LA Times climate journalist, Pulitzer-Prize finalist, author of the award-winning investigative book, California against the Sea: Visions for Our Vanishing Coastline, and director of a feature-length documentary about the dumping of DDT off the coast of Los Angeles, “Out of Plain Sight,” Rosanna Xia’s job is to get up close and personal with bad environmental news. How does she keep getting up in the morning when the news is so bad? How does she communicate ecological problems with the public?
In this interview, we get a glimpse into how she stays courageous in the face of devastation. She sees her job as “deep hanging out,” and thinks of her journalism as a practice of empathy. Xia is a lover of oceans, a witness-bearer of climate suffering, and a shaper of culture. This is a masterclass on why we need more curiosity, compassion, and trust in all the work we do, not just journalism.
Showmnotes:
- Rosanna on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com
- Rosanna on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rosannaxia
- Learn more about the book: https://www.rosannaxia.com/book
- Learn more about the film: https://www.outofplainsight.com/
- Climate Magic episode with Dave Powell: https://www.khsu.org/show/climate-magic/2026-01-02/dave-powell-this-is-your-brain-on-climate
- Kari Norgaard’s book, Living in Denial
- The climate anxiety essay in the Los Angeles Times: https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2024-09-11/climate-anxiety-essay
- The “Why I Write” essay for Alta Journal: https://www.altaonline.com/california-book-club/a64906381/rosanna-xia-why-i-write-climate-empathy/
Transcription:
Sarah Jaquette Ray: Welcome to Climate Magic, a show where we explore the messy, human side of climate politics. We ask: what if our hearts and minds are the most radical leverage points at our disposal? How do our human emotions and mindsets, and cognitive biases and wounds shape climate policy?
I'm your host, Dr. Sarah Jaquette Ray, an author and a professor of environmental studies at Cal Poly Humboldt.
The LA Times climate journalist and Pulitzer Prize finalist, Rosanna Xia, is my guest today. Author of the award-winning investigative book, California Against the Sea: Visions for Our Vanishing Coastline, and director of a feature-length documentary about the dumping of DDT off the coast of Los Angeles called Out of Plain Sight, Rosanna Xia stretches outside the boxes of journalism, in order to keep audiences engaged, curious, informed, and even hopeful.
She does this work so well, I think, because she is truly a student of humans, a lover of oceans, a witness-bearer of climate suffering, and a shaper of culture. This interview feels like a masterclass on why we need more curiosity, compassion, and trust in all of the work we do, not just journalism.
There's something about connecting with Rosanna that gets all my synapses firing, makes me feel deeply present and gives me serotonin boosts that last weeks. Her sense of purpose, her delight in humanity's possibilities, and her exquisite skill of what she calls "deep hanging out" come through loud and clear in this interview.
Ready to do some deep hanging out with Rosanna Xia? Let's dive in.
Welcome to the show, Rosanna.
Rosanna Xia: It's good to be back in conversation with you. And I really do love that you're doing this podcast. Every time we're in the same room together, physically or virtually, I just feel like there's endless things to talk about.
Sarah Jaquette Ray: It's all your fault [laughs]. You're fantastic company. I have questions, but we're going to dive into some stuff you were saying earlier. You were saying that when you go into the field, you're not just seeing denial the way we think of denial. What you're seeing is denial coming in lots of different forms. What are you seeing when you go out and as a journalist and talk to people and like sometimes I bet you're saying the word "climate," and sometimes you're reading your audience and thinking maybe I shouldn't say the word "climate," right?
Rosanna Xia: I think in California, the denial that I run into isn't like, oh, I don't believe in climate change. I feel like most people I talk to are very present to the fact that we have, you know, 100-year floods more than every 100 years. We have so many wildfires, drought. It's just this constant drumbeat of a story and an issue that is permeating so many aspects of our lives. And they're not denying that climate change doesn't exist, but you know, the denial or the debate is how much time we have and what the solution should be, and whether or not, you know, this is something that can be a next generation thing or something that doesn't necessarily affect me.
And I think what I really found powerful in the book Living in Denial is also just kind of this collective ability to shut it out. That there's always something else that we can think about or a narrative that we can kind of really live in that doesn't require you to think about climate change on a day-to-day basis.
And I think that was fascinating to me: that we could live in these multiple parallels or these multiple universes where climate change does exist, but it doesn't affect me right now, while I'm stressed out about this thing in my life. And I think that's just so fascinating to me.
And as a -- kind of bringing it all back, like as a journalist working in the environmental space, you know, something that I think a lot about as a storyteller, is like how, do you not only, you know, hook someone, you know, for lack of a better word, but how do you help them stay engaged? How do you get people to care and to like not stop caring after they finish, you know, after they wake up the next day and something else occupies their attention? There's just so much going on now that is just like a fire hose of things to worry about. And so, how do you, you know, help people remain committed and remain engaged? And that's something that I've been thinking a lot about.
Sarah Jaquette Ray: Other than the fact that I'm talking to you right now, and there's a podcast called Climate Magic, and I have a book with the word "climate" in it, and I teach environmental studies. I mean, those are all obviously directly related to climate change, but on some level, am I touching climate change in my daily life? Is this climate change touching me in any way that I would register as climate change, other than I'm thinking about it in my mind a lot? And I don't -- I think it is perfectly easy. The way climate change has been framed or narrated, or just the type of problem it is constructed as, it's almost impossible to think about how it touches your life. In fact, I think by definition, climate change is not something we can perceive, because it's like beyond our time frames of our lives. Like the temporal -- there's like a temporal disconnect between our lifetimes and climate change, you know?
And it's been framed as like polar bears, right? So, you know, I mean, it's like, or something in the distance, distant future or distant geographically. You must be thinking all the time, how do I make this abstract concept that people believe in, feel like it's in their daily lives, so that they, or is that what you're thinking? What are you trying to do to try to bridge that gap between those parallel tracks?
Rosanna Xia: Oh my goodness, I can answer that question in a number of ways. And I think, just to build on one of the points that you just made, I actually just listened to your conversation with Dave Powell, which was a couple episodes ago. And what you just said, I think it really resonates. Like, A, he said, like, what was his quote? Like, we tend to rationalize our way out of things. I think that really resonated with me.
And then, just also this idea that, you know, people do have a sense of identity and a sense of, like, self that, like, I am fundamentally a good person, and this idea that, like, I do believe in climate change, that is part of my identity. I'm not a climate denier. Okay, check, done. Now I can put that in a box and not think about it and go away. Because, like, that's part of my, like -- you know, ideologically, I am not a climate denier. I believe in climate change, it's an important issue.
Okay, and now all the other things I need to deal with, you know, on a day-to-day basis. So, that was also really interesting for me to think about and kind of how it applies to the work that I'm doing. And I would say that, you know, it's interesting. There are just so many when I, like, think about how I bring someone into a story or how I enter an issue or a story, it's like I'm thinking about where on the onramp someone is with kind of the climate change issue. And like -- and a lot of that also starts with language. Like, am I using the word "climate change" in the title of the book, in the headline? Or am I, you know, there's a lot of debate in journalism right now, in climate journalism, whether we should call it -- is "climate change" enough? Does that convey the urgency? Should it be a climate crisis?
There are a lot of news organizations that are starting to move in that direction, where you're either calling it, you know, a disaster or a climate crisis. And I think -- I mean, put 10 climate journalists into a room and they will give you 10 different answers on what, like, that right balance is. And I think where I land is kind of on one end of that spectrum where I would rather have the reader arrive at their own conclusion that this is a crisis rather than to tell them upfront in the headline or within the first four paragraphs of an article that, you know, this is a crisis and you should care about it. I think, like, what are the other additional facts and meaning-making that you need to give someone before they can arrive at that conclusion?
Rather, because I think everyone at this point in 2026, is just so tired of being lectured at or told that they're wrong and told that, like, how they believe -- what they think or how they believe something needs to be shifted. And I think that, like, how do you do that in a way that is gentle, that is bringing them into a journey and doing it with trust and empathy and compassion rather than just telling them upfront, like you need to know this, this is important, this is important because I say so. And I think that's something that I think more and more journalists are recalibrating.
It's something I've been definitely recalibrating, and just kind of really understanding that just because I find something important does not mean I should assume that the other person will just accept that. And how do I bring them further into this in a way that is again like led with empathy and compassion, you know, first and foremost?
Sarah Jaquette Ray: Yes, there's a beautiful article about -- that you wrote about your writing that actually talks about compassion, and I'm just going to quote from it. I've got it over here. It's called “Why I Write”. You know that piece that I'm talking about? The Why I Write piece [laughs]? You can interview me too, later.
Rosanna Xia: Hopefully, I'm the one like, oh [inaudible], this really amazing essay that you wrote 10 years ago is, you know, totally grounding me. That's usually how we do our interviews.
Sarah Jaquette Ray: We can do that too, a little bit too. I will say that you did interview me for the one about climate change, “If You Have Climate Anxiety, You Should Fix Individualism First.” Which I'm so -- I love that title, and I'm so happy you went with that title. I'll put that in the show notes.
But I -- you did write that you like to -- you embrace writing as a daily practice of empathy. I just thought it was so beautiful. And earlier I was saying to you, you've thought a lot about the emotion side of what you're doing. And you said, no, no, I haven't thought about the emotions. I'm just trying to be human [laughs]. So I'm curious, you know, you're --obviously empathy is probably part of that.
You write, "with every conversation and every new person I meet, I marvel at the breakthroughs that are still possible when we take the time to reach out to one another and when we slow down to listen, I write for these humbling moments of connection. The more I question all the ways we've hardened ourselves against nature, the more I need to write just to remember, to hope, that it doesn't have to be this way."
I just think that's so beautiful, and I'm curious: you know, is that what you mean by being human? You're not really necessarily studying, you know, as an academic exercise the way I do, all of the emotion side of what you're doing in your work, but you're practicing it. And I don't know if you want to share a little bit more about that.
Rosanna Xia: Just what you were just saying, like two thoughts kind of popped into my mind. Like, one is just like, you know, a question I get asked a lot, you know, in the process of writing the book, working on the documentary film, all the investigations I do. So people will be like, What surprised you the most? And I realized, like, in the process of just actually thinking about just the last few years, like what I realized is, like, I was pleasantly surprised by just how much commonality we actually do have with one another, but it takes breaking past the first few levels of the surface, you know, kind of like rhetoric.
And people -- we do live in such a fractured, siloed, very online kind of world right now. And people tend to retreat into their corners, or like this person on this side of the issue will literally sit on the other side of the aisle in the planning commission meeting. And it really took kind of like deeper conversations and multiple conversations, and me coming back to a community to realize, like, oh my goodness, like, everyone, for example, has a story about the first time they saw the ocean, and why they feel connected to the beach, or why they chose to live in this town too, even though they disagree with their neighbor on something.
And I think the more I was able to peel back those layers, you know, and to get past the initial emotions of anger or frustration or whatever form of denial we want to talk about. And again, not come at a place where I am questioning or attacking what someone is feeling because you can't debate with someone about how they're feeling. That emotion is real, regardless of what is informing that emotion. You know, the facts are one thing, but you can't debate someone how they're feeling. And I think acknowledging and validating how someone is feeling, and then kind of peeling back the layers that way. Yes, I am the California coastal and ocean reporter, so I'll kind of stay in that universe.
Like, there is something so beautifully, distinctly California -- Californian, even if you don't necessarily live right on the coast, in terms of our connection to, you know, the ocean, to the mountains, and to the landscapes, like the stunning, majestic landscapes that define California and make California what it is. I had this very old school editor years ago at the LA Times, who told me, you know, he's like, Rosanna if like, the day a really big story breaks that you've been working forever on, and if like, that story publishes and everyone that you quote in that story hates you just a little bit, nitpicks just something in the story, like, oh, like, this quote is fine, but why did you have to cite this study? This study is wrong, or this guy is crazy, or whatever. Like, that means you are fair.
Like, you included all perspectives, and no one fully agrees with your article. That is the definition of fairness. And I was like, what kind of job did I sign up for? Where basically, if you do your job right, everyone just literally -- and I think the problem, like, over the years, I realized that the other end of the extreme also works, where like, the day your article publishes, every single person that you talk to on all sides of the issue, you know, you know, from all these different perspectives, they all tell you that they felt heard. You know, like, you know, I don't know why you talked to this person, but at least thank you for getting my section right.
Thank you for taking the time to listen to me. And I think also some of the magic is helping people realize that a lot of what they were saying were kind of similar or compatible, but they had also stopped listening to each other. And as a journalist, the cool thing is you're connecting the dots. So, I think the other thought, the second thought I had as you were speaking, and just thank you for -- I could literally listen to you talk forever because my brain just activates whenever I hear you just like speak on all of this.
But the other thing that I was thinking about is just like I realize too that traditionally, and I'm speaking very generally, the old school journalism kind of, you know, thought is that the impact happens after the article publishes. You know, you publish a big article that exposes a wrongdoing and a law gets changed, and -- or like, you know, something shifts or a policy gets adopted.
But I think what I realized working on, you know, writing an issue like sea level rise, which has taken years, and is a continued ongoing daily practice of reporting. You know, I realize that a lot of the magic happens as I'm talking to people. Like I'm door-knocking on someone -- like, you know, in a town where someone is, you know, considered resistant to a climate change policy, or everyone's like, Oh, that person is like anti-whatever and I'll you know, knock on the door and be like, wait, wait don't close the door on me, you know, like -- and hey, I'm about to go talk to the Coastal Commission tomorrow. What questions do you have that I can bring to them? And I think that opens a different kind of conversation. And then I'm able to bring those questions to the Coastal Commission and be like, hey, so like, I'm actually hearing on the ground a lot of people frustrated with what you are doing because of these questions that feel like they're not getting answered. And they're like, oh, interesting. Okay, how about here are some answers, and then I'll take it to the next person.
A lot of really cool with like science, for example, too. I will, you know, be talking to a scientist up in like this corner of research, and then I'll be talking to someone in a completely different field who's noticing something that's somewhat similar, and they didn't realize that there was a dot connection because this person works in toxicology and this other person works in, you know, marine biology or something. And I think, you know, in the early years of writing about sea level rise in California, you know, before people were really looking at this issue as a statewide issue, and it was very much done on a case-by-case, parcel-by-parcel, town-by-town kind of issue.
As things were popping up, as floods were happening, as something was falling into the ocean, they needed to deal with it. I was also able to help -- I'd like to think I was also able to help, you know, one mayor up in this town in Northern California realize that what they've been dealing with is very similar to kind of the politics or the cultural and emotional conversations that another mayor was dealing with in Southern California. And so, again, like a lot of the magic happens in the dot-connecting and the bridge-building. And I think for me, like being a beat reporter in journalism has also made me realize that I am speaking to, I'm building an audience, I'm also building a community through the work. And with every single conversation I have with someone, I'm also hopefully rebuilding trust in journalism.
I do have a tendency to now to overexplain my process. I am asking you this question because it helps me understand this, or it will help other people understand this. And I think that, you know, especially people who are not familiar with talking to journalists? A lot of people I talk to in the field like this, I'm the first reporter they've ever met, or they've met another reporter who completely burned them, and now it's my job to also make them understand that not all reporters are created equal, and so I think this is a very long-winded way of saying, like, I think a lot of the magic happens in the process of reporting and putting the story together: the trust building, the dot-connecting, the community building, the ideas-connecting, and being like, Oh, have you talked to this person? And then this person being like, Oh, I should go read this book. And I think that's something -- I mean, Sarah, you've probably felt this too in the way we've talked and like -- because I often do start with like a concept or a question, like, I'm going to write an essay about climate anxiety, and let me just start building the pieces and let me start building a community around this question that I have that is half-baked.
Sarah Jaquette Ray: Yeah, I feel slightly responsible for that. I was like, hello, there's something you might want to think about. Maybe you should do a piece on it someday. That was really fun. So, what I'm hearing from you is: I'm imagining this mycelium, you know, fungal network happening underground, that really is where the magic is. And then occasionally an article comes out, and it's like a little sprout above ground that people can see. You know what I mean?
And then actually, what you're doing is building this other thing and building trust. I mean, all of this stuff, folks like Renee Lertzman and a bunch of other people are often talking about the definition of action or a deliverable or something that we want to measure that shows us that we're doing well on climate, looks like these very specific things that are fundable, you know, that people like nonprofits have to, you know, show that they've done this thing for compliance, and that it really narrows our idea of what counts as an action. And it narrows it to this very superficial expression of the kinds of work people are doing, but that the immeasurable stuff or the invisible stuff or the long-term stuff of basically what you just described: relationship building, trust building, connecting people across geography, across politics, that that is really where you find the magic to be.
And to me, this is a revelation we all need to be hearing in all of our work, right? That that relationship-building part is actually the magic, not the article that came out as a result of it. Although you can produce better journalism because of it, of course, and that there is a -- the ends justifies the means argument to be made there, but it's really not the point of it for you, is what I'm hearing.
Rosanna Xia: Yeah, and just to add to that, and you know, I think -- and thank you for also just showing kind of what -- like deep listening. I feel like that. I feel like I'm listening a lot in the field. And I remember my book editor telling me after the final draft of the book, and we were ready to ship it to the copy editor. She was like, I love how this book has really become a blend of old school journalism, radical listening, and deep hanging out. And I think the radical listening and deep hanging out parts are so important and something that we do lose sight of, not just in like old school journalism, but in life and in so many sectors today.
We're just so online, our attention spans are so short, and we just don't settle into a conversation as much anymore. And I think the other -- so I think what you just summarized so beautifully, and thank you for your deep listening and active listening, is, you know, the process leading up to the article is super important.
And a lot of that is something that usually is done behind the scenes [inaudible]. It hasn't been transparent. There was this kind of like almost gatekeeping that you feel in journalism. I also feel like this in research and science, like you don't know what the scientific process is until the peer-reviewed paper comes out in a journal that has been vetted by all the peers and is, you know, Nature Communications or whatever.
And that's the science, you know, and that you don't know the 19 years and all the PhD students that went through all of that process to get that paper. And I think it's so important now to really peel back kind of the process to people and help them understand what it actually means to produce truth and to fact check and the rigor and the care that goes into it, the amount of discipline that goes into it. And I think for me, so the lead-up to the article is important. The article itself, still very important and very impactful, you know, article, book, movie, whatever the quote-unquote like end product is. But I think the other thing that I'm realizing existentially as a journalist is like, traditionally, and again, I'm speaking very generally, I don't want to speak for all of my colleagues in journalism, but traditionally, it's like once your article is out, your job is done. It's now, you know, a government leader's job to take that article and do something about it.
You know, we've exposed the wrongdoing, now an advocacy group or a politician has to continue, take the baton and keep going. And I think that is still true. But I also realize, like, I remember the night before my book published, my book editor called me, like, and she was like, Rosanna, she's like, I know you spent so many years working on this book, and you think that tomorrow, when the book is finally published, that you are done. And I'm here to tell you that tomorrow is not the end, it is the beginning. That is tomorrow, it is the first day every single person starts engaging with this work that you have been living and breathing and thinking about for years.
Sarah Jaquette Ray: It's so important.
Rosanna Xia: Yeah, and I think so for me, for my last few projects, I've realized that just putting an article out into the world, or a big investigation, or a big project, like putting it onto the world and just expecting people to receive it and to do something with it and to engage with it in a meaningful way is an assumption that we cannot operate with anymore as journalists. And so, for me, it's like, you know, the book came out, the hardcover came out in the fall of 2023, and it's now 2026. And I'm still giving book talks, going to universities, meeting people where they are, responding to like so many seeking requests, because I think a lot of, again, the magic -- I love this word "magic" that you've kind of implanted in me in this conversation -- but this idea that the magic does happen when I enter a space, I'm physically, collectively giving people something to experience, and we're having a real conversation.
And what I've realized, like for the book -- with the book, for example, there are so many people who -- I've just met so many people who have been craving a conversation about climate change. They've been curious, they've been anxious, they've been interested, but they're not necessarily the same people who would go show up at a planning commission meeting and, you know, get angry during three minutes of public comment or even protest out on the street regarding an issue, but they will go to their local library if there's an interesting book talk, they will go to their local bookstore or show up at their church or you know, go to a university kind of public, you know, event.
And I think meeting folks there and again, creating a space for people to enter this conversation in a way that feels more accessible, more warm, and you know, again, sparking curiosity rather than someone's fear right from the get-go, has been really interesting to me, and you know, I've been also working on this documentary project about a different issue, even just like film. I've been thinking a lot lately about just what it means to have people go to a movie theater, sit with 200 people, and collectively experience the same music, you know, the same music, the same journey, the immersiveness of it. And then, like, basically, like, having the filmmaker come out at the end to do a Q&A, and we're basically having, like, a live discussion of what we all just collectively experienced. And then walking out of the lobby, hearing the chatter as people are talking about it. Like that -- that stays with you.
There is something so long-lasting about it. And so for me, it's like I release something now, and it's like another two years of my life where I'm just like manually going city by city, place by place, just building kind of -- like making myself accessible and just talking to people and listening to their questions and listening to their responses to the work and helping kind of like, really connect the dots on those conversations that need to be had, and I think that level of engagement is just like so much deeper and emotional. And yeah, as you can tell, I kind of talk like my first draft where I'm like, just like rambling and finding my thoughts and --
Sarah Jaquette Ray: [laughs] we're having deep hanging out.
Rosanna Xia: -- and edit myself.
Sarah Jaquette Ray: We're having deep hanging out. This is what deep hanging out -- you don't have to edit. You're not editing. We're having deep hanging out. That's what it is. You said curiosity, sparking curiosity, not fear. You talked about the experience of kind of -- I don't know if you want to call it translating process. I don't know. I'm thinking about what you said about the work isn't done, it starts after it comes out, and now you get to share and engage with people about your work for an infinite amount of time.
And I think, I'm thinking the equivalent, sort of similar to the way climate science has been for a long time, is people have been saying, the science is out there, why aren't they doing anything about it? The sort of obligation of scientists to move beyond just producing the science with the expectation that people will do something about it? And there's a similar parallel in teaching in environmental education, where it's like environmental educators forever, we're just like, we just got to get everyone to care, wake them up, and then we can assume that by throwing all this horror at them, they will know what to do and go out and do it. Right?
That kind of like parallel between journalism, science, and even education. Our job is just to, you know, give the information, and then our hands are, you know, then when we're free, the work is done. And you're describing this so beautifully, and I feel the same deep, deep passion in teaching that no, when we give them the information, they could easily not go off and do what they're supposed to do. And you saw, people aren't going to make the right policies based on my reporting [laughs]. I'm going to have to -- there's something else that I have to do here.
And it's sort of like a theories of change kind of a thing. Like, where is the leverage point of change? And you have, just because of your experience of seeing coming to that revelation, you have decided, ah, the change, the sort of arena of change is no longer necessarily just at the policy level, or I'm going to produce journalism that's going to result in this policy change.
But in fact, the arena of change is in this trust building and this mycelium building the network, this realizing we have so much more in common than we thought, this breaking down of divisions, and this sparking of curiosity to keep bringing people in instead of fear is a whole new kind of level of nuance about what you think of your job being [laughs].
Rosanna Xia: Yeah. Okay, a couple thoughts. And I'm going to shout out my book editor again, Marthine Satris at Heyday Books. She just totally deepened and expanded kind of the way I relate to the material that I gather as a reporter. And I remember her telling me after my first or second draft, where she was like, she's like -- it was the first draft because I remember after the first draft, I'm like, I give up. I'm not writing this book. Like, I think I'll, I like -- screw it, like, went around, walk around the block and like cried. But she basically was like, This draft is amazing. There's so much great reporting, there's so much great color, so many great characters, so many great [inaudible] but -- and then her "but" was the biggest but in the world. The but was, she was like, You have too much show and not enough tell. And I was like, What do you mean?
Sarah Jaquette Ray: Wow, I'm opposite.
Rosanna Xia: You're supposed to -- yeah. You're supposed to show, not tell. That's what you've been taught since like fifth grade writing, right? Show, don't tell. And that's what you're taught in journalism, because my job has been to give you the facts to show, you know, and just like, and then you figure it out yourself and receive the information, process it, decide how you feel about it. And she was like, I need more telling that shows. And as a writer, I think that has been so fascinating to me to explore this idea of, like, okay, beyond giving someone the facts or a piece of information or detail, you're bringing them to a place, you know, as a reporter. What is the meaning that you're helping them make out of this? And again, it's not -- there is still a fine line between like, bias and opinion, but there is the kind of this deeper -- she was really pushing me to think beyond just the intellectual journey of the reader and helping me think about emotionally. And also, like, she was basically telling me that I hadn't emotionally processed or philosophically processed what it was that I had gathered in the field and the material. And like, I needed to internalize it deeper. And so she was kind of pushing me to do that.
Sarah Jaquette Ray: She sounds like a therapist.
Rosanna Xia: She's incredible.
Sarah Jaquette Ray: She's a therapist/editor. Same thing.
Rosanna Xia: The other thing that she said that I haven't thought about in a while, but as we were talking, I was like, oh my God, I should call her and actually tell her that this has really -- to this day, I have a problem. I like really get weird to calling it, calling California Against the Sea "my book" or Out of Plain Sight, like "my documentary," or the -- you know, like, because I remember her telling me, she's-- that after first draft, okay? This is the draft where, like she like -- it was five hours.
She told me all the things that were great about it, then all the things I need to redo. And I was like, My life is about -- like, I'm going to spend the next gazillion years of my life rewriting this book. And she told me, she was like, Rosanna, up until this point, this book was your book. Now that I've edited it, it is our book. And then the day before the book published, she told me it went -- she's like, tomorrow when the book publishes, this book goes from being our book to everyone's book. And I think she was preparing me for, like -- I think she was saying in a way where she was preparing me to -- you know, for the people who might have different thoughts on it, like everyone's going to have an opinion about it, and I have no control over that.
And as a reporter, I think I've always been chill about knowing that you know, you put something out in the world, the more people have opinions about it, the more you know you've done your job and you've created a talker, but I've been thinking about the "my book" versus "our book" versus "everyone's book." And I think, similar to your research, I'm sure you feel this way: the minute you put this kind of information out in the world, it is everybody's.
And I think that that -- and this is knowledge that is to be shared. This is knowledge that you and I have vetted through research, through journalism, through our modes of practice. And once it's out in the world and it's available, you know, the point is that this is not everybody's information to receive, to internalize, to interpret, however -- and to like act on and to engage with. And I think part of that, too, what I'm seeing is that, like, I want to be there for people as they are processing it because a lot of the stuff is heavy, a lot of it's overwhelming.
A lot of it has like a lot of different factors, you know, involved, and you can pick a little one piece of it to engage with, and even picking one little piece of it is still better than nothing. And so I think that has been really interesting and has been now part of my practice whenever I release something. And I think the other thing I will just say, and again, I'm thinking back to your conversation with Dave Powell and this idea of, like, our sense of self and identity. The other kind of existential crisis I've been having as, like, a newspaper journalist who's now written a book and directed a film is that, like, there is something, and I feel like I'd love your perspective on this, because you probably have the, like, psychology framework to explain this phenomenon. But this idea that, like, when you read a book, it becomes part of your identity.
Sarah Jaquette Ray: Totally.
Rosanna Xia: Oh, I've read Harry Potter. When you've watched a movie, you've either watched Chinatown or you've [inaudible].
Sarah Jaquette Ray: I am Harry Potter [laughs].
Rosanna Xia: You've either watched the most recent Batman series with Robert Pattinson or you have not, and that is part of your identity. And that's not the same with a newspaper article. Like, you know, you're not like, oh, I read that LA Times article about that policy, that blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so there's something about the fact that, like, putting out a book, putting out a film, there is something transformative that it becomes internalized in someone as part of, like, the way they've culturally become a part of something. And I think that has made me realize that I also have a responsibility to also, you know, be there during this identity shift, however small or big it is.
And I think the other thing is also just like when you've met someone, oh, I've met the author versus I've never met the author. Like, there's this anonymity to like reading kind of newspaper articles and just again, the fire hose of information that's coming out all day. There's something about how people connect with podcasts more because there is a host that they connect with that they feel like they know, and I think there's a lot more work that can be done as storytellers, as journalists, in my opinion, on just making sure that people, like, you know, when they're like, Oh, I've met Rosanna. She's actually really nice. That's actually something I hear from a lot of people. Like, oh, she seems like a scary investigative reporter. Actually, she's the most bubbly investigative reporter I've ever met. I think that shifts the way you process information.
There's again, trust building. I am going to keep going back to trust and empathy. I think those are just two such important things that we need to all ground ourselves in, in this day and age and to prioritize in the way we relate to people.
Sarah Jaquette Ray: But what you just laid out was a model of how. You didn't just say, oh, we should aspire to trust. Well, yeah, everybody wants to aspire to trust. We all can see that the crisis of trust is the problem of our democracy, of climate, and all the rest. But how, how, how; right? And you just laid out a methodology, and that methodology -- you kept saying, I want to be present for that, I want to be very there for that, I want to help them hold that. And it made me think, like, doula, you know? It made me -- this person's like a doula of like culture change, right? Like a culture doula, if you don't mind me saying, something like that.
And what I'm thinking about, I always think that because I'm a humanities person, as we were talking about earlier, I've always thought, well, I'm like, in the sort of leverage points of change, we need the engineers, we need the politicians, we need the lawyers. Like, we have these existing institutions and systems, and we need people who know how to navigate them and push the lever so that these things can happen at different scales. Wonderful. And as an educator, you could even say, oh, education's in some system theory of change.
But, like, even more narrow than that, as a humanities person, I have often felt like the arena of change is really less visible. There's less money attached to it. It feels like less big bang, it feels less deliverable, it feels less statistically significant because we're really thinking about oftentimes what you just beautifully described. Like, I want to know the individual human behind that story, right? I want to meet the author. I want to, you know, absorb Harry Potter into my identity, right?
That there's a sort of desire to connect, and that that is more about human-to-human rather than all of this other stuff that I just said. And I think I finally came to some sort of conclusion that I'm still playing around with, which is that the arena of change is therefore way more amorphous. It's like we're just sort of touching each other, or bearing witness to each other, or accompanying each other through difficult things, and that may or may not, but I would like to think, that it has the effect of maybe building trust, and that then building trust might have the effect of having these other kinds of changes. And it may be delusional to think that culture change in that way is going to solve all these problems that we want solved [laughs].
I think it's too much of a stretch to say that that's how this goes, but it is the only thing I do well at, and I truly believe in it, and it feels really good to me, and I feel like I've made a craft of it. And that's what you're sharing with me. That's what you just shared with me. Like, this is the how of how I've made a craft of this, you know [laughs]? And it's like, yeah, you're a culture doula. You know? You're like helping after your book was published, after your film came out, you're gonna go around and help people with this heavy stuff, you know? I mean, it's really heavy.
And it kind of makes me -- leads me to a question I wanted to ask you about the heavy, which is, you know, I'm sure you've been asked this before, and I'll try to ask it in a clever way that makes you feel like it's a new question. But you know, how do you deal with the heavy? And I'll push it a little bit too, because I know you've been thinking about -- we -- you and I -- have talked about this in the past too. But a lot of what you're trying to do is expose heavy things and create a sense of urgency around getting people to act, getting people to care, or getting them to, as you just put it, absorb it into some part of their identity. I love that as an alternative to, like, action as a result of your work. No, what you're trying to do is get them to absorb it into some part of identity. It's so cool. I love it. And it's so like depth psychology, so right on, right?
Rosanna Xia: Just to clarify, I don't think I'm trying to actively do that. I think I'm just noticing after so many years with the book and the film that people receive these forms, these mediums differently.
Sarah Jaquette Ray: Yes. Yes.
Rosanna Xia: You know, that just does become a part of it. I think I've only been able to like articulate that, I think, in the last two or three months. But I was thinking to figure out what was hitting differently with like because I -- for me, it's like the journalism has been the same, you know, the amount of work and vetting and fact-checking and reporting and interviewing that goes into an article for the LA Times is the same as what I've done for the book and what I've done for the film, but people have been receiving these mediums differently and absorbing it differently. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt.
Sarah Jaquette Ray: No, no, I love that.
Rosanna Xia: I want to just make it clear that I'm not actively trying to shift people's identities. I'm realizing that you internalize a book that you've read, you log it on Goodreads; or you watch a film, you log it on Letterbox. No one's keeping a checklist of every article that they've read in the LA Times, you know, and it's just not just a way that you process and think about how you -- like, there is just something fascinating to me about that.
Sarah Jaquette Ray: Yeah, the different ways that these artifacts do their work in culture. Yeah.
Rosanna Xia: Yes.
Sarah Jaquette Ray: And they have called upon you to be more present for the consumption and translation of those texts, and that -- you are responding to, and you're thinking, like your editor said, get ready for that. You're going to be the doula for this book you've produced or this film that you've produced. Helping people process that. And I kind of wanted to get to that, helping people process that point, because I notice about a lot of your work, the Out of Plain Sight film and California Against the Sea, that you must feel like you are walking a line between kind of hope and despair. And you do write about this in that article about why I write.
You say, “these days I also find myself writing to think, to process this all-consuming story of climate change. I write in search of a different ending than the one we're barreling toward. We have much to mend and much to learn from the messes of our past. Is there still hope? For years I wrestled with how much hope to give when writing about an overheating planet. Too much might diminish the urgency, too little can paralyze us into a point of inaction”.
And I sort of -- you're articulating that very line I'm talking about, right? Like, there's -- you must want to unload all of this horrible news. That's the point of investigative journalism, right? Like, here's this terrible thing happening. We got to tell everybody this terrible story. And then you know from experience that it's not enough to just do that. You have to do this doula work of helping people process it.
I'm just kind of curious, you know, you've gotten a huge education then on like processing grief or grief literacy indirectly, accidentally. How are you thinking about the processing of hard news? Do you think about it in terms of grief? I mean, how do you think about it? And how are you dealing with it? I mean, how do you keep getting up in the morning and doing that? You know?
Rosanna Xia: Yeah. And I really appreciate the way you're asking this question. And it is true, and I'm sure you get this all the time. I've started to call it the hope question, you know, and I think the hope --
Sarah Jaquette Ray: We know, we know.
Rosanna Xia: Anyone working in climate change knows the hope question.
Sarah Jaquette Ray: What gives us hope?
Rosanna Xia: And I would say for me, the hope question is twofold. One half of the question is: how do I -- like, how much hope do I have? And then the other hope question is, you know, how much hope do I owe the reader or the viewer or the listener when I'm presenting an issue as a journalist?
So I'll answer that question first because I think, you know, again, put 10 climate journalists in the room and we'll debate this ad nauseam on what is the right amount of hope to give to someone. Because, as you just read in the Why I Write essay from Alta Journal, you know, if you give someone too much hope, they can put it down and live in that socially organized denialism and move on to another issue that is just more short-term and pressing, you know.
And I think that if you give someone not enough hope, that's where the anxiety and the grief and the like, nihilism and paralysis starts to come in, and people just shut down. They're like, well, no matter what I do, all is lost. I'm -- eff it. I'm just going to live my life. And I so I think that, like, that's a tough balance. And I think, like, you know, urgency, despair, alarm, all of those important emotions. The other one that gets talked a lot about in journalism is outrage and anger. I think there are a lot of people, and I think advocacy as well, where they think anger is a very important emotion to work with. And I think, you know, if you talk to, like kind of, you know, go to any investigative journalism conference and the old school investigative journalism approach is like, what is your outrage factor? Like, there has to be a level of outrage to like instill a policy shift or to expose wrongdoing. Like that emotion is very important in old school investigative journalism. And, you know, for me, it's like, I do think those emotions are important. I think anger is incredibly activating, but is it sustaining?
And for an issue like climate change, you -- like this -- I feel like I hear "burnout" almost as much as "grief" and "anxiety" in people who work in the climate space, because it is just such a multi-generational, long-term issue that just is like -- there are so many tentacles to this, and you know, how do you, you know, transition from anger and turn that anger into something that you can literally work on for the rest of your career, for the rest of your life? And that's something I think a lot of like, young activists, for example, who started when they were 11 are now feeling the burnout in their 20s or their 30s.
And I commend them for even lasting that long. And so I think, you know, this is a very -- like, in the journey that I've been on, I feel like the emotion that I have kind of really grounded myself in is courage. I think that was also mentioned in the Why I Write essay. Like, I think what I try to give people in my articles, in my book, in the movie is not hope, but courage, you know, courage to care, courage to engage somehow and to not look away. And I think also, like, how do you give people courage? I think making sure that not, it's that not all hope is lost, and the fact and like you know, activating not their anger, but a sense of responsibility to be a part of something bigger, to be -- to feel a sense of duty to care. And I think that, you know, maybe this is all kind of two sides of the same kind of emotional coin, but I think there is just something really empowering for me to really think about what it takes to give someone the courage to actually care, and I think, like, you know, I'm also remembering this line from Rebecca Solnit in one of her books: like, what is the difference between taking climate action and having climate commitment?
You know, again, and going back to this notion of like trying to solve climate change is such a massive undertaking, but what does a daily practice and daily commitment to caring about climate change look like? And that feels in some ways a more sustaining framework to, like, think about all this.
Sarah Jaquette Ray: I really love what you are thinking a lot about emotions [laughs]. I can see it. You're parsing courage and hope and anger and responsibility and these fine lines and thinking, this is working with my audience, so I'm going with it, you know?
Rosanna Xia: Yeah, and I just realized I didn't answer like, the like, personal grief hope question. I don't want people to feel like I'm dodging that question. I mean, my hope, my personal hope goes up and down all the time.
But I would also say that I think the fact that, like, whenever I have a question about something as an environmental journalist, climate journalist, however you want, whatever you want to call my job, like, whenever I have a question about something, there is someone with an answer, like, or multiple someones, right? Or I'll call that someone and be like, who else should I talk to? And then they'll list, like, five other amazing people working in this space. You know, Sarah, like -- you know, I call you about climate anxiety, and you're like, oh my God, read this book, talk to this person, this amazing person in Nigeria is thinking about this a whole different way.
Like -- and I think that in itself is inspiring to me, that there are so many people who are committed to doing their part in this and recognizing that not a single -- no one single person can solve this, but it takes all of us collectively putting our brain powers and what we're good at and our personal skills and joy, and our emotions into this, and like our heart into this, and collectively that's going to add up to something. Like, I maybe, if I had faith, my faith is believing that it does all of this adds up to something, and it's still better than nothing.
And so I think that's what honestly keeps me going. And I think, you know, the other thing is like, I have all these students, and I mean, you work in a university. Like, I -- so many students, when I give -- when I visit a campus, will ask me, like, how I stay hopeful, and I just like -- I do feel, like, the fact that these conversations do exist, that there is interest in this, and that there are people committing, like, I just -- there's still so much for me to be inspired by, and I think maybe, yeah, I use the word "hope" less and more like "inspiration." And I think there's just so much that I am inspired by.
Sarah Jaquette Ray: You said something about this faith that everybody can do their part and that will add up to something that's better than nothing. And I just that really hit me in the stomach, like, ah, yes. So thank you for putting it so beautifully. And that's really the kind of -- as I was describing earlier, the kind of inspiration behind the concept of climate magic. You know, like, what's your magic and how can you share that with the world?
I'm kind of curious -- I'm very curious about you and your -- how you relate to your work. And I want to ask, and you know, feel free to be as honest with this as you feel comfortable. But do you ever feel like, given how much there is going on, that what you're doing is not enough, and that you really should be working harder to do your work, more of it, or that you should probably be doing something else entirely, also? And how do you talk yourself off of that cliff? Because you really work hard. You're not one of these people who's like, I'm going to do it slow. I'm going to do my form of resistance; it's going to be to rest. You know, you're not one of those people.
You're like going, charging, caffeinated 24 hours a day, kind of. I mean, I'm sure you sleep, but -- and I'm sure you have good self-care practices. I don't even need to get into it, but I'm just saying that you are intense energy. You could put it in 50 different places and make a humongous difference in 50 different places. How do you reconcile that you're doing this one thing? Do you ever feel like it's not quite in alignment with what you want and/or you should be doing more? How are you okay with it? You know, this is my climate magic. This is my way of doing it.
Rosanna Xia: [inaudible] my heart.
Sarah Jaquette Ray: That's what I wanted to know. That's what I'm here for. And you know, you can cry. I got some tissue.
Rosanna Xia: No, this is the hardest.
Sarah Jaquette Ray: We're deep hanging out.
Rosanna Xia: No, and you're striking to the core of, like, one of the most existential questions I ask myself. And, you know, if I'm, like, fully honest, like, I think the hardest part of my job is -- and "it's gotten like it's gotten easier with age" -- it's not gotten easier with age, but this is something that really kept me up, you know, in my 20s and 30s. Just this notion that, like, in order to do one story right or to really make an impact on one issue, I have to say no to like 20 other issues that also deserve my time, my brain power, my heart, my like, everything and the, like -- and then once you pick that one thing and say no to the 20 other things, trusting that that one thing was the right decision, like, that haunts me.
And I think that that's something that -- you know, I think about like the fact that the book, not my book, everyone's book, California Against the Sea, took years to write and then, you know, years to launch, and I'm still launching. Same thing with the film. And I think, did I make the right call on that? That is how I spent the last five to ten years of my life. You know, and if you think about how many five to ten years of your life you have, and what cycles, and you know, when I first started thinking about making a documentary, I had a really good filmmaker friend who also works in documentary tell me, you know, the average documentary, believe it or not, takes at least seven to eight years.
You might think it takes two years, but it's going to take seven to eight years in real life. And I think -- and with a film, with a movie, a book, one of my co-workers who's written multiple books, he was like, whatever you think, however much time you think it's going to take to write a book, like triple it. And that's definitely true. And so I think for me, it's like, yeah.
And I'm haunted by the fact that, like, I -- well, to quickly answer one part of your question, I don't think I've ever questioned: is journalism the right job for me? Like, I think that I do feel like I am doing something useful currently in my job as, you know, the coastal ocean reporter for the Los Angeles Times and working as an environmental storyteller and finding specific stories that do kind of activate these broader, you know, multifaceted, deeper conversations that do enter the national conversation on sea level rise, on toxic pollution, on whatever issue it is that I choose. I do feel haunted by the fact that, like, I do have so many readers and so many sources and so many people who will email me and be like, Rosanna, like, you would make -- it would be huge if you just put your brain power on this issue that I care about, that I work on, like, you can make a huge difference if you just did your Rosanna thing on this issue, and I have to say no to so many, and that is really hard.
And I think that -- how do I pick these stories? Like, I mean, it's -- I'm not perfect, I question it every day, but I will say, like, you know, just specifically, for example, with Out of Plain Sight, which is about you know, one chemical that got dumped off of one coast into one part of the ocean in this big, big, big planet. You know, that investigation was the tip of the iceberg to this, you know, much bigger story.
And I think even though the story is kind of narrowly focused, and again, on one chemical, like we've taken it now to like dozens of cities across the country, and we're actually taking it internationally next week. And you know, I was just talking about it in Norway, actually, but just the fact that like this story about one chemical that got dumped off of the coast of California has prompted all these different communities to think about, you know, the benzenes that are getting dumped into the Cuyahoga River in, you know, Cleveland, or when we were in Miami, people thinking about the comparable parallels to their own communities, and so, like, this is a film that is actually a proxy for so many other conversations. This investigation that I went super micro on is allowed -- is able to spark these more macro-related parallel conversations. And so for me, like I do try to find that sweet spot of a story where, okay, I can go deep on this issue and possibly make some kind of difference in the way we think specifically about this issue, but can also this conversation about this issue activate other parallel conversations about other chemicals, other climate change adaptation questions, other flooding questions, or -- you know, in other places?
And you know, someone in South Carolina told me recently that they read California Against the Sea, and it helped them think about the way they were approaching sea level rise issues in, you know, South Carolina. And I will admit, I know nothing about South Carolina sea level rise adaptation, except for what I've read by other fantastic journalists and researchers. But that's great, you know, because I was able to put my whole heart and all of my time and all my brain power into sea level rise in California, but that still made a difference in South Carolina in some small way. So that's kind of, I hope that's a -- that makes sense in terms of like how I pick my issues, but it's not -- there's no -- it's not easy, and I do get your like -- that question. Like, thank you for that question because I think that is something that I continue to wrestle with as a journalist. But --
Sarah Jaquette Ray: I'm sure. I mean, I feel that way about my own path all the time. Like, oh, if I could just do 100% of this thing that my brain and my skills are aligned with, then my impact could be so much bigger or something, right? I don't know. I mean, like, what fantasy am I thinking about here, you know?
But it -- and I have to do so much of this work of saying, you know, this particular one narrow thing I'm doing. I'm not saying that your job is narrow at all. You actually have a huge platform, which is why people are keeping asking you, cover my thing, you know? But this kind of having to figure out that this is my leverage point of change, or this is my climate magic, this is my lane, so to speak. This is my skill set. This is where I can maximize what I'm good at and what I love with something that's useful in the world, even if it's not the biggest, most important thing objectively out there. Even if you could say there's objectively one thing that had to happen.
But yeah, I just -- I'm curious about that about you, because I know from talking to you how much -- how much you know that it's so important how people feel about these problems in order to engage them. And that they will turn off if you don't get it just right. And that the responsibility you have of taking really hard, terrible news and having people continue to be able to look at it straight in the face over time, you know, after even after the book is published, long after this doula-ing that you're doing of, like, helping people look the hard stuff in the eye is really a deep emotional, psychological, almost spiritual thing. And I sort of, you know, I've been so curious about you.
How do you think about that incredible work [laughs]. You know, it's just -- I mean, do you even think about it spiritually? I don't know, and you don't have to answer that, but there's something happening there that even if you're not studying it the way I'm studying it and have a podcast about asking about it, that you're just doing it all the time, every day, and responding to it all the time, every day. And, you know, I just kind of wondered, is that -- does that make you feel like existentially content that you're in right relationship with the climate stuff that you care most about? You know? So you answered it. You don't have to keep going. But if you have anything more to say, I'd love to hear it.
Rosanna Xia: I mean, I would just say that, like, you know, journalism is certainly a craft, and doing journalism right has become increasingly challenging and recalibrated in this day and age, and there's no one right way to do journalism. It's also fascinating to me that just in the, like, years that I've been a journalist, it went from what I do is called journalism to the media to content. And that I think is also probably a whole other podcast discussion on the state of journalism right now. But I will say, like ultimately, my job is to absorb and listen and report and then synthesize and share with the public. And I think for me it's like what -- I do have a sense of purpose that -- and that purpose is driven by the amazing work that the experts the true experts in the world are doing, and that I am just -- it's such a gift for me to get to follow my curiosity and ask questions and to chase, you know, kind of, you know, a hot take or a thought that I had, and then just to find, like, who is the best person to talk about this in the whole wide world, and they will pick up the phone and talk to me. And because they know that when they talk to me, I will be able to, like, share this with even more people and to continue this ripple effect. And so, I think that I am buoyed by --
Sarah Jaquette Ray: That is so cool.
Rosanna Xia: I'm buoyed by just the amount of work, good work that does happen in this world by people who care, who've dedicated their entire careers and their lives and their interests and their hearts and their brain power to specific, sometimes very niche things that are amazing and incredible and like activate so much wonder and fascination, and ultimately, like their sense of purpose drives me, and then I get to collect everyone's senses of purpose and sense of usefulness, and then package it in a way that you know, isn't just --
Sarah Jaquette Ray: Make it more contagious!
Rosanna Xia: Yes. Telling that shows, and that helps more people also connect and feel inspired and activated by these people who are grounded in their sense of purpose.
Sarah Jaquette Ray: Here I was thinking --
Rosanna Xia: [inaudible] pretty cool. Yeah, it all sounds pretty cool if you get to do it right.
Sarah Jaquette Ray: I was imagining you suffering over there with all this terrible news all the time and thinking, How does she keep herself from falling off the cliff? And you just told me something completely shocking that I never would have guessed you would have said. And so, and you just buoyed me. I mean, it's contagious, right? Like, you're collecting those stories. You're sharing them out. It is not just there are terrible things happening, and let's look at them in the eye. And also, look at all the sense of purpose around us. Look at all the great work people are doing. Look at the wonder they inspire in all of us. And let me share their stories out that way, too. Thanks for joining us.
Rosanna Xia: Thank you for creating the space for these kinds of conversations, having the faith that all these pieces add up to something is truly what keeps me going. And I'm just, I'm so grateful to you. So, thank you.
Sarah Jaquette Ray: Oh, it was my pleasure. That was my conversation with LA Times ocean and climate reporter Rosanna Xia, author of California Against the Sea and director of the film Out of Plain Sight.
You can find show notes to all we reference here and listen to this and other episodes of Climate Magic on khsu.org. Follow Climate Magic wherever you get your podcasts and on LinkedIn and Instagram.
I'm Sarah Jaquette Ray, and thanks for listening to Climate Magic.
