Shumita Basu, Narrating: Hey there, it's Shumita. Before we get to the show, I have a favor to ask. On an upcoming episode of "In Conversation," we're gonna be talking about couples therapy.
So, if you've ever been to a couples therapist or even just solo therapy, what's something that you learned that's made you think differently about relationships?
We wanna hear about it. Just use your iPhone's voice memo app to record yourself. Tell us your name, where you're from, and a relationship lesson that you learned from therapy. And please try to keep it to about a minute. You can send it to us at applenewstoday@apple.com and we might include your story on the show. Thanks!
[MUSIC FADES IN]
Basu, Narrating: This is "In Conversation" from Apple News. I'm Shumita Basu. Today, imagining the worst of a climate-ravaged future to inspire more action in the present.
[MUSIC FADES OUT]
[GENTLE MUSIC]
Basu, Narrating: We are already seeing the devastating effects of a warming planet. Enormous wildfires, thick air pollution, floods, famine and mass displacement. A recent U.N. report found we're on track to see global average temperatures increase by as much as 2.9 degrees Celsius by the year 2100.
That means unless we take drastic action on a global scale, the effects will only become more intense and pervasive. And we can look to the science and understand it, in theory, but it can be hard to wrap your mind around. What would it actually look like if the consequences of climate change played a huge part in every single person's daily life, if the problem becomes so massive, so un-ignorable?
These are some of the questions the new Apple TV+ show "Extrapolations" tries to answer. The star-studded series begins in the not-so-distant future, the year 2037, and it ends in 2070. The show is an emotional and evocative warning that asks you to imagine, really imagine, what it will mean to allow climate change to continue unaddressed.
Scott Z. Burns: For me, it was taking the science that exists and figuring out interesting human-sized stories that will be affected by it.
Basu, Narrating: Scott Z. Burns is the creator of "Extrapolations." He was also a producer of the 2006 documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," and the writer behind the eerily prescient 2011 film "Contagion," about a global pandemic. I sat down with Scott and Sienna Miller, one of the actors who stars in the series, to talk about how art and dystopian portrayals of the future can mobilize and motivate people to finally take serious action.
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Burns: Years ago, I had the opportunity to be a producer on "An Inconvenient Truth," and there were a lot of very rewarding aspects of that experience, but I walked away from it sort of shouldering a responsibility of, once you know about this issue, what are you gonna do about it? And years ago, I had spoken to a guy named Denis Hayes, who was one of the people sort of responsible for Earth Day. And at the time, I was working in an ad agency, and I told Denis, I want to quit and I want to come and work for you. And he said, the only way things are really gonna get better is not by you quitting, but by you staying where you are, but doing your job differently so you have some impact. And for me as a writer and filmmaker, I thought, how can I use narrative to get people more attuned to climate change and where it is in their lives? And that led me to sit down during pandemic and start writing.
Basu: Well, I wanna mine that so much more, but first, I wanna hear Sienna's answer for why she decided to get involved with this project. Sienna, what did it mean to you?
Sienna Miller: First of all, I'd worked with Scott. He directed an episode of "The Loudest Voice," which is a show that was also pretty important in terms of its content. It was about Roger Ailes and the inception of "Fox News." And we had a great time working together. He sent me an email with the scripts one and two attached, and it sounded completely intriguing. And then, of course, the P.S. was: Meryl Streep will be playing your mother. So, I think any actor in the world, irrespective of the brilliance of the subject matter, would've just jumped without reading. You know, I've been somebody who's been pretty conscious about environmental issues. I was in Mumbai in 2008, and we actually got legislation changed in India. And the idea of creating a narrative piece that really doesn't focus on data as much as the effect on human lives felt like a really interesting and important and novel way of relating to the ways in which our world is shifting.
Basu: Sienna, do you wanna say just a little bit more about that legislation that you were involved in advocating for?
Miller: It was essentially a carbon reduction bill. So, I went to India, and it was with an organization called Global Cool. They were pretty radical at the time. It was, I suppose, actually in the aftermath of "An Inconvenient Truth," and I think watching that documentary really galvanized me to want to do something. But we teamed up with a lot of the Bollywood stars who carry enormous clout in the country, Amitabh Bachchan amongst others, and he's sort of worshiped …
Basu: Absolutely. [LAUGHS]
Miller: … and we banded together. [LAUGHS] Yeah. It felt unfair, it still feels unfair, that a country that hasn't caused this issue is feeling the effect of it so drastically. And we see that all over the world. I mean, I'm from England and living in America for the past seven years, and it's kind of exhausting and devastating to see the places that are deeply impacted by the actions of us.
Basu: Yeah, I mean, Scott, you've talked a little bit in some past interviews about the sort of awakening that happens when you sort of first find out about some big climate-related, ecosystem-related disaster. Can you talk a little bit about how the Exxon Valdez oil spill created that moment of understanding for you?
Burns: Yeah, I mean, I was working in advertising in Chicago, and it was a difficult equation for me to go to work because I wasn't sure how I felt about advertising some products, and I think I still harbored dreams of being a fiction writer. And when the Exxon Valdez happened, I saw these images of otters that had been covered in oil. And when I was a little kid, my dad would affectionately call me Scotter the Otter 'cause I loved playing in the mud. And I was struck by this idea of, what happens to just the impoverishment of the language and our experience if there are no otters, or if Sienna takes her daughter to go play soccer, and she can't say, "Go get 'em, tiger," because a tiger is something on a cereal box and not in a jungle. And so that, you know, in some ways, I think as a writer, I was going out to defend metaphor and language. But when I got there, what became clear is that there was so much hypocrisy and money. And were we really saving otters, or was Exxon just using the Otter Center to make it look like they were doing the right thing? And, you know, at one point, I even had an Exxon spokesperson say to me, oil's a naturally occurring substance, so, you know, why are people so upset that it's in the water? So, that was sort of the beginning of my fascination with all things sort of climate change and pollution related.
[INTRIGUING MUSIC]
Basu, Narrating: In "Extrapolations," Sienna Miller plays a scientist named Rebecca Shearer who is trying to save animal species from extinction. When the show begins in 2037, Rebecca is extremely pregnant and trying to escape a raging wildfire.
[START EXTRAPOLATIONS ARCHIVAL CLIP]
Rebecca Shearer (played by Sienna Miller): [COUGHING] Give me a minute.
Unidentified Speaker: No, we gotta keep going, Becca.
Rebecca Shearer: [BREATHING HEAVILY] How in the [CENSORED] did I do this?
Unidentified Speaker: Get pregnant or take a job counting ravens in the middle of the woods?
Rebecca Shearer: Maybe this is nature's way of telling us to stop making babies.
Unidentified Speaker: It's still an hour to the e-vac spot. Come on.
Rebecca Shearer: [BREATHING HEAVILY]
[END EXTRAPOLATIONS ARCHIVAL CLIP]
Basu, Narrating: Later in the series, in the year 2046, we see Rebecca again. Her son is now nine years old, and he has something called "summer heart," a fictionalized congenital condition caused by extreme heat.
We also learn that Rebecca is working for a tech company that's gathering information about species that are going extinct, to be able to someday re-introduce these animals in future.
<v And her job involves communicating with what is likely the last humpback whale on the planet, using technology that translates whale song into human speech and vice versa. Rebecca chooses a voice for the whale translation>her late mother's, played by Meryl Streep.
[MUSIC FADES OUT]
Basu, Narrating: Rebecca eventually learns that the company she's working for has been misleading the whale, giving her false hope that there might be a mate out there for her. Rebecca tries to come clean.
[START EXTRAPOLATIONS ARCHIVAL CLIP]
[INTRIGUING MUSIC]
Rebecca Shearer (played by Sienna Miller): It is possible that you are the last one of your kind. We cannot find any others, just you.
[WHALE SONG]
Whale (played by Meryl Streep): Then it is time for me to fall.
Rebecca Shearer: You said that when you fall, it starts over. You become all that follows. You return what is taken.
[WHALE SONG]
Whale: Yes.
Rebecca Shearer: It is possible that one day there will be more of you.
[WHALE SONG]
Whale: When?
Rebecca Shearer: It will take time.
[MUSIC FADES OUT]
[END EXTRAPOLATIONS ARCHIVAL CLIP]
Burns: For me, this episode was really the first one that I wrote. I wrote it during a period of time which was challenging for me 'cause my father was dying, and so it really was about loss.
Miller: It's devastating and it's poignant, and I think what I love most about it was the connection between two different species. The imagined connection and the tragedy of existing in a world where these animals that we are familiar with no longer exist. There's a lot to say, but essentially that's who she is. She's somebody who is really grappling with the dilemma of trying to work for this corporation that has a probably really negative agenda but is also working to preserve or bring back extinct species.
Basu: I mean, that dynamic that you're describing there is a really complicated one that I think many people can relate to in some sense, right? On an individual level, wanting to do right and do good by our planet, by each other. But sometimes feeling like you might have to compromise some of those values, that you might have to join up with greater forces that might have motivations that you're not [LAUGHS] on board with. And I think it was a really complicated thing to try to portray, but I'm curious, Sienna, you know, what did you find yourself wanting to communicate about being in that difficult position?
Miller: Well, I think that I think that the thing that I was most intent upon communicating was the sense of loss and the sense of hope and the sense of connection between each other and these species that we probably take for granted. We don't really consider our role or our impact in the destruction of the world as we're living in it. We do our little bit, but probably not enough. But I think that the connection was the thing that we really focused on more than anything else. And to give people an idea of what it would feel like potentially to be communicating with the last ever humpback whale. Such an extraordinary species. I mean, beluga whales will mimic sailors' songs; they'll come out of the water and copy a song. I mean, the level of intelligence is something that we don't even understand. And it's something that is remote in some ways in our minds but is actually much closer than we think. She's also really dealing with the part of human beings that can be duplicitous and deceptive. And there was a line where I let the whale know that there is no other whale, and I'm dealing with the betrayal of the exposure of that lie. And I say …
[START EXTRAPOLATIONS ARCHIVAL CLIP]
Rebecca Shearer (played by Sienna Miller): We are lying to you. That is what our kind does when we are in pain.
[END EXTRAPOLATIONS ARCHIVAL CLIP]
Miller: And I think it was such a poignant moment and such a devastating line to deliver.
Burns: Yeah, and again, that goes back really to my experience in Alaska with Exxon, in that they were trying to manage a situation and they were not forthcoming with any of us who volunteered to go and work in their center, and we all thought we were doing a great thing. And to this day, I wonder if all I did was help greenwash them by being there when press tours came by. And so, that's sort of the story aspect of this that I was very excited to put down.
Basu: Can we kind of peek behind the curtain a bit? How much are the plot lines in "Extrapolations" closely following the science? I guess I wanna know how much alignment is there? How much fictionalization is there?
Burns: It's a tricky balance and something that you have to take responsibility for, and I learned this when I worked on "Contagion," where all of the scientists I worked with would always say, it's not a matter of if there's gonna be another pandemic, it's just a matter of when. And then I started looking at, you know, with them, where are the areas in the world that are likely to see a novel virus jump into the human population, and what would it look like? And there were two other kinds of viruses that I put together. So, what I learned from that was, you know, I hope, and I don't think I'm perfect at it, but it informed a lot of what we did on "Extrapolations," was we had a writer's room at one point, and on it, there was a wall with everything we had learned from the experts who came and spoke to us. Things as small as when the last pinot noir grape is likely to go extinct in Napa Valley to predictions about big ice sheets breaking off in Antarctica and the extinction dates that may affect certain animals on the red list. So we did that, and we built this big, long sort of timeline, and then the issue was, okay, take an event and then take a human relationship, take a mother and her son. And by the way, summer heart comes from research that's now being done on the impact of heat on pregnant women. So, even summer heart is really pulled from the science that suggests that developmentally, there's going to be problems for people who have babies in areas and they get heat stress. So, even that came from the science, but the work that you do as a writer is then to take that and go, what's an interesting, unexpected story where my characters are gonna have to tangle with that.
Basu: Now, another theme that's really prominent throughout the whole series is, of course, the role of capitalism and technology in not only creating this problem, but possibly solving some of these problems. The tech company Alpha is what we hear a lot of throughout the whole series. And it's owned by this billionaire type, Nicholas Bilton, who's played by Kit Harrington. And in the first episode, we hear Bilton say, we've been told climate change is a symptom of capitalism, but he says it can also be the cure. So, Scott can you to talk a little bit about how you wanted to explore these ideas of capitalism and tech and climate change?
Burns: You know, in the early years of this century, there was a fair amount of conversation about: Is climate change just a symptom of capitalism? And I remember hearing that speech at the U.N. in New York, and I thought, well, okay, that's a much bigger problem to solve. Like, I don't know how to tell people that capitalism needs to go. You know, that seems like a much larger philosophical thing, and right now the forces of capitalism seem to be prevailing on our planet. So, the other approach to it is: How can we harness capitalism to help us solve this problem? How can we identify technology that will reduce carbon? What can we do using that flawed system? And ultimately, and I'm probably gonna get this quote wrong, but there's a famous line that, in capitalism, man takes advantage of man, and in socialism, it's the other way around.
[SHUMITA CHUCKLES]
Burns: So, I don't know that any system is perfect in providing us with answers. So, I think a version of capitalism that promotes technology that is gonna help us take on some solves and arrive at solves is something that I think is going to be the big debate in the next 25 years.
Basu: Yeah. I mean, we hear this often in climate change rhetoric at large, but you also hear this in the series quite a bit, this idea of: It's about us. It's on us. Which sounds very individualistic. And I wonder, you know, what is it that you want people to be thinking about and grappling with when it comes to thinking about the individual's role here? And I think there's two different ways to think about it. It's like everybody in general, but then also these individuals like Kit Harrington's character or like the sort of Elon Musk-esque tech leader who is acting unilaterally in some ways and just making these big sweeping decisions and affect so many people. What does it mean when individuals can act in that way and when the greater group of people feel like, as individuals, they don't have much power at all?
Burns: Wow, that's a big one. First of all, I guess I feel, you know, especially after "Contagion," that I'm not a soothsayer, I am a storyteller. And I think art is at its most magnificent when it gets you, the audience, to ask a question inside of yourself, rather than beating you about the head and shoulders with an answer. So, having said that, I do feel that this is sort of a unique moment and not, you know? J. P. Morgan saved the banks in the United States in the early 20th century with an infusion of his own capital before the U.S. government would bail out the banks. Well, now the U.S. government will bail out the banks. So, I do think some of these people who have arrived at absurd wealth are now in a position to have a really concerning impact on our lives. I mean, if someone is going to the moon, well, maybe there are minerals on the moon that they feel like mining. Well, who gets to decide who owns the moon?
Basu: That's for a different Apple TV series, I believe, to answer. [LAUGHS]
[SIENNA LAUGHS]
Burns: Exactly. But those are the questions that I want people to begin to ponder because, you know, just like there were J. P. Morgans and Rockefellers and people who were incredibly wealthy, you know, at various points in our past. I think the wealth of tech titans is concerning. I mean, the fourth episode where we look at geo-engineering, there's a very brilliant scientist who helped us named David Keith on that. And I asked him, what do you think is the most likely way that that would happen? And he said, probably a rogue state helped by, you know, a tech billionaire. It wasn't a country arriving at it. But when you have people who can buy their own jets and do things like this, it's something we have to look at.
Basu: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Can I tell you a question that I was left thinking about during the series a lot? I kept thinking about like, when is it time? When will it be time to do something? And the anxiety for me just kind of ratcheted up further and further with each new episode announcing that time had passed, years had passed. What it made me think about is how it is very, very hard to see the future and how it's very, very hard to understand sacrifices in the now and how it will benefit the future.
Miller: It's an impossibly scary thing to watch this and imagine it as a reality. But Scott said once, and it really resonated, that any movie or series set in the future that doesn't involve a radically different climate is just science fiction. And that landed. I have a 10-year-old daughter. They are far more environmentally conscious than we ever were growing up. I mean, this is definitely a headline in the progressive school that she's in, and she feels very inspired and galvanized to do something. They're constantly going and picking up trash in the park and recycling and coming up with design ideas. You know, she came up with the idea of a whale that had a filtration system, a sort of model of a whale that they've, I think, 3D built that can filter out trash from the sea. And so …
Basu: Oh, my gosh. She should pitch this idea around.
Miller: [CHUCKLES] What's encouraging is how aware they are of the crisis that we're in. And I do have faith in that generation. I also carry immense guilt for leaving the world in a state that it is in, and for my role in that.
Basu: One thing I was thinking about a lot, Sienna, in watching your character is how many people can someday, honestly, turn to their children and look them in the eyes and say, "I did everything I could." And your character, it just struck me, your character felt like one of the very, very, very few people who would be able to do that for her child.
Miller: I don't think she'd see herself that way though. I think that …
Basu: Really?
Miller: Yeah, I think that no matter what we do, we harbor some guilt, especially looking into our children's eyes and imagining the world that they will have to be dealing with that we didn't really have to consider. I think Rebecca feels like she's done some, but not nearly enough. And probably a sense of complicity with the organization with which she's been working and realizing that she probably knew deep down that there were ignoble intentions to some of it, that … you know, it's difficult. It's not black and white for her at all.
Burns: There is a moment with Rebecca in the finale, and I think you get a really great sense of the weight of the decisions that she made from a really beautiful scene that Sienna did for us in the finale. So, there's a little bit more Rebecca Shearer to come.
Basu: I should mention, and we've mentioned a couple of times already, but there's just an unbelievably star-studded cast in this series. Unbelievably. I mean, Meryl Streep, we've mentioned, plays your mother, Sienna. Edward Norton is in it, David Schwimmer is there, Marion Cotillard, Forrest Whitaker, I could keep going, but I should probably end this list somewhere. There's just a huge number of really recognizable names and faces. Why pack the series with stars?
Miller: Why not?
[ALL LAUGH]
Burns: You know, there were a few things that sort of came together that caused us to make the casting decisions that we did. Like I said, the first idea that I had was an exit interview with a whale. And I remember where I was when I had that wander across my mind.
Basu: [LAUGHS] Where were you? How did that occur to you?
Burns: I was sitting at the coffee house down the street where I used to live in Venice, California. And I remember writing, "Exit interview with whale," you know, on my to-do list. Go to gym, do exit interview with whale. So, I had that idea first for the show, and the show sort of grew out of that. And you couldn't necessarily tell this story by staying in one place. Because like I said before, climate change happens everywhere, and it happens differently everywhere. We have an episode and a half pretty much in India, we have episodes in New York, we have episodes in London. So, for us, it became this opportunity to invite a lot of other people into our story. You know, having Indira Varma play the character she does in episode four. But also, there's a generational story here that's really important. And so, having Yara Shahidi be the first voice in the show was really important to me. Having Hari Nef in episode seven was so awesome. She's just a really talented actor and a great activist and human. So, it was about having the ability to go very far afield.
Basu: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, what does it mean to have them spend some of their social currency, if you think of it that way, in getting behind a project like this?
Burns: It means everything to me that that these are fellow artists and storytellers who are willing to throw in with us. The other thing that I didn't anticipate, especially coming out of a pandemic, and I think this is good medicine for people who might be tempted to sink into despair around climate change: I never felt better, more positive, more engaged than going to work every day on the problem. You know, seeing people who cared about it, talking about it at lunch, we tried to make our set as green as possible. So, seeing grips and gaffers eat off of compostable plates, see them have more plant-forward diets, not seeing any plastic water bottles but people understanding that you have to do your job, so let's fill up each other's water bottles if someone is going to the hydration … Like all of that became the tonic to the despair that we tend to go into in isolation when you watch the media and go, this is way too big. Well, it's really only too big until you plug into a community. And for us, our community of people telling these stories was something that I'm really grateful for.
Basu: It's actually really nice to hear some of those details about commitments made by everyone who was involved in making the series to sort of put your actions where the message is, right? This brings me to think a little bit more about, you know, who has this kind of social currency and how they're meant to use that. What kind of responsibility comes with having social currency and whether - I mean, this is a question for you as well, Sienna - whether you think that people in Hollywood, people in pop culture and actors and creators and artists are doing enough with the platforms that they have to call attention to important issues like this.
Miller: I mean, it's a broad question, and obviously it bands everybody who is in the public eye in any way, shape or form into one bracket. I think obviously there is great impact in using whatever fame you might have to educate and inform. I don't know. I work with, I'm the ambassador of an organization called International Medical Core, which is healthcare for refugees, which actually does fall under the climate bracket because a lot of the displacement is as a result of climate change.
Basu: Sure.
Miller: Not someone who is particularly comfortable being really front and center publicly on that. But if I go, and I've traveled all over Africa and many other countries for the past 12 years, I will write articles, I will reach out to donors, they will see a spike in web traffic and donations if I say something, I will speak at their events. So, I've seen firsthand that it can have an effect on a small NGO that I love and believe in. Again, there's just always more we could do, all of us, I'm sure, and there are people that are really active and prolific in doing things, but then slightly contradictory in flying on private jets. And, you know, it's a difficult balance to strike.
Burns: Yeah. I mean, people are gonna call out hypocrisy. And Bill McKibben, who is one of the advisors on our show, who has been one of my gurus on climate change for 25 years, Bill, I think very humanly says, you know, hypocrisy is sort of the price of admission right now for this whole issue. And to throw away somebody because of some appearance is really not gonna get us there. So, it's something that we were very sensitive to. You know, I made it really clear when we started this part of the show where we were gonna be asking people to do press that people should get picked up and taken places in electric vehicles and that we need to help manage that because it's really a bummer when someone seizes hold of something like that, something where they're like, "Ah, look, that person's a hypocrite," and the larger issue doesn't get talked about.
Basu: Yeah. Yeah. You know, something that I think "An Inconvenient Truth" played such a large role in for so many people, it sounds like even Sienna included, but I think that really was a pivot point for a lot of people in understanding the scope of the climate issue. And one thing that I think about a lot these days is the fact that it does feel like a lot of people are aware of climate change as a huge problem, so I don't think that the awareness thing is as much of a problem now as it used to be, and yet it does seem like there's just so little momentum to change things. I'm always struck by whenever, you know, election cycles roll around how few times voters say that climate change is anywhere in their top five list of issues that is motivating their voting habits or voting patterns.
Burns: Yeah. It's moving up. And so, I think one of the things we really need to do is stick a fork in the political part of this. Like, it's really not a political issue. It gonna affect everybody. The climate doesn't go looking for Republicans or Democrats. For people who think that climate isn't about them, climate feels differently about you.
[SHUMITA CHUCKLES]
Burns: It's pretty sure that it is all about you. So, for us, what's really become critical is how do we make people feel that they do have an impact. And a tree remains a really good carbon capture and removal device, the best one we have. The second-best thing I think we have for carbon capture and removal is a voting booth. And I think both of those devices are really, really great things. When we did "An Inconvenient Truth," the big issue was there were still deniers. How do we prevail upon a climate denier?
Basu: Yeah. Yeah.
Burns: I don't think we have a lot of deniers anymore. We have something pretty dangerous that the show gets into, which is a climate opportunist. But we're not looking at trying to get people past their denial. Now what we're trying to do is get people to realize that there are solutions and that it's on all of us to insist that those become the choices we can make in our day-to-day lives.
Basu: Yeah. Yeah. I don't wanna do any spoilers here for the finale or anything, but maybe I could ask each of you to just tell us a bit about what you want the audience to be left thinking about.
Miller: I hope that the audience are just left feeling and thinking and imagining the world through the lens of their own relationships, life, legacy. In a way, what Scott sort of said earlier, which I think is very true, it's quite overwhelming to watch a documentary and to deal with this from a scientific perspective. For a lot of people, it just doesn't resonate. But I'm hoping through stories about interpersonal connections and the effect of the climate on not only the world we are leaving behind, but on each other, that that will hopefully resonate in a way that perhaps science and data and graphs might not.
Burns: Well, she did a better job of answering that question than I will, but honestly, you know, we're storytellers, and we have no illusion that we're going to get anywhere without entertaining people. So, more than anything, I want people to look at these stories and find them to be moving and entertaining and sometimes funny and sometimes sad, but that it shows them that any story can be a climate story. And that when you watch the news, look for it beyond the weather report. Look for it, as Sienna said, in why certain people are now displaced. You know, look for it in nutrition and the cost of milk and eggs. Look for it everywhere. And when you start to find it everywhere, then that should open up inside of you an imagination that can begin to contemplate solutions that we haven't considered yet.
[MUSIC FADES IN]
Basu: Scott, Sienna, thank you both so much for your time and really for putting out this series that, I will say, really does make you feel and really does make you think. I appreciate your time.
Miller: Thank you.
Burns: Thank you.
Basu, Narrating: You can watch "Extrapolations" on Apple TV+. We'll include a link for you on our show notes page. And if you're enjoying this show, "In Conversation," don't forget to subscribe, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts.
[MUSIC FADES OUT]