Hello and welcome to Outrage and Optimism. I'm Tom Rivikarnak. I'm Christiana Figueres. And I'm Paul Dickinson, wondering what Christiana's done with her. Introductuary comment, it's changed. I think she's still giddy from the ICJ opinion from last year, so I think that was going to be a... Ah, so it's a kind of... Okay, ecstatic trauma.

Yeah, last week, last week. Last week, sorry. Yeah, I was going to say, I'm Christiana Figuettas, barely coming down from the cloud here. Well, we can help you, because this week we're talking about the latest climate news from the US, so that should help you come down from it. Plus, we have an exclusive

conversation with actress and singer-songwriter Maggie Baird from backstage at her daughter,

Billy Elish's Plant Bass Music Tour. Thanks for being here.

Okay, so last week was an amazing episode and what an incredible piece of reaction to a world-changing news item on the ICJ, but we are sadly... Even though there's no global police force to enforce it, even though we have to recognize that there's a, you know, it's a, it's not the answer to everything, but it's the platform for an answer to everything. It's the platform for an answer, and we've got to start somewhere. So it was huge progress, but this week we are going to turn back to sadly one of the countries

that is creating most of the friction in our collective attempt to deal with the climate crisis

and that is the United States under President Donald Trump, who right now as we're recording this,

it is golf courses in Scotland continuing to work away on these transatlantic trade deals. Can I just say one thing about him being in Scotland? Did you see our Prime Minister, Sir Keir Stahner, sort of saying, this is such a lovely golf course, and this is such a wonderful room? I've seen more and more sort of kind of world leaders, just looking kind of weirdly sort of frightened of the child with a machine gun that is the US president. Anyway, I digress. I do agree with that. Although I was, and maybe I have to set the bar too low, but I did, I was watching the press conference where Trump was going off about what a terrible person, Sadiq Khan, former guest on this podcast is. And Kirstama said, actually that guy's my friend and he's all right. So, you know, maybe that's too low to be impressed with something. No, good for Kirstarman. Just before we come on to the actual sort of big climate change related news, you know, I'm not a vampire, but some kind of stake went through my heart. When Stephen Colbert said that the late show was ending in the US in 10 months' time, He carried me through Trump 1. Unfortunately, I didn't

stop watching him during Biden. And so, as I said, the meds don't work so well, but he's been

carrying me through Trump too. You know, there is apparently a plausible case that the economics

of the show didn't work very well, but it was also linked to-

I doubt that. Carry on. Well, I agree with you, Christiana, but it was also linked to... I doubt that.

Carry on.

Well, I agree with you, Christiana, but I'm forced to...

There was a sort of reasonably independent analysis.

Somebody said that that could be a reason.

I agree with you.

The real question is why weren't the cuts made earlier and all the rest of it all could have been fixed?

But the point is the character of the United States of America that I love is being able

to talk truth to power. Stephen Cobbett embodied that for me. And the fact that he moves out of that

public position is a tragedy in the current form. But I think that, you know, the power of comic

insight to challenge power is like

...