Buying a home is already so expensive in America, but climate change is poised to make it much worse—even if you don’t live in the path of a hurricane. This week on How We Got Here, Max and Erin take a look at Florida to understand the thorny problem of insuring a home in a warming world. They break down how the insurance system is trying to account for ever-increasing risk, and explain why people keep moving to the places that are hardest hit by climate change.

TRANSCRIPT

Max Fisher: Erin, I was away on a trip this weekend, and while I was there, you know I opened up Zillow. 

Erin Ryan: Oh. It’s not a real vacation until you’ve opened up Zillow. 

Max Fisher: Right. Well, I saw something interesting when I popped it open. A climate risk score. Turns out that cute beachside bungalow I had my eye on is a nine out of ten for flood risk, i.e., being underwater by 2050. 

Erin Ryan: Ooh, from dream home to goldfish castle. [laughter] But why on earth would Zillow, which you and I both know, is a fun app where you play a game called Could I Afford to Live Here? Why would Zillow want to bum its users out with climate change information? Don’t they want to sell houses? 

[clip of speaker 1 from Fox affiliate report] Many potential buyers want to know what is the area’s climate risks before purchasing a home. 

[clip of speaker 2 from Fox affiliate report] It really takes all of our climate hazard data, which is developed at a property specific level for floods, wildfires, hurricane winds, drought, heat, and even air quality from wildfire smoke. 

Max Fisher: That was a Fox affiliate report. Because for homeowners, even after saving for a down payment, applying for a mortgage, winning a bidding war, redecorating the whole damn thing, and living there for many years. Climate change now means their houses could literally be priced out from under them. 

Erin Ryan: Well, it sucks for more than just the future owners of that beach house. It sucks for everyone because, Max, we are all connected in the great–

Max Fisher: –Circle of life?

Erin Ryan: No. Something even more important. The pool of high risk homeowners insurance. [music break]

Max Fisher: I’m Max Fisher. 

Erin Ryan: I’m Erin Ryan, and this is How We Got Here, a series where we explore a big question behind the week’s headlines and tell a story that answers that question. 

Max Fisher: This week, buying a home is already so expensive in America. Why is climate change expected to make it even worse? 

Erin Ryan: To find the answer, we’re going to take a look at the story of the homeowners insurance market in the state of Florida. 

Max Fisher: Oof. A barrel of laughs. 

Erin Ryan: I know it sounds sort of like an anti Bill Hader as Stefon set up. 

[clip of Bill Hader as Stefon on SNL] This place has everything. Glass, steam, Bear traps. 

Erin Ryan: Actuaries, the National Weather Service, retirement plans, risk pools. 

Max Fisher: [laugh] But we’re telling the story because in the era of climate change, nobody is immune from feeling the effects of climate on housing affordability. 

Erin Ryan: Okay. Just to make sure everybody’s on the same page here, we should explain a little bit about homeowners insurance. Very few people in this country are in a position to purchase a house upfront with cash. 

Max Fisher: Of course. 

Erin Ryan: Most people who buy a home get a mortgage, a 15 or 30 year term loan from a bank that you slowly pay back with interest until you own the home outright. 

Max Fisher: But because the entire value of a home could vanish if, say, it burned down or something. Banks don’t like taking houses onto their balance sheets unless those assets are protected with insurance policies. That way, if something comes along and wipes the house off the face of the earth, it wouldn’t be a total loss for them. 

Erin Ryan: So when you get a mortgage, you must also purchase homeowner’s insurance that satisfies your lender. And your homeowner’s insurance premium is baked into how much you pay your lender every month. I’m vastly simplifying here, but you get the idea. 

Max Fisher: Yeah, it makes sense. So if the cost of insurance goes up, so does your monthly housing payment in a way that you can’t control or necessarily predict. 

Erin Ryan: Right. 

Max Fisher: But what about that category of people who can purchase a home without a mortgage? Do they also need homeowner’s insurance? 

Erin Ryan: No, but they probably want it. If you buy a house and you don’t insure it. Then if something comes along and wipes that house off the face of the earth, you can’t recoup any of your losses. All the money you put into the house is just gone. I mean, you could set up a go fund me account or something, but I didn’t buy insurance because I didn’t think a bad thing would happen to me and so I cheaped out and now it’s biting me in the ass isn’t exactly a story that’ll get people to open their pocketbooks. 

Max Fisher: So the housing market in the U.S. kind of depends on people being able to ensure their houses. 

Erin Ryan: And this is where climate change comes into play, because this whole system only works if everyone can get insurance, a.k.a. protect their asset. But that’s getting harder thanks to something called the risk pool. 

Max Fisher: The risk pool. What’s that?

Erin Ryan: Well, it’s not a three foot pool with a diving board over it. I’ll tell you that much. [laughter] The insurance business runs on scale. The more homes a company insures, the more it spreads out the risk of having to make a big payout on any one policy. But that requires the company to balance and manage the kinds of risks that their pool of homes are exposed to. 

Max Fisher: Ah. Because if a company insured too many homes, at say the base of a volcano. When the volcano erupted, the company would go bankrupt. So they make sure to insure some volcano homes, but not too many and balance them out with lots of non volcano homes. 

Erin Ryan: And that’s why building a subterranean layer is only within the reach of the billionaire class of villains. Regular middle class villains could never. And it’s also the same reason why a health insurance plan that only insures super high risk patients is a stupid idea. If the risk isn’t spread out enough, insurance doesn’t make sense. Paging J.D. Vance. 

Max Fisher: So if there are a bunch of homes in an area prone to natural disasters, it doesn’t take long before housing prices could get out of control. And that’s not because institutional investors are bidding up the price or flippers are coming in, slapping on a new bathroom and trying to sell it for 50,000 more than they paid. 

Erin Ryan: It’s because of insurance. Especially if the natural disaster in question like a hurricane, affects hundreds of thousands of homes at once. 

Max Fisher: Unless they raise premiums by crazy amounts to offset the odds of paying out 100,000 policies simultaneously. 

Erin Ryan: And people will pay it because if they want to own a home, they don’t really have any other choice. 

Max Fisher: So the more people that a natural disaster could theoretically affect at once, the more it upsets insurers risk pools, the more premiums go up and the more unaffordable that housing becomes. 

Erin Ryan: You’re getting it. 

Max Fisher: And there’s one natural disaster in particular that’s going to affect not just thousands, but hundreds of millions of people in the coming decades. 

Erin Ryan: Climate change. 

[clip of unnamed NBC News reporter] Hurricane Milton, it exploded from a Category one storm into a Category five in just a matter of hours. The reason for this rapid intensification? Well it appears to be climate change and it is likely a disturbing trend when it comes to future hurricane seasons. 

Max Fisher: That was NBC News this past week. And Erin, I saw a paper from Imperial College London that estimated that Hurricane Milton caused literally twice as much property damage as it would have, absent the effects of climate change. Twice as much. 

Erin Ryan: Woof, That’s stark. And that’s on top of all that coastal housing that’s going to get closer and closer to the shoreline as oceans rise. 

Max Fisher: Okay Erin. I’m pulling back up that Zillow listing with the climate risk numbers. And the house I’m looking at says it has a 50% chance of flooding this year, a 90% chance of flooding by 2040 and a 100% chance of flooding by 2050. 

Erin Ryan: And I bet that’s every house in town. 

Max Fisher: I cannot imagine what that would do to those insurance risk pools. 

[clip of unnamed NBC reporter affiliate in Dallas] Then came a bill that hit like a hurricane. The year before, Clifton paid about $2,600 for homeowner’s insurance. Now, the insurance company wanted more than three times that amount. What did you think when you saw that number? 

[clip of unnamed woman in Dallas] I said it’s it’s an unimaginable number. 

Max Fisher: That’s from an NBC affiliate in Dallas, just one of many places that have had lots of extreme weather recently. And therefore, lots of stories of people who can no longer afford their insurance. 

Erin Ryan: That brings us to a place where we’re seeing what happens when climate risk rises for millions of homes all at once. Florida.

Max Fisher: Because climate change is increasing the strength and frequency of hurricanes in the Caribbean and turning the Sunshine State into a flashing red, high risk pool for insurers. 

Erin Ryan: It makes Florida a sort of front line for seeing what climate change will mean for people’s ability to buy homes. 

Max Fisher: Man. Florida simply cannot stop being a national bellwether in the scariest possible way. 

Erin Ryan: I was actually surprised to learn how this all started. Neither of us are experts on the wild and wacky world of insurance, as many listeners know. Um. 

Max Fisher: Not yet. 

Erin Ryan: So we reached out to somebody who is. Mark Friedlander, the national spokesperson for the Insurance Information Institute, which represents the insurance industry. He explained that while it’s true that Florida’s housing affordability issues currently have a lot to do with climate change, that’s not how the problem started. 

[clip of Mark Friedlander] The crisis really began due to legal system abuse and claim fraud. Those were two factors that were driving major losses for Florida property insurers when the winds were not blowing. Meaning we had seasons with no storms at all. Yet we were seeing results of the insurance industry in Florida, extremely negative. In fact, more than $1 billion in underwriting losses for three consecutive years when there were no storms in Florida, 2019 through ’21. Obviously, something’s wrong there. Well, what was happening is billboard attorneys, they aggressively market their services to consumers, where they’re encouraging consumers to call them. First of all, they call their insurance company. So we’ll handle everything for you and we’re going to sue your insurance company if they don’t meet our demands, basically on what we want for your claim. And this trend just really snowballed. It was due to regulations in the state that were pretty lax and the legislature initially didn’t see it was a big problem until things got to a crisis point where potentially the Florida insurance market was going to collapse. 

Max Fisher: Wow. Florida hustled too hard. 

Erin Ryan: So all these insurance companies in Florida are going belly up, but people need insurance to buy homes and people really want to buy homes in Florida. Folks are moving there in droves. Up where I’m from, we called them snowbirds on account of the fact that they were too wimpy to handle the winter. 

Max Fisher: Where I’m from, we call them grandparents or sometimes just Jews. [laughter]

Erin Ryan: So the problem for Florida home buyers is that there are a lot of people who want to buy. And in order to buy a home, you need homeowner’s insurance. But the market in Florida was too loosey goosey and left too much room for abuse. So people are making claims on homeowners policies that companies are just failing because they’re running out of money. 

Max Fisher: So what happens then? 

Erin Ryan: So Florida set up two insurance funds. 

Max Fisher: Oh, as in the state got involved?

Erin Ryan: Yes. One is kind of an insurance fund for insurance companies. Basically, insurance companies themselves are required by state law to pay into this big pool that will pay out to their policyholders in case the entire company goes insolvent. 

Max Fisher: Insurance for insurance, a real economic fractal. So if insurers are paying into their own risk pool, then when an insurance company went bust, that would mean that the other insurers would have to pay more into the insurance insurance fund. 

Erin Ryan: Correct. And those costs were passed on to consumers. 

Max Fisher: You worry that insurance companies could simply stop covering some people because they’ve decided that they’ve insured too many houses in one area with the same risk profile. 

Erin Ryan: Right. Like just because you were able to get insurance when purchasing a home doesn’t mean that you’re going to be able to keep renewing that policy indefinitely. 

Max Fisher: And that is something that’s happening a lot in parts of California that are prone to wildfires. 

Erin Ryan: Motto: The flammable state. 

Max Fisher: This actually happened to me. When I moved out to L.A. two years ago. My long time insurance company told me, sorry, we have a new rule that says we are not insuring any homes in that neighborhood at any price because the risk of wildfire was simply getting too high. 

Erin Ryan: Thanks to, you guessed it, climate change. 

Max Fisher: But often insurance companies are spiking the rates on homeowners and renters like myself. Even years after they moved in. 

Erin Ryan: Well, part of the problem here is that in many states and California in particular, there are regulations that don’t really account for the reality of climate impacts. Yes, the rate of insurance is spiking, but actually not enough to cover the increased risk. Here’s Mark again. 

[clip of Mark Friedlander] When you look at all the states across the country, California is near the bottom of the list for average cost of home insurance. Most people say that’s impossible. California has all these risks, all these hazards. How could that be? California’s regulations are very antiquated. They go back to Proposition 103, so they go back decades where it’s very restrictive. And California insurers have not been allowed to use climate risk modeling to price their coverage. And the state insurance commissioner, along with the legislature, are working on fixes. They’re moving in the right direction. But if you don’t allow climate risk to be factored into your modeling for risk exposure, you can’t price accurately. 

Erin Ryan: So to review foregoing homeowners insurance is not possible with a mortgage, and it’s a pretty bad idea without a mortgage, unless you personally have the wealth and risk tolerance to absorb the possible total loss of that home if and when disaster strikes. 

Max Fisher: And very few Americans are rich enough to do that. 

Erin Ryan: And from the perspective of insurance companies, it makes no business sense to insure too many homes that are vulnerable to risks like natural disasters, because that could cause your company to become insolvent quickly. So they either skyrocket prices or pull out altogether. And not to get too into the weeds here. But like Mark said, the regulatory environment in California is kind of the opposite of what the regulatory environment was in Florida before problems started. In California, state law really limits how much insurance companies are able to increase homeowner premiums in response to events that expose them to more risk. 

Max Fisher: So in Florida, too many policies were cashing out. And in California, not enough premiums were going in. 

Erin Ryan: Right. Two different ways to arrive at the same problem for insurance companies at least. Conducting business in those states quickly becomes unprofitable. 

Max Fisher: Okay Erin. What if insurers just looked at vast swathes of Florida or other high risk states, said fuck it and bailed? 

Erin Ryan: Well, many have done that, but that doesn’t mean that Florida homeowners can’t get insurance. Here’s Mark again. 

[clip of Mark Friedlander] There’s no property that’s uninsurable. It’s how much you might need to spend for the insurers because the [?] I’ll call it a second bucket of insurance. It’s called the excess and surplus [?] market. What that is, is a market of insurers that are willing to insure properties at a risk level that they are able to charge rates to meet that risk. And it could be very expensive as there are properties in Florida that have six figure premium levels because they’re extremely high risk and standard home insurers won’t insure those, so they go to this excess, the surplus market. It’s not that homes are uninsurable. It’s just what level of insurance will you need to pay. 

Max Fisher: Six figure premiums. 

Erin Ryan: I know. 

Max Fisher: Okay. So I, technically every house is insurable, but only if you have infinite money. 

Erin Ryan: Basically, eventually there’s a limit, like when the cost of the premium equals the cost of the property, then you might as well just not have insurance because you’re just paying in exactly what you would get out. So there is a limit either for individual consumers. Even though Mark has noted that the Florida insurance market has stabilized from the perspective of insurance companies, but also for the larger insurance infrastructure. [music break]

[AD BREAK]

Max Fisher: Okay, so let’s say I don’t own a home Erin. I don’t want to own a home and I don’t want to move to Florida. 

Erin Ryan: Oh. Let’s just say that. 

Max Fisher: Why should I care about insurance premium hikes in Florida? 

Erin Ryan: Okay, so here’s the issue, long term. One of the big things that we talk about as we’re moving toward this election is housing affordability. Housing affordability includes insurability. And in places like Florida, people who have houses already can suddenly get a new policy or get dropped from their policy or have to buy into a high risk pool where suddenly, like, you’ve owned this house for like 10, 15 years, you know, you’re halfway through your 30 year mortgage and you get a letter that’s like, oh it’s going to cost three times what it used to cost. Then your home goes on the market, then someone else’s home goes on the market. You know, it becomes kind of a domino effect. Which you would think would bring home prices down, which you would think would be a good thing. But homes for most Americans are the most valuable asset that they own. Think about the wealth that transfers between average American families that are able to transfer any wealth between generations. Like, imagine if all of the housing costs collapsed all across the country. That would mean trillions of dollars in wealth would disappear before it could transfer to the next generation. So basically, as housing prices become unreachable because they’re overvalued, you know, which we could debate in a separate podcast, um they’re also having these massive insurance premiums tacked on to them as a condition of–

Max Fisher: Oh. 

Erin Ryan: –their being owned. 

Max Fisher: I see. 

Erin Ryan: And at the same time, you know, like if your parents are like, we paid our house off, we’re not going to get insurance, they’re exposing you to the risk of like all of the things that could be passed to you could just disappear. 

Max Fisher: Right. 

Erin Ryan: Because they don’t have insurance. 

Max Fisher: If you can’t get it insured. Right.

Erin Ryan: Exactly. Exactly. 

Max Fisher: Yeah. 

Erin Ryan: And so it’s it’s a long term, super interesting question because it could lead to like a cratering in the market and a real big write down of how much wealth there is in America, because housing is only worth as much as people are willing to pay for it. Um. So I think for somebody who maybe doesn’t want to buy a home, if you’re renting, it’s going to affect how much your landlord is paying. It’s going to affect how much you know your kids are paying. It’s going to affect like how much it costs to like live in a dorm in a college. It’s going to affect everyone that pays to live anywhere. 

Max Fisher: And even if there’s not a collapse, I mean, we are seeing the effects of climate change are clearly already here, but also getting worse all the time. Um. 40% of Americans live in a county that is on the coast. So this is not just a West Palm Beach problem. This is a 40% of America problem. And like we heard from someone in Dallas, we’ve seen storm damage in Asheville, which is in the mountains. It was supposed to be immune from the effect. Or not immune but resistant to the effects of climate change. 

Erin Ryan: Okay. So now, like, let’s imagine a future where people can’t afford to live in Florida and there’s all these houses that nobody’s living in or nobody can afford, um they’re either going to be bought up by speculative investors um who are going to probably charge rent because speculative investors can afford to absorb risk um or they’re going to sit vacant and people are going to leave those places and move elsewhere because they can’t afford to live there or tolerate the risk of living there. So who absorbs those people? Is there infrastructure to absorb climate migration? Um. And what does it do to the real estate market and to public infrastructure in those places that they relocate to? 

Max Fisher: Wait, do you really think that we could just see a mass exodus from Florida because of insurance premiums? 

Erin Ryan: Okay. So when I was a reporter, like many, many moons ago, I was following a convention of urban planners who specialized in resilience, climate resilience. 

Max Fisher: Oh interesting, okay. 

Erin Ryan: Climate resilience was kind of how during the Trump years, how people who studied climate change had to rebrand. 

Max Fisher: Right, right, right. 

Erin Ryan: What they were doing so that they could keep getting government funding. But in the Climate Resilience Conference, they were talking about adapting over the next 20 years, and it seemed kind of baked into their assumptions that there are a lot of cities where people will have to figure out, quote, “alternative uses for their first floors by 2030 or 2040.” 

Max Fisher: Really? To be clear, because the first floors would flood? 

Erin Ryan: Because the first floors would flood. No, not not because they’re getting some like, cool new stores in, you know, like it’s the, you know, the department store is coming back of Mervyn’s, California. No, they are assuming that there’s going to be such um such chronic flooding in those places that the first floors will become basically unusable. And in a lot of parts of Florida, like houses now have to be built on stilts. Um. Houses need to be retrofitted, houses, it’s it’s really quite striking the amount of expense that is anticipated in really in years that are coming up pretty fast. 

Max Fisher: Can I ask you, the climate resilience experts, where did they all move to? I bet it was Michigan. 

Erin Ryan: [laugh] I don’t know, I, because the convention was in New York. 

Max Fisher: Oh okay. 

Erin Ryan: And so I have no idea where they were all living. But um they they were uh probably not Florida. 

Max Fisher: Yeah, but I bet it’s not Fort Lauderdale. 

Erin Ryan: Probably not Miami. Probably not Fort Lauderdale. Probably not any of the places where the Everglades had to be drained in order to create uh like cul de sac McMansion. 

Max Fisher: Right. 

Erin Ryan: Places. 

Max Fisher: Yeah. 

Erin Ryan: Um. But something that always strikes me like in the aftermath of major weather events like the hurricanes that we just saw and, you know, even Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Irma any any of the big ones, Maria, um there’s always this drumbeat among people that live there of rebuild, rebuild, rebuild. And there’s always something that kind of feels smug about the push back that that gets. People who don’t live in those places and didn’t just lose everything, trying to point out that, well, maybe there are just places that shouldn’t be rebuilt. Like it seems like the finger wagers are spitting in the face of human resilience. 

Max Fisher: Well, okay. So what does human resilience to the effects of climate change look like when 40% of the country lives on the coasts? 

Erin Ryan: Yeah, I mean, that’s such a good question. And, you know, there is something to be said for like human resilience, rebuild. Like we’re not going to let this get us down to be like, maybe we should let it get us down. Like, maybe we’re wasting our energy doing this. Maybe we’re needlessly subjecting ourselves to trauma after trauma and loss after loss. And maybe at some point it’s time to get out of dodge. 

Max Fisher: Maybe we’re not quite at the stage of Mad Max mass migration from the coasts just yet, because the problem is not that the coasts are going to be uninhabitable by human life. The problem is just how do you balance the actuarial sheets for insurance companies that don’t want to insure climate prone regions and the premiums are going to go up. Um. You mentioned Louisiana because you mentioned Katrina. They, like Florida, introduced a public insurance backstop. It’s called FAIR, fair access to insurance requirements. And the plan seems to be–

Erin Ryan: Okay. Wait a second. FAIR?

Max Fisher: I know is both in the acronym and the–

Erin Ryan: You can’t use, it’s like in Twin Peaks, how Bob means beware of Bob. [laughter] You can’t–

Max Fisher: It’s a very David Lynchian–

Erin Ryan: Yeah. 

Max Fisher: –name. Yes, I agree with you. Um. Well, despite the problem with the name, the plan has proven wildly popular because so many insurers are fleeing Louisiana. Like a lot of states, enrollment tripled just between 2021 and 2022. But that means the price the plan has gone up because so many people are now on it. And there’s concern about whether the plan is appropriately pricing its premiums. So it will be solvent because it’s run by the government. So they are accountable to voters. And voters want low premiums, of course. But is that going to be enough to pay for any sort of catastrophic damage? 

Erin Ryan: Right. Let’s go back to the health insurance example that you mentioned before. Like let’s say that there was a health insurance plan that we are all able to buy into. And there are a bunch of people that were like a skydiving association that wanted to buy into the health insurance plan and make sure that we had 100% coverage for neck breaking injuries that result from falling out of an airplane. And it was like really, really expensive. And we were kind of like, hey, you know, we’re kind of tired of you, could you stop skydiving? 

Max Fisher: So this actually happened in the ’60s. The federal government set up the National Flood Insurance Program, which is a national federally run insurance plan for flooding. And critics said for a long time that the premiums were too cheap because, of course, it was being set up by lawmakers who are elected by voters. So they wanted to set low premiums um and that that encouraged not it wasn’t just a problem with the plan being solvent, but that it was effectively subsidizing people doing the equivalent of skydiving, which is moving to very flood prone areas like in Louisiana and Florida in huge numbers because the federal government was basically subsidizing cheaper insurance. So a difficult but necessary political reality as states get more and more involved in these kind of backstops of, you know, insurance plans of last resorts for consumers. You talked about Florida’s public insurance for the insurers. More and more states are looking into these, but the really tricky thing is going to be pricing those appropriately. So the plans are actually solvent, even though, of course, nobody is going to want to pay that upfront. And there is also a tricky question if it’s a big state where some people live in the coasts and other people don’t. How many people who chose not to live on the beach in Florida should be subsidizing the people who did choose to live there? And that is a tough question because it’s easy to conjure up in your mind, just like, you know, oh the retired grandparent who didn’t think about the effects of climate change and someone else would pick up the tab. But huge numbers of people live in a lot of these coastal communities, including a lot of lower income communities where it’s not so easy to say, okay, everybody moves to Montana now. 

Erin Ryan: Mm hmm. Yeah. I mean, there’s got to be a breaking point, but we haven’t hit it yet. Like, I was kind of struck by the tension between what people say about how they consider climate change when they’re choosing a place to live and where people are actually moving to. Like people are moving to Phoenix in droves. 

Max Fisher: Yeah. 

Erin Ryan: That place is uninhabitable. Like you can’t go outside during the day for like four months of the year. Um. And the places that are being hit the hardest by climate change are also places that people want to live, like in the U.S.. Let’s hear from Mark one more time. 

[clip of Mark Friedlander] Local and state governments need to look at the reality of allowing real estate to be built in certain areas. How many major hurricanes does it take to strike one area before you decide this is really a bad idea to have such dense housing and commercial development in a location? The bottom line is there’s a demand to live in these areas. That’s why most governments are not acting on this, because people want to live walking distance to the beach. Oh I want to live a block or two or right on the beach. This is what people want. What happens after a catastrophe is people come in, invest and build bigger and more expensive. They don’t say, we’re not going to rebuild. It’s the opposite. They say we’re going to build bigger, more expensive, more valuable properties. So it’s this vicious cycle. 

Erin Ryan: You know, it kind of reminds me of that scene in Arrested Development when Tobias tells Lindsay that something is a terrible idea that never works, but it might work for us. 

[clip of character Lindsay Fünke on Arrested Development] Did it work for those people? 

[clip of character Tobias Fünke on Arrested Development] No, it never does. I mean, these people somehow delude themselves into thinking it might, but [laugh] but it might work for us. [laughter]

Max Fisher: It’s truly a group that works in so many situations. 

Erin Ryan: 100%. 

Max Fisher: In American politics. 

Erin Ryan: Yup. 

Max Fisher: And, you know, one thing is for sure, climate change is no longer some hypothetical future problem or a problem just for people in certain areas. Stuff like the insurance market, it’s a today problem and one for everyone. But you’ve got to hope that gets some red state support for continuing the climate work that we’ve been seeing under the Biden administration. And look at that Erin. We made it about the election. 

Erin Ryan: We did it. 

Max Fisher: And on that, let’ us go out with some really helpful weather and climate advice from one of the candidates in the election, Donald Trump. 

[clip of Donald Trump] I just want to thank all of the incredible men and women who have done such a great job in helping with Florence. This is a tough hurricane, one of the wettest we’ve ever seen from the standpoint of water. [laughter] [music break]

Max Fisher: How We Got Here is written and hosted by me, Max Fisher and Erin Ryan. 

Erin Ryan: Our producer is Emma Ilick-Frank. 

Max Fisher: Evan Sutton mixes and masters the show. 

Erin Ryan: Jordan Cantor sound engineers the show, audio support from Kyle Seglin, Charlotte Landes and Vasilis Fotopoulos. 

Max Fisher: Production support from Leo Duran, Raven Yamamoto, and Adriene Hill. 

[music break]