In this episode of the Audio Signals Podcast, Marco Ciappelli sits down with Lee Schneider to discuss his shift from television production to crafting climate fiction novels that explore the human side of a changing world.
Guest: Lee Schneider, Artistic Director, FutureX Studio
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Host: Marco Ciappelli, Co-Founder at ITSPmagazine [@ITSPmagazine] and Host of Redefining Society Podcast & Audio Signals Podcast
On ITSPmagazine | https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/marco-ciappelli
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Episode Introduction
Welcome to another episode of the Audio Signals Podcast, where we dive into the world of stories, the people behind them, and the impact they leave on us. Today, I’m excited to introduce Lee Schneider, a storyteller who’s journeyed through television and is now making waves in the world of climate fiction. His work reminds us of how stories shape our understanding of the pressing issues of our time, especially when it comes to the environment.
The Journey of Lee Schneider Marco Ciappelli: "Hey everyone, you know my favorite line by now—'we are all made of stories.' Today’s guest fits right into that idea. Lee, welcome! Let’s jump right in—how did your storytelling path begin?" Lee Schneider: "Hi everyone. For me, it all started around the age of 18 or 19 when I first dreamed of writing novels. But like many of us, life had other plans—I ventured into television writing to make a living. Now, I’ve come full circle and am back to writing novels, specifically three interconnected ones." Lee’s journey from writing novels to television and back again is a testament to his passion for storytelling. From producing content for shows like Good Morning America and Dateline NBC to documentaries, he’s seen the power of stories in various formats. Now, he’s channeling that experience into his true calling: writing novels.
Exploring Climate Fiction Marco Ciappelli: "You mentioned climate change in your bio, and staying optimistic—something I’m definitely curious about. But first, let’s talk about the title of one of your books, Resist. How did that come about?" Lee Schneider: "Great question. A lot of science fiction gets technical, but I wanted to focus on how people deal with these changes. That’s what drew me to climate fiction. It’s a growing genre, and I’m raising my hand to say, I’m in." Lee’s approach to climate fiction zeroes in on the human side of things. By steering clear of the heavy technical details, he crafts stories that focus on people and how they navigate the challenges brought on by a changing environment. It’s this focus on humanity that makes his work stand out.
The Trilogy: Surrender, Resist, Liberation Marco Ciappelli: "So, we have Surrender and Resist—are these titles setting up a bigger question about how society reacts to control?" Lee Schneider: "Surrender is a bit of an inside joke for me because I hate surrendering. In the story, it’s a command from a global corporation, and naturally, some people refuse. Resist dives into what it means to push back. And the third book, which I’m writing now, is called Liberation." Schneider’s trilogy takes readers through different stages of resistance and rebellion against control. The titles alone invite readers to think about their own responses to authority and change, mirroring the journeys of his characters.
Storytelling vs. Preaching Marco Ciappelli: "When you’re writing, do you find yourself driven more by the story itself or the message you want to convey?" Lee Schneider: "You have to avoid getting too preachy. It’s all about the story—people are naturally drawn to narratives. I’ve worked on screenplays and scripts, but there’s always that urge to write stories. Suppressing that doesn’t lead to happiness." For Lee, it’s clear that story comes first. His work is about connecting with readers through characters and situations, rather than pushing a specific message. This focus ensures that his stories resonate on a personal level.
The Future Lab Podcast and Lee’s Outlook Marco Ciappelli: "I’m curious about your podcast, Future Lab. Is it focused on climate change as well?" Lee Schneider: "Yes, Future Lab is launching soon, and it will dive into climate fiction. My goal is to build a community around this genre and explore its potential to inspire change." Lee’s new podcast aims to explore the intersections of fiction and reality, particularly how stories can influence our approach to climate issues.
Conclusion As our conversation with Lee Schneider wraps up, one thing is clear: storytelling is a powerful tool. Through his novels and upcoming podcast, Lee is not just telling stories—he’s sparking conversations about the future of our planet. Be sure to stay tuned for more thought-provoking episodes from the Audio Signals Podcast.
About the Books
Surrender (Book 1 of the Utopia Engine trilogy): The United States has splintered into independent domains. Global heating has plunged coastal cities underwater. Technocrats control the weather and use software to reanimate the dead.
Working in the world-building and mind-bending traditions of Philip K. Dick, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Kurt Vonnegut, Lee Schneider conjures a world in Surrender at once familiar and strange, a future where inner thoughts are broadcast and received, corporations have gained control over nearly every aspect of life, and a band of female rebels fights to restore human values amid a tech-dominated world.
Driven by a dazzling cast of characters, Surrender transports readers to a not-far-off future where networked machine intelligence and human rebels square off, but only one group can win.
Resist (Book 2 of the Utopia Engine trilogy):
It is 2052 and Kat Keeper is fighting to stop an AI corporation from exerting absolute control over everyone on Earth.
The CEO of MIND, the world's most powerful corporation, has been murdered, and Kat Keeper, a resistance fighter, has been accused of the deed. Not only is she on record wishing ill of the corporate titan, but she also used to date him. To evade arrest, Kat has to flee New York. But an extreme weather event has locked down the city, and enforcement bots and trackers are closing in on Kat and her small band of resistance fighters. MIND, their corporate adversary, is on a mission to profit by stealing the inner thoughts and memories of everyone it can, and it won't stop until it captures Kat and destroys the resistance movement she leads.
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Resources
Books: https://www.futurex.studio/books
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Book | Utopia Engine Trilogy | Writing Climate Fiction: A Conversation with Author Lee Schneider | Audio Signals Podcast With Marco Ciappelli
Please note that this transcript was created using AI technology and may contain inaccuracies or deviations from the original audio file. The transcript is provided for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a substitute for the original recording, as errors may exist. At this time, we provide it “as it is,” and we hope it can be helpful for our audience.
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[00:00:00] Marco Ciappelli: Hello, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Audio Signals Podcast. This is where we talk about stories, storytelling and storytellers. And I'd like to start with my, at this point, signature phrase, which is, we are all made of stories. And I love it. I, I Done a lot of branding and marketing and advertising a light to write And and I think that's how we live in our society.
We learn and uh, We need good stories We need to get inspired and the stories Can be a book can be a movie can be music can be a painting a photography, whatever. So today we have a a storyteller. I'm just gonna give you this. I'm gonna disqualify you as a storyteller from what I've learned from your bio, uh, Lee.
And, uh, you do podcasting, you write, you've been a producer, and, uh, and I'm sure, uh, you have other, other adventures and ventures going on. So without further ado, I'm gonna let you say hello and, uh, tell me a little bit about yourself, uh, and, uh, to the audience mostly.
[00:01:13] Lee Schneider: Awesome. Well, thanks. Thanks for having me on the show.
And hi everybody. I'm Lee Schneider. I think this whole journey started when I was about 18 or 19 when I really thought about, I wanted to write novels. And, uh, it was a kind of a crazy idea because the only novelists I knew were famous novelists. And we had a big library at home and I would pick out a book, you know, from, and when I ran out of books in my parents library, they gave me a Uh, account at the local bookstore, and I think when I was around 12, I spent 1, 000 in one summer just reading as many books as I could possibly read, mostly novels.
And then, I had to make a living. So I wrote some novels. I wrote a few. I have a few. Everyone has a few in the drawer, right? I have a few novels in the drawer, but I went into television writing for, to have a career, to raise a family, to buy a home. So I worked for Good Morning America and Dateline NBC and ran a production company that did um, Documentaries for Discovery and History and Food Network and many others.
And I've done that for a while and also did podcasting for a while because I love podcasting. I love the simplicity of it. I love just people talking. I think it works really well. But I finally, finally, finally had a chance to start writing novels. And, you know, the issue with that is you actually have to write the novel.
You know, what's the old expression is, uh, uh, I love being a writer, it's the writing I hate. And, you know, for me, right, you're familiar. For me, finding the juice to keep the writing going in a long form is Maybe years long job of writing a novel was the hard part. So I finally found a topic that I really wanted to dig into, and I'm actually writing three connected novels about this topic.
Finding a way to talk about climate change and finding a way to create role models for people. In a novel to think about climate change,
[00:03:43] Marco Ciappelli: and I definitely like that. And it's funny. I talk a lot with people that are academic, both on this and the other podcasts that I have. And sometimes we end up in the importance of storytelling when you're a scientific educator.
I always bring like Carl Sagan as an example, or, you know, many other, that are actually really good in, in fascinating people with stories that inspire. So when I saw what you were presenting, I'm really interested in that because, uh, you know, one of the thing you mentioned in your bio, I think, is how to stay optimistic in your question and thing you'd like to talk about, how to stay optimistic when we talk about that, which is definitely a question that I will ask you.
But the first one, is what I mentioned before we started recording. It's like, uh, the catch of the sentence that you, you resist, which is the title of one of your book, is a science fiction set in the near future for people who don't usually read science fiction. And I need you to explain.
[00:04:51] Lee Schneider: Cool. The idea there is a lot of science fiction and beloved science fiction gets into a very technical stuff.
You know, some science fiction is written by actual scientists and they, they, you know, it's called hard science fiction and they, you, you don't have to know about orbital escape velocities and things like that, but it helps. I decided to write books where the technology was never explained. Different from a fantasy where magic technology is never explained.
But I figure, you know, We get in our car, we turn it on. If it's electric, it goes, I don't know how that car goes. I don't know how it works. I just, you know, charge it at the charger or when I run it on gas, I go gas it up. Uh, I don't know what happens really. I, I kind of do, but I, I don't. And. I thought, well, what if we looked at a world of 2050 or 2052 or 2053 where things were commonplace like anti gravity or high speed trains that floated or climate controls that were planetary that worked all over the place?
And what if I didn't have to explain that? It was just more about How the people would deal with it, which is really why we read books anyway, and why we go to movies. Anyway, we we don't I mean When you see a Mission Impossible movie, you kind of want to know what the gimmick is, and you kind of want to know, like, oh, how did they get that to do that, you know, that flamethrower thing to work, but not really.
I mean, we're more concerned, will, you know, will Keanu Reeves make it? Will Tom Cruise make it? Will there be a love interest? Or, you know, they can't kill off the main character, can they? You know, and all of those sort of dramatic moments that are, but they're more human. And I was thinking, well, how can I do that?
How can I talk about a world that is weird enough to remind us of this world? in a turn 90 degrees, just a little different. So there are talking AIs. There are people whose consciousness live in boxes. There are planetary controls that people are trying to control people's minds and all things that the way I write it, I try to make it connect to what's happening now.
So people will say, you know, He's talking about planetary mind control, but we sort of have that with the internet and the media in a way, you know Maybe not as extreme as what I'm writing about But that's the point because if I make it a bit of extreme then it stands out and you can see it So that's what I mean by Science fiction for people who don't usually read science fiction.
It's a little more in the fantasy realm and there's this growing world of what's called climate fiction, which I'm kind of, I guess, raising my hand and saying I'm kind of getting into that.
[00:08:07] Marco Ciappelli: No, I like that and I get the picture and I completely agree with you when it comes to. The regular person that go and watch a movie, just you dive in, right?
You're not questioning or other book. I mean, you don't read Harry Potter and question how magician became magician and other people are not right. You just go into it, right? You don't need to explain something about dragons or anything like that. But of course there are, there's the other way around where you kind of predict the future by.
By knowing enough with hard science fiction, and it's a great point. Now, I like your idea because I will be doing the same thing. I love enchanted and magical story where I just go in another world. I don't need, it doesn't need to make sense. I just need to like it. So I like that. Another thing that kind of got me was the two title.
I didn't read the book. We just connected and, uh, you know, eventually I will get there. But so one is surrender and the other one is resist, which is, uh, are we going to surrender or are we going to resist, right? What's what's the catch there? What is the catch?
[00:09:29] Lee Schneider: I started thinking about. Well, okay. Most science fiction now is more than one book.
So, that immediately set me back. Like, what kind of mind map could I make that would give me three stages, really, of the character development? What was going to happen to the people in those books that could mirror what we were feeling as we read them? So, uh, Surrender is kind of an inside joke because I actually hate to surrender.
I hate giving up. I do yoga and sometimes the yoga teachers will say things like just surrender and I go, you know, insert expletive here. I am not surrendering. But so I decided to name the book that to kind of challenge myself. And what it is, is it's a directive from a global corporation telling the citizens what they should be doing.
And of course, there's a few who say no. More than a few. And those people become the resistance. So, the first book covers this world. You know, you have to do a lot of world building in a book. And, to take the example of the Harry Potter novels, It is magic and it's fanciful, but it has so much integrity.
There's so much detail there that you're willing to believe. You're willing to set aside any doubt and go, I'm in. I'm, like you said, right? I'm in, I'm going to do this. So the first book is about the process that People are asked to surrender to a higher AI corporation, and some say no. And the middle book, Resist, is about what do they do to resist, and what is it like to resist, and how well do they do that, and will they fail or succeed.
And the third book, which I'm writing now, is called Liberation. Which is about overcoming all of that and getting into something else. So, the one word titles, you know, you could, books are funny, right? You could have long, complicated titles. You could have secondary titles. And I played with all of that.
But I just thought that the single word would work best for these books.
[00:11:53] Marco Ciappelli: It's interesting titles and me coming from advertising, always try to get the catchy thing. There was a book that I read, I don't know, 15 years ago, and it's about a tournament. A tournament, the World Championship of Memory, right.
There is a cool, the people that actually memorized from cards to list of things and, and they're extremely good. And the old story is about this journalist that goes to cover this and then he. He's been invited to learn how to do this and go back and compete and he's like, I don't even remember where I put my keys.
It's like, you can learn. So he goes all through all this trick and you know, things that are memorable, they're usually because you're curious about something. So he titled the book Moonwalking with Einstein, which has nothing to do with what it's about. But that's why at that time I grabbed that book and I read it.
And then he explained why he made it. So. So weird like that. So, I mean, you invest a lot into, into a title because. Sometimes that's that's no more than that. That makes people get something until yeah. Yeah. Well, you know
[00:13:10] Lee Schneider: Yeah, and you're going to live with that for a long time, you know, it's going to be on the cover of the book It's going to be in the Library of Congress You know Norman Mailer wrote a book called.
Why are we in Vietnam? And the purpose of the book was to ask the question. He knew he was famous at the time and and he The war was going on and he knew that that book cover would be all over the place asking that question and I thought in a surge of imitative Behavior not that well thought through I named one of my early novels My name is john coltrane because I love the music of john coltrane of jazz artists from the late 50s 60s and I thought, well, that would be cool to have a book out there that says that, that would intrigue people.
So it's an approach. I mean, I like the idea of it. Uh, but so much today in book marketing, you know, gets very dialed in very fast and you're not, you're going to get a publicist who's saying, do you want to change that title? You know, and I didn't really want to deal with that at all.
[00:14:20] Marco Ciappelli: Well, things have definitely changed.
Um, I, I, You know, as a job, I talk to a lot of these people and I'm interested in the authors and, and a lot of them, they say, you know, it's not like they used to be like music. It's not like it used to be with social media, you need to have your own audience, you need to do your own marketing, you need to do a lot of podcasts, eventually, or whatever you can put your hands on to like book signing.
Like you said, you don't maybe you don't have that editor that Uh, does a lot of things for you before you actually go out there. Um, so I don't know if you, you feel the same. When it comes to marketing the books,
[00:15:02] Lee Schneider: sure. Well, you know, for some people, it's very hard. They, they kind of freak out and I, my attitude has become, I like talking about what I do.
That's how I frame it. I want people to read the book, but I'm not trying to sell. Anything really? I'm talking about what I do, which is fun for me. I will say, caveat, major caveat, that writing a synopsis or writing the back cover of the book is the hardest thing I've ever done. After you've written a whole book and then try to dial it down to 20 words or a log line, it's horrible.
So what I decided to do with book three is I wrote that first. I decided to write that first. And I may not stick with it. It may not stay, but at least it gave me a direction and I kind of got it over with. Uh, it's also, uh, terribly tempting to ask a chat bot to tune up your prose, to write, write a terrible synopsis of your own book.
And feed it through and say, make, punch this up. Uh, and it's kind of like having a bad intern punch up your prose, but it also block unblocks you because you'll look at it as I have done and say, boy, that is the worst synopsis ever. Let me fix that. And then it at least inspires you to do a little better.
[00:16:34] Marco Ciappelli: It's, uh, it's like when you pick a title, do you pick it before or after, like, does it come by itself and then maybe you get to the end of the book and, or even a short story or an article? I mean, even if you're writing an article, it's like, do I write the title before and I follow it? As a guideline, or do I wait and see?
Yeah, exactly. Nowadays you can ask CHAT GPT if it actually answers well sometimes, but most of the time I feel like it doesn't. But, you know.
[00:17:03] Lee Schneider: Yeah, I mean, I need a framework, so I'll often start with a title, and I'll often, you know, the characters will start to talk to me. It sounds weird, but I'll start to diary in their voices and people will raise their hands as characters and say, I want a bigger role, or can you put me in this scene?
It's kind of like directing a movie where all the actors want more screen time. I'm open to listening to that. You know, I'll hear them all. If anyone ever looked in my diaries, I think I was crazy because I, there's all these different voices and people talking in them and I don't label them. It just says, I, it's just first person, but you have to get into them somehow and let them kind of talk back.
So that's my way.
[00:17:49] Marco Ciappelli: So I'm going to ask you a question that I, I love. When I see people doing something, but then, as I often say, we have different lives when you're ready to reach a certain age. At least I look back and I'm like, Okay, I've done many things. But I feel like If you're lucky, you still stay in that kind of frame, like the creative world or the production world, the entertainment world, even if you wear different hats.
From what I can see from, from the short bias of you, I mean, yes, you had the idea to write the book. Then you said, well, maybe I don't make a living with that. I'm going to go do other things, but they were still seems to me in that creative. And was that by accident or it's something that you felt like you, you drove that for you, for yourself?
[00:18:54] Lee Schneider: That's a good question. I think it's inborn. I think you kind of start that way, continue that way and end that way. I will look to give two examples. I'll look, speaking of diaries, I'll look in my old notebooks at the things that I've highlighted from 10 years ago. And they're the same things I'm highlighting now.
You know, decades later, the same things are knocking around in my head in different forms, but you could, in hindsight, you can recognize them. There was also a period when I got very busy in production, where I just couldn't get up at five o'clock in the morning before work to try to write a few pages of the book I was working on, or, or the screenplay.
I was writing screenplays, I was doing creative work, and I was writing scripts, but Let's say just novels or just literature and I had to stop. I was seeing a therapist at the time and she said, you know, you just have to stop writing that kind of thing You know Just do your work and try to get more sleep and live and it was among the worst advice That I've ever ever had because I got more depressed and just in a worse mood Because I didn't have that creative outlet that I determined, you know, it's different you can Do creative work at work.
It's great. You know, I do it and you do it. But what about that crazy idea you have to write a short story or whatever it is, you know, or sing a song. If you have to suppress that because you can't get to it or you don't have the time or you don't have a cooperative family because the people who support you around this have to believe in you.
And if they don't, it's very hard to fight them. It's going to be unhappy. So I found that it kind of, um, manifests. It kind of shows up. And if you try to stop it, it's going to be bad. You're going to be unhappy.
[00:20:47] Marco Ciappelli: I agree. And I think it's like do by doing what you like. Also, some people say write about what you know.
So for example, one of my last episodes I recorded is a neurosurgeon. That decided then to write a book where he described what neurosurgeon do, but there's also ghost stories like he sees ghost, somebody that work in really heavy environment, like, you know, emergency room accident. And anyway, he built this thing.
And, uh, and it make me think like, yeah, they say write about what you know, but I think you need to write about what you care to, you know, be what you know, because you may have choose a different path. Now, is there you've been always been passionate about? The future of this planet and Somebody right now is like, yeah, this guy is of course there in california.
Santa monica la, of course, they think that way
[00:21:47] Lee Schneider: Yeah, but it yeah, it kind of hit me Yeah, it's not true I was concerned, you know, I I bought um when the iraq war started Uh, by Bush. Uh, I went out, I had a small inheritance from my grandmother and I went out and bought a little Honda Prius because It could go, you know, it could be a hybrid car.
So I've had that, the conviction of it for a long time, but it didn't really, and I, well, and I'll say when I worked for NBC and Burbank, there were days where you couldn't go outside or you didn't want to go outside because the pollution was too bad. So I had an experience, but recently here, and by recently, I mean, probably 2018, 2019, we had some fires, uh, up north and some here and The air, you couldn't go outside.
I'm a runner as well. Couldn't really run. And I, it started to hit me. Things are really changing. Like, something's happening here. Uh, that California is not going to be the land of eternal sunshine and, you know, fun, fun, fun all the time like a Beach Boys song. Something's happening. And I, that's really what got me going on to this path and caused me to, it's one thing to start a novel, but actually finish two novels and write a third because I'm on a path here that I see these stories are really worth telling and I think they're going to matter to people.
So yeah, writing what you care, you know, write what you know is a funny thing because What is the definition of no? I mean, do, do, do, do people know about hobbits? Have you met one? You know, if maybe, you know, maybe,
[00:23:36] Marco Ciappelli: uh, that's the fun part. Yeah. You have no boundaries and you want to create an entire world.
Yeah. That's what Tolkien did. Right. You know,
[00:23:47] Lee Schneider: that I think, yes, no. I mean, if you're going to try to write a story about something that you've never, ever, ever experienced. It's going to be a bit dicey, but when you look at Ursula Le Guin or any of the great science fiction writers, she's been in arctic places and cold places, but I don't think she's ever been to any of those planets that she writes so far.
Cool. With such detail. So that's clearly sourcing from another place. An interesting place, a mystical place, but sourcing from another place than what we know.
[00:24:23] Marco Ciappelli: So when you write these books, do you feel like is the story that drives you or what you want to communicate drives you? I don't know if it makes sense.
It's a question.
[00:24:36] Lee Schneider: Yeah, that makes sense. Um, you got to be careful about getting preachy and, you know, what do I want to communicate there? There's some writers who definitely see the book as a medium to get their ideas across. Asimov is a good example. You know, the writing is not always super terrific, but the ideas are absolutely amazing.
And that's what he was doing. That's hard because you, your ideas have to be pretty darn good to carry that. I think it's more story. I mean, we're narrative animals. People love story. People are story, right? To coin a phrase. And we have to experience these narratives. And get into people and get into role modeling people.
I mean, who hasn't? Watch some superhero movie or some, some, you know, and, and pretended to be that superhero in their mind for a minute. Well, that's the story working. We want to be able to enter these, these stories in these realities. So I think it's story. It just has to be, you know, when I have a scene mapped out and I map out pretty well, I do mind maps, I do graphs, I do charts, I do people, but sometimes You know, you get those people in the room and it's like actors improv ing a scene.
Sometimes things happen and they, somebody says something and I'll think, well, that's pretty crazy, but let's run with that. And the whole scene changes. And sometimes I'll have to cut that part out because it's too crazy, but other times it becomes Like the best part or something that I have to back engineer to build in to make it make sense.
You know, and that's happened a couple of times. You know, the first book, a character falls in love with an AI. Now that's been covered before, so it's, I didn't think of it, but I thought, well, How are we going to deal with these AI personalities, a personality based AI? What if an AI were our boss? Like, how would you deal with that person?
Or what if you had an AI of a loved one who had passed away? Not the mechanics, you know, I don't care about that, I care about the person. And that just, that just channeled in, like that was a scene I was writing and suddenly there they were, the actors in the scene were kind of writing it themselves and I was, I said, Wow, wow, I didn't think of that.
Forget the outline. Let's write that. And that can work really well.
[00:27:17] Marco Ciappelli: Yeah, so you go with the flow of where the sword is bringing you. Um, as we get towards the end here, and I could talk about this a lot, but I'm kind of curious also about what you do with the, with the podcast. I know you have one. It's called the Future X Podcast.
And are you still, like, are you focused there on the Environment and, and, and the climate change as well, or it's more generic.
[00:27:43] Lee Schneider: Yeah, I, that, uh, of course I changed the title because why not? I can, it's, it's my podcast. I can change the title. I think you've done that at some point. So it's called the Future Lab now, and it's going to start recording next month.
And yes, I'm going to be aiming at climate fiction. What is it? Who's writing it? Why write it? The reason to write it, and I'm going to dial that in and just think about how it can amplify and build the community around that kind of science fiction. It's kind of a branch of science fiction.
[00:28:20] Marco Ciappelli: Very cool. I like that.
So the last part of the interview, normally I'll ask what's next, but you kind of already told me there is a third book. And there is sounds to me like a podcast that kind of goes along with it with that and, uh, I'm gonna ask you, Dan, your vision, when you write this, it's a way to reflect. I think writing it, it's a way to help you think.
It's like, if I, sometimes I have a conversation, like right now, I don't remember everything we said, but when I go and either re listen or do the transcript, because It helps me with that. But I repeat it. I'm like, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. We cover all this, this, this, and this. And I'm like, hmm, that gives me an idea.
Maybe I can write a newsletter about it. Because there is something that, so as you write this, as you have more conversation on the podcast, are you being optimistic about where we're going? Are you hopeless? And is it changing as you reflect on it?
[00:29:32] Lee Schneider: Definitely changing. There are things about what's going on that are, that do give cause for optimism.
I think that, first of all, it's in the mind. It's, it's in the collective consciousness. People are changing. Taking the issue more seriously. And there are more people, especially in Europe, not so much here, but thinking about, well, how do we electrify cars? How do we have less, fewer cars? And people are giving a lot of good thought to that and how to, how do we build cities or how do we modify the cities we have so we're better partners with the planet.
The problem with humans, there are many, but one big one is we haven't been really great partners with other species. We've basically gone in there and leveled the place or taken over or, to coin a phrase, put up a parking lot. And that. That's got to end, you know, the planet is not going to put up with it any longer.
And, uh, we're going to find that we need to cooperate with other species. We need to connect with our environment in a way that's not so destructive, even though it might feel good. And even though it's kind of macho and, you know, driving really fast in a car might be fun, but it feels like people are the conscious.
The way people are thinking is changing. And of course, that has to come first, right? Before there's an electric car with a super long range, or before there's a really walkable city, or any of that, people have to start thinking differently about it. And I think they are. So, there's That's the reason. I
[00:31:19] Marco Ciappelli: agree with you.
I mean, unfortunately, we are made in a way that we always have to if you can tell somebody don't touch that candle, the flame, because you're going to burn yourself and you need to touch it so that you can prove it. But as human, we could just project. Some do, but I feel like we're at a point that actually it has become, unfortunately, very tangible, all of this.
I mean, we see it outside, but there's been people that has been telling us this since the fifties. So that's right. And I think the importance of telling the right stories. And use fiction to to actually talk about reality, right? It's a beautiful thing. I love it. Cool. So I really enjoy our conversation. I I'm definitely going to check your podcast as well.
Are you, are you going to start it soon? The new lab? It it'll
[00:32:23] Lee Schneider: start. Uh, we're recording starting next month and, uh, you know what it's like. I hope maybe. To maybe in September, uh, we'll get the episodes out there. I'm debating the usual podcasters debate whether I Put them out as I record them or bank a bunch and put them out at a regular cadence.
[00:32:41] Marco Ciappelli: Yeah I like to put them up when I record it if I if I have time, but that's me I'll just record more. I don't care Yeah, please when you do that Let me know. I'm going to have you on my other show, Redefining Society, where we talk about technology and society, and that will be a cool conversation because I really enjoy these and I wish we had more time, but I told myself more than 35 minutes, people are just not going to listen.
So I like to, I like to drive there unless it's a panel or something with four or five people on the show. So, Thank you very much, Lee. You're welcome. And, uh, uh, there'll be, of course, you know it, and the audience know it. There'll be notes, and there'll be links to your website, to your Amazon, and anything you want to share with, uh, with me, where they can buy the book.
Uh, and, uh, for everybody else, just subscribe, stay tuned. There are more stories coming from Audio Signals, as we are all made of stories, and And I'd love to, I'd love to talk. I'm Italian. What can I do? Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you, Lee.
[00:33:46] Lee Schneider: Thank you so much. It's a pleasure.