Latest / The MOOD Podcast / Are We Out of Time? Jorik Dozy, EO80

Transcript

Are We Out of Time? Jorik Dozy, EO80 · The MOOD Podcast

• 0:00
  Matt Jacob: Welcome to the Mood Podcast.
• 0:01
  Matt Jacob: I'm covering the art of conversation through the lens of photography and creativity, one frame at a time.
• 0:07
  Matt Jacob: I'm your host, matt Jacob.
• 0:10
  Matt Jacob: Thanks so much for joining me in today's conversation.
• 0:13
  Matt Jacob: And my guest today is Yorick Dozie, a visionary filmmaker and film director whose groundbreaking work blends artistry and purpose.
• 0:23
  Matt Jacob: As the co-founder of Studio Birthplace, jurek creates powerful narratives that really raise awareness about pressing environmental and social issues, using the medium of film to inspire change and provoke thought.
• 0:37
  Matt Jacob: Known for his immersive, visually stunning storytelling, jurek has collaborated with global brands and organizations to produce content that really leaves a lasting impact.
• 0:48
  Matt Jacob: We hope at least In today's episode we dive into Yorick's creative process, the philosophy behind Studio Birthplace and the role of filmmaking in tackling global challenges.
• 0:59
  Matt Jacob: I do want to warn you, though this conversation is a heavy one.
• 1:02
  Matt Jacob: It's upsetting, deeply emotional and thought-provoking.
• 1:05
  Matt Jacob: A few times during recording, we did have to stop to gather ourselves as we discussed the devastating realities of the seemingly insurmountable challenges we face with nature and the world around us, from climate change to animal cruelty and the responsibilities we all bear in addressing these pressing issues.
• 1:25
  Matt Jacob: There were moments when Yorick's passion and vulnerability moved us both to tears, underscoring the real gravity of the challenges that we face, coupled with the ever-changing and ever-politicized world around us.
• 1:39
  Matt Jacob: We found solace in the beauty of his work and hope through those that are making real changes.
• 1:45
  Matt Jacob: So this episode is deep and it is heavy, but it's not without hope.
• 1:49
  Matt Jacob: It's a powerful reminder that standing up, educating ourselves and making even the smallest changes in our lives can have quite a meaningful impact.
• 1:58
  Matt Jacob: So if you're listening, chances are you have the ability to do something, however small, to contribute to a better future for yourself, future generations and all of those suffering around the world today, and for creatives.
• 2:12
  Matt Jacob: Yorick demonstrates how we can channel our artistry into work that is not only beautiful but also profoundly purposeful.
• 2:20
  Matt Jacob: This episode was tough record.
• 2:23
  Matt Jacob: It was both sobering and inspiring, but I really do hope it moves you as much as it moved me, just to be better, even just by 1%, every day.
• 2:33
  Matt Jacob: Here is Yorick Dozie.
• 2:35
  Matt Jacob: Yorick Dozie, welcome to the Moon Podcast.
• 2:49
  Matt Jacob: Awesome to be here.
• 2:50
  Matt Jacob: This was a bit of a last minute thing, so I really appreciate you coming to join me.
• 2:55
  Matt Jacob: I wanted to start with kind of more of the general overview of what you do and why you do it.
• 3:04
  Matt Jacob: So just go ahead and kind of describe to us exactly what you do, but, more importantly, the reasons behind what you do.
• 3:10
  Jorik Dozy: Totally, yeah.
• 3:10
  Jorik Dozy: Yeah, I'm excited to be here man, thanks for having me and I'm the co-founder of a studio called Studio Birthplace, and Studio Birthplace is a creative studio and a film production company that solely focuses on pro-planet projects.
• 3:27
  Jorik Dozy: That means that we advocate, we amplify eco-conscious messages and also especially create awareness around the planetary crisis that we're in.
• 3:38
  Jorik Dozy: So we're doing a lot of work around biodiversity loss, destation, pollution, the climate, climate change, and that's really like the sole focus of the studio.
• 3:53
  Jorik Dozy: So there's no really hidden agenda behind it.
• 3:55
  Jorik Dozy: We don't do any commercial jobs on the side to kind of pay the bills or make it work.
• 4:01
  Jorik Dozy: We've really kind of planted that flag and and, as far as I know, we're kind of the first ones who really took such a stand in this as a mission, and we like to say that the studio is kind of a birthplace of new ideas, new way of thinking.
• 4:18
  Jorik Dozy: It's also the work that we do talks about our collective birthplace, our planet Earth.
• 4:25
  Jorik Dozy: So that's a little bit of why the studio is named after Mother Earth.
• 4:30
  Jorik Dozy: Essentially, and with every project that we do, we ask ourselves the question is this improving our planet?
• 4:37
  Jorik Dozy: Like, does this project, once it's made, once it's out into the world, does it have a net positive effect on our world?
• 4:44
  Jorik Dozy: And that means that we say no a lot.
• 4:46
  Jorik Dozy: So we, we do a lot of vetting on potential clients that come in on projects, um, to make sure that, uh, we're doing, we're making the right type of work and we're sending the right type of message out into the world.
• 4:58
  Jorik Dozy: Um, and I myself, I'm a creative director at the company, at the studio I direct, I write for that and yeah, that's pretty much in a nutshell what Studio Birthplace does.
• 5:13
  Matt Jacob: It's a nutshell that we're going to take apart and really kind of look at in intricate detail certain parts of that.
• 5:20
  Matt Jacob: And you talked about the crisis that we're in today, that word crisis.
• 5:27
  Matt Jacob: Can you explain your reasoning behind that, whether that's driven by science, by data, or is it more anecdotal and experiential.
• 5:39
  Jorik Dozy: I think the science on the planetary crisis is actually very good at the moment.
• 5:45
  Jorik Dozy: We understand a lot about what's going on, where we're headed, and the journey of the studio is really that once we started to learn about where we're at as a species and as a humanity, this train where we're all kind of in it really came.
• 6:06
  Jorik Dozy: This mission came to the forefront and that's where the studio started from.
• 6:11
  Jorik Dozy: So me and Sil, my co-founder we were actually both in the entertainment industry before this, and once we started to educate ourselves and started to really realize where we're heading, that's when this idea of we want to use our skills, our talent, for positive change and to contribute to creating a better world, so to speak, and that's where the studio came from and it's all from really learning and understanding the data and the science behind it.
• 6:43
  Jorik Dozy: I think it's very powerful, like once you know, you can't unknow that it's.
• 6:48
  Jorik Dozy: You have to kind of start seeing the world through that light and that means you have to probably change things.
• 6:54
  Matt Jacob: Yeah and how has that change gone for you since the inception of the studio and the, the creative team that you put together and all the projects you know?
• 7:04
  Matt Jacob: My first kind of like high level question would be like are you impacting, are you making positive change in the world or do you feel that you are?
• 7:13
  Jorik Dozy: Yeah, I hope so.
• 7:16
  Jorik Dozy: I think there's a lot to unpack here actually, because we are.
• 7:23
  Jorik Dozy: I've seen that there are projects.
• 7:24
  Jorik Dozy: For example, one of the projects maybe we can dive into that one a bit deeper later it's called wasteminster.
• 7:29
  Jorik Dozy: That we did for greenpeace and we actually managed to change the law.
• 7:32
  Jorik Dozy: So that was a project where we um had a very direct and clear impact.
• 7:38
  Jorik Dozy: It was very um, you could point of a tangible tangible, exactly very tangible, um.
• 7:44
  Jorik Dozy: But besides that, of course, you can influence a lot of people just by changing the way they think and changing the way on how they see something or see the world or a specific issue.
• 7:52
  Jorik Dozy: And that is just, in general, awareness creation, which is what most of our projects are doing.
• 7:58
  Jorik Dozy: And then a lot of times we're also trying to connect these projects with a very specific call to action to have that tangible change.
• 8:06
  Jorik Dozy: I think the entertainment industry and advertising, social media, etc.
• 8:16
  Jorik Dozy: Creators, we have a massive responsibility because we have an audience and the entertainment industry determines what's cool, we determine what people want to buy, we determine, really, the path of culture to a large extent, right, the films we watch, the series we watch, the celebrities that we look up to.
• 8:38
  Jorik Dozy: For some reason, people are shaping their way of thinking a lot by the culture that we live in and the entertainment that we see.
• 8:47
  Jorik Dozy: So, and the advertising industry I mean, we know right has played a huge part in creating this endless consumer behavior mostly nefarious part, exactly.
• 8:58
  Jorik Dozy: so we have a massive responsibility collectively, as the creative industry, to turn this around and to change the conversation and to start talking about, like, things that are really important and that can help this transition.
• 9:11
  Matt Jacob: Yeah, Interesting that you feel like it's the creative industry that has that responsibility.
• 9:16
  Matt Jacob: I mean and you use the word part um one of the first ones to do it.
• 9:20
  Matt Jacob: In other words, in my eyes, I don't see anyone else doing what you're doing right now, which is both scary, I'm sure, for you, but, in a pioneering aspect, hugely inspirational Joining the creative world with the global environmental and sustainable world.
• 9:40
  Matt Jacob: Where does politics fit into that?
• 9:44
  Matt Jacob: Because we know that a lot of this stuff is politicized or a lot of this stuff is taken advantage of to make money, whether it's the advertising world or the social media platforms, or the governments or local regulations.
• 9:58
  Matt Jacob: How do you balance this kind of real, delicate environment when it comes to dealing with these huge, huge topical projects?
• 10:09
  Jorik Dozy: yeah, I mean, this is also a constant learning curve for for us, and the landscape is always shifting.
• 10:16
  Jorik Dozy: Um, I think, like the entertainment industry, has a massive industry, a massive responsibility to to bring this message to the world and to to change the way that we consume, that we think.
• 10:28
  Jorik Dozy: But, of course, the political side, that's where the real change can be made.
• 10:34
  Jorik Dozy: We need policy change, we need to shift, you know the kind of laws and the kind of things that we, that our leaders, are agreeing to do and we need to hold them accountable.
• 10:46
  Jorik Dozy: So a big part of our work is to try and find a way to bridge the communications gap between the science, the policymakers and the public, because there's a massive gap there in understanding of our situation.
• 11:06
  Jorik Dozy: The scientists are talking in a language that the public doesn't fully understand and the policymakers are not held accountable by the public, because the public doesn't fully understand it, and the policymakers are usually not even in the room as the scientists are explaining what is happening in the world.
• 11:28
  Jorik Dozy: So they're not really listening and we're not holding them accountable.
• 11:30
  Jorik Dozy: So that is what we are trying to kind of come in and say we're going to create these projects that are very entertaining that are very highly appealing.
• 11:42
  Jorik Dozy: We use a lot of really high concept and high production value to appeal to that general public and then sneak in these messages of the scientists and of the state of the world so that the people can start to better understand the situation that we're in.
• 11:58
  Jorik Dozy: But of course, our goal is to really get to the policymakers.
• 12:02
  Jorik Dozy: So we're trying to find ways actually actively this year especially, we're trying to find ways actually actively this year especially, we're trying to find ways to to make work that really talks to the policymakers as well, cause that's, in the end, where we need to.
• 12:13
  Jorik Dozy: We need yeah, we need to make changes.
• 12:17
  Matt Jacob: Yeah, it's almost difficult to have the conversation without being cynical, skeptical and almost nihilistic in the hope to get to the policymakers.
• 12:28
  Matt Jacob: And then what?
• 12:29
  Matt Jacob: We know that it's not an easy conversation to have with the policymakers and news topics that just come out, such as a few days ago from recording the 1.5 degree, as a few days ago from recording the 1.5 degree, over 1.5 degree increase in global temperatures since the industrial revolution, which is way sooner than anyone ever expected, that's a really good example of no one really listening at the top, no one really listening really at the middle, at the top.
• 13:06
  Matt Jacob: No one really listening really at the middle.
• 13:07
  Matt Jacob: What do you say to those people that think that that kind of rhetoric is scaremongering is just wrong.
• 13:12
  Matt Jacob: It's wrong data, it's wrong science, it's conspiracies, it's politicized to change a certain power hierarchy or a certain political movement.
• 13:22
  Jorik Dozy: Yeah, yeah, I mean that's a really good topic, because maybe here we can unpack the 1.5 a little bit.
• 13:28
  Jorik Dozy: Let's do it, because, again, it's not clear, communicated to the world, like what this really means, and even we hear the scientists now say, like it's no longer enough to do science for science, like we need to do science for the public now, because we're misunderstanding, um, our situation.
• 13:48
  Jorik Dozy: So, um, the reality is that we're at, uh, at a risk of destabilizing, um, the livability, the, um, the way that our earth can actually sustain what we're doing to it.
• 14:02
  Jorik Dozy: So we're at, really, the cliff edge of a very scary moment.
• 14:08
  Jorik Dozy: And the 1.5 degrees we've crossed it so last year was the first year in history, right, since modern recording began is that we've crossed 1.5, or we've been above 1.5 degree of average increase for an entire year.
• 14:21
  Jorik Dozy: This does not mean, however, that the global average is 1.5, because that's measured over 5 to 30 year period.
• 14:31
  Jorik Dozy: So we're actually, when you, when they talk about the 1.5 degree, uh, paris agreement, um, uh, goal, we're still not, we haven't crossed that yet, because we're around 1.2 to 1.3 degrees when you look at it long term.
• 14:47
  Jorik Dozy: So the IPCC, the UN, united Nations Climate Change Panel, they will kind of look at it over a five year to a 30 year period and then say, okay, this is the global average over that period and that is the world we're living in, because a one year average can be kind of an anomaly.
• 15:08
  Matt Jacob: How do you?
• 15:09
  Jorik Dozy: say Anomaly, anomaly, that's the word An anomaly.
• 15:11
  Jorik Dozy: Yeah, so we're still aiming for that 1.5.
• 15:16
  Jorik Dozy: And do you actually know why the 1.5?
• 15:19
  Jorik Dozy: Because this is also no, I don't.
• 15:22
  Matt Jacob: I mean, I would guess from what I've read and heard that it's almost an irreversible limit.
• 15:30
  Matt Jacob: Essentially, we can't really recover from that yeah, you're well informed actually.
• 15:35
  Jorik Dozy: So 1.5 is where um, science has kind of determined that there are irreversible tipping points and some of those tipping points, honestly, honestly, we're already.
• 15:44
  Jorik Dozy: We could be there already, we, you know, that's still.
• 15:47
  Jorik Dozy: We have to see how things go.
• 15:49
  Jorik Dozy: But, um, at 1.5, we're talking about losing, um, all of the coral reefs, uh, tropical coral reefs in our world.
• 15:55
  Jorik Dozy: We're talking about, um not being able to stop the melting of the Arctic ice.
• 16:01
  Jorik Dozy: You know the Greenland ice sheet, the Western Arctic ice shield, the arctic ice, you know the greenland ice sheet, the western arctic ice shield, which combined is like 10 meters of sea level rise or something.
• 16:09
  Jorik Dozy: So 1.5 is kind of that critical point where we're saying, uh, you know, the, the science is saying we should not cross that.
• 16:15
  Jorik Dozy: Is that?
• 16:17
  Jorik Dozy: Um, are we?
• 16:18
  Jorik Dozy: I mean the, the debate of like if we're going to cross that or not, I mean, yeah, that's, that's a whole nother thing, like who knows.
• 16:24
  Jorik Dozy: But um, yeah, it's, uh, it's scary.
• 16:28
  Jorik Dozy: And I think attached to this is that what people don't realize and what they don't know is that we're playing like a massive experiment right now with humanity, and the world has never been this warm before since we've been around.
• 16:42
  Jorik Dozy: So for the last 12,000 years, since we invented farming and then the industrial revolution happened, we've lived in this like corridor of life, this kind of garden of Eden of humanity, where the climate was extremely stable, stable enough for us to invent farming and depend on rainfall, depend on seasons being accurate, that wasn't always the case.
• 17:08
  Jorik Dozy: That's been only roughly for 12,000 to 15,000 years.
• 17:11
  Jorik Dozy: That has allowed humanity to flourish and to become what we are today.
• 17:17
  Jorik Dozy: Before that, you know, 200,000 years of human in our modern form roaming the world.
• 17:23
  Jorik Dozy: We were hunter-gatherers, reacting to ice ages, reacting to a very unstable climate, and even in that period the Earth's temperature never really reached I think it's something like near two degrees or one and a half degrees.
• 17:36
  Jorik Dozy: So we are.
• 17:38
  Jorik Dozy: The latest UNEP report, the United Nations Environmental Program, has estimated that we're heading towards 3.1 by the end of the century.
• 17:47
  Jorik Dozy: We have never lived in a world like that.
• 17:50
  Jorik Dozy: So there's no science that says that we can sustain modern society in a world like that Happy January everyone.
• 18:02
  Jorik Dozy: Yeah, it's a bit depressing it is it?
• 18:05
  Matt Jacob: but yeah, but this is the, this is the, exactly the problem.
• 18:08
  Matt Jacob: My next question was really you know, you must know the film don't look up.
• 18:11
  Matt Jacob: I thought it was just the the, as you're talking and reminding me of that film and how well it was and how subtly it was, uh, written so many kind of sub layers of different stories, but the overarching story is why, you know, people just not listening, right?
• 18:28
  Matt Jacob: People not listening to the data, the scientists, the people that we know, and there's, for me, there's a lot that goes into that.
• 18:36
  Matt Jacob: You know, covid was another kind of perfect analogy to this environment where people don't trust the experts, they don't recognize experts anymore, they don't trust institutions because of many reasons social media being a huge one, disparate politics, many, many things but there is this huge, huge issue that the general public don't care or don't want to listen.
• 19:01
  Matt Jacob: Can't, really, and we were obviously generalizing.
• 19:04
  Matt Jacob: Why is that?
• 19:05
  Jorik Dozy: Yeah, this drives me crazy also because if the information I just told you was publicly known, we would all change our life right away, because it means that your child it's important to realize that people who have a child today, their child, will be not living in a world that looks like this right, they will be 60, 70 years old in a very different world, and I think that once you know that you, I don't know how can you still do what we're doing?
• 19:40
  Jorik Dozy: So it's very frustrating that this is not fully, um explained in a in a good way, and I think it's also because people cannot.
• 19:50
  Jorik Dozy: There's this thing with humans that we cannot empathize with our future selves.
• 19:55
  Jorik Dozy: We cannot feel empathy for us in 10 or 20 years, like there's something that holds us back from that.
• 20:02
  Jorik Dozy: We're all about short-term survival.
• 20:04
  Jorik Dozy: Our instincts from our caveman days have taught us that right, like we need to survive now, we need to do this now, and there's no long-term thinking, and that is, I think, what's holding us back to a large extent that people cannot make decisions for the long road, and you know there's so many beautiful quotes about planting a tree that you know your children will will sit under.
• 20:27
  Jorik Dozy: That way of thinking is what, um, we need, you know, we need to start thinking long term, and people need to.
• 20:34
  Jorik Dozy: We need to have like we like to say it now.
• 20:36
  Jorik Dozy: It's like a revolution of kindness.
• 20:38
  Jorik Dozy: We need to wake up, um, yeah, and be, have empathy towards each other yeah, I, I, I kind of battle with um, you know.
• 20:48
  Matt Jacob: Take animal cruelty, for example.
• 20:50
  Matt Jacob: Yeah, I, I don't.
• 20:52
  Matt Jacob: I just try really hard to empathize with you know, various countries have different, you know, cultural practices and they kind of wash themselves of any kind of harm because they hide behind that.
• 21:06
  Matt Jacob: But it's analogous to these types of environmental issues because I can't grapple with any understanding of it.
• 21:14
  Matt Jacob: Like I just don't understand why anyone would be cruel to an animal.
• 21:18
  Matt Jacob: I just don't.
• 21:19
  Matt Jacob: I do understand why people eat meat I eat meat sometimes and fish and stuff.
• 21:24
  Matt Jacob: As long as it's treated humanely in the killing process.
• 21:26
  Matt Jacob: I do understand why people eat meat I eat meat sometimes and fish and stuff.
• 21:28
  Matt Jacob: As long as it's treated humanely in the killing process, I can kind of get okay with that.
• 21:34
  Matt Jacob: And I don't want to talk about animals a little bit.
• 21:36
  Matt Jacob: I mean, your project with birds brought me to tears because it just sheds light on on these issues that clearly the majority of the people don't care about and I still don't know why.
• 21:52
  Matt Jacob: And because we I don't have children, but if I did have children, I mean I care about it even without children and not even thinking about the next generation.
• 22:01
  Matt Jacob: I want to live in a world where we're not getting more typhoons every year, more wildfires every year, which everyone suffers, right, yeah.
• 22:09
  Matt Jacob: So I don't understand why you wouldn't do, everyone wouldn't do their little part to help change.
• 22:14
  Matt Jacob: But at the end of the day, it does come down to the people at the top and it's just like a such a difficult maze to navigate right.
• 22:21
  Matt Jacob: And I just I still put this question to you again why do you think people don't care about it?
• 22:28
  Matt Jacob: Or is it just ignorance and they're kind of like comfortable with that ignorance?
• 22:32
  Jorik Dozy: Well, one of the things that we're trying to apply a lot in the work we do is that we have to make people relate to these issues.
• 22:38
  Jorik Dozy: It's one thing about knowing it.
• 22:40
  Jorik Dozy: It's another thing that you fully feel it or you understand it, and I think that's a big part here.
• 22:47
  Jorik Dozy: That we're trying to do with the studio is that we're creating films and campaigns where we make a massive issue or something that we want to raise awareness on and we try to make it human, we try to make it emotional, we try to make it funny or accessible in a way that you suddenly relate to it as a human and that can change you in a different way, because everyone is so tired of the news being constantly you know, doom scenarios, this and the story I just told you like I think people will switch off if that is on the news every day.
• 23:20
  Jorik Dozy: Right, I mean, in a way, it is right.
• 23:22
  Jorik Dozy: Climate change and all the disasters that are happening, and people don't seem to really understand that we have to change the way we live.
• 23:29
  Jorik Dozy: So we have to humanize it, we have to make it relatable for people so they can engage with it emotionally, they can feel yeah, they can feel it with their heart, you know, and then that has more chance to affect change than if you just bombard someone with with information.
• 23:48
  Jorik Dozy: And that's really like what we do at the studio.
• 23:50
  Jorik Dozy: We we try to engage people through a humor or we try to tell, like, a really beautiful story in a way that makes you relate to it, um, as a parent or, uh, as a family member.
• 24:02
  Jorik Dozy: So I think these are the type of methods that we're trying to engage.
• 24:07
  Matt Jacob: There's something in the human psyche about proximity to an issue right.
• 24:10
  Jorik Dozy: A hundred percent yeah.
• 24:12
  Matt Jacob: You know why I don't care as much about children with AIDS in Africa or children with malaria in Africa as I do about a dog on the street where I live, right, it's not as close to us, so it's almost like and you talk about communication a lot, which is clearly a huge part of the problem Getting actually in front and, like you said, humanizing, making it relatable to these people so that I can actually see this is on your doorstep.
• 24:40
  Matt Jacob: This is not the other side of the world.
• 24:42
  Matt Jacob: You are suffering or will suffer if we don't.
• 24:45
  Matt Jacob: You directly will suffer if we don't do something about that.
• 24:48
  Matt Jacob: But also put it in a way that that isn't preachy, that isn't dictatorial right yeah, I think that's really important.
• 24:55
  Jorik Dozy: You know we don't want to blame and shame.
• 24:57
  Jorik Dozy: That's not really what this is.
• 24:58
  Jorik Dozy: We need a movement of inclusivity.
• 25:02
  Jorik Dozy: Everyone needs to feel part of creating this change, and everyone is, everyone should be, so I think that's the beautiful thing about it, and talking about animals and talking about something not on your doorstep.
• 25:18
  Matt Jacob: Since the 1950s, we've lost 73% of all wildlife it's all right, it's okay, man, it's okay, I'm with you.
• 25:39
  Matt Jacob: Yeah, tell you time, yeah.
• 25:47
  Matt Jacob: And then you, you do a project like Broken Wings and add one of my favorite pianists to the.
• 25:53
  Matt Jacob: Yeah.
• 25:53
  Matt Jacob: I mean just wonderful, what a wonderful film.
• 25:58
  Matt Jacob: And that brought me to tears because just something about animal enslavement almost capturing animals, killing them for fun, keeping them confined for fucking no reason other than someone's status.
• 26:13
  Jorik Dozy: Yeah.
• 26:14
  Matt Jacob: Or whatever it might be right, something I, I just it breaks my heart all the time and, uh, we, we try and do our little part.
• 26:23
  Matt Jacob: That's why we've got four and a half dogs um four and a half.
• 26:27
  Matt Jacob: Well, we have a straight story we have a stray dog who we haven't quite homed, but he comes and says hello every day and yeah, yeah, yeah, we've, we've, yeah, yeah, I'm with you man, I don't, it's hard, I think, like just saying that kind of brought up like the reality of you know, like, yeah, maybe we just slightly changed it for a bit, so yeah.
• 26:52
  Matt Jacob: Tell me about how you make these projects.
• 26:54
  Matt Jacob: You know from a technical aspect, but also from a conceptual aspect.
• 26:57
  Matt Jacob: You, you, your team have worked I mean, we haven't even touched on that yet how, how amazing your team is.
• 27:04
  Matt Jacob: You obviously at kind of the forefront, alongside your co-founders and other directors, but this team that you put together have worked on anything from blockbusters to intimate projects that have so much depth and meaning to them.
• 27:19
  Matt Jacob: Tell me how this all came about, where you started with this, what your process is like, how the team really evolved with these types of projects.
• 27:27
  Jorik Dozy: Yeah, yeah, it's an interesting path really that we were on because we like so, both me and Sil path really that we were on because we like so both me and Syl, my co-founder, we come from Hollywood.
• 27:40
  Jorik Dozy: Really like that's where our journey started.
• 27:41
  Jorik Dozy: So I was working in visual effects for 10 years at Industrial Light and Magic, which is George Lucas's company the guy who made Star Wars working on the biggest films in the world.
• 27:52
  Jorik Dozy: So I was on set for like the Transformers movies and I was working on Mission Impossible, pirates of the Caribbean, like those type of films, shit films.
• 28:03
  Matt Jacob: Entertainment Popcorn.
• 28:04
  Matt Jacob: No, no, I love them, I was being sarcastic.
• 28:07
  Matt Jacob: Just small films like Mission Impossible, pirates of the Caribbean.
• 28:11
  Jorik Dozy: They're a blast because, yeah, it's really amazing to see the craft you know and the people that make these films and to be part of that.
• 28:21
  Jorik Dozy: I it's a privilege, you know, and um it it brings together Like I w I worked on the, the new star Wars trilogy and there's really like the best people in the world that are in there in those respective jobs come together to make a film like that and that's just awesome to to see that um, and it really trained my eye, like for me it was kind of my film school like I never went to film school, so this was where I learned about craft and good composition and lighting especially, and how to make an appealing image.
• 28:55
  Jorik Dozy: And now, with the studio, we are taking that way of thinking.
• 29:01
  Jorik Dozy: So we're taking the spectacle, so to speak, of those type of films and we are applying them into the eco space.
• 29:08
  Jorik Dozy: So we're taking visual effects high concept as well, thinking out of the box in terms of ideas, and bringing them into the green sector and the eco storytelling space, where that really hasn't been done a lot Like we don't really see a lot of projects that have that way of thinking or that kind of production value, and that's how we, I think, separate ourselves from a lot of other work done in the sector.
• 29:34
  Jorik Dozy: So we're really trying to be that super high production value place.
• 29:39
  Jorik Dozy: Yeah, and I think the team that we have.
• 29:44
  Jorik Dozy: There's a naivety to what we do, because a lot of the topics that we we work on are very difficult to talk about or explain or even to film practically.
• 29:55
  Jorik Dozy: But we always go in with so much throughout like drive and and excitement that we just we're like, yeah, we'll figure it out.
• 30:03
  Jorik Dozy: You know when, really, if you present a project like that to you know, a seasoned, uh, advertising person, that they would be like, ah, that's, let's change the idea.
• 30:13
  Jorik Dozy: But we just kind of have that drive to say, let's figure it out.
• 30:16
  Jorik Dozy: Um, and that's how we end up, you know, following a, an actual bird poacher and combining that with incredible cinematic camera work, and that's how we end up filming an entire film underwater and build a life-size replica of a whale made entirely of trash to talk about plastic pollution.
• 30:36
  Jorik Dozy: All of these ideas kind of come from combining that spectacle and creativity, different ways of approaching a subject and the real fact, the real documentary aspect of it.
• 30:52
  Matt Jacob: I think that's quite unique, very unique and a way to, I guess, get people's attention in a shocking way.
• 30:59
  Matt Jacob: Right?
• 30:59
  Matt Jacob: Oh wow, this is.
• 31:00
  Matt Jacob: This is something different, but there's still a story underneath there that's been either told before or no one's aware of, right?
• 31:09
  Matt Jacob: How do you fund all this?
• 31:12
  Jorik Dozy: It's different on every project.
• 31:13
  Jorik Dozy: To be honest, like one of the clients we work with a lot is greenpeace, for example.
• 31:18
  Jorik Dozy: We've done like five global campaigns with them and um, they have, you know, their kind of communication budget.
• 31:25
  Jorik Dozy: Uh, we work with organizations like discovery channel, a lot of ngos, where we try to find partnerships with brands.
• 31:33
  Jorik Dozy: So we try to work with brands who fit our ethos and we're really putting their money where their mouth is and trying to change the way they produce products or the way that they do things.
• 31:45
  Jorik Dozy: And also one thing that we've been doing quite a bit is working with musicians, where we make music videos for a specific artist and the music video doesn't feature the artist, but it features one of the you know the messages, one of the topics that we want to shed light on, um, and then the you know the label would fund that, for example, um.
• 32:06
  Jorik Dozy: But that is a very effective method as well to raise awareness, because when you work with an audio with an artist, you have an audience already, um, and that audience loves this artist, so they will watch it and they will go into watching that film or video, um, listening to their favorite music, and suddenly their whole eyes are opened with this other message that you're presenting to them that otherwise they probably would have never sat down for.
• 32:31
  Jorik Dozy: So that is a is a method that we really uh, we really enjoy and we do it quite a bit, yeah is that how?
• 32:37
  Matt Jacob: I'm sorry to kind of go back to to the animal thing, but the broken wings project was really took my interest just because, first of all, I was like, how did they do this?
• 32:47
  Matt Jacob: You know, the you're balancing, constantly balancing aesthetics with ethics, almost right.
• 32:52
  Matt Jacob: And this tightrope walk of following a poacher poaching birds in real life, real person, who does that?
• 33:02
  Matt Jacob: How do you go about explaining what you're doing to him and maybe at least getting him to understand that you're not taking advantage of such a kind of nefarious activity?
• 33:14
  Matt Jacob: How do you even approach those with the subjects and the people that you're kind of prioritizing those projects?
• 33:22
  Jorik Dozy: Yeah, I think it's really important to have a relationship with the people that you're working with, of course, and for them to feel comfortable with you and you explain what you're doing, in this case with the poacher.
• 33:35
  Jorik Dozy: And you explain what you're doing In this case with the poacher.
• 33:39
  Jorik Dozy: We really talked to him about kind of capturing the traditional way of how he goes about it.
• 33:42
  Jorik Dozy: So we saw the bamboo tube and you know they put glue on branches to capture the birds and that's something that you know that's very specific to this, is a very specific method.
• 33:53
  Jorik Dozy: So that was kind of what we were focusing on.
• 33:55
  Jorik Dozy: We never showed his face in the film.
• 33:57
  Jorik Dozy: Um, you know, we kind of kept his identity uh blank, because the the the second part of it is that he is just a husband taking care of his family.
• 34:07
  Jorik Dozy: He's not a bad person, he's just doing this because he doesn't have any other options.
• 34:12
  Jorik Dozy: So it's never again about blaming and shaming.
• 34:15
  Jorik Dozy: It's not putting the camera in his face and saying you're a bad person.
• 34:17
  Jorik Dozy: It's about showing the fact that this is happening, showing the reality of this, but then also showing the other side, that he's just surviving with his family.
• 34:28
  Jorik Dozy: In the end, we're all captives in this capitalist system.
• 34:32
  Jorik Dozy: So we're just all caught in this system.
• 34:36
  Matt Jacob: So, then, is some of your responsibility to try and educate him or you step away from that.
• 34:46
  Jorik Dozy: I don't know if it's my responsibility to educate him, but it's what I hope to do as a person.
• 34:53
  Jorik Dozy: But sometimes people are also stuck and then you can educate them all you want, but if they don't have a way out, if they don't have an alternative, that falls on deaf ears, Because they might actually understand what they're doing is not completely right, but it doesn't mean that they have an alternative.
• 35:13
  Jorik Dozy: So actually the the solution there would be to work with government, work with ngos to find alternative for for these situations, and that type of work is being done everywhere, right, like a lot of people are trying to change these exploitative industries and especially wildlife poaching.
• 35:34
  Jorik Dozy: There's a lot of work trying to change be done to try and change that.
• 35:38
  Jorik Dozy: But it's really hard when you're stuck in the the kind of system and the situation that these people are, you know they find themselves in.
• 35:46
  Matt Jacob: Yeah, not just poaching.
• 35:47
  Matt Jacob: I mean what goes into that as well.
• 35:48
  Matt Jacob: There's deforestation, right.
• 35:49
  Jorik Dozy: I mean the statistics behind that right now yeah, yeah, the deforestation is actually like, if we want to stop, um, if we want, if we want to make sure we don't go above 1.5, the one of the most important things is that we have to stop destroying nature.
• 36:07
  Jorik Dozy: It's actually nature.
• 36:08
  Jorik Dozy: We have to start seeing it as like the massive ally that it is.
• 36:12
  Jorik Dozy: We have to to stop destroying it, we have to restore it, we have to regenerate it.
• 36:16
  Jorik Dozy: Even if we stop emitting fossil fuels tomorrow, there's already so much in the atmosphere that we will still cross 1.5 if we don't stop destroying nature.
• 36:28
  Jorik Dozy: So nature is actually this massive carbon sink right, where a lot of the pollution that we put out onto the planet is being absorbed by our natural systems.
• 36:39
  Jorik Dozy: So the ocean, the atmosphere and land is absorbing a massive amount of the pollution right that we put out into our earth systems, and without healthy ecosystems, this carbon cannot be absorbed.
• 36:54
  Jorik Dozy: So we're actually, by destroying nature, we're actually kind of shooting ourselves in the foot in trying to stop this planetary crisis.
• 37:04
  Jorik Dozy: And I'll go a little bit more like sciencey here, but the really alarming thing that we're seeing right now and scientists don't fully understand it yet is that actually, when you look at the amount of carbon that all of our Earth's systems are absorbing.
• 37:18
  Jorik Dozy: It's flatlining.
• 37:19
  Jorik Dozy: So what that's kind of showing is that the ability for planet Earth to respond to what we're doing to it is starting to break.
• 37:29
  Jorik Dozy: Like maybe it says that the Earth is no longer able to absorb so much of our heat and our carbon and it's kind of at its limit.
• 37:38
  Jorik Dozy: So that means that nature really is no longer an ally as it was.
• 37:41
  Jorik Dozy: It's no longer helping us with diminishing the effects of what we're doing to it.
• 37:47
  Jorik Dozy: So that's very alarming also.
• 37:50
  Matt Jacob: Does this come down to money most of the time?
• 37:53
  Matt Jacob: Greed?
• 37:54
  Jorik Dozy: I mean, it all comes down to that, man.
• 37:56
  Jorik Dozy: I think power and greed is that is it.
• 37:59
  Jorik Dozy: That is it Like science can shout all they want, we can come with all the solutions, but what is the solution to greed, what is the solution to capitalism?
• 38:11
  Jorik Dozy: You know, like we need to completely change the way we think, and that is what.
• 38:15
  Jorik Dozy: That is what scientists cannot do.
• 38:17
  Jorik Dozy: That is where people, you know, like us and and like I talked about before the entertainment industry, um, everyone, everyone can be part of that and has to be part of that.
• 38:27
  Jorik Dozy: Right, we really need to change the way that we look at the planet and and nature.
• 38:31
  Jorik Dozy: Um, you know, nature is, is our mother, like that's how we need to see it and you would never harm or pollute your mother.
• 38:40
  Jorik Dozy: So, once you change that way of thinking, we need that kind of thinking in, in, uh, in society, yeah, there's almost a a feeling of resignation as well, though like, oh you know, I'm just one person.
• 38:54
  Matt Jacob: This I can't make a difference.
• 38:56
  Matt Jacob: Yeah, so how?
• 38:58
  Matt Jacob: How do we go about kind of collectively coming together in such a polarized world to to have kind of the same same message and at least to drive because change of the, the public institutions, change of governments, change of?
• 39:15
  Matt Jacob: You know, we've got to stay hopeful in that we can at least impact that can come from the majority, can come from the.
• 39:24
  Matt Jacob: You know, us people on the ground just going about our daily lives, but certainly in my experience in the 40 or so years that I've lived there, there's definitely just a feeling of, well, you know, I try my best, but you know, really it's up to the people with the power.
• 39:40
  Matt Jacob: Yeah, how do we combat that?
• 39:43
  Jorik Dozy: Yeah, I mean this is.
• 39:44
  Jorik Dozy: This is exactly the point right, of how um, I'm just one person, what can I do?
• 39:51
  Jorik Dozy: It doesn't matter.
• 39:52
  Jorik Dozy: In the grand scheme of things, if everyone thinks like that, nothing will ever change, and we don't actually need that many people to change in order to create a revolution.
• 40:00
  Jorik Dozy: Right?
• 40:00
  Jorik Dozy: The history shows us that you don't really need the majority.
• 40:03
  Jorik Dozy: You need a big enough group.
• 40:05
  Jorik Dozy: I think that's really an important thing to understand.
• 40:09
  Jorik Dozy: But also, we need to hold our leaders accountable.
• 40:14
  Jorik Dozy: We're in a point now where, let's say, I'm going to tell you now this list of solutions you can do as an individual, like switch off your light bulb, these things they're important, don't get me wrong.
• 40:26
  Jorik Dozy: We need to do that collectively.
• 40:29
  Matt Jacob: These are solar-powered lights, by the way.
• 40:32
  Jorik Dozy: This is a fully green studio, but it's more important to start holding our leaders accountable and collectively start rising up against this destructive system that we have created, because, in the end, it's just a concept, right like capitalism is just an idea that we came up with now that we're seeing as our truth, but that doesn't have to be the truth, and there's many like indigenous ways and there's many different kind of ways of thinking that still exist on this planet that show us that we can have, uh, different systems, that we can have a different mindset, and we should start looking at those and we should start listening to them.
• 41:10
  Jorik Dozy: And I think, as an individual, you can start to make that change within you, um, and when you do, you can affect people around you and, um, yeah, it can come from, from, it can start there, because there's a lot of like.
• 41:21
  Jorik Dozy: Sure, there's a lot of practical solutions and physical things you can do, like, for example, not having kids is actually one of the biggest thing you can do as as to reduce your impact, or just less.
• 41:32
  Jorik Dozy: You know, like, we don't need four or five children.
• 41:34
  Jorik Dozy: That's, you know, an individual thing you can do.
• 41:44
  Jorik Dozy: You can not fly, for example.
• 41:45
  Jorik Dozy: You can adopt a plant-based diet or reduce your meat intake.
• 41:47
  Jorik Dozy: Those three things alone are like the biggest things you can do as an individual.
• 41:51
  Jorik Dozy: But beyond that, it's about here.
• 41:57
  Matt Jacob: Yeah, I totally agree.
• 41:58
  Matt Jacob: But then you have, I mean, let's say, the kids thing.
• 42:03
  Matt Jacob: I do feel, and maybe you can back this up based on what you said with some data but the world is overpopulated, which means we have to expand and expand into the landscapes, into nature, and just expand and expand.
• 42:21
  Matt Jacob: Where does it end?
• 42:22
  Matt Jacob: We're growing exponentially, essentially as a global population, as science gets better to keep us living longer, and people are still having just a stupid amount of kids.
• 42:31
  Matt Jacob: But you look at the countries that are really new in that aspect and developing.
• 42:37
  Matt Jacob: Take India, for example, one of the biggest polluters, one of the biggest breeders.
• 42:41
  Matt Jacob: Right, I mean, where do you?
• 42:43
  Matt Jacob: That's what I mean, like in terms of, well, if India aren't going to do anything about it, then I'm not going to make a difference, but if at least the rest of us can all kind of do our tiny little part and come together doing our tiny little part, then that's enough for change.
• 43:00
  Jorik Dozy: Yeah, and I think also like it's a great example what you mentioned, because that is true, that's all true, and that's also a reason why people say, well, look at them, you know, but it's not about that man.
• 43:11
  Jorik Dozy: It's like look at us, yeah, but it gets politicized, but it's not about that man.
• 43:16
  Jorik Dozy: It's like look at us, yeah, but it gets politicized, yeah.
• 43:18
  Jorik Dozy: But I think important to understand is that India, like the average emissions, the average pollution a citizen in India causes, versus what someone in the West causes, or in Japan or in a richer country, it's significantly higher, so our responsibility is higher.
• 43:34
  Jorik Dozy: It's significantly higher, so our responsibility is higher, and we need to make sure that we develop the technologies and we help the developing countries to not make the same mistakes that the richer countries have made, because we have that responsibility collectively.
• 43:51
  Jorik Dozy: A great idea that's floating around right now is that we should treat some of these tipping points that we talked about earlier.
• 43:59
  Jorik Dozy: Actually, so we have these systems on our planet that really regulate the biosphere.
• 44:05
  Jorik Dozy: They really regulate the livability of the planet, and an idea that's, for example, the Amazon rainforest is one of them Coral reefs, yeah, and the idea is to make these kind of systems global comets so that they belong to the citizens of the planet.
• 44:19
  Jorik Dozy: And if we do that, then we give poorer countries the ownership of something that now we're saying, hey, you're going to get paid by the world to keep this rainforest intact and you're going to get money from that and you can, you know, spend that on developing your economy and whatever, but you're not going to destroy this rainforest Like.
• 44:41
  Jorik Dozy: These type of ideas are great, but you know, the richer countries need to start implementing them and agreeing to those.
• 44:47
  Matt Jacob: And there are many examples of that on a local level, where you take take Raja Ampat in Indonesia and missoula, the biodiverse reef.
• 44:56
  Matt Jacob: Essentially that is protected not completely.
• 45:00
  Matt Jacob: They allow scuba divers and liverboards to go in but they pay a fucking premium and that money goes to the protection of that area and in the space of a decade it's the most biodiverse you know um diving site in the world.
• 45:13
  Matt Jacob: It's incredible.
• 45:15
  Matt Jacob: The earth is resilient.
• 45:16
  Matt Jacob: We forget.
• 45:17
  Matt Jacob: I think we maybe rest on our laurels in that aspect, but if we give it a chance, it can come back from the brink.
• 45:25
  Jorik Dozy: Yeah, I think it's beautiful.
• 45:27
  Jorik Dozy: You say that because it's so critical for us to know, and I'm not a scientist, so I've just been on this journey of kind of trying to learn all about this.
• 45:37
  Jorik Dozy: Right, because the information is out there, right?
• 45:40
  Jorik Dozy: You can kind of start to understand this if you're willing to look into it.
• 45:44
  Jorik Dozy: And what's so powerful about it, once you start looking at this, is that nature is our biggest ally and it's the most powerful thing that we have.
• 45:54
  Jorik Dozy: You know, we invest billions of dollars into all these other technologies, which we also need, right, don't get me wrong Like we need to develop carbon capture technology and all of that.
• 46:03
  Jorik Dozy: But when you talk about scaling those things and the impact that it has, preserving nature and taking care of our planet does so much more than all of those technologies.
• 46:16
  Jorik Dozy: So it's so important that we start to look at our planet as part of us.
• 46:23
  Matt Jacob: I think it's easy for people to think that, well, technology is going to solve it, the Elon Musk's of the world will figure out a solution.
• 46:30
  Matt Jacob: Right, and that may be the case, but I've seen Elon on Twitter and he ain't thinking too much about the environment but this mindset is very dangerous, you know yeah yeah, it's not like there might be a technology that will help us, right, like solar.
• 46:45
  Jorik Dozy: Take solar, for example.
• 46:46
  Jorik Dozy: Like, what an incredible revolution we're on with solar energy.
• 46:49
  Jorik Dozy: Right, and solar and wind energy are really the the important and and the only problem with this and here comes greed in the conversation is that we're not offlining fossil fuels.
• 47:01
  Jorik Dozy: So, even though we are developing and we have more energy than ever before because we have all these green energy sources as well, we're not offlining.
• 47:11
  Jorik Dozy: Yeah, we keep going with our fossil fuel industry as well, so we just keep getting more energy.
• 47:19
  Jorik Dozy: We're not taking the pollution, the bad energy, offline.
• 47:22
  Jorik Dozy: Europe is setting a good example, like they're making good headway with it, right, I think Europe is, I believe, one of the only places where our carbon emissions are not rising.
• 47:34
  Jorik Dozy: But yeah, in general, when you look at the world, we create more sustainable energy, more green energy, but we're not offlining the bad stuff.
• 47:41
  Jorik Dozy: And yeah, what was your question?
• 47:47
  Jorik Dozy: Sometimes I just go on this ramble guys.
• 47:51
  Matt Jacob: Um about technology and and thinking that that might be the solution to everything.
• 47:55
  Jorik Dozy: Yes, yes, so I'll close that one off because, yeah, so we're not offlining that, and the best technology that we have is a tree.
• 48:04
  Jorik Dozy: You know, the best technology that we have is is nature.
• 48:07
  Jorik Dozy: It has already invented everything that we need, so we just need to keep that whole.
• 48:14
  Matt Jacob: Yeah, there's a lot of greenwashing going on.
• 48:17
  Matt Jacob: Do you encounter a lot of that type of financial kind of undercurrent?
• 48:24
  Jorik Dozy: Yeah, there's always the risk of kind of taking on a project that ends up being a greenwash project, so that's what we're really uh careful with.
• 48:32
  Jorik Dozy: I think people are becoming very aware of the term greenwashing and and what it is, so that's good, um, but it it's scary like how much it's uh, the word sustainability has lost its meaning.
• 48:48
  Jorik Dozy: Yeah, there's, everything is nowadays, but it's not.
• 48:52
  Jorik Dozy: For something to truly be sustainable is very hard.
• 48:56
  Matt Jacob: So let's dive into that, just for people who may be confused or not know about the real definitions of.
• 49:02
  Matt Jacob: Let's talk about greenwashing, really what that means, and sustainability.
• 49:06
  Jorik Dozy: Yeah, I mean greenwashing is just saying you're doing something great and we're being sustainable and we're investing this much money into this and you're covering up the fact that behind the scenes you're actually continuing as usual or you're still polluting, or you're not really doing what you're saying you're doing.
• 49:25
  Jorik Dozy: So essentially it's just kind of putting up a picture to the public, but it's not very truthful.
• 49:31
  Jorik Dozy: So essentially it's just kind of putting up a picture to the public, but it's not very truthful Marketing yeah.
• 49:34
  Jorik Dozy: It's a marketing trick, and this is we.
• 49:35
  Jorik Dozy: We fight this quite a lot with Zero Birthplace.
• 49:37
  Jorik Dozy: We did a campaign with Greenpeace against greenwashing.
• 49:40
  Jorik Dozy: Another interesting one is sports washing, which is what we did a project on, where a fossil fuel company is sponsoring a huge sporting event to say, look at us, we're awesome, like we're sponsoring your World Cup.
• 49:53
  Jorik Dozy: You know, we're sponsoring your whatever event, we're the good guys, but it's all about the association, right?
• 50:00
  Jorik Dozy: So they're associating themselves with something that we in our culture think is awesome and therefore they must be awesome.
• 50:05
  Jorik Dozy: That's a form of greenwashing and this is happening everywhere and and you, once you start to be aware of this, it's everywhere actually it's.
• 50:15
  Matt Jacob: This is not the same example, but I was watching nfl playoffs yesterday morning and uh, I said to fee my wife, who's watching it with or working alongside me, and uh, this very athletic game right, super healthy, these athletes are incredible specimen, human specimens, and obviously it's American TV.
• 50:35
  Matt Jacob: So every two minutes there's commercials and almost all of the commercials are, I remember thinking, some amazing play happened and it's just such a wonderful example of a human at his highest potential.
• 50:49
  Matt Jacob: And then it cut to a break and it was a, it was an advert for McDonald's and it's just like that's nothing to do with what it is to do with the NFL.
• 50:58
  Matt Jacob: You know they, they take money to put adverts on on TV.
• 51:01
  Matt Jacob: So why are we?
• 51:02
  Matt Jacob: Why?
• 51:03
  Matt Jacob: Why?
• 51:04
  Matt Jacob: Why are we not promoting?
• 51:06
  Matt Jacob: I know that's off topic, it's.
• 51:08
  Matt Jacob: It's analogous to kind of taking money and running so that we can kind of pretend to be be good or to pretend carbon offsetting, whatever it might be, to kind of essentially just get money in the door yeah, it all comes.
• 51:22
  Jorik Dozy: it comes back to capitalism, right and greed.
• 51:24
  Jorik Dozy: It's all about profit, profit, profit.
• 51:26
  Jorik Dozy: We, we treat the planet like it's infinite.
• 51:30
  Jorik Dozy: Our whole economic system is built on infinite growth profit, profit, profit.
• 51:34
  Jorik Dozy: But that's not how the planet works.
• 51:35
  Jorik Dozy: The planet is circular, so we cannot, the system does not work on a circular planet, and that's we're seeing the results of it.
• 51:42
  Jorik Dozy: Now we're getting the bill, we're getting the first few receipts.
• 51:45
  Matt Jacob: Yeah, anything expensive.
• 51:46
  Jorik Dozy: Exactly the last few years have been the most expensive when it comes to how much money we need to pay to rebuild from climate disasters.
• 51:56
  Matt Jacob: So we're getting the bill.
• 51:57
  Matt Jacob: We haven't really talked about filmmaking that much but, you know, I encourage anyone watching and listening to this to go and obviously watch your showreel.
• 52:05
  Matt Jacob: The showreel itself is like like, how do you put this together?
• 52:08
  Matt Jacob: I mean, I don't know, I'm not a filmmaker but I'm.
• 52:12
  Matt Jacob: I'm aghast at just how, how technically and and well produced these things are, obviously with a team in the background, that you have multiple awards and recognitions, that you have which we haven't even touched upon about the good you're doing in in just the awareness space, which I imagine is really what these awards mean in terms of a little pat on the back.
• 52:32
  Matt Jacob: But at least people are seeing these types of this type of content and these types of films and these these moving narratives.
• 52:39
  Matt Jacob: Let's let's just touch upon the technical aspect of putting putting the showreel together.
• 52:46
  Matt Jacob: For example, there's some AI in there, there's some animations, there's some real life footage.
• 52:50
  Matt Jacob: I mean, I don't know, tell me, break that down for me, and, kind of, what techniques are you using on a, on a creative basis?
• 52:58
  Jorik Dozy: Interesting.
• 52:58
  Jorik Dozy: You said it there's no AI, there's no.
• 53:01
  Matt Jacob: AI?
• 53:02
  Matt Jacob: No, that blows my mind Right.
• 53:03
  Matt Jacob: So now you have to tell me how you do it.
• 53:05
  Matt Jacob: Um, really, yeah, which part were?
• 53:09
  Jorik Dozy: you All, all of it, that just means it's well just well conceived.
• 53:14
  Jorik Dozy: No, we we have.
• 53:15
  Jorik Dozy: We try not to use um ai for like final products or anything.
• 53:19
  Jorik Dozy: It's uh, it's all you know.
• 53:22
  Jorik Dozy: Craft, it's all visual effects like the kind of otherworldly things that you see in there, and a lot of it is real as well.
• 53:28
  Jorik Dozy: So, um, yeah, I think all of what we discussed about you know, finding an original visual or like something that's very appealing and and grabs you as an audience um, they come with different challenges and techniques, so usually it starts from the place of um, you know what is what we're trying to tell here and and what is the?
• 53:49
  Jorik Dozy: Uh, the message, the story of, and what is the message, the story?
• 53:51
  Jorik Dozy: Of course, story is everything.
• 53:52
  Jorik Dozy: That's where we start.
• 53:53
  Jorik Dozy: But then what is the most original, crazy way to tell this story that you've never seen before or that you might have never thought or felt about this topic in this way before?
• 54:05
  Jorik Dozy: And that's what we start.
• 54:06
  Jorik Dozy: That's what we investigate then and we start to write and research.
• 54:11
  Jorik Dozy: Research is a massive part of it.
• 54:13
  Jorik Dozy: Um, last year, we did a project called earth defender, uh, which is about um, you know the people who are really defending the remaining wilderness that we have on the planet?
• 54:23
  Jorik Dozy: Um, many of them are indigenous peoples and we spent months researching that.
• 54:28
  Jorik Dozy: Then we spent five weeks on the ground with the community before we shot anything.
• 54:34
  Jorik Dozy: So the the time it kind of costs to and even though the video is an eight minute piece.
• 54:41
  Jorik Dozy: So it took months of research and five weeks on the ground sculpting that film with the community to get it to the place where it could become what it became, and I think that process is intensive.
• 54:54
  Jorik Dozy: And then after that we have the visual effects or the post-production aspect of it as well, and that's where I think our expertise and the background that I mentioned about visual effects and working on these films comes into play, because we understand really well how we can create these images and how we can apply visual effects in an interesting way.
• 55:17
  Jorik Dozy: So, yeah, most of the visuals you saw are done, I guess, the traditional way of non-AI like visual effects, 3d animation and parts of the Caribbean way, exactly, and like trying to combine it with doing as much as we can on location itself.
• 55:35
  Matt Jacob: Right, yeah, yeah, I mean the Earth Defender.
• 55:40
  Matt Jacob: I didn't think I watched all of it, but I watched four or five minutes of it.
• 55:45
  Matt Jacob: And again, just there's something that you do with the story in the cinematic way, which it certainly appeals to me and gets me like getting emotional and without just knowing much about it, just diving into the, diving into the film, suddenly like bang, fuck, you're in this world.
• 56:06
  Matt Jacob: How do you, how do you go about that storytelling aspect?
• 56:09
  Matt Jacob: You talked about research.
• 56:10
  Matt Jacob: Obviously.
• 56:11
  Matt Jacob: What?
• 56:12
  Matt Jacob: Where does it even start?
• 56:13
  Matt Jacob: Is it team meetings and conceptual kind of drawing on whiteboards or it's?
• 56:17
  Matt Jacob: Do you already have it in your head or is it a bit of everything?
• 56:20
  Jorik Dozy: yeah, I mean, I think it's different per project, but okay, um, with that film, for example, what we try to do and the broken wings about burr poaching is a similar method where we bring in cinematic equipment like high, high end equipment with a really good crew to put.
• 56:38
  Jorik Dozy: To put you like you're.
• 56:40
  Jorik Dozy: You feel like you're watching a film that you might see, you know, on a streaming platform or on the cinema or whatever, but it is actually a real documentary piece.
• 56:47
  Jorik Dozy: So we we try to lens it very differently than how a traditional documentary filmmaker would portray it, and I think that way of thinking comes from that cinema background that we have and that is not something that's done a lot.
• 57:01
  Matt Jacob: So maybe that's why the films they're quite immersive in a lot of ways, because you almost feel like you're watching, you know, a narrative film and not a traditional documentary yeah, it's definitely a pioneering way of doing these, or at least telling these, these stories right in a very beautiful way, because which I talk about that all the time and even with photography, if I can make something that looks nice, I've already got someone curious, and so you know, that's the difference with documentary, like you might watch a documentary because it's a topic that appeals to you, but I still I'm still here, I want to see something that's nice and therefore is going to like, really appeal to me at a different level.
• 57:42
  Matt Jacob: I'm going to keep watching it because it kind of looks nice and it's making me feel really weird.
• 57:46
  Matt Jacob: And then I start kind of paying attention to the story.
• 57:48
  Matt Jacob: And in the Broken Wings case, you know, you have one of my favorite pianists playing such a wonderful piece of music.
• 58:00
  Matt Jacob: He moves me every time I listen to him Ludovico Ainaudi.
• 58:01
  Matt Jacob: How do you go about the production side of getting in touch with someone like that who I would consider is almost unreachable?
• 58:08
  Jorik Dozy: Yeah With him.
• 58:09
  Jorik Dozy: It was a unique uh approach actually, because we collaborate with this streaming platform called uh, called water bear, uh, water bear network.
• 58:18
  Jorik Dozy: They are, um, they call themselves kind of the netflix for the planet, so they only have films on their platform that are for the planet and about the planet.
• 58:26
  Jorik Dozy: And we pitched the film to them and they actually allowed us to, they funded it and they allowed us to produce it and then, once we had an edit, I send it to Ludovico with his music under it and his label, and I mean his management responded with like, let's talk, so that's how that project came together.
• 58:48
  Jorik Dozy: And then we, once you know, we it all kind of connected and and they were on board um, we actually flew to one of his uh concerts where he was performing and we got a few hours with him before the show to film the opening and the ending of the film when he's on stage.
• 59:06
  Jorik Dozy: Yeah, yeah yeah, so that's how that kind of came together, but it's a unique case because the film was already shot when we presented it to him, which is not, you know, normally what happens yeah, music, I guess, is an important part of these videos.
• 59:20
  Jorik Dozy: Yeah, key yeah.
• 59:22
  Matt Jacob: It's so emotive.
• 59:24
  Jorik Dozy: Exactly his straight emotion like yeah, so it's very important.
• 59:33
  Jorik Dozy: And the way that ludovico composes, there's a very um, like primal kind of feeling to his music, I think, like this kind of he uses like very repetitive kind of rhythmic elements and it's it's a perfect to depict nature, uh, with this, with that kind of music.
• 59:48
  Jorik Dozy: And a lot of people who listen to Ludovico says that he's kind of their portal into nature and into connecting with nature.
• 59:56
  Matt Jacob: Very, yeah, it's very natural in this nature.
• 1:00:00
  Jorik Dozy: Natural, no, very natural yeah, I don't know what it is.
• 1:00:03
  Matt Jacob: It sparks nature right, and in that case it was perfect, because even the song sounded like birdsong right.
• 1:00:09
  Matt Jacob: And in that case, it was perfect because even the song sounded like Birdsong, right, yeah, it's, um, even in the dark part, the darker movements and the brighter movements.
• 1:00:14
  Matt Jacob: So, um, yeah, one of many projects.
• 1:00:17
  Matt Jacob: We could spend hours going through all your projects because I'm so interested in all of them.
• 1:00:20
  Matt Jacob: Um, but where was before even these projects were conceived?
• 1:00:26
  Matt Jacob: Where was the pivotal moment for you in in terms of moving from Hollywood, essentially, and that kind of sector of VFX and filmmaking, to these more global issues and more of an kind of NGO aspect of making films?
• 1:00:44
  Jorik Dozy: Yeah.
• 1:00:45
  Matt Jacob: Was there like a click at some point?
• 1:00:48
  Jorik Dozy: I think it was.
• 1:00:48
  Jorik Dozy: There was a bit, but it was.
• 1:00:50
  Jorik Dozy: It was gradual in a way that it started with this educational part that I mentioned about really understanding the situation that we're in and and and learning about the science.
• 1:01:00
  Jorik Dozy: But then at the same time, while I was learning that and I changed.
• 1:01:06
  Jorik Dozy: I became a vegetarian, I became more aware of like my own impact as well, but then at the same time, I was still just making entertainment right, which is great, like people need that.
• 1:01:17
  Jorik Dozy: I want to come home sometimes and put on a film and just not think like we, we need that in our society as well.
• 1:01:23
  Jorik Dozy: But I was feeling like how can I use my time?
• 1:01:26
  Jorik Dozy: How can I use my time?
• 1:01:28
  Jorik Dozy: How can I use my uh whatever skill that I have, whatever I've learned um for change.
• 1:01:32
  Jorik Dozy: So that became my my kind of question.
• 1:01:35
  Jorik Dozy: And my co-founder, sil, was also on that same journey and we actually we been like best buddies for for a long time, so we were talking about this a lot and we started to direct projects together and and we made a project about sulfur miners which was also a music film.
• 1:01:52
  Jorik Dozy: Actually it's kind of music video.
• 1:01:53
  Jorik Dozy: That's really the foundation of where Studio Birthplace came from.
• 1:01:57
  Matt Jacob: It's like music videos.
• 1:01:59
  Jorik Dozy: And we made that film and it kind of depicts the life that sulfur miners have and how they need to go into a very toxic place to make a living and how it affects their bodies and how little money they get for it Essentially a form of modern slavery, in a way right Like the fact that this is still happening and sulfur is in everything it's in our electronics, it's in our toothpaste, it's in our makeup, like it's everywhere.
• 1:02:29
  Jorik Dozy: And we made that film and then we fell in love with the community.
• 1:02:32
  Jorik Dozy: They were just so beautiful, the people, we were so welcomed and it was such an amazing experience that we set up a fundraiser and the fundraiser I think it collected something like $25,000 for it and we were able to send like a hundred kids to school, you know, like fund uh the education of the kids, like even renovate some of the school, uh classrooms, and that like really was like, oh, like my, my, me pointing a camera somewhere can make like a huge impact to people's lives.
• 1:03:00
  Jorik Dozy: And I think that project became kind of like a kickoff point for us to say we should turn this like into a studio, into into our job really, and it really also came from the idea of what is activism, because activism can be, can look very different for everyone.
• 1:03:20
  Jorik Dozy: It's.
• 1:03:20
  Jorik Dozy: It looks different for everyone you don't like.
• 1:03:23
  Jorik Dozy: Sometimes I feel like I want to take a sign and go block a road somewhere you know and then and demand change.
• 1:03:29
  Jorik Dozy: But maybe that's not the best use of my, of my skill.
• 1:03:32
  Jorik Dozy: Maybe I can use my whatever I've learned to influence other people and to educate other people, and filmmaking is kind of my way of, you know, giving back to everything that I've obtained and I've learned and all the privileges that I've been given to make that change.
• 1:03:52
  Matt Jacob: How do you balance the emotional toll of these projects?
• 1:03:57
  Matt Jacob: And do you?
• 1:03:57
  Matt Jacob: I mean, how do you even process it?
• 1:03:58
  Matt Jacob: Maybe not balance because it's so difficult, but when you go to these places and you do these projects and you invest so much time, energy, mental capacity, empathy, money into telling these incredible stories in the most innovative and artistic way that you do, do you even kind of get back?
• 1:04:20
  Matt Jacob: I mean, there is that thing of you leaving right.
• 1:04:23
  Matt Jacob: How do you process the emotional toll that these projects have, or do you?
• 1:04:29
  Jorik Dozy: Yeah, process, that the emotional toll that these projects haven't, or do you?
• 1:04:34
  Jorik Dozy: Yeah, um, I'm like a pretty, I would say I'm a positive person, like I have usually, you know, quite a lot of energy and I look at life like I'm enjoying myself, you know, like this, it's a privilege to do what I'm doing.
• 1:04:43
  Jorik Dozy: Um, so, yeah, I'm not someone who really kind of gets comes away from a project broken, but more just feeling grateful and privileged that I was able to experience that and to share the story with the world.
• 1:05:02
  Jorik Dozy: And there are many people who are doing the work that I'm putting a camera on who are experiencing the real intense bad stuff, and maybe I'm telling their story or I'm capturing a little bit of that, but it's I'm not living that right, I can, at the end of the day, I can go home, and that, I think, gives me this perspective that I should just be nothing more than grateful and, and I'm here to should just be nothing more than grateful and and I'm here to, uh, do my part and try to kind of, you know, contribute and telling these people stories or these animal stories, or whatever it is that we're pointing the camera at, um, and and it gives me a lot of kind of energy to to keep going.
• 1:05:44
  Jorik Dozy: Actually, it keeps me, it gives me a lot of like will to, so to speak, because there are stories out there that we need to know about and that we need to change, there are situations we need to change and that kind of feeling is just deeply rooted, I think, in me to have this kind of endless kind of mission.
• 1:06:04
  Jorik Dozy: I feel like I'm on this mission and that kind of keeps me going.
• 1:06:08
  Matt Jacob: I feel like I'm on this mission and that kind of keeps me going.
• 1:06:16
  Jorik Dozy: Do you think us as artists and creatives should have a purpose behind their work, ideally, I think.
• 1:06:22
  Jorik Dozy: If you don't have a purpose, then why are you doing it?
• 1:06:28
  Jorik Dozy: I think, sure, because it's fun, fun.
• 1:06:29
  Jorik Dozy: But how long can you keep doing that?
• 1:06:30
  Jorik Dozy: I think everyone you know has to find their purpose, and everyone has a purpose for sure.
• 1:06:37
  Jorik Dozy: Maybe you're not sure about it or you haven't found it, but as if you create something, I hope that it has purpose yeah.
• 1:06:45
  Matt Jacob: Should we feel guilty that if our purpose is not saving the world?
• 1:06:49
  Matt Jacob: Should we feel guilty if our purpose is not saving the world?
• 1:06:53
  Jorik Dozy: no, not at all not at all not at all.
• 1:06:56
  Jorik Dozy: I think it's not.
• 1:06:57
  Jorik Dozy: It's not something that you know.
• 1:06:59
  Jorik Dozy: Um, in the end, we all have our own things going on.
• 1:07:02
  Jorik Dozy: We have our own lives, we have our own priorities and challenges.
• 1:07:05
  Jorik Dozy: And, um, if you're able to have the capacity in your life to think about this, this conversation that we're having, and to think about how can I contribute, that's enormous already.
• 1:07:18
  Jorik Dozy: And then if you have that privilege because that what it is right, you have a safe place, you have food, you have everything then you're actually in the position to contribute something positive, in whatever form.
• 1:07:30
  Jorik Dozy: That is that's great.
• 1:07:32
  Jorik Dozy: You don't need to feel obligated because maybe you just can't, maybe you're not in that position that you can contribute.
• 1:07:41
  Matt Jacob: It's where we are as individuals.
• 1:07:42
  Matt Jacob: On Maslow's hierarchy right, we've got everything, certainly in the West and the capitalist societies that we've been talking about, developed nations, we have all of the kind of survival stuff, sort of obviously that there are many people still suffering and still in bad situations.
• 1:07:57
  Jorik Dozy: Yeah, but to quickly add on that, because what I think it is important to kind of think about is that we need change and innovation in every aspect of our lives right, All the issues that we spoke about before.
• 1:08:08
  Jorik Dozy: It trickles down into the hierarchy of everything.
• 1:08:11
  Jorik Dozy: So if you have a desk job and you don't know how you can contribute, you can think about well, what kind of changes can I make in my job that I can suggest to my manager?
• 1:08:23
  Jorik Dozy: Or what kind of changes can I make into the way that I get to my job?
• 1:08:26
  Jorik Dozy: All these little things you can start thinking about and you can see what can I implement.
• 1:08:31
  Jorik Dozy: That makes a difference Because, as we said, activism looks different for everyone.
• 1:08:36
  Jorik Dozy: If you even discuss some of these topics with your colleagues, that's a form of activism yeah.
• 1:08:42
  Matt Jacob: And I think that's important, and that's one of many reasons why you're on the show is just to talk about it, right?
• 1:08:49
  Matt Jacob: I think if we're in a position where we're having discourse around these topics without it being politicized, objectified or any type of kind of bias to anyone's opinion or a political situation, then that's what's important to be able to have these conversations, because, at the end of the day, that's the real driver of change is is when we have, when we're able to talk about these things without someone getting offended or without saying the wrong thing or without it being politicized, without feeling attacked by the other side, which is all of which we experience on a, on a, certainly on a, on the digisphere that we see in social media and everything.
• 1:09:30
  Matt Jacob: But I think that's the most important thing.
• 1:09:33
  Matt Jacob: That's all we have, right?
• 1:09:34
  Matt Jacob: All we have, at the end of the day, is the ability to communicate with each other about these topics, and if we don't do it, what do you think is going to happen?
• 1:09:41
  Matt Jacob: Right, it's just going to end in chaos, and we're we're going along that, that road quite fast at the moment.
• 1:09:47
  Matt Jacob: But, um, which brings me to kind of a story or something that is so resonant with you now that you might look back on all the projects and all the awards that you've won and the incredible work that I'm sure you push aside, because the most important project is the next one and you want to be better and bigger and drive more change.
• 1:10:06
  Matt Jacob: What is probably the one story that means so much to you, or has meant the most to you, ooh well, I guess there's different ways of looking at when.
• 1:10:21
  Jorik Dozy: Something means a lot to me, I think, in terms of the emotional weight of it and what I've learned is on a project, as with that film, because it exposed us to the ways of indigenous peoples, we learned about indigenous values and there's an incredible kind of way forward and solution there and solution there, or at least it gives a lot of positivity when you start learning about indigenous values and that there's people on this planet alive today who are living the kind of life that shows us how we can live on this planet positively, sustainably, looking at the things we talked about, seeing nature as one, they have these values intrinsically in their nature.
• 1:11:23
  Jorik Dozy: These values intrinsically in their nature and I think that gives so much hope.
• 1:11:25
  Jorik Dozy: We were at COP 29 in Azerbaijan, the United Nations Climate Conference, and listening to the indigenous leaders there when they speak.
• 1:11:31
  Jorik Dozy: They should be our world leaders and I think, knowing that these people are here and they are becoming more present on the global stage, they're given more room to speak and they're giving more rights as well that gives me hope.
• 1:11:49
  Jorik Dozy: We need to listen to indigenous values and peoples and we need to protect their rights.
• 1:11:56
  Jorik Dozy: They need to be given a platform everywhere, in every conversation, when we talk about the future.
• 1:12:05
  Matt Jacob: What was the project called Wasteminster about?
• 1:12:07
  Matt Jacob: Can you tell us a little bit about that?
• 1:12:09
  Jorik Dozy: Yeah.
• 1:12:09
  Jorik Dozy: So the other side of projects that are very memorable and that made a lot of impact Wasteminster, I think, is one of the best examples that we have in our portfolio because it went viral and it eventually actually influenced the law.
• 1:12:25
  Jorik Dozy: So that's again very tangible, something that you never expect, that you work and do, and it shows the power of a piece of film.
• 1:12:34
  Jorik Dozy: And in that film it was a collaboration with Greenpeace and we visualized the amount of plastic waste that is every day being shipped to developing countries while the government is saying that they're recycling it.
• 1:12:51
  Jorik Dozy: So 1.8 million kilograms of plastic waste is being put on ships and sent to Philippines, malaysia, turkey and dumped on dumps there.
• 1:13:07
  Jorik Dozy: While you at home think you did the right thing because I put my plastic in the recycling bin, so it's being recycled, in reality, I think it's 9%, 7% or 9% of all plastic waste is actually recycled.
• 1:13:18
  Jorik Dozy: The recycling industry is a massive, you know, smoke and mirrors, smoke and mirrors.
• 1:13:23
  Jorik Dozy: Yeah, it's really complicated to properly recycle something.
• 1:13:26
  Jorik Dozy: So that's another thing.
• 1:13:28
  Jorik Dozy: But, um, it's being used by the fossil fuel industry, by the plastic industry, to say we can keep doing what we're doing because we're recycling.
• 1:13:35
  Jorik Dozy: But that's not really the true story.
• 1:13:37
  Jorik Dozy: And so we again, we kind of thought how can we visualize this piece of data, how can we tell this story in a way you've never seen before?
• 1:13:46
  Jorik Dozy: So we unleashed a CG simulation, a 3D animation, of 1.8 kilograms of plastic pollution and dumped it onto Boris Johnson in front of Downing Street where he's giving a speech about how great the UK is in environmentalism.
• 1:14:04
  Jorik Dozy: So that film, once it got released, it picked up millions of views within a couple of days and it went all over and people shared it and it really gave a reaction.
• 1:14:16
  Jorik Dozy: People were upset.
• 1:14:18
  Jorik Dozy: When they learned about this.
• 1:14:19
  Jorik Dozy: They were like really gave a reaction, like people were upset.
• 1:14:20
  Jorik Dozy: You know that they, when they learned about this, they were like how is this true?
• 1:14:22
  Jorik Dozy: Like how can this be true?
• 1:14:24
  Jorik Dozy: Um, and greenpeace followed it up with a campaign with, uh, the research that they did.
• 1:14:28
  Jorik Dozy: So they showed look, these are all the data, this is all the facts.
• 1:14:32
  Jorik Dozy: And that whole campaign eventually pushed um legislation to change the plastic exports.
• 1:14:39
  Jorik Dozy: Turkey was the main importer of plastic waste from the UK and they completely banned any import.
• 1:14:47
  Jorik Dozy: So it gave the UK government a massive problem.
• 1:14:50
  Matt Jacob: So what are these countries doing with it?
• 1:14:52
  Matt Jacob: Are they recycling, are they using it for materials, or are they dumping it in landfill?
• 1:14:56
  Jorik Dozy: Yeah, Most of them are dumping it in landfill because data themselves don't have the capacity to recycle that.
• 1:15:01
  Jorik Dozy: If we in the West, in the UK, cannot recycle this waste, then why would the Philippines be able to do so or Malaysia?
• 1:15:08
  Jorik Dozy: It just ends up in landfills where either it's burned or before it's burned.
• 1:15:12
  Jorik Dozy: People are going through it to find things they can sell.
• 1:15:16
  Jorik Dozy: Pl know they can uh plastic waste they can try to uh sell to uh little recycling shops here and there, um, but most of it is is landfill or burnt yeah.
• 1:15:28
  Matt Jacob: Fuck's sake.
• 1:15:29
  Jorik Dozy: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:15:30
  Matt Jacob: It was also.
• 1:15:31
  Jorik Dozy: You know, uh, and then this is happening, you know still everywhere, Everywhere.
• 1:15:35
  Jorik Dozy: Every rich country is exporting their waste to developing countries.
• 1:15:46
  Matt Jacob: It is that psychological experiment.
• 1:15:48
  Matt Jacob: It is governments and large institutions that control all of this, the ins and the outs of all of this, and the money is the flow of money, essentially and power that make us feel like, oh, we're doing something.
• 1:15:56
  Matt Jacob: I put my recycling in my little red bin at home and then never see it, but I feel okay, I feel cozy because I've done my part, and they don't want to kind of pull the curtain up and just show you that this is not really true, we're just making money off it.
• 1:16:12
  Matt Jacob: Yeah Well, let's try and propel this into a more hopeful scenario.
• 1:16:22
  Matt Jacob: What can we do?
• 1:16:24
  Matt Jacob: What can we do as general population, as creators, filmmaking and visual effects to tell stories rather than go into journalism, for example but journalists have a role to play in this as well.
• 1:16:45
  Matt Jacob: People who want to drive awareness at least, if not change, yeah.
• 1:16:49
  Matt Jacob: But what about lowly people like me and the other people that are just kind of doing their jobs day in, day out?
• 1:16:56
  Matt Jacob: What can we do to help?
• 1:16:59
  Jorik Dozy: Yeah, I mean we spoke about this a little bit.
• 1:17:02
  Jorik Dozy: I guess you know activism looks like many different things, so you can do your own uh reflection and see how can I change my life.
• 1:17:09
  Jorik Dozy: Can I change my diet, for example, right like that is a massive thing if you do that and you can influence the people around you very easily with that.
• 1:17:16
  Matt Jacob: But people don't know how people you know it.
• 1:17:19
  Matt Jacob: It's easy for us to say I mean, even take nutrition.
• 1:17:23
  Matt Jacob: It's such a confusing fucking because everyone's got their own opinion and one scientist says that you look at any of the big podcasts out there, they'll have one scientist one week talking about this type of nutrition is best for you, and then another scientist the next week perfectly eligible scientists with years and years of doctorate experience saying completely the opposite.
• 1:17:44
  Matt Jacob: And now we as the general public are expected to kind of pick one and go with it.
• 1:17:49
  Matt Jacob: I mean, the argument over vegetarianism and veganism is palpable.
• 1:17:56
  Matt Jacob: There was a massive uproar because this guy had created a documentary on Netflix about how veganism is essentially better for you, better for the planet, right?
• 1:18:05
  Matt Jacob: That was basically his overarching narrative.
• 1:18:09
  Matt Jacob: He got ripped apart, yeah.
• 1:18:12
  Jorik Dozy: Yeah, because, like telling people to change their diet is directly telling them to change their culture and who they are, because our food is very interconnected with who we are as people and the country I'm from.
• 1:18:26
  Jorik Dozy: Right, we have cuisines from every specific country.
• 1:18:29
  Jorik Dozy: You know I'm from the US.
• 1:18:30
  Jorik Dozy: I want to eat my meat.
• 1:18:31
  Jorik Dozy: You know it's a very like.
• 1:18:33
  Jorik Dozy: You identify with it.
• 1:18:34
  Jorik Dozy: So that's why, also, that's such a challenging subject.
• 1:18:37
  Matt Jacob: But surrounding this one specifically, there is a weird rhetoric about you know, not even rhetoric, they don't even come out and really say it, but I mean some of them do.
• 1:18:48
  Matt Jacob: If you don't eat meat, you're considered uncool, you know?
• 1:18:53
  Matt Jacob: Oh, you're so soft, you're a snowflake.
• 1:18:55
  Matt Jacob: Why don't you eat meat, especially in America?
• 1:18:56
  Matt Jacob: Like there's this machoism surrounding eating meat, which is just again, it's cultural, but it's incredibly misguided and misdirected and personally I don't know how we kind of get through to these people Because, like you said, it's years and years of genetics, cultural kind of practices that haven't changed over all these times, even though now we have the opportunity to not do those things.
• 1:19:22
  Matt Jacob: But you get, you get.
• 1:19:24
  Matt Jacob: There's even laws in some places for for things like this, and it's it's just bog beggars belief and I don't really I mean I just I guess that triggered me a little bit when you said well, you know we need to change the diet.
• 1:19:34
  Matt Jacob: I totally agree with you, but you, but people don't, I'd fucking why not?
• 1:19:43
  Matt Jacob: Do you not want to be healthier?
• 1:19:44
  Matt Jacob: They don't believe the data, and that's a huge issue we have right now.
• 1:19:46
  Matt Jacob: They don't believe whether it's climate change, covid or nutrition.
• 1:19:49
  Matt Jacob: They don't trust what they're seeing, because we're in a world of TikTok, instagram, X, netflix, legacy media, all spinning their own narrative, depending on who's paying for it, and us, as just normal people go.
• 1:20:04
  Matt Jacob: What the fuck?
• 1:20:05
  Matt Jacob: What am I meant to listen to?
• 1:20:08
  Jorik Dozy: It's a confusing world.
• 1:20:08
  Jorik Dozy: I think that's really what we live in very confusing times, because you're just bombarded with stuff.
• 1:20:15
  Jorik Dozy: One of the ways to kind of get around that that I'm quite bad at but I'm trying to is to shut of.
• 1:20:20
  Jorik Dozy: Get around that that I'm quite bad at but I I'm trying to is to shut off a lot of that stuff and to just kind of reconnect, you know, with what, what makes me feel good and and and where does my real yeah uh, when I look inside, like where do I feel happy and good?
• 1:20:37
  Jorik Dozy: and a lot of times that's for me.
• 1:20:40
  Jorik Dozy: You know that's a specific way.
• 1:20:41
  Jorik Dozy: For everyone that's different, um, but it's a.
• 1:20:44
  Jorik Dozy: It's a way to kind of shut off all of that for a little bit, like just don't absorb so much of all that information and just kind of think about okay, if I change my diet, um, take it one step at a time, like progress, not perfection, I think is a really good way of looking at it, because a little change is better than no change at all.
• 1:21:05
  Jorik Dozy: So, even if you can make a small change as an individual in your personal routine that becomes part of you know what you do, that's already a really great step forward.
• 1:21:15
  Jorik Dozy: And then try another one and another one.
• 1:21:17
  Jorik Dozy: And I think that that way of thinking is is different than like I'm going to cut out everything because that's hard, it's doable, but it's hard.
• 1:21:26
  Matt Jacob: People feel defensive and also it's a huge challenge that they probably won't be able to keep.
• 1:21:30
  Matt Jacob: And the old adage of take nutrition and vegetarianism.
• 1:21:34
  Jorik Dozy: If you give up meat just one day a week, if everyone did, that would basically solve um global starvation yeah, the the other thing is like we're killing so many animals that if we would kill the human race at the same rate, we would be extinct in a week.
• 1:21:50
  Jorik Dozy: Yeah, that'd also be complete uproar.
• 1:21:52
  Jorik Dozy: Yeah, but a week that's how many animals we kill, and I think that's only land-based animals.
• 1:21:58
  Jorik Dozy: When you look at fish is something like billions a week, you know, and and it's it come to a level where we have normalized like mass murder.
• 1:22:07
  Jorik Dozy: Yeah, that's as a society, that's we think it's okay to do this, right, because these animals are there to feed us.
• 1:22:19
  Jorik Dozy: When you come, when you think about that, uh, combined with like uh, 50 of all the agricultural land that we use is for animals, right, 20 of all the land on the planet is to just for our animals.
• 1:22:34
  Jorik Dozy: Yeah, just so we can eat them, just so we can eat animals.
• 1:22:37
  Jorik Dozy: Right, imagine all that land like being wild nature, right?
• 1:22:41
  Jorik Dozy: So I think again, understanding the reality, the reality that, like the amazon rainforest is being destroyed to plant soy that feeds the animals we eat yeah it's not even the soy that we eat.
• 1:22:55
  Jorik Dozy: Yeah, so, like when you, when you think about these realities, do you want to be part of a system that is that insane, because that's really what it is right Do you want to participate in that?
• 1:23:07
  Jorik Dozy: I think, again, it comes from that feeling of like asking yourself that question.
• 1:23:13
  Matt Jacob: That was meant to be the positive part of our conversation.
• 1:23:17
  Matt Jacob: To like okay, let's, let's wrap this up with with a, with a hopeful message, with what the future looks like on a positive spin.
• 1:23:25
  Matt Jacob: You know, we all know what we actually all know.
• 1:23:28
  Matt Jacob: And just to actually finish that part off, I think deep down, many of us in developed environments really know what we can do.
• 1:23:36
  Matt Jacob: We just choose not to, or we push it aside, or we're happy in our ignorance or naivety.
• 1:23:42
  Matt Jacob: I think, deep down, we all know that, and I'm I'm the first one to you know.
• 1:23:47
  Matt Jacob: I feel like I do some.
• 1:23:48
  Matt Jacob: I could do more.
• 1:23:49
  Matt Jacob: I know what I need to do, but I just don't because I'm selfish in many and we.
• 1:23:56
  Matt Jacob: That is human nature, but we, you know again, it's all those, those little bits.
• 1:23:59
  Matt Jacob: So I I think ignorance is a cop out.
• 1:24:01
  Matt Jacob: I think it's like, well, I don't know what to do and I don't know where to turn for information.
• 1:24:05
  Matt Jacob: Yeah, you do.
• 1:24:05
  Matt Jacob: Yeah, I think you do.
• 1:24:06
  Matt Jacob: I think most people, most people with just a very basic form of education, if you can spend three hours doom scrolling on fucking TikTok, you can spend three hours actually figuring out what you're going to change in your life, even if it's just a one percenter, a hundred percent.
• 1:24:23
  Jorik Dozy: Yeah, and I'm the same.
• 1:24:24
  Jorik Dozy: I doom scroll.
• 1:24:25
  Jorik Dozy: I'm not perfect, I don't do everything that I know I could be doing, and that's again.
• 1:24:31
  Jorik Dozy: It's up to you individually to see how much can you change, and I walk around with the exact same feelings that you just described.
• 1:24:40
  Matt Jacob: And I think actually you're right, it does start and we've implemented this.
• 1:24:44
  Matt Jacob: I say we myself and my wife implemented this a little bit more strictly recently.
• 1:24:49
  Matt Jacob: I've never been a scroller on social media, Obviously, I'm present on Instagram.
• 1:24:52
  Matt Jacob: I rarely do scroll unless I see a cute funny dog video and then I'll try and find another one, and then I'll try and find another one, and then I'll try and find another one you gotta see those.
• 1:25:00
  Matt Jacob: Yeah, you gotta see those.
• 1:25:01
  Matt Jacob: Press the smile on my face and then, but I catch myself.
• 1:25:03
  Matt Jacob: So it all comes down to awareness going oh fuck, actually, what am I doing?
• 1:25:06
  Matt Jacob: Can I be doing something a little bit better, Even if it's just reading a book and switching off from that environment?
• 1:25:12
  Matt Jacob: There is right.
• 1:25:21
  Matt Jacob: We just think that we identify ourselves with these platforms and I think there's a lot to be said for that.
• 1:25:24
  Matt Jacob: I think there's so much responsibility.
• 1:25:24
  Matt Jacob: We're not going to go into social media and the politics of it, because it's such a fucking maze of hatred and politics and power.
• 1:25:31
  Matt Jacob: But you know it's not.
• 1:25:33
  Matt Jacob: We seem to forget it's not real life, it's.
• 1:25:36
  Matt Jacob: It's.
• 1:25:36
  Matt Jacob: It's not reality and it just harms us most of the time, and we all know this again, deep down, we all know it's not reality and it just harms us most of the time, and we all know this again, deep down, we all know it's not a healthy thing to do.
• 1:25:44
  Matt Jacob: There is enough data now after a decade more than a decade of social media being in our lives.
• 1:25:49
  Matt Jacob: There's enough data to basically tell us to put that fucking phone down right.
• 1:25:55
  Matt Jacob: It is damaging in more ways than we even discussed.
• 1:25:59
  Matt Jacob: It is damaging in more ways than we even discussed.
• 1:26:00
  Matt Jacob: So I think a lot of it does start there.
• 1:26:02
  Matt Jacob: But hey look, what are we going to see in the next five, 10 years?
• 1:26:08
  Matt Jacob: How can we look at this in a positive way?
• 1:26:11
  Matt Jacob: Where's the hope?
• 1:26:13
  Jorik Dozy: Where do we find the hope?
• 1:26:14
  Jorik Dozy: I think what I discussed, what I touched on a little bit earlier about and that's, I guess, my personal journey just like learning about indigenous values has given me a lot of hope Understanding that there is a way of leadership and looking at life that is positive for the planet and that can give us answers against this capitalism.
• 1:26:41
  Jorik Dozy: Really, that's just destroying us, right Like indigenous values are so the opposite of that.
• 1:26:47
  Jorik Dozy: That is a good example for us to kind of get ideas from, and if we put indigenous leaders in leadership positions, they can you know, they can get those values to the rest of us and and they can create systems that, you know, respect those values.
• 1:27:03
  Jorik Dozy: I think that that hope that I I've learned about that and that that is a possibility, uh, gives me uh, hope.
• 1:27:12
  Jorik Dozy: And of course, also the fact that you and I having this conversation now, when maybe five years ago you wouldn't want to talk about this, or you know media in general, like the fact that there's a massive uprising in young people, um, who are saying, uh, that's my future, yeah, that's powerful.
• 1:27:32
  Matt Jacob: Yeah, well, it's been.
• 1:27:36
  Matt Jacob: We've talked a lot about, I guess, the negative side of things, but I I still feel, you know, being a little bit more educated by you and bringing this into the world of discourse whether it's podcasting, articles, tv, whatever it might be there's a lot of hope and, more important, there's a lot of inspiration from you and what you do.
• 1:27:57
  Matt Jacob: So keep it going, man.
• 1:27:59
  Matt Jacob: You're fighting the good fight.
• 1:28:00
  Matt Jacob: I want to support you in any way we can and we'll get this episode out as soon as we can.
• 1:28:05
  Matt Jacob: And, um, thank you so much for taking the time to join us.
• 1:28:09
  Matt Jacob: I know it's been difficult, but I've loved every minute.
• 1:28:13
  Matt Jacob: So, thank you, appreciate it, thanks, man.