Hello and welcome back to Drilled. I'm Amy Westervelt. We have a new season coming for you starting June 3rd.

But in the meantime, I wanted to bring you this interview that reporter Adam Lowenstein did with journalist and author Malcolm Harris.

You may have come across Harris's work in New York Magazine or his book, Palo Alto.

I particularly enjoyed his take on the abundance pros recently in The Baffler.

Harris has a new book out now called What's Left that tackles how we can save both democracy and the planet.

It's a great read and this conversation is a great listen. Enjoy.

Thank you. Thanks for being here, Malcolm.

Yeah, thanks for having me here.

So I wanted to ask you to start, I have my own theory of this, but I'm curious what you see as the purpose of your book.

Oh, I want to hear your theory. I should hear it before I hear my theory, then you're going to copy me.

When I set out to write this book, at first I thought,

I'm going to write about why I'm right and everyone else is wrong. Everyone who even sort of agrees

with me is wrong. And they all need to completely agree to me with me. And I have the only

explanation for how we get through the climate crisis. And when people read

my brilliant explanation, they'll have no choice but to agree with me in my understanding.

And then I thought about that for a second and thought, like, well, that's not true.

Like, that won't happen. Even if I make a spectacular argument, I could convince, people, but most people are probably doing what they're doing.

Even people on the left, as I'm broadly considering it, who don't agree with me on specifics, are doing what they're doing for a number of reasons, not just because they're particularly convinced, but because they have a temperamental affinity with what they're doing. They have, like,

interpersonal commitments. You know, people, we live in a society, you know, and I wasn't going to

remake that society by making an argument. And so I decided the most useful thing I could do

was operating from some base of shared understanding

give a sort of showcase of what I think are the relevant ideological paths that the left has open to it right now.

...