Hello everyone, and welcome to Naked Nuclear and welcome to our
new series, Follow Them Friday, where I highlight the people
doing amazing work in the nuclear space, helping to
educate the public through social media, newsletters,
blogs, books and. Of course, podcasts our. 1st
guest in this series is Zeon Lights.
Zeon is an environmental advocate, science communicator,
and the author of Energy is Life.
Why Environmentalism Went Nuclear, A book that really asks
the hard question. What happens when fear based
climate narratives block the very technologies that allow
humans and ecosystems to thrive? In this episode of Followed Them
Friday, we talk about changing your mind in public, why nuclear
energy is essential to environmental justice, and how
honest energy conversations and storytelling might be the most
radical climate change action we have.
I knew this was more than your average energy book when I read
through the introduction. Here's an excerpt Zion writes.
At 10 years old, wrapped up in my own small dramas and
concerns, I didn't pay much attention to what my parents did
for work. But I do have a vivid memory of
my mother bringing home a stainless steel saucepan and our
family gathering around as if it were a rare and precious jewel.
I remember clearly the smell of the freshly unwrapped pan, mom
lifting it carefully from its nest of paper in a large box for
all to admire in our small kitchen.
I didn't quite know what I felt at the time, only that we were
looking at more than just a saucepan.
I really hope that you enjoyed today's episode with Zeon Lights
because she is an excellent storyteller and environmental
advocate. Thank you so much for joining me
and being able to have this conversation.
Well, thank you for welcoming me.
And so, yeah, it is funny. We were just talking about this
earlier. We had some technical
difficulties in the first time. This is the second time we're
having this conversation. But I think it's it's great
because. Honestly, said welcoming me
again, and then I had to stop myself.
The first conversation was great, and I learned so much
about you and your background. We talked about everything from
what it means to, you know, grow up in a rural community that
does not have access to energy. What are all the downstream
effects? What do people have to become
when they don't have that energy, action access?
And I think that was really something that changed my frame
of thinking after that conversation of like, yeah, what
would my life look like if I didn't have access to, like,
Zoom and running water and energy And like, I don't even
think twice about it. And so just wanted to talk from
that perspective. With your new book, Energy is
Life. Your perspective takes us from
this journey out of rural India, your parents journey into the
UK. And so can you talk about a
little bit about that story and how it kind of shaped your idea
of environmentalism? So my parents grew up in the
rural Punjab in very, I don't want to say it was, it was not
extreme poverty. So it was not at the worst end
even of what I saw when I travelled around India.
But they grew up in poverty. And you know, obviously we have
poverty here as well. But I think that's our measure.
Like Ask GAIL is very different to what millions of other people
experienced. They took me when I was a kid.
I have no memory of that journey.
And then they took me again when I was a teenager.
And that's the one that really struck me.
And we went for three weeks because I, I didn't know what I
was getting into. Like they didn't talk about
poverty. They would talk about
experiences, which now I kind of connect to that.
For example, I remember my dad saying you get chased time by
wild dogs sometimes. But I kind of, you know, I
followed it away. I didn't really understand.
Like it's not something I could relate to.
I was just a kid, but then I saw what that actually meant, which
is that they do have this huge issue of wild dogs and the
government has tried to deal with it, but they just breed.
And the problem is that they do bite people and then you get
rabies. And then the other problem is
that then you get rabies and it can be treated, but you can't
get that treatment because you can't get access to it because
you're in the rural area. And it's like, so the area we
went to was 4 hours from the airport.
That's how close you are to anything resembling civilization
to get to a hospital. It's similar.
So you're really on your own out there.
And you know, it's interesting, your question was how did this
fit into my environmentalism? But this was actually at odds
with my environmentalism because at the same time, I was
surrounded by people here who have grown up with immense
abundance, right? We've grown up.
We don't know scarcity, not really, especially not on that
level. And there are some support
systems if you do get into that situation.
But we have, we generally have good access, right?
We have good access to electricity, healthcare,
medication, education, all of those things which we take for
granted. And so I would spend time in
these groups. We do letter right here, we go
to protest. As I got older, I got more and
more involved in these groups. It's doing a lot for them.
And their idea of like, where development went wrong and why
modernity is wrong and the way we live is wrong was that we
need to go back to living in rural areas on the land.
And we don't need all of these things.
You know, we don't need all of these things.
We don't need TV's and technologies.
We don't need all of that. But it was very hard to.
I had to kind of compartmentalize what I'd seen
and felt and understood. It took me a long time really to
process that. And part of that is because
people at that time, we're not talking about it.
There was no one to have a discussion with about that.
Like, yeah, I can talk to my parents, but they're also
thinking, well, we just escaped that, aren't we glad?
You know, they're not thinking about the the challenges that
they faced. They didn't like talking about
that because it made them feel bad.
And then they'd feel sad as well because they left all their
family members behind who still live in poverty.
So it was many years before I started to push back on that
kind of living on the land naturalistic fallacy.
But I just get told I was wrong. Oh, you don't know what you
mean. We should all live in a commune.
I even went and lived in in sort of like a hippie commune to see,
you know, maybe I'm wrong. And on this commune, they did
grow some of their own food. They did have some hens.
You know, they're getting eggs from hens.
There were families there. They would they would cook
communally. There was only one cooking
space. But every week, one of their
parents would come and pick up their washing and take it to the
laundry. Yeah, really.
Take it to the laundrette, wash and dry it all and bring it back
because let's be honest, they don't people.
They did not want to spend hours hand washing clothes, trying to
dry them in our climate where we get a lot of rain here, you
know, if you don't have a dryer, you don't have access to
anything like that. So they were off grid as much as
you could be, I think. But it was a facade.
And that was around then that I really started to think and I
and I questioned them on it, right?
And they said, oh, we're in transition.
We'll get there. But then I would think about
like what I saw in these villages.
This is where I started to connect it, where I was kind of
thinking, what in those villages, these women, as always
women spending hours washing clothes with river water in
these like, you know, buckets beating clothes.
You know, no one wants to live like that.
Let's be, let's just be honest. And if you're picking and
choosing what you can and can't have so you can find you've got
a nice little place on the land in the countryside, you're
picking and choosing. That's not really living the way
that we did for a long time, that humans did for a long time.
Oh, yeah, yeah. And I think that's super helpful
because it it brings up this idea of Labor and gender, of
who's doing what work, how much time women are spending bridging
the energy gap, because that's usually what it is.
We're bridging the energy and labor gap.
What adds it really to like water or washing or things like
that, All of those things women are doing it and they're not
able to get access to like, you know, an education.
And I think that's something that's really interesting that I
found fascinating within your own story of when you came to
this crossroads and be like, I actually don't agree.
Not just going along and be like, OK, we'll just kind of put
that in the background and keep them going.
Because that was also your experience around nuclear energy
where you're like, well, wait a minute.
There are some questions that I have and things aren't fitting
the way I thought into this box. And so, yeah, I wanted it to
kind of get your perspective on how that was coming into
contradiction with how that we should be living.
Yeah, I mean, it's, and it was a hard thing to do.
You know, I do appreciate why it's hard for people to change
their minds because even if you have it in the back of your mind
and even if you really know, it's a huge step because you
have to challenge your community.
They don't want to be challenged on that.
It's one of the core belief systems.
So you already know that you've got to be combative.
You've got to be willing to potentially lose your community,
which I did, if it's a really core belief, something that you
believe for a long time. So I believed those nuclear
myths since I was a teenager because I was involved in groups
like Greenpeace and Francia. I went to their events.
It was always the same messaging, the same myths over
and over again, reinforced by pop culture, reinforced by
people around me who weren't necessarily anti nuclear, but
they just kind of, you know, it's just a general, yeah, it's
bad, isn't it? You know, even if they didn't
really think about why to go against all of that is, you
know, it didn't take me a while. It took me a while and it wasn't
like an overnight thing. I don't think these things ever
are. It was a chipping away of kind
of questioning. And it did fit into the previous
example I've given, challenging the idea that living in poverty
is good, right? I was frustrated then.
I couldn't have these conversations.
And as I say, at that time, there was nothing.
Like, you've got lots of good books by intellectuals now that
are talking about these ideas. But back then, there was
absolutely nothing. And if I went and I tried to
read something, even in the media, they were perpetuating
this idea that the way we live is bad, the way we live is
damaging. Look what we've done to the
planet. And it was kind of reinforcing
this idea that we went wrong somewhere.
And so, yeah, it took me a while and I started to push back and
push back. And it was really just at the
point of I was at a Green Party event, I was a member, and they
wanted me to run as a council. And I was considering it was
very involved and I tried to ask a question about Newton.
I just was basically told we don't discuss that.
And it was that simple. But then, you know, I don't
think even that would have made me leave, leave the party
altogether. It was the fact that the leader
of the local party then after the event came over to me, she
put her hand on my shoulder and she said, you're not pregnant,
are you? You got to and it was just that
moment. Now this woman really lovely,
like I've been to a house for dinner.
She's extremely supportive. She's a nice person.
So it's hard again to kind of go, wait, no, but it was that
moment where I just, what I realized was we're on different
planets. I'm never going to get through
to you. If we can't have a conversation
about this, we're never going to get past this.
So either I go back to just, I don't question and I go along
with stuff, but there was a little bit niggling in the back
of my mind with nuclear, with the living on the land fallacy,
I kind of thought then we're not going to achieve that.
So I could kind of live with it. It's just a fantasy, right?
But with nuclear, it was kind of more sort of what if, what if
we're wrong and it's actually damaging the planet, which we
all know that, you know, there's plenty of data to back that up.
But I was just questioning. And again, there weren't a lot
of places to go to get answers on that.
But that was the moment when I create the party that same day.
And I said in my e-mail to the membership, you know, you've got
to allow these conversations, even if you are going to keep
your anti nuclear policy and still disagree, you've got to
allow the conversations because otherwise that's dangerous.
And that's what happened there is rubbed up against a core
personal belief that was more integral to me, more innate than
the anti nuclearism was. Whereas for the other people
there, a lot of the people there, the anti nuclearism was
more core. And so that's really where we
there was a friction and I stepped away.
As I say, it was not an overnight process.
And the reason I say that is because I was speaking to
someone recently, nuclear advocate who basically said, you
know, oh, we just need to get rid of these people.
This is a bit bleak, but you basically said these people,
they'll never change their minds.
And I said, well, hold on, I did.
And I think actually that's part of the problem if you're not
building the bridges. There was nowhere for me to go
for good information. There was no one to reach out
to. Industry had very little
visibility. I didn't even know anyone.
I didn't know how to contact anyone in the industry.
Like I just, it wasn't even on my radar.
There was no one to go to. I would have changed my mind a
lot sooner had the information been out there.
And the reason I wrote this book is because this is the book I
needed to read that would have changed my mind as a kid.
I would have read this book and gone OK.
And I would not have gone down the path that I went down,
wasting frankly years in a movement that I feel like she
was quite destructive. Yeah, I think it's really
fascinating just the way in which we as humans, every now
and again, we get a little bit tribal in our thinking of like,
OK, like this is our core belief and it can't change.
And I think it's interesting because beliefs are kind of, you
know, every now and again, they do have to change.
And using that intellectual process, using like curiosity to
enable us to kind of be like, hey, this is not what I thought
it was. Maybe I have to change my mind.
And so, yeah, I wanted to get a little bit more into like, the
core thesis of Energy is Life. You mentioned it was the book
that you needed to read. And as I've read it, I'm like,
yeah, I can see that. Like I can see my 13 year old
self taking it on a crusade to be like, listen everybody, but
yeah, what is that for you? I pitched this book to a number
of publishers, right? And I've been writing for at
least 10 years. I have many years under my belt
as a writer, as a communicator. So I thought it would be an easy
pitch because everybody's talking about nuclear.
But Even so, a lot of the publishers are still in this old
mindset that is controversial, you know?
And a couple came back and said, wait, if you change your pitch
and you make it just scientific, that could work.
And one of them did actually then go and publish someone's
book here that by a man that's just pure, like pure science.
And I was trying to argue for something different, which as
you know, from reading, I mean, it's narrative nonfiction.
So it's blending storytelling with data.
I mean, this is what all the research and science
communication says is, is the best way to reach people.
Because if you make a really technical scientific book, good,
we should have those too. But the people that are reading
that already have the foundational knowledge and
they're coming to that, but because they they don't need
convincing and they have that information.
And, you know, to me, one of the biggest issues is that if you
look at polls, like across the world, it's women that don't
support nuclear and men do like overwhelmingly so.
And I think that came from a movement that demonized nuclear
technology as like, masculine. And there's literally, you know,
Helen Caldecott and other environmental activists who very
popular before I was born, even giving speeches saying it's nail
energy, it's masculine, it's dangerous.
That's why it's linked to weapons.
And I think that kind of did get into the psyche of a lot of
women. And I think that's really
damaging. So I wanted to write something
that like, yeah, my female friends who would not read a
scientific book or a textbook about nuclear, absolutely not,
would read, not because I wrote it, but because it's telling a
story. And for them, obviously, it adds
more of an element because they know me as well.
But from the feedback I've got, you know, it's similar to what
you said, like it's making people think about things that
we just haven't quite kind of thought about from this angle
before. What I found really interesting
with that, I always thought it was a little bit of a failure of
like, why isn't industry doing this?
Why aren't more people doing this?
But actually there are roadblocks the whole way because
like I said, the publishers themselves didn't see the value.
And I think part of that was because they still see nuclear
as controversial. They would rather just have a
scientific book because that's easy to defend.
If you put opinion in there, then they don't know, they're
not experts, they don't know if they should back that or not.
And so it's safer not to. And that again, can be quite
dangerous because you've got, you've only really got the big 5
publishers and then you've got everybody else.
I went with an independent publisher and it's really hard
actually to compete with the bigger titles because, you know,
even just, I tried to do it. There was a lady on X who
tweeted me and said I came in to buy your book and it was on the
3rd floor, Waterstones. And why is it on the third floor
when you live here and it should be blah, blah.
And I said, look, I've contacted Waterstones and they don't want
to have a local author in the store doing book signings.
Like, I'll try, I can try again. But if you're not part of the
Big 5. And she said, but couldn't they
put it on one of the store? You know, where you walk in and
there's like books everywhere. And I said, no, you have to pay
loads of money, loads of money. I'm talking 10s of thousands of
pounds to be on that. Small publishers can't compete
anyway. But I think it was a shame
because I feel like there's a bigger story here that needs to
be told, whether it's me or someone else telling it.
And I feel like those stories, probably people have tried
before and they're just not breaking through even now
because, you know, a lot of people still aren't really up to
date with like the nuclear conversation.
So they're still thinking, oh, no, this is still kind of, we
don't touch this unless it's just purely science.
I think we almost have too much of the purely science, right?
I think we've had so much emphasis on science and
technology. We've forgotten the role of the
humanities. You know, we process everything
with our feelings. Even if we learn to be rational,
we learn to spot cognitive biases and we learn to overcome
fears and tribal thinking and all of that, we still, first of
all, process things emotionally. And that's probably never going
to change. So I think really we desperately
need more of the storytelling, but it's tough out there.
It sure is. And that's been one of the
things that I've been kind of like, you know, preaching for
the rooftops of of, of, you know, letting nuclear down.
Like you, we need to spend more money on the storytelling and
and, you know, it's, it's slow going because it is kind of
uncomfortable and unfamiliar for for industry.
And I think from from this book, is there a story that you feel
like, you know, maybe it's not your favorite, but like just you
think kind of really synthesizes your your whole book?
Is there a story that you're like, you know, this wouldn't be
one that I would, I would, you know, start people off with?
I mean, look, I obviously have a soft spot for the Saucepan
story, but in terms of what's important, I think kind of the
chapter approaching communication differently, I
think that's where we're at in the conversation now.
A lot of people do now either support nuclear or they kind of
lean towards it. Are we leading people towards
thinking about these issues in the way that I'm thinking about
scarcity? And I mean that it does link
back to the Sauceman story because I'm talking about my
mother being able to afford things with her own money, being
able to have a job and to have time because she's not washing
clothes by hand all day. And her daughters aren't having
to go and collect fuel all day so that you can burn it to cook
on your stove and all of that stuff.
But yeah, that, you know, I think if there's one story, then
it's the Sauceman story. But if it's what's most
important, then it's the conversation about how do we
humanize this and talk about this differently?
Because I honestly think we're behind on that and not just in
nuclear and everything. Look, we've got measles
outbreaks here because it's happening like it's happening
with vaccines. It's happening in every every
bit of science that you look at every development, there is
pushback and it's significant pushback.
And that is not getting enough attention.
And, and that's where industry or whatever advocates can play a
role in nuclear specifically. And I feel like if you're
chipping away at that, and even if it's in one area, it benefits
all the areas because you're teaching critical thinking,
you're getting people to be aware of their common biases and
you're getting people to think about things differently.
And what I've tried to do is just try and get people to think
about scarcity versus abundance differently because I've seen,
you know, there's like an abundance movement now, which is
great. You know, all for kind of build,
build the homes, build the clean tech and all that stuff.
But it's funny that they talk about.
Aiming for abundance rather than recognizing that we already live
with abundance. If you can go and buy any number
of appliances that you like and plug them in and power them, you
already live in abundance. Yeah, the people in abundance
are the ones that are loudest about scarcity.
Yeah, yeah. And I think, I think this is
where you know the sauce mantor. I think I was definitely.
I teared up when I when I was. Reading it, people said that to
me. Yeah, I was.
Like Oh my God, this is. Really.
I have it right here. Hold on.
Yeah. Look at this.
I got it out because I wanted to take a picture.
It's so big, Yeah, Yeah, OK, yeah.
And then I think it's kind of like this idea, you know, that
we can start from a place that seems really unimaginable that
we would ever get to or obtain that level of abundance.
You know, you didn't think that you were ever going to have this
thing, and now you have it. And it really shifts your entire
worldview. And I think that's almost where
we are kind of as a Society of like, we're like, hey, this is
what the planet's doing right now.
It seems very impossible. And I think the ability for us
to go to like, Oh my gosh, it's all doom and gloom to like,
actually like, oh, wait, made a minute.
We can power these things and we can have a clean earth and we
can have healthy soil. It's such a big narrative shift.
But to your point of, you know, across the board, we're seeing
this pushback on science. I remember in our previous
conversation you mentioned doing TikTok and kind of just like a
deep dive on why waterfalls are, you know, not like deep state
conspiracy theories like like the.
Yeah, I thought this video, it's not even the video itself, like
this video went viral, but sometimes things go viral
because they're bad. So this video of this guy,
American guy with a waterfall behind him, saying no one knows
how this works, no one knows how the wall is replaced.
I looked at the comments because I thought they'd be pushed back
and there was so many people agreeing with him.
And I didn't even know that that was a conspiracy because we all
learned this at school. Like I might have even learned
it at primary school, you know, like really early on.
So I did a response just because I thought all of those people in
the comments, some of the people were just asking.
They were like, oh, I think there is a theory, but what, you
know, they didn't remember, or maybe they weren't taught it.
To be fair, maybe they weren't taught it.
And so I did this response and it went instantly viral.
But actually it was quite good because I didn't get too much
pushback in the comments there. Some there were some those
deniers are deniers, 100% motorcycle deniers.
But there were plenty of people who were like, thanks for
explaining this. It makes sense.
Thanks. I now remember that I did learn
this or whatever. So some of it, you know, you do
have to give people the benefit of the doubt, but it's also a
little bit worrying that because they couldn't remember, they
didn't have like a solid position on it.
They were just led by this guy making this 10 second video
saying we don't, we definitely don't know.
We don't know. It's all it's all up in the air.
And you know, these are really basic things that you don't have
to know and you don't have to be able to explain the water cycle
to someone. But if you even if you can't, I
think you do have to have a certain amount of like faith in
humanity and trust in science and you don't have to trust
science, right, Right. We should definitely have debate
within science, but within certain parameters, right?
I mean, to me that's like Flat Earth.
There are lots of people, I'm talking thousands of people, who
actually genuinely believe that we don't like.
It's like magic. It's like magic we don't know.
We don't know how the water cycle, we don't know how
waterfalls work. I met a gentleman who believes
that the earth is flat and it really changed my I was like,
OK, how do I move forward in this conversation?
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Now back to the show. And I think what's really
fascinating is these are things that you can look up how does
the water cycle work that you can literally type into Google
and get like a pretty clear explanation with the visual key
cues like we can see. I think with nuclear it's a
little bit more challenging because it's so unfamiliar and
we really don't like, if you ask, you know, a random person,
hey, picture a nuclear reactor. Or even a power plant.
They think it's cooling. And even now I'll see articles
from like quite respectable institutions.
And it's something about nuclear.
And the picture is cooling towers.
The picture they've used is cooling towers.
So it's just reinforcing. And I guess they're using it
because it's familiar to people, but then people are seeing them
and there is an issue there. But actually, I did another
video that went viral, which was on how the cooling towers from
nuclear power plants are just emitting water vapor.
Because, again, I think there was a study on this in the US
and I can't remember the numbers, but a lot of people
there do believe that it's polluting, that it's like it's
Yeah, they do. I can't remember what the
numbers were, but it's quite high.
People believe that these are polluting, and it's because
they're associating it with coal because they also associate the
cooling powers with coal and not like, you know, the nuclear kind
of Dome, whatever shape the building is.
Yeah. So that's another thing.
That was only a really short kind of 22nd video, but that
went viral, too. But again, it was a lot of
people saying, oh, thanks, they didn't know.
And someone actually pointed me towards an article in a
mainstream paper that I went and looked at because they published
an article about nuclear. It's quite negative, but like,
subtly negative. And the image they used, which
was of cooling towers, they had darkened the water vapor to make
it look like smoke. I did see them get some pushback
on this on social media as well. I can't remember who it was, but
it's too big. Quit us.
And it's those images that stay with you.
And I do think there's something about images like you touched on
there. And that's why I really value
doing the Tik Toks. I know a lot of people don't
like the kind of short form video context, getting a lot of
pushback. But actually there's something
about being able to see the thing and make the association.
Like, we are very visual creatures where we love watching
TV and going to the cinema and whatever, talking face to face
instead of a phone call. And because I also did one on
deep geological repositories. And to be honest, again, this
was like, this was a lazy video. I sat on the sofa, it's blurry,
the lighting's not good. It was just something in the
evening I saw some people posting about, well, what about
long term story? What about long term?
And I thought, oh, I should just do a quick thing on this.
And I put in some pictures showing on Cologne in Finland
and that had 1.4 million people watch that 1.4 million views.
I did not expect that one to blow up just because like I was
fuzzy. But what I think was important
there was they could go and Google that or put it into their
whatever search engine. They could look at it on
Wikipedia, but they're not going to get the kind of personal
element, which is somebody's talking to them about it.
It's like your friend talking to you.
And just the sheer number of visuals.
I could just pack this video with all these different
pictures because I think you can't just put one picture
because it doesn't really. And then they'll say, oh, well,
how did they get the casks underground?
They also had that in there. I had all the kind of processes
because I thought, like you're saying, most people don't know
what a reactor looks like. So you kind of need.
And then even if you put that, there's like, wait, they still
think that the power plant is just cooling towers.
So you need to add that and you need to maybe say there's a
control room and like add stuff. There's so much potential
actually. And I have tried and failed to
get the industry to capitalize on this with moving to short
form content or even not. You could do long form content
like on YouTube, but doing visual like video content, not
only because all the platforms are using it and it's getting
very popular, but also because if it's not on there, people
don't search it. So maybe, yeah, for you and I,
we would just go and search something and it's, I use Google
as a verb, right? Younger generations aren't doing
that. Gen.
Z doesn't do that. They in fact on TikTok, when you
watch a video like that video of that guy who was saying the
water, you know, how does the waterfall work?
Nobody knows. When you click on the comments,
it comes up with like a blue search tick and that that the
blue search phrase is what most of the people watching the video
are searching. So when you click that it takes
it's like a instead of wiki. Instead of going to Wikipedia or
searching online, you click that and it takes you to the
selection of videos that answer that question.
So that's what happened, is people clicking it and they were
getting my video because I was the only one kind of challenging
and pushing back. More people did after that, but
mine was cut 1st. And yeah, I actually think
that's a really good model, which I know people don't like.
They kind of said, well, it would be better if you went and
looked it up online, but it is not easy to find information.
And even now, you know, I know the industry's done a good job
here at least. And I know that they're in other
countries where they're getting better, I think, and a bit
bolder with the communication. And there's a lot more.
There's a lot less technical information and a lot more kind
of humanized, I would say. But it still requires someone to
know where that website is and then go and click on it.
And maybe we'd like quite a long spiel.
Someone they don't know, they're just not going to.
And I think it was inevitable that that was going to kind of
peek at one point and then die out just because the visual
communication is so much more personal.
And I think that's really helpful because I've been
studying more of the data side of how we take in information
and the shift to video. And even like HBO and Amazon are
like, Oh my gosh, short form mini dramas, like vertical mini
dramas are like taken over. Like what are we going to do?
And I'm like, well, probably just shift with the time, just
like go with the times. But I think the other thing I
find really interesting when I'm watching your videos is really
how you've kind of built this visual platform, but also kind
of as a trusted science communicator.
And so I guess my question is, like, how did you become a
trusted science communicator? Like, what are the things that
you prioritize? And, you know, is it like not
using too much jargon or, you know, taking the time to
explain, you know, water cycles, Like, what does that look like
for you, I think? The first thing is you have to
have a little bit of humility. And I say this because I know
that there are some quite famous science communicators who will,
for example, make fun of flat earthers.
And I just think as soon as you do that, you lose the potential
to build the bridge. In fact, all it does is it
pushes the person more into their community of deniers.
So you have to approach it like that.
And what I normally do is I kind of think out how I want to
approach it with some bullet points.
And then I always go over it and think, how would someone who
isn't me approach? This is too technical.
And you have to be really brutal about that, right?
Because you know, in a way, my comfort zone is talking about
science. It would be easier for me to
make long videos on YouTube, which many brilliant science
communicators have done, like Carl Hill in the US been
brilliant. And he's done some stuff on
YouTube as well, like long content, just highly factual or
highly technical. And that I know that that would
appeal to lots of people because only a few people have are able
to do it. And those who leverage their
skills have done really well. They make entire careers out of
YouTube. But there's no challenge in that
because again, the people watching it mostly already agree
or mostly already know that they already have some they already
believe in, You know, that we should accept science.
They're not flat earthers. They're not motorcycle deniers.
They already know enough about technical jargon and stuff to
keep up. It's not going to go above their
heads. Now, if I think about when I'm
on school run and the parents that I talk to on the school
run, that is how I simplify my approach to can I explain it to
this person on the school run? If not, it's too technical.
I need to dial this back. And that is the way that I
approach. And I think that it's not a
coincidence that the one that I just wrote on the sofa, I mean,
if you go and look it up, it's fuzzy.
I would say it's not high quality content, but in terms of
information, it is because nobody else anywhere ever has
explained this issue to somebody in this way.
And even if you go on to some of the websites about deep
geological repositories, even like the wiki page, really
technical people just want to know, like, is it safe?
Does it work? Should we do it or not?
That's what they want to know. Is it harm me or am I OK?
OK, well that's good. I might want to learn a bit more
about it, but not a lot more. They don't want to watch 10
minutes of it unless they're already the nerds, right?
So just give a minute or two. I think that video is like a
minute and 1/2 or something and it is challenging.
I find it more challenging to condense it and more easy as you
could tell from how long I talk. Much easier to do a long form
video. But I just again, it's moving
with the times. If people aren't spending the
time watching those all the way through, they're not getting the
key points and they just want the key points.
And actually I think there is benefit to that.
I think there's a lot of push back on the short form content
for people who aren't kind of used to it.
But actually often what will happen, as I said, they'll watch
it. If they want to know more, go
and click that. The issue is there's a deficit
of information. So you might then say, right, I
want to know about uncle. I click on that.
Uncle is not posting on there. How are you going to find out?
You're not going to go and look up their website and go and see
what this company is doing. You're not going to do it.
So unless the faces are there
and the conversation's there, it's not happening.
And this is millions of people, right?
It's not a niche fringe thing. It's millions of people are
having this conversation and certain actors are choosing not
to be part of it, which I honestly I find a little bit
shocking at this point. Yeah, for sure.
And I think like you synthesize a couple different things, like
1, you know, the humility piece of like, you know, when there is
a belief that doesn't necessarily align with the
science, like not being like, wow, you're stupid.
But then also taking that time to like simplify the main points
and the key points that I feel like as a communicator, and it's
specifically as a science communicator, I think that's
something that a lot of engineers really, really
struggle with. Because they.
Wanna tell the whole thing and they wanna get down into all the
data pool this calculation. In the when I started out in the
advocacy, I came from the other world, so I didn't know anyone,
couldn't name a single person in industry came from the other
world, from the environmentalists who were
against it. The first thing I found was I'm
getting this popularised like I'm getting news articles partly
again, I had contacts, I had an established career already as a
writer. So I was writing articles, I was
getting stuff out and then have people push back, engineers and
nuclear professionals pushing back and emailing me.
You shouldn't be saying phrases you shouldn't be reducing
nuclear to. Well, I remember specifically
one person saying it was because I was using Nuclear Saves Lives,
which actually really took off and a lot of people started
using it. And he felt, he sent me this
really long e-mail. He felt that it was disingenuous
and we shouldn't be reducing science to slogans.
It's quite off putting to get that when you're already kind of
like getting a lot of pushback from the anti makers.
And that one instance just kind of alerted me to, and this is
where the problem is, right? The problem isn't that people,
the problem isn't that people are stupid and they can't change
their minds about stuff. The problem is that the
information has never been presented in the right way.
And that's a problem that falls on us, I think, either as
communicators or as professionals, because you have
to be able to boil point down just to simplify it down.
You do have to. And yeah, all right, you could
argue with how accurate is this phrase or how inaccurate is it?
But the inaccurate phrases about nuclear is what made it so
unpopular for so long. And I had to, the way I saw it
was I need to rewrite those phrases.
You know, we did this an Extinction Rebellion,
popularized Net 0, popularized climate crisis, climate
emergency. We came up with all this stuff
just sitting in a room. So it was kind of bringing like
an activist slant to it. But actually that was what was
missing because the activists are very, very good
communicators. And let's face it, they're all
humanities people, you know, So they're really good.
And they, and they, because they're those, they're like the
literature nerds, they're on that side.
I think they have better theory of mind, like they're better at
thinking, how do I get in that person's shoes and see that
perspective? Where do I push the trigger
points? And then they push them and it
works. And it worked on me for a long
time. I was very fearful about waste.
Yeah. And that's a really helpful kind
of like process of like understanding, you know,
actually almost who's gifted at what.
And so looking at like, for our scientists, our engineers,
people who are kind of more deeply in the jargon, would you
have pieces of advice for them? I literally had a friend the
other day who was like, I like doing the theory and like, I
like doing theoretical stuff. And I don't think I should be
having to explain this to like, the population.
I'm like actually. Quite a rare skill.
Think about the science communicators that you could
probably listen on one hand, like Carl Sagan, or if not the
first such communicator, Richard Fineman.
He was still very technical, but he did popularize certain things
within his talks and texts and books.
And Neil Degrassi, Tyson, Brian Cox, and how many of them are
women? There's not many out there.
I think that is because it's difficult to have both skill
sets. I think almost the opposite
skill sets. When you're a scientist, you're
really honing in like you're narrowing down, right?
If you do some like a PhD, you're narrowing, narrowing,
getting, you know, more and more into the detail.
If you're trying to talk to large groups of people, it's the
opposite. You've got to broaden right out.
You've got to have good theory of mind.
You've got to be able to consider the way people are
thinking. And it's almost the opposite.
And so I think it's quite rare to get someone that has both
skill sets and and you know, you asked how I built my platform.
I think to be honest, I didn't have any kind of strategy.
I just went in there and was like, well, I'm going to write
do something like waterfall thing because I don't like that.
I'm going to do something about deep geological project because
there's literally nothing else on this platform about that.
So I'm going to fill that niche. And I did it more because I felt
like this is easy because people are going to watch and they're
going to get information before also because a lot of them are
younger before they hear misinformation about it, which
is actually a really good tactic.
It's called pre bunking. We kind of can go through some
of the myths that you might hear later and it helps protect you
from it. It's like an immune form of
immunization. Prebunking anyway, it's term use
of misinformation theories. But for me, you know, it was a
no brainer. Just go in and start doing that.
But because I have both skill sets, it's not difficult for me.
I don't actually spend a lot of time.
Someone asked me the other day, like how are you putting out a
video every day? It doesn't take me very long
unless it's a new topic that I know nothing about.
But I tend not to go into those topics actually.
And occasionally if it's something really in depth and I
just don't know, I'll send it to someone and say, could you
respond because this is getting it.
You know, I saw something on this on glyphosate and I said
your this is your area and you should go, yeah, I could respond
to it. But I just thought I tend to
stick to the things that I've been talking about for a long
time because I can condense information because I've been
thinking about it for so long. I can answer in simpler terms.
It's much more difficult when it's something that I haven't
thought about before. I don't know a lot about.
I can go away and do it, but there are so many topics and to
be honest, a lot of what I do is fight misinformation because
there are many videos like the Waterfall one that go viral for
the wrong reasons and I'll just jump in there.
I just did one on SIDS because I saw some stuff about sudden
infant death syndrome and I thought actually this could be
quite dangerous. Dangerous and I'd better address
like yes, they are saying that a study said this thing, but it
was an observational study. It's not something that's
recommended in medical practice because it's not supported.
So that person actually didn't mean any harm.
They saw a study and they didn't know.
You've got to look at like broadly, like how does it fit
into the the literature? Like do a literature review.
Other studies might have disproved it, right?
It might be an old study. You might have a small sample
size, like you can't just read 1.
You've got to understand like the and this person didn't.
So they've made this one video and it went viral.
It's kind of giving people. I'm not the best information.
I've responded to that because again, I see a value there and
to me, like what Two things drive me?
One is like, is there value in this?
Is this going to help people? Like I care about that.
Then I get an intrinsic value. I'm happy to do it.
I've got the energy and time for it.
And the other thing is, you know, I think we talked about
this before, but I have got to the point now where I'm
comfortable being uncomfortable. And not everybody gets to that
point now, right? Because I have I should use that
because, again, it puts me in a rare position.
And that's also what you've got with all the main kind of the
most visible science communicators.
They're comfortable pushing back on things and taking expertise
but bringing it to a broad audience.
So yeah, I think people who don't have that skill set
shouldn't be forced, certainly shouldn't be made, you know, to
do the communication. But if they want to, I think
there should be opportunities for training.
And I have done some of this in my consultancy would have, we've
done workshops with scientists on how they could present their
data better and kind of looking at ways that things might be
misconstrued if you use certain phrases.
Many examples of this happening even in like official
institution press releases where they've put it out and it looks
good to them, but it looks different to a journalist who
picks out a certain phrase about something negative.
And that becomes the headline everywhere.
And then you've got two groups here and one saying, I don't
understand how that was misconstrued.
And, you know, there's a technical lens and then there's
the human story. Yeah.
Anyway, so I've, I've done some of that work with those people,
but it's not, you know, it's something that you can, it's
something I think you can develop over time, but it's not
necessarily skill set that a lot of people have to begin with.
I think one benefit I have is that I spend a lot of time in
different communities. Like, you know, I've been to
like Star Trek convention, stuff like that.
So I've been around those kind of nerves as well.
I read a lot of sci-fi, read a lot, generally read non fiction
fiction. So maybe a good theory of mind.
I have two children, so I'm in parenting communities.
So I hear what they're talking about, which is just so you
know, nucleus never mentioned in there.
The only time energy's mentioned is if they're complaining about
high electricity bills, which is because they are high.
And it doesn't go beyond that. It's just kind of, oh, it must
be the government's fault, the end of discussion.
And I sometimes will bring up and say, well, it would be good
if we did this or that, wouldn't we?
Oh, I don't know anything about that, you know, and then I, I
usually, I'll have the conversation.
Oh, wow. Actually cheaper prices
correlate with having good, reliable, stable nuclear
reactors anyway. And practicing that and being
around those communities, I think is of immense benefit to
like, how you think about processing and simplifying
information. Like just because you and I
might have a high technical knowledge, probably not where
most people are and probably not what they need to know.
And you might feel, I think a lot this is a thing like between
kind of engineers and youth professionals.
A lot of people like kind of pat each other on the back.
Like you wrote a really good piece, you know, so technical
and I'll look at it and I'll be like, yeah, this is great.
But if I can't send that to one of the people parents I see on
the school run and have them read it and understand it, then
who is it aimed at? Like what's your aim there?
Yeah. What's the purpose of creating
that? Is it just so you can pat each
other on the back? I've actually suffered the
consequences of pushing back on that as well.
Yeah, the academic silos. And I think that's one of those
things that it feels good when you're talking to somebody and
they know exactly what you're talking about and you're like,
oh, we're vibing, we're really cool.
But it's like, yeah, because you have a PhD in nuclear and they
haven't. Been I have a good example of
this that I was invited to do a round table at Westminster where
you get a bunch of people in the room and they talk for an hour
and it gets kind of recorded and then written up and it goes to
of the government. So this was on nuclear and you
don't get a lot of time to talk a lot of people in the room and
stuff. So I made my point.
There was someone in the room who's got a PhD nuclear
professional and he said the solution to communication.
So I was there to talk about communication.
I was the only non industry person there.
He said the solution is to teach nuclear in primary schools
because I didn't get a lot of time to talk.
I kind of was reserving the times that I could talk for like
the points I really wanted to get across, but I was blown away
that this could be a recommendation.
This is like the first thing they teach you in science
communication not to do because it's the idea that if I just
throw more facts and they'll speak and that's not come up,
that's not the issue. We all go through the same
education system. You could argue for teaching
more critical thinking skills because that can then help you
to identify the misinformation around things like nuclear
technology. Absolutely, we should be doing
that. But teaching nuclear science to
kids, I mean, A, that could backfire because it would be
seen as like an indoctrination, I think.
But B, it's I would really be disappointed if efforts were
made to make that happen. Every in the room is agreeing.
It was just me sitting there thinking this is like you're an
expert in nuclear. Brilliant.
I will listen to you on all those topics and I will trust
you, but please listen to the communication experts because
that's what I've studied. And I can tell you right now
that you're wrong. Throwing more like facts at
children is not going to make them pro nuclear producing them
to real people who work in the industry.
Yeah, sure, you could say that, but that's not kind of what the
argument was. And even then, like it's
complicated, just like nuclear technology is complicated and
you have to go away and study it to know the the real details.
Will be able to build a reactor or whatever will operate in a
control room. Communication is almost more
complicated because you can follow a set of rules and facts
there, but being able to appeal to people and build bridges and
change minds and all of that stuff is more complicated.
There's one thing we're saying, science communication.
There's no general public. Like we never use that term.
It's publics. Every group is a different
publics and it all depends who you're talking about.
So you could have one strategy for a specific age group in
primary school. That's what I would say.
And then a different one for like when they're older and then
a different one when they're in secondary school.
But it would not be increase the science.
I don't think that's the issue. I don't think increasing science
teaching, he's going to improve the literacy, science literacy,
in fact, we have quite a lot of good science programs already,
is much better now than it was when I was in school.
I know from what my daughter's come from talking about, they're
pretty good. They're doing well in these
subjects, so they're getting a good understanding of these
topics, but they will still watch something and take in the
misinformation and believe that over what they have learned in
school. I've seen that myself and my
role as a parent is to challenge that and help develop the
critical thinking skills. But most people aren't doing
that. Most people are just believing
that they see themselves right. They watch Chernobyl on HBO and
that's their perspective of what happened.
And that overwrites sitting in a classroom being told XY and Z or
seeing it in a textbook. It overwrites it.
It's it's we're storytelling creatures and we will always be
storytelling creatures. We always have been.
The world around us might have changed, the way we live might
have changed, but those very intrinsic qualities have not
changed. And in order to tackle that, we
have to we have to get comfortable being uncomfortable.
We have to have the conversations about what
realistically is going to change this.
And as I say, it's not just nuclear technologies, almost
every facet of science, almost every facet like we're talking
about waterfalls. I saw someone denying that you
need glasses. This went viral as well.
This was this was actually not on TikTok.
It was on XI think and they were saying, you know, they make your
eyes worse. You should.
You can live without them and your eyes will improve.
It's what happened to me and loads of people jumping into,
yeah, it's true. My eyes got worse and I've been
wearing glasses, so that must be why.
And I just, again, it's everywhere.
But that's a failure of society. You, yeah, you can point and
laugh at them, but like, when your kid gets measles because
they're not getting immunized, it's not a laughing matter
really, is it? It's more a case of what are we
doing to address this? And we have loads of data that
tells us how to address it. But almost the technical people
are not the people to, you know, they can't go away and also
study that they're not the people to do it.
But they do need to have, I don't know, departments or
whatever they do. I mean, look, they, the industry
here does have a communication department.
But I would again, push back on some of the things like, yeah,
they're making a new website to get people into.
OK, great. But are you on TikTok?
Why you're making stuff on Instagram?
No, no, we just on LinkedIn and we have this website.
Then all the people that will click on it are the people that
are already in your network that already supporting nuclear.
So you know, I don't see, I haven't seen that change yet.
And if you haven't got to that book bit in the book yet, it's
in there. But I actually think that's
where the challenge is on us. Like, how do we address this
rampant misinformation? It's just so much of it.
It's not because the rise of social media, like social media
helps spread it more, But in this information far predates
that. They've been using it in Roman
times. Yeah, they used it in Roman
times, like, put like little messages on coins and give out
money. And then people would, like, get
convinced by. Oh, yeah.
It says that not to vote for this guy.
I can't remember what the exact example was, but there is one.
Yeah. You know, it's been around for a
long time. But what we haven't kept up with
is is like keeping up with our vaccinations against it, like
keeping up with our immunization, keeping up with
defenses. And that's completely societal
failure. Gotcha.
Yeah, I think literally I feel like the last half of this
conversation has been like a master class on you of like
communications and what works, what doesn't work, what we can
kind of start shifting our mind to as well.
Because yeah, I think it is such an important conversation to be
having of when we don't communicate well.
Here's how society. It is uncomfortable.
I do get that and I have given feedback to people.
It's almost like saying we are doing it wrong and I understand
that. But I think we all get things
wrong sometimes and we should just accept like in our
expertise we're probably like geniuses, but we can't be
experts in every area. That's when you've got to bring
other people on. And I'm not even saying me like
I get asked to do stuff, I'm doing a lot of stuff, but we
need to train more people so that they can do what I'm doing.
We need to have those opportunities which at the
moment they don't exist, so there's no incentive.
The last part of our show before we talk about how and where
people can follow you and buy your book, we'll put a link to
that in the show notes is our rapid fire questions where we
get a little bit more. So the first one is.
Are you a coffee or tea person? Oh yeah, tea.
OK, what types of? Tea.
I drink regular tea, but only in the mornings because otherwise
the caffeine keeps me up at night and I drink mint tea.
White tea I drink. All the teas.
OK.
Perfect. Well, when we finally meet,
we'll get a tea time together going because I'm also a tea a
tea gown myself. Nice.
If you had to build the city of the future, what are you putting
in it? What would it might look like?
Oh, wow, this is rapid fire. Yeah.
Do you know something?
Look, is it, There is a book that I read by Isaac Asimov, but
I can't remember which one it was.
It's the closest thing you'll get to a utopia.
It's not a utopian, but it's like people are getting all the
benefits of the technology. People broadly trust the
science. People are supported if they
can't fit into the system. You're not obligated to have to
work most of your life. That's the pinnacle.
I think that's the pinnacle of a society with the least amount of
struggle. You wrote about it really well,
but I can't remember which story it was.
I. Like that.
So that's a pretty good, good answer.
And then is there a book, I mean, other than your own book
that you've read that you're like, wow, I would recommend
people read this that kind of change your worldview.
Yeah, it was Cosmos by Carl Sagan.
I read this when I was a kid, and what blew my mind about it
was it was almost like a light bulb moment.
You can talk about science like this because if you read it, I
mean, it's still like, you know, one of these best selling books,
even though it's old now. If you read it, it's like
poetry, but about science, about space science, about astronomy.
And he was an astrophysicist. So it's all in there.
But it was like poetry. It's the first time I saw that
done. And I thought, Oh my goodness, I
would love to be able to do that because I was so gripped and it
interested me in something. Not because I'm not interested
in space and astronomy, because I actually really am out of
telescope, but because those books were boring textbooks.
I was a kid and this book was like, it was like poetry.
So yeah, I mean that his books. Then I went and read everything
he's ever written, and that really set me on the trajectory
for doing what I do now. That's amazing.
Yeah. Yeah.
The OG Carl Sagan, I think would also be top, top recommended for
people to go read. What gives you hope about
science communication, just the world, environmentalism going
forward. What really excites you?
I think so. We're having some really good
conversations now that we've never had before.
And I think it's easy to be kind of negative in the moment, but
it brings us back to what we're saying that actually for most of
human history, we lived in scarcity and most of us don't.
Now, there's still people that would need to be lifted out of
energy poverty. But for most of us, like if you
picked a timeline to live in, yes, I know there are bad things
happening in the world, but if you picked a timeline, it would
be now you wouldn't go back to tribal times, you wouldn't go
back to chiefdoms, you wouldn't even go back to like medieval
times because the violence, there was so much violence, you
know, and there wasn't like the medical developments we have
now. And the thing that really
excites me is actually what's happening in medicine.
And I think this is really like under discussed because even
just like in the last year, we're finding through gene
editing and other technologies, we're finding, you know, cures
for blindness. Kids can see for the first time,
they've never been able to see visits.
They found this cool. And it sets up the research for
further investigation, discovery in those areas, treatment for
Alzheimer's that didn't exist before, treatment for
Parkinson's. Like there's so much, there's so
much going on. And I know there's been funding
cuts and issues and all that stuff.
But if you think about it, even when you read the headlines of
that, you kind of read, oh great, well, this blind kid was
given this therapy. You can see for the first time
and you've got the parents saying, Oh my God, he saw us for
the first time. Like it's mind blowing.
Even I saw a similar thing for deafness as well.
Like loads of advances coming in.
What really excites me is even with everything that's
happening, there are people working away at trying to make
the lives better of those, you know, most disadvantaged people,
people who don't have the basic kind of like human dignity that
you get from you're not suffering through physiological
impairments. I think that's incredible and I
think it's just so under discussed.
Just wrote a short article about it for New Humanist Magazine.
It was just like a listicle. Here are 10 things that just
happened in the last year that is not getting enough attention
that this is in just a few years, this would change so many
lives. And I think sometimes we forget
that human aspect, that they're all these people.
And let's be honest, those are scientists.
It's not the image that a lot of people conjure up when they
think of a scientist, someone who just putting all their
life's energy and work into helping people in the most
vulnerable communities. I think that's a really
beautiful thing. So yeah, it makes me feel
positive. You could.
Go and try and get wealthy doing something else you don't have
to. And we always still have the
most altruistic people pushing back, trying to do, you know,
make things better. I'm very inspired by those
stories. Yeah.
And I, and I think that's always the amazing part of science is
when we do get to move the needle and make a breakthrough
and just the cascade effect of how many lives it's positively
impacted. Like to me, I'm like that's,
that's. Some of those things you can't
even measure. You can measure the amount of
people treated, but you can't know the ripple effect in his
families or in that person's life trajectory or anything
really. But that's why it's so
phenomenal that we often focus on here's this bad thing that
happened, and now there's a ripple effect from that.
What about all the good stuff? There's a whole network of
people out there just doing the good stuff, and maybe we
shouldn't forget that. Amazing.
Well where should we go to find your book to follow you?
Energy is life, I love it. Use life.
Why environmentalism? Like nuclear?
You can find it anywhere. The easiest place to get it is
Amazon if you're in the US. There's a slight delay with
getting the paperback because it's published here, but the
ebooks available instantly everywhere.
You can find me everywhere. I'm on TikTok Z love science,
I'm on Instagram. My name's Zeon lights.
I'm on X Zeon tree. I'm easy to find and if people
want to contact me, I have a contact form on our website
which does go straight to my e-mail.
But yeah, please buy the book. Consider some of the ideas in it
and even changing your mind. It's not about convincing people
of nuclear, which I know you know from from reading at least
some of it. It's about challenging some of
our foundational beliefs that have kind of cropped up over
many years of dialogue around these issues that have maybe
never been challenged. And I'd be surprised if anyone
reads it and isn't challenged on some point somewhere because
it's about the communication, right?
As well as, you know, technology.
Yeah, I've got the ebook version, but I've been kind of
journaling in in the sides. And so, yeah, just trying to
trying to kind of implement some of some of the new kind of
thought processes that I've that I've got from the book.
So Zion, thank you so much for, you know, having this
conversation again with me telling us and sharing about
your life story. I think it's been phenomenal to
kind of see the way in which you move through the world.
It's, it's very inspirational the way that you're, you're
constantly looking to make the planet better, but also
challenge your own beliefs and, and say like, hey, is this the
most right thing? Based on my experience and, and,
and finding that truth, I think that like your, your journey is
definitely a really good example of how we can get to, you know,
communicating with the public better.
And so, yeah, thank you for doing that work for yourself,
but like for the rest of, you know, the different publics
online as well. Thank you.
Thanks for having me. Thank you so much for listening
to this episode of Naked Nuclear and our first episode in the
series. Follow them Friday.
Every final Friday of the month we will be dropping another
episode with a mover and shaker within the industry that is
putting out amazing content. If you enjoyed this episode and
honestly, if your brain isn't a little bit rewired right now,
you should absolutely be following Zeon Lights.
You can find her across all platforms, including Instagram,
LinkedIn, TikTok, and X. She is consistently sharing
sharp, thoughtful takes on energy, environmentalism,
science, and nuclear that is getting millions of views across
these platforms. If you want to go deeper into
everything we talked about today, her book Energy is Life
is now available on Amazon. And for me, it was one of those
reads that challenge the way that I think about energy,
climate, what we think is good and bad, and what it actually
means to support life on this planet.
As always, if you got any value from this episode, share it with
a friend, send it to someone who still thinks nuclear is scary,
and help keep these conversations going.
Thank you so much for listening to Naked Nuclear.
Until next time, stay.