Hello and welcome to Ways to Change the World, I'm Krishnigeru Murphy and this is the

podcast in which we talk to extraordinary people about the big ideas in their lives and

the events that have helped shape them.

My guest this week is the director, comedian, writer and now perhaps activist Adam McKay.

He's the man behind the Netflix movie Don't Look Up and of course a whole string of

movies before that, vice the big shorts, a load of collaborations with Will Ferrell including

Ankeman and Taladega Knights.

I spoke to him about the climate crisis, climate is the one that just scares me to my

core, it just feels like a big shadow over all of us.

Backlash surrounding his latest movie and the state of US politics, they're doing nothing.

And I think by them doing nothing, they're fueling the extreme right.

Adam Yorker has changed quite substantially, hasn't it, from comedy and stand up and

writing to something akin to activism now.

Well yeah, I mean the funny thing about comedy is that you're always trying to stay in

touch with what's going on in the world.

So early on in my career I was working for SNL, Saturday at Live, the big sketch show

in the States and then I started doing those movies with Will, which you know they're

very silly movies but we were always riffing off of what was going on in culture.

And then at a certain point with the financial collapse it was like whoa, whoa, whoa, something

is going on here.

And all of the sudden all those old comic tropes, all those old riffs didn't really make

much sense.

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