We absolutely love it when two Lavin speakers get together to share world-changing ideas, and that happened on Douglas Rushkoff’s most recent episode of his Team Human podcast, “The Power of Panic,” when he and The Uninhabitable Earth author David Wallace-Wells got down to brass tacks around climate change, and the power of human anxiety to counter complacency.

“Being scared can be motivating,” David Wallace-Wells tells Douglas Rushkoff on the recent episode. “We can see the movement against smoking, against nuclear proliferation, against drunk driving. These are all public health campaigns, and I do think that the public health aspect of climate change is something that has been underutilized by advocates of it.” As author of the landmark climate change book The Uninhabitable Earth, Wallace-Wells shares how fear for the planet—and the future of human health—was what shook him from complacency. “It’s an all-encompassing story that affects us all.”

Over the hourlong episode, the two journalists, authors, and social change speakers engage deeply with the different motivating factors that have the potential to affect the climate crisis in real, world-changing ways. “Confronting imminent catastrophe head-on is the only option,” says Rushkoff, “if we’re going to evade extinction.” And while it might sounds like a scary conversation, these two charismatic raconteurs are anything but grim. Together, Rushkoff and Wallace-Wells reveal how living in a hotter and less hospitable world will require collective political engagement—a.k.a. all hands on deck—if we are to turn this ship around.

Listen to the episode here.

To learn more about The Lavin Agency’s selection of Environment and Climate Change speakers, contact us today.