#5 - Isabelle Boemeke: The Cut-Throat Worlds of Modelling and Activism

29:48So it's probably a hard question to answer, but do you think on net, like if you could choose again, you know, you were 16 years old again, would you choose to be a model in the old school, like sort of early 2000s modeling world or today? It's an impossible question because I don't have any other conception of a 16 year old than myself. And with the environment that I grew up in and the things that I grew up in, I would still choose the old school modeling just because I didn't, you know, I didn't grow up necessarily from a very early age or I didn't grow up at all with smartphones. Right. And so this idea that you can just take photos of yourself and put it, I don't have a conception of that as a 16 year old.

30:32Um, so I would still prefer, I would still prefer the old school way. And I liked it. There was like, um, I don't know, this might just be like a kids this day kind of thing, but But there was a certain more mysterious element to it. Like the fact that you had these agents, you know, like you had a team of agents that was like sending your photos. And these clients were like, oh, we're going to choose her for our campaign. And now I feel like it's just different. It has more of like an air of elitism. Yeah, a little bit. Yeah. Which it does sound, it sounds cooler. It sounds cooler. Yes. But it's also, you know, I think it's much better today because a lot of girls are making money just by creating their own, you know, companies, let's say, on social media.

31:23You know, I did this, my first Moloch video on beauty filters as an example of this kind of potentially race to the bottom spiral where everyone feels pressured to use more and more sort of digital alteration in order to stand out. do you think this is like tangibly worse than perhaps like the old days of where photographers would airbrush photos for models or do you think it's just part of the same thing and it's a fuss over nothing? I think it's part of the same thing. I think it is damaging in the same way that airbrushing and makeup and you know just changing images to make it look better than they look is damaging because as you know, you know, if you're a 14, 15 year old girl, you look at yourself in the mirror and you're like, why do I have pores?

32:12Like, why do I have hair on my face? Because people have hair on their face and pores, but you don't see that on magazines. So I think it's a different manifestation of that. I do think that the bigger problem is that now you're inundated with that all day long, you know, pre-social media, you didn't have, like you could buy a magazine, you'd see those images, but you wouldn't be staring at them all day long. You'd put them away and whatever, keep going with your life. And now, because we live online so much, it's everywhere. So every time you open your Instagram, there's, you know, images of people using filters and makeup and good lighting and good photography.

32:53And you never get to meet them in person. So you have no sort of point of reference of being like, ah, okay, this is, you know, you don't get as regularly reminded that this is actually fake. Exactly. Another thing that sort of concerns me around social media is that it seems to have sort of not only normalized, but actively encouraged those who probably would not have fallen into it into narcissism. Everyone is almost expected and celebrated for being very focused on how they look and present themselves more than in the past. You know, like when I was a kid, no one in my, you know, I went to an all-girls school and it was like 50 girls in my year or so.

33:36And none of us particularly cared about being celebrities or wanted to be. There was one girl I remember, she was like, I want to be famous. And I remember being like, huh, weird. Yeah, but you did grow up in England. What's the difference? In America, I feel like the answer would have been a lot different. Really, even back in like 1999? I don't know, I didn't grow up here, but I grew up in Brazil. and the number one response that girls gave growing up of what they wanted to be was a model. Yeah. So I think it's a different culture. It was just because we had so many top models. We had Giselle, we had some other girls before her.

34:09It's kind of what your country had become famous for already. Exactly. For women. Yeah, and you become so proud of that because you're like, oh my God, it's our country doing something. On the world stage. On the world stage. So for girls it was modeling or being a model and for boys it was being a soccer player. which is the same. So I think it's more of a cultural thing of just, that is your chance of becoming, of rising to the top, of becoming, you know, known for doing something in the world. Yeah, in England, we were already, you know, women there have been encouraged to become scientists, to become, you know, as far as I was concerned.

34:47Those examples. Yeah, exactly. And yeah, and we've had, you know, we had Marie Curie. Was Marie Curie English? No, Marie Curie. She was actually Polish. No, she was French. No, she was Polish. She was Polish, but she married a French guy named Pierre Cuy. And so her maiden name, I don't even want to try to pronounce it, but it was like a Polish maiden name. But yeah, you had examples, even if it was not Marie Curie. I'm trying to think of a famous British female scientist. I mean, we've had plenty, and my mind's gone blank. This is bad. but yes we had so we were celebrated they were celebrated in the media and yeah we had and we had actresses and and all we had actually uh our premier you know we had margaret thatcher our prime minister was a had already been a woman you know at least once so um yeah perhaps yeah perhaps you're right it was more of a cultural thing but um but it certainly seems to have changed now.

35:45Like number one job choice, I think in almost every Western nation is social media influencer for Gen Z. Yeah, that makes sense. Because it gives them a sense of, I can do this. They look at a girl who's just sharing her life or a boy who's just sharing their lives. And they're like, oh, I can do this. And they make money out of it. Like, why not? You know, when you're young, that's what you care about. My biggest concern is not even like that that is the number one thing, is that we're falling behind on a lot of other stuff, like manufacturing, like industry-related stuff that keeps our civilization alive.

36:22I think I would be less concerned if those industries were healthy, and people still wanted to be influencers, but somebody needs to make the things that the influencers are going to sell. Very good point, yeah. I mean, you could argue that automation, AI, etc., robotics advancements, etc. But that's still like a decade away? Five years? Yeah. No, I mean, there definitely seems to be gaps in the supply chain. Yeah, there's a little bit of a gap. Even just construction, just paying attention to how long houses around here are taking to be built. There's a house down the street that is being... They've been building this for six months now.

37:04all they've done is build the concrete foundation. I'm just like, I want to know what this house is going to look like. And it's just still a concrete foundation. I'm like, what's going on? There are people there every day. So it's like, if everybody wants to be famous and everyone wants to sell the products, then there's going to be a sort of capabilities gap. And just not even products, like not even consumer products. Think about products that you use in your home, right? Like we have to make the air conditioning and the pipes. And the toilets and all this infrastructure that's not even just products that people consume, but all of it really.

37:41So one of the things I find so fascinating about you is how, you know, you're one of the most sort of rational, level-headed and scientifically minded people I've ever met. But your background is actually, you know, you grew up in a small town in Brazil, a very religious upbringing. You didn't even know about evolution, I think, until your late teens. So how did you become sort of so scientifically minded? Like, what was that journey? I grew up in a small town in Brazil, the south of Brazil. And people in Brazil are generally super Catholic. But not, it's a different type of like super religious than the United States.

38:20We're super religious, but chill. Like we have Carnival, you know, which is... Everyone's naked. An outsider looking at it is like, that's not very religious. But yeah, we believe in God, obviously. and the world was created in whatever, how many days? I can't even remember now. Seven, right? Six, and then he rested on the seventh day. So I went to Catholic school because those are the best schools in small towns in Brazil. It was either Catholic, private, or public school, which in a country like Brazil, unfortunately, the public schools are not great. And that was my education up until like 12, which then I moved to a bigger city and I went to a different school, which wasn't Catholic, but you're still in a Catholic society, right?

39:07So even though the school itself wasn't necessarily religious, you're still surrounded by religion. And I feel like my formative years was informed by Catholic education. So yeah, I don't remember hearing about evolution. It was presented to me later in this other school that was not religious, but as one possible. It was more like a thesis. Right. You know, it was like, oh, and then there's this evolution, but maybe there is creationism. And they were presented as the same likelihood of being true. And, of course, if you have this whole background of, you know, hearing about God and how it created the world in six days, you're never going to think, oh, maybe there is something to this other one, right?

39:59So wait, did you actually think that the world was like a few thousand years old? Yeah. Wow. To be fair, I didn't think about the world. You know, it was just like, I don't know. It's just, I didn't think about those things. Okay. Which is interesting because now as you know me, I'm very curious. Yeah, that seems quite shocking actually. Right. I was always thinking about this stuff as a kid, but maybe it's because like I was given. Because you had better education, yeah. Right. And I, you know, it was something I would discuss with my mother regularly and so on. Yeah. Yeah, so that was kind of my education.

40:31And then I left, started modeling. I left, I started modeling when I was 16, then came to the United States when I was 18. And when I was 19 years old, my cousin who still lived in Brazil, his name is Alex, he bought a book by Richard Dawkins called The Greatest Show on Earth. and he ordered it on Amazon, shipped it to my house and said, please bring it with you when you come to Brazil at the end of the year. I was like, sure, of course, no problem. And the book just sat in a box. I was like, oh, whatever. I don't want to read it. And then one day I was bored and I was like, oh, let me take a look.

41:04I've always been a reader. I read a lot of fiction growing up and I didn't have anything to read at the time. And I went to check the book. It was a beautiful cover with like flowers and like just a striking cover. And I started reading it. And I remember to this day, the feeling of just my mind being completely blown and expanding upon encountering this idea of evolution and like how we came to be, how other animals came to be. And that whole process, which was never really explained to me in depth, or if it was, I didn't even register because my mind was in a completely different state. And yeah, that was the first book I read that just like opened my mind to science really.

41:51And I remember I got my computer and went on Amazon and I was like, looked the book up and then it says, you know, related books or like books that are similar or whatever. And I, I read our inner ape next, which is a book about chimps basically or other primates and how they behave in, in ways that are similar and, but also different from humans. So that was fascinating as well. Like how, We share so much of our behavior with our distant cousins. And yeah, that led me down a path of just consuming as much popular science books as I could and just really teaching myself all the things that I hadn't learned in school.

42:33And I've grown to become more science-minded because of that. And I just have a deep appreciation for the scientific method as a way to understand the world. and as a way to explain phenomena and make predictions and so on. So it's something that was definitely, I don't think it was innate. Maybe it was like somewhat there and it was just never fostered, but it was something that I definitely had to teach myself. I didn't grow up with it. Did you feel any sort of annoyance at your school or your family for not exposing you to this stuff? Or did you feel like... I don't think they knew any better.

43:16You know, my family is certainly, they grew up in that environment. And the school, you know, they're nuns. Like religious people. Like they actually believe that. So I don't feel annoyance at them. I do feel annoyance that that happened to me. You know, I sometimes, I don't even think about this anymore because I'm pretty happy with my life. But if I used to think like, what if I had grown up in a different country, you know, with different access to education and information? Maybe it could have been a different path, but it's fine. I now don't have, I'm neutral towards it. I'm not positive either, but I'm pretty neutral.

44:00Do you still carry any degree of like religiosity? Do you believe in God? So my trajectory was like, believing God, of course, like went to church and the whole thing and prayed and all of that, to hardcore atheists, like new atheists, like God is dumb. You know, like YouTube videos with like Richard Dawkins destroys so-and-so creationist. I went through that phase and I think it was a necessary step in, you know, that evolution, evolution pun intended. And now I'm more in a place of openness, of being open to the mysteries of the universe, of the things that we don't know, that we don't understand.

44:43I do think that ultimately everything can be explained through science. It's just that we don't have the knowledge or the tools necessary at this time to explain it. But I don't think there is a mystery that can never be explained. I think that we just don't have the tools necessary yet. Even if we think that the simulation theory is true, the simulator is a god. We just don't call it that. We call it the simulator. Simulation theory is creationism for science nerds. Yeah, totally. It gives people who perhaps feel uncomfortable with talking about the idea of a creator, it gives them a language and a framing that makes them, you know, it's like kind of their safe space.

45:29And I know that because that was what I went through myself. I'm now personally comfortable with like actually, like I'm feeling an appeal towards going to church, actually. I'm seeing like the value in, even in the concept of faith. Like for a while, because I went through a very similar curve. Well, actually not quite the same. I just didn't really believe in anything, I think, up to a certain point. I was just like, la, la, la, la, la. Like, I don't know. I didn't have strong opinions either way. But then sort of in my late teens when I went and entered my goth phase and metal and so on, I became like very much an atheist.

46:02There is like, there's suffering in the world. Fedora heads and all. No. Never a fedora. How dare you? But yeah, like went through that sort of like, obviously there's no, you know, of course there's no God. Obviously like, no, there's just, there's like, physics is what it is and there's no mysteries beyond that. Like, and it was like, as I've gotten older, I've gotten increasingly humble. I think it's the only thing I've felt like, it's the only common thread. I'm becoming increasingly aware of we really don't know. There are little signs here and there that push me in one direction depending on the day of the week or the way the wind's blowing.

46:42I lean a bit more in the experiences I've had over the weekend, lean more or less in a more skeptical or open direction. It's also honestly, being a super hardcore atheist is just a miserable way to live your life. There's no magic. There's no mystery. Yeah, which, you know, if I was in that mindset, I would be like, well, I accept the cold truth versus some delusional fiction. And I guess, but also, good luck. It's the difference between, to steal money, you know, there's like, some atheists would, I think the line between agnostic and atheist tends to get blurred. Like, I think in reality, you know, for a period of time I was a true atheist and I felt certain that there was no, like, anything sort of to do with the, like, the transcendent or the supernatural or like the religious, whatever, was just bullshit.

47:36And then I became more agnostic, essentially. I guess I would describe myself as an agnostic in that I just don't know. But more recently, I've seen the value in actually the concept of faith. I think, again, like a rational atheist would say faith is like, is a form of delusion and thus this is bad. And now I'm seeing that actually, you know, there's something to like choosing to put trust in something that it exists and that there's value in that. Oh, there's so much value in religion, I think. For one, I think it is a way to mitigate against Moloch. How? Because it can enable large-scale cooperation amongst people who maybe are not from the same tribe, but they share this religious belief.

48:29So I think it's very valuable, not only as an individual, like, oh, there is something bigger out there. There is a plan for me. I'm not going through the suffering in vain. But also at a society scale, I think it is valuable to, again, enable large-scale cooperation. So nowadays you have one of the strangest job titles of anyone, I can imagine, which is you're a nuclear energy influencer. How on earth did you go from, because actually when we got to know each other, you were still modeling. but you were also trying to do a sort of a startup on um eco-packaged beauty products and then one day i think you i think you called me and you were like liv it sounds strange but i want to be a nuclear energy influencer and i think i'm going to give up everything to do that and I was just like eh?

49:27what? so and by the way you and Tim Tim Urban and all of our friends who I shared that idea with I think everyone was like okay honey go do that yeah I think we were encouraging but we were just confused I just didn't know what that looked like so talk us through how that idea came about and what it means. I had been modeling for over a decade at that point. Not at that point, but before I started my cosmetics company, which you talked about. But I had always wanted to do something. I had always had this entrepreneurial mindset of, oh, one day I want to start my own thing. I didn't know what that was.

50:11I didn't know what that looked like. I didn't really know what my passions were. And one thing I was and still am very passionate about is skincare. I love it. I don't talk about it much, but you and I talk about it sometimes. And I love it. And so I had this idea to start to make a product, a beauty product. And me and one of my best friends, Ola, we started this company, which changed the name several times, ended up being Maré, which is like a Brazilian word. Is it like sea? Yeah, kind of. It's sea-related. It's like tide. Tide? Yeah. Okay. And I ended up creating this product that was a coconut water face mist for several reasons that we don't need to get into like the science of coconut water, why it's better than water.

50:58But that whole process was enlightening to me because I created a fake brochure of company, went online, asked for samples of ingredients for cosmetics. Got it all for free because these big companies, they'll send you samples so you can order from them later. And I formulated my own product. Then I researched the packaging, found the packaging. The only, what's the name of that bottle? Aerosol. The only aerosol bottle that didn't have propellants in it. It was all compressed air and it was also fully recyclable. And that whole journey was enlightening to me that, oh my God, I can do all of this, but also how many people are out there who have great ideas for products, but don't know how to do all the things that I just did.

51:50so that, you know, I ended up launching that company, but then that evolved into a beauty, like a beauty incubator. So I partnered with somebody else, my friend Terry, and we were basically creating brands, beauty brands for influencers, for celebrities, and it was all like eco-friendly as much as it can be. You know, I think now looking back, it's like, eh, not really, but as much as it could be. And we did that for a year and a half or so. I was working really hard on it. I was like, I want to make this work, you know, with that mindset. And it just never fulfilled me. But I was like, I have to do this.

52:30I'm going to do this. I'm going to make it successful. And then in 2019, at the end of 2019, I was still working on that. And the Australia and the Amazon fires happened and California as well. So there was like these three major fires that I think were a lot of people's wake up calls to climate change. And that's how it felt to me. I was like, oh my God, climate change, this thing that I grew up hearing about my whole life is here. And we're not, you know, solving it. We're not near solving it. And where are all the adults in the room? And then you're like, oh my God, I am an adult. I guess I have to do something about it.

53:06So it's just this wake up call and keep, and I just had like an existential crisis. I was like, do I keep, do I want to keep making cosmetics? Is this what I want my life to be about? Is this what I want? Does the world need another beauty brand? And the answer to me was no. No shade on anybody who does because I do love and consume a lot of beauty brands. But I just didn't feel like that was my thing, my calling. And I was kind of thinking about what I wanted to do, how I wanted to help solve climate change, which is like a ridiculous go. But I was like, whatever I can do, even if it's something small, what can I do?

53:47and nuclear power had been in my mind for several years because Carolyn Porco, who is a planetary scientist who worked at NASA, she led the imaging team at Cassini which was a probe that went around Saturn. She's an incredible scientist and very inspirational woman. She tweeted about molten salt thorium reactors which is a type of nuclear reactor. And at the time, this was 2015, 2016, I was like what is that? That's so interesting. And I just became obsessed with the idea of nuclear power as like, what is, you know, why isn't anybody talking about nuclear power? What is the deal with it? I don't know much about it.

54:28Seems bad, but I don't know anything about it. And so throughout the years I had been asking people like, what do you feel about nuclear power? What do you think about nuclear power? And the responses are always the same. It was like, it's actually really good. We definitely needed to solve climate change, but people just hate it. so that had been in my brain for several years before but just as a curious like a scientific curiosity and then at the end of 2019 when I you know had this existential crisis I started thinking about nuclear power again and like reading books and and about climate change how to solve it and nuclear power kept coming up you know as a as a solution so I was like what if I just become a nuclear energy influencer.

55:13It's just like the craziest idea. And, you know, we were just talking about the supernatural and I don't know that I believe in it, but it is one of those things that like, where did this idea come from? And like, how did it even work? How is it that people, it resonated with people that people are interested in it? It's just a curiosity. But yeah, one of the ways that I tested to see if it would be interesting was I started telling people like you and others, if anybody sitting next to me in a flight, it would be, what do you do? I would say, I'm a nuclear energy influencer. They'd be like, what?

55:49Yeah, right. What is going on? It's just like two things because people associate influences with a kind of superficial. Exactly, superficial, caring about aesthetics. Usually it's like a very feminine coded thing. And then nuclear energy is just like hardcore. And it's just a beautiful juxtaposition of these two vibes. Yeah, but that's why I did it. I could have called myself a nuclear energy advocate. Right, ambassador. It just wouldn't cause the same emotion in people. It is upsetting, but that's what I wanted to get that reaction. I wanted people to be like, what the f*** is going on? And it's the same reason why I do my videos the way I do.

56:35is because I want people to be like, this is so weird. What am I watching? But you can't look away because it's weird. Right. So actually on that note, I want to have a look at some of your videos. I want, because for people who haven't seen them, like they, before we can go any further, people need to see what we're talking about. The style and aesthetic that you do. So we're on your Isodope account, which by the way, great name, Isodope. I can't take credit for that. Oh, really? Yeah, somebody else gave me the name. Well, either way, it's absolutely inspired. So this one is one of my favorites.

57:09Hey guys, so a lot of you have been asking about my diet. I start my day by drinking pure black coffee. Then I usually work out for about an hour or so. After working out, I eat something a little bit unusual. Gummy bears, roughly the size of uranium pellets. Uranium pellets are the few used in nuclear power plants. And just like gummy bears, they're super dense, which just means they're small but have a lot of energy inside. One uranium pellet, roughly the size of a gummy bear, okay, you get it by now, has as much energy as 149 gallons of oil, 2 ,000 pounds of coal, or 12 ,000 Big Macs. With one of these tiny little things, we can power a house for about two and a half months.

57:44That's unless you're being a total idiot, leaving all your lights on while binge-watching Netflix, blow-drying your hair, and using a blender. This means that we can create an insane amount of energy in smaller spaces, which requires less land, which is great news for the environment. It also means that the waste it creates is tiny. If I were to get all of my life's energy from nuclear, My waist would fit inside of a soda can. Ew, ew, ew, ew, ew. Don't ever drink soda. Sugar is like really bad for you.

58:12It's so crazy. I'm like, was I high when I did that? And I wasn't, but... That's the thing. It seems like you are. Honestly, that's how like out of the box and creative it is. And that's why I think it's been so successful because it's like it's truly like deeply unique content, which is so hard to do in such a content-saturated world that we're in now. It's so unbelievably unique. Thank you. Because I thought my videos are weird, and it's on esoteric concepts, but this is another level. What was your creative process when coming up with these metaphors, with the gummy bears, how did that come about?

58:54So that's one of the things where, in order for me to understand complicated things, I have to put them into simple terms, Otherwise, my brain can't understand it. So I make my videos basically for myself. This is how the analogies you see is because that's a way I've better understood what I'm trying to understand. And I feel like that can resonate with other people as well. And the gummy bear one, it was an existing reference that people made, you know, that one uranium pellet was the size of a gummy bear. They just never made it visually and never said it so many times. I think I said it like four times.

59:32I'm like, okay, you get it by now. But you know, when people tell me about my videos, they're like, the only thing I remember is the gummy bear, which is cool. But yeah, the process was basically like, I have to do something that is different. I can't just be like myself now, you know, like wearing a normal outfit and just talking in front of a camera because the subject is not compelling to people. the goal for me wasn't like oh I'm just going to share this subject and everyone is going to love it I was like I knew that I had to trick people into watching my content so that they would learn about nuclear power you also did this really cool thing which you know how things trend on TikTok there was that wipe thing people did for a while where they would look all shitty and then they would do a wipe on the mirror and they'd look hot and then back again And you would sit and observe the trends on TikTok, which is, you know, I guess a kind of fun activity.

1:00:32And then create a video out of that, which I think is a really unique thing. Because that's like, that's truly what you have to do in the influencing space these days. It's all about latching onto a trend and finding a way to put your message and your unique spin on it. Right. Yeah. Maybe it's just because of like, sort of an awareness thing. but I feel like now other people have started doing that, but you were kind of one of the first people to do this. I don't, I actually don't know. I don't know. Maybe it could have been. It seems like it. Like you now see, and also there seem to be like now other nuclear energy influencers who are like kind of trying to do it in like a, in a sort of entertaining artistic way.

1:01:12And again, it feels like you are sort of the, the originator of that. Another cool thing. So aside of, you know, raising awareness of nuclear energy, you've actually done a very concrete thing, which was you were instrumental in stopping the shutdown of Diablo Canyon power plant. So can you just explain a little bit about what, first of all, why it was being shut down and why stopping it from being shut down is a good thing? So when I got super crazy about nuclear power, one of the first things I learned was that there were five plants at risk of being shut down prematurely in the United States.

1:01:47And prematurely here just means they could keep operating for another 10, 20 years, but they're being shut down earlier than they could. One of them was Diablo Canyon in California, which is California's last nuclear power plant. It is the most important power plant in the country, just from a political and cultural perspective, because there were a lot of protests back in the 70s and 80s when it was open in the 80s. There were something like 30 ,000 people protesting outside of it. About the fact that it existed. About the fact that it was about to be open, yeah. So this was like the peak of anti-nuclear movement in the United States, and that was the symbol, right?

1:02:25It's like, we're going to shut down this plant. It ended up opening and obviously making electricity for, like, it's going to be almost 40 years at this point. Clean electricity, enough electricity for 3 million people in California, which is crazy that one facility alone can make that much electricity, right? Tiny small land area as well. It's a tiny, small land area. There's a lot of area around it that's closed off, but it's all nature. But the plant itself and the buildings that are like administration and so on are a very small part of land. And it was being shut down prematurely. It was going to be shut down in 2025.

1:03:06When I started looking into Diablo Canyon, the reason why I chose to focus on it, because there were five plants that were about to be shut down, But Diablo Canyon was my focus because, A, the symbolic element of it, like, wow, this is like the symbol of the anti-nuclear movement. How cool would it be if we switched this decision to prove that sentiment is changing? But then also just looking at California and knowing that, you know, there was an energy crisis. There were very bold clean electricity targets, like 100 % clean electricity. and there were also electric vehicles mandate, which means that they want to increase the amount of electric vehicles in California, which is a great thing.

1:03:49Right, but you need the energy to power them. But you need the energy to power them. From a sort of centralized source. And when do people charge their electric cars? At night. When is the sun not shining? At night. And so you need some sort of source of energy that is providing that electricity through the night. And you can do that with solar and batteries, even though we're very far from, you know, achieving, having the amount of batteries necessary to provide that. And, you know, this power plant is there. It's built. It's operating safely. It employs 1 ,500 people with high-paying, stable jobs.

1:04:22Why are we shutting this down? So it seemed to me like there was a possibility just because of all the things that I just mentioned. You know, the changing public perception, the electric vehicle mandate, energy crisis. and I reached out to a bunch of people who were nuclear advocates and they all said, oh, it's a done deal, don't even try. A lot of people died on that hill. And then I ended up finding some like-minded crazy people. Not crazy, but just like-minded. Dedicated, right? Willing to put a lot of effort in for what seems like a low probability of success. Yeah, very low probability. I think when we started, I would have said there was like a 10 % chance.

1:05:00But it felt important enough, even if it was just a conversation starter around why are we shutting down nuclear power plants. And I made a video about it, about Diablo Canyon and in it I talk about San Onofre which was another nuclear power plant in California it was shut down earlier. It was fully replaced by natural gas even though the promises at the time was it was going to be fully replaced by renewable energy, blah blah blah. They always say the same thing. And it's always replaced by fossil fuels because it's the easiest cheapest. is. So one thing I want to touch on a bit is the topic of activism.

1:05:35Because, you know, obviously, historically, activism has done, achieved so many great things, you know, civil rights movement, gay rights movement, animal welfare, environmental change, you know, all obviously positive things that probably wouldn't have happened had, you know, a small group of people taken on personal risk to put themselves out there and challenge the status quo. But at the same time, and maybe again, it's like kind of like a kids these days thing is just a sign of me getting old. But I can't help but feel that it's kind of gotten like co-opted or, you know, starting to move into a less than optimal direction.

1:06:20Like there was that TV show recently called The Activist. Did you see this? No, I didn't see it. Oh my God. The premise was that they had three judges. Um, one of them was Asha, the musician, uh, Priyanka Chopkra, the, the actress, and then another actress. And they, it was basically a competition, you know, a reality show of who could be the best activist, but instead of judging them on reasonable things like, you know, how they selected their cause in the first place, or what was the actual impact they made on the thing that they're trying to solve, or even how much money they raised. Instead, their metric was literally that.

1:07:03How many followers did they get? How many retweets did they get? And also then the random judges, the impressions by the judges, who I'm sorry, I'm sure they're great people, Usher and Priyanka Pachopka, but they are not experts in philanthropy by any stretch. So that seems like an example of how this concept of being an activist has sort of become, and to an extent, I guess, becoming like an influencer is like, it's gotten corrupted in some way from its original intention. So like, what do you think is going on there? You know, What's your experience as, because technically, would you consider yourself an activist?

1:07:46The whole time you're speaking, I'm thinking about myself, not because I'm selfish, but because I'm thinking about my experience. And what I would say is that I think they're different things. And maybe it's just because we don't have another word to use. But the activists you're talking about, in my opinion, are ideas activists. There are people who are spreading some idea, raising awareness about something, but they're just spreading that information, which I think is a valuable thing because without that idea, you can't act on it. But an activist, in the way I think about it, in the way you think about it, is someone who, you know, goes door to door and organizes some form of protest or action around a cause and has some result with that.

1:08:38Even if it's negative, like you go through the motions of like, you know, community organization and creating events, creating petitions, calling the representatives, engaging with politicians. So I see those as two different things. I think that in our social media age, the other one has become more influential in a way, but also more, it's just easier. It is much easier to share ideas on a social platform than it is to try and get people to go rally for your cause. And to me, those are completely different things. But I think one feeds into the other, for sure. Because I think that without the social awareness, without people being concerned with that problem to begin with, You can't really galvanize people to mobilize around something.

1:09:36Right, and it's like a necessary part of the game. Exactly. The game has changed, and frankly, you probably can't make huge social change without getting a hashtag going. You probably can't. But then that comes with all the baggage that there will be a lot of people who sort of latch onto that. And this is probably going to get me in trouble for saying, but it is just true that some problems are bigger than others. some problems are more urgent than others, some problems are actually more solvable than others. And when we're in a world where everyone feels, you know, understandably people want to like make a difference to something, the whole sort of space becomes so saturated that perhaps that's where there's sort of this like eye rolling that comes about when people are like, I'm an activist or whatever.

1:10:25I sense that there's like becoming a sort of backlash. a backlash is starting to emerge against people who are actually like trying to do good which is a shame and it's really sad and um yeah i want to like understand how we can minimize that and i guess like how one can sort of well that this this then actually leads to my next point which is like it seems like stunt-based activism is is becoming more and more of a thing right we've got people throwing tomato soup over vince and vanco and and like they just climate change activists just poured like black dye in that ancient Roman fountain. And it's a kind of a double-edged sword, right?

1:11:03Because they get in the front page of the news. Like that's, if your goal is to raise awareness, then that's, that is job well done. But at the same time, especially with a topic like climate change, everyone's heard of it, right? That's, that's where I was going to say, like, I think their strategic mistake was that nobody who saw those news were like, what, climate change is a thing? Yeah, like, oh my God, tell me more. Never heard of it, tell me more. They were just annoyed. They were just like, why are you doing this? This makes no sense. So I think that was their mistake. But if they were to like, imagine if it was a guy throwing soup at something, at some art piece, and then saying, AI is going to kill us all.

1:11:46Like that would have been maybe more impactful because not everyone is thinking about that. But, you know, then you have obviously the outcome that potentially a lot of people, not to give any ideas, right? But you have the outcome, the bad outcome of potentially a lot of people just being annoyed and just being more resistant than to hearing what you have to say. Because they're like, you could have said that differently. But you know what? I don't know that you could. You remember, what's the name of that group of women that used to go naked and protest? Oh, the Femin. Femin. Yes. Femin, yeah.

1:12:28What were they actually protesting specifically? I think it was like animals, abuse, and a bunch of different stuff. Women's rights. They protested a bunch of different stuff, but Femin. And that works. People like to look at boobs. it makes it into the news. And it's like, people will pay attention to it. Now, does that mean they're going to join your cause? I don't know. I don't know if that works. But it does work in the sense that even if it's just like one word that sticks to your mind, like let's say AI, you're going to have the concept of like, oh, some people think AI is a danger. Even if you don't immediately join, you're being exposed to that idea.

1:13:15Right. That you would otherwise have never heard. Yeah. Yeah, it seems like such a sort of difficult trade-off because at the same time, if everyone now starts, you know, leaning into sort of stunt-based activism for their cause. Well, then it just doesn't become... Exactly. It becomes like a race to the bottom of just doing like increasingly crazier and crazier shit in order to get headlines. And that's happening already with content. Yes. You know, if you're following online, there's some guy in England, I think, getting in trouble, rightly so, because he goes into, like, he will walk into somebody's home and start being threatening to them and whatever.

1:13:53Right. And that's what happens, right? You have to become more and more absurd. And I'm sure you notice with social media as well, there's this pressure to just say more and more radical things because that's what gets... It's a classic Moloch problem. Yes. Yeah, so it's like I will do the short-term winning thing, which in this case is like a hyper-dramatic thing to capture a little piece of the attention pie more than someone else. But then that forces the next person to do something even more and something more and we end up in this negative spiral. I wonder though if like a sort of critical, you know, because these things tend to move in cycles a little bit and I wonder if this particular process might stop because enough people start to get annoyed with it that it will become like a counter-signaling thing to be like, actually, my activism is done purely by long-form blogs.

1:14:44My activism is done by behind-the-scenes conversations. I don't know if that will ever be sufficient given that the landscape, you know, so much of our economy is now tied to attention through the digital space. I don't know if it'll ever be possible to sort of supersede that. I think not, and I think it depends on what you're trying to do. What advice would you give to someone who, has a cause that they are feeling that people are not paying enough attention to, that they, you know, for them to start out as an activist, to raise attention to it, but in a way that doesn't make them become part of the same like Moloky game.

1:15:23It's unfortunate because I do think that social media is the most powerful tool for activism, in a way, at least for the type of activism that I do, which is, you know, trying to change minds. so the ideas activism right not the action based activism because it's free people are on it like even you and I we're talking bad about it but we're we spend a lot of time on social media and that's how we consume our information nowadays if you think about TV we watch TV you watch shows and movies but you're not watching the things in between so you're basically consuming all of your information through social media nowadays and if you're on social media I have the view that you're either a creator or an observer and you can be an observer that's fine but you're just consuming other people's ideas instead of spreading your own so I I think everybody should everybody who has an idea they want to spread it should use social media for sure and then for the action based activism that is a different beast and it's the opposite of social media It's like you have to go into communities and you have to befriend people and you have to make alliances and you have to keep interacting with them and showing excitement and getting them excited about your cause.

1:16:42So excited that the day you need them to write a letter or call somebody, show up, they're going to show up because they're excited about it. So they're almost completely different skill sets. And I think that not everybody has the capacity to do both. I'm much more on the ideas activism camp in terms of my abilities. I had to learn how to do some of the other things. But just knowing what your abilities are, you can think about which one you want to go. And then there is long-form writing. But still, that's going to be disseminated through social media. So you're still not getting away from social media altogether.

1:17:19Or let's say the internet instead of social media, because you can do newsletters and so on. I just don't see how anybody can grow nowadays without social media. Handing out their audience. Exactly. Did you run into any surprising competitiveness from other people in the space? Are you laughing? No. Yeah, I did. Of course, it happens. I think that my advantage is that I don't get any money from the nuclear industry. And so we're not actually competing for those resources, for the people who do get money. Some of them don't, some other activist groups. But I'm mostly self-funded. I'm self-funded.

1:18:01I mean, there's like small donations that come in through my nonprofit. So I'm not actually competing for the resources, financial resources. I guess I am competing for the attention and so on. But I've done a pretty good job at befriending people. I like to work together. In the rally that I put for Diablo Canyon that I organized for it, I worked with all the different non-profits here. And we had a great experience. And it's truly, I don't think there's almost a better example of a win-win situation. Totally. Where, yes, the only thing you're really competing for is the only scarce resource essentially here that you're competing for is attention.

1:18:45but if actually, same as I mentioned in poker, if some new person comes along and creates a bunch more attention to nuclear energy that existing influencers couldn't have created just by themselves, that's more people now to come in and be also interested and see your stuff and so on. It's like, I was talking to someone, I remember I was going to, I nearly wrote a book on poker thinking and I sort of started doing it and then this other girl who's a professional writer came along and she was like, oh I'm really interested in poker I'm going to write a book on poker thinking and I was like that's my idea but she made a really good point she's like no and I mentioned to her I was like well actually I was going to do one she's like oh great please do it at the same time because actually if both books come out at the same time it's going to be more of a like zeitgeist essentially and it's going to people will be like oh it's a thing to think about poker thinking oh I want to chances are they'll end up actually buying both and I was like that was a real sort a light bulb moment for me.

1:19:42It was Maria Konnikova. She's really, really cool. People should read her books. And it was like a light bulb moment for me. I was like, wow, that's actually a thing that can happen. Someone else coming in will raise more attention to the thing that you're already doing. And this cross-pollination is so key. And yeah, that's how people change their minds on the subject. It's not because they read one piece or one book or watched one TED Talk. It's several coming from very different people, from people who explain it in very different ways. You know, you change your mind. I don't know the science behind this.

1:20:18I'm sure there's research on this. But even if you think about advertising on Instagram, you know, I'm advertised all the time, certain products. And there are brands that are constantly advertised to me. And I'll see their products, I'm like, no. And then I'll buy on the like 20th time that I see the product. So there is something about, you know, You have to be exposed to something several times before you make that decision. And I feel like it's the same with an idea. You have to be exposed to it from different... Yeah, nobody who is interested in a topic is only going to read one thing. You're going to search all different types of content around it.

1:20:52So I think that's a good point. But still, I feel like the first impulse is to be annoyed. But that's okay. I think that's like, going back to our previous part of the conversation, if we all understand that that's normal and everybody has it, It's the way you decide to engage with it and then what your actions are after it that matters. So if you're like, oh, I'm annoyed, but I guess, you know, I'm going to support this person because it's better for everybody, then great. So one thing just to finish up, I'd love to chat about a little bit because, you know, it's just crazy, really. You've become a mom since, you know, in the last year.

1:21:31You went from my friend that was the same as me. we were the same and now all of a sudden you have this little human that you made and you are now responsible for is it as crazy as you expected it to be? is it less crazy? is it weirder? I don't like talking about motherhood for one simple reason and it's because there's nothing interesting that I can say about it that hasn't been said before because all the cliches are true you've never experienced this love before or it only gets better, it's, you know, it will make you the happiest, you'll feel so, all of that is true. The only thing I say, I always tell people that I found was different because I hadn't heard it before in those words, is that I had so much fear around losing myself, around losing my freedom, losing my time, losing my interests.

1:22:29I thought, what if I just don't care about my cause? What if I don't care about making my content and doing the activism work that I'm doing? What if that just goes away and I just want to become a mom? Which can happen and happens to some people. And that's also fine, by the way. If that's what you want to do now, then great. Right, because in that moment you'll actually want to do that. And so you'll be happy. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with it. It was just my fear, being the person that I am. And my experience so far has been just the opposite of What it feels like is basically you add layers to yourself.

1:23:10So you become a deeper person that can experience deeper emotions. And you can, you just have like a whole other layer of personality, of emotions, of everything. And that is really cool. Just as like a human experience point of view, right? that, oh my God, if I didn't have kids, I would have gone my whole life without experiencing these things that I do experience as a parent. And I would never know what loving a child feels like, which is very different from everything else. I can't even try to describe it in the same way that I can try to describe contractions. It's just like a different thing that you've never experienced.

1:23:54It's like, remember when we started testing for COVID and they would put that into your brain. You can't really describe that experience because you've never experienced it before. It's the same thing. It's like, wow, this is a very weird sensation, very unpleasant. But with loving a child, it's like, oh my God, this is just a cool human emotion. And I love experiencing that. But it is very hard. And I always tell people this because I feel like I didn't fully understand. I don't think anybody can fully understand and how hard it is until you're there. In terms of what? Sleep deprivation? Sleep deprivation, just your body, especially if you gave birth, your body is going through so much hormonally and then just also physically recovering from birth.

1:24:40Right, it's so crazy that the most probably physically traumatic thing that a woman's body goes through, it then doesn't even get a chance to heal. It has to go straight into giving literal life energy out of it into this little creature. and never sleeping. Never sleeping, yes. Probably not really getting to like, you know, healing is slowed down, everything. Yeah. Like what the hell nature? I know, it is a very, it's very weird that we did evolve in that way. Basically humans and whales are the only two species where females go through menopause and live, keep living. So one explanation is that, you know, your mom or your aunt or whatever older females would help you in that stage, which makes sense.

1:25:27Because I don't see, I can't imagine a woman, you know, giving birth alone in the middle of the jungle, a female human, how it would possibly survive without a network of help. Even with just the father is still not enough. Right, you need the maternal wisdom as well, like, you know, grandmas and so on. Like, yeah, why are they still around? It seems like, and yeah, from like what I'm gathering to the point, you know, if I have a child at any point, like it seems like you want your parents around. You want as much as possible. You want as much family support. Did you make a decision like, okay, after this amount of time, I'm going to go back into work?

1:26:08Or have you sort of like let it evolve as much as possible? I wanted to take three months, four months off. Just like off, no calls. I ended up being able to do like three and a half and then I started taking calls but it was mostly because I missed that intellectual stimulation of just like having conversations that weren't related to raising a tiny human but that's just because I'm fueled by that so I started doing calls and now still my child is my priority so if there is anything that I have to do that will be in conflict with something that is important to the baby, I won't do it. It's been super gratifying so far.

1:26:53I feel like if you take a big picture view of life, if I think about 20 years from now, I don't think I'll ever regret spending time with my child, spending too much time with my child. But I would most likely regret if I felt like, I'm not spending enough time with him. I'm just focusing more on the work. I do feel like I would have more regrets. And that's arguably what your, you know, your work is about safeguarding the future. Yeah. What is the point in doing that if you're not going to then live in the moment with the person who, you know, you're building this for? Right, exactly. So thanks for listening, everyone.

1:27:31And huge thanks to Isabel for being such an open book. Do go check out her stuff. I've linked to all her socials below. I highly recommend going on a binge of her videos. They're super short, very funny. and of course if you enjoyed this episode please share please subscribe you know how it works we've got to play that game and till the next time uh may all your lives be full of win-wins does that make me a win-win influencer uh yes i am i officially say i am one i'm gonna end this now see you next time