I've actually had conversations when gotten to know a lot of the climate scientists like Michael Mann and the Kibb and Bill McKibbin.

And the one question I always ask them, I always say, is it possible we're so far outside the zone of what we know is going to happen,

or so far outside the zone of known science, that there is a trigger moment with all of this.

And one day we do wake up, and there are seagulls flying across the sky, and everything is tipped, and every one of them says, yes.

And that's the scariest thing I've ever, ever heard.

Hello, and welcome to Wise Is Happening with me, your host, Chris Hayes.

Well, I'm fresh back from vacation, the Grand Canyon, and in Sedona and Arizona, which was amazing.

Never been to the Grand Canyon. One of those things that just surpasses any possible hype that you could give it in person.

We're really profound moving spiritual experience.

It was great, got to spend some time in my family. So for today, because I was on vacation, we're going to present you with a very special encore episode, which is one of my favorites that we've ever done.

In some ways, a time capsule from a different world, that different world, of course, being pre-pandemic October 2019, when we had a with pod live tour, which was incredibly fun, which I would love to get back to doing at some point.

So we recorded this conversation at the theater at the A So Tellin' LA, and it's with screenwriter and director Adam McKay, along with novelist Omar Al-Akkad.

And Adam, who I know pretty well, is of course an incredible guy, and has only gotten more famous since we have this conversation.

He's, of course, the writer and director that did Anchorman, Taladek Inaith, the big short vice.

And when we were having this conversation, was in the early stages of working on a movie that would become Don't Look Up, which of course has become this huge cultural force,

that is about, in some ways, what the talks of this conversation are about, about climate, storytelling, and attention.

And if you haven't seen that movie, you really should. So Adam talks about some of these projects in the podcast, and also with us is novelist named Omar Al-Akkad, who is just a completely fascinating dude who wrote this book, American War, that has stuck in my head almost more than any fiction I've read in the last five years.

And I hadn't ever met him in person before, meeting him backstage at the event, but we booked him because I really enjoyed the book.

So the two of us got together in Los Angeles in this great venue at Ace Hotel, and the conversation, the topic really, the reason I booked both of them, and it's even more relevant, I think today than it was then, is how we can use art and pop culture to try to tell the story of the climate crisis, to convey its urgency, to attract attention to it.

Of course, this is, I'm speaking to you just a few weeks after the latest IPCC report, which is, you know, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, that comes out with these reports, that's basically, say, the windows closing, we have seven to 10 years to really definitively like ultra archery, to maintain a world underneath the 1.5 to 2 Celsius degree target,

almost certainly going to be two could be much more, I mean, two is going to be terrible and horrible for a lot of people, 1.5 would still be horrible, better, over two is going to be like, really terrible, and once you start to get up to three and four, you're talking like, you know, does human civilization look recognizable sort of territory.

So, you know, we're also doing it a few days after an individual let himself on fire in Washington DC killed himself as a moment to try to catalyze attention on the climate crisis, and I can, it's very hard for me to sort of think about that action and what it means about attention, because what it is is sort of an act of both conviction and.

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