oil and gas exploration around the world. And they were trying to understand what was planned because that's not necessarily publicly available data. And what they found is of the big fossil fuel companies in the world. They had planned 195 oil and gas projects that would be called carbon bombs, which means they would emit over a billion tons of carbon dioxide over the course of their lifetime. And for context in 2019, I believe the entire world emitted like 59 billion tons of carbon dioxide so a billion for one project is a lot. And they found 195 of these projects planned around the world, which together would emit 646 billion tons of carbon and kind of blow past our 1.5 degrees Celsius climate goal. And that kind of freaked me out when I heard that but I was kind of like, okay, my job is to make this less overwhelming. What do I do? And so I decided, alright, let's take this one by one. Why I thought that was possible. I don't know but I we started picking specific projects off the list and seeing all right, what's going on here. And what I found is each project really has its own issues, its own nuances. Obviously, there's a lot of common threads you might see, but they're very different. And what we find because of that is there's a lot of different solutions in each community. And the communities themselves are very different. Sometimes the community is largely people who love the industry being there and we think about Alright, how can we get the new jobs or how can we make the industry safer? And other places? It's literally on indigenous land, and we're talking about how do we preserve their rights to hunt, fish and gather so I found those issues, fascinating to actually break down each individual community and it gives me a lot of hope to see that in each of these cases, there really is a viable and sensible path forward. So if you look two episodes like the Montney formation this last week, which is in Canada, the Orinoco belt, which is the big oil field and Venezuela the river basin, which is an LNG project in Mozambique. We've also done several in the United States like the Permian Basin, Haynesville shale Bakken formation, so yeah, there's a lot of those and I think the titles might be like conduits that but they're really interesting and insightful. So I hope you'll check them out. So yeah,

Nic 
I mean, I think that's fascinating and, you know, finding projects like that and then finding the nuances to it honestly, from the interview. I just love the basically our theme today is is Be curious, right? And that'll take you lots of places. And one of the things we love to do is ask people about the job that they do. So this is what we call Field Notes for the show. And so we like to ask about memorable moments of people in the environmental industry doing their job, and we are encouraging our guests or our listeners to share their stories with us hashtag field notes. Ethan Do you have a memorable story of you doing a job and taking you either taking you to a place where you never thought you'd be? Or just you know, learning something kind of amusing or fun that you want to share with it?

Ethan Brown 
That's a good question. The thing that jumped into my head first is kind of an anti story. So I going into quarantine or well before that so January 2020. I was applying for a study abroad program for the next summer in Kenya and Tanzania where I'd be doing a month learning about wildlife conservation. It was a intense application was like a 500 word essays or something. And so it took me a few weeks to do I got it in and I got accepted and I was so excited. And then quarantine hit and didn't happen and I was devastated. Understandably. And I actually tried studying abroad earlier in college to there was a Antarctic research program and that got blown up for reasons I won't get into here. It was a national news story if you want to look it up but yeah, so I had really tried to study abroad in college and do a really cool experienced twice and both times it didn't happen. But quarantine led to the sweaty penguin it probably would not have happened without it. And I guess as we were getting going, I was reflecting on the fact that I'm sure you're familiar with the preservation versus conservation, conversation preservation would be leaving land intact and kind of protecting it that way whereas conservation is more. How do we use resources in a sustainable way where we can continue to use them in the future. And I've always tended to lean in more of a conservation direction, and I was not really an outdoorsy person growing up so learning about climate change was very much a knee concern and other human concern that was less so about just the sanctity of nature, if that makes sense. And so I wonder sometimes I think that that approach has been part of what's led me to reach out to a lot of people because I think a lot of people do feel that way that we need to preserve the environment to the extent that it helps us but it doesn't have to be perfect. And I wonder had I gone on one of these trips and just seeing these beautiful landscapes if I might have ended up being swayed and thinking oh, no, we have to leave everything perfect. We can't do anything and that may have cut into my message down the line. So I still wish I had those experiences. But I do think that I was shaped by the fact that I didn't and so that's why I call that a anti story but that's where my brain went.

Nic 
So it's wonderful. And I think it's very fair to say to know a lot of, you know, the world we have is very dynamic, right? We want to put it in boxes all the time. And all the time. That changes you know, no matter what we try to do, conceptually simple. It's very, very hard to do. So I think it's fascinating. I think it's a great story. So I appreciate that short and you have to I guess I want another Ask out your public engagements as well. And we've had people on the show that are great at public speaking, you know, offering advice on ways to do that. Do you have any memorable moments of maybe where something didn't go the way you had planned how you to deal with that?

Ethan Brown 
I think I've had challenging conversations in the sense of someone just didn't want to listen like they just kind of wanted to talk at me and shut down what I was saying and it doesn't happen a lot. And it actually happens from both sides. It's not a liberal or conservative thing. But I will say I've had a lot of great opportunities to appear on shows that are both liberal and conservative and very much so in both directions and I struggle to think of any time where I felt like it was unproductive. I've had shows where I felt that wasn't my best. There was one that came out recently where I was running on like two hours of sleep and I was in the middle of my move to LA and they asked a question that I think was like, Do you really believe that humans can change the environment that God created for us and I get those questions sometimes and normally I'm quick to answer but that day I was a little off and I wasn't as happy with my answer. But like I think that for the most part, those conversations go amazingly well. I think we have so much more common ground than we realize. And the fact that I have so much faith in that I think makes even the more challenging conversations are ones where we might seem like we're a lot further apart actually turned out to be very productive and insightful. So I look forward to doing more of those in the coming weeks, months, years. Well, that's great.

Laura 
I like the use of faith in that scenario. So we've learned about your podcast and your writing and a little bit of the comedy. What do you do for fun? What do you do when you're not doing sweaty penguin? Or trying to help people laugh their way through climate change?

Ethan Brown 
Yeah, I'm a big Pittsburgh Steelers fan. I listen to like 80 podcasts a day.

Nic 
All right, you can come back anytime. Alright. Are you as well? Yeah, of course. Oh, that's awesome.

Ethan Brown  
Yeah, very bittersweet to the season there but for excited for next year. I also have a home aquarium, which I love. I need to go get some more fishes and shrimps soon. I have three cardinal tetras in there right now. And the whole story with that if you want and then I'm also I love grilling, I love cooking and baking and then famous around here for entertaining. I put on my tic tock a whole spread that I made for the FIFA World Cup final because it was 7am Our time and I had friends coming over so I wanted to make like breakfast at appetizer foods. And so I made bacon roses I made like bite size sausage, egg and cheese McGriddles I may hold awesome spreads. So that's one of my favorite things. Yeah, I ran track and cross country in high school. I get shin splints now but I'd still love running. I just can't really do it very much. You totally fine. Yeah, I do that for a week and then I'm like, trying to get a year but I do miss it a lot. So

Laura 
awesome. Well, it's still early in the year. We're still in January. So what's on deck and any new adventures for you this year?

Ethan Brown  
Yeah, we're really excited to be a part of this climate beacon newsroom initiative. As part of it. A lot of what we're focused on is growing our tick tock. I think that tick tock is such a great platform to reach young people to be our silly selves and to provide some quick information on climate. We're also looking at educational resources, how we can support professors and teachers. This was inspired by the fact that over at the University of Kansas, there's a Professor Shannon earlier who's hopefully it will launch this semester. She's been working for the last like year to put together a geography course where instead of the textbook, they'll be using the sweaty penguin. And we're thrilled about this. I think it's the most flattering thing that's ever happened to me. And she very smartly was just like, yeah, they don't read the textbook, so I need to give them something they'll enjoy. And so I'm really looking forward to seeing how that class turns out if we can collaborate with them to make that something that other universities do as well. And then, I guess in addition, I'm working hard to come on more TV and radio and podcasts and talk about what we're doing. I have been writing a lot of op eds, which are really exciting to see my work published in other places as opposed to just posting it myself. So we'll see where all this goes. Ultimately, my goal is to make the biggest impact possible help people engage with climate change, feel less overwhelmed and get less politicized and however I can do that. I'm glad to do it.

Laura 
Well, that's awesome. Thanks for joining us today and talking about all this before we let you go. Is there anything else that you would like to talk about?

Ethan Brown 
Well, I'll just say if you want to find the sweaty Penguin, we are on Apple Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts for the sweaty penguin.com If you want to support the show further, you can sign up for our patreon@patreon.com slash the sweaty penguin. You can get merch bonus content, a bunch of cool stuff. We were just talking before the show about how hard monetization is. So if we really, really appreciate when people do that, and then yeah, if you have any climate questions, let us know you can comment on our social media, you can email me you can send it via Patreon. We'll be more than happy to get them answered on the show.

Laura 
Awesome. Well, thanks for joining us, Ethan. This has been a lot of fun, and have a great year.

Ethan Brown  
You as well. Thanks for having me.

[Outro]

Laura  
That's for show. Thank you Ethan for joining us today. Please be sure to check us out each and every Friday. Don't forget to subscribe, rate and review. Bye.

Nic
See you everybody.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai