“It’s nice that you’re still here,” Sieger Sloot and Carice van Houten jokingly welcome each other in their six-part podcast series First Aid for Extinction. In the form of a ‘crash course in first aid’, climate scientists explain in digestible chunks the risks that climate change entails, and concerned celebrities join us who wonder what can still be done about it.
The tone is light: a mix of science, interview, news fragments and chit chat, in which the actors constantly measure each other. When Van Houten shares a number of hopeful messages about the climate, Sloot cannot resist making comments. “So there you go again, Sieger, this is warming up, not burning down,” Van Houten addresses him. When guest Sanne Wallis de Vries leaves her shopping note: “This woman is confused.” Actor friends also appear in striking sketches, such as Eva Crutzen who tearfully whispers the names of endangered animal and plant species through a church until she can no longer. “I have also been here for twelve days.” In this way they aim to offer the listener a little comfort. Van Houten: “Many people are concerned. Hopefully this podcast will make them feel less alone.”
Van Houten and Sloot know each other from the performance Foxtrot from 2001, but came into contact again through Extinction Rebellion. Sloot: “They give presentations, which are like a punch in the stomach. A list of climate scientific facts that make you think: this is not possible!” He decided to give that XR presentation together with actress Katja Herbers. They invited Van Houten, who was on the phone within 24 hours. Sloot: “You have really turned your life around.” Van Houten: “Yes, quite a bit. Activism has taken over my life. For example, I had a nice podcast with Halina (Reijn, ed.) but I thought: I want to zoom in on this.” Sloot: “Only it is of course a terrible subject…”
You also say that in the trailer: “Nobody is waiting for this.”
Sloot: “Yes, exactly. The big problem with the climate crisis, writer Yuval Noah Harari once said, is that the people who know the most about it talk in tables and figures. That is soporific. And at the same time…”
Van Houten: “… everyone is waiting for it.”
Sloot: “Because three-quarters of Dutch people think that our government is doing too little to combat the climate crisis. Rightly so, because we only have five years left to ensure that we stay below two degrees of warming. If we don’t, then the shit hits the fan.”
And so that unsellable podcast had to be created. How did you approach that?
Van Houten: “Yes, we talked about that a lot. How do you keep this hopeful, without being able to easily ignore it? Because we all have to get through it together.”
Sloot: “You always call it ‘looking the animal in the mouth’, which I think is a very good expression. But we don’t want to discourage.”
Van Houten: “We try to combine urgency and lightness. Quite a difficult balance. But we have a great team.”
Sloot: “Including editors with a lot of radio experience, Josephine Hoogland and Evelien Veldboom.”
Van Houten: “Beautiful surnames too. Really nature.”
Sloot: “They ultimately proposed to put the podcast in the form of a crash course, a course that you may not want to take, but do anyway, because otherwise we will become extinct. Stoneware, we thought. It expresses urgency, and you can chop it into pieces.”
Van Houten: “Yes, and we are not experts but course leaders. That also gave us a clear role, which allowed us to be a little more theatrical.”
Sloot: “It also helped with the structure we already had in mind. A section about what you as an individual can do or not do, and then: who is really responsible? I’m a few years ago cold turkey became vegan. I thought that was quite intense, because your eating pattern is linked to nostalgia and ingrained patterns. Not easy to change. Reint Jan Renes, who is a guest in episode three and investigates how you can influence human behavior, said to us: ‘There is a fantastic instrument for that. Government!’ By nudging, by rewarding positive behavior, with subsidies. That is what part two of the course is about.”
Do you want to play such a nudging role with this podcast?
Van Houten: “Yes, I really see this as a kind of activism. Renes calls it: ‘doing good, louder‘. So always show how you do your best. Not to brag, but to show: this is what I find normal.”
Sloot: “By speaking out, he also says, you create space for others to do the same.”
Van Houten: “I get messages on my phone from people who don’t tell anyone that they went to the A12. I understand that so well. As soon as you speak out, you get all kinds of comments thrown at you.”
Sloot: “That you are a hypocrite.”
Van Houten: “Yes, or: what about China? We learned from XR that you should see it as a bingo card of arguments, arising from a kind of coping mechanism to avoid having to change. At some point you’ve had them all.”
In episode two you present each other with a dilemma: ‘every Christmas at the table with a climate denier or not showering for a year?’
Van Houten: “We just want to say: it is very exciting! In my own private life I don’t always dare. So we try one safe space to make of the studio, by making fun of ourselves and talking about our hypocrisy.
Sloot: “You don’t have to be perfect to speak out.”
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In addition to scientists, you invite famous Dutch people.
Sloot: “We call them Concerned Dutch.”
Van Houten: “Yes, because then eighty percent of Dutch people are celebrities.”
Sloot: “And it works so well that someone you don’t associate with climate activism says: I’m actually quite concerned.”
These kinds of puns express the lightheartedness that you find so important. Couldn’t that also be counterproductive? That you sound so hopeful that listeners don’t take action?
Sloot: “No. Because we do not give false hope and we do not trivialize. We don’t say ‘ladies and gentlemen, it’s not that bad’.”
Van Houten: “But we are not an XR podcast either. We do not want to disrupt, but to be inviting. The hard figures are simply easier to digest with humor.”
Sloot: “And with self-mockery we show people that they are in good hands with us on this subject, so that we can take them with us to the less pleasant conclusions that we draw at the end.”
Van Houten: “In that sense we are a kind of Trojan horse. But there is still room for improvement in our unpleasant conclusions. And ultimately we want to plant seeds, we think that’s the most important thing.”