Naomi Klein

Speaker 20:00

This is the

Naomi Klein0:01

B B C

Presenter0:03

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young. Welcome to Desert Island Discs, where every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, the book, and the luxury item that they'd want to take with them if they were cast away on a desert island.

Presenter0:16

For rights' reasons, the music on these podcast versions is shorter than in the original broadcast. You can find over two thousand more editions to listen to and download on the Desert Island Disc's website.

Presenter0:49

My castaway this week is the author and activist Naomi Klein. Her challenging terrain is the ideological battleground of ideas, globalization, hyper consumerism, climate change, the democratic deficit, big problems, she says, that require radical solutions.

Presenter1:07

If there were a gene for social conscience, her preoccupations would be easily explained. Making the political personal is something of a family trait. Her grandfather, an animator at Walt Disney in the 1940s, lost his job for organising a strike. Her mother was a celebrated feminist filmmaker, and her father avoided the Vietnam draft by moving the family to Canada, later becoming a member of Physicians for Social Responsibility. She says having a big idea is a fairly arrogant thing to have. There aren't that many women who are brought up with a sense that they have the right to occupy that space. I was brought up by a feminist mum.

Presenter1:44

And I think that's part of the reason why I'm arrogant enough to put my big ideas out there. You're looking as though you're wondering if you actually said that, Naomi Klein, but I can guarantee you it is a quote. Your first book, then, No Logo, which really put you on the map as an author and a thinker, was published in 1999. I should remind people it was about this idea of globalization and branding and how much branding was really dictating the way we lived our lives and affecting the lives of people very far away who were caught in the chain of actually manufacturing these brands. It hit a nerve in a particular moment.

Presenter2:20

Was there a moment when you thought, my goodness, I'm clearly on to something. This is bigger than just the book?

Naomi Klein2:26

The book was at the printer when these protests in Seattle happened in 1999 against the World Trade Organization.

Naomi Klein2:35

There was a shift underway among young people. They were all about corporate power. They were defacing the corporate ads in the bathrooms. They had this sense that they were up against these transnational forces that were more powerful than governments. And it was this moment where this thing that I had been covering as a journalist for four years burst onto the international stage. And I remember I pitched to the New York Times an op-ed, very arrogant. Here I was, this Canadian with no international profile at all. And I said, I'd like to write a column for you guys about what these protests in Seattle are all about. And they said, well, we already have an op-ed about the WTO. And I said, who's the op-ed by? And they said, Bill Gates. Then Seattle just exploded. And then I got a call from the op-ed page of the New York Times going, maybe we could use that perspective after all. Maybe Bill Gates doesn't have it covered. And so that was the shift. That was the moment that maybe Bill Gates doesn't represent the spectrum of opinion on this question.

Presenter3:27

Yeah.

Presenter3:32

Talking of the masses, do you love a march? Are you somebody who will march at the drop of a hat?

Naomi Klein3:37

No, I'm not a big marcher. Writing was always my tool. I'm a self-conscious person. I think partly because I had parents who were constantly embarrassing me. They were real exhibitionists. And so there was just something about the sort of chanting and marching and the kind of exhibitionism of protests that I just couldn't do. I know I had to lock myself in a room for three years and you can write.

Presenter4:03

I mean, it takes a long time. These are big, solid books that you write. It takes anywhere between three and five years to write them.

Naomi Klein4:09

It's a five-year process including all the journalism and there's a lot of reporting in the field and that's my, you know, really my favorite part. And then the writing requires a lot of isolation. So it's this funny thing where people suddenly expected me to have these exhibitionist skills when the whole reason I had been able to write this book was because I actually have the ability to live completely without what I would make a great castaway.

Presenter4:32

Excellently. It's the perfect combination. We're going to go to the music at Naomi Klein. Tell me about this first one. What are we going to hear? And why is it on your list today?

Naomi Klein4:40

So the first one is First We Take Manhattan by Leonard Cohen. It's a rallying cry against reformism.

Naomi Klein4:47

And the need for deep change. And so it is 1987, and it sounds like it.

Presenter4:53

Bit of sins in here we're gonna hear.

Naomi Klein4:55

Bit of zip, yeah.

Speaker 34:56

Yeah.

Naomi Klein4:56

Uh

Speaker 34:56

They sentence me to twenty years of boredom. For track.

Presenter5:04

And it changes the system.

Naomi Klein5:06

Stem from where they are

Presenter5:09

Uh

Naomi Klein5:12

I'm coming now, I'm coming to reward them First, we take Manhattan

Naomi Klein5:26

Then waiting.

Speaker 35:27

Uh Hallelujah.

Naomi Klein5:29

Yeah.

Presenter5:29

Uh

Presenter5:29

First we take Manhattan from Leonard Cohen. He was Naomi Klein, I'm right, in saying I'm a signatory to your declaration called The Leap.

Naomi Klein5:36

The Leap Manifesto based on cherishing and caring for the earth and for each other. I know famous Canadian sounds like an oxymoron, but there are a few of them.

Naomi Klein5:47

And we really wanted Leonard Cohen to sign, but he never does polit uh overtly political things. He's not one of those artists. Like, of course, Neil Young signed and Arcade Fire signed, but Leonard Cohen was a pipe dream, and we just kept at it. And finally, one day we got an email from him, and he said, Yep, I'll do it, sign me up.

Presenter6:04

You've spoken about the fact that, you know, in a self-confessed way, you came pretty late to the whole climate change thing. And your view of that was that we, the people who are doing okay in life, hear the background rumble of the need for action when it comes to climate change, but we don't quite want to look it in the eye. Why do you think that is?

Naomi Klein6:26

For me, it sort of felt like there were all these big green groups that were really well funded that had this as their mission, as their mandate. And it seemed like, okay, well, this is one issue I don't have to care about. Al Gore's got

Naomi Klein6:41

Which sounds pretty flip, but it wasn't that I didn't know about it or didn't care about it, but I think, like a lot of people, I felt like human rights, inequality,

Naomi Klein6:51

All of these injustices that I was focused on were more pressing, that lies were on the line right now. And climate change had been cast as this issue that we should care about because it's going to affect our grandkids. I mean, my wake-up call was covering Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, and it was intersecting with a weak and neglected public sphere. The levees shouldn't have broken, but they broke because so much of our infrastructure is starved by the logic of austerity. And overlaying it all is systemic racism and who is considered disposable and who is not, and who gets saved and who doesn't. It's consistently people of color, poor people. We saw it in New Orleans. We see it now in Puerto Rico. Climate change can't just be an issue that is left to environmentalists. It has to be an issue that's taken up by all of us.

Presenter7:38

Does anything change in America after New Orleans happens? It would appear not. Life will go on. Politics will stay the same.

Naomi Klein7:46

The reason why I've been focused in recent years on

Naomi Klein7:52

What do we want instead? We can't just expose and say, look, look, more evidence that this system is brutal, that it values some lives so much more than others. We actually have to propose what we want instead. And that's not just policy solutions to say, you know, housing is a human right, but also, you know, what kind of people do we want to be? Do we want to be the type of people that allows thousands and thousands of people to drown in the Mediterranean? And this to me is what all of the great modern day struggles, Black Lives Matter, the fight for 15, I mean, these are people who are saying, no, you are not going to treat our lives as if they are less.

Presenter8:32

We need to fit in the music now, I'm a fine. So let's not forget about that. We'll go to your second disc. Tell me about this. What are we going to get?

Naomi Klein8:33

So let's not forget about

Naomi Klein8:37

Oh.

Naomi Klein8:39

You'll hear more about my Red Diaper Baby Roots. So the second song is called The Draft Dodger Rag. It's performed by Pete Seeger because it's a better version, but originally it was written by Phil Oakes. And it's a it's a

Speaker 28:53

It explains itself, actually. Exactly what it sounds like.

Speaker 28:58

I'm just a typical American boy from a typical American town. I believe in God and Senator Dodd and he'd keep an old Castro down.

Naomi Klein9:07

Yeah. And when it came my time to serve

Speaker 29:10

I knew better dead than red

Speaker 29:13

But when I got to my old draft board, buddy, this is what I said. Sarge, I'm only 18, I got a rupture spleen, and I always carry a purse.

Presenter9:23

I got eyes like a bat and my feet are flat and my asthma's getting worse.

Presenter9:28

That was the draft Dodger rag. Pete Seeger was singing it, and it was written by Phil Oakes. Uh, Naomi Klein, you you used a brilliant little phrase there. You said it was a red diaper, baby?

Naomi Klein9:37

Technically, my father was a red diaper baby. I'm a second generation.

Presenter9:41

I see. So you were born in Montreal right at the beginning of the nineteen seventies, and your your grandfather Philip is the person that I mentioned in the introduction who had worked for Walt Disney. He was very important to you, was a huge influence on you. Why why was that?

Naomi Klein9:55

Well, so I grew up with these stories. I mean, partly because I am a draft dodger's daughter, and we came to Canada two years before I was born.

Naomi Klein10:05

My parents didn't really know anything about Canada except for that, you know, it was either jail or Canada if you didn't want to go to Vietnam. He originally tried to get conscientious objector status, but in order to get conscientious objector status, you need to prove that you have this history of war resistance. And he was unwilling to share very much information about his upbringing because basically my grandfather had been blacklisted. So he didn't want to prove that he'd grown up, you know, with meetings in his living room and in this very political household because as far as he was concerned, that's kind of what ruined his parents' life. Because my grandfather had, in the 40s, he was an animator working for Walt Disney, and he was one of the leaders of the first animator strike. And not only was he fired for this, but he wasn't able to work as an animator after this because Disney testified against the strike organizers in front of the House of Un-American Activity. So I grew up with all these stories. A lot of it happened on car trips because we spent a lot of time driving to visit relatives in the States once it was less stressful to cross the border. My parents would talk about the strike at Walt Disney and they would explain why they made the choices they made.

Presenter11:15

And as a little kid did your grandfather do drawings for you? Were you aware of the fact that you had w presumably a fairly brilliant talent?

Naomi Klein11:23

He's the one who taught me to look for the dirt behind the shine.

Presenter11:27

And was he saying that about the work that he was doing then? Was he saying, you know, at Disney we were.

Naomi Klein11:31

He had this very conflicted relationship with Disney, where he was really proud of having worked on films like Bambi, Fantasia. I grew up watching the films, and then he would draw Donald Duck for me. It was magic to suddenly see this character from movies just appear on a napkin. And that coexisted with this terrible story about how he had been mistreated by the company. So he taught me, yes, to look behind the gloss, to look behind the surface, but he also taught me that we can hold contradiction, that we can be attracted to it, love it, want it, and be troubled by it, want fairness. Whereas I think my parents were a little bit more literal. No, you can't have Barbie. No, you can't have War Toys. That's all bad. And I think with my grandfather, it was more like, yeah, we love the Donald Duck, but we think all the workers should be treated fairly.

Presenter12:23

Let's have some more music, Naomi Klein. Tell me about your third. What are we going to hear now?

Naomi Klein12:26

We're going to hear one way or another by Blondie. I lived in the UK actually when I was 9 and 10, 79, 80.

Naomi Klein12:35

And I just wanted to be her, loved her, was completely obsessed with her, would watch Top of the Pops. And I'm saving all of you from other teen rock that we could be listening to.

Speaker 312:47

One way or another, I'm gonna find ya. I'm gonna get ya, get ya, get ya, get ya. One way, or another, I'm gonna win ya. I'm gonna get you, get you, get you, get you. One way, or another, I'm gonna see ya. I'm gonna meet ya, meet ya, meet ya, meet ya one day. Maybe next week, I'm gonna meet ya. I'm gonna meet ya, I'll meet ya.

Presenter13:14

That was Blondie and one way or another. And Naomi Klein, I I read that uh your high school yearbook read that you were the girl most likely to be in jail for stealing peroxide, and I'm linking that up with the love of blondie. Was there a connection?

Naomi Klein13:27

Yes, it was a goal and it took a lot of work.

Naomi Klein13:30

It has a lot of dark sounds.

Presenter13:30

Yeah.

Speaker 313:31

Design.

Presenter13:31

Yeah.

Speaker 313:32

Uh

Presenter13:33

So you must surely have had I mean, from what you say about your parents, more maybe in their way puritanical about their social position and their politics. How did you react to that? I'm presuming you rebelled.

Naomi Klein13:45

You know, when I look back on it now, I think, God, it must have been so hard for them to just deal with the eighties, you know, after spending so much time and energy

Naomi Klein13:57

Being part of movements for social transformation, whether it was feminism, the anti-war movement, civil rights. I mean, in some ways, I think it was easier for my grandparents because I think they were seeing the world change and it wasn't all perfect and linear. But I think what my parents were really struggling with and what I, I guess, bore the brunt of in this feeling of judgment was just like, we're losing, you know? And then they have this daughter who just wants to be a teeny bopper, you know? So that created a lot of conflict.

Presenter14:26

In our family. You have a brother, Seth. Was he the same? Was he wanting all the nice, shiny, bright things?

Naomi Klein14:29

No, no, no, no.

Naomi Klein14:31

No, he formed a group called Students Against Global Extermination, Sage. He had the activism thing covered. He was two years older than me. And so my rebellion was just being a child of the eighties.

Presenter14:44

And so, how did your parents ride that out? You know, what did they do? Did they give in or did they hold the line?

Naomi Klein14:49

My mother would give in a little. Like I remember she let me buy a pair of gold satin pants.

Presenter14:53

Oh, okay. Mine didn't. Well done, you!

Naomi Klein14:56

And that was, I think, more about Olivia Newton John than Debbie Harry. That was so there was the occasional small victory for me. But it w I think it was harder for my father because he grew up more in this very anti-consumer household. I think maybe my mom und understood me a little bit better, whereas my father

Presenter14:58

I'm not going to be married.

Naomi Klein15:16

It really didn't.

Presenter15:18

Some more music, Naomi Klein. This is your fourth.

Naomi Klein15:20

Do Ray Me by Woody Guthrie. It's about the mass migration from southern states. My grandparents moved to California to work for Disney. Obviously, we weren't Dust Bowl migrants, but this idea of California being very different than the Hollywood version was important in our family. And these stories of my grandparents on the picket line, for some reason, I really loved this story of my father at age three yelling scab at the scabs that Disney brought.

Presenter15:52

Lots of

Naomi Klein15:52

Yeah.

Presenter15:52

Folks back east they say is leaving home every day, feeding the hot old dusty way to the California line.

Presenter16:00

Across the desert, sands they roll, getting out

Speaker 316:02

Out of that old dust bowl They think they're goin' to a sugar bowl But here's what they find

Speaker 316:09

Now the police at the port of entry say

Speaker 316:14

Your number 14,000 for today

Speaker 316:17

When you ain't got the do-ray me folkson, you ain't got the do-ray Yeah.

Presenter16:24

Uh Uh

Presenter16:25

Woody Guthrie, don't worry me. No, McLang, you were, I think, seventeen when your mother suffered a series of devastating strokes that must have, of course, changed her life, but changed family life enormously. What's your predominant memory of the time?

Naomi Klein16:39

Yeah, I remember really vividly watching her take her first steps with a walker very shakily, and I was on the other side of the glass and I hadn't sort of prepared myself for seeing her not being able to walk and I just passed out. I just fell down. How old was she? She was forty six.

Presenter16:56

Incredibly young.

Naomi Klein16:56

Incredible.

Naomi Klein16:57

Yeah, I mean it certainly changed everything for our family and

Presenter17:00

You stayed at home for a year to look after hers, am I right?

Naomi Klein17:03

Yeah, um

Presenter17:04

How was that?

Naomi Klein17:07

I mean, in lots of ways, it was good. I was able to be useful. And we became instantly very close. And I learned how to be a caretaker after being completely self-absorbed and narcissistic. And I called on my teenage skills. I would put makeup on her, do her hair, do her nails. I did a lot of that kind of caretaking. And I don't know if she was just putting up with me.

Naomi Klein17:35

Uh I did that a lot.

Presenter17:36

And you then went on, as your mother gradually improved, you went on to university in Toronto. And not long after you began university, there was a catastrophic event.

Naomi Klein17:42

Mm-hmm.

Presenter17:48

In Montreal, that it rocked campuses around the world. Can you tell me what happened?

Naomi Klein17:53

So this was 1989 and I was 19.

Naomi Klein17:57

And a gunman.

Naomi Klein18:00

Went into an engineering school in Montreal. He separated the men from the women.

Naomi Klein18:07

Then he gunned down 14 women, killed 14 women, and said, you're all a bunch of effing feminists. And this was because apparently he believed that he had not been admitted to the school because of some kind of gender-based affirmative action. So he had a narrative in his mind that he had been discriminated against, and he took it out on women.

Presenter18:29

So that was a moment of would it be fair to say a moment of epiphany for you, where you connected with all of these thi you know, your mother being a feminist filmmaker, you had grown up with this very activist family. Was that a moment when you connected with it?

Naomi Klein18:42

It was the moment where I could no longer

Naomi Klein18:45

Be this apolitical teenager because you had to call yourself a feminist. You know, we walked around with pins saying, you know, I'm a effing feminist. And yet, the coverage immediately was, he's a madman, it's a random act, don't politicize the disaster. And I felt the need, and I was not alone, to make the case that, you know, no, you are not going to treat this as if it has no political context. And so we put up a poster that just said, you know, we're going to have a meeting to talk about the Montreal massacre. And we thought maybe 12 people would show up. And 500 people showed up. I just suddenly found myself chairing the meeting.

Naomi Klein19:26

I had a language, I had skills because I'd grown up with this, so some of it kind of came naturally to me.

Presenter19:32

Let's have some music for a moment, Naomi Klein. Um tell me about this then. We're gonna hear your fist.

Naomi Klein19:37

I got into Manuchow around the time that the movement taking on corporate globalization was really taking off. And in 2001, in Genoa, there were these huge demonstrations against the G8. A protester was killed by police, which was sort of a watershed moment in our movement. There hadn't been a death like that before. Italy was very on edge. There had been a ton of arrests, a ton of violence. And Manuchow played Naples just a month later. It rained and people just danced in the rain and it was this just incredible catharsis.

Speaker 320:13

Mellaman el desa parecido, cuando yegallacia ido. Volando, bengo, volando voy. E prisa de prisa rumbo perdido. Cuando me busca nún castoy. Cuando me encuentraño no soy. El que están frante porquella. Pefuy corrindo másaya. Medicen el desa parecido. Fantas ma que nun casta. Medicen el desa gra decido. Pero esa no es la verda.

Presenter20:44

Uh

Speaker 320:44

Uh

Presenter20:44

Uh

Speaker 320:44

Yo ye von el cuer bundolor, que nonde de jar es.

Presenter20:48

That was Manu Chow and Desparacido. Naomi Klein, there was a time when it was at a moment in your life and career when you were beginning to work full-time as a journalist, when you you said that you thought the left had run out of things to say. That's a very interesting thought. Can you remember why you said it and what particularly you were talking about?

Naomi Klein21:09

I definitely had this feeling that we had just become this sort of very nostalgic space. Make it stop. Can we go back to the way things were five years ago? Stop the cuts, and just kind of stop the world we want to get off. You know, we hadn't really confronted these huge changes in the world. Like, there needed to be a new analysis for the global era.

Presenter21:32

You've spoken and written often about this idea that corporations now are not organizations that manufacture things in the traditional way, that what they do is they sub-sub sub-contract it out. So there will be somebody in Taiwan or somebody in Portugal or somebody somewhere else in the world making those trainers that you buy. What's the problem with that? I mean, that means people are employed, surely.

Naomi Klein21:53

Well, I think people are going to be employed in in either model, but in the sub-sub subcontractor model, the act of production is less important to the parent corporation.

Naomi Klein22:05

They don't see their act of manufacturing being the manufacturing of those trainers or the building of those buildings. They see their manufacturing as the act of building their brand, building a lifestyle, a legend, an identity. And if you don't see your manufacturing as the manufacturing of the things you are selling, then you're going to treat the workers who do that manufacturing a lot worse. Is it hard work? Yeah.

Presenter22:31

Uh

Naomi Klein22:31

Okay.

Presenter22:31

Being so ideological.

Naomi Klein22:34

I don't see myself as that ideological. I mean, maybe that's a crazy thing to say. Well, I think ideological implies, you know, an inability to learn. I think I am a systems thinker. I think that I do identify problems with systems that need systemic solutions. But I spend my life learning. This is why I am still a journalist and go out there and report and learn. You know, you started the show saying I was arrogant, but I'm not that arrogant.

Speaker 323:03

No, I didn't those were your words and not mine. Claudi, we begin to say, I didn't call it.

Naomi Klein23:07

I didn't call it.

Presenter23:10

I'm learning all the time. Nothing wrong with a little bit of Annekins. Tell me about your next piece of music, then. What are we going to hear? This is your sixth.

Naomi Klein23:19

Now we're going to get sappy. It is Al Green's God Blessed Our Love, which I think is one of the greatest love songs of all time. And my husband Abby Lewis and I played it at our wedding. We're going to take a break from the ideology. Got nothing political to say about this song.

Presenter23:35

We've got so much, so much love.

Presenter23:40

We've got so much

Presenter23:43

So much trouble.

Presenter23:45

Can't you see I'm handing up?

Presenter23:48

I can see I know hovering over my eyes.

Presenter23:56

Maybe button.

Presenter24:05

I'm not gonna say it because she

Presenter24:08

Al Green and God Blessed Our Love. So married then, Yelmi Klein, but not, I noticed today, wearing a wedding ring. Why is that? I don't like logos.

Naomi Klein24:16

Yeah.

Naomi Klein24:17

That's it? Also, I'm double-jointed and and my knuckles are wide. No, I really don't like rings. I I just don't wear rings. I have a wedding ring. I just don't.

Presenter24:27

You've said that when you were in your early thirties you were ambivalent about having children and then came to that point it will be familiar to many women of a certain age where they realize that actually, yes, I I do want to do that. Was there a a thing that's changed your mind or was it simply time passing?

Naomi Klein24:44

I really did know that I couldn't do the work that I did with a child. And it's a terrible thing to say, but it is true. I was going from disaster zone to disaster zone. I went to Baghdad right after the invasion. There were bombs going off all over the place.

Naomi Klein25:00

I was also aware that there are just not a lot of women doing this kind of work, talking about global economics. I just didn't like the assumption that everybody's got to do it.

Presenter25:10

And and so you were forty two, I think, by the time you had your your son, and it was difficult. It was a difficult process for you, and you wrote about that. You decide I mean, to a lot of people's surprise, you wrote about it in This Changes Everything, which is not a book about motherhood. You think you might think it it was with that title, it's actually about climate change.

Naomi Klein25:17

You decide

Naomi Klein25:23

You think you might

Presenter25:26

Why did you decide to write about your own personal difficulties in having a child?

Naomi Klein25:31

Why did I? It was crazy. But I started trying to become a mother when I was 38. And as you say, I wasn't successful until I was 42. And there were a lot of miscarriages in between. And I also did IVF, and that didn't work. And in the end, just got lucky. All of this was happening as I was writing This Changes Everything. And it was just, it was, I couldn't change the fact that my experience trying and failing and having my own systems fail me was informing some of what I was learning about.

Naomi Klein26:05

I was learning about geoengineering and this idea that we can solve climate change by hacking the planet. And as I'm learning about this, I'm going through fertility treatments that I feel like are treating my body like a machine. And this idea of like there is no barrier, there's nothing we can't solve with technology and drugs. That wasn't my experience, but I felt like my health was being compromised and put at risk through this process. And so I just decided to write about it. And do you wish now you hadn't?

Naomi Klein26:32

You know, whenever I talk and write personally, it's always a risk because this may come as a shock to you, but not everybody likes me.

Naomi Klein26:41

So, you know, the the tricky thing is you write something in exactly the way you want to write it and like one sentence gets taken out of context.

Naomi Klein26:50

But I I don't regret it.

Presenter26:51

Your son is now um five. Are you political with a small P in the way that you parent him? I mean, is it a gender neutral environment? Does he get to play with trucks and guns if that's what he wants to play with? And so on and so on.

Naomi Klein27:06

He's been diagnosed recently as high functioning autistic, but in retrospect, he really liked lining up trucks. You know, it's just about raising questions, not banning things. For me, most important is giving him lots of experiences in nature that connects him, because I don't think we can save things unless we love them and are connected to them. So yeah, these are challenges.

Presenter27:28

Some more music, then. Uh Naomi Klein, tell me about your sevenths.

Naomi Klein27:32

So the seventh one is by Lhasa Di Sela, and it's Rising, which is from an English album. She usually sings in Spanish. She died at age thirty seven. I think she's one of the great voices of our time.

Speaker 327:47

I got caught in the storm Yeah.

Speaker 227:49

Uh

Speaker 327:53

Curry

Speaker 327:57

Oh wait.

Speaker 328:03

I got turned.

Speaker 328:07

Turn around.

Presenter28:17

Rising, Lassa de Sela. Naomi Klein, empirically, to be alive now, to be a human being, we live in a time where we are healthier, we're safer, we live longer lives. It's true, isn't it? I mean, I think reading your books often we wouldn't feel that way about the world. We would feel we're all on a bit of a

Presenter28:34

Hancart to hell.

Naomi Klein28:36

Well, who's we? I don't think there is a universal we, but certainly in advanced industrial societies, you know, lifespans are increasing. It's not true for everyone. We are starting to see a backslide among the white working class where you have this wave of what they're calling deaths by despair, suicide, opiate addiction. But even if it were true that everybody was living longer, if collectively we don't

Naomi Klein29:03

Change how we power our lives, move ourselves around, live in cities, how we consume our relationship to consumption. If we don't get this under control,

Naomi Klein29:12

We are going to make large parts of our planet uninhabitable. So we have to confront that.

Presenter29:18

How do you police your own consumption?

Naomi Klein29:21

Um

Presenter29:21

And you know, do you skip down Madison Avenue and buy yourself a handbag once in a while? Do you do the bad stuff?

Naomi Klein29:22

No, do you skip

Naomi Klein29:27

Sure. And I've always been open about that, that I'm not apart from the culture that I'm critiquing. And I think if the price of admission to having a critical analysis is our own perfection, then we're going to have a movement of three. Yeah, I'm far from perfect.

Presenter29:43

What do you do for fun?

Presenter29:46

Well, um'cause we think of you as such a serious minded person, and you've smiled a lot today, and you've laughed a lot, and there's a lightness to you that I think maybe people wouldn't necessarily expect.

Naomi Klein29:56

Which makes me sad. Um

Presenter29:58

Well

Naomi Klein29:58

I'm sorry.

Presenter29:58

I'm sorry.

Speaker 230:00

Uh

Naomi Klein30:03

More afraid to joke, you know, things getting taken out of context and.

Presenter30:07

Right.

Naomi Klein30:08

So you're

Presenter30:08

So you're not allowed irony and you're not allowed to be floating.

Naomi Klein30:10

Well, it's funny because when I first started writing, you know, I had a column in a a Canadian newspaper, the Toronto Star, and half my columns were humor columns. And I do think I've become more serious with time and part of that in my public persona, not in my private persona. Like I laugh a lot and having a five-year-old keeps you laughing. I don't feel cheated for fun.

Presenter30:30

Do you feel that your work has changed things?

Naomi Klein30:35

I think my work has given people

Naomi Klein30:39

Some language that is useful for them to change things. I mean, I don't think that books change the world. I really do believe that movements change the world. I never felt that I had a right as a writer to just tell people what we should be doing. I really do believe that that has to come from a democratic ground up process because I'm not Lenin. I'm not going to be like, this is what's to be done. We figured it all out. Here's the 10-point plan. Everybody listen to me. And here I'm not saying I'm not that arrogant. I don't think anybody should be that arrogant.

Naomi Klein31:12

Are you optimistic?

Naomi Klein31:14

I guess I'm less optimistic that we are going to do what's necessary in the face of the climate crisis than I was a year ago. And I wasn't optimistic. I just thought our chances were better.

Naomi Klein31:25

But that makes it more important to become a more humane society. That increases the urgency to decide whether or not we actually believe that human life has value. So I feel like despair is a luxury and still at it.

Presenter31:42

Let's hear your final piece of music, Naomi Klein. What are we gonna hear as your eighth disc of the day?

Naomi Klein31:47

This is mine and Toma's theme song, Toma's My Son. It's Paul Simon's Mother and Child Reunion.

Naomi Klein31:54

My son Tome is a massive Paul Simon fan.

Naomi Klein31:58

And he orders the world through music. And because of my work, we have a lot of separations, trying to have fewer of them, but but it is hard. It is hard to have a mother who who who travels.

Naomi Klein32:08

Whenever we have a separation, even if it's half a day, when we get back together, he always says it's a mother and child dream.

Presenter32:16

No, I would not give you false hope

Presenter32:20

On this strange and mournful day

Presenter32:24

But the mother and child young is only emotion

Speaker 232:30

Show me

Presenter32:33

Oh, a little daughter of man.

Presenter32:37

I care for the life of me

Presenter32:41

Remember a Saturday

Presenter32:46

That's Paul Simon and Mother and Child Reunion. And Naomi, it's time for me to give you the books I give every castaway a copy of the Bible, a copy of the complete works of Shakespeare, and they get to take a book of their own along which book would you like to take?

Naomi Klein33:00

The Backyard Astronomer's Guide by Terence Dickinson and Alan Dyer, because I think that.

Naomi Klein33:06

If I were all on my own, I'd want the stars to be my company and I'd wanna

Naomi Klein33:11

Understand them.

Presenter33:12

Okay. That's your book, then. You're allowed a luxury as well.

Naomi Klein33:15

I would want a snorkel and mask because I would want the fish to be my company and I love snorkeling.

Presenter33:23

It's yours then.

Naomi Klein33:24

The single disk that you would save if you had to save just one.

Naomi Klein33:28

I think it's going to have to be Paul Simon mother and child reunion'cause then I'd have Toma with me.

Presenter33:33

Yeah.

Naomi Klein33:33

Yeah.

Presenter33:33

Okay, it's yours. Naomi Klein, thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Naomi Klein33:38

It was such a pleasure. Thank you.

Presenter34:02

I hope you enjoyed this edition of Desert Island Discs. You'll find more interviews with artists, musicians, scientists, sports stars, comedians, and more at bbc.co.uk/slash desert island discs.

Naomi Klein34:29

This is the BBC.