Integrity Alone Will Get You Outplayed

There's an unspoken rule that governs how the social impact sector operates. We don't lie. We don't manipulate and we follow the science. We tell the truth. We play fair and it's a good rule. It's the right rule, but it's also increasingly a losing one because the industries we're up against figured out a long time ago that they don't have to win the argument. 

They just have to muddy it. If they manufacture enough doubt, if they fund enough counter research, if they sponsor enough music festivals, then the truth just becomes one option on a menu of multiple options. And meanwhile, our side hedges and qualifies and we refuse to overclaim. We bring evidence to a fight that isn't really about evidence anymore. 

So here's the question. How do we win without losing our integrity? And can a values-led sector beat opponents who have no values to slow them down?

To explore what that looks like in practice, I wanted to talk with someone who has spent her entire career inside this exact tension. My guest today is Joelle Lester, executive director of the Public Health Law Center. For 25 years, her organization has studied how the tobacco industry manufactures doubt. And what they learned is that that same playbook is used to hold back progress on climate and on food and beyond. 

Episode Highlights:

[00:02:00] The "Cooking with Smoke" report and why gas stoves share more with cigarettes than most people realize

[00:04:00] Merchants of doubt: how the tobacco industry wrote the playbook for manufacturing scientific uncertainty

[00:07:00] What happens when government shifts from public health partner to public health barrier

[00:09:00] Why philanthropy needs to step up right now, and which foundations are leading

[00:11:00] Staying grounded in values during sustained attacks on equity and inclusion work

[00:15:00] The strategic calculus of when to resist publicly versus when to go underground

[00:24:00] Funded research designed to look independent, and why scientists with integrity are at a structural disadvantage

[00:29:30] Celebrity chefs, slick cartoons, and the gas industry's marketing campaign for your kitchen

[00:33:00] “Cultural engineering” — Alessandra Orofino: why culture is always upstream of public policy, and why the social impact sector is terrible at it

[00:36:00] The ethical dilemma of fighting manipulation without becoming manipulative

[00:40:30] Why public health groups need to get better at storytelling and soundbites

[00:42:00] What keeps Joelle going: live music, meaningful work, and raising teenagers who believe good people are doing good work
 

Notable Quotes:

[00:05:00]: "The art of it is that they don't try to disprove it. They just try to raise doubt in people's minds about how believable the science is." Joelle Lester

[00:20:05]: "If we're really, really effective, people don't experience anything bad. So if you're doing your job, people don't think about you and they don't really understand and it's kind of invisible." Joelle Lester

[00:24:40]: "Scientists have integrity about how they talk about their work and they will only say what they can demonstrate. And then on the other side, you have people without integrity who are making much bigger claims than any research supports." Joelle Lester 

[00:37:10]: "If we change the culture, it's upstream of policy and that it builds political will and exposure to elected officials to have to act in the interest of the greater good and the public will." Eric Ressler

[00:41:05]: "Having all the evidence and having the legal authority and being right is not getting us where we need to go. We need to be able to communicate with folks in communities in a way that resonates with them." Joelle Lester 

[00:43:05]: "Even when it's hard, I know I'm on the right team." Joelle Lester 
 

Resources & Links:

• Public Health Law Center — Joelle Lester's organization, a nonprofit affiliate of Mitchell Hamline School of Law providing legal technical assistance for public health policy change
• Cooking with Smoke: How the Gas Industry Used Tobacco Tactics to Cover Up Harms from Gas Stoves — The Public Health Law Center report discussed at the top of the episode (and Video)
• Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway — The book (and 2014 documentary film) on how a small group of scientists obscured the truth on issues from tobacco to climate change
• The McKnight Foundation — Minnesota-based family foundation mentioned by Joelle as an example of philanthropy stepping up in this moment
• Robert Wood Johnson Foundation — National health philanthropy highlighted as a funder that has evolved its approach to meet the current crisis
• African American Tobacco Control Leadership Council — Black-led organization leading advocacy against menthol cigarettes and predatory tobacco marketing
• Center for Black Health & Equity — National nonprofit facilitating public health programs and services benefiting communities of African descent
• Dr Valerie Yerger at UCSF
• YouTube episode with Joel Breakstone
• Skoll World Forum presenter: Alessandra Orofino 

Full Transcript:

Eric Ressler [00:01:30]: Joelle Lester, thank you so much for joining me today.

Joelle Lester [00:01:30]: Thanks for having me.

Eric Ressler [00:01:30]: So I'm really excited for our conversation and I think where I'd like to start is to rewind a little bit in the work that you're doing and talk specifically about a report that you and your org came out with called Cooking with Smoke. And the reason I want to start there is because I think it's a really interesting case story about how public policy work happens and also the behind the scenes that just everyday people or even people in this space maybe aren't aware of what's going on behind the scenes that creates tension and backlash and doubt in public policy work.

Joelle Lester [00:02:10]: Yeah, definitely. So actually I will take a step further back from that report to explain why we ended up approaching the issue of clean indoor air the way we did. We were founded more than 25 years ago to work on the issue of commercial tobacco product use. And in our work over 25 years, we have learned a lot about how the tobacco industry operates, both how they have information, conduct their own research, what they share publicly and what they lie about. And what we have realized is that our understanding of that industry helps us also understand how other industries operate because many industries take a page out of Big Tobacco's playbook and how they approach science and research and public perceptions of harm. And so we had done all of this work on the problems of commercial tobacco product use and the health harms and we were studying the clean indoor air and other things that cause problems with clean indoor air.

And what we realized was not only are the health harms from appliances like gas stoves very similar to the health harms caused by cigarettes, but the industry behavior is also very similar of trying to obscure the science and mislead consumers and avoid really directly confronting the health consequences of the products that they're selling.

Eric Ressler [00:03:30]: So we've talked about this before and you had actually introduced me to the term merchants of doubt. Can you tell me about who are these merchants of doubt? It sounds like some conspiratorial cabal and it seems like that's actually partially true. So can you help educate me and our listeners about this element of doing the work?

Joelle Lester [00:03:50]: Absolutely. And I cannot take credit for that term. It's the name of a book and a documentary film, which I totally recommend to everyone. It's fascinating, but it's describing the industry approach of knowing the science behind the products and the consequences of their products and then trying to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the science. And so for example, in tobacco products, when the first Surgeon General's report came out and then a few subsequent ones came out, the industry kept saying that it wasn't clear whether smoking caused these different cancers and they also said they didn't believe that nicotine was addictive. And they kept swearing that they didn't believe it was addictive, including a famous photo at a congressional hearing in the '90s where all of the CEOs of the big cigarette companies said that they didn't believe it was addictive. And then of course we know from the litigation and the discovery and the industry's own documents that they knew way before everybody else knew not only that nicotine was addictive, but that the products were causing all kinds of health problems, including many kinds of cancer.

And so the art of it is that they don't try to disprove it. They just try to raise doubt in people's minds about how believable the science is. And we have seen that same tactic used over and over, most prominently I think in people's minds right now is about climate change where people say you can't be sure that that's what's causing it. We're not positive. There are probably other causes. And it's enough for the public to feel like the question is unresolved. That is an open question of research and it's not. It's not in climate change, it's not in tobacco use, but it's an industry tactic to avoid taking responsibility for the consequences of their behavior and their products.

Eric Ressler [00:05:40]: So to me, the other parallel that comes to mind is with social media and algorithms. I think we see this also with some of the data and research and whistleblowing that happened out of Meta and Facebook around clear data and proof basically that those technologies can create major harm to people's mental wellbeing, especially for young people. And so there's always this conflict between science and what's best for society and health and wellbeing for our culture and the financial incentives of big industry. How do we as a sector approach this problem, problems like these problems at scale, especially when a lot of times the theory of change at large for creating social good is philanthropy coming in, creating interventions and then partnering with the government to scale. And I think that that's still overall a very valid strategy, but now government as a partner in especially public health in America but also across the globe is becoming less durable and reliable as a partner, more fickle funding cycles, funding disappearing all of a sudden.

So for organizations like yours that are primarily grant funded, and my understanding is primarily, or maybe not primarily, but traditionally a lot of those grants traditionally coming from state or federal government, how are you navigating that tension right now as a leader?

Joelle Lester [00:07:10]: Well, it's really hard. I won't sugarcoat it. It's been an incredibly difficult year and a half especially where in public health government has not only been a partner, but been a critical partner in protecting community health and funding research and bringing partners together across sectors. And now we have a federal government anyway that is a barrier to improving health in communities around the US. So it's been very difficult. I do think that it's overwhelming to think about all the things that have to happen to advance public health and environmental health and health justice, but it helps me to think about it in terms of everybody doing their part. The government is going to continue to need to play a role at some point. It will have to reengage because it's really important to make sure that the health protections through policies and programs are reaching every member in every community in the US for equity and fairness sake and the federal government is the best vehicle for that.

But I think philanthropy does have a role to play. Nonprofit organizations, educational institutions, companies, some private companies can also have an important role to play in funding research, providing grants. I think there's not one solution to the problems we are facing and the particular challenge of our current political situation, but there are a lot of things we can do and everybody has to do their part in order for us to get through this difficult time and be ready to make bigger strides to protect health once there's more opportunity for that going forward.

I do think that just on the funding point in particular, I think it's really important that philanthropy step up to this moment. This is not normal. The federal funding has supported state health departments in all 50 states and many programs led by nonprofit organizations. And so the absence of huge amounts of federal funding or the new restrictions on the federal funding means other funders have to step up. And I think that has been challenging in philanthropy because there's been a way of doing business and they have their own culture and systems in place and some of them are huge organizations themselves.

And I really appreciate and admire the foundations that have dramatically adjusted. The McKnight Foundation here in Minnesota is a good example. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which has been undergoing a whole evolution in how they do their funding anyway and has been more ready to meet this moment I think than some. But we really, those of us doing the work in the field, we need the funders to step up right now and bridge this difficult time until we can get to sturdier firmer ground.

Eric Ressler [00:10:10]: Yeah. And that's a theme that we've definitely been trying to surface and spotlight on our show even here on Designing Tomorrow. We've done some really awesome interviews with the Stupski Foundation, Jen Wynn, who there it's been down philanthropy and they're really pushing I think with a strong conviction and good data to challenge the philanthropic sector to step up at least temporarily. And we'll put some links in the show notes for listeners who are interested in this topic and to go a little bit further. I'd like to ask you though more from a personal level, given all of these challenges, especially as it relates to public health, especially as it relates to durability and reliance of funding and federal grants and even state grants in this moment, how have you thought about and how are you actively pivoting to continue your mission despite these barriers?

Joelle Lester [00:11:05]: I think we've done a lot of different things to keep the work moving forward despite all the barriers, but first and foremost, we have grounded ourselves in our values and in community with our partners. And I think that has been really important to keeping things steady here at our organization and also providing support where we can to partners who are also struggling and dealing with the same challenges. But I think the only way through this kind of broad sustained attack on the work that we're doing and the values that we hold dear is to stand together in solidarity and to do everything we can to keep our partners going as well as our own organization.

We have continued to focus on equity and justice in public health. There is no improving health for all if you don't figure out why health disparities are persisting and take specific actions to address those health disparities so we aren't shying away from that. Racism has caused poor outcomes for certain folks in communities and you can't fix that if you aren't talking about racism in systems and in communities. So like everyone, I think we were knocked back on our heels at first with all of the attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion programs, as well as on belief in science and in experts, but we have really stayed true to those values.

And another thing that I think is important in how we've conducted ourselves is I'm white and so we're not a Black-led or a BIPOC-led organization and our name is general. And so there is protection in that. And what's important to me as an ally is to ensure that I'm doing everything to stand shoulder to shoulder with the folks who can't avoid the risk and to take that risk together. I do think there's so much strength and solidarity that when there's hundreds of organizations standing together to resist changes in federal grant making or prohibitions on research related to LGBTQ+ community, that solidarity is so strong and that's where we win in court and where we win in arguments with the administration.

Eric Ressler [00:13:30]: Yeah, I think that's a really good point. And let me say that back to you to make sure I'm understanding what you're saying. I think anyone in this sector doing this work right now in the current situation has a certain amount of exposure to extra scrutiny, funding cuts, pick your barrier. And what I'm hearing you say is that we need to be self-reflective and clear-eyed about where is our exposure and where are our strengths as an organization because of leadership, because of the type of work that we're doing. We've been navigating this a lot in our portfolio of client partners where some we have client partners who are Black-led working on DEI issues, working on diversity, really core to their programming who are significantly more exposed in this moment, even in their positioning and their messaging. And then we have other clients who are doing similar work from a slightly safer point of view.

And so I've been really trying to work with our clients to help them figure out how to navigate when does it make sense to be doubling down on that mission publicly in almost a resistance style versus when does it make sense to go a little bit more underground and to hunker down strategically so that when the conditions are better, we can come back strong and not actually go under even potentially in this moment.

Joelle Lester [00:15:00]: Yeah. These are the kinds of conversations we've been having a lot of with our partners and I don't judge any organization for doing what they need to do to get through this time. I will say that it's important for organizations with resources and with privilege to make sure that they're not sinking into that and doing less than they could. And so we aren't trying to lose any funding. We're following all of the rules for our federally funded projects and we're doing our very best within those constraints, but we absolutely comply with all of the requirements of the federal grants.

And as an organization, we think equity and anti-racism is central to public health work. And so we have other funding and we can continue to talk about that and be bold about that. And I also think I just feel a real responsibility as an ally to make sure I'm saying the words and demonstrating to people that these values remain at the Public Health Law Center. We are here for our partners. We are constantly trying to think about what else we can do that we maybe haven't done before, but right now is an unusual time and we need to extend ourselves in those ways.

And I think that I feel a huge responsibility to my staff and I'm sure everyone you talk to says this. I know that they rely on this income. These aren't a bunch of independently wealthy people who work here. They work here because they care about the mission and they need these jobs and I need to be responsible with how I conduct myself so we sustain our funding and sustain our staff. And this is a terrible time and I want to conduct myself and I want my organization to conduct itself in a way that we are proud of later, in a way that we point back and say, we did everything we could to protect people. We did everything we could to maintain public health systems and policies and to be ready for the opportunity when it arises again at some point in the future for bold policy change that dramatically improves health outcomes and reduces disparities.

Eric Ressler [00:17:15]: I think public health is an interesting proxy for a number of other systemic social change issue areas. And in a minute, I'm going to try and connect it to climate action, which I know you guys do a lot of work on as well. And to me, it's the kind of work that does, to your earlier point, require all sectors to come together and to work together. We need public health education. We need individuals to be informed by the right people, by the experts around the choices that they make so they can show up with agency. We also need activism. We need nonprofits. We need, of course, a strong set of government policies that are built to protect people. And I think the thing that's making this work challenging, looking at it from the outside, working with clients who we've done some work in public health and with climate, is that a number of those pillars are currently degraded and actively moving against what's in the best interest of most people.

And so let's even talk a little bit about this erosion of trust and expertise, especially around public health. And I think this is something that was already in motion but was exacerbated by some of the public health, I don't even want to say missteps because that seems overcritical of our public health systems, but the chaos during that period of time. And to me, looking from the outside, that was a moment where trust in institutions in public health took a major nosedive and I don't feel like it's even come close to recovering. So I'd be curious to hear how you see the durability of these important systems and what your current read on them is and how you think we could work to either reclaim or reimagine them to be more durable in the future.

Joelle Lester [00:19:00]: That's a great question. I agree that the COVID-19 pandemic and the public health response has been really harmful and even catastrophic for public trust in government institutions and competence and ability to respond. I will say I think that problem was seeded much earlier. The disinvestment in public health systems and institutions over a long period of time and accelerating immediately before the pandemic is directly related to the ability of the agency to respond quickly to an emerging and scary and confusing virus and that isn't an accident. The same forces that oppose government as a helpful institution in people's lives now, that was why they didn't want to fund the institutions then.

And I think public health is tough because if we're really, really effective, people don't experience anything bad. So I think that if you're doing your job, people don't think about you and they don't really understand and it's invisible. And then it became really visible, not just the importance of public health, but the lack of investment in the infrastructure that's necessary to sustain health in an ongoing way, but also to be ready in an emergency situation to respond effectively on all fronts because the public health response is at the community level, it's at the individual level, it's about policies around behavior, it's the information environment and it's also development of a vaccine and delivery of that vaccine effectively. And so it's a comprehensive and huge effort to scale that kind of response up and it can't happen on a dime if you don't have a trained public health workforce with resources in place to do that response. I think there were missteps by public health, but I also think that they were not set up to succeed by policymakers and decision makers for the years leading up to the pandemic.

Eric Ressler [00:22:15]: So we're talking about merchants of doubt as part of this broader equation. We've talked about how that has shown up for tobacco and the report that you wrote, which we started with that I'd actually like to revisit for a little bit and get a little bit deeper on. It's also being applied to these other social issues like climate justice and climate action and climate resilience, to public health, to mis and disinformation in general in our ecosystems. We just did a spotlight interview with Joelle from Civic Online Reasoning and they're doing a lot of work around trying to improve our digital literacy from a young age that are working in school systems because these new modes of communication and technology have a lot of upsides, but unfortunately we're seeing in real time they have a lot of downsides too into shaping public perception and these fracturing information silos.

And so I want to revisit this idea of the merchants of doubt and maybe tell me a little bit more about how they showed up when it came to big tobacco and how some of those same tools around sewing doubt and confusion intentionally are showing up as it relates now to climate change.

Joelle Lester [00:23:30]: Yeah, absolutely. I do want to correct one thing. I did not write the report. I was involved with it, but I have amazing colleagues and I don't want to take credit for their outstanding work.

But yes, the parallels are really uncanny. And I think in the big tobacco space, merchants of doubt, it was a huge coordinated effort among the big tobacco companies to fund research that looked independent. So they had their own tobacco research centers that they funded to produce favorable papers and then they also would fund researchers at academic institutions to produce favorable research for them and they would use that to counter the research produced by CDC-funded academic institutions or NIH and then the CDC and NIH themselves.

And then I think it was also just the constant questioning of the science and saying, here's one problem, is that scientists have integrity about how they talk about their work and they will only say what they can demonstrate. So they'll say, "Well, these are the limitations of this study and we know this from it, but I won't make the leap to these other things that seem likely because all I know is this." And then on the other side, you have people without integrity who are making much bigger claims than any research supports. And so it's an uneven playing field because of the limitations of the scientists with integrity being unwilling to extrapolate irresponsibly. So that's also part of the problem. And that's something we deal with all the time still is that so many researchers are so careful in their language and what claims they think they can support. And then you have people who are not scientists on the other side who don't feel restrained in any similar way.

And then I think also there were things like they put an ad in the papers across the US. It was called the Frank Statement where it was a full page ad where they said that tobacco wasn't addictive and harmful and that actually was used against them, that kind of affirmative claim of protection when they knew at that time all of the harms of tobacco. When all of that came out in the US v. Philip Morris case, that kind of overtly lying to the public actually was harmful for them, which is good that they were held accountable in that case.

But I think that those are just some examples. I think we definitely see that in the climate space also as funding research to cast doubt on other research. And research, if you're really just trying to answer a question, you have to accept whatever the result is of the research. And you try to replicate it, you try to make sure your methods are as strong as they can be. You use different methodology to see if you're finding different results. But to try to design a research product to show a specific thing is not the same as scientific research that's conducted at many institutions, which is just trying to learn and understand about health outcomes and to connect, to understand what's causing things.

And that's the other thing I think is that the tobacco industry would be like, a lot of things cause lung cancer. What about cars? What about inhaling smoke from a campfire? Just trying to diffuse responsibility so they didn't have to take responsibility. And that is true, if you stood by a campfire 10 times a day and inhaled from it, that would be very bad for your lungs too, but it's not really an honest comparison because that doesn't happen. People don't stand by the campfire that way. But trying to take something that seems innocuous and then say it's no worse than these products that we're targeting and making as addictive as possible is so disingenuous.

But those are just some of the tactics that are used. And I think there's also shaping social norms and promoting the idea that people are making a free choice when really we know a lot about marketing and how it works and the social media and influencers. That's all related to this too, but it's refusing to take responsibility when you know that you're able to shape people's opinions through marketing campaigns, but you're telling them that any restriction on the product takes away their freedom to choose that product.

So it's all very manipulative and disingenuous. And another example of how this played out in the big tobacco context is there were all these lawsuits against the tobacco companies for personal injury claims where people were sick or dying because of tobacco use and they're like, "You knew that this was harmful and this is what's harming me." And they were like, "You can't prove it. There's no evidence." And everybody lost those cases. And then as soon as it shifted, then they said, "It is harmful, but everyone knows it's harmful now." And so it was an immediate pivot from, "No, it's not harmful" to "Not only is it harmful, but it's your fault that you did it, even though it's harmful because you should have known." So it's basically saying anything to avoid taking responsibility for their industry behavior.

Eric Ressler [00:29:05]: So let's now try and connect that to what's going on in the climate action space and with climate change specifically around, I think the example in the report is around electrification of replacing gas stoves with induction or electric stoves. Tell us about how some of these similar tactics are being used.

Joelle Lester [00:29:25]: Well, we have some very funny examples of marketing campaigns about how great it is to cook with gas. And so it's not an accident that people think that cooking with gas is what real chefs do because the companies get celebrity chef endorsements. They produce really sometimes very slick videos. In one case, it's a hilarious video, it's a cartoon about cooking with gas, but promoting this idea that it's the classy way to cook, it's the home chef, the foodie thing to do. So that's all just about promoting a social norm of this is what people who care about cooking good food use. And then also either quashing research that would demonstrate to the contrary or funding research that minimizes the consequences.

And then you said something earlier that I haven't touched on, but it's really important. It's just the money in politics part of this problem, which is the fact that any elected official in federal government at this point would question climate change as an actual thing happening can only happen because they're getting huge donations from companies. It's basically, we're giving you this money and you need to keep this doubt going because the science is very clear. There isn't an actual dispute about causes of these things.

And so the money and politics piece is a thread that cuts across all the industries who behave this way. It's very much related to sowing the doubt that you have been talking about and it's very hard to deal with. And so you have people working in climate justice, you have people working in public health and other very important areas and you're trying to prove something based on evidence and convince people based on facts and on the other side they are purchasing the opposition to what you're trying to do. And so none of what we are doing happens if we don't protect the integrity of our democracy by getting bigger money out of politics and protecting access to voting.

Eric Ressler [00:31:45]: So there's so many good threads I want to pull on there. I think one that I've been particularly thinking about lately and partly because I was just at the Skoll World Forum and saw a presentation about another parallel happening specifically around deforestation in the Amazon. And what's happening there is that these large ag groups and caucuses are creating a narrative, a cultural narrative, trying to create and balloon an identity around agriculture in the Amazon. And the way that they're doing it is by basically infusing that point of view and that cultural narrative into dramas in culture, which are extremely popular in Brazil and to music. And they've created an entire musical genre about this constructed identity.

And the speaker whose name I'm unfortunately forgetting, but I will find and put in the show notes, was so compelling because what she said and what I... First of all, she called this phenomenon cultural engineering, which is the first time I've heard it described that way. And her thesis on this, her point of view was that culture is always upstream of public policy and that these interest groups and these big corporate interest groups are so good at cultural engineering and their theory of change is basically if they sew enough doubt or if they have a strong enough counterargument to these beneficial public policies that run counter to their financial interests, they're going to win the fight basically every time. And this is a tale as old as time. We're basically talking about propaganda here and yet I feel like our sector, the social impact sector at large, consistently under-indexes on or is unable to play as effectively at cultural engineering. And I'd be curious to just hear, do you agree with that? And if so, or if not, why do you think that is?

Joelle Lester [00:33:45]: I think that is so interesting. I love that framing, the cultural engineering. I haven't heard that either, but as you were talking about it, I'm immediately thinking of all these examples of how that has happened. And to use the tobacco example again, tobacco product placement in movies is still a huge problem. And then with the rise of influencers, there's a whole marketing of tobacco products to young people using celebrities and influencers on social media channels that I don't know about because I'm too old. So I don't even see a lot of that. And so they are way ahead.

And another really important illustration of this is menthol cigarettes, which the tobacco companies have predatorily targeted towards the Black community in the US for many, many years. And it's the Newport Jazz Festival. It's about sponsoring music festivals. It's about taking Black cultural iconography and using it in marketing, in advertisements, in packaging. It's so comprehensive and trying to make it seem like smoking a menthol cigarette is part of the Black American experience, which it is not. It's engineered exactly as that speaker is describing, but it's so insidious how that happens.

And what it does too, it sows doubt and it also enlists people as the advocates for their own harm. Then you have people saying prohibiting this kind of cigarette is racist because you're taking away a product that Black people like more. But the reason the Black community has a higher prevalence rate for use of menthol cigarettes is because the industry has worked for decades to get them to have it.

So it's very, very insidious. But I think we're terrible at cultural engineering as a community and public health is for sure. And I think part of it is it feels gross. And I think that people who are doing public health work or environmental justice work have values. The thing that's keeping me going is staying grounded in our values and the idea of manipulating people to believe something about themselves and to behave in a certain way is appalling, I think, to most of us. So we are bad at it.

Eric Ressler [00:36:05]: Interesting.

Joelle Lester [00:36:05]: I'm not sure it's terrible that we're bad at it, but I think we have to be better at exposing it where it's happening.

Eric Ressler [00:36:15]: That's interesting because I agree it feels manipulative. It feels bad faith even if... It's like, do the ends even justify the means to do things that way? I think that's a real ethical dilemma, frankly, because to spin it a little bit more positively, the thing that it changed in my brain a little bit is I'm a major advocate for positive climate action and I feel less individually empowered than I ever have around me being able to contribute positively to that movement. I've basically landed on this is a systemic public policy issue and my actions do matter, but no individual action is going to matter enough. This is going to require collective action, policy change, regulation, things that are outside of my personal control.

And yet this cultural engineering actually points to a very different story, which is that if we change the culture, it's upstream of policy and that it builds political will and exposure to elected officials to have to act in the interest of the greater good and the public will. How did that land for you? Do you agree with my thesis there and how do we do that in a way that isn't manipulative in an information ecosystem where everyone's being manipulated already?

Joelle Lester [00:37:40]: Well, what you're saying makes sense, but I don't know how you could do it with integrity, which I don't know if I've ever said integrity as many times in one hour as I have in this conversation, but it is really important I think that we remain values led.

But I think what has worked is to pull back that curtain on the industry behavior, the social engineering and everything. And so just to continue with the menthol cigarettes example, what's been really effective is Black-led organizations, chiefly the African American Tobacco Control Leadership Council based in California and the Center for Black Health and Equity based in North Carolina and Georgia, really doing the research on the industry's behavior and the predatory marketing and how they really talk about the Black community to each other versus how they're marketing the products and sharing that information with communities.

Dr. Valerie Yerger at UCSF was one of the original tobacco documents archive researchers where all the documents went after the litigation and she has amazing presentations that she shares with community members and young people are especially, I think, receptive to the information and enraged by the predation. And so I think it's not so much that we do the same thing, but people should trust us because we have a good result in mind. It's more that we expose what's happening and empower people with the information they need to form their own opinion about things and apply the pressure to policymakers there. But I think there's probably something about the cultural engineering that could be done with integrity, but I would have to think more about that.

Eric Ressler [00:39:30]: I mean, the first thing that comes to mind for me is that we're also, for better or for worse, in an ecosystem where everyone loves a good conspiracy and here's one that's actually real. So maybe that expose style truth sharing might feed into the zeitgeist in a positive way and maybe it's just about how do we, going back to the topic of trust and there's less trust than ever in institutions. Nonprofits are still generally higher than other institutions despite also taking a bit of a hit based on the research that I've seen.

So do we need to get pragmatic as a sector sometimes without losing our integrity, but partnering with people who do have platforms that influence, potentially celebrities as has been done before for public health campaigns, in a way that either exposes or motivates or shares truth to people and doing cultural engineering in a positive way that we can feel good about. And when we look back in a decade and say, "Yeah, that was a good move and I can sleep at night."

Joelle Lester [00:40:25]: Yeah, I think so. I think one thing that public health and environmental justice groups aren't great at is short soundbite bits of information that are persuasive to people and we're not that great at storytelling. And I'm a lawyer and so I 100% include myself and the people who are not great at this because we always want to use a lot of words to tell people things and that's not the information environment we exist in right now. And so I do think we need to approach it with humility that we have not been able to connect with audiences the way we need to and we need to think differently about how we're delivering our information. Having all the evidence and having the legal authority and being right is not getting us where we need to go. We need to be able to communicate with folks in communities in a way that resonates with them.

Eric Ressler [00:41:15]: Yeah. So Joelle, before we wrap up, I'd like to ask, despite everything going on and all of these challenges that we've talked about, and this has been a fascinating conversation, so thank you. How are you getting through this as a leader, especially when things are hard? You're in Minneapolis, so I imagine, and we've talked a little bit in the pre-recording about your experience there, there's a lot of pressure. You have a lot of weight on your shoulders as a leader. You mentioned having to keep your staff protected and supported. What are you doing for yourself to stay motivated and to stay balanced? I'm not expecting that you're doing that every day. I don't think anyone is. But for listeners who are in similar situations, any tips, any thoughts? What's keeping you motivated? What's keeping you engaged in this work despite all of these setbacks and challenges?

Joelle Lester [00:42:05]: Yeah, it has been really hard and I'm actually based in St. Paul, the lesser known of the twin cities, but it's been a brutal stretch here and it has been really difficult to see the way forward as an organizational leader and just a human being. So I think I do a lot of little things. I work out regularly. I go to a lot of live music, which is like church for me. And then I also feel really lucky that I'm doing work that is meaningful and important right now. And if I weren't, I would feel, I think, more hopeless. But instead, I spend my day with people who care so much about each other and our communities and who have devoted their careers to making people healthier and that's an amazing gift to be in that space every single day. So even when it's hard, I know I'm on the right team.

And then the other thing for me is I am a single parent of two teenagers and I think it's been a tough stretch to be a teen with the COVID-19 impact on youth and gun violence in schools. I think there is a real loss of faith that adults are going to do the right thing. And so I feel very motivated as a mother to do everything I can to turn things around because I want my kids to see that good people are doing good work and we're trying to make things better all the time for our own families and for people we will never meet. That's the lesson I want them to take from this.

Eric Ressler [00:43:45]: I think that's a beautiful place to wrap up. Thank you so much for your time today, Joelle, and yeah, looking forward to seeing what you guys do next as an org and as you do as an individual.

Joelle Lester [00:43:55]: Thanks so much. It was great to talk to you, Eric.