Future Tense Fiction: Who Gets to Escape the Climate Crisis?

Slate Technology

Slate

Society & Culture, Technology, History

4.6 • 636 Ratings

🗓️ 24 June 2023

⏱️ 74 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

On this month’s episode of Future Tense Fiction, host Maddie Stone talks to Matt Bell about his short story “Empathy Hour.” In the story’s climate-change-ravaged future, society’s wealthiest are whisked away to luxurious, self-contained cities. Once there, they entertain themselves with a carefully crafted reality show meant to assuage their guilt about the climate refugees they’ve left behind. But then, someone breaks into their airbrushed world, lifting the lid on what hides underneath it. After the story, Matt and Maddie discuss the promises and pitfalls of climate fiction–and why we want to feel empathy, but never too much. Guest: Matt Bell is the author of several books, including the novel Appleseed, a New York Times Notable Book of 2021. He is a professor of creative writing at Arizona State University. Story read by Josh Bloomberg Podcast production by Tiara Darnell You can skip all the ads in Future Tense Fiction by joining Slate Plus. Sign up now at slate.com/plus for just $15 for your first three months. Check out AWS Insiders here: https://link.chtbl.com/awsinsiders?sid=podcast.futuretensefiction Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Future Tense Fiction, a podcast featuring stories about how technology could change tomorrow.
0:08.0	I'm Maddie Stone.
0:10.0	In the coming decades, hundreds of millions of people may be displaced by the rising seas, worsening droughts, and extreme weather associated with climate change.
0:20.0	Of course, some people will still be living fairly stable lives,
0:24.5	watching it all unfold from the comfort of their homes.
0:28.7	15-minute empathy hours were my idea.
0:32.5	The show used to go a full 60, but it turns out people want to feel, but not too long, not too much.
0:39.5	The show got shorter, but the name stuck. And why not? Afterward, you remembered having
0:45.3	cared for the whole hour. And so many of us like having cared more than we like the act of caring.
0:53.5	On today's episode,
0:55.4	we're bringing you a reading of Empathy Hour by Matt Bell.
0:58.8	Afterward, Matt joins me to talk about climate change, propaganda,
1:02.4	and balancing utopia and dystopia in sci-fi.
1:06.8	That's all coming up on Future Tense Fiction.
1:10.2	Stay with us.
1:13.6	I made you think you wish me. My name is Caden Sinclair. Some people call us American royalty.
1:24.6	We were liars. A new series on Prime Video.
1:28.0	We were happy.
1:29.0	We wanted for nothing.
1:31.0	Based on the best-selling novel.
1:33.8	Something terrible happened last summer,
1:36.0	and I have no memory of what or who hurt me.
	...

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