We hear a lot about solar and wind power, but a renewable source of clean energy that continues to be largely untapped is the ocean. According to the US Energy Information Administration, the annual energy potential of waves off the coasts of the United States is 2.64 trillion kilowatt hours, or the equivalent of about 66% of this country’s electricity generation in 2020. Over the past two decades, many marine energy projects have sprung up around the world aiming to harness this seemingly limitless resource. This week on Sea Change Radio, we speak to Andrea Copping, a senior research scientist at the Pacific Northwest Laboratory, to catch the latest on wave energy. We learn about the various technologies, the benefits these projects present, potential regulatory hurdles, and the kinds of harmful effects they may have on marine life.

Narrator  0:01  This is Sea Change Radio covering the shift to sustainability. I'm Alex Wise.

Andrea Copping  0:15  I'm pretty bullish on this as a coastal system for small communities. And I believe as we get better with the technology, and we can bring the price down, I think they can be there right alongside offshore wind and solar providing to the national grids around the world.

Narrator  0:35  We hear a lot about solar and wind power. But a renewable source of clean energy that continues to be largely untapped is the ocean. According to the US Energy Information Administration, the annual energy potential of waves off the coast of the United States is 2.6 4 trillion kilowatt hours or the equivalent of about 66% of this country's electricity generation in 2020. Over the past two decades, many marine energy projects have sprung up around the world, aiming to harness this seemingly limitless resource. This week on Sea Change Radio, we speak to Andrea Copping a senior research scientist at the Pacific Northwest laboratory to catch the latest on wave energy. We learned about the various technologies, the benefits, these projects present, potential regulatory hurdles, and the kinds of harmful effects they may have on marine life.

Alex Wise  1:53  I'm joined now on Sea Change Radio by Andrea Copping. She is a senior research scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and a Distinguished Faculty Fellow at the University of Washington. Andrea, welcome to Sea Change Radio.

Andrea Copping  2:07  Thank you. Glad to be here, Alex.

Alex Wise  2:10  So you've been studying marine energy for quite some time. And there are a lot of different types of ways to tackle this untapped potential source for energy. And there's projects underway in places like Korea, Canada, Denmark, Italy, I want to dive into some of those soon. But why don't you first kind of define what is marine energy, and then maybe kind of give us a snapshot of some of your latest research.

Andrea Copping  2:41  Great - happy to. By marine energy, we mean generating power from any aspect of seawater, it could be moving seawater, like tides, and waves, or ocean currents, or even the gradients in temperature and salinity. And we're not including offshore wind in this. So it's everything in the water. And as we try to develop this newest entry into the low carbon portfolio for many nations of renewables, we realize there's a necessity to protect the oceans. At the same time, the animals, the habitats, even the systems that run the ocean, make it operate as it is. And what my group and I have been doing for over a decade now is trying to anticipate those potential environmental effects. Understand the research that's been done, what do we know what still needs to be done? And pursue that research? So we look at a variety of what we call stressor receptor interactions, what are the parts of the system stressing the animals and the habitats, and the receptors,

An icon of 20th Century journalism, Walter Cronkite, once said, "The profession of journalism ought to be about telling people what they need to know - not what they want to know." That quote was never more relevant than today. This week on Sea Change Radio we speak with two reporters. First we talk about the state of independent journalism with David Kaplan, the Executive Director of the Global Investigative Journalism Network, an organization promoting cutting-edge investigative reporting. Then we hear from Tara Duggan of the San Francisco Chronicle about some reporting she has done on single-use plastic products -- how their use surged during the pandemic and whether retailers are finally reverting back to pre-pandemic practices.

Narrator 0:01  This is Sea Change Radio covering the shift to sustainability. I'm Alex Wise.

David Kaplan 0:21  We love technology. You know, tech is our friend. And we're, we're constantly looking for ways to use technology as an equalizer out there, so that our journalists around the world who don't have a lot of resources can get an edge and start documenting the lack of accountability, the looting of the environment and abuses of power, and it's working.

Narrator  0:48  An icon of 20th century journalism, Walter Cronkite once said, The profession of journalism ought to be about telling people what they need to know, not what they want to know. That quote was never more relevant than today. This week on Sea Change Radio, we speak with two reporters. First we talk about the state of independent journalism with David Kaplan, the executive director of the Global investigative journalism Network, an organization promoting cutting edge investigative reporting. Then we hear from Tara Duggan of the San Francisco Chronicle, about some reporting she's done on single use plastic products, how they're used surged during the pandemic, and whether retailers are finally reverting back to pre pandemic practices.

Alex Wise  1:30  I'm joined now on Sea Change Radio by David Kaplan. He's the Executive Director of the Global Investigative Journalism Network. David, welcome to Sea Change Radio.

David Kaplan 1:51  Thank you, Alex. Good to be here.

Alex Wise  1:54  So what is GIJN? Why don't you explain the mission of your organization in a nutshell, if you can,

David Kaplan 2:00  GIJN serves as the umbrella organization for the world's muckraking journalist for reporters who do watchdog journalism, who care about social accountability and go after the issues of the day in depth. It's a grand old tradition that here in the US stretches back more than 100 years and has a strong social justice component. Our core mission is to strengthen and spread quality investigative journalism around the world. And it's pretty strong in the West, though, about 20% of our work is, is US based. But the most urgent areas we work in are the global South,  that's where this kind of reporting can have the biggest impact where the stakes are the largest and in where the issues and people are most in need. So GIJN has 227 member organizations, all nonprofits in 88 countries, and we work through our members and then we work through the broader journalism community really through through anyone who uses what we call public interest, investigative tools, to work in the public interest. And it's one of these best of times, worst of times, our community is under assault from all directions from autocrats and oligarchs from, from slap harassment lawsuits and, and physical threats. At the same time,

People sometimes like to quote that Bible passage about “an eye for an eye” when justifying a punitive criminal justice system focused on retribution and vengeance. Others like to repeat a saying often attributed to Ghandi, that “an eye for an eye will leave the whole world blind.” This week on Sea Change Radio, we get philosophical about crime and punishment. Our guest today is Celia Ouellette, a human rights lawyer and CEO of the nonprofit Responsible Business Initiative for Justice. Within the scope of her organization’s campaigns, we take a critical look at the American prison industrial complex and private prisons, the ineffectiveness of the death penalty, and the draconian practice of locking juveniles up for life.

Narrator  0:02  This is Sea Change Radio covering the shift to sustainability. I’m Alex Wise.

Celia Ouellette  0:17  The death penalty in juvenile life without parole or clearly human rights issues the use of juvenile life without parole. juvenile detention without any possibility prop violates the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. America is the only country in the world to continue to use this practice and has not signed the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child because of it.

Narrator  0:39  People sometimes like to quote that Bible passage about an eye for an eye when justifying a punitive criminal justice system focused on retribution and vengeance. Others like to repeat a saying often attributed to Gandhi that an eye for an eye will lead the whole world blind. This week on Sea Change Radio, we get philosophical about crime and punishment. Our guest today is Celia Ouellette, a human rights lawyer and CEO of the nonprofit Responsible Business Initiative for Justice. within the scope of our organization’s campaigns, we take a critical look at the American prison industrial complex and private prisons, the ineffectiveness of the death penalty, and the draconian practice of locking juveniles up for life.

Alex Wise  1:45  I’m joined now on Sea Change Radio by Celia Ouellette. She is the CEO of the Responsible Business Initiative for Justice. Celia, welcome to Sea Change Radio. Thanks so much. So the responsible business initiative for justice, you are personally based in the UK, but most of your work revolves around United States, incarceration and justice issues, correct? That’s right. Why don’t you explain the mission of your organization if you can?

Celia Ouellette 2:16  Yeah, it’s a little bit of a long title for an organization. But it kind of does exactly what it sounds like we work with businesses, on criminal justice issues. So the mission of the organization was really designed to kind of meet a need in the criminal justice reform movement in the US, which is where I come from, despite the accent, but my whole career working in the US as a defense attorney, and we really saw this need to have businesses be effective allies. If you are working on a legislative campaign, having a business, really support your issue, and advocate for why what you’re trying to do it makes good sense is very, very helpful. If you’re looking at big narrative campaigns, you know, the platform and reach of companies and business leaders is really, really helpful. And on things like helping to reduce recidivism rates, companies are really essential in their internal policies and practices, for example, whether they’re willing to hire people who have an arrest or conviction record. And so we really saw businesses as part of the solution and fixing the US Justice System in many different ways. And there was actually no organization doing this. So rbj was built in 2017, to do exactly this.

Alex Wise  3:39  And why don’t you give us an example of your work in action?

The Marshall Fire that swept through the Boulder, Colorado area in the last days of 2021 seemed to be an aberration - a destructive wildfire raging while just a few miles away, skiers took turns through Rocky Mountain powder. But as we are learning on a daily basis, climate change predictably creates unpredictable weather events. This week on Sea Change Radio, we speak to Bob Berwyn of Inside Climate News to learn what this fire that destroyed over one thousand homes reveals to us about the new normal.

Narrator  0:01  This is Sea Change Radio, covering the shift to sustainability. I'm Alex Wise.

Bob Berwyn  0:19  Denver was just experiencing what was probably going to be its longest ever snow-free period more than 220 days with no measurable snowfall. And that's directly linked to the something like the Marshall Fire because when you have snow on the ground, it makes it moister. And you know having that extended period of time just drives everything out more.

Narrator  0:43  The Marshall Fire that swept through the Boulder, Colorado area in the last days of 2021 seemed to be an aberration. A destructive wildfire raging well, just a few miles away, skiers took turns through Rocky Mountain powder. But as we're learning on a daily basis, climate change predictably creates unpredictable weather events. This week on Sea Change Radio, we speak to Bob Berwyn of Inside Climate News to learn what this fire that destroyed over 1000 homes reveals to us about the new normal.

Alex Wise  1:34  I'm joined now on Sea Change Radio by Bob Berwyn. He is a science writer for Inside Climate News. Bob, welcome back to Sea Change Radio.

Bob Berwyn  1:42  Thanks, Alex.

Alex Wise  1:44  So you have two new pieces in Inside Climate News that tackle some of the latest whether we I would say aberrations, but because of climate change, these aberrations are more than norm. But why don't you kind of summarize what's been happening in the Front Range area of Colorado and how that reflects on some of your work in a larger sense.

Bob Berwyn  2:09  Well, I think  the culmination of a sort of a barrage of global warming, extraordinary heat events this summer, and in the wider West, really set the stage for the horrific fires that broke out near boulder on December 30. What a sad and frightening punctuation mark to the year in terms of climate and speaking with the two climate scientists who live in that area, and who made personal observations during the fires were. Those were gripping conversations. One of the scientists who's studied forests and fires for decades, a lot of it at CU Boulder right there said this event really is just changing his conception of where he thinks it's safe to live and where he thinks it's not safe to live. That's how unusual this  fire was to, you know, to a guy who studies it professionally. And both of them talked about just incredible amounts of debris and barely being able to open car doors and stand outside in the wind and described the fire racing along cedar fences, almost like a lit fuse, you know, on a piece of dynamite or something like that the wind was pushing it so fast along the fence. And then when he would hit a dry tree or a deck or even a swing set in a backyard close to a house, there'd be another little in the house is gone 20 minutes later.

Alex Wise 3:48  And are you talking about the Marshall Fire here?

Bob Berwyn  3:51  We're talking about the Marshall Fire that started December 30 and still causes still being investigated. Unfortunately. At last report, two people are still missing. And I think they're kind of assuming that they're dead, and may have found some partial root human remains. And it burned 1000 houses and structures of different types homes and businesses and into ...

New iterations of the smartphone often focus on bells, whistles and other fancy features, when what we all really want for our devices are batteries that last longer. This week on Sea Change Radio, we speak with technology writer and battery expert Daniel Oberhaus about the latest developments in the energy storage space. We learn about the role that solid state and lithium-silicon batteries may play in the machines of tomorrow, how artificial intelligence may improve battery life, and the progress being made to create recyclable batteries.

Narrator  0:02 This is Sea Change Radio covering the shift to sustainability. I’m Alex Wise.

Daniel Oberhaus (DO)  0:16 Yeah, I mean, that’s the thing with the battery space is that nothing is ever moved as fast as you would want it to. But you know, I think it really underscores just like how challenging these problems that we’re dealing with are and battery development has never been happening faster. It’s a really exciting time for the field.

Alex Wise (AW)  0:33  New iterations of the smartphone often focus on bells, whistles, and other fancy features. One what we all really want for our devices are batteries that last longer. This week on Sea Change Radio, we speak with technology writer and battery expert Daniel Oberhaus, about the latest developments in the energy storage space. We learn about the role that solid state and lithium silicon batteries may play in the machines of tomorrow, how artificial intelligence may improve battery life, and the progress being made to create recyclable batteries.

Alex Wise (AW)  1:26  I’m joined now on Sea Change Radio by Daniel Oberhaus. Daniel is a science writer and his first book was entitled Extra Terrestrial languages. Daniel, welcome to Sea Change Radio.

Daniel Oberhaus (DO)  Thank you so much for having me, Alex.

Alex Wise (AW)  1:39   So you have been a staff writer for Wired magazine for quite some time and have contributed a lot of very interesting pieces specializing in the future of energy. And specifically, I want to talk to you about battery technology because there’s it’s a large palette to work with, why don’t we first dive into solid state batteries. They’re very promising for what reason?

(DO)  2:06  Solid State has been getting a lot of attention lately, due specifically to one company called quantum scape, which recently went public through a special acquisition company a couple months ago. They’re backed by Volkswagen, they’re backed by JB Straubel, who was Tesla employee number seven, if I’m not mistaken. So just really high caliber people working in the battery space are kind of rallying around this company. And the reason for this is that quantum scape believes that they have solved a at this point probably a 40 or 50 year old battery problem, which is how do you create lithium ion cell with a solid electrolyte typically the the batteries that you find in your phone or your computer, these lithium ion cells, they have either a liquid electrolyte or it’s almost like a like a plasticky material. And so the problem with liquid electrolytes is, if you remember, like years ago, when people were having their cell phones, you know, spontaneously catch fire. And people were getting these horrible burns from like, we’re like from vaporizers. Liquid electrolytes and cells are often very fla...

The next time you sip on a drink from a straw, you may want to think twice because humans are producing an inordinate amount of plastic waste on straws alone. Plastic straws are one of the leading contributors to ocean trash, they take up to 200 years to decompose and they can’t be recycled.  Every year, the US alone uses enough straws to fill up nine baseball stadiums. Plastic straws are pretty much the definition of wastefulness, they serve very little purpose and are terrible for the environment.  This week on Sea Change Radio, we speak to two people who are doing their best to combat plastic waste in our oceans. First, Mark Marinozzi from World Centric gives us some important facts about plastic straws and talks about the best ways to fight the problem. Then, we hear from Romain Troublé whose organization, Tara Expedition, has been making scientific ocean voyages for the past fifteen years to monitor and collect data about ocean plastic waste.

Narrator  0:01  This is Sea Change Radio covering the shift to sustainability, I'm Alex Wise

Mark Marinozzi 0:20  it won't necessarily be a transition. In terms of straws as a category, it will be a transition in terms of the behavior of the trade customer and the consumer.

Narrator  0:34  The next time you sip on a drink from a straw, you may want to think twice because humans are producing an inordinate amount of plastic waste on straws alone. plastic straws are one of the leading contributors to ocean trash. They take up to 200 years to decompose, and they can't be recycled. Every year, the US alone uses enough straws to fill up nine baseball stadiums. plastic straws are pretty much the definition of wastefulness. They serve very little purpose and are terrible for the environment. This week on Sea Change Radio, we speak to two people who are doing their best to combat plastic waste in our oceans. First, Mark Marinozzi from World Centric gives us some important facts about plastic straws, and talks about the best ways to fight the problem. Then we hear from Romain Troublé, whose organization the Tara Foundation has been making scientific ocean voyages for the past 15 years to monitor and collect data about ocean plastic waste.

Alex Wise  1:57  I'm joined now on Sea Change Radio by Mark Marinozzi. He's the VP of Marketing at World Centric. Mark, welcome to Sea Change Radio.

Mark Marinozzi 2:05  Thanks, Alex. Appreciate it.

Alex Wise  2:07  So a lot of us have started seeing a spike in compostable packaging it seems to be anytime you go to a salad bar, let's say a whole foods you see these different type of clam shells and plates that are made out of cardboard that we may have seen plastic 10 years ago? Why don't you first explain the market and how World Centric plays a part in it?

Mark Marinozzi 2:32  Well, first of all, World Centric was started in 2004 by our founder and CEO Aseem Das. He was looking to raise awareness for large scale humanitarian and environmental issues, and to alert people that the pursuit of the good life was severely damaging the planet's ecosystems. So he started the company to both establish as a nonprofit, that awareness and also to advocate for creating better sustainability in our society, as well as trying to lessen the inequities between the two and a half billion people that live on less than $2 a day. So by 2009, he decided it was probably best to switch the company over to a for profit. But in 2010 actually converted it to a California benefit corporation and a B Corp. and B corpse are organizations that really focus on Triple Bottom Line and are looking to harness the power of business to solve social and economic problems.

For environmentalists “agriculture” can be something of a dirty word, associated with other words such as, pesticides, water consumption, pollutants, and deforestation. Not all environmentalists have these negative associations, though. Some, like my guest today, are working to re-fashion agricultural practices so that they actually help to reverse environmental damage. This week on Sea Change Radio we are speaking with Joe Brewer, an American ex-pat living  and working in the regenerative agriculture space in Colombia. We discuss his family’s journey to this small but vibrant farming community, the lessons he’s learned, and how those lessons can be scaled to bigger farms in the U.S.

Narrator  0:01  This is Sea Change Radio covering the shift to sustainability. I'm Alex Wise.

Joe Brewer  0:16  Because it's a small town, all of these people are friends. So the idea is for this money to support the network of these local people, to coordinate their projects with each other and to create new projects. And all the while be learning and sharing what we're learning back to everyone in the world who cares to learn through our global network and through the different media outlets that we have to share our story.

Narrator  0:42  For environmentalists, agriculture can be something of a dirty word, associated with other words such as pesticides, water consumption, pollutants, and deforestation. Not all environmentalists have these negative associations though. Some, like my guest today are working to refashion agricultural practices so that they actually help to reverse environmental damage. This week on Sea Change Radio, we're speaking with Joe Brewer, an American expat living and working in the regenerative agriculture space in Colombia. We discuss his family's journey to this small but vibrant farming community, the lessons he's learned, and how those lessons can be scaled to bigger farms in the US.

Alex Wise  1:48  I'm joined now on Sea Change Radio by Joe Brewer. Joe is joining us from Barichara, Columbia. He is a complexity scientist and an environmentalist. Joe, welcome to Sea Change Radio.

Joe Brewer 1:59  Thanks so much, Alex. It's awesome to be here with you.

Alex Wise  2:03  So explain what you're doing in Barichara, I you grew up on a chicken farm in Missouri, I believe and this is more than a stone's throw away from there. Explain what you're involved in what you've created in Barichara.

JB  2:16  Yes, maybe I'd start this way by saying just a little less than four years ago, something absolutely transformational happened, which is my wife and I had a child, we have a little daughter, who's about to turn four. And she is a big reason why we are in Colombia now. And the story could be summarized like this. We my wife and I are both what we would call collapse aware, environmentally minded people who see the level of crisis that humanity is in the kinds of dangers on the horizon, and how big the mismatches between what needs to happen and what's generally being done. And so we spent about a year through a set of work connections I had, we spent about a year living off grid, and a biodiversity hotspot, and a tropical rainforest in Costa Rica. And during that time, I was helping to envision a different way of creating local economic systems, so that the economies could be in harmony with their environment. And we are doing this by visiting projects in Costa Rica, and helping to build a planetary scale network of places where people were trying to do this. And that network is called the regenerative communities network, hosted by an organization based in Connecticut, called capital Institute. So I was on the team at Capital Institute,

Come election season, some of us who live in solidly “blue” states like California or New York take our activist selves on the road to so-called “swing states,” where our door-knocking will make the most impact. One possible destination next Fall for energetic canvassers is North Carolina, one of the nation's most “purple“ states. This week on Sea Change Radio, we take a deep dive into North Carolina politics with Rob Schofield, the Director of NC Policy Watch. We recap the last few elections in the state, learn about battles over the fundamental right to cast a ballot, and take a look at some of the candidates and races slated for upcoming election cycles.

Narrator 0:01  This is Sea Change Radio covering the shift to sustainability, I'm Alex wise.

Rob Schofield 0:26   It is emblematic of just a long litany of legislation that's going on for a decade in which Republicans have generally tried to make it harder to vote, particularly those classes of people that they perceive are likely to vote democratic. That means older citizens. That's why we've had battles over voter ID people of color, immigrants, young people, all the people that they view as not necessarily being part of their natural constituency. If they can figure out a way to put up barriers, they do it.

Narrator  0:55  Come election season, some of us who live in solidly “blue” states like California or New York take our activist selves on the road to so-called “swing states,” where our door-knocking will make the most impact. One possible destination next Fall for energetic canvassers is North Carolina, one of the nation's most “purple“ states. This week on Sea Change Radio, we take a deep dive into North Carolina politics with Rob Schofield, the Director of NC Policy Watch. We recap the last few elections in the state, learn about battles over the fundamental right to cast a ballot, and take a look at some of the candidates and races slated for upcoming election cycles.

Alex Wise  1:54  I'm joined now on Sea Change Radio by Rob Schofield. Rob is the director of North Carolina policy watch NC policy watch calm Rob, welcome to Sea Change Radio.

Rob Schofield 2:04  Hey, Alex, thanks so much for having me on.

Alex Wise  2:07  The political environment in your state is fascinating. And it's one of the most purple states in the union right now and going to be focus for the 2022 election and the 2024 election, I think, why don't we first take a step back, though and look at what happened in 2018 with the Mark Harris fiasco and kind of recap that for our listeners and explain why that's was an important template for where we are now in terms of voter rights in the state.

Rob Schofield 2:37  Well, 2018 was symptomatic of this ongoing situation in which North Carolina is sort of a razor Razor's Edge state. It's a deeply purple state, actually, historically, as a result of historical trends still has more registered Democrats than Republicans. But it's basically evenly divided certainly ideologically, like a lot of parts of the of the country. There's a there's a broad divide between urban and rural areas. The 2018 election was of course, one that featured a fairly formidable Blue Wave both nationally and here in North Carolina. We had, we've gone through just repeated court decisions and redrawing of our congressional and legislative maps and 2018. We were battling through another one of those but what happened was that we had an election in what was then the ninth district of North Carolina at the time, North Carolina had 13 seats in the house. And there was a an empty seat beak as a result of a of an incumbent Republican who had some corruption issues losing in the Republican primary guy by the name of Bob Pittenger ...

It's right in the Declaration of Independence that everyone is created equal. So why is an entire political party so scared of talking critically about race in this country? This week on Sea Change Radio, the second half of our discussion with John Stoehr of The Editorial Board centered around the latest Republican boogeyman, critical race theory. We look at the media's role in creating something out of nothing, compare critical race theory to the debate over gun control, and examine how the hullabaloo about CRT is connected to the so-called "Big Lie" and why both pose a threat to our democracy. Then, we hear an excerpt from Editorial Board contributor Magdi Semrau on how Black voices are largely left out of public education debates in this country.

Narrator 0:01  This is Sea Change Radio covering the shift to sustainability. I'm Alex Wise.

John Stoehr  0:22  The whole expansion of guns everywhere the loosening of gun laws and stuff is a reaction to democracy, putting guns in the hands of people who will not be punished by the law but will be protected by the law, even as they commit crimes that would otherwise be crimes in order to maintain those hierarchies of power. If you can't turn to democracy to get what you want, then you turn to your gun.

Narrator  0:49  It's right in the Declaration of Independence that everyone is created equal. So why is an entire political party so scared of talking critically about race in this country? This week on Sea Change Radio, the second half of our discussion with John Stoehr of The Editorial Board centered around the latest Republican boogeyman, critical race theory. We look at the media's role in creating something out of nothing, compare critical race theory to the debate over gun control, and examine how the hullabaloo about CRT is connected to the so-called "Big Lie" and why both pose a threat to our democracy. Then, we hear an excerpt from Editorial Board contributor Magdi Semrau on how Black voices are largely left out of public education debates in this country.

Alex Wise  1:47  This is Alex Wise on Sea Change Radio, and I'm speaking to the founder and editor of the editorial board, John Stoehr. So John, we were talking about the role of the press and you hit upon Fox News. But let's turn to more mainstream news outlets if we can like the New York Times, how are they playing along with this critical race theory malarkey?

John Stoehr  2:10  The thing about the press corps is, first of all the big media companies are is really about six companies that own all the big, profitable media companies, as opposed to 50 years ago when there was 50, and more. And so when they speak with one voice, that's a really big, loud voice. And the other thing that I've come to, sadly, realizes that fascism or being friendly to fascism is really profitable. I mean, the Fox News model is Case in point, it's the most profitable cable news channel. And for there's one reason for that, it's because it foments anger, it taps into bigotries and prejudices that people already believe to be true. It smears the intentions of the of minority voices, etc. And even the New York Times is really catching on to this.

Alex Wise  3:03  But they do it in a coy kind of both-sides-ism way.

John Stoehr  3:06  Absolutely. It's never ever. I mean, Fox News is actually pretty coy, but much less. Yeah, it sounds overt side, but the lucrative media properties, they also don't want reform, they don't want Democrats changing things, because the way things are right now is really good. You know, it's really profitable. And at the same time, the Democrats in power, so the press corps has an incentive to elevate the part the voices from the party out of power. And so you put those in economic incentive plus this kind of like this n...

Have you noticed what's got the far right-wing of American politics hot-and-bothered lately? This week on Sea Change Radio, we speak to John Stoehr, the founder and editor of The Editorial Board about the latest red herring issue from the Right - critical race theory - and how it’s affecting political races across the country. In the first half of this two part discussion, Stoehr helps explain how the topic gained traction, distinguishes fact from fiction, and connects critical race theory to a larger discussion about race and American exceptionalism.

Narrator  0:01  This is Sea Change Radio covering the shift to sustainability. I'm Alex Wise.

John Stoehr  0:22  If you have bigotry on your side slander and smear campaigns are usually very effective, because people will they're already believing it. You're just telling somebody something they already believe, if they already believe the Liberals are out here trying to make trouble in race relations, meaning give let people freedom and equality, then they're communists, right? Or they're socialists, or they're troublemakers or just anything to smear their intentions.

Narrator  0:51  Have you noticed what's got the far right wing of American politics hot and bothered lately? This week on Sea Change Radio, we speak to John Stoehr, the founder and editor of the Editorial Board about the latest red herring issue from the right - critical race theory - and how it's affecting political races around the country.  In the first half of this two part discussion, Stoehr helps explain how the topic gain traction, distinguishes fact from fiction, and connects critical race theory to a larger discussion about race and American exceptionalism.

Alex Wise  1:46  I'm joined now on Sea Change Radio by John Stoehr. He's the founder and editor of the Editorial Board. John, welcome back to Sea Change Radio.

John Stoehr  1:55  Thanks for having me back.

Alex Wise  1:56  Always a pleasure to speak to you, sir. So you've written a piece about critical race theory on the editorial board. And so have some of your colleagues, Rod Graham and Trent Nelson. They're all slightly different takes on this hot button issue. First one, we summarize what the issue of critical race theory is to political debates going around in school boards and in the pundit class in America right now.

John Stoehr  2:26  Right. So the first thing you really need to understand about anything with the words critical race theory is that they are part of a backlash against the political gains made in the wake of George Floyd's murder. George Floyd, as everyone knows, I hope is, was killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis, and he was his murder was recorded. And this murder is set off a chain reaction across the country, in institutions from K through 12, up through colleges, nonprofits, other democratic institutions, to kind of do some soul searching about what we're doing that is contributing to the oppression of African Americans and other racial minorities. So that's the proper context in which to understand this critical race theory thing. I guess the second thing you should know is that it's not about education, even though the Republicans are insisting that it is about education

Alex Wise  3:26  Particularly K through 12 education, right?

John Stoehr  3:30  Especially K through 12. Exactly.