Behind the podcast “How We Got Here”
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When asked what his job is, award-winning environmental poet Craig Santos Perez usually says he “teaches reading and writing.”what made him arrive However, this work is not an easy answer. When he was 15, Perez moved with his family from Guam to California. Poetry became a space where he could navigate his nostalgia, his cultural identity as an indigenous Chamoru, and his burgeoning climate anxieties. More than 20 years later, he is now an American Book Award winner and a professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
Perez’s career path is just one of many explored through the podcast,”how we got here,” co-hosted by climate scientists Stephanie Spera and Rachel LupienThe podcast, which wrapped its first season in March, aims to showcase the breadth of work in the climate movement and the nonlinear decision-making that often guides workers. The result is a hopeful series highlighting the many ways one person can contribute to addressing climate change, with the aim of inspiring and empowering others to get involved.
Before it became a podcast, however, “How We Got Here” was an idea born of despair.
From class to podcast
In spring 2021, Spera will teach an introductory course in the Department of Geography and Environment at the University of Richmond. Like many college introductory classes, it takes place at nine in the morning. In the pandemic era of remote learning, she can feel it starting to drag on.
Climate scientists Rachel Lupien and Stephanie Spera are co-hosts of the “How We Got Here” podcast. Lupien is a postdoctoral research scientist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.
“I just kept thinking, ‘How can I stop my students from being hell on earth?'” she said. “How can I keep them engaged, so it’s not just me talking to the black box ether on Zoom?”
Spera decided to reach out to her professional network — “cool friends who do cool things” — and asked them to talk to her students about what they (actually) do at work, and what they (actually) do what to get there. If nothing else, she thought, it would bring a new face to the screen. By the end of the semester, the open invitation was turned into a special weekly lecture series—her students overwhelmingly rave about their end-of-course surveys.
“My students are passionate about the climate crisis,” Spera said, “and I realized that no one really gave them the time or space to think about how to help solve this problem.” To serve a wider audience, Spera reached out to Lupien (mentioned above). One of the “cool friends”) co-hosted a podcast, and soon after, “How We Got Here” launched.
From graduate student to co-host
Spera and Lupien first met as graduate students at Brown University, where they became close friends through a shared pursuit of climate science and an unparalleled enthusiasm for the biannual prom. When Spera considered what it might look like to venture into the “severely oversaturated” podcast space, she said Lupien was the most obvious choice for a partner.
“When I pitched the idea to her, we were all intoxicated,” Spera said, “and she immediately gave it the time and support it needed. She’s just one of the smartest and most likeable people I know. .”
For the past three years, Lupien serve as a paleoclimatologist At Columbia Climate Institute’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, study how climate change about 25 million years ago affected early human evolution across Africa. It’s a job most people have never heard of before — not unlike many jobs on podcasts.
“It can be really hard to deviate from the more ‘classical occupations’ that are portrayed in the media or familiar to our families,” Lupien said. “One of our goals was to show that it’s possible to get out of this — not knowing what you’re doing — — as long as you enjoy and be with yourself on the go.”
In many ways, Spera and Lupien embody this advice through their podcast productions. At the beginning of How We Got Here, none of them had any podcasting experience. They iterated as they did—tightening up episode introductions, improving interview questions, and hiring an audio intern after realizing the importance of good sound quality.
Spera and Lupien interview Angie Patterson,shotgun scientist‘ and climate communicators.
Both Spera and Lupien have spent their careers in academia, and they (like their audience) are newcomers to the world of work for their guests. Their show invite list starts with identifying areas they want to know more about, then expands to a master spreadsheet, systematized the way you might expect two people with PhDs in science. Over the course of the first season, they’ve also grown more candid about their career difficulties, including Lupien’s real-time job search at the time and Spera’s interest in turning to something completely different from her current role.
“I realize there’s a lot of possibilities out there,” Spera said, “and, maybe like someone listening to our podcast, I’m trying to figure out what I want to do next.”
From podcasts to sports builds
Climate change is of overwhelming scale and complexity, a problem that no job or career path can address, and part of what Spera and Lupien hope to achieve by continuing to produce How We Got Here is to democratize what it means to contribute .
“We all have unique talents, skills and voices that we can make a difference in in very specific ways,” Lupien said.
The first season of the podcast proved this, featuring the work of a variety of climate professionals: forest ecologists, policy executives, and clean energy professionals decarbonizing the cryptocurrency industry, among others.
That’s not to say there aren’t straight lines to their career paths, though. The importance of developing strong communication skills has been mentioned many times, as has the changes a supportive mentor can make – something Lupien thinks of often in her capacity as a graduate student mentor. The guests also had a strong commitment to climate action.
“Even though we see them make different decisions based on their life experiences, their motivations are the same,” Spera said.
Lupien’s cat, Tina, makes an occasional cameo on the show.
Spera and Lupien are already brainstorming who they can invite on the second season of the podcast, which is expected to air this fall. Potential guests include venture capitalists, musicians, climate justice activists and mechanical engineers. Regardless of the lineup, though, Spera believes she’ll learn just as much — if not more — than she did the first time.
“When I feel like the world is a dumpster fire, I talk to someone about why it’s worth fighting for,” she said. “I know all these people are using their skills to make the world a better place, myself. The enthusiasm has been rekindled.”
“How We Got Here” is available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts as well as “How We Got Here” website.
