fauci. then -- >> you want to be on the side of dr. king or george wallace? you want to be on the side of john lewis or bull connor? this is the moment to decide. >> senator cory booker on the president's rousing call to protect democracy, and academy award winning filmmaker adam mccay on the untrungsal truth in his new hit, don't look up. >> you know how many the world is ending meetings we had over the last two years. >> drought, famine, so boring. >> "all in" starts right now. >> good evening from new york. i'm chris hayes. during this pandemic, dr. anthony fauci has become a strange point of fixation. even obsession on the right, and it's among those who see him as a kind of stand-in, a punching bag for the pointy headed public health officials who want to tell you how to live your life. even gone so far as to compare him to a dictator and a murderer. >> after two years of nonstop media adulation, tony fauci has morphed into a shorter version of benito mussolini. >> this is what people say to me, he doesn't represent science to them. he represents joseph mengola, the nazi doctor who did experiments on jews. >> hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to fund deadly speerpts on puppies in tunisia. >> what we learned is dr. fauci is sending puppies to slaughter basically. >> today, dr. fauci was on capitol hill, testifying on the federal government's response to the omicron variant, as we see a massive spike in cases around the country. and i think fair to say, a profound sense of frustration and exhaustion with the ongoing pandemic. dr. fauci has testified in front of congress many times, and by now, we expect him to face hostile questions from republicans. there's one republican who seems to have a particular ubscission with dr. fauci. senator rand paul of kentucky. it's a bit weird and obsessive, but every time dr. fauci comes to testify, senator paul tries to knock him down over and over again. >> i think dr. fauci routinely ignores the science and creates fear. this is the opposite of what you really want as far as someone leading your public health effort. >> do you still support funding of the nih funding of the lab in wuhan? >> senator paul, with all due respect, you are entirely and completely incorrect. >> dr. fauci, i don't expect you today to admit that you approved of nih funding for gain of function research in wuhan. but your repeated denials have worn thin and a majority of americans frankly don't believe you. you won't admit it's dangerous. i think it's time you resign. >> today in the hearing before the health education labor and pensions committee, rand paul's attacks took a new turn as he accused dr. fauci of trying to silence other scientists. >> do you really think it's appropriate to use your $420,000 salary to attack scientists that disagree with you? >> the email you're referring to was email of dr. collins to me, if you look at the email -- >> that you responded to and hurried up and said i can do it. we have something in wired magazine. >> no, no, i think in usual fashion, senator, you are distorting everything about me. >> did you ever object to dr. collins' characterization of -- did you write back and say they're not fringe, they're esteemed scientists and it would be beneath me to do that. >> you responded you would do it and immediately got an article in wired and said look, i got them, i nailed them in wired, of all scientific publications. >> there you go again. you just do the same thing every hearing. >> okay, before we get into what happened after that, and again, senator paul comes up with all sorts of things. a lot happened today. we'll play you that, but take a step back for a second. let's understand, dr. anthony fauci has been on the receiving end of many attacks. he's been around the block a few times. for nearly 40 years he's been the director of the national institute of allergy and infectious diseases. that salary rand paul mentioned is because he has so much seniority he accrued in the government pay scal. 40 years. he was appointed to the role in 1984. in the early years of the aids epidemic. he was also then the target of some very angry public criticism at the time, because dr. fauci had become the public face of the federal government's response to that crisis. to that deadly virus. in october of 1988, aids activists protested at the food and drug administration headquarters and outside of dr. fauci's office at the national institutes of health. protesters chanted, fu fauci. that same year, larry kremer, one of the founders of two activist groups, a legend himself, published this open letter to dr. fauci in the village voice in which he calls fauci a, quote, incompetent idiot, and quote, a murderer. kremer told the new yorker, as far as i was concerned, he was the central focus of evil in the world. kremer attacked fauci relentlessly in the media. he called him a pill pushing tool of the medical establishment, insulted his wife, even compared him to adolph aikman. now, here's the thing. kremer and fauci would eventually go on to become close friends. with fauci telling "the new york times" after kremer's death in 2020 that they, quote, loved each other. but nothing changed overnight. in may of 1990, hundreds of activists from act up descended on the national institutes of health again. they launched rainbow colored smoke, wore skelcon masks and wore signs that said red tape kills us. they even put a fake dr. fauci head on a spike, there. so all of this to say anthony faucistranger to public criticism. he's a big boy. it's something that comes with the territory, something that all public officials have. that's what life in a democracy is. two years ago, dr. fauci and his family started receiving security protection, the armed security detail as a result of increasing online attacks. those attacks have only gotten worse with the pandemic and the right's obsession. today on capitol hill took a different turn. dr. fauci shared a specific and terrifying story about one of those very real threats. after senator rand paul relentlessly attacked him. >> what happens when he gets out and accuses me of things that are completely untrue is that all of a sudden that kindles the crazies out there and i have threats upon my life, harassment of my family and my children, with obscene phone calls because people are lying about me. now, you know, i guess you could say, well, that's the way it goes. i can take a hit. well, it makes a difference because as some of you may know, just about three or four weeks ago on december 21st, a person was arrested who was on their way from sacramento to washington, d.c. at a speed stop in iowa. and they asked the police -- the police asked him where he was going. he was going to washington, d.c. to kill dr. fauci. and they found in his car an ar-15 and multiple magazines of ammunition. because he thinks that maybe i'm killing people. >> so as i mentioned before, this has been an ongoing pattern, and it's not just dr. fauci. there's lots of people that once they get into the scopes of the right-wing machine, they have a security problem. dr. fauci, as you see, chief among them. every time fauci comes before the senate health committee, rand paul goes after him. it's often about a different thing each time. it does prompt the question, why is senator paul doing this over and over in such a hostile and performative manner? dr. fauci has figured it out, at least he has a theory, and he shared it with the committee today. >> i asked myself, why would senator want to do this? so go to rand paul website, and you see fire dr. fauci, with a little box that says contribute here. you can do $5, $10, $20, $100. so you are making a catastrophic epidemic for your political gain. >> now, you might think that might instill some shame in rand paul, but no, just hours after the hearing concluded, paul fired -- sent this email literally fund-raising off dr. fauci, calling him out at today's hearing. joining me now, the man on the receiving end of these attacks, been undeterred, dr. anthony fauci, director of the national institute of allergy and infectious diseases and chief medical adviser to president biden. dr. fauci, let's take a step back and talk about your career in public life and your career at the locust of these difficult policy issues having to deal with deadly high-stakes pandemics and epidemics and diseases. i was sort of amazed as we were going through the footage to see your head on a spike outside a protest of nih. i didn't know that it had sort of gotten to that point. is this sort of how it goes? or is there something different now in the nature of our politics, in the nature of the attacks on you that are different than what you experienced before in public life? >> it's entirely different, chris. i mean, back in the activist days, the federal government was not early on including activists, particularly gay activists, those who were at risk for or who had already been living with hiv, in the kinds of discussions for clinical trials and the rigidity of the regulatory process. they made a really good point. they were fundamentally good people who were not lying, they were reacting. they were trying to gain attention. they were very theatrical about it. if you look at that film, most of those people, many of them now, are my closest friends. they are fundamentally people of high integrity who don't lie, who were trying to get the federal government to do things that quite frankly the federal government was slow in doing. and as the face of the federal government, the way they got attention, which was actually a pretty good activist ploy, it succeeded, was to be very iconoclastic, to be provocative, and theatrical. that's what you saw in the clip. they got my attention and i sat down and listened to them because what they said made absolute sense. and we made major changes. they were dignified people. and like i said, many of them are my closest friends right now. what we're having now is outright lies that clearly are in the realm of politics. i mean, the thing i showed at the hearing is very, very true. we were having a hearing today, chris, that was a tough hearing. there were tough questions that were asked on both sides of the aisle. i mean, the democrats clearly, it was not a piece of cake. they were asking very good questions about what the administration was doing. and the republicans themselves led by senator burr, were asking questions that were important, and mitt romney and susan collins and tuberville and others, including senator moran, were there asking tough questions. but what senator paul was doing was not even given anyone a chance to make any explanation. nothing productive or constructive. it was totally ad hominem, literally from the get-go, before you could get a word out of your mouth. that's entirely different than the aids activists from the 1980s. it's fundamentally, fundamentally different. >> you shared the story, and i had read reports about the individual who was arrested with weapons saying they were on their way towards you. you know, senator paul, i think, gave an interview and said that's ridiculous. that has nothing do with me. you can't hold people accountable for what some, you know, violent disordered person is doing. it's irresponsible to paint me with that brush. have you experienced threats like this before or a security situation like this before in your public life given you had a career as long as you have? >> no. no, absolutely not. absolutely not. and all of the situations that we were in, it was trying to get attention to sit down and be able to talk. there was no threats. i went down to the aids activists hub in greenwich village in the gay and lesbian community center to talk about and with the same people that were putting my head on a stake just to get my attention. and they got my attention, and i went and spoke to them. i felt completely safe in that environment. because they were fundamental people who were struggling to get the attention of the government. what you saw at the hearing today was pure ad hominem, and i called him out because that's exactly what he's doing. he's raising money, vote here, you know, paid for by rand paul. fire fauci, he's killing you. he's murdering people. he's doing this, and by the way, donate here. click this box. i mean, if that isn't absolutely proof of what's going on here, i mean, you can't miss that one, chris. >> i want to play another moment today that happened with senator marshall who seemed very focused on your public financial disclosures which are required by law and filed. and there was an exchange over them, where he seemed to think you -- they weren't accessible and they are. you can get them here. here was that exchange. take a listen. >> yes or no, would you be willing to submit to congress and the public a financial disclosure that includes your past and current investments? after all, your colleague dr. walensky and every member of congress submits a financial disclosure that includes their investments. >> i don't understand why you're asking me that question. my financial disclosure is public knowledge and has been so for the last 37 years or so, 35 years. it is totally accessible to you if you want it. >> for the public, is it accessible. >> to the public. >> great. we look forward to reviewing it. >> you are totally incorrect. >> we look forward to reviewing it. >> senator marshall, dr. fauci has answered you. it is public information, and he's happy to give it to you if you ask. senator moran. >> it sounded like you at the end there, dr. fauci, you seemed a little frustrated with that line of inquiry. >> well, you know, chris, it just as an example, again, he was implying, if you listen to the entire dialogue, that in my position responsible for drug trials and having so-called inside knowledge of what drug works and what drug doesn't work, that maybe i was making investments sort of like ahead of the game here. he was totally implying that. and he made the statement that we can't get your financial statement. it was stunning to me that a united states senator doesn't realize that my financial statement is public knowledge. it was just like, where have you been? >> i want to ask a final question here about where we find ourselves. i read your testimony. you talked about the omicron wave today. there's one big question i have, which is we look to south africa and saw the curve. we saw a pretty big divergence between cases and hospitalizations. we saw that in denmark, we saw it in the uk. even in a very vaccinated place, like new york city, we have seen hospitalizations go up. the country is in a record hospitalization. we're not seeing that gap between hospitalization and cases here in the same way we saw in other places. and i wonder how much that worries you and what your theory for why that is, is? >> well, it's complicated, chris. if you look at our cases, there really is, if you look at the difference between vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals, the charts are really, really rather profound. particularly among vaccinated and boosted individuals. where you see the overwhelming majority of the people who are in the hospital and are dying are people who are unvaccinated. it is true that this virus has a phenomenal degree of transmissibility, and the transmissibility means a lot of people are going to get infected. i believe you're going to see, and we're already starting to see that, when you talk anecdotally to the hospitals, they're seeing a lot of people who are getting infected but it appears that the seriousness of it is less. i think once we get through, since it's a big country, and there's different regions with different levels of vaccination, different levels of what we call percentage of already infected individuals, that i believe you're going to see exactly what we have seen in south africa, that you're going to see a big, big gap where this virus even though it's highly infective, for the most part, is not going to be as severe. but, when quantitatively, you get so many people infected, even if the relative proportion of people who are hospitalized is less than with delta, when you have such a volume of people infected, you're going to get a lot of serious disease, which is the reason why we now have something like 145,000 hospitalizations, 1600 deaths, and over a quarter -- three-quarters of a million cases in one day. we can't take this lightly. >> dr. anthony fauci, thank you so much for making time tonight. >> thank you for having me, chris. all right, we have a big show for you tonight. as a fight over the voting rights bill comes to a head, new jersey senator cory booker is here on president biden's ultimatum, call the vote or change the filibuster. how soon until we see action? plus, he brought you the big short, vice, anchorman, and 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consequential moments in history present a choice. do you want to be on the side of dr. king or george wallace? do you want to be on the side of john lewis or bull connor? do you want to be on the side of abraham lincoln or jefferson davis? this is the moment to decide, to defend our elections, to defend our democracy. >> after supporting the filibuster for many years, democratic senator cory booker of new jersey came out against it last march, saying for the sake of our vulnerable populations, the filibuster has to be reformed. he's a co-sponsor of the for the people act as well as the john lewis voting rights act, the two pieces of legislation biden advocated for today, and senator cory booker joins me today. your reaction to today and the speech today and what kind of effect you think the president stepping into this has? >> well, first of all, i think the president recognizes we're at a fundamentally inflection point in our democracy. you have this wave of voter suppression laws that are being passed now, really sourced by the big lie, that somehow the election that trump's own highest administrative officials were saying was free and fair, somehow we need to get these voting laws to fix something that's not broken. and really what they're doing is suppressing the votes of young people, native americans, minorities, disabled folks, and more. so i think joe biden had to go out. i think he gave a tremendous, full-throated endorsement. and does it have an effect? look, you know this as well as i do. this is a personality issue. this is about a lot of individual senators and the decisions that they're going to have to make, and i think in many ways joe biden is a respected guy here in the senate. this is where he came up from. so i'm hoping it makes a difference. >> yeah, i mean, i guess i'm not -- look, everyone is trying to best they can on this and also build back better, right? got a very thin majority. you need all 50 votes to do anything. whether it's to change the rules to get the voting rights legislation or to pass build back better. the math is the math. i'm not missing something, right? sinema and manchin say they won't vote to change the filibuster rules and that's currently the position unless something changes. >> well, an important distinction. build back better, there's arguments over the base bill. we are talking about two voting bills that have 50 democratic senators onboard with them, and senators saying yeah, there are really problematic things with some of the laws that are being passed out there that will make it more difficult for some populations to vote. so we are in agreement with that. the question now is, what do we do with the filibuster? and i think that's what really the grind of the conversations we have been having over these last weeks, many of which i have been in, about can we figure out, is it going to be a carve-out? is there a way to modify the rule? but the idea for most of us is this is the sacrosanct most important right of a democracy. the voting of the people. and we need to make sure that we find a way to get this done. >> when you came out, i mean, there has been progress on this, or at least migration among democratic senators. back when i was 12 years ago during the obama administration when i was covering u.s. senators, they tended to not want to change the filibuster. part of the reason is, it does give each individual senator more power. i mean, just in the sort of mathematical sense, there's fewer of you that need to get together to block stuff. what was your migration, and it does seem like if you take a step back, there's been a lot of movement into the column of we need to do something here. >> i'm going to be honest. i was one of these people that was really afraid. i saw mitch mcconnell, paul ryan, donald trump trifecta, if there's no filibuster, i can only imagine what they would have done. and i was very worried about the most vulnerable populations in america, really, so many americans, what they would have done on the fundamental right of a woman to control her body, for example, so i had a lot of those fears and a lot of those concerns. now, i migrated quickly. one, the history of the filibuster. it's not part of our history, not in the constitution. this is something that flared up and used to stop civil rights legislation, to stop the rights of minorities, and the tact the law has been changed, the filibuster rule, excuse me, has been changed in the '70s, in the '80s. it was changed in 2013. mitch mcconnell changed it to get supreme court justices there. and the other final thing that really pushed me was the fact of how many of the things we're not getting done in this body. the overwhelming majority of americans believe in. take common sense background checks, think roe v. wade, that somehow we're now in a nation where the things that we agree on aren't getting done. and voters knowing that if we get that alignment again of mcconnell, ryan, and trump, they will be more aware that there's even more consequences if we don't engage. i moved a long way, and i'm hoping, and i have loved to see the wisdom of some of my colleagues who moved as well. >> that was what was striking to me about watching joe biden give the speech today. this is a person who is very much a creature of the united states senate, one of the longest serving senators we have had recently. and i think, you know, if you asked him very recently -- he is someone who is very molded and adapted to those norms. it is striking to see him making this call from the lectern as the president towards his former body. >> yeah, look, the filibuster in a long period, early 1900s to like the 1970s, was used on average one time a year. it was a rarely invoked thing. it wasn't invoked in supreme court justices. it wasn't invoked for lot of major pieces of legislation. it began to be abused especially with mitch mcconnell taking the filibuster to a whole new level under barack obama. so tosay that joe biden has changed, the real change you need to point to is the way the modern republican party picked up the filibuster and so abused it to the point now where many of us are saying this is ridiculous. we're stopping some fundamental progress in our country that the majority of people agree with. we need to revisit this filibuster. >> all right, senator cory booker, good to have you on tonight. >> great to be on. thanks. and happy new year to you. >> you, too, man. >> don't go anywhere. my interview with award-winning filmmaker adam mckay about his new netflix phenomenon, don't look up. just ahead. you don't want to miss it. ahead you don't want to miss it. you can be well-mannered. 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"new york times" reports that the committee has been in touch with pence's lawyers since last summer and has been gauging his willingness to speak with investigators. reporting that in recent weeksb pence has grown increasingly disillusions with the idea of voluntarily cooperating. seeing the committee's consideration of criminal referrals for donald trump and others as designed to hurt republican chances of winning control of congress in november. even with all of that obstruction, the committee seems to be moving forward towards laying out the facts and building a case against the ex-president. in plea negotiations, federal prosecutors, people working for the department of justice, recently began asking defense lawyers for some of those charges in the insurrection who were pleaing out if they clients would admit in statements that they stormed the capitol believing truch wanted them to stop pence from certifying the election. chairman thompson told reporters the committee will meet tomorrow, as the committee continues to move forward with the investigation portion of their inquiry, we also know they're preparing for the possibility of televised primetime hearings. a lot going on. right now, they are, of course, working against the clock. with the midterm elections and the strong possibility of a republican takeover in congress looming large, less than ten months. hs more of what you earn. this is the planning effect. you could email an urgent question to lisa in marketing. and a follow up. and a “did you see my email?” text. orrrr... you could see her status in slack. and give lisa a break while you find someone online who can help. for people living with h-i-v, keep being you. slack. where the future works. and ask your doctor about biktarvy. biktarvy is a complete, one-pill, once-a-day treatment used for h-i-v in certain adults. it's not a cure, but with one small pill, biktarvy fights h-i-v to help you get to and stay undetectable. that's when the amount of virus is so low it cannot be measured by a lab test. research shows people who take h-i-v treatment every day and get to and stay undetectable can no longer transmit h-i-v through sex. serious side effects can occur, including kidney problems and kidney failure. rare, life-threatening side effects include a buildup of lactic acid and liver problems. do not take biktarvy if you take dofetilide or rifampin. tell your doctor about all the medicines and supplements you take, if you are pregnant or breastfeeding, or if you have kidney or liver problems, including hepatitis. if you have hepatitis b, do not stop taking biktarvy without talking to your doctor. common side effects were diarrhea, nausea, and headache. if you're living with hiv, keep loving who you are. and ask your doctor if biktarvy is right for you. it's time for our lowest prices of the season on the sleep number 360 smart bed. ifit senses your movements and keepautomatically adjusts to relieve pressure points. and its temperature balancing so you both sleep just right. save up to $1,000 on sleep number 360 smart beds. plus, 0% interest for 36 months when you add an adjustable base. only for a limited time. this is not real. this is not real. this is not real. this isn't happening. okay. tell me this isn't really happening. >> i hear there's something you don't like the looks of. >> we discovered a very large comet. >> oh. good for you. >> it's headed directly towards earth. >> this comet is what we call a planet killer. >> at this exact moment, i say we sit tight and assess. >> sit tight and assess? >> sit tight and -- >> and then assess. the sit tight part comes first and then you have to digest it. that's the assessment period. >> that is part of the trailer from one of the most successful films in netflix history. since it debuted on that streaming platform on christmas eve, don't look up has been viewed tens of millions of times and unlike most movies these days it's become part of the cultural conversation. the movies of satire, it's a bang you on the head allegory for climate change. there's a giant comet on course to destroy earth, and in a few short weeks, it will impact the planet, ending all life as we know it. when two astronomers try to sound the alarm about the impending imminent armageddon, they're met with a resounding shrug. take this scene where they attempt the warn the president, played by meryl streep, of their discovery. >> there will be mile-high tsunamis fanning out all across the globe. if this comet makes impact, it will have the power of a billion hiroshima bombs. there will be magnitude 10 or 11 earthquakes. >> you're breathing weird. it's making me uncomfortable. >> i'm sorry, i'm just trying to articulate the science. >> i know, but it's so stressful. i'm trying to listen -- >> i don't think you understand the gravity of the situation. >> the politicians are too worried about sounding like alarmists to do anything, and what's worst, they're lobbied by big business to not stop the comet because there's a tech billionaire and big donor who is more interested in the economic opportunities it might present. he can mine the minerals on it, as one character puts it quite hilariously, we're for the jobs, the comet is going to provide. sound familiar? it's not just politicians that are incapable of dealing with imminent catastrophe, when the heroes take their pitch to the media, this is how that goes. >> i'm sorry, are we not being clear? we're trying to tell you that the entire planet is about to be destroyed. >> you know, just something we do around here, we just keep the bad news light. >> right. it helps the medicine go down. speaking of medicine, tomorrow, we have -- >> maybe the destruction of the entire planet isn't supposed to be fun. maybe it's supposed to be terrifying. and unsettling. >> please don'ts do that. >> you should stay up all night every night crying. when we're all 100% for sure going to [ bleep ] die. >> the movie paints a damning portrait of humanity's inaction when it comes to giant catastrophes and the movie is punching through the cultural zeitgeist, just in time for the annual reminder of the actual world's biggest threat right now, the nonallegorical catastrophe we're facing. last year was the fifth hottest on record. the last seven years have been the hottest seven years on record. for the sixth year in a row, ocean temperatures were the hottest on record. according to one climate scientist, the oceans have absorbed the heat equivalent to seven hiroshima atomic bombs detonated each second, 365 days a year. that's the climate reality that don't look up forces us to look at, and the man behind the remarkable film, adam mckay, joins me here live, next. joins me here live, next ks... gets a little old. i really should be retired by now. wish i'd invested when i had the chance... to the moon! ugh. unbelievable. ♪ i'm chi lan, i am a mom, and a real estate agent. after having a kid, everything that you used to do for yourself goes out the window. the lines that i was seeing in my forehead were getting deeper than i was used to them being. and i realized, you know, what i can focus again on myself. so, what do you see when you look at yourself? 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>> there's 100% certainty of impact. >> please, don't say 100%. >> can we just call it a potentially significant event. >> 99.7%. >> okay, so not 100%. >> "don't look up" on netflix debuted two weeks ago. a lot of people love it, some hate it, and everyone is talking about it. joining me now, adam mckay. adam, it's very hard to get movies, i think, to break through into cultural conversations these days. for a million different reasons. some of which i think you satirize in the film. are you surprised, gratified, glad to see how much conversation this movie has kicked off? >> i mean, our whole team, we were blown away by the world reaction to this. the movie was always predicated on the idea that we're living in very anxious, uncertain times. and to see hundreds of millions of people respond to that, i've never experienced anything like it. in my entire experience. i've made a lot of movies and a lot of tv shows. so, yeah, it's been pretty incredible. >> talk to me about the allegory. david serota and i were talking about it, a comet is about to hit the earth. tell me about telling a story in a fictional world about climate. >> the whole idea was, i tried to write about four or five different movies. and each one had their limitations. there were some that were dramatic, dystopic, others had a "twilight zone" twist. and david said, it's like "armageddon," and the asteroid is going to hit, and no one cares. and i said, that's it. it's something we can all relate to. and i love that it was funny. i really thought, like, from my experience doing comedy for years, what i've noticed is when 300, 400, 500 people are together and they're laughing, there's a high bar of truth. it's hard to get people to laugh when something is false. if you want to do a joke where the joke is billionaires are taxed too much, good luck with that. because they're really not. and i thought that ultimately, the reality of the comet is going to hit earth, as a metaphor for climate change and a bunch of other realities, like income inequality, corruption in our government, people would identify with that. but i never dreamed the response was going to be this overwhelming. >> and trying to find a way around the dread, in some ways, that's the story of the movie. when she says we're all going to die, and living with that, that part of the problem, and part of the difficulty of truly internalizing on what is bearing down on us from the climate is a natural human allergy to contemplating that. which i think you do a really good job of capturing the film across all players involved in it. when they say, you know, it's not just the media or political types. everyone rebels a little bit when contemplating the end of the earth. >> yeah. the story is so big, what we're confronting now with the end of the livable climate, and we're in the middle of it right now, make no mistake about it. that it challenges the imagination and in fairness to everyone who is resistant to it, or thinks we're overblowing it, or it's just like y2k, this is real, and it's happening now. until four years ago, i was in the group of people that were like, oh, yeah, that's an issue. and it's only because i ran headlong into david wallace wells' book, "uninhabitable earth," or the ipcc reports from the u.n. that i finally got that chill in my bones. and i understood what the climate scientists were feeling, and why they're so emotional and so frustrated. we really are looking at the biggest story and threat to life in human history. and yet i'm not going to lie, i'm way too invested in jennifer lopez and ben affleck hitting it off, and them finally finding happiness. >> i am also rooting for them. i think -- i find it truly and genuinely delightful as a story, i have to say. but that relates, right? because one of the things i think is really sophisticated and funny and powerful about the film is that the first part of it is, getting attention. you and i offline have discussed the difficulties of covering climate, how undercover climate is, right? and we agree on that. but the first part of the movie is, if we can get attention, we can do it. people have to know the comet is coming, and then we'll do something. that's the first hero's quest. then they get the attention, and that doesn't solve it. which leads to sort of a second hero's quest. but the second part is really profound. the warning goes up, the comet is up there, and the way the culture processes information makes it hard to act on. >> yeah. we're in a very strange place right now. we have all this new tech blossoming, but it's also all profitized, they make money off of engagement, misunderstanding, our media makes a lot of money off of us not comprehending and dealing with simple truths. >> yes. >> and by the way, i say this not from some holier than thou spot. you're obviously someone i know and respect, and there's a lot of great journalists who are covering climate change, who are doing really good work. but the truth is, the system is so bizarrely cranked up right now that i just don't know if we have that room to really take in a truth as complex as the collapse of the livable climate. which is happening. make no mistake about it. you saw in kentucky, colorado, the crazy record high temperatures up in alaska that were just off the charts. >> yup. >> and i just read a story the other day where they said that according to new computer models, in eight years, 50% of our days will be 1 out of 100 year heat events. i read this article, and i'm like, where is that? why am i not hearing that in my media? i understand it. stuff is so crazy right now, we're in such a chaos of change that to drop that on people, and then go to a commercial for subway or, you know, the new ford tundra, how does that even make any sense? >> well, and i think, you know, i think the other part of it, too, is, like, what do you do, for the people that do the comet is coming, and we have to get together to stop it. you said this the other day on twitter, which i agree with. it's like, there really isn't the sense of all hands on-deck about this. in the way there has to be. that means, across the spectrum, like, we have to be shutting down coal, we have to be creating crazy moonshots to try to do carbon capture. a lot of things we need to try, all at once, and the full spectrum, it feels like we're just nowhere near close to that. >> yeah. the emotional bandwidth we need to be living in right now, this is me as a non-scientist, i'm sure i only get about 10% of it. this is somewhere between the cuban missile crisis and the initial bombing of london. and we're at, like, don't use aerosol cans because of the hole in the ozone, or y2k. and if you know this in the movie, we take shots at hollywood. which includes me. we take shots at everyone. across the board. we're failing in a tremendous way to convey these truths. and it may simply be a matter of our format is wrong. we may need to do three times longer segments before