At the age of 7, Jacob Simon set out to become a world-class figure skater. He competed around the world and was training for the Olympics when a dislocated shoulder derailed his career. Devastated but not defeated, he made a conscious choice to focus on the positive.

His other skills as a writer and artist came in handy when he started sharing short, personal videos on Instagram and TikTok about the climate crisis. But these were not about rising temps or dire warnings.

All of Jacob's stories feature GOOD news about climate progress and hope for the future: animals bouncing back from extinction, governments passing green laws, renewable energy breakthroughs, and regular people making a huge impact on their communities.

Turns out, the Internet was also exhausted from two decades of doom scrolling. Jacob's daily stories of progress have garnered him millions of views and hundreds of thousands of followers, who rely on him to cut through the darkness of our media diet.

This week on INFLUENCE, Jacob and Matt discuss his new life as a science communicator, why social media (and news media) bias toward "bad" news, the rigorous research he puts into every video, the stories that most-inspire his audience, the ingenious way he makes a living, and what we all can do to help the climate, even when it seems futile.

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