Ziya Tong: Shiny Plastic People

Jann Arden  0:08  
Welcome everyone to the Jann Arden podcast and show what a special day it is today. For one thing, I'm at home, which feels really good. And I have a couple of days off, I'm still in the midst of the Rick Mercer extravaganza. But with us today is the amazing Ziya Tong and also the amazing Caitlin Green. Sarah Burke is not joining us today. She's got some family stuff going on. So, Ziya, how would you introduce yourself? Tell people who you are?

Ziya Tong  0:38  
Oh, gosh, that is so awkward, Jann!, How am I supposed to introduce myself? I don't know.

Caitlin Green  0:44  
It's like when you're asked to write your own bio, I've been asked to write my own bio so many times,

Ziya Tong  0:48  
I have no idea how to do it. I'll give it a shot if you want.

Jann Arden  0:52  
I think it's really interesting how people perceive themselves and how they're making their way through the world. Because like, what do you do that that, that it's almost like a party trick question. Oh, what do you do? And it's more like, who are you? Like, what, what do you like to do? So I'm gonna leave it for you to decide.

Ziya Tong  1:10  
I like to make regular appearances as the third co host on the Jin Arden podcast. That so one of one of one of my big highlights this podcast certainly feels like home for me. I love being on here. I guess now I'm a multi hyphenate person, right? You know, some folks may know me from Daily Planet, which I hosted for a decade. So I've been a science broadcaster for close to two decades now. And I wrote a book called The reality bubble. And it's so good, it's so good. It's about kind of eviscerating and overturning the system and our blind spots. And now, now, somehow or other, I really don't know how I'm a director, which I think is hilarious. I'm a newbie director. This is my first film. And I've just made a film called plastic people, which I actually told you about last time I was here when we were just starting on it. And generally, I'm a human being first though. And I love all our fellow Earthlings. That's basically me.

Jann Arden  2:12  
And you are incredibly intuitive. You are empathic, you are an animal lover, you are a vegan, you are inspiring people all the time to look at life through a plant based lens. And, you know, we're all wondering how we can make the planet better. And you and I have talked about this at nauseam? Well, it starts at the tip of your fork and the tip of your tongue. And it's amazing what a few of those shifts can create in how you feed your family. And it may seem like kind of Oh, I'm so sick of hearing about this, but it is super important. But Ziya, today you are you're a director of this film, plastic people. I've caught in little wisps of what's happening with this film, and I'm I'm dying to see it. And I'm sitting here, very apologetic before you today, I have not yet see the film. But let's talk about the catalyst of where this began. And what prompted you to look at basically, I guess, micro plastics, in our world, and in our bodies, essentially, where did it begin? Well,

Ziya Tong  3:21  
I think, you know, there's two big reasons why I wanted to work on this film, right. The first is I really wanted to start to make this connection between planetary health and human health, right. And if we crash the planet, we literally trash our bodies. So that's one thing. The second thing is a really important connection, which is to do with the oil and gas industry. And we know that the oil and gas industry is responsible for some really massive problems on our planet right now. Right? That's almost an understatement. But the problem is, they're invisible. So this is just like the stuff I used to talk to you about when with the reality bubble stuff that you can't see. So the climate crisis and carbon dioxide, you can't see it coming out of your tailpipes, you can't see it coming out of buildings invisible, but you know, devastating microplastics the same thing, right? Because plastics made from oil and gas, also invisible. We're breathing them in right now, as all of us are here. Right now, every listener is breathing in microplastics. We can't see them. But then I started thinking about this. And I was like, Okay, I know from like, having worked during the BP oil spill, for example, that when you see an oil spill, people are like, Oh my god, the oil spill, let's go clean it up and chop chop, they clean that stuff up quick. So I wanted to show people what an oil spill looks like in the human body. And so essentially, that is what this film is about really being able to see how we have trashed the planet and our human body while we're at it. Where do you begin

Jann Arden  4:53  
that journey? Those if it's a huge question, where did you start

Ziya Tong  4:59  
with poo. It's incredibly unglamorous. But that was the first phone call that I got from Rick Smith, who is the executive producer, also the president of the Canadian climate Institute. And while all this sounds super fancy, Rick and I had been working on the plastics panel together, and he wrote an amazing article in The Globe and Mail where he had tested his own poo for microplastics. He was the first person on earth to do it. And then he was approached by white pictures, hey, let's make a film about microplastics. Nobody has done it on the scale. And so of course, we had just worked together. And so he called me up and he's like, Hey, Ziaja, how would you feel about filming your own poo? If you're just

Jann Arden  5:38  
joining us here on the Jen rd podcast.

Ziya Tong  5:43  
It's not glamorous. My job is not glamorous. Other people have glamorous TV, jobs and film jobs. This is how I got into it.

Jann Arden  5:51  
There's a lot of magical information and shit.

Ziya Tong  5:53  
There sure is. And one of the things that I had written about previously was actually wolves, the Sea Wolves for Canadian Geographic and of course, what they were doing because the indigenous people don't allow you to tag wolves like Western scientists do, because wolves are their family. So one of the best ways to study wolves is through Wolf, do a wolf feces, scat, right? Essentially, it provides the DNA and provides the location of where the wolves are going, whatever, you know, so you know what they're eating all this sort of fascinating stuff. So shit is really, really interesting. We'll get into it, it really is

Jann Arden  6:30  
not to get off track too much. But I know that when my father had C diff, this was years ago, he's long since gone. But he really struggled with it for a number of years. It sort of came in and out of his gut health for a long time. And anyone who doesn't know what C diff is a C. difficile, it's, you know, one of the bad little bugs that gets into your system and wreaks havoc, and you can basically you can succumb to having it it's it's very hard, but they wanted to give him a feces transplants just going to ask if he had one of those? No, he did. And he was he was two he was he had dementia, and there was a lot of extenuating circumstances. But I remember sitting across from our family doctor, and he said, they're just really starting to do it in the last year. So this would have been 910 years ago, almost. I was like, what would they take a healthy poo from somebody else? I mean, I'm not really explaining this properly. But basically, they put the healthy poo stuff into the sick person's body and it that all those little bugs get in there and save the day absolutely

Ziya Tong  7:32  
makes a difference. It's one of the best treatments for this sort of thing now. So yeah, you know, it was when your when your dad was approached, it was fairly novel. And now it's very common.

Jann Arden  7:42  
So did he find microplastics? In his stool? Sure. Did. The journey began with poo, and then it started you down a road, obviously. Yeah,

Ziya Tong  7:50  
exactly. And really sort of checking out, you know, not only the microplastic in my stool, but also in my blood, we ended up visiting people who have found it in the placenta. And as Caitlyn knows, of course, because we were very fortunate. This film has already been covered in the New York Times and in variety of groundbreaking research with scientists in Turkey who found it in the human brain. So it's everywhere. What does that mean? Well, it's weird, Jen. Because when you can actually see as I did something like other people's garbage, like other people's shopping bags, or yoga pants in your blood, you really start to think twice. Like I mean, we read about this stuff all the time. We just read very recently, there was that study that came out about plastic two days ago, I think it was plastic and every male testicle that was tested, right? So we know that it's everywhere. We know that it's absolutely everywhere. And we know that the impacts are really quite dangerous. So there was another study that was done out of the New England Journal of Medicine. And what they found was that people who have microplastics in their carotid arteries, they were at much higher risk for stroke, heart attack and death for 4.5 times more at risk because of microplastics. I think the idea here is that's what they're surmising is the microplastics kind of makes the plaques more brittle. And then they can kind of fall off and then if it if it jams your bloodstream, right, then you can have a stroke, you can have a heart attack, what have you. So really dangerous again, invisible threats are incredibly dangerous. And we're not used to these things as human beings, right? We're used to we still we talked about this before, we have sort of caveman perception still, we're like, oh, have to be afraid of the lion that comes or the truck that's coming these days, the things that things that we need to actually be most afraid of, we cannot see. So it became really important to do a documentary to show people on the big screen exactly what this looks like what is the threat and the reaction has been incredibly positive. Because you know, people care people act, and that's the thing I love about dogs. They do change things they can do. Change Policy, they can change people's personal actions. And hopefully, you know, with the plastics treaty that is being negotiated right now we can change this, we can change the law. Caitlin

Jann Arden  10:11  
has questions I know.

Caitlin Green  10:14  
I'm okay. Because I just know that for me, I hear about all this stuff. And I believe it right away, I don't second guess it, I believe that it's there. I believe that it's damaging. But there's so many different horrible things happening at once. And it feels like it's being perpetrated by these massive, very hard to control very hard to change entities like the oil and gas industry. So when you take in all this information all the time, I personally have found at least since like the lockdown portion of the pandemic, like I get really overwhelmed. And so I'm sort of like, what, how do you take in all this information and use it to like energize yourself versus going like, I'm just going to sit and watch Vanderpump Rules, which is a place that I've landed recently, because it's hard, it's hard not to feel as though you're being screamed at to use a paper straw. But also, we're all being poisoned with microplastics. So I feel like we're focusing on the wrong thing. Sometimes,

Ziya Tong  11:09  
we're absolutely always being distracted quite deliberately to focus on the wrong thing, right? Because you have to think there aren't that many villains? Yeah, there's a guy oil, right? There's Big Pharma, and there's big meat. And those three categories of industry in themselves are responsible for a lot of what is happening in our world today. And big media, let's throw that in there. It's only a handful of corporations, right. And even, for example, when it comes to let's just, you know, focus on plastic as an issue, five companies, five brands are responsible for 50% of the plastic out there, five, those those bosses, those CEOs have names and addresses, right. So I think what we need to do is we need people to get so far, things are gonna change we've seen we always see revolutions happen, people get really fed up, and then they act, there's always almost like a sort of match, right? And then all of a sudden things light up. The key thing is, it's really bad to have a religious revolution without a plan in the background. That's when things go wrong. You know, everybody gets mad, they revolt, and then the system quietens down, what we need to do is kind of plan, plan, policy, all that sort of stuff. So when we develop this film, we developed an impact campaign alongside it, right? There's a lot of good people doing good work. So we're partnered with the top NGOs in the world, we've got WWF International, we've got Friends of the Earth, we've got Environmental Defense, we've got plastic pollution coalition, the list goes on and on and on and on. Because we're like, we don't have to reinvent the wheel. There are people there are people working on ocean plastics, there are people working on, you know, microfiber plastics, there are people working to stop, you know, to sue people. You'll see in our film, there's one woman who sued a plastics manufacturing company for $50 million. And one, right, there's people who are doing you know, fighting for different legislation, there's people doing citizen action. So I think the mistake is to be like, I can do all of it. I'm gonna fight every note, I'm gonna join one group, do one thing, always do one thing like, and with you guys too. And even with Jen, Jen doesn't have to do 8 million things. Jan's got horses, literally do the horse, right? I'll do the microplastics, or what have you. But we need everybody to be involved in one thing. So I think that once once we do too many things, everybody gets paralyzed. Nobody has time for that,

Caitlin Green  13:26  
that feels reasonable. And it feels as though it's a reasonable request to people also, because I think that so many people, we know maybe their job isn't the most fulfilling thing in the world for them. Maybe they feel like their life is missing something. So if something bothers you enough, and you in you open your eyes to it. And then you can find some purpose in your own life by taking a bit of action, whatever that looks like for you. In that specific department. It's also like a little bit of CBT, where you're, you build on success. So it's like you have you have one piece of success, and then you build and then you build, you don't sort of like start from the top and say, I'm going to overhaul the whole thing. It's like start little teeny, tiny, and then you just make these incremental steps. And on that note, what would be the things that if you're listening to us, wondering about plastic, what what kind of changes did you make in your life right away after you made this documentary? What things everyday changed for you?

Ziya Tong  14:15  
Well, the first thing that I did, and the thing that I regret not doing sooner, because I like to keep my stuff, right. I don't I don't throw stuff out. I mean, that's probably why I'm in this documentary. I'm not one of those people who's really into fast fashion or any of that other sort of stuff. So I have a pan that I've had for frickin a long time, right? But the pan was scratched up and I was like, whatever, it's a bit scratched up. I can still use it, whatever. And then I started reading about how many billions of nanoplastics are coming out of scratched up Teflon, all that sort of stuff. Nasty, nasty, nasty.

Jann Arden  14:47  
I'm getting rid of a pan. I have a pan that I need to get rid of right after we have this conversation. No, I've been I've been thinking about it. I look at it all the time. I'm like, Oh, it's so great. I hate to waste this. But you know what it needs to go With a dump, and

Ziya Tong  15:02  
you gotta throw that can go into recycling. Right. Um, the other thing though, is my chopping board. So I had a plastic chopping board and want to throw that out. And then Sadat was like, every time you're using your knife on your plastic chopping board, you're literally like peppering all your food with microplastic.

Jann Arden  15:20  
I've got a plastic chopping board that I've used for shopping today.

Ziya Tong  15:23  
It's me, right? So it's okay. I'm not saying let's throw out everything.

Jann Arden  15:28  
No, but I mean, long term. I mean, if I'm lucky, I have another 20 years on this planet, fingers crossed, I'm 60. To be great to would be great to be 100. Let's see. But it is. It's the little things always that catch us. You know, the funny thing and listening to you talk earlier about you know, there's there's only so many villains on this planet, big villains, like you mentioned, and these same people that are running these corporations are equally as affected by these plastics, as their companies are affecting millions and millions of people like they're, they're not exempt to what is happening environmentally and what's happening to body. So you'd think at the end of the day, that watching a film like plastic people, and realizing my my daughter that's going to be having a baby has plastics in her entire body.

Ziya Tong  16:21  
It was found in breast milk, right?

Jann Arden  16:23  
So it begins. Yeah, you know, I

Ziya Tong  16:25  
don't I can't remember what the statistic is in Canada. I think it's one in three women get breast cancer, but I know in the UK, I think it's according to their breast cancer society one and two. Now, certainly, cancer has been around, but holy Krakatoa not at the numbers, and we're looking around and like, you know, that was one of the things in the film. I'm like, I know, I have a lot of people in my family who've had cancer. And I remember when I was growing up, it sure was a scary word, because there weren't that many people. And cancer is highly, highly prevalent now. And a lot of these plastics are starting to be implicated because we know that it hijacks our endocrine system. So there's some there's a lot of dangers. And like a lot of people who've watched this film, you know, it is a bit of a horror movie. I've been calling it Barbie, the horror movie. But it wakes people up to and it's not, it's certainly not too late for us to change. I'm honest to God more hopeful about changing and solving the plastics crisis than I am the climate crisis, which I think is more multifaceted. Because you don't have a big as big of a left and right divide politically. It's not as polarizing people on the left, and people on the right don't like garbage. Yeah, they not like garbage. You know what I mean? Nobody really likes it. But when you get in your own body, people care about their health, they do ultimately care. So I think what you're right, like the big villains haven't connected the dots yet right? That what you put out into the world comes back into your body. That was part of what I wrote in the reality bubble is you know, there's just no divide everything that like the carbon that is out there coming out of a tailpipe is also the state same carbon that ends up making up your fingernails, we know that our cells are turning over constantly but they're not just made up of nothing they're made up of the outside world. So when we when we put all that toxic stuff out there into the world it is what our physical bodies are remade of when we remake ourselves all that stuff is what is coming back into our system so we're still a little early days most people haven't made that connection yet but when they start to I think things will change

Caitlin Green  18:37  
why Nouba nonstick surfaces from the film that Mark buffalo starred in cold dark waters about the Teflon kind of scandal The DuPont like Teflon story, so I knew a little about that. That doesn't surprise me quite as much the plastic chopping board I don't know why I didn't think of that one sooner. I didn't think of it but because also I'm a mom I encounter so many products that will heavily advertised that they're BPA free or you know chemical free or whatever but it doesn't feel like they are so Do you happen to know what kind of regulation is there if any behind like companies that make those claims because I just see the the prevalence of these products everywhere on like Amazon Teemu Ali Express you name it and I feel like it's the Wild West like I feel like if it's not a piece of wood or glass we don't really effectively know what's in it. I've just like taught myself to second guess that

Ziya Tong  19:29  
you're absolutely right and that's the second part of this invisible isolation right like I've compared it to punch buggy remember that game where you see like a VW that's red and then you'll see them everywhere. Now I see plastic everywhere because of course most of our clothes are made of plastic carpets are made of plastic children's toys are made of plastic your couch is made of plastic. The paint is made of plastic cigarette butts are made of plastic chewing gum is made of plastic mascara is made of plastic. So once you start looking you're like holes li Krakatoa and then wonder like the oil and gas industry is not going to be able, they know that their future is not going to be at the gas pump. So what are they putting it into? They're putting it into plastic making it and making it still invisible. So that's the irony, right? You go and you see these fitness people doing yoga, right, but they're just plastic on the plastic mat drinking out of a plastic bottle. And they're like, but I've got a hemp tote bag, it

Caitlin Green  20:27  
has felt crazy to because they sold a lot of those there were these brands of you know, period underwear now. And yeah, they tout that it's better for the environment, because you're not using disposable sanitary pads or tampons or whatever. And then people started talking about how tampons are bleached, and then you're putting it inside your body. And then a brand of period underwear, it came out as being endocrine disruptors, it was high in a certain type of chemical. And it's the same thing that's in a lot of the workout clothing now, too. And totally, I was like, Who would have thought you wouldn't have thought that just wearing it, it would absorb into your body. But then kind of also, of course he would because your skin is a very large, permeable organ.

Ziya Tong  21:04  
Exactly. So so it's really that. But again, I want us to not feel paralyzed ever, there are things that we can do. I keep saying this, like it's buying quality, right? Buy things that have good quality, spend just that little bit more for the quality thing that you will keep that will last. And I often think about my grandmother, I'm sure your grandmother's, too. My grandmother just did not have very much plastic in her house. You know, I mean, things were made out of glass, they were made out of ceramic, they were made just iron pans. It's not like everybody was suffering at that time, they just didn't have it. And as you'll see in the film, we literally had to be trained to throw things away.

Jann Arden  21:44  
Well, now I'm thinking about teeth brushing three times a day, that's really puking plastic bristles and cramming them into the gums of your teeth. And if there was ever an entry point for a micro plastic gang to team up and like, let's meet at the bicuspids 7am. But I also know that we're capable of change, which is exactly what you're touching on human beings are made for change. That's why we're still here. That's why we're going forward that we haven't been completely annihilated. But you think about medieval anywhere, when people were taking their bedpans and throwing them onto the streets where they walked in where, you know, they had vegetable carts set up, you know, two hours later for people to buy their goods. Like they eventually had to stop doing that because they're like, Oh, we're getting sick. So eventually, the eventualities, like you said, of these microplastics, invading our physical bodies, is that we are going to see people getting more sick, maybe there will be more cancers, more brain cancers, more birth defects, because the particle ratio in your bloodstream is just going to be too much for like, are we going to just morph into like completely different versions of humans? I mean, what's what's down the road? 1000 years? I?

Ziya Tong  23:02  
Well, that's a big question. But we do know that every one of those micro plastic particles is a poison pill, right. In order to make plastics, there's something like 16,000 chemicals and plastics, 4200 of them 16,000 in plastic generally, but we know that 4200 of them are classified as hazardous. So we know that a quarter of those chemicals that make up plastics are absolutely hazardous to our health. So if you've got something like that in your body, not only is it going to form as let's say you've got a plastic particle that is stuck in your blood vessel, for example. And this isn't something we included in our film only because we couldn't include everything, we're actually going to develop a podcast to actually talk about things that we weren't. But we interviewed a scientist named Bianca Reese. And she actually shows that when white blood cells come to attack the plastic particle, they kinda like Pac Man, you know, Pac Man kind of gobbles up the ghosts. Normally, if your immune cells come and they, you know, try to take down bacteria, they gobble them up like a Pac Man, and, you know, take them away, and you know, you can clear up your system. In this instance, the immune cells were coming up to the microplastics and dying, they would die, and then their death signal would call in another immune cell, which would then come and also die, and then another immune cell would come in. And that's inflammation, because that's when you're not able to your own immune systems like what's going on. And you know, prolonged inflammation, that's when you end up dealing with situations that can lead to things like cancer. So yeah, you've got the poison pill aspect, and you've got the physical sort of aggravation of it. And we also know that bacteria do tend to leech more onto microplastics. So it's a problem. But again, the best thing about being able to be on your podcast and be able to speak freely about these things, because we're not dealing with traditional advertising models as we can tell people what's really happening, right? This is not the kind of thing that you know, you can really delve into too much unfortunately. In traditional media,

Jann Arden  25:16  
yeah. No, we're very, we're very proud of that. I mean, there's no there's nothing that we don't you know, talk about on this podcast, this issue in particular and the film plastic people is what we're talking about today was diatom. Where can we where can we see this film? I know that you've had some premieres at various places, like I said, unfortunately, I haven't been able to see it yet. But where would where would someone like me and Caitlin go to see plastic people?

Ziya Tong  25:43  
Well, it's going to be having a Toronto premiere next Tuesday at the Royal cinema. So that's going to be a big one. We're also very fortunate that we're gonna get in some screenings at hot dogs right before hot dogs closes, which is so sad. But I will be the last film that screens at Hot Docs on June 1 And June 11. We're screening right now in Vancouver and starting all around the country in theaters. It's going to be part of the tip circuit, which is really great. It streams on TELUS tell us subscribers can get it as part of their package in a little while the CBC Nature of Things is going to

Jann Arden  26:22  
so it'll be on mainstream a mainstream broadcaster. Yeah,

Ziya Tong  26:25  
but that's going to be a little a little while from from now. And I'm off to Europe for the European premiere coming up. So yeah, so just very exciting. Because as you know, like I've been in the little screen, so to be on the big screen now is as funny. What

Jann Arden  26:42  
was the most surprising thing about this film? Ziaja? Like, what, what surprised you the most and like maybe a takeaway that did seem somewhat either perplexing, or like, absolutely bizarre, like, there must have been so many of those moments, but were you ever like completely gobsmacked by things you were uncovering?

Ziya Tong  27:03  
I think one of the main things that I found really shocking, because in the film, what you see me doing is testing for microplastics that have come out of my body, right? A tiny poop sample is about a teaspoon, and the blood sample was only 2.5 millimeters milliliters. Sorry. So 2.5 milliliters for anybody who cooks, you know, that's only like a few drops, that's tiny. But in 2.5 milliliters, on average, the scientists were finding about 11 Micro plastic particles, okay, 11 Micro plastic particles for a few drops of your blood, I have five liters of blood circulating in my system. They go, Well, Jesus, how much is actually in there that you've

Jann Arden  27:45  
got a picnic set floating around in your body fitting,

Ziya Tong  27:49  
it's called plastic people for a reason? You know, because we are turning into plastic people. Can

Caitlin Green  27:54  
anyone go get these tests? Now? I'm like, I want to go?

Ziya Tong  27:57  
Well, we're actually we're starting to look at at doing that. Yeah, we're starting to look at that. I can't announce too much about that yet. But yeah, we're starting to work on that. And won't be available widely to the public. Because, you know, we have to take up a lot of scientists and lab resources to do that. And we're a film and we're not a lab, but we're hoping to. I mean, do you guys want to do that? Jen, do you want to get tested?

Jann Arden  28:20  
I absolutely do. And I'm missing a set of car keys, you know, somewhere in my body to some

Ziya Tong  28:28  
patio furniture. That's like, the 80s were rough. Okay, but yeah, I can definitely see if I can get that sorted out and see if we can get you guys tested out would

Caitlin Green  28:38  
be cool. And I also think it would help personalize it for people if they were like, Oh, I really should switch back to glass and some would also to did we not have this correct then in the past, like when you think about like the milkman that would come and deliver your milk and glass bottles, then you take it back like this method behind not only was it adorable and whimsical, but also turns out it was much better for our health.

Ziya Tong  29:00  
I was just in Rwanda and I had a Coca Cola out of a glass bottle there. It's not the case. But you know, keep in mind Coca Cola is actually the number one plastic polluter on the planet. Like basically, they are responsible for 11% of all plastic that is out there. But they did have glass before so you're kind of like why don't you guys go back to glass which is infinitely recyclable. Where as plastic you can only ultimately recycle it four or five times anyway. So we have the solutions. It's just a bunch of Num Nums went out there and screwed it all up for us. We have to fix it, you know, but it takes people getting together. So I really recommend people come to plastic people doc.com Check out our impact campaign. See how you can get involved you can do it from the lightest thing of just sending an email letter that's already written for you to getting involved with people you know, we actually feature a plastic free community that's right here in Ontario Bayfield Ontario, where All these folks got together and just got rid of plastic, like 90% plastic free. So it's not not possible. It's infinitely possible. It's just information and action. And, you know, I think we need, we need different hobbies. See, for me, for all for three of us here, we love having, you know, activist hobbies. Because, you know, it's been said before, there's no, you know, the best way to get rid of any sense of frustration or anger is to channel it into action, right? And then you're like, Oh, my goodness, I'm part of that solution. So, you know, if you're tired of golf, or pickleball, or maybe you have an extra slot available, join, join another group?

Jann Arden  30:39  
Well, I was gonna say the one thing that we do know about people, and that I have learned, definitely from the horseshit campaign, which has been on the goal for the last, you know, 10 years, 20 years, actually, if you're counting the Canadian horse defense that started this up in 2006. But when people are aware of a situation when there's awareness, and that was the biggest thing that we faced, when we started down the road of letting people know that giant horses were being put into boxes and being flown 1000 kilometers to be eaten raw by very wealthy clients. And people are like, what, what I mean, so the clandestine nature of nefarious things is always your biggest obstacle. You have to we knew right out of the gate, we have to tell people, we have to be consistent and repetitive with our messaging over and over and over, I cannot tell you how many 1000s of tweets that I made with the same information, because that cycle of scrolling, scrolling scrolling, you know, people need to see it repeat. That's why hit songs get made is because they're repeated over and over. A hit song doesn't play once. And and millions of people glom on to it a hit song is absolutely crammed on our throats like microplastics you're absolutely

Ziya Tong  31:59  
right. And politicians have known this for the longest time, right? George Bush would say the same thing. Sometimes people say it until it sounds true, like Donald Trump, right? So yeah, you're absolutely right. You do have to repeat it. And there's that's the part of it right? First, you need the courage to kind of reveal to people an ugly truth. And it's usually an ugly truth. And then you need to have the persistence to keep going even when most people would give up, which is exactly what you've done with the horseshit campaign. And you know, then you start accumulating a community. And that's where things get more interesting is like communities come together, and then it's not just you anymore, and that's when change starts to happen. And we do this because the whole history of the world is about these things happening over and over again, right? Courage, persistence, Community Action, it always happens. That's how we see change. And we've constantly seen change, and positive change. I know sometimes it feels a little bit dark. And we're in certainly one of those periods now. But that's, that gives us the greatest opportunity for blooming. I think, I think

Caitlin Green  33:03  
moms will really get behind this I have to say, as a mom myself, and there is no group who do you will galvanize faster than a group of moms going I'm sorry, there are plastics in my baby. And they know that we know grassroots movements work like Mothers Against Drunk Driving did more to solve, you know, drunk driving than any government really ever did. They they started that. So I do. I feel like the more I learned about this, I already know that there has been an increasingly large movement in like the parenting community to avoid plastic stuff, wood toys are back Montessori learning is back. There's a lot more of that happening. But I really think this could piggyback strongly on to it because you moms just don't we just want to look after our kids. It's like it's that simple. Moms

Ziya Tong  33:46  
are fierce, there is actually a mother's against plastic pollution. It's not called that so it's not math. But they're, they're on Instagram, and they are fantastic. But I'll share one last little tip if I'm as I was really happy to learn. And it's a really super, super, super simple one. And I love super simple solutions. Basically, if you want to reduce the amount of microplastics coming off of your clothes, which are largely synthetic, right, and one of the biggest sources of ocean microplastics, all you've got to do is turn the dial on your washing machine from regular spin to gentle spin. And that'll reduce the plastics by 70% 70%. So it's huge, that's huge amount of reduction, and that's only by turning a knob. Maybe 25 But 25 degree angle to the left. So there are things that we can do that are simple.

Caitlin Green  34:37  
That's crazy. That means literally today everyone can me I'm doing this today. I am throwing out my scratched up pans I'm switching me to it and or bamboo or whatever product led me to go away from plastic cutting boards and then just going to switch to a lower spin cycle. I mean, that's very easy to do.

Jann Arden  34:53  
I have got it on the highest spin cycle always because I'm like I want the water out of there when I stick it in the dryer, folks All of these things will be included in our show notes. Certainly the website, any information on plastic people, you'll be able to find on the show notes. The whole concept of, of what you're doing is, for me showing the connection with all of us that we're not exempt doesn't matter if you're in Iceland, or the tip of Finland or somewhere in, in Asia on a little Japanese island. We are all being affected by microplastics. There's no place on this world where people are like, there isn't any in their body. It's everywhere, is it not?

Ziya Tong  35:31  
You're absolutely right from the Mariana Trench to the highest mountains, they're finding it in the poop of penguins in Antarctica, it's everywhere. But the key thing again, that I want to remind people, and that we were quite clear to remind people in the film is it's not, it's not your fault, right? It's not your fault. And we don't want people to feel like the onus is on them, you can do what you can do. But ultimately, we need to change the system. This is a system change thing. This is people getting together and calling out those corporations who are polluting, there are Polluter Pays laws in certain places, we've seen huge changes, you'll see some of that and some incredible countries that we feature like Rwanda and Manila, who have made massive, massive strides. There's, you know, all these, there's lots of different ways in which you know, we can get mayor's to start working with cities to reduce plastic pollution, let the leaders and the corporate officials there, they're really the ones that are quite responsible here. So do what you can to protect yourself as much as you can buy things that have quality, don't buy shit and crap that's just going to fall apart. And unfortunately, Janna actually do have to say something that's going to be a bit of a bummer for the two of us. But I've been a big fan of vegan leather quote unquote, for a long time. And vegan leather is plastic. And I am tempted to run into my closet and show you my vegan leather jacket. Should I show you it? It's falling apart. It's it's absolutely flaking into plastic pieces. And in fact, last time, a few of them got into my eye, which was a little bit frustrating. Um, it's really really it's tricky, right? I mean, there's Apple leather, I will say there's Apple leather.

Jann Arden  37:12  
I've got Apple leather boots,

Ziya Tong  37:13  
I've got Apple leather shoes, too. But but not all of that is within the price point.

Jann Arden  37:19  
Everybody kept us leather is coming along.

Ziya Tong  37:21  
There's mushroom leather, cactus leather.

Jann Arden  37:24  
There's some actual plant based footwear. I have a lot of canvas shoes. Yeah, of course I have rubber soles,

Ziya Tong  37:31  
but we can't we can't win them all. We can't win them all. So I mean, do what you can and really be happy with with those things. You know, do one thing a week. Also I really want people to pace things out and I don't want them to feel overwhelmed ever because I think that that's the biggest hindrance to action is when people just start to get scared so don't be scared. We've got a good fight ahead. There's great communities there's great collectives Come join us at plastic people.com

Jann Arden  37:59  
plastic people doc.com

Ziya Tong  38:02  
Yeah, let's let's start being human again. Let's let's stop being plastic people

Jann Arden  38:06  
Ziya Tong as always, you are fierce, fabulous informed. You are one of those people that's just out there making a difference in the world. We love having you on the show. And you

Ziya Tong  38:17  
guys are my kindred spirits and I love being on here and I love both of you. Thank you so

Jann Arden  38:22  
much. I hope you come back a time and time and time again and plastic people is the film it is saya tongs directorial debut, she's been on the small screen. For decades. We have seen her she's a fabulous author. The reality bubble is another book. You can grab it on Amazon. I have three copies of that book. Now I've bought them for people. I have one in my condo. I don't have a lot of books in my condo, but the reality bubble is one of them. And I've even seen my my tour manager Chris flipping through and I'm like, Oh, you read the reality bubble. He goes, this is wild. And I love it that you can just open it up. I pride myself on bathroom reading. And the reality bubble is my copy is in Tibet in my bathroom in the condo, and I have a copy here in the house but I can open it up when I am having a plastic poo now when I'm when I'm who getting when I'm getting rid of my plastic poo. Anyway, I'd be remiss if I didn't say Ziya Tong's the reality bubble is really great desire. Thanks for being on the Jann Arden pod cast Today in we love you and thank you so much keep keeping a word a warrior for the world we appreciate it more than you know

that was our amazing special guest Ziya Tong. She's a friend of our show, and she's been on many many times and I'm sure she will be on many times again. What did you think of all this Caitlin My God,

Caitlin Green  39:50  
I knew from you know, researching and everything ahead of the conversation we had with her that I was going to be roundly shocked and I did. It immediately called to mind that Mark Ruffalo. film, which I encourage anyone who hasn't seen it to see dark waters, and it's about the Forever chemicals that exist in Teflon. And the fight that, you know, this lawyer had to take on those companies. And it would be a continuation of my frustration with these larger models that convinced the individual that we are responsible and that we're the bad agent in life. You know, again, it's our plastic straws that are choking the turtles instead of actually just the oil and gas industry. So that's the type of stuff

Jann Arden  40:28  
no, it's been shifted, the responsibility has been shifted to us, this is not

Caitlin Green  40:32  
my issue, like I'm just me over here, I'm not you know, so it's like I knew I have what I always love about die is that, you know, you come to it from a place of, oh my gosh, this is gonna make me thrown into apathetic Hell, where I feel like it's bigger than me. But then you get a few little things you can do, like throw your pants, you're chopping board, change your setting on your, you know, washing machine

Jann Arden  40:57  
70% Going into the to the water stream, going into that water table, it is really not. Well, it's certainly food for thought. And she really is a delight, and the fact that she's just out there traveling the world, you know, Zeitung. And I mean this with so much love in my heart, and so much admiration. She is such a my version of Jane Goodall. She is someone who's taken on really big, scary issues on this planet, she travels the world tirelessly, I was going to ask her how they got the funding to make plastic people because I can imagine that would be an uphill slog to secure the funds to do a piece like this that does go after the four or five big villains on the planet, right?

Caitlin Green  41:43  
Yeah, I would think that there would be a certain amount of you know, arts funding that could possibly be included, if you had a, you know, a producer, obviously, who knew how to access that. But also, it sounded as though they had aligned a little bit with some Environmental Defense groups. So maybe there was something there. But yeah, it's not easy. And she's gone out on her own. And she will kind of call into question a lot of very powerful organizations in the world. And that's not easy to do for just one person, especially just one person in Canada. She's always been a very enlightening person to speak with. And I remember first encountering her when I was on the radio. And she would come through as part of a promotional tour for the Daily Planet with Dan Riskin, who has also been on the show, yes, stick. And I just thought, This person is so fun to talk to about things that aren't necessarily fun to talk about. But just fascinating and a very interested person she's very interested in things and and being helpful and is also very charming and charismatic as as Dan so then she walks the walk. Yeah, and I remember thinking like, when I started working with you, Jan, right away, I was like, oh, Janet, we're gonna get along famously. And I'm happy that my hunch was correct. And

Jann Arden  42:53  
oh, I'm sure you you've brought so many great guests on you know, saya dan, being one of them, everyone that you've brought, you know, just just people that are putting themselves out there, they're walking, they're going out on that limb, to to teach us and to help us through their own experiences. They all these people that we have on the show that are willing to teach us through their own experiences, be it good or bad. So anyway, gentlemen, podcast, you can subscribe to us. It'll help us pop into your stream. You're into your vibe every week or your vibe will be part of our podcast. I

Caitlin Green  43:27  
would be remiss if I didn't ask you how your tour with your platonic life partner Rick Mercer is going

Jann Arden  43:31  
yeah, it's going really good. We played Calgary last night so hometown crowd sold out southern Jubilee auditorium. I love it because I get a good parking spot so it's always weird I've been to so many shows there over the years and you're like fuck I gotta walk eight god damn miles and so Chris is like your install three at the stage door that part of it I love what

Caitlin Green  43:49  
do you guys each have I should have asked you with this one. He was on the show. But what are your riders like? What do you guys keep backstage?

Jann Arden  43:55  
His is really simple. He's had four D alcohol lized beers Okay, partake shout out to you partake love partying,

Caitlin Green  44:02  
my pregnancy beer

Jann Arden  44:03  
well there you go partake feel free to sponsor our show. But there's your first free you know, shout out okay, um, he has something so funny and it's part of his comedy world. It's part of a bunch of people going out and doing these these comedy tours. He has a sandwich that he wants at the end of the night like a package sandwich that's cold cuts and cheese and like in a in a submarine bun and it's wrapped up in waiting in the fridge and across the country. There's been fucking the craziest versions of Rick's after show sandwich. It makes me laugh my ass off. I actually seek out to go look in the fridge to see what his after show sandwiches in Saskatoon he had like it looked like an English fucking tea. It was all these little sandwiches piled up on a plate with the crust cut off like funerals, just funeral sandwiches. And I was like, oh, I want to get in and eat those cucumber ones. Yeah, but he has that. We always sort of order Dinner in whether it's skip the dishes or Uber Eats or Adam Chris's right hand, man, he'll run out and grab some stuff from wherever. But yeah, it's really funny. The guys had sushi last night. And it was at the venue like at six o'clock, but somebody brought us these amazing doughnuts, and I cannot in the shownotes, I will try and find the donut name, but it's a friend of Chris's and he's now got four or five donut stores. And they're mostly vegan. And yeah, they're the size of one of those pillows. You stick around your neck to sleep on a plane. We'll

Caitlin Green  45:33  
put it in the notes.

Jann Arden  45:34  
But I have tea I have of like a vegan ramen noodle. I just have one of those sitting in my room and you have no idea how many times I eat them. Like it's four o'clock. I'm in the venue. I pour some hot water in there because I have tea. I have Earl Grey decaf. And, yeah, it's boring. We've got boring writers. That's it. That's the gist of it.

Caitlin Green  45:56  
It's really the opposite of rock'n'roll. Like, this is not the Guns and Roses writer. It's non alcoholic beer and some vegan food and tea. Caffeine Free tea. That's wild.

Jann Arden  46:07  
I know. But it just goes to waste. I now have one I don't eat the noodles at the venue. I bring them with me. So guess how my suitcase starts filling up at some point. You know you've done 10 shows you've only eaten three of the noodles and you've got seven fucking containers of, you know, ramen noodles in your suitcase, which is kind of fun. Don't try this at home folks. I was very hungry last week. It was 1130 At night I got back to the hotel. I think we were in Regina. And I tried putting hot water from the tap into my ramen noodle. It doesn't work. That's just a tip from me to you. Nothing happens the noodles do not soften it is the noodles. The noodles are on Viagra. They do not soften they stay quite firm. Okay,

Caitlin Green  46:56  
well that's it. All right. Well, this is Jan's hacks from the road and I really appreciate it I will not try to have tap water temperature had ruined

Jann Arden  47:06  
fuck don't do it Caitlyn. Don't do it sounds so bad Zeitung was our amazing guest today. Plastic people is her directorial debut. It's going to be available in many spots, but just check our show notes. Kate, Caitlyn, thank you so much as always for for swinging the bat this week. You're a delight. And we will see you next week. Until then, folks, totally