00:02:10.200so I want to just jump right in and start with an introduction to a more recent project you've
00:02:18.560been working on imagine 2200 that's even hard for me to say I'm like wait what but imagine 2200
00:02:28.040fixes climate fiction contest which recognizes stories that envision the next 180 years of
00:02:36.440Equitable Climate Progress, imagining intersectional worlds of abundance, adaptation,
00:02:42.640reform, and hope. And I just love if you could give us some insight into the project and what
00:02:49.320drew you to it. Yeah, well, I mean, for me, for a long time, I've been really into the work of
00:02:57.180visionary fiction and how we write stories. You know, Walida E. Marisha and I did Octavia's
00:03:04.080years ago. And the bent of it was how do we tell stories that sort of activate our imagination of
00:03:12.320the future in ways that feel compelling, right? Like ways that are like, oh, I would like to go
00:03:18.980to there, like to be a part of that. So when I got this invitation from Grist to be one of the
00:03:27.720judges for this incredible climate fiction contest um you know i jumped at the chance and i got to
00:03:35.460work with a lot of other people um incredible judges morgan jerkins sheree renee thomas casey
00:03:41.860layman um to sort of sit and read through really groundbreaking work and the idea is if we can
00:03:52.080envision the world, the world ahead of us together, we can start to share from these dreams that we're
00:03:58.800having, that we might actually be able to increase our chances of living on a planet that feels
00:04:05.360viable to more and more of us. And I really loved getting to read the stories. A ton of stories came
00:04:14.960in I think something like a thousand people 1100 people or something submitted stories
00:04:21.080and you know it got narrowed down for us so we read like the top 20 stories or something but
00:04:29.040just knowing that that many people are holding pieces of the future gave me a sense of of hope
00:04:37.200and possibility. That sounds like a really beautiful way to spend time is to go into
00:04:46.840other folks' imaginations. And gosh, this is something that I've thought about so much with
00:04:54.240our past conversations that's come up again and again in my organizing work and just my own
00:05:00.040personal work around hope and seeing through the overwhelm and anxiety of this time and I don't
00:05:11.020want to misquote you but this idea of the imagination battle and how we're living in
00:05:16.860other people's imaginations that we yeah well you know that actually that idea was from a friend of
00:05:23.580my name, Terry Marshall, who works with Intelligent Mischief. And I remember sitting in a room in
00:05:31.720Boston, they were doing a training, like a panel training there. And I remember Terry talking about
00:05:37.700this, like that we're in this imagination battle. And the idea was so clear to me, right? I was
00:05:44.120just like, I understand exactly what you mean. Someone envisioned and imagined the world being
00:05:51.740the way it is now and the way that we can take for granted right that it can just be like oh
00:05:57.000white supremacy has always been here and that's just how white people are you know and it's like
00:06:01.300actually no someone constructed that someone looked at the world and and the way resources0.58
00:06:07.900move through the world thought it would be really strategic if if we declared white people
00:06:14.540as some kind of superior species you know we would be able to take in and and move and trade0.58
00:06:21.140and do everything just for ourselves you know so uh i'm like for a lot of us especially those of us
00:06:29.480who are not white we look at that and it's like how you know in what realm in what world is there
00:06:36.980a superiority here there's not it's imagined and if that can be imagined anything can be imagined
00:06:43.620right and so then we start to say well what would it look like to actually imagine
00:06:47.720a world that meets the needs of its people and a world in which people don't have to
00:06:53.040be born into a certain race or class background in order to have access to health care or to have
00:06:59.320access to a healthy environment in order to have access to education and all those basic human
00:07:05.720needs you know um so much of of the science fictional behavior that walida and i have always
00:07:12.560kind of push people towards is like it's not you know it's not about being the most bombastic
00:07:18.660you know like it's really like we're talking about basic human needs here and what would it
00:07:24.440look like to get to get to a place where that felt like the primary um focal point and the
00:07:31.740primary reason for the decisions that were made as a collective species
00:07:35.580yeah this thread is so fascinating to me because i've been doing a lot of organizing work in
00:07:47.020southeast alaska around well one particular mine for the last nine months well it's a series of
00:07:53.800mines but it's under one corporation and they are planning on drilling a mile long tunnel into a
00:08:01.180glacier. And I'm just like, well, okay, we're talking about some strange dystopian sci-fi
00:08:09.280imagination. This is that. How can some folks think that drilling into a glacier in climate
00:08:17.840chaos is possible, but those of us who are struggling to even imagine that a community
00:08:24.680garden is possible and just to see the discrepancy in that those who think they're in power and who
00:08:35.100are controlling a lot of the reins of how the resources are extracted from this earth can have
00:08:41.260these wild imaginations to do just things that seem completely impossible yet somehow they get
00:08:49.060the investors to back them and their imaginations can be manifested. So I guess I just want to hear
00:08:56.280you speak to those of us who are in our communities and feeling maybe a little downtrodden that
00:09:04.160the things that we want to imagine, like you're saying, healthcare and food and safety,
00:09:11.220that those things sometimes can feel unreachable yeah i mean you know i think this has been a
00:09:20.880really tender time i know that it has felt that way for me um wanting the species to be so much
00:09:28.960more self-aware and self-reflective and to have a sense of like oh we're the stewards you know
00:09:37.940we're responsible for some of what's happening on this planet and how do we how do we be responsible
00:09:43.540in a good way how do we take that responsibility in a way that you know future generations can
00:09:49.700look back and they're like wow you know y'all really turned something around here um i think
00:09:55.080that part of the tenderness of this time is recognizing that a lot of the people who can
00:10:01.540make decisions about um about the direction that things are going in are not driven by the same
00:10:10.220values and not driven by the same beliefs right um and maybe even not driven by the same sense
00:10:15.520of urgency you know like when i hear some you know like someone's going to drill i'm like we're past
00:10:20.240that point you know we're past being able to act as if we don't understand the impact of such
00:10:26.560drilling um we're in a new phase of our of our planetary self-awareness and when will our
00:10:34.280decisions start to reflect that you know i'm hungry for that moment when our decisions start
00:10:39.900to really reflect that we understand we have an impact on this planet i've been listening to this
00:10:45.400book a brief history of earth i don't know if you've heard of it it's um you know i go through
00:10:51.520my little audio book phases but part of it is like how do we make people understand just how
00:10:57.040magnificent and unique and special and spectacular our planet is and some of us are really on that
00:11:04.340vibe you know that's just like maybe if you understood just how miraculous and unique it is
00:11:09.100you know that would make that would make people feel more hopeful but it doesn't and so for for
00:11:15.320me I know that the thing that happens when I realize that is I feel this overwhelming despair
00:11:20.720and I've been sitting with that despair more often recently of just like okay what is this
00:11:26.940despair here to teach me how can I lean into this feeling and what I realize is that when I'm feeling
00:11:34.820that that despair that hopelessness in some ways I'm really feeling the most connected feeling I
00:11:42.620can have on the planet right now right that it's like I'm not just feeling um a selfish
00:11:51.440you know a selfish like I just want to live for as long as I can there's a real interconnected
00:11:57.320um energy that I feel flowing through me that's like I can feel myself connected to the generations
00:12:04.080to come and I can feel their disappointment and I can feel their innovations um and that gives me
00:12:11.600a sense of peace, a sense of, of hopefulness, that we're not the first people to try to turn
00:12:18.280this thing around. We won't be the last to try to turn this thing around. There's not a quick
00:12:23.580solution, actually. There's many, many solutions and many, many experiments. And the way, you know,
00:12:30.880as a U.S. citizen, the way that things are playing out here is not the only way the species are
00:12:37.040figuring out and answering these questions so all of that gives me some hope and then
00:12:42.740there's a book that came out this year and dean spade um called mutual aid and the way that even
00:12:52.700during this immense overwhelming crisis um much of which feels spurned on by our inability to make
00:13:02.000decisions with a collective orientation even during this time there have been people practicing
00:13:08.740like learning to practice mutual aid and that that maybe more than any other thing gives me a lot of
00:13:15.140hope that it's like okay like people could be spending their time on a lot of different things
00:13:20.120and the thing that you know a good number of people are actually putting their energy into is
00:13:25.740how do I think collectively how do I give from what I have enough of how do I be in a relationship
00:13:33.000with other people that's not rooted in scarcity and I'm practicing this very personally right now
00:13:38.720you know that I'm like okay like how in my community how did how did my partner and I
00:13:44.840how do my siblings and I my family and I my friends and I how do we think of our resources
00:13:49.960collectively how do we make sure that everyone has enough time money child care health care
00:13:57.020how do we make sure we have everything we need and being in that activity brings my attention
00:14:03.900to the realm at which I can touch and feel the people I'm caring for and I find that to be
00:14:10.720really helpful like when I get overwhelmed with despair it's usually because I have my attention
00:14:15.960on everything in the entire world and I can't I can't take action on every single thing in the
00:14:22.080entire world in fact I can get very inactive you know I can get very overwhelmed and then
00:14:27.540nothing happens um so I've been in a practice of like hey not you know it's like all this is true
00:14:34.320this is we are in a climate catastrophe all of this is unfolding but there's also a lot of good
00:14:40.320unfolding and what can I bring my attention to what can I grow with my attention and what can
00:14:46.740I grow with my practice so that's that's kind of the vibe I'm in right now
00:14:50.520oh that was medicinal to hear that so many pieces of that the mutual aid but also just
00:15:00.240when you're speaking to um you know we're not the first we're not the last and people all over the
00:15:05.960world are working through it and we have so little knowledge of the seven billion people and
00:15:15.240I think that there's a lot of release in that that I'm hearing at least for myself because
00:15:21.700it's like letting go of the pressure of trying to figure it all out because we can't and I do
00:15:29.160think that when we get too big in our anxiety to fix or save the world we actually can't really
00:15:37.500focus on what we have real possibility with which is those around us those we are connected to and
00:15:44.600and maybe that's even part of the design of this time of the sinister ones just trying to
00:15:51.840jumble us a bit so that we feel too overwhelmed like I I think about that even with the media
00:15:57.760news just just too much oh yeah and we can't think about this all the time i think about this
00:16:04.960all the time like i'm i'm frequently you know getting off of social media um you know taking
00:16:12.340breaks from it um dosing myself with that addictive substance you know um and recognizing like my
00:16:20.300attention is really the most valuable thing that i have that i can offer to the world and
00:16:27.540capitalism really benefits from our distraction right um all the forces that keep us kind of
00:16:37.620asleep and consuming really benefit from us staying asleep and you know but there's there's
00:16:45.620always something happening there's always people trying there's always people envisioning the world
00:16:50.800anew and you know this is part of why i the fiction contest for me was really interesting
00:16:56.660because it's there you know the stories are not just like and then everything was great you know
00:17:02.520like people are really being very rational even in their imagination right it's like okay like
00:17:11.620what are the basic needs that we need to attend to how do we be visionary about that and if we
00:17:17.360can already imagine what it would look like in the best case scenario how do we bring that into
00:17:21.480our daily lives now? What does that look like? And I think that sometimes it can be really scary
00:17:30.500for people to shift from panic to practice. I'm just like, oh my God, it's a total crisis and
00:17:39.320there's nothing to be done. And it's like, well, what are you practicing? If you practice every day
00:17:45.700panicking and surrendering your power to the 24 hour news cycle, then yeah, it's not going to feel
00:17:52.600like a very hopeful time. You know, you're not generating a field of possibility. That's for
00:17:59.020sure. Right. But if you, if you've been for me, you know, I find that I'm like, okay, when I feel
00:18:05.320that despair and that overwhelm, who can I turn to? Who can really help me hear a different
00:18:11.900possibility even in this moment who am I who am I giving my attention to I ask this question to
00:18:17.460myself all the time like an annoying amount you know as I'm just like well who's getting this
00:18:23.460attention and do they deserve this attention from me you know like are they um am I actually
00:18:31.400entertained am I actually intrigued do I feel like my humanity is witnessed you know who I want
00:18:38.680to get my attention to and it's changed a lot I spend very little time reading the news I've
00:18:44.900spent a ton of time reading visionary fiction I spend a ton of time thinking through you know
00:18:51.360like once I read you know some something from Octavia but I'm like well what would it take
00:18:56.540to practice this you know how would we create spaces where people could practice this and
00:19:01.700sometimes the practice is just reading together you know reading and being like well what do we
00:19:07.000think of that you know i often will tell people like we're in this age of abolition and trying
00:19:11.980to figure out what justice looks like and like read woman on the edge of time it's really really
00:19:17.200helpful to read it and think about what kind of punishment um what kind of punishment are we
00:19:22.500currently engaging in and how would we break into a different relationship with each other that
00:19:27.480wasn't punitive you know like i'm just like there's fiction people have written about all
00:19:32.940these things and by asking the question like could you live in this world how about this one over
00:19:38.080here what if it was like this you know asking ourselves allows us to start to get in the
00:19:42.600practice of creating worlds that we could actually live in and feel justice in that's to me what
00:19:49.360we're supposed to be doing right we're constantly supposed to be experimenting with well if this
00:19:54.320isn't working what could work could that work you know there's got to be a way
00:19:59.440Yeah. I think speaking of the value of attention and presence, I've noticed that so strongly, especially since COVID started, how valuable and precious presence is to me and how much I want to give my presence to those around me, my loved ones, and how much I want to receive that.
00:20:24.720And, and then I think with attention, there was an interview I did a few years ago. And I think one of the quotes was, and this was from Swartz. And he said something like, attention is the most valuable currency in the universe. And I really sat with that. I was like, wow, we've really been duped.
00:20:46.980thinking that like other things are more valuable than that that other things are more valuable than
00:20:53.160spooning or looking into each other's eyes or sharing a meal like where else are we trying to
00:20:59.920go what what else is better than that and yeah I really appreciate that reminder to come back to
00:21:08.540source in that way because that's like another form of that distraction that I think you're
00:21:13.540speaking to and just to jump back to practicing imagination and practicing this type of visionary
00:21:22.700fiction maybe you could share with folks how they might begin to practice this in their own lives
00:21:31.760whether that's just by themselves or within their community maybe other folks who want to feel that
00:21:37.240type of support. But I think that could be helpful to hear. Well, one thing that we did,
00:21:44.540Walidah and I, Walidah and Marisha and I, when we were touring Octavia's food, was we would do
00:21:51.120these collective science fiction writing workshops where we would get people together in community
00:21:56.940and we would ask them, you know, where in your community, what wound in your community,
00:22:03.960what pattern in your community could use some visionary attention right and you know it changed
00:22:12.720from place to place but in most places there was you know some element of like our education system
00:22:19.820could really use some medicine like it could really use some vision um our health care system
00:22:27.380could really use this our housing system could really use this like folks quickly came up with
00:22:32.140things that were like this area of our collective lives could really use a different kind of
00:22:38.140attention a healing attention so we would start there and we were always blown away by how quickly
00:22:47.300people would move into you know they're okay so build a world you know build a world and what are
00:22:53.760all the needs what are the needs that are being met what is the conflict you know inside of that
00:22:59.240world because so much of the conflict we experience now comes from people not having their needs met
00:23:04.840and trying to find ways to meet those needs um when the state and the system actually don't
00:23:12.820provide in the way that they need to right so then we're like okay well what would it look like
00:23:18.540if all those needs were provided for how would we provide all those needs you know um i always
00:23:25.720one of my pet peeves is you know having critiques but not having any idea of what an alternate
00:23:33.440solution could even look like and it's one of the main reasons I love visionary fiction in general
00:23:39.220but get people together what is the medicine you need and have people be in a real conversation
00:23:45.940about that you know it's like here's what we need here's how it could look to practice it you know
00:23:50.900And once people start having those conversations with each other, a lot will unfold or unveil from that place. Sometimes we'll go so far as to explicitly say, okay, so if we're trying to end up there, where do we need to start?
00:24:06.960You know, how would we, what was the first step that we might take locally in order to move in that direction? And every single thing, all the decisions that we live inside of every day, when we start to track them, pay attention to them, almost all of us can easily see differences, changes, like, oh, here's one thing we could do that would yield different results.
00:24:30.260and that's the sweet spot to me that's where we want to be is what are things that we could
00:24:35.980imagine would actually have a tangible different outcome and and then you know how do we become
00:24:43.820the people who are willing to to be in that practice so i've done this with folks um you know
00:24:51.100i've done this with folks like in new orleans where some of the work of visioning survival
00:24:56.980together actually was able to help in terms of how survival happened during the next hurricane
00:25:03.740you know it's like if you can imagine ourselves as a community as opposed to a bunch of individuals
00:25:10.320trying to survive these conditions it's like actually we're a community trying together to
00:25:15.100survive these conditions and even that kind of a small shift of identity can transform what's
00:25:21.520possible so new stories lead to new actions new possibilities well adrian thank you so much for
00:25:32.780sharing some time with us today and yeah awakening these rumblings in us as we close i want to bring
00:25:42.520back up imagine 2200 2200 yeah and just see if there's any anything else you want to touch on
00:25:53.020before we say goodbye or how people can learn more about this contest and where they can
00:25:59.880potentially read any of these works yeah well you know I can send you the link to drop in the show
00:26:06.680notes of all the stuff that is published already we're actually going to be publishing a book
00:26:12.340of the winning stories um the winning stories and the finalists are going to be published
00:26:17.820and they just opened so there's actually a submission portal we're doing another year
00:26:24.500of the contest um so this year's judges are sheree renee thomas are katie martine and grace
00:26:30.940dylan and i think the deadline for that is may 5th 2022 so people should write their stories
00:26:38.060and get those into us so that they can read more
00:26:41.280and, you know, that we can find out more
00:26:43.900about the clues that people have in their imaginations
00:26:46.560for what this next 180 years of survival looks like.