How Concerts Can Turn Fans into Activists – Caleb Johnson

 

Airdate: August 27, 2025

Julie Rose: Is there something you and a member of your family really disagree about, but you wish you could find a way to have that conversation?

Caleb Johnson: If the other person had all the same experiences that you did, they'd probably see the world the way that you do. I think it's the, the discrediting of people, or the assumption of bad faith, especially from our loved ones, it just really gets in the way of us having fruitful conversations.

Julie Rose: Hey there, it's Julie. Welcome to Uncomfy, a show about sticking with moments that challenge us even when they're uncomfortable. And I know you're wondering, "Why would anybody choose to be uncomfortable?" But I know from personal experience, and you probably do too, that sometimes a little bit of discomfort has benefits if we can stay open and curious about it. And that is what we're here to explore, so let's get Uncomfy. I'm joined today by Caleb Johnson. He's a musician, a former teacher, and he now works at a climate research and advocacy nonprofit called Planet Reimagined, which was co-founded by Adam Met, who's the bass player for the indie band, AJR. Caleb, welcome. It's great to have you.

Caleb Johnson: Thanks, Julie. Pleasure to be here today.

Julie Rose: What's the link there between climate activism and music? Is there, or is this just a total pivot for you?

Caleb Johnson: Um, you know, I actually come from a background where, uh, I grew up in a evangelical conservative family and community, and I grew up playing music in churches and learned how music brings communities together. Music kind of binds people together across values and stories and gives people a sense of belonging and purpose, um, and I, I don't do that work anymore, but I took those lessons and found a new way of using some of those skills, uh, thanks to, um, working with Adam, uh, he has learned how to bridge music and climate, and so gave me a space to really bring those skills together and how we can figure out ways to use these collective spaces like concerts, uh, as a place that reminds us that we're not alone, we have a lot in common, um, and that our true power is when we come together, um, on those issues that really concern all of us.

Julie Rose: I have to admit, when I, um, first read about Planet Reimagined and read some of Adam's book, Adam Met has written a book about this, it's called "Amplify," I was like, "I don't get it. Like, why, why, what does a rock musician have, or indie rock musician have anything to say about," you know, and that's a whole long other story, it's pretty fascinating, but, um, but when you actually dig into what you guys are doing, it totally makes sense, and so I wanna talk about that in, in a minute in, in more detail, but can we just start with kind of, like, the big thing here, which is that this is an Uncomfy issue, right, that, because it's so divisive. Many people think concerns about the climate and greenhouse gas emissions are overblown and more divisive than they need to be, while a lot of other people see this as an existential crisis, the crisis of our day. So, how, have you had any success actually being able to bridge that divide, to express your concerns when you're confronted with someone who just really doesn't see this as an important issue?

Caleb Johnson: Definitely and, and I think I would start, though, by saying, if we look at the statistics, we'd be surprised at actually how many people are concerned about this, even in our country, in the US here, we're talking about over 70% of the population is concerned about the climate, but the issue that you were just addressing here is, like, it's not necessarily the number one priority for all 70%, 75% of those people across the country, and that's totally fair. I think, uh, as somebody who works in climate, I think having a little empathy for people who don't put climate at the top of the list, uh, is, would, would really serve us well to understand that people have bills to pay, uh, they have kids to get to a school, and they're hoping that the kid has a good education, and they're hoping that the food in the fridge is healthy and also affordable, and they can make rent, uh, and they have good jobs, and, like, all of these very pressing, immediate issues that feel a part of the day-to-day life in a way that greenhouse gas emissions, uh, does not feel all that important to, "How is my life today?" So, I found for me, especially, coming from my family, I, I have a family, like I mentioned, that's much more conservative, um, and evangelicals and conservatives are not necessarily known for being big climate people.

Julie Rose: So, these, so this division is real, like, like with your parents, would you say? In your,

Caleb Johnson: I, my parents and I have come a long way on the issue, but

Julie Rose: tell, tell us about that.

Caleb Johnson: Yeah, it, it's not, like, the, the primary issue for my parents, but I grew up in San Diego, um, and if you're familiar with Southern California, we have a lot of fires and increasingly a lot of fires. Growing up, 2007, a firestorm hit San Diego, um, and that's what they call it when it's, like, across the county and lots of different places, and that firestorm actually came to the edge of our property. The, the firefighters were actually on site battling the fire in our yard, and that really shaped my own consciousness about, about the links between our life and the environments and everything, but fast forward to just, like, a year ago, as this has become worse and worse and more and more present to our mind, um, my family just lost their fire insurance, and that's a huge deal.

Julie Rose: Because of the risk, you can't, like, no insurer will in insure you for fire.

Caleb Johnson: Exactly. So, as I talked to, let's say, with my father specifically about it, you know, climate could be something far away, and it was disconnected from the realities of fire insurance, fire insurance is a monthly bill, but then we could link the two to say, "Well, the insurance companies are doing the math. They're looking at all the statistics that the scientists are producing around the climate, and they are calculating that it is no longer profitable to provide fire insurance to our family because of climate change, because of the expectation of worsening fires in our community, so now we're stuck." Even though we don't see necessarily the rising sea level or some of the kind of big issues that people talk about with climate, we got to be directly impacted in a way that kind of cracked the conversation for my family to raise the priority of climate change in our conversations because it was concrete, it directly affected our day-to-day life in a way that it hadn't before. So, that,

Julie Rose: so did they change their minds? I mean, did your dad? I guess you're saying that, that he, that it's now a more pressing issue for him than it had been in the past, and for you, it had always been, like, right up there, and so that created a sense of, like, what does that feel like for the two of you, then, in your relationship?

Caleb Johnson: Uh, it's given us a much more, um, kind of common frame to talk about the direct impacts of climate in our community, and that's made climate change something that, while my dad was never avidly against the concept of climate change, it was just not a priority to him in a way that it is now. So, he understands much more viscerally the work that I do, um, because he can connect it to the rising bills and the precarity that people in our community, uh, live with. What I've learned with my dad is, is it's really common for a lot of people that work in climate that, again, we can move away from what might be the appropriate insider language of talking about greenhouse gas emissions or rising sea levels or tipping points and some of this kind of scientific, technocratic language that's useful in some context, but if we're talking in our cultures, in our communities, it's really not. So, I mean, you said you're from, you're calling from Utah. Like, if I was in Utah, I'm not gonna talk about rising sea levels on the California coastline. Um, you have a big body of water in your state that dramatically impacts everybody's lives, and so if I wanna talk about climate change in Utah, I should be talking about the Great Salt Lake. I used to live in Louisiana, so flooding and the, like, loss of the coastline, uh, is, uh, really astonishing if you've not seen that before, um, so there's these really local dimensions that help people to understand something that's really big and scary and feels distant and makes it all feel really concrete and local in a way that they can point to and then actually, like, feel something kind of visceral about it; it's not abstract at that point.

Julie Rose: Uh, I, I do wanna know, Caleb, if, um, prior to you and your father having this meeting of the minds, at least on this one level, like, were, were they disdainful of your job, or were they, like, a little embarrassed to tell people what you did?

Caleb Johnson: You know, uh, luckily they, they were never disdainful about my work. Uh, we've been on a long journey. Like I said, I, I used to play music in churches, um, and my journey from churches to being in public education to working on climate, it's been quite a journey over a long, many years.

Julie Rose: They're used to you making some pivots.

Caleb Johnson: Exactly, and I, and throughout all of that, just learning this idea of empathy, and I just think that that is so huge. If you wanna get Uncomfy, like, there's a sense of you being Uncomfy and having a little empathy for the fact that somebody else, like, like, we're all the first person character in our story. Like, if the other person had all the same experiences that you did, they'd probably see the world the way that you do, but they don't, and they probably see the world the way they do for pretty reasonable reasons, uh, and if you can start from that perspective, that, like, validates that they had a real life experience, then you can get somewhere. I think it's the, the discrediting of people, or the assumption of bad faith, especially from our loved ones, it just really gets in the way of us having fruitful conversations. And if you're trying to change things in the world, you gotta find a place of empathy where you can connect with each other. We have no chance doing this alone.

Julie Rose: Well, tell us, caleb, uh, how you at, at Planet Reimagined with the work that you're doing, how are you, um, bridging the, from understanding to action to, you know, having people not just say like, "Yeah, it's a problem," but also do something and do something that feels meaningful, 'cause that, frankly, has been, it feels like one of the major problems that we've experienced. I mean, like, I mean, I, I, I won't, now I even feel like recycling is hardly even useful because half the stuff that I'm doing with the plastics is, like, just not even getting recycled, you know? There's such a sense of, "There's nothing, nothing I can do is gonna make a difference," so how are you bridging that?

Caleb Johnson: Yeah, so Planet Reimagined, as you mentioned earlier is a nonprofit, started by Adam Met and his co-founder, Mila Rosenthal, and the organization has really tried to bridge this difference between academic research and advocacy and action. These two things tend to be very separate, and it kind of leaves people feeling, like you said, like, not really knowing what to do. And the project that I've really worked on is a project we call Amplify, which is about, "How do we use these live entertainment spaces, like a concert, uh, like AJR's tour when we were back in Salt Lake last summer, um, how do we use that as a space recognizing that it brings community together in a way that often you don't see anymore?" Um, my grandmother used to tell a story in her small town, Illinois, where, like, the mayor would hold parties for all the young people that, like, have these community dances and everything, and it feels like a foreign world. Like, that's not the world that we live in now, and there's very few places that kind of reunify a community and bring them back together, uh, especially in a positive and joyful way, like a concert. Um, so recognizing the potential, what we call "collective effervescence," this unifying and empowering experience that we have, you know, "How could we take that energy and point it towards opportunities to address issues in our community and make our community better. So, what we've really done is try to empower fans across tours, so as we come into a city, we host a number of local organizations that are connected with the issues that the artist has been outspoken on, and that the fan community also is concerned about and giving people an outlet, not asking them for donations, not asking them to sign up for a newsletter, but asking them to say, "Hey, we're in Salt Lake right now, and we want to stop, uh, the lake from drying up, and to do that, we'd like to limit the amount of water that we're pulling from it so that we can bring those levels up so we don't have toxic dust." Very concrete, very local to say, "Hey, if this is something you support, if you'd like to help support the Great Salt Lake and protect it, go ahead and sign this postcard, this letter, we're gonna send it to our representatives and just let them know that the community cares about this issue and wanna see action."

Julie Rose: You're trying, then, with Amplify, one of the things that's different then isn't just, 'cause I've been to a lot of concerts where they're like, "Every, all of our water bottles are compostable or made, all of our paper products for the over, overpriced food we're selling at this festival is, you know, is recycled vegetable material or something," right, and, which is great, I mean, obviously we need less waste, that's awesome, but you're actually trying to, so, so, so, the Amplify approach, then, is to encourage people to take, like, immediate but more collective action that focuses on policy as opposed to addressing... Okay, so gimme a, gimme another example. I mean, you talked about sending, sending a postcard to Utah lawmakers about the Great Salt Lake, great, me about another, another one that you guys have worked on.

Caleb Johnson: Okay. We were in Phoenix on that same tour, uh, this was with AJR last summer. When we were there, it was, like, 109, 110 degrees outside. But, for some reason, we don't recognize extreme heat as an emergency, even though extreme heat, um, quite literally kills people. So, when we came through Phoenix, there's a big push from a lot of the community members to get it recognized that when the temperature gets to these extreme levels to recognize that as an emergency, that certain public funding could be released so that there's more cooling zones, so there's more resources for community members that don't have access, uh, to safe spaces, um, to ride out the heat wave, so we were sending letters to city council, very local, especially at the local level, if you've got a thousand people sending a letter to city council, which is what we were able to accomplish in Phoenix, that sends a big message to city council, uh, that this is something quite pressing that we need to address, uh, so it was to city council and to FEMA to also, at a federal level, recognize this as an emergency. So, that's the kind of mindset is to not say that what venues are doing, like you described, of like having the compostable cutlery and all these things, those are great, but we need to elevate beyond that to see how can we take that energy that happens in a concert and make the impact live beyond the venue.

Julie Rose: You, and do you find, I mean, uh, clearly people within the venue, you know, AJR concert are happy to sign the letter or whatever, right, and there's plenty of downtime at a concert to be able to do stuff like that, but do you find that, that any of that interest or energy or activism actually continues beyond the concert for those concert goers?

Caleb Johnson: Yes, so that's part of our research agenda is trying to figure out how do we track that, like, longitudinal level, and that is a very difficult thing to do. But what we can do is follow up with our local organizers that we've partnered with and we have heard stories of specifically that, in Phoenix, we were there with the, the local Sunrise chapter. So, it's, AJR has a really young audience, The Sunrise is a youth organizing, um, movement, and so we had young people from the Phoenix show that attended local chapter meetings and got plugged into that community. So, really key, they're moving to that second physical place, building real relationships beyond that one moment at a concert, which is gonna be short lived because you're getting concessions, you're getting merch, you get these 2, 3, 5 minutes of interaction and realizing like, "Oh, the people around me also care about this thing," especially with young people, "Also caring about this thing that I care about, but don't have a, a way to do anything about, but maybe if I build friendship with these people, I'll feel a sense of power and have a way to make a difference in my community." So, we have been seeing that, uh, and that's a big part of our research, though, is trying to figure out better ways to track that over time, um, but right now, yeah, we just keep tabs with our local partners and say, "Hey, what's the impact been, and who's been staying involved, and what policies have gotten passed?"

Julie Rose: Have you actually seen policies implemented,

Caleb Johnson: so we, uh,

Julie Rose: on issues that you worked on? I mean, clearly you're not the only people working on a lot of these.

Caleb Johnson: Absolutely, so, uh, within California we passed, I believe it was a $10 billion, um, funding mechanism, uh, for climate mitigation and adaptation in the state, so we were campaigning on that when we were in Los Angeles, and that was a voter referendum, so that was the local coalition that was on site with us in Los Angeles raising awareness with those fans about that bill that they're gonna have the chance to vote on, and then encouraging people to pledge to vote and they would have these little reminder mailers that would get sent out closer to November to remind people like, "Hey, remember we talked about this bill and why it's important. I hope you'll still vote, uh, to support the proposition." We had a similar thing in, in Washington, but that's the kind of example of the things we can contribute to and, and really help people be aware of the ways that they can impact their communities through policy.

Julie Rose: Yeah, there is just an awful lot of footwork to know in advance, like, "What's an issue that's happening right now in this city?" You know, and if there's, like, 20 different cities on a tour or something, or more than that, that's a lot of, I guess that's the work that you do then, right, to identify the cities, identify the partners and figure out, and then how important it is, is it for the, for the, for the artist? I mean, obviously Adam Met, who founded Planet Reimagined, and I think he's got, like, a PhD and all this kind of stuff, right, so he's a scientist and everything, but, you know, are, have you been able to get other artists to, who care bad, deeply about this to also wanna have this happen at their own concerts?

Caleb Johnson: Yes, uh, so actually I just got back from the UK. I was working with the Billie Eilish tour, um, in three cities in the UK and then also in Dublin, Ireland as well. So, it's not even just in the United States, but you're seeing this also internationally. Uh, other artists, you've got, like, Dead & Co. and the Dave Matthews Band, um, even with the campaign in Washington that I mentioned, um, Killer Mike was out there also le, lending space on the stage to talk about the campaign.

Julie Rose: All right, you're crossing genres and generations, yeah. Interesting. Well, it's, it's really interesting and I just love so much where we started here, approaching these issues with empathy and recognizing that everybody has valid, valid, you know, like, rational and valid reasons for the level that they care or don't care, and, and, and that, that we can actually, with empathy, we can find a way to address the things that do matter to all of us. Um, it's just, it's great, thank you. Thanks so much, Caleb, for taking time and for sharing your story today.

Caleb Johnson: Appreciate it.

Julie Rose: Caleb Johnson is the Climate Engagement Coordinator at Planet Reimagined, and you can find more about what they're doing at planetreimagined.com. Well, thanks for getting Uncomfy with us today. Have you been able to find some common ground on a particularly polarizing topic lately? Whatever it was, I would love to hear your story. Email me at uncomfy@byu.edu or connect with us on social media to continue the conversation. We're on Instagram, @uncomfy.podcast. Uncomfy is a BYUradio podcast. Samuel Benson produces it, and the team includes Hyobin Kim and Sam Payne. Our theme music was composed by Kelsey Nay. I'm Julie Rose. Can't wait to get Uncomfy with you again next week.