Episode #2: Dr. Heidi Steltzer and Anne Christianson (Transcript)

Episode #2: Dr. Heidi Steltzer and Anne Christianson (Transcript)

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Quinn:    Hey everybody. Welcome to Important, Not Important episode two. I am Quinn Emmett, and I would like to finally and formally introduce my co-host. Co-host, what's your birth name?

Brian:    Hello. My birth name is Brian Colbert Kennedy. Hey everyone.

Quinn:    Hey Brian Colbert Kennedy.

Brian:    Colbert, it's a hard "T".

Quinn:    Well, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself Brian?

Brian:    I'm your friend and I-

Quinn:    Good start.

Brian:    Yeah, yeah. I'm from Chicago and I'm happy to be doing this with you.

Quinn:    Brian, what do you already do for Important, Not Important?

Brian:    I like to say that I work in social media and research.

Quinn:    Right, you put out all those awesome things that everybody sees every day.

Brian:    Yes, I did a great job for a while, and I will do a great job again.

Quinn:    It was Christmas Brian. No one's gonna make you work over Christmas.

Brian:    I will step it up [crosstalk 00:01:02].

Quinn:    You could have worked more over Christmas.

Brian:    Honestly though, the one's I've made, I'm pretty proud of.

Quinn:    You should be. It was just a while ago.

Brian:    Yeah, just a long time ago.

Quinn:    It's like when you haven't seen anybody in a long time and you're like, "What does their face look like?"

Brian:    Yeah, it's like that. I'm gonna get back on it though, just you wait.

Quinn:    Tomorrow, for sure. Just like your pushups, right?

Brian:    It's hard to do 100 pushups a day if you don't ever do pushups, is all I'm saying.

Quinn:    Mm-hmm (affirmative). Okay, so that's Brian.

Brian:    Happy to be here.

Quinn:    We're happy to have you, buddy. Listen folks, the last episode, or our first one. Well, it was a real rush job. It was important. I really wanted to record it the day I did, which was the day of. I really wanted to get it out as soon as possible, because I do think and did think it was pretty timely to capture that. Listen, I know I set up what we're trying to do here, but just to reiterate who we are and what we've been up to for the past year, other than podcasting. 

Quinn:    We started Important, Not Important way back in early summer of 2016, before Trump was even a twinkle in Paul Ryan's googly eye. Our social timelines were dominated by celebrity news and ninja cats, which are great, but we wanted to curate and help surface what we call the news most vital to our survival as a species. We have always provided a free weekly newsletter with timely selected news around artificial intelligence, climate change, autonomous cars, renewable energy, killer asteroids, superbugs, biotech and more.

Brian:    As previously mentioned, we're also pretty active on social media.

Quinn:    I mean, you are.

Brian:    Yeah. Well, mostly. I put out mostly daily infographics and little bite-sized vital nuggets that you can use to bolster your thankless arguments with anyone and everyone who isn't standing directly next to you and your echo chamber of progressive values.

Quinn:    Right, and to be clear, this isn't just crazy sci-fi stuff. What we cover is the shit that's most vital and most likely to come to term for good or very bad in the near future, so the next 20 years say, or at least the things that need to come around in the next 20 years. For example, we've ruined this sweet, sweet planet and even if we hadn't, there's been at least one mass extinction by asteroid and while those awesome animals aren't here anymore, but now we are and we still don't have anywhere else to live 65 million years later. We don't have a backup plan.

Quinn:    If social and the newsletter are our daily and weekly updates, this podcast is intended to be our more evergreen platform, or vertical, as the corporate folks would say. The goal of each episode is, and please hold us to this. Obviously, it's gonna evolve and we're gonna get better at it and the first couple are a learning experience. The goal of each episode is to identify one vital question or topic and bring a guest to help answer that question, or clarify the topic for us and for you. That might be a scientist, or an engineer, or a politician, or a business person, or even an effected person, or a journalist. Hopefully, mostly people on the ground. The people creating and imagining change. Finally, and most importantly, our goal by the end of the episode, is to come together with them to illustrate ways that we can all take action to support their cause.

Brian:    Yeah, because these are the people who are either going to help save us and save the planet, or if we're lucky, maybe they'll just make us all into indestructible CRISPR robots and we'll live on Mars.

Quinn:    Right. That's our structure. That's our goal. Ask an actionable question, bring on some experience to talk about it and help us build a game plan for all of us to follow.

Brian:    This week's question is: how do we get more ladies involved in science? To help us answer, we have two awesome scientists. Doctor Heidi Steltzer and Anne Christianson.

Quinn:    I felt like we did a pretty good job of not totally embarrassing ourselves.

Brian:    Pretty good, yeah.

Quinn:    They're infinitely smarter, and I guess you just have to use the word infinitely again, more experienced and more eloquent and all of those words than we could ever be. Please remember, we're new at this and the structure is evolving. I promise we'll get better, or the world will just end all of a sudden, and it won't matter. Hopefully not, and we're gonna keep fighting back until it does, or doesn't. Whatever. Anyways, let's dive in.

Brian:    Let's go!

Quinn:    Our guests today are Dr Heidi Steltzer and it seems like almost Dr Anne Christianson?

Anne C:    Almost doctor, correct.

Quinn:    We referenced these guys in our March newsletter. They were featured in a Think Progress article titled: 76 Women On a Glacier Are Changing the World, which is a pretty badass headline.

Brian:    Pretty badass.

Quinn:    Let's find out who they are. Heidi, Anne, welcome.

Anne C:    Thanks for having us.

Quinn:    Of course. Let's start off pretty basic. Tell us your story. Who are you? Where did you come from, and what do you do?

Dr. Steltzer:    I am a real country girl. I grew up in a suburb of Boston back in the '80s. I can't say I really heard of climate change much growing up. All through undergrad, I really felt like science had the potential to help people and inform their decisions and make better choices, so that more people are cared for well in our world. More people are safe, more people are protected and there's better health. I wanted to figure out a way that I could study science and biology, but not go into medicine, which at a school like Duke is pretty hard to do, because everyone around you is going into medicine. I took a class in biogeochemistry as a sophomore, which says something about the science that I'm interested in. I couldn't pick one, so I picked three.

Quinn:    That was a good call.

Dr. Steltzer:    It's about how our earth works and that's what I still continue to do today, is understand how our earth works and try and put that in whatever context needs to happen for conversation and helping and caring for people.

Quinn:    That might be the best opening statement ever. Anne, good luck.

Anne C:    Oh thank you. Thanks Heidi. I grew up suburbs of twin cities in Minnesota to an Economist father and a stay-at-home mother that was not at home. To explain that, she is a force to be reckoned with and she was constantly volunteering or hiking Patagonia, or golfing, or bowling and she is a marine biologist at heart, so when I was little, she would bring me out into the woods or into the nearby lakes and streams and teach me everything she knew about biology, because she was a biology teacher in her previous life.

Anne C:    In college, I decided not to be a biology major. I did environmental studies, which was more social science, and political science. Then I did a minor in women's studies. I've been trying to get back to my naturalist roots ever since then, and this PhD that I am undertaking right now is part of that endeavor, but because I had such an interdisciplinary undergraduate experience, I was able to do a lot of very cool, very, very different things in my years after graduating, including working in the U.S. Congress and studying meerkats in the Kalahari desserts, and being a lobbyist. I'm fitting all of those different experiences into one massive PhD and trying to balance my love for nature. That's where I get most of my energy from, with my interest in how to apply what I've learned in all of these experiences to a career once I get out of school, again for the third time.

Quinn:    It almost sounds like you created and packaged your own liberal arts degree-

Brian:    Yeah.

Quinn:    ... touching on so many different things.

Anne C:    I did, which is to the unending frustration of my advisor, but we went to the same undergrad institution, so she kind of understands, but has a lot of patience with all the different fields that I want to focus on.

Quinn:    That's awesome. It's hard to do one thing, especially when there's so much calling our attention these days, and so many things that you ladies are so good at, and we need you to do. Anne, I'm sure someone has mentioned this to you before, but you're aware that there's another human named Anne Christianson, who is in the classic field Homeward Bound.

Anne C:    I am aware.

Brian:    We really wanted to surprise you with that one.

Quinn:    Yeah, that's really bizarre.

Anne C:    I know, it's the only other Anne Christianson that I can find online consistently.

Quinn:    Have you found this person?

Anne C:    Of course we all google ourselves, and she comes up first.

Quinn:    Sure, sure, sure.

Brian:    That will change.

Quinn:    My older brother shares a name with apparently a considerably popular Australian porn start, so that's a tough one.

Brian:    Oh my God.

Anne C:    Oh, that's hard to get over.

Quinn:    Yeah, so you just take your Homeward Bound and be happy with what you've got, I guess. Heidi, I know you worked at the Department of Energy for a little bit in 2015, and I think you were on a specific White House council, which I imagine both those programs are going spectacularly well right now. Let's cut to it. Talk to us about what you guys did this week.

Anne C:    Sure. When we were on the ship in Antarctica a year ago. I guess it was a year ago today, wasn't it Heidi?

Quinn:    Oh wow.

Anne C:    We were talking about how we could communicate and how we'd had such different experiences in our lives, but we connected pretty quickly on the ship.

Quinn:    You two, or all of the women?

Anne C:    All of the women, but us two specifically.

Dr. Steltzer:    Anne's really an incredible naturalist and I just can't see ... I'm the biologist, but she's the naturalist. I found that if I tagged around behind her, I would see a lot more wildlife than if I was on my own.

Quinn:    Smart. Good move, good move.

Anne C:    We were talking about, and multiple conversations on the ship were how scientists can communicate, and I gave a presentation on how to talk to policymakers. Heidi and I were brainstorming about how we could combine our expertise to be more effective after the voyage. One of the things that we landed on was having a congressional briefing on polar climate science and science communication. It's taken several months to put it together, but I contacted some friends who are still in congress and asked them if they would sponsor the briefing.

Quinn:    Were there any congress people there? Sorry to interrupt you.

Anne C:    No, so these briefings, congress people don't usually come to them. They send their staff out and to report back.

Quinn:    Gotcha, okay.

Dr. Steltzer:    The people who get a lot of work done.

Quinn:    Yeah, right, yes.

Anne C:    Yeah, Monday when this was going on, the house was debating the Tax Bill and voting on the Tax Bill.

Quinn:    Right.

Anne C:    They were a little busy on Monday doing the people's work.

Quinn:    Sure.

Anne C:    Does sarcasm not translate through these microphones?

Brian:    They're really good microphones.

Quinn:    Yeah, I feel like we can have an after hours chat about that shit show. What were some of the questions these guys asked? Do you feel like they had ... Where did they come from on this? Do you feel lie they were speaking more for themselves and their office, or do you feel like they were actually speaking for their constituents and trying to represent their interests and needs, and fears, and hopes, and such?

Anne C:    I'll let Heidi answer that first. I'm curious what her answer will be and I don't want to sway her one way or another, because we may have different views on how they were asking their questions.

Dr. Steltzer:    It was an incredible experience, and one of the things that I've learned is when you're giving talks and you're not sure how people will respond to something, start by introducing yourself to people before you even start talking. During the lead-up to beginning, people are coming in the room and I made a purposeful choice to go and talk to a few people. I felt like it was a crowd ready and welcome to some ideas, but then it's also the approach that I've chosen to take on science communication, is one that I hope many people would be open to. Climate change is about things that we care about. It's about financial security. It's about human health and well-being of ourselves and others who we care about and climate change links and ties into feeling protected, feeling some sense that things aren't gonna change so rapidly that we won't do well.

Dr. Steltzer:    I felt like people were really open. They asked questions about where and what can we do about it? How can we, through education, create opportunities for more people to understand what's happening and support students? The undergrads, I teach at a college that's primarily undergrads and the students that I teach, this is what they want to study. This is what they want to learn about and they want to make a difference in the world. I love that one of the staffers in the audience asked, "What do we need to do for education?" I said, "We need merit-based aid for students." If you're willing to give hard, then we'll give you the money so you can stay in school.

Quinn:    Fascinating. I guess Anne, how did you think it was received?

Brian:    Don't be swayed by Heidi's answer.

Anne C:    I think it was received very well. I know that the staffers who are there, they're bosses are some of the most actively pro environmental people on the Hill. They want to stay up on the latest science and educate themselves, but in order to educate their bosses as well. The way that congressional staff works, at least on the House side, is that each staff member has several different issues, which they cover. They may not necessarily be an expert in every issue and you're actually lucky if you get a staff member that is an expert in every issue. Some of the staffers that were there, some of them had PhD's in environmental science, but other ones were probably political science majors in college and have no environmental background, but are stuck with that issue with an environmentally active boss. 

Anne C:    They asked questions, so they become more intelligent about the issue, but then the question that Heidi mentioned about how education, what we need to change in education, was probably because that staffer, their boss is on the education committee. If you are a staff member for an issue that your boss is not sitting on the committee that has to do with that issue, if you want more face time with them, if you want your ideas and your passions to get across in the agenda, you need to be able to connect it to what they are working on most often.

Anne C:    I think that the education question was actually coming from that angle of how can I engage my boss on this issue, when they are more actively engaged in something else? I think that this is one of the messages that I tried to have for the other women on the ship, was then you're talking to policymakers, you need to know what they're pet issue is. What is most important to them, and then tailor your message to fit what they most care about.

Quinn:    You need to meet them where they are a little bit.

Anne C:    Right, rather than try and get them to care most about your message.

Quinn:    Sure.

Anne C:    I think that that what was going on for a few of the questions there, which is great, because we do need to have a more interdisciplinary message and more interdisciplinary view of climate change. It does affect education and we never talk about that.

Quinn:    Oh. Yeah, and then I feel that applies to everything. I mean, I love tech [nerdery 00:17:49] as much as anybody, but you see a lot of these bigger companies, which have obviously been in the news in the past couple of years, have sprung from nothing there isn't a single liberal arts major in the executive ranks, much less creating the project and asking things like, "Should we do this? Why shouldn't we do this? Why should we not do this? How would it affect people? How will it affect society?" That's really important, again, whether it's climate change, or tech, or space exploration, or things like that. That's interesting. Do you feel like there was anybody from the other side of the aisle there? Anyone [crosstalk 00:18:05].

Anne C:    I know there wasn't.

Brian:    You know there wasn't? Really?

Anne C:    Yeah.

Brian:    Wow.

Dr. Steltzer:    On that Tax Bill that has the ANWR drilling in it. I don't know. That's so interesting, but we can make headway and we can have these discussions. I'm convinced of it, that with the right framing and a little bit of a thick skin, we can start to have these conversations, have them be constructive and work towards finding that common space where climate change doesn't have to feel scary, and it's something we can talk about with people who have a different perspective than us.

Quinn:    Do you feel like, I don't know the right way to do this, and it's sort of the same thing with healthcare, which is ... It's incredibly frustrating and pretty dark, but do you almost feel like these folks need to start actually feeling the effects themselves in some way before they're gonna make any moves?

Anne C:    I don't want them to have to, but I also don't think that that will necessarily help, because a lot of the first, I guess, shots of climate change in America are happening in the south. The Houston flooding and Katrina and one of our first climate refugee communities is along the Gulf Coast and another one's in Alaska. It does not seem to be helping, so I honestly don't know what it will take. I had a professor say once that he thought it would take a natural disaster that killed tens of millions of people for humanity to finally wake up and start doing something. I really don't want that to be, I don't want him to be right. He said that ten years ago, so I really don't want that to be right.

Quinn:    Right. Things like Houston and Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands are about enough for watching, I spent half the year in Virginia and half the year in Los Angeles and Los Angeles is on fire.

Brian:    Still on fire.

Quinn:    Brian's there right now, and it's on fire and it's December, which is not okay. At the same time, it could get so much worse. We're relying on folks like you to stay optimistic, to keep pushing these conversations and try to meet folks who [inaudible 00:20:31] to say like, look, it's not something you have to fear. It's not gonna destroy your business. It's not gonna ruin your identity to look around and say, "We can make some changes. We can do some, at least, small moves to try to affect things." Does that sort of obstacle, does that change at all how you guys feel personally? Do you still feel like you're on the right path, or do you feel more empowered?

Dr. Steltzer:    I, these days, feel more empowered. I feel like there are new conversations that are starting. Conversations that I wish had taken place 20 years ago. There wasn't the momentum there where we're recording this podcast at the end of 2017, a year in which there was a women's march and then there was a science march, and then there was a climate change march. I'm a woman who studies the science of climate change. Putting all those things together, there's a chance for new conversations and investing in that, and being able to brave that new wilderness that for so long has been scary to me. 

Dr. Steltzer:    There's a chance to feel more interconnected with people and personally, I think that's ultimately one of the solutions to climate change, is to realize that a lot of the things that we do that are very carbon intensive and demand a lot from our environment and our world, we're often doing in order to fill gaps and voids in our life.

Quinn:    I guess that takes us to Homeward Bound a little bit, and on a couple levels. You talked about meeting peers and developing relationships with them that don't necessarily, no one's personally getting anything from them. It's about a shared goal and a shared vision, and a shared personal and professional lifestyle. Heidi, you had a Medium post talking about Homeward Bound that said, "Faculty want women to understand why they need to take up leadership roles in science and in society at large", and that feels so necessary. At the same time, it seems a little different than meeting peers in ballrooms and speeches. You're reaching out to educate and to bring along the next generation of awesome women that are doing this. I guess, tell us a little bit about Homeward Bound. I'm sure you guys have talked about it a lot, but we'd love to hear.

Brian:    Then we'll talk about the movie.

Anne C:    Okay.

Dr. Steltzer:    The movie?

Quinn:    Homeward Bound, remember?

Dr. Steltzer:    Oh, that movie.

Anne C:    That I star in. I'm sorry.

Brian:    Starring the Anne Christianson.

Quinn:    Starring you and the dog.

Dr. Steltzer:    Anne's featured in the movie. 

Quinn:    Come on.

Dr. Steltzer:    A lot of people have asked us at different times, what made you decide to put your name in the hat? A friend sent me an email back in 2014, and the email was the call for submitting an application to Homeward Bound. I'd long been interested in opportunities for leadership and learning how to move into that space and have more training, more expertise in it.

Dr. Steltzer:    As an undergraduate, I did a lot of wilderness leadership, taking groups out into the mountains of North Carolina. Usually, it was upperclassmen taking freshmen out prior to starting their freshmen year on Outward Bound roles like experiences, so I did that.

Dr. Steltzer:    I took a class in undergrad called Leadership Policy and Change, and then I did a program here in Colorado. It's the Colorado institute for leadership training, and each one of those times, I learned a lot, but never before, until Homeward Bound was it such a big deep dive into understanding myself better. At least not in a way where there were the kind of self-evaluations that are part of what training would be available to CEOs and companies. That kind of training isn't really available to scientists, or at least it's very narrowly available. I can't believe the process of what it's like to do a values elicitation and to lay out all these cards that say different things that we can value in our world and to try and figure out which 10 are my top 10 out of 200? I picked 10 and I put them away and felt really-

Quinn:    What were the 10 picks? Do you remember?

Dr. Steltzer:    Felt really good about myself and here's the funny story, is that then I took out the cards the next day and I redid it. Almost all of them moved, and it was a different 10. It really feels like it's ... It's not because my values are changing, so much as I hadn't gone through this process before and it takes going through the process.

Quinn:    You sure it wasn't just like a Ouija board or ...

Dr. Steltzer:    No, because the cards, you're moving them round and writing them down and trying to see if it's really you. Compassion is one of the ones that stands out as being really important to me, and justice. I hadn't really realized to what extent justice and equal opportunity was part of what underlies why I became a scientist, and that's that caring for others and feeling like if I have clean air to breathe, then other people should have clean air to breathe. If I can make good choices about the foods I eat and have a nutritious diet, I want other people to have that, and clean water. We can't be making choices where some people live into old age, and other people develop environmental related illnesses, and certainly, it's even more heart-breaking when it's children that are developing diseases that are environmentally caused and we could have prevented that.

Quinn:    Sure.

Anne C:    One of my main values was justice too Heidi, unsurprising.

Dr. Steltzer:    I'm not surprised by that.

Quinn:    You guys are warriors.

Brian:    You guys are the best.

Quinn:    We're having a great time. It seems like the trip was almost as much, and this is really interesting. I guess it makes sense, but almost as much about self-realization as it was, about meeting other awesome women who are doing kick ass things across the sciences.

Anne C:    You know, for some people. There are several self-reflection exercises having to do with personality traits and strategy mapping of really, your life and figuring out your values. I was very clear on most of those things. When I scored very high on competitive and argumentative, that was surprising to no one. I got home and all my family laughed that I had scored, I realize the irony of this statement, I had scored the highest competitive score on the ship.

Quinn:    That's kind of incredible. 

Anne C:    Someone else was bragging they had scored 96 percentile and I said, "Well, I scored 98." Which pretty much underlined why.

Quinn:    That's incredible.

Anne C:    I had a pretty clear idea about my values. In my family, we talk a lot about values actually, and justice is one of the primary values in my both nuclear and extended family.

Quinn:    It was about a year ago, you guys hop on this boat four weeks after, ship, sorry. I know, my best friend's a sub mariner, I get yelled at about that all the time. Subs are best.

Anne C:    We got yelled at for three weeks about that. I said that mostly for Heidi's benefit.

Quinn:    Yeah, it's pretty strict. It's pretty strict Brian.

Brian:    Wow.

Quinn:    Be careful out there.

Brian:    Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Quinn:    You hop on this ship about four weeks after Trump gets elected. What is the mood on the boat as far as science goes?

Anne C:    Can I answer this first Heidi?

Dr. Steltzer:    Go for it.

Anne C:    I was so angry, and people commiserated, but I heard a lot of, "Oh, it's gonna be okay." I just wanted to shake people and try to explain to them how it was not going to be okay.

Quinn:    Was there any differentiation? Was it younger women, or older women, or different experiences?

Anne C:    It was women not from the United States who were saying that.

Brian:    Yeah, that's what I was gonna ask you.

Quinn:    Gotcha, gotcha.

Anne C:    Yeah, it was women who are not from the U.S. Everyone from the U.S. was scared shitless and people in other countries were appalled, but they were not ... I don't think they understood the magnitude of what it means to have one Party controlling both Houses of Congress and having a completely unstable President.

Anne C:    That was extremely frustrating to me, because about, how many years ago? Seven years ago, I had a cousin killed in the Haiti earthquake and discovered that grief is very different from sadness. If you haven't had someone close to you die suddenly, or if you haven't gone through a traumatic life event, there's no way to explain what grief feels like. I firmly believe that a lot of Americans were experiencing grief for the first time and not being able to label it.

Quinn:    Fascinating, yeah.

Anne C:    It's visceral and it is scary and it is ... You can't just smile and get on with life, you actually have to wade it out.

Quinn:    You've got to deal with it.

Anne C:    Yeah, and you have to deal with it, but time is a huge factor in being able to, and you never move past it, you just move forward.

Quinn:    Sure.

Anne C:    You never get over something like that, and so I'm trying to explain to people to just let Americans grieve, because that's what we're doing. We're grieving over the complete loss of a society that we were expecting, because after, especially if you come from a progressive mindset, after eight years of Obama, you're thrilled that we have gay marriage and that we have given healthcare to people who couldn't afford it and who needed it most. We're slowly tackling race issues, and it was-

Quinn:    Slowly.

Anne C:    Now we have the first female nominee for a major Party, and to lose all of that and coming from Congress and understanding, and reading weekly, the legislation that Republicans want to pass that has to do with the environment. The anti-climate change legislation, the rescinding public lands designation legislation, the attacks on the Endangered Species Act, the wanting to drill in the Arctic and wanting to mine minerals in a salmon fishery. All of these, that's the Pebble Mine. All of these issues, knowing that now they're going to happen. They're going to be able to pass this legislation, so when people would tell me on the ship, "Oh, it will be okay", it just reminded me of all of the stupid things people told me after my cousin died and how it doesn't help to say that. What you need to say, and what I wanted people from other countries to say was, "This is appalling. How can we help?"

Quinn:    Sure.

Anne C:    They weren't saying that and that was very frustrating to me and it was frustrating to me to be on that ship with all these women, and having someone who I was very excited about becoming my President not being voted into office, and for a large part, because she was a woman.

Quinn:    Sure. Plenty of candidates lose all the time and people are bummed, but this was very different.

Anne C:    This was different and I was trying to explain that to people. It was very difficult for me. I had bought my inaugural ball gown and I had bought my plane ticket to DC, because I was so sure she was going to win. Because I had already bought my ticket, I did, once we got back from Homeward Bound, I was able to go to DC and participate in the march.

Quinn:    That's awesome.

Anne C:    That was fantastic.

Brian:    Did you wear your gown?

Anne C:    No, I usually just wear it when I'm doing homework in my house actually.

Brian:    That's fair.

Anne C:    It's my fancy homework time. Being on the ship was very difficult for me at that time, because it was a reminder of what I was not going to be able to experience, and there were very few people who understood what I was going through.

Quinn:    So much of what you stood for, and what every woman on that boat stood for, whether international or not, and whether those international based women understood it, was about to come under severe attack and now we look a year later and I have to imagine that besides the outreach you guys are doing, the education you're doing, I imagine that you're more technical jobs have become more difficult.

Anne C:    You mean in terms of the attacks on science?

Quinn:    Yeah, sure.

Anne C:    Absolutely.

Dr. Steltzer:    Wow, there's so many things. For me, I live in a fairly rural, fairly purple part of our country, and so my experience getting on the ship was finding more people who shared my values and saw things in a similar way, versus I felt like within the region that I live in, people willing to, "Well, let's just give him a chance to govern and see how it goes", and I thought, no, I don't think this is gonna go well. I think part of that ties into what Anne is sharing, which is the one-way door when you change a landscape from being conserved and protected to be one that is dramatically altered by people. 

Dr. Steltzer:    One of the things that I love about the places I go for field work, one of the things that's just incredible about Antarctica is seeing landscapes from the top of a hill, from the top of an ice snow-covered landscape and not seeing a road, or a trail, or an airplane, or another ship, or any kind of structures and feeling in a space that the environment is in control, and you don't know what you'll see around the next corner, and it's probably not gonna be another person. It's gonna be wildlife and I love being in those kind of places and being with people who could appreciate being in those places felt really different than them being in the region of Colorado where I live and having more people who felt like, "Well, let's just see where this goes." 

Dr. Steltzer:    I was tying it into conservation and it doesn't take much to change a landscape and transform it to where it doesn't provide for human health and human well-being in the same ways, and that's saying nothing of what's fair to the species that live there that depend on that environment. A big piece of what we've seen over this year is with, as Anne was saying, with all the House, Senate and the President lined up within the same Party, it's the one-way door to the other side, the side where we transform these landscape, Desert Southwest, ANWR, and other places to landscapes that we can't put them back. If you've studied ecology at all, it's Humpty Dumpty. You can't put the pieces back together in anything close to the same kind of functional system again.

Quinn:    There has to be some grief there as well.

Dr. Steltzer:    Yeah, and we shouldn't risk certain changes. We depend on some of these services of plants sucking carbon out of the atmosphere and landscapes filtering water too much to alter them.

Quinn:    Right, yeah my brother won't hear this until after Christmas, but he's been trying to get me to read The Rise of Teddy Roosevelt for years and I finally did, so for Christmas, I got him a T-shirt that says, Vote for national parks, with a big picture of Teddy on it.

Anne C:    Are you gonna read the next two books?

Quinn:    I've heard they're pretty good, but the first one is the best one? I don't know.

Anne C:    The first one is the best one.

Quinn:    I was just like, "This guy is amazing and a crazy person, but I'm into it." It was really just incredible, but you know what he and others did to do those things and it's amazing that they can shrine these folks. I spent part of my life spending a few weeks each summer down in the U.S. Virgin Islands and always knowing the economy was holding on by a thread a little bit. It's so heavy. Tourism-based, but St. John in particular is 70% National Park and being so thankful that Rockefeller did what he did to preserve that place. 

Quinn:    Then you see the devastation that can be wrought when you get two category five hurricanes in five days and realize that we as humans, none of the people on this call, can have that same sort of effect on certain preservations by opening the oil up to drilling, or even them up to people in general. There is a few stages of grief there. There's a shock, there a sadness and there's definitely some anger, but like you said and a little bit with climate change in general. When I feel like shaking people, letting them know, this is a ticking clock. This isn't something we can just reverse every time somebody else becomes President.

Anne C:    Yeah. Well, and this was something that, climate change, we've known about it since the early 1900's. We talked a lot in the briefing on Monday about thresholds and feedbacks and how, and Heidi can speak better to this than I can, but how we're reaching these thresholds where there is no turning back once we get there. That is something that I think a lot of people in the general public who don't study climate change don't understand.

Quinn:    Right, and you know, that a lot of what we're trying to do and what we're trying to do with this podcast in talking to you folks, is sort of encapsulate. We want to represent our listeners, which are pretty progressive and pretty frustrated and angry, and more action oriented than maybe they've ever been in the past year. Educated, but probably don't understand the specific timelines and details about, if an iceberg breaks here, it affects sea level rise here, or the emissions, but plants are blowing things out of the atmosphere. Carbon capture, yada, yada, so we're hoping that talking to folks like you is to be the vehicle for them to try to translate that so that we can recognize that there are some things we're not gonna be able to go back on already, because like you said, we've known about it for this long and we haven't done shit.

Anne C:    Something that I want to stress is that we failed so many times on the international level to address this, and I really think the solutions are gonna come at the household, city council, and corporate level. People don't necessarily need to understand how an iceberg breaking off is gonna affect them, but they do need to understand that it's happening and what they can do about it. I think the solutions we're gonna see are going to be cities taking really innovative steps to curb transportation pollution, or construction pollution, or use of materials, or methane emissions from landfills, or our corporations taking different steps for where they source their materials from, the life cycle of their products, how they package different products, where that plastic goes. 

Anne C:    Also, the equity issues that come with corporations. Who's recycling the metals that are in our iPhones and in our computers? Typically, we're shipping this to low income countries in Asia and people are dying from our pollution directly. Understanding more about those decisions and really encouraging people to not just come out for National elections, but understanding that their local city council decisions may have even more of an impact ultimately on climate change, than who our President is and really tuning into those.

Quinn:    I had a really interesting conversation today from an incredibly smart young woman who's affiliated with the 500 Women Scientists group. Not sure if you guys are too familiar with them. It started like everyone else in the past year, and we had a really interesting discussion about finding ways to empower folks at the township level, at the city level. Mayors-

Dr. Steltzer:    Did you talk with Jane?

Quinn:    No, I talked to a woman named Jewel who was so much smarter than me. She was very patient and we just talked about how do we utilize our ability to emphasize things and to get the word out and inspire a community, and their ability to straight up educate folks. They've built all these really cool pods, as they call them, around the nation and in each pod is a variety of women scientists across the disciplines and how they might be able to host parties or talk to folks, or provide a hotline for people who might find out that a fucking Tax Bill passed in the middle of the night. 

Quinn:    All their calls that they've made, for their first time in their life, actually amounted to nothing, which is incredibly frustrating and makes you want to walk away and might go, "Well, you know what? Fuck it. I'll do it myself, and is gonna go to a city council meeting for their first time and say, "Do you know where the most emissions come from in our city?" If they don't have the answer, demand why. If they don't do enough about it, then maybe they just say screw it, and they run themselves, or they run for mayor, because as much as it's incredible how many more women are running for the House, the National House than ever before, how many scientists are running than ever before. Gerrymandering is gonna be a really severe obstacle, at least until hopefully 2020, when we make enough progress that we can take it back. 

Quinn:    It's a fucked up vicious cycle, but like you guys said, people can make on a household level, in their towns, in their cities, they can make such a big impact if they just get there and they start with, "Do you know if our water is okay? Do you know what our air is like?" If not, why not and how do we find out and who are the companies producing it? Are they in this town? Are they coming from outside this town and just poisoning us as the train goes by? That's someplace where they can really, I feel like, take some pride and make some change.

Anne C:    Absolutely. Gerrymandering also comes from the local level. It comes from people not getting out to vote for their state legislatures and being engaged in your local politics and what you said, with how our municipalities are using energy and using the environment is probably the most important thing we can do right now.

Quinn:    Like I said, I spend half the year in Virginia and half the year in Los Angeles. Yesterday, for the first time in 25 years, the Virginia House of Delegates got democratic control because of one vote.

Brian:    Oh yeah.

Quinn:    There was a recount.

Anne C:    I don't know if you saw the news in the last hour, but now it's tied again.

Brian:    Oh wow.

Quinn:    Do you know how they fixed the tie? Have you guys heard this? They pulled a fucking name out of a hat.

Anne C:    Okay.

Quinn:    No, super great. The same way they decide whose name goes first on the ballot, they're gonna pull a name out of a hat, and it just makes me ...

Brian:    Oh my God.

Quinn:    Ah, God. If there's never more evidence about one vote, because if the democratic name is pulled out of the hat, this woman in Newport News who's so awesome. If the name is pulled out of the hat, she wins and the democratics control, 450,000 people are eligible for Medicaid in Virginia and that changes because literally of one vote in Newport News. It's the same thing when it comes to whether your downtown bans cars, which your city councilmen have never even considered, but it could have such an impact and become such a cool story.

Dr. Steltzer:    When you spoke to what the audience for your news organization is, people who are frustrated, what you're describing is the solution to frustration. The solution to frustration is to start figuring out where and how can I be more involved, and when the first opportunity and idea you have doesn't work out, you try the next one and you try the next one. Then you ask three friends to help. You start feeling connected and involved.

Dr. Steltzer:    The story I'll share is, on the eve that we left the Paris Accord, I was giving a talk on climate change in a rural town in northern New Mexico, that's a resource extraction town, and even though the news that we left the Paris Accord was hard to hear, it wasn't as hard because I had engaged in this difficult but constructive conversation in a community near me that I want to feel more connected to, because where and how they manage their economy, that affects the cold snowy places that I left. We have to find a way to have those conversations across places and keep trying, and invest in city council, and invest in initiatives and all of that.

Anne C:    I think that, to bring it back to Homeward Bound and Women in Science, that we have such a unique-

Quinn:    The movie or the boat trip?

Anne C:    Not the movie. Not this time. We'll get there.

Brian:    It's just so confusing.

Quinn:    I'm easily confused.

Anne C:    Don't worry. Yeah. Women scientists have such an interesting role to play with what's happening right now, because scientists aren't used to being in this new dilemma where they're not being believed en masse and where they're being excluded from conversations, and where they're being unfunded. That is exactly the female experience. We aren't believed-

Quinn:    You've been here forever.

Anne C:    ... en masse. We're excluded from conversations constantly. We're excluded from board rooms, and sports, and journalism, and movies, and political representation. We're underfunded and underpaid, particularly non-white women. Female scientists who have been fighting for equality their whole lives, especially in such a sexist, to be quite honest, a very sexist field, we have all of the tools already to lift all scientists up now in this time when people are distrustful of science and distrustful of scientists. We already have all those advocacy tools in our toolbox. I feel like it's a really unique position for scientists to become leaders and speak for all scientists right now.

Dr. Steltzer:    That's incredible, wasn't it, what she just shared?

Brian:    That was.

Quinn:    Yeah, it was and it's so true. My wife is an incredibly smart, and powerful, and impassioned feminist screenwriter in Los Angeles and has spent her whole life being ignored, despite how successful she is, and being harassed. Now we have a daughter, and she's both terrified and empowered. Like you said, there are a lot of folks who are going, "Oh, you know. Nobody listens to science." She's going, "Yeah, that's my whole life man." That's my whole life, but she has realized in the past year, "Oh wait a minute, I have inadvertently and consciously spent a lifetime building up the tools to defend myself and to get my shit done despite that and to be productive and to fight back if I need to." Starting with the women's march when she came back with her pink pussy hat and put it our son and said, "You're gonna wear it for a week whether you like it or not." She is excited to use those and share those, and get out there and do that. It's incredibly inspiring and we should just give everything to you. That's basically the moral of the story.

Anne C:    I'll take it.

Quinn:    One of our main goals is to really, like we've kind of discussed, and seems like we all share, is to shine a light on where we need to go, us specifically, Quinn and Brian, all our listeners and our country, and our world as a people. Where do we need to go as a people? What, to you, are the big actionable questions that we, or our listeners, or people going to talk to their city council or fun for mayor, should be asking of their representatives, whether it's local, or whether they're using fivecalls.org to call their national representatives. To you guys, in your professions and your life experiences, what are the big questions they should be asking?

Anne C:    That's a hard question.

Brian:    All right, we're one for one.

Quinn:    Yeah.

Anne C:    Okay.

Quinn:    Good talk. Where would you start if you were talking to someone for the first time? If you were going to your city council and realize this whole year has gone by and they haven't really said much about emissions, and maybe you're in a city that's not Miami or New York, but sea level rise might be an issue in the next 50 years, or there's a bottling plant that's pumping out a bunch of emissions and nobody's talked about. What are your first questions to them? To me, questions provoke more action than just spitting facts at people.

Dr. Steltzer:    I'm gonna answer your question, but with a very different direction than I think you were headed.

Quinn:    Please, please.

Dr. Steltzer:    Which is that, we need to understand when our actions aren't aligned with our values. I think for many of us, we know and understand our values. We're refining them and understanding them better, but then often times we can make decisions that are inconsistent and I think that us as individuals and government can make those decisions. Where and how can one of the big changes that moves forward be people asking good questions to help elicit the disconnect between what we want and what we're gonna get, so that we recognize it and we make a different choice. It sure is sad when you set your mind to wanting something, and then you realize that instead of saving money, you just keep spending your money. A big part of what we're doing with our environment is we're spending everything in the bank, and we're spending everything in a bunch of friends' bank accounts, and we're spending the bank accounts of people in other countries that we've never met. We have to recognize that we can't keep doing that if what we want to be able to is be happy, healthy and safe. 

Dr. Steltzer:    How do we start to align our choices so that we're not just looking short term, later this year, next year, we're looking 50 years from now and for me, that's one of the big things that's been invaluable about being in the southwest U.S., is being near and close and engaging with a lot of native American communities and realizing just the way they think. They think the way more of us need to be thinking, and how can those voices be heard more in our world. The voice of Native American peoples who always think in terms of 50 and 100 and 500 years from now. I think we can get there and move into that space and have our actions be consistent with our values, thinking in the long term. I think the question I would go to city council with is, are we thinking in the long term? Is that the way we're thinking, or are we thinking about how we make sure we manage a small issue over a short time scale? Which isn't that important.

Quinn:    I love it.

Anne C:    Okay, I've come up with my three questions.

Quinn:    Let's do it.

Anne C:    What are you doing about voter suppression would be, I think, the first question I would ask, because that is a huge deal that's not talked about enough, and which affects women, minorities and students the most, and the elderly. My second question would be, who in our community is most at risk to climate change and what the hell are you doing about it? Because one of the things that we rarely talk about with climate change is the environmental justice angle of it, and how, even in the United States, we have populations that are much more vulnerable to impacts than others, both directly and also in their ability to recover from climate change impacts. 

Anne C:    I think I would make sure to have them start thinking about that, because I think a lot of city councils don't think about it in those terms. They think about poverty and they think about access to education and good schools, but they don't think about how climate change is impacting Americans, because that's something that we're so rich and it's not supposed to, almost, you know you live in Florida. Then my third question, I'm blanking on, but I did have one.

Quinn:    Ooh.

Brian:    We believe you.

Anne C:    I was on such a role.

Quinn:    Yeah, that's too bad. That's too bad.

Brian:    That's not good.

Dr. Steltzer:    Maybe now we have an opportunity to talk about the movie Anne.

Quinn:    We have time. Perfect.

Brian:    Bringing it back Heidi.

Quinn:    I love it. Building on your entire careers and coming up in these families that helped push you in this direction, which is so important and awesome, and coming off the boat.

Brian:    Ship.

Quinn:    Do you ... Son of a bitch.

Anne C:    Thank you.

Brian:    It's no problem.

Quinn:    Do you guys have, besides each other, any really reliable allies in science, in politics, in civics that you're currently calling upon?

Anne C:    I'm getting there.

Dr. Steltzer:    Calling upon for what exactly?

Quinn:    That's a great question. It could be anything. It could be comfort. It could be knowledge. It could be mentorship. It could be action. Who did you call to do the congressional briefing? Who are the people that you know are gonna be instrumental in getting things done? 

Dr. Steltzer:    We're gonna call you all and keep asking for opportunities to talk and share our voices. One of the people who's become an advocate and helpful is, I did a podcast this summer with Robin Morgan at Women's Media Center, and it's really incredible the opportunity that that was for just a 15 minute spot on her Women's Media Center Live show, then created the opportunity to be at a global feminism conference organized by the French Embassy in New York City and a chance to share my voice alongside Cecile Richards and with Planned Parenthood, and some other incredible women in leadership.

Dr. Steltzer:    I mention that, she's someone who has and is in a position of influence, and so that's fantastic, but I've also found that it doesn't have to be the person who's already the most shiny and sparkly, and already has a big role. Finding people, finding, like Anne and I have found each other and figuring out what you can create together from wherever you're at, that we can lead without yet having influence and then that creates the opportunity to have more influence. I think that's really important, because we're seeing that as part of this year. More and more people who are putting their voice forward in really interesting ways, and then 500 Women Scientists is a great example of that, and then being able to share their voice with more people. What about you Anne?

Anne C:    I found myself returning, I was a board member of a group called, DC EcoWomen in Washington, DC, and it's actually a national non-profit that has chapters in various cities. The whole mission of this group is to give women the tools to become leaders in the environmental community. DC is the capital of networking also, and so it's partly valuable in that way, but the friendships I have formed with these women who, again, are in various disciplines within science and the environmental community and then sometimes they work in business as well. One of the women I was on the board with works for Amazon now, and getting those different perspectives from their backgrounds, from their careers, from their expertise, I have found myself repeatedly calling upon them. 

Anne C:    I think these communities that we build as women with other women who share our experiences and share our frustrations are incredibly, incredibly important and being able to support each other and help each other succeed in our chosen fields and our chosen paths is something that I've found increasingly valuable in my personal as well as professional life. I didn't want to go through the podcast without talking about how important DC EcoWomen has been to me, but how important these type of organizations like Heidi was just mentioning as well, are incredibly valuable outlets for women and for especially young women who are just entering into careers and are facing a number of obstacles that we have yet to overcome.

Quinn:    Awesome. That's really exciting. Are there any specific civic leaders, either locally or nationally, that you guys feel are fighting the good fight every day?

Anne C:    Yes. I don't want to say who they are, because I think that one of the problems we had in the last election, and that we're seeing right now, is that no leader, no politician is gonna be your savior. I've been incredibly frustrated with these cults of personality that build up around people and then they don't win ... that person doesn't get a nomination, or that person doesn't get elected, then people become totally disengaged from the entire process. I think that is so dangerous. I'm so frustrated seeing my friends do that in the past election, and I think leaders are important, but I think that we have to realize that everybody is fallible and I don't think any one person is gonna solve any of these problems. That's why I want to emphasize the network and the communication, and the building new relationships, because this is no longer something that one person is gonna be able to solve. By naming people who are particularly important, I think we lose focus on the fact that this is something that we have to do as a community, and not just look towards one person.

Quinn:    Love it.

Brian:    That is an incredible and unexpected answer.

Dr. Steltzer:    I agree with Anne on all of that. It's hard to name any one or two or 10 people, because what we need are thousands, and hundreds of thousands of people to put their name and their voice forward in leadership. The analogy a student and I came up with is that so often it feels like we're being fed information through a fire hose, and nobody plays in a fire hose. A different analogy for what we need, and this parallels what Anne just shared is we need to create the opportunity for more sprinklers to be out there. One purpose, many voices, movement and shifting of who those voices are that we don't look to news reports on climate change and see two or three voices that are repeatedly being referred to and get the first calls. Let's each and every one of us, it feels like we have something to share, be one of the voices and two of the stories and know that we'll share that opportunity with someone else.

Quinn:    Yeah, I love that. Obviously in this podcast, we would love to have the big players that people find sexy, but I would only, I'm never gonna kick them out of bed, but I would love to use that to get more listeners who can hear the stories of folks that aren't normally called on CNN. Who are running for city council, or have run for city council, or the folks out there on the ground. I was just reading about this husband and wife team at the CDC who are chasing down monkey pox, and what is their life like and how did they get there, and what are they doing about it, and why is it so vitally important? Those people, I feel like, are the ones that hopefully will inspire more folks to get involved because I think you're right. 

Quinn:    I think when we anoint kings and queens, it makes them a little untouchable, and it can make that office seen that way and unattainable, but seeing other folks that are doing it, and they might not be capable of becoming a scientist themselves like you folks, but that doesn't mean they can't have an effect in some way. We want to highlight those stories, but we also want to ... It's no use if we can't inspire people to action. Are there ways folks, our listeners, can support you guys, or support what you do, or support your particular brands of science?

Anne C:    There's lots of ways. From the political standpoint, making sure that science is funded. A lot of the science that very, very important climate science is being done takes millions and millions of dollars, and we've seen reports come out about Trump turning off satellites that we need for long term data.

Quinn:    I heard one of them was already built and we destroyed it. Is that right?

Anne C:    I mean, these things are just unacceptable. They're unacceptable and they're immoral. Making your voices heard on issues like that, that we aren't going to let him decide the fate of six billion people on earth, or however many billion there are now.

Quinn:    Too many.

Brian:    Too many.

Anne C:    Whatever he's feeling like tweeting that day and whatever ax he has to grind that day. One of the things that's rarely talked about with climate change is that one of the best ways to combat climate change is to educate women around the world. Supporting programs that educate girls in other countries, that introduce girls to science in this country, that elect women to positions of power like an Emily's List organization that gives campaign funding to female candidates who are more likely then to support girls' education once they get to congress. I think that's a very important, if people are looking for a way to financially support different organizations. Then just getting involved in their local communities and doing their part in alleviating climate vulnerabilities in their local community and figuring out what those are as well, and educating yourself on what those are.

Dr. Steltzer:    How can people support you Anne? I think that was part of Quinn's question.

Quinn:    Yeah. Is there somebody out there who can write you a grant?

Anne C:    Yes, but I feel as a Minnesotan, I feel extremely uncomfortable asking for it.

Quinn:    Ah, typical.

Anne C:    The University of Minnesota has lost more funding from our state legislature than almost any other university in the country over the last two decades.

Brian:    Whoa.

Anne C:    That, I feel every day.

Quinn:    That makes sense.

Anne C:    It's not just about me. There's lots of women out there who aren't on podcasts and don't get to ask for funding, so these bigger buckets are the ones that we need to focus on.

Quinn:    Absolutely. How would you guys like to use opportunities like this, like this podcast or another one, to take a moment and really speak truth to power? What is something you really want to get out that you haven't, whether it's anger, fear, or something you want to preach. Is there anything else out there to take a moment?

Dr. Steltzer:    I think for me, I keep coming up with different names for a book I want to author. You asked what the next step is and where and how do you bring big names into your podcast. I think part of it is that you need to, we need to have opportunities like this, that new big names are created. New names that share more voices with the world. I've talked to some friends and understand that the process for writing a book proposal and finding and creating the opportunity to publish a book, I mean, it's got challenges and its not something that I've ever been trained to do and I can talk to friends who know how to do it. I've come up with, I can't even tell you how many titles of this book. The one that I like best is, Great Hearted Courage, and part of what I found interesting about that is, at first, I started with Undaunted Courage, and that's sort of the introspection on self, and trying to self discover this past year more than I have at any other time in my life, and Undaunted Courage-

Anne C:    That one's already taken though Heidi.

Dr. Steltzer:    It's already a book, exactly, about Lewis and Clark, so I had to come up with something different. I thought that the inner connection was great, is that we look back on the explorers of past history and there are many of us that are putting ourselves forward. We're exploring the world. We're exploring countryside and landscapes where few people go, but we're also started to explore and understand where and how do we take what we learned in those places to the even more challenging place, like I've alluded to in this podcast. For me the Great Hearted Courage is in partnering with Anne and going someplace like DC and finding new ways to feel comfortable in a space that maybe Lewis and Clark never had to explore and understand, because it was a different time and resources were plentiful, and now resources are dwindling and we have to manage the resources well. We will not have the future we want if we spend all the money that's in the bank.

Brian:    I love the title.

Dr. Steltzer:    Thank you.

Quinn:    Where can our listeners follow you guys online? Where are you active, if you are? For better or worse.

Dr. Steltzer:    I am on social media as @heidimountains and that's on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook.

Quinn:    Awesome.

Anne C:    I'm not nearly as media savvy as Heidi, so I have several different-

Quinn:    Oh boy.

Anne C:    ... names that obviously I need to consolidate.

Quinn:    Well, we're out of time.

Anne C:    No honestly, I got off Twitter because I guess social media is where I need to get better at, because I got off Twitter because I was so disheartened by the anger, and the trolling, and the pressure that is put on women when they make themselves visible on social media, and the number of sexist threats and comments that they get when they put themselves out there. I'm not very active on social media for that reason right now, and because I want my PhD sometime in the next ...

Quinn:    Details, details.

Anne C:    Yes.

Quinn:    All right, Anne they'll follow you on your IMDB page. We got that.

Anne C:    Absolutely, absolutely. If they google my name and the University of Minnesota, I'm sure I come up with more information-

Brian:    You do, yes.

Anne C:    ... besides Homeward Bound the movie.

Quinn:    There's got to be a sequel in there. We'll make it happen.

Anne C:    I think so, with penguins.

Brian:    Yeah.

Quinn:    Sure, sure. Why not? Everybody loves penguins and it's so appropriate to what you guys do.

Anne C:    Yeah.

Brian:    There's some great photos, theme photos of you guys with penguins in the background on your trip and they're lovely.

Anne C:    We were quite enthralled by all the penguins. It was a sad day the first day we didn't see them on the way back.

Brian:    Oh yeah.

Quinn:    I recently broke out Planet Earth for my children and they just don't want to watch anything else, because it's amazing.

Brian:    Because it's the best show ever?

Quinn:    Yeah. It's incredible. Well listen guys, thank you so much for your time today. Obviously, you guys are so busy. You've been bouncing around. Heidi's sick. You went to Congress. Hell of a week for a number of reasons, but we thank you for your time and for all that you guys do, and hope that you keep kicking ass out there.

Dr. Steltzer:    Well thank you. Thank you for having us.

Quinn:    Thanks to our incredible guests today and thanks to all of you for tuning in. We hope this episode has made your commute, or workout, or dish washing, or fucking dog walking late at night that much more pleasant. As a reminder, subscribe to our free email newsletter at importantnotimportant.com and it is all the news most vital to our survival as a species.

Brian:    You can find us all over the world wide web. You can follow us on Twitter at importantnotimp, Facebook and Instagram at importantnotimportant. Pinterest and Tumbler, the same thing, so follow us, share us, like us, tell your friends. You know the drill. Please subscribe to our show wherever you listen to things like this, and if you're really fucking awesome, rate us on Apple Podcast, Help keep the lights on. You can find the show notes from today right in your little podcast player and at our website importantnotimportant.com.

Quinn:    Thanks. As always to Tim Blane for all of our jamming music. To all of you for listening, and to our moms for making us. Have a great day.

Brian:    Thanks mom.