Tell me if you get an answer.

also would like to hear the answer to this one

I think many people still view climate change as a future threat. It was really clear in our reporting that this is something happening right now. Of course that's very apparent in the city of Saint-Louis, where we did a lot of our reporting in Senegal. But even in the strawberry fields of Huelva, Spain, farmers told us that the harvest used to begin in February and it now begins in December. Sneak preview: I just interviewed the author Jake Bittle about his forthcoming book, "The Great Displacement," for All Things Considered. He documents the lives of people displaced by climate change in the United States. And he found them all over the country...from droughts in Arizona to floods in Houston. This isn't a future threat; it's happening right now.

There are lots of commonalities - the writer Moises Naim talks about some of them in his very smart book, “The Revenge of Power: How Autocrats Are Reinventing Politics for the 21st Century.” But one Spanish activist we met in Madrid made a point that stuck with me. She told methe far right is gaining power by telling a story about community, and stories about community have power. The far right tells a story of "us" against "them" - outsiders coming to harm our community. She believes that the only successful response will be a different kind of story about community.

The person I've probably quoted most when I talk about this project of Kayly Ober of Refugees International, who called climate change a "vulnerability multiplier." She meant that it exacerbates other factors, such as corruption and poverty, that make life difficult to sustain. So people we met in our reporting were all very aware of climate change. But in the same breath, they would talk about the pressures of overfishing, or the difficulty of earning a living during the pandemic. Climate change is rarely the only force in someone's decision to abandon their home, but it is often the final straw.

Thank you so much! It's a cliche but it's true - reporting projects like this one are only possible because of...say it with me now...listeners like you

A tech nerd! I defer to my producer and engineer colleagues on this one. When I'm in the field on my own, I usually use an RE-50 mic...but this is mostly because it's what NPR gave me at the very beginning of my career (more than 20 years ago), and it is indestructible. Also because I fear change.

sure did

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Before we started the trip, I imagined the movement from Senegal to Europe to be one-directional. I was surprised at how many people in Senegal either had work visas that allowed them to go back and forth, or had spent time in Spain before being deported. To Senegalese people we met, Spain was not some distant unreachable land of their imagination. Folks in Senegal were surrounded by people who'd been to Spain. Some had built very good lives for themselves there; others struggled before being forced to leave; and some even came home because they decided that life in West Africa is better than in Europe, despite the challenges.

Fun question! For more than a decade now I've used my vacation time to tour with a band called Pink Martini as a guest singer. I've been all over the world with them and recorded one or two songs on each of their recent albums. I also created a two-man cabaret show with the star of stage and screen Alan Cumming. We're performing it at the Cafe CarlyleApril 5-15 if you want to stop by!

We visited a town in Southern Spain called Palos de la Frontera just after the day that the US calls either Indigenous People's Day or Columbus Day. We didn't see Spain making any over effort to re-assess the legacy of colonialism in the way the US has. Colonialist attitudes can be hard to uproot. Put another way - racism is real. In Spain, the population is overwhelmingly white. European politicians have a lot to gain by portraying people from Africa as invaders. But of course this isn't unique to Spain, or even to Europe. Donald Trump began his first presidential campaign with the racist claim that Mexico was sending rapists to the United States. One of his most frequent applause lines as president was that he would build a wall along the southern US border. One reason we wanted to do this project is because these themes are playing out all over the world. To me, whether political leaders believe their talking points is almost less important than the impact those policies are having on the world.

Western Europe generally opposes immigration from Eastern Europe. Even with massive pro-Ukraine media coverage, grudging acceptance is based on a) immigrants being mainly women and children since fighting-age males are conscripted, b) the expectation they'll go back once the war ends.

You pretty much have the situation backwards - as a general rule, the worse a country is, the less supportive people become of free travel, for reasons I assumed were obvious.

Always.

Stop watching the liberal media.

Your life will improve dramatically.

Demographers, insurance companies, and others have made efforts to answer this question. Buffalo, New York, is one of the places that has pitched itself as a haven from climate displacement. I'm not an expert in this, but my impression is that people are mostly making educated guesses and nobody really knows for sure.

You know why they switched from global warming to climate change...right?

Everywhere I go, I find stories that give me hope. In Senegal, these hip hop artists talked about giving "young people weapons to combat the system, to combat poverty." At the UN climate summit in Glasgow, a young Samoan activist named Breanna Fruean taught me the refrain, "We are not drowning; we're fighting." The artist Taylor Mac once told me that things are cyclical, but you can always find people fighting to make the world better. Those are the people I look for in my reporting.

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Thank you! Ari means "Lion" in Hebrew. It's also good for crossword puzzles.

And he does it very well!

I wonder if he quips "and you don't look like I imagined you either!" at every show!

I lived in Senegal for 11 years and spent 3 years in other west African countries. There isn't a lot of xenophobia in the region. I occasionally heard a bit of grumbling at the number of Guineans in Senegal but there was no targeting of them by anyone. I never heard any political party address it either.

Cote d'Ivoire is one country that has had issues with xenophobia, particularly directed at Burkinabé, and this issue contributed to a period of instability in the country.

Many people in the region hold negative views of Nigerians but afaik they have not been officially targeted except that they often get extra scrutiny from police.

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