Episode 96: Stuart Goldsmith - Comedy, Climate & Confusion

Molly Wood Voice-Over: Welcome to Everybody in the Pool, the podcast where we dive deep into the innovative solutions and the brilliant minds who are tackling the climate crisis head-on. I'm Molly Wood. 

This week I can’t get enough of storytellers this summer. Storyteller summer? Sure, yes, let’s go with that wish I thought of that like four episodes ago, right? 

Anyway, as I sit here laughing at my own jokes let’s have a little fun this week my guest today is proof that you really can make just about any job into a climate job 

And it’s a perfect example of what I talked about a few weeks ago with Rev Yearwood mentioned about how the key to effective communication about the climate crisis is to make it accessible and available to the everyday person and what better way than to make fun of it?  

Stuart Goldsmith

My name is Stuart Goldsmith and I'm a stand-up comedian and over the last few years, having been a stand-up for about 20 years, over the last few years I've started talking exclusively about the climate crisis and personal sustainability, which I do in public settings and live shows and online and also in kind of corporate and business settings to support sustainability departments.

Molly Wood

Yes, dear audience, was lucky enough to get to see Stuart at a conference and think to myself, this is exactly the kind of climate storytelling that we need to tell a story about. Let's go all the way back though to doing comedy for 20 years. How did you get started in standup?

Stuart Goldsmith 

Mm-hmm.

Stuart Goldsmith

Mm-hmm.

Stuart Goldsmith

The long and the short of it is that I've never had a real job, I've never had a salary, and when I was 16 years old I did a street show. I improvised a sort of circus skills type street show with my friend Noel from school, and it was in Stratford-upon-Avon near where we grew up, and I will never forget looking in our little bowler hat that we'd collected the money and we'd made something like £30, which probably in those days was like £50.

Molly Wood

Well played, sir.

Stuart Goldsmith

And we realised this changes everything and we never need to get real jobs. And then I became a professional street performer at Covent Garden and at the Edinburgh Festival. And then at the Edinburgh Festival I would go and I would take all the money I was making in my hat from doing street shows and spend it on tickets to stand-up shows. And then eventually thought, come on, who am I trying to kid? I'm a stand-up comedian. So I did that instead.

Molly Wood 

my goodness, how do I, I just am about to be derailed because I just attended my first Fringe Festival this past summer. Yes, yeah, the Edinburgh one.

Stuart Goldsmith 

hahahaha

Stuart Goldsmith 

did you? Which one? In Edinburgh? wow, yes, well I've been going this will be my 31st and it completely...

Molly Wood

Yeah, I'm totally, the way you talk about that is the way that I talk about CES in my world. I'm like, oh, I've been to 24 of those. Like I'm over, I know, but yes. Okay, so.

Stuart Goldsmith 

Yeah, sure, sure, Yeah, I love it. It's a constant source of inspiration and just an incredible place to be.

Molly Wood

Just incredible. Yeah, just absolutely wonderful. I think I have now become a junkie. Okay, so then at some point you, as all comedians do, decide to talk about the climate crisis. Sorry, I'm sorry, as no comedians do, decide to talk about climate and sustainability. Okay, there are four.

Stuart Goldsmith

Hahaha.

Stuart Goldsmith 

Well, I can think of four. Yeah, I think so. can think of, can name four off the of my head, but not many more than that. And I think here's, here's a fun thing just while we're on numbers. Here is an un-Googleable quiz question. What do stand-up comedians have in common with commercial airliners, airliners, the jets themselves, and snow leopards?

Molly Wood

I don't know.

Stuart Goldsmith

There are roughly as many of us, there are roughly as many comedians in the world as there are snow leopards. So we imagine, if we imagine that four or five of those snow leopards have started snow leoparding about the climate, it's that rare. I'm so excited about my new fact. Yeah.

Molly Wood 

That is an excellent un-Google-able analogy. Wow. I didn't know there were that few comedians either.

Stuart Goldsmith 

Yes, it's kind of... If we take as a comedian the idea of someone who has been going for say at minimum five years and has turned over minimum an hour of stand-up, know, lots of people have... You know, you can temporarily become a snow leopard or a commercial airliner without really committing to it, you know. Probably regular leopards. Well, exactly. Exactly. So, yes, comedy is about problems.

Molly Wood 

You I just dabble in being a commercial airliner. It's extremely dangerous, but I try.

Stuart Goldsmith 

The problems are the material, they say. I remember I got that from a clown teacher many years ago. And that's so true for stand-up comedy. The problems are the material. whenever you have problems in your life or problems with your relationships or problems with your government or problems with your whatever, your socks, then those are the things that become material. No one ever says, here's my stand-up show. It's all about how great everything is. So instead you go, this is a problem and this is a challenge and I always do this wrong and I never get this right. And those are the problems. So the problems are the material.

And inescapably, having for many years done shows about my problems with my anxiety or my problems with becoming a parent and those kind of things, eventually I just couldn't get over the hump of having a big, big problem with the climate crisis, suffering lots of eco-dread. Inescapably, that kind of bled out into my work. And I went to the Edinburgh Fringe in 2022 with a work-in-progress show that was very amorphous and changing every day.

and I probably had five minutes on the climate at the beginning of it and at the end of the festival I had half an hour on the climate and I made the decision right next year I'm just going all in and going for it and it has become, it's completely rekindled my passion for stand-up. I've been doing it a long time as I say and the buzz you get from really raising the roof on a room does wear off faster and faster but now I've got the bit between my teeth on a whole new challenge. I'm completely addicted.

Molly Wood 

And it sounds like audiences must have responded. If you went from five minutes to 30 minutes, I'm assuming that's because...

Stuart Goldsmith

Ha ha! They do now! Yes, I'm fond of saying, it's funny actually, there are rhythms in a comedian's life and the rhythm in the UK at least is that we build up to the Edinburgh Festival. So you perform your show at Edinburgh and then maybe you tour it through the autumn and then in January you look at a blank piece of paper and you go, my god, I've got to do it again. And then you do it again and you get it ready for the next August. So with that in mind, the rhythm of making that show...

was that because I suddenly realised I didn't want to write jokes about anything else, and the way that I create shows is to write and then put it on stage before it's ready and make it be ready. Writing on stage, they call it, stand-ups, taking a very long time to learn how to do that. What I found was that for maybe eight months I was going on stage, headlining the chuckle factory and wherever, on a Friday night and...

wedging in loads of stuff about the climate. And that is what I would normally do. If I had new jokes about my socks, I'd wedge in new jokes about my socks and putting them in front of an audience, I would have to smash my way to a laugh somehow, and at the end of six gigs over a weekend I'd go, that material exists now, I've got something there. With the climate, as I'm sure you can imagine, you can do an awful lot of, hey here's a new joke about ocean acidification. No? Guys? Taps mic.

Molly Wood 

Mm-hmm.

Stuart Goldsmith 

Because with climate communication, as I have been learning and I'm still learning, if you get it wrong, they are angry and sad. And it's very hard to communicate those messages. think any type of climate communication can be very difficult. I think stand-up comedy is pretty sharp end because the stakes are so high. So I did, spent a long time in that rhythm, I spent a long time kind of bombing, learning how to make it work.

Then I took the show to Edinburgh, had a fantastic time, very well reviewed and highly regarded show. Big life-changing impact on me going, I want to do this now forever. And then where I am in the rhythm now is the Edinburgh Festival is coming up again. I have just recently completed my second hour. And I think the amount of time that I spent bombing on stage was much, much more reduced this time. I feel like I've learned something about how to efficiently continue that process, the creative process.

Molly Wood 

Yeah

Molly Wood 

What, I mean, I would imagine that you were not necessarily a climate expert when you decided to start writing. You know, like what is, it seems like there is a dual process here. There's bombing a lot, figuring out the jokes that don't make people cry or freak out. And then there is understanding the issues well enough to be able to distill them into a joke at all.

Stuart Goldsmith

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Stuart Goldsmith 

Yes, yes, absolutely. And so the way that I went about that for the first show was primarily reading books, listening to lectures, watching lectures on YouTube, listening to podcasts, trying to get a sense of, and I think in retrospect I go, what I was working out was the things that I am an expert in. I'm an expert in speaking and being funny, and I'm sort of an expert in...

in stories of personal resilience because for the last 13 years I've had a podcast where I interview my comedy colleagues from all over the world. Plenty of people from the States. Bill Burr, Kathy Griffin, Oswald, Roy Wood Jr. I've had just brilliant comics from all over the world. And it's the only not funny comedy podcast. I'm interviewing them in detail about their creativity and their creative process and how they cope. So I did feel like even if my expertise is not climate,

then I do know how to be publicly worried about something. So I would find stuff out and then I would say, I became, I think I'm pretty well versed at going, at recognising the emotional impact something has on me. Being able to sort of expand that with empathy into going, how must other people be feeling about this? So rather than in the, for that first show at least, and it's changed now, I was more like, these are the most meaningful ideas that I'm hearing.

about how to feel okay about the climate. I can become an expert in how I make myself feel okay about the climate, if that's possible. So that informed the first show. Since then, one of the things I've started doing over the last two years really, I've now conducted over hundred interviews with professionals in sustainability, with activists, with also academics, scientists, where I'm kind of just getting in touch with them and saying, look, I want to know more about this for the purposes of writing jokes.

I'll interview them, I'll work out, I'll try and build a bigger picture of it. And of late, the people I interview have started to go, wow, you're really clued up on this. And I'm like, it's all kind of bodged together, a kind of quilt patchwork pseudo expertise. But I think one of the things I'm very passionate about, one of the things I believe very hard is that you can't wait until you're an expert on everything to have an opinion.

Molly Wood 

Mm.

Stuart Goldsmith 

You can't, well because no one's in it, you the best vulcanologist in the world isn't also the best oceanologist in the world. So it is a holistic picture. So we have the right to not understand all of it and still have the right to speak about it. And you know, I can certainly, I may not be an expert on the solutions, but I can, I am a human and a lot of it, a lot of it has been finding out, and this may simply be because I'm talking to someone in California that this element of it is coming out, but a lot of it for me has been learning.

the agency. I imagine there's a brilliant American expression like sort of stepping into yourself or stepping into your power or something like that. Is it? Yeah, yeah, only something like that, I'm sure. But if we're talking in those kind of spheres, then a lot of it

Molly Wood

Yeah, it's owning your power. Yeah, we totally have. Yep. Yes. I can't believe that just by looking at you over Riverside, I have brought out the woo woo. I mean, we really, Californians have a gift.

Stuart Goldsmith

It's incredible. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, let me say it Britishly then. I have been granting myself the authority or the agency to say, do you know what? If I wait around until someone gives me a platform or until someone gives me a document that says permission, you may now have an opinion on the climate, not only is that never going to happen, but also the waiting plays into the hands of the fossil fuel companies. They would love it if we all didn't say something.

if we all felt too stodgy and stuck. So, yeah.

Molly Wood 

Right. Or if we thought we have to be a big enough expert and we have to have every fact exactly right, as opposed to a feeling about it and an understanding of the basics of what is happening. I mean, it's, and to your point, that has been a specific tactic, right? Is to sort of say, well, it sounds like to have fossil fuel industry or cryo-lamit deniers. Exactly.

Stuart Goldsmith 

Yes. Yes.

Stuart Goldsmith 

Yes, to create room for discussion. Well, there's a lot of talk on both sides, that kind of feeling. And I would say as well, it's weird, I don't want to be in danger of saying, hey listen, I don't really understand it, but I'm going to talk about it, because that's what right-wing podcasters do. That's what the Joe Rogan's of the world do, where even if they themselves are not right-wing, they just allow unchallenged pseudo-facts into the arena. don't... Yeah, exactly, exactly. So I'm... What I'm trying to do is...

Molly Wood

Just asking questions.

Stuart Goldsmith 

really pay attention to 99.9 % of scientists who agree on this stuff and make jokes about the science that I know about it. The question mark for me is the fact that I can't regard myself as an expert across the board, but I certainly can say, hey look, methane is CH4 and that's because it's got one carbon atom and four hydrogen atoms. They may be molecules, not atoms. I need to check before I wrote a joke about it. I think they're... I can't remember.

But that is a science thing and I've illustrated my own point there by saying, I I tell you, there's a lovely bit in a new section that I'm doing about veganism where my angle is I'm becoming vegan not because of the ethics but because of the inefficiencies of the land use. And I say to the audience, it takes fact hectares of land to grow fact kilos of corn. And then I pause and I say, I'll fill in the numbers later.

Molly Wood 

Mm-hmm.

Stuart Goldsmith 

You know, and it's like, it's trying to sort of weaponize the confusion effectively. I have ADHD, I'm very scattergun, and my point is not, if you know these numbers, then it makes sense. My point is, those numbers are written down in numerous studies, and all the scientists I've spoken to said, don't become an expert on the science, we're that. You become an expert about expressing it. So that's one of my tactics, is to make sure I don't overwhelm people with, it sounds very convenient now I put it like this, I don't overwhelm people by

Molly Wood 

Outstanding. Right, totally.

Stuart Goldsmith 

having to learn the actual numbers.

Molly Wood 

No, no, I mean, what you have just hit on is why we are having this conversation. Because there has been such effective weaponization of emotion and confusion and obfuscation, and there has not been an effective counterattack from the storytelling side. There's been a bunch of science, right? Like it is a, it's now a well-documented critique of the environmental community that leaning into

Stuart Goldsmith 

Right.

Stuart Goldsmith 

Yes. Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Molly Wood 

parts per million and the fact number of hectares is actually not effective. That making people laugh and cry and maybe fear has always been effective as a storytelling technique.

Stuart Goldsmith 

Yes.

Stuart Goldsmith 

Yes.

Stuart Goldsmith 

Yes. Yes. And someone that I spoke to recently, Chris De Meyer, who is a neuroscientist, who is the head of the climate outreach programme at UCL in London. I heard him on it. One of the wonderful things about my job is I heard him on a podcast for research and went, God, that's brilliant. I think that and he can prove it. And then I'm able to get in touch with him and have a meeting with him and talk and send him my material. And he goes, yeah, you're doing the right thing. But one of the things he says is it's about telling stories of action. This brilliant example he gives is

Molly Wood 

Yes.

Stuart Goldsmith

an audience of any of stripe. If you try and scare them into action, fear can only motivate people if they have agency, and agency means an awareness of a solution. So if you say, this building is on fire, there's the door, run to the door or you'll burn, the fear will motivate people to run to the door. But if you say, the building is on fire and I don't know where the door is, you will scare people and not motivate them to positive action.

So what I'm trying to do is learn ways to reference and be funny about some big heavy scary stuff with the underlying message being don't be afraid to find out more about this. And so I'm always keen to make sure that I'm the victim of the joke. My hypocrisy is first and foremost in the show and so I'm sort of interrogating my hypocrisies and the reason why I don't live a better climate life rather than scaring or scolding.

Molly Wood 

Yeah, I love it. You're teaching people, as we say in California, to step into their power. Yeah, that's how we, yep, that's it. That's the one, step into your power. So.

Stuart Goldsmith

that's a lovely expression that I shall continue to use.

Molly Wood Voice-Over: Time for a quick break. When we come back, we’ll talk about Stuart measures impact mostly when he hears people repeating his jokes in public and how making fun of yourself is usually the right place to start. 

Molly Wood Voice-Over: Welcome back to Everybody in the Pool. We’re talking with climate comedian Stuart Goldsmith also host of the Comedian’s Comedian podcast. 

Molly Wood 

How have, what do you hear? How have audiences responded to this? Like, do you have any sense of whether it's working? A question I ask myself all the time too. Me too.

Stuart Goldsmith

Yes, I have a sense I have no data. Yes, I've got lots of Anec data on how well it's Yeah, think that for me, I am certain that I can't be doing any harm. I'm certain I'm not doing harm. a thing I am quite honest, I don't think I've said this before in an interview. I know that there is a parallel universe in which I didn't get into climate. And I'm just talking about whatever these days.

And that's, it's definitely, this one's definitely better. So, however, when I feel stuck and when I feel like it's too much of a challenge or I have a tough gig and I think, what am I even trying to do? I do come back to the fact of thinking whether or not I change one person's mind or a million people's minds, it's definitely better that I'm trying than that I'm doing nothing at all, which is what I was doing previously. My most positive reactions have been once at Green Biz,

where I did the show in 2024 at Green Biz in Phoenix, Arizona for this enormous convention of two and a half thousand chief sustainability officers from all over the place. I do this material, which your listeners can find on my website, [stewartgoldsmith.com](http://stewartgoldsmith.com/). On the climate page, there's a little example of a routine I do about business class travel being three times worse for the climate than economy class. And again, I'm careful to put myself front and center.

It's my hypocrisy, my delight in finally flying business class and all the rest of it. And some of the best response data I've ever had was two individuals separately after Greenbiz say, we saw that, they got in touch with me a week later, we saw that material and we all laughed about it. And then when we were at the airport the next day, flying away from the conference, we were razzing everyone that walked past us going on to, know, those of us who were flying business class, we were making fun of them.

Molly Wood 

Mm-hmm.

Stuart Goldsmith 

Now that feels like a win, you know? That people in those kind of positions are going, that is... One of the very first things I thought was of a Jerry Seinfeld joke from the 90s about the salad crisper in the fridge. And every time I use the salad crisper in my fridge, every single time I hear Seinfeld's voice saying, I put my vegetables in there and I leave them to rot. And so my very early thought was, if I can write a joke about...

Molly Wood 

That's a win.

Stuart Goldsmith 

Name your subject. Recycling carbon, lost methane. Anything about human behaviour. If I can write a joke that's sticky enough that everyone thinks of that joke, or a listener will think of that joke every time they're about to wish-cycle something, instead they go, I'm doing that thing this is wish-cycling and a comedian said, and then they make a better choice, then that feels like a pretty punchy, useful thing to do. But you are absolutely right, there's no data on paper, there's nothing beyond...

My friend Dave saw the bit about veganism and he went, that's the most I've ever thought about being a vegan. And I'm like, yes, this feels like it's in the right direction. Yeah, exactly, yeah.

Molly Wood 

It's working. Yeah. No, a hundred percent. I, you know, I have this, I have this theory of sort of both personal marketing, marketing, but also storytelling around any topic or climate. And I call it the bear hug theory. Like I just, I think there is value for someone to feel surrounded by this topic or, you know, me, like they should, they should go, we should go to a climate event and you should be there every time. And they will go like that. Wow. That's like really important. And

Stuart Goldsmith 

Yes.

Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Molly Wood 

If you hear comedy about climate, it is suddenly a real topic, right? It is as real as relationships and socks. And that by itself feels so profound.

Stuart Goldsmith 

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Yes, I think there is, I totally agree. And I also think that part of what Chris Domeo is saying is tell stories of action. Just talk about your attempts to be better at climate topics. Even if those stories are, I tried and failed because we're not trying to scold people into going, well, you should be like me. That would be an absolute non-starter. I'm not trying to come out and say, hey, you guys should be scared. I'm saying, I'm pretty alarmed. And maybe...

Who knows? Am I right to be alarmed? And so I'm asking questions because I do think that climate action and climate consciousness has a terrible branding problem. It sounds like homework. It sounds dreary and like it's only of interest to niche people. You and I know that's not the case at all. We know it underpins everything. social justice issues any of your listeners are passionate about, they will be made worse by a two degree world, know? Everything.

It underpins everything, but it doesn't feel cool. I went to a big march of a hundred thousand people, of a climate activist march, and I felt this is good and passionate and exciting, but it doesn't feel cool. I don't want to text my friends and show off to them. I do want to make them come here, but I don't want to go, check me out, everyone. I'm doing this amazing thing. Because the vibe wasn't there yet. So I think, and I'm not solely talking about activism, and I know activists have more important fish to fry than vibes.

Molly Wood 

Yeah.

Stuart Goldsmith

But I do think that changing the nature of the conversation so it's something really obvious. We've both seen in our lifetimes tremendous culture change. Seat belts in cars, smoking in pubs. In the UK you can't smoke indoors in a pub anymore. And those are huge changes that felt like, whoa, we can't put up with this. And then a week later everyone's like, we're used to it now. And if someone lights a cigarette in a pub now, they're insane. So what we need is that kind of level of change in the conversation.

Molly Wood

Would you, let's talk about content for a minute. Do you find it, you know, you definitely focus on some personal action, which is of course valuable, dread. I've got to assume you're also taking shots at the bad guys. Like give me some of your, you know, sort of top themes here.

Stuart Goldsmith 

Yes. Sure. Yep.

Stuart Goldsmith

Well, I mean, the thing is, I think that stand-up comedy is a very broad church. And my general position is that the sort of comedian that I am and the sort of skill set, the hand which I'm dealt, is that I walk on stage and every review I've ever had has said, as soon as this guy walks on stage, you relax and think we're going to be fine. Every young comic wants to be Bill Hicks or George Carlin. But the reality is, comedy isn't about who you aspire to be, it's about who you really are.

And I'm not a scathing, lacerating satirist. So my biggest victim is often myself and the consumer. Now that doesn't mean that I'm entirely focused on personal action, because as you know we need pandemic urgency levels of change and we need it yesterday. But there are the people who will deliver the huge rallying, rousing cry on the podium at the 100,000 person protest. And that isn't really the sort of person that I am. If anything...

My strongest suit is that I look nice and I sound nice and I feel like I can smuggle stuff in in polite society. So that's slightly informed my mission to kind of go to chief sustainability officers and say, what do need your CEO to really hear? I'll write jokes about that and smuggle them in and you can get those jokes in front of them and everyone can see them laughing at that thing and you can say, hey, remember that guy? Like that might be the best use of my skill set. Having said that,

I do make fun of, you know, BP and I make fun of the carbon footprint calculator. That's not completely clear cut. The carbon footprint calculator was popularised by the sustainability department within BP who wanted to do some good within a structure. So it's very easy to go, I mean, I certainly have activist friends who would be like, we have to dismantle the fossil fuel companies. And I'm like, no, we have to convert them because where else are you going to get the money to build a million wind turbines? You need enormous business infrastructure.

Molly Wood 

Mm-hmm.

Stuart Goldsmith 

Some of my friends are like, have to, this won't work unless we stop capitalism. And I don't agree with that. I think we have to fix capitalism. Capitalism drives everything. So yes, in terms of the targets, if I think of the material in my new show, it's much less about attacking and it's much more about a sort of, it's almost like, I don't know if I could use this word, almost soothing. It's pressure release valve for people who are so scared.

that they are not taking any action. I want to crack into that and stop the fear and make them go, right, yeah, I can mobilise, I can join other people in my community, I can change my bank, I can consider changing my consumption habits. You know, I've got some stuff about writing letters to politicians, I've got some stuff about voting, but it's about empowering individuals rather than taking down the man.

Molly Wood 

Yeah.

Molly Wood 

Yeah.

Stuart Goldsmith 

Because the reality is coming out of my mouth and we just seem ridiculous. I'm too soft for that.

Molly Wood

It's just not you. That's so delightful. You're like, it's just not me. Well, I, I, but also I fundamentally agree with you that hope is bottom up, you know, despair is top down. Hope is bottom up. Every, every person who sends that signal with what they buy or where they bank or, know, that's, that's actually how it changes. It's people going like, I don't want to die from cigarette smoke turns out.

Stuart Goldsmith

Mmm.

Stuart Goldsmith 

Yes. Yes. Will this... before...

Yes, exactly, exactly right. And there is an argument, I remember I'm chatting to the, he's a professor of sustainable marketing. Is it sustainable marketing or marketing sustainability at Amsterdam University? Jan Willem Buldeijk, fascinating guy. And he was talking about, there's like a famous cartoon in the Netherlands whereby it's someone's, it's like a meme. Someone sitting on a plane and it's like 20 years ago, someone sits on a plane smiling. Now.

someone sits on a plane looking sad and they're like, climate action. And it's mocking climate action. But his point is someone sitting on a plane doing the same actions but feeling bad isn't a failure of climate action. It's part of the process through which we affect culture change. So I think that's, I feel like I didn't entirely answer your question. I may have gone off the track there, but I, yeah. So I think that those...

Molly Wood 

Yeah.

Molly Wood 

It wasn't really a question. Now we're just chatting.

Stuart Goldsmith 

those decisions like the sort of the, I was just chatting to someone today from let's just say a big financial institute. And they were saying the stuff, the nonsense that's coming out of the White House at the moment is the death throes of a state of mind that doesn't want to take climate action. You know, it's the last gasp. Can we cling onto the fossil fuels? Can we make it happen? You can't make it happen. You can't. This is unstoppable now. You know,

Molly Wood 

Yes.

Stuart Goldsmith

If you work in, as you know, you work in risk, if you work in insurance, you can't pretend this isn't happening. You know, and I think the insurance industry, that is going to be such a key marker. Once people can no longer borrow money, no one can finance alone. Capitalism grinds to a halt and we have a Minsky moment, which is, I admit to you a phrase I learned two hours ago, but I've looked it up. And you know, there is, it's like an enormous kind of global climate bad, bad.

Molly Wood

Please explain it for our audience.

Stuart Goldsmith

bad thing. So the 2008 global crash, that was a Minsky moment and we're overdue an enormous one in the, and specifically it is about insurance and insurance failing to be able to insure. And there's a hilarious quote from the CEO of AXA a couple of years ago, I don't remember the gentleman's name, but he said, in a four degree world, a four degree world could mean unaffordable premiums.

Molly Wood

tipping point.

Molly Wood 

Jesus. That is the kind of dark comedy that we do not look to you for, That's incredible.

Stuart Goldsmith

And I think that's, of course, is absolutely laughable. Well, exactly, exactly. Well, I might be doing something with that. But I think that's the language capitalism speaks. But also, that's funny to those of us who aren't enormous hedge fund managers. But actually, unaffordable premiums seems to us like a laughable way of business talking about the potential end of life on Earth.

Molly Wood

It is.

Stuart Goldsmith

But what they mean is, unaffordable premiums, that means the potential end of business life on earth. And he's speaking the language, I think he means it as passionately as we mean what we're saying. He's like, we cannot have unaffordable premiums. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly right. Exactly right, yes.

Molly Wood

100%. Right. Extinction means lots of things to different people, it turns out. It also, and I want to put a finer point on something you just said too, which is that we know that there are extremes on all sides of this conversation. And that the goal of mobilizing people en masse is to stay away from those extremes.

right, to sort of say we can't realistically have a conversation about ending capitalism, no one ever flying again, you know, no one ever shopping, although really like there's a teeny tiny part of me that's like, tariffs the worst thing though? Because shouldn't cost a lot more? anyway, I'm going to stay away from that one. I'm just saying like.

Stuart Goldsmith 

Yeah. I see what you mean. Anti-consumerism via tariffs. Yeah, that's a fascinating insight. 5D chess, man. Yeah.

Molly Wood

5D chests. I mean, think Kim Stanley Robinson made the point in New York 2140 that all the stuff that we buy does not cost anywhere near as much as it should cost. It's just an artificial market because these prices are not real.

Stuart Goldsmith 

Yes, of course.

Yes. Yes, that's hilarious! a funny thing to think of tariffs as artificially re-realising the market. Yeah, I mean that's... yes.

Molly Wood 

It's like kind of an accidental climate action. I had a whole conversation with AI about this and I was just like, I'm afraid to say this out loud, which I am now doing, but like what if, anyway, have at it, take that. Make all the tariff jokes you want.

Stuart Goldsmith 

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, but I... Yes, I think it's, It's obviously very, very scary what's happening in the States. It's very scary to the rest of the world. Lee Zerdin is the head of the EPA. It's just mind-boggling to me. But we have to... We have to... We don't have to just blindly trust the system, but I do trust that the system is made up out of individuals, and the individuals are numerous, sufficiently numerous.

Molly Wood

Yes, yeah.

Stuart Goldsmith 

to reconfigure the system. 

Stuart Goldsmith 

People can, thank you, people can find my website at StuartGoldsmith.com That's got everything you need on that, Stuart with a UA If you are a comedy fan you can find me on Instagram at Stuart Goldsmith Comedy And as I'm fond of saying on stage, if you're a potential client you can find me on LinkedIn But only if you're a decision maker, let's not waste each other's time I tell you what, there is no, there's no fun It's one of my favourite jokes in the show If I'm doing a club audience somewhere, highfaluting

Stuart Goldsmith 

Every all comedian shout out their Instagram or their TikTok and I love shouting out my LinkedIn which gets a deliberately like eggy jeopardy like God did you really do that and then the word decision maker brings the house down I love it. Thank you so much. A really great chat. Thanks, Molly.

Molly Wood 

That is brilliant, Stuart. Thank you so much for the time today. 

MW VO:

That's it for this episode of Everybody in the Pool. Thank you so much for listening. Now Stuart did tell me that most if not all of his American clients have fled since the start of the Trump administration so if you know anyone who’s STILL hiring climate comedians drop a guy a line, won’t you? 

And as for this show please keep the feedback coming. Email me your thoughts and suggestions to in at everybody in the pool dot com and find all the latest episodes and more at everybody in the pool dot com, the website. And if you want to become a subscriber and get an ad free version of the show, hit the link in the description in your podcast app of choice.

Thank you to those of you who already have. See you next week when we take a break from Storytelling Summer to drive deep into a series on the oceans and water tech.