Episodes
In today’s episode, storyteller Radu Stochita examines plastic reuse in Romanian culture through the lens of his own family, contrasting historical recycling practices under communism with the modern-day green consumerism sweeping the country and world. Through candid interviews with loved ones and community members, Radu explores the obstacles facing sustainability in Romania, and challenges the onus of individual responsibility.
And, for our weekly bonus episode, Inherited host Shaylyn Martos sits down with storyteller Radu Stochita. Radu examined plastic reuse in Romanian culture in Season 3, Episode 6: “Bag of Bags.” Together, they talk about Radu’s process of interviewing his family, environmental responsibility, and the need for data-focused climate journalism.
For more information about our podcast, head to our website at yr.media/inherited, and follow us on the socials @inheritedpod.
S3E6: “BAG OF BAGS,” BY RADU STOCHITA
TRANSCRIPT
HOST SHAYLYN MARTOS: Before we utilized the terms “ecology” and “environmentalism,” cultures around the world practiced recycling and waste reduction. With the rise of plastic consumption, people in countries like Romania are witnessing the effects of negligent environmental policies more than ever before.
Recycling was a tradition in Romanian households before the communist revolution. Glass bottles, yogurt containers, damaged pots and bowls — each presented an opportunity for reuse, time and time again.
But when plastic is everywhere, and most of it single-use, how do we maintain the sustainable practices of older generations?
Håfa adai, and welcome to Inherited — we share the work of young audio storytellers, hoping to uplift a new generation of climate advocacy. I’m your season host, shaylyn martos. This is season 3, episode 6: “Bag of Bags.”
This episode’s storyteller, reporter and audio producer Radu Stochita, grew up with his family’s bag of bags — their collection of multi-use plastic containers for everything from groceries to P.E. uniforms. Today, Radu shares conversations with experts and family on Romanian traditions honoring the versatility of our materials.
Here’s Radu Stochita with “Bag of Bags”.
“BAG OF BAGS,” BY STORYTELLER RADU STOCHITA
RADU STOCHITA: Growing up between a small post-industrial town in southern Romania, and a smaller village, my parents and I would save old jars to use as drinking glasses, yogurt containers for flower pots, and anytime we’d come home from the store with a plastic bag, which was rare, we’d stuff it right into our “bag of bags”, a single plastic bag to hold all others.
My family did not have the language of ecology, recycling, or reusing. Instead, we did what we thought was normal: reuse any jar you buy, ideally by pickling cucumbers, or unripe tomatoes for winter. And when you needed a bag, you grabbed one from the bag of bags.
But nowadays, plastic is everywhere – from the lids we use to cover our coffees to the plastic bags in which we get our groceries. Meanwhile, environmental campaigns led by corporations shift the responsibility onto us consumers, as the ones having the power to enact change. And sure, while individual action is helpful to move towards a greener world, true change will come when corporations are held accountable for their push of plastic onto the general public.
[intense synth music]
[news anchors speak about plastic waste, overlapping]
[new music fades in]
ION STOCHITA, in Romanian, translated by Radu: There were plastic bags with international bands, with artists and various companies imprinted on them. It was expensive buying one, and what we used to do was to patch it on the inside to last longer.
RADU: This is my father, Ion, a retired forest ranger. Since quitting the world of labor, he's joined the local university, where he studies tourism geography.
My family, like many others, prized every possession we had. A plastic bag offered endless opportunities for reuse: we carried gifts in it for cousins’ celebrations, my physical education uniform while at school, as well as basketballs, books and groceries. My dad would bring home cheese from the shepherds in the mountains in an old Marlboro plastic bag. The bag was at least ten years old, and he used it long past when cigarette companies were allowed to advertise in Romania.
It reeked of intense salty cheese, yet my parents never threw it out. Instead, they gave it a good wash and let it dry in the sun. It was embarrassing at one point, going to class with this smelly bag in tow, just because my parents forgot to pack my tracksuit in the other, cleaner ones.
ION STOCHITA: We would get rags and add a protective layer on the inside. We were very proud of our bags and the same applied for bottles. Whenever we had a plastic bottle - which was a rarity - we would keep it forever.
RADU: Eventually, green consumerism found its way to Romania. It posed consumption of new, so-called “green” products as a one-size-fits-all solution, ignoring all the previous practices of people like my dad, with his Marlboro bag. Pop-up stores began selling overpriced soap, helping fade consumers’ memories of the times when our grandparents made soap from excess pork fat, combined with caustic soda.
[soft music starts]
Green consumerists called their movement a revolution, ready to rescue us from the dirt. They ignored the practices Romanians have had for decades, and instead persuaded us to spend money on new things. Maybe our bag of bags and old pickle jars were too simple for the lofty world of reduce, reuse, and recycle.
But my parents and grandparents, and our many neighbors, have kept many of their old practices alive: they continue to reuse the same plastic bag and the same bottles, and they never throw away a newspaper that can be later used as a gift-wrap.
Sadly, these practices have become harder and harder to maintain as Romania changes. On a global scale, petrochemical companies have funneled excess drilled fossil fuels, like petroleum and methane gas, into an explosion of single-use plastic.
[warped news clip]
Plastic is more ubiquitous than ever in Romania and recycling programs can’t do much about the waste it produces. Our government can’t keep up, my family and my neighbors can’t keep up. We need a much bigger, perhaps country-wide, bag of bags to match pace with waste.
ION: There was no notion of ecology amongst my parents or your mother’s. They did not learn how to preserve the environment, how to not pollute it. Occasionally they threw trash next to the river or directly dumped it into the river, but nothing to the scale of what we see nowadays. Plastic was also just not available, only after the communist revolution in 1989 we started getting more of it on the market.
[low hip hop beat starts]
In his lifetime, my father has seen the shift from a time when simple practices of reusing bags and jars was sufficient, to now – when the increase in plastic use and waste in Romania has surpassed what people can reuse. Like my father said, there was a huge increase in plastic in the country after the communist revolution. Big western companies all of a sudden had new markets to flood with their plastic wares. Additionally, the movement to preserve and protect the environment faces several hurdles in Romania, a country where, at least in my observation, conspiracy theories and direct climate-denialism have reached rampant levels.
[music fades out]
RADU: This is Stefania Gartu, an up and coming journalist and ecologist activist, who documents environmental issues in Romania. Stefania is also a graduate of Sociology from the University of Bucharest.
STEFANIA GARTU, in Romanian, translated by Radu: Education is lacking of course and this emphasis on recycling as a solution is, is annoying and does not represent a clear solution. Instead of creating a circular economy that allows us to reuse, to recycle and to value every part of our ecosystem equally, we are embracing solutions that were not designed to help us.
RADU: Our tried and true practices of reusing materials haven’t been able to keep up with the amount of waste our lives now create. And just peddling recycling as an easy solution isn’t a valid replacement for the way my family used to reuse plastic. The plastic just keeps coming. Those cheeses that my dad used to carry in his Marlboro bag from the shepherds up the mountain – are now sold in markets, wrapped in layers of plastic. Same with the tomatoes and cucumbers we used to pickle in our leftover jars. Plus, infrastructure and education haven’t caught up, leaving many people without solutions to dispose of waste that they can’t reuse.
ION: We just produce too much trash. There is plastic for everything we buy. It was not like this in the past. Now, I go downstairs, you know, to the store in the hood, and I might ask for some parsley. I am trained now to be quicker than the shop vendor and tell her that I do not want a plastic bag for a bloody parsley. I have two hands to carry, I can keep it easy. You see, the solution is always to either just throw it down the river or just burn it, there is simply no education about the consequences that derive from our actions.
[light violin music starts]
RADU: Over the years, I’ve taken numerous walks down near the river that passes south of our property. Oftentimes I had to jump over plastic heaps, rotten furniture, metal scraps barring my path. When the river overflows, the objects get carried downstream onto the next house, crossing through other properties, leaving a permanent mark of the trash we created.
[crumpling trash noises]
It’s common to blame this situation on the individual, maybe the elderly person in the village who throws their trash in the river because they, quote, “don’t know any better” or “don’t care”. But like the causes of global climate change, these piles of plastic I see by the river in my village are a deep, systemic problem.
According to Eurostat, 34.4% of Romanians are at risk of poverty or social exclusion, the highest percentage for any country in the European Union. For those that have to think whether or not food will be on the table at dinnertime, knowing how and where to dispose of new excess plastic waste is probably not the first thing on their mind.
RADU: A lot of the frustration around the plastic waste piling up is placed on the government. Beneficial change from above feels like an imaginary tale to many. Only 21% of Romanians have faith in the government, a number that has been slowly decreasing over the years.
To understand the lack of faith in government and politics, one has to go back to the collapse of communism, that promised prosperity, and instead brought a crisis.
[MIDROLL BREAK]
[speaking in Romanian]
RADU: This is my mom, Elena.
ELENA STOCHITA: Consumption before was very different than what you are used to now. The way we shopped, the things we had access to were very different. Plastic was hard to come by, it did not even exist, maybe once in a while you would find some products wrapped in plastic.
I don’t remember any besides those bunny-shaped candy containers my father would bring that had chocolates inside. He purchased them at the factory store and would bring them home sometimes, but besides, I don’t remember plastic.
RADU: Nowadays, my parents bring home milk in five-year old plastic bottles that they cannot let go of. With every piece of trash they put in the bin, a feeling of guilt washes over my family. It is unfortunate to want to eat a piece of candy, a croissant or some wafers – which I absolutely adore – and leave so much trash behind. We find it impossible to drink a soda and then throw the bottle out, since that plastic can be used in various ways.
The fossil fuel industry might argue that the plastic we put in the trash gets recycled, yet the truth is far from that claim. Globally, only 9% of plastic waste is ever recycled. Instead, the majority of it ends up in a landfill, an incinerator, or our environment.
In the recycling of plastic, energy gets consumed, quite often the plastic gets shipped away from the country to East Asia, where they recycle it or simply dump it on a pile of land. And what do Romanians get in exchange for this outsourcing? Statistically, we just look better on paper, since we are not the ones disposing of the trash, but in reality, nature does not forget. The plastic that we throw away must end up somewhere.
ION: We grew up like that, everything was reused at all times. Plastic was hard to come by, and we did not feel like we needed premade objects for every little task we had to do around the house.
RADU: That may explain why around our house one finds a bunch of yogurt pots that have been cleaned and in which flowers are planted, or why the cats eat from a bowl that in the past we used to serve soup out of. Whenever I go on a trip, my parents ask if they should pack me some food in one of those yogurt containers.
[Romanian]
RADU: This is Dan Barbulescu, a founding member and executive director of Parcul National Vacaresti. Parcul is the first urban natural park of Romania, and the biggest green space in all of Bucharest.
DAN: I was fairly young when communism collapsed, but I remember how my parents reused everything. We still do, we have a bag of bags at home, a box of boxes, a box of bottles. Oh, I remember that we had those campaigns to recycle, to bring glass, metal sheets and anything one could find around the house to school.
RADU: Dan told me that in fact the recycling efforts by the communists were part of a greater economic framework, rather than amplified by a collective sense of environmental protection. The Cold War dynamics imposed a competition between what was left and right of the Iron Curtain. The communist states, though having a different economic system than the Western states, had to develop their economies which were in part ravaged by the war. To do so meant using and reusing every last bit of material that one found around: an empty glass bottle was not to be disposed of, but repurposed inside the economy, creating jobs for the one working in the recycling factory, and easing our dependence on foreign nations for economic development.
ELENA: Yes, there were many campaigns as such. A couple of times a year we had a quota of paper products, of metal ones to bring to school. It was a shared sense of responsibility, each one of us putting in effort to clean the streets, their houses, their neighborhoods. I am not nostalgic for those times, but I remember it clearly.
RADU: The practice still exists in many countries, in the United States people hunt for aluminum cans in order to turn in at the local can disposal station. In Romania, the practice, once applied all throughout the economy, is now done only by individual supermarkets. It’s a piecemeal solution that still makes people feel like it’s their responsibility, or their fault, for the amount of waste produced.
Over time, the national recycling program was abandoned. My father claimed that once the transition to free market capitalism commenced, and with it the increase of plastic, what belonged in the past was supposed to be left there. No transition was perfect, and certain elements from communist times were eventually brought back, but recycling facilities and programs started disappearing, augmented by a cost-cutting mentality.
DAN: And not only that, but you could recycle almost everywhere. Where there was a store, there was a collection point for materials. When we had too many metal scraps in the house, we would bring them to the village store and they will later take care of it.
NOW + FUTURE
DAN: The solution of green consumerism is a false solution. I hear it everywhere and they think that solely replacing internal combustion engine cars with electric ones will solve everything. The EV is seen as the future’s car, an anomaly if you ask me, because our cities, I mean the European ones, are not designed with the car in mind. We need public transportation.
What we need for the future is an ecological agricultural model since the current state of food production has one of the most negative impacts on the natural ecosystems. We could borrow from our grandparents, look at the way they treated the soil.
[Romanian]
RADU: Here’s Stefania again.
STEFANIA: Yes, we recycle, we make it good, but most of the plastic waste still ends up somewhere in nature. In other countries, you know, we don't know about the waste colonialism that Romania also faces, especially other countries in Southeast Asia and Africa, maybe from South America. It's a joke of our time: yes, let's recycle, but when can we make a circular system that actually works, not the current one?
[hopeful music comes in]
RADU: Stefania’s hope for a system that works was present in all conversations I have had. Despite their criticisms of the present, everyone I talked to imagined that a better future is possible.
We must reflect on the past, bring back what was buried on the premise of being antique. Bring back the reusable, bring back the bag of bags, a circular economy, and hold the powerful accountable. Take those individual struggles, and move towards a bigger cause.
I remember that Marlboro bag I used to carry the tracksuit for my P.E. class in, and think often about the jars my family and I would use for pickling. In the current day and age, we emphasize comfort.
While my individual ability to act is limited, that should not stop us from taking matters into our own hands, and striving for a better future. To make that happen, we must come together, and shift the paradigm, from blaming the individual, to identifying structural issues at play, like the false promise of green consumerism. We can’t buy our way out of this crisis.
OUTRO
[fade in shaylyn’s theme]
Hey everyone, it’s shaylyn again. Thank you so much for listening to “Bag of Bags” by Radu Stochita.
That’s all for this episode of Inherited, and we’ll return next week with an all-new episode featuring another impactful climate storyteller.
[fade in synth theme]
And don’t forget! This Friday we’ll drop a craft talk bonus episode with Radu on environmental responsibility, and the need for more data-focused climate journalism.
That’s all for this episode of Inherited, we’ll return next week with an all new episode featuring another impactful climate storyteller. There’s more in store for season 3 of Inherited, so make sure to tune in Wednesdays, wherever you get your podcasts.
CREDITS
Inherited is brought to you by YR Media, a national network of young journalists and artists creating content for this generation. We’re distributed by Critical Frequency, a women-run podcast network founded by journalists.
The story “Bag of Bags” featured in today's episode, was written, produced, and voiced by Radu Stochita, an Inherited season 3 storyteller. I’m shaylyn martos, your Season 3 host, and producer. The co-creators and senior producers of Inherited are Georgia Wright and Jules Bradley. Our audio engineer is James Riley, and our audio engineering fellow is Christian Romo. Dominique French and Nyge Turner provided production support, and our intern is Esther Omolola. Our Executive Producer is Amy Westervelt from Critical Frequency. YR’s Director of Podcasting is Sam Choo, and our Sr. Director of Podcasting and Partnerships is Rebecca Martin.
Original music for this episode created by these young musicians at YR Media:
Christian Romo, Anders Knutstad, Noah Holt, Jacob Armenta, Chaz Whitley, Michael Diaz, Sean Luciano Galarza, and Jay Mejia Cuenca. Music direction by Oliver “Kuya” Rodriguez and Maya Drexler. Other music licensed from APM Music.
Art for this episode created by YR’s Marjerrie Masicat. Art direction by Brigido Bautista. Michella Rivera is our web designer. Project management from Eli Arbreton. YR Media’s Creative Director is Pedro Vega, Jr. Special thanks to Maggie Taylor, Jazmyn Burton, Shavonne Graham, Donielle Conley, and Kyra Kyles.
Please throw us a rating or maybe even a review on the Apple Podcast app – it goes a LONG way towards getting these stories out there! You can also follow us on Instagram and Twitter @inheritedpod. If you want to learn more about our show and this season’s cohort of storytellers, head to our website at yr.media/inherited.
Saina Ma’ase’ for listening, and see ya next Wednesday!
BONUS EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
S3E6 BONUS: “Interview with Radu”
Friday 8/25/23
Shaylyn: Hey everyone, you're listening to Inherited – a sound-rich, solutions focused youth storytelling podcast about the climate crisis. I'm Shaylyn Martos, your season 3 host.
In episode 6, storyteller Radu Stochita critiqued the environmental policies and trends in Romania, post-the Communist Revolution, in his story “Bag of Bags.” He interviewed some experts on traditional recycling practices: his parents.
We linked up about halfway through production to talk about objectivity, and how science data can be daunting but illuminating.
Radu: My name is Radu Stochita. Some people know me only as “Stoch.” It's a nickname from my last name. He/him is my pronouns, and the title is… storyteller. Journalist. I don't know, anything goes really!
Shaylyn: So you've done some audio work and podcasting through college, but this is your first time doing podcasting professionally. So what's it like to know that this time you're going to get paid for it and you have the support of your producers instead of just doing it by yourself?
Radu: Well, the team is amazing. It's way more understanding than I would have expected any journalistic team to be. I've worked with teams in the past and they're, like, deadly. You know, they said they set high deadlines. They're not really understanding and understand why. So it's how they call it. It's a highly stressed, high-stress, I think, profession that we choose. And once you find those little oasis or like, you know, those little zens, those groups where you can actually I think they give us you can basically, you know, take your time and do it and their understanding and then they respect if an emergency comes and, you know, it's it's been beautiful.
I mean, the paying part of it is lovely. I mean, the first gigs and journalistic world, regardless if it's all your video or writings, are most likely to be unpaid. And it takes a long time, I think, for someone to actually get money and get recognition and get experience. I was fortunate enough to do that. I would say two years ago, maybe for the first time or one year ago for a podcast, I've never been paid. So this will be my first time and it's great. I'm investing the money into more equipment, actually. I'm not sitting on it.
Shaylyn: At this point, you know, we're still in the production process. You still need to track your script. And I took a look and I read over it. I even felt a little bit guilty thinking about how I've contributed to green consumerism. And I feel like maybe some people are going to be a little butthurt. So how does that make you feel? Does that kind of drive the story for you?
Radu: Yeah. Partially because I still believe in agency, like in the individual powers, I would say, for change. And I think that if you made me have the chance to choose between, I don't know, a paper straw in the plastic stroke, maybe go with a paper straw. But that's, that's kind of irrelevant at the end of the day. I think that's what they want us to believe. You know, they really – and by they, I mean the big corporations and and those corporate boards, governments – they just want to focus all the blame and the responsibility on the individual. To the extent that you go into a store and you feel bad for buying something that's plastic wrapped. And I feel the same way, trust me.
But like, imagine I go with my girlfriend on a date or something and she expects me to buy her a box of chocolates, whatever is plastic. Am I going to stop buying that? No. You know, of course they come up with a different gift. But maybe if she really likes those chocolates, I'm still going to buy for her. And I think there are other avenues and maybe other people. And by people, I mean entities such as corporations and government should be the ones that actually, you know, make sure those countries do not end up in plastic boxes anymore, where the lobbies are so high that it just puts so much pressure, I think, on the individual.
And at the end of the day, I think some people, while we might be able to think about it, are like poor people that have no chance to ever think about this. You know, what they really have to think is I have to put food on the table. Do I really care if it comes packaged in plastic or paper? It's irrelevant. And it should be to them because they're striving for survival and someone is putting the blame on them. Oh, you haven't bought my, I don't know, over the counter granola or something. You know that if you really come up with an argument, you're lacking empathy. In my opinion.
Shaylyn: It's really, really difficult for a lot of people to avoid that, to avoid contributing to either green consumerism or just capitalism in general, and how that is affecting our food and everything else around us. So I feel reading the script that your parents are like the glue in this story. And so one thing I wanted to bring up is this ever-shifting debate of objectivity in journalism, and how your parents’ perspectives and your experiences shaped this episode. So I'm wondering what it's like to report on your own family. And you, as someone who's had experience in journalism before, did that kind of occur to you? Have you had issues with that? Like what does that feel like for you?
Radu: Well, it's lovely. I think the idea wasn't that I will not write for a news agency, you know, just like a reporter reporting on the ground in the South. So I allowed myself a lot of subjectivity, which I've done in the past, as well as on the first time I included my parents in a journalistic piece. I've I think I might have started or this might be a later article where I was documented a strike my mom was taking part in, and they interviewed my mother for an article, and then I wrote an entire article, a profile of my father for a Romanian magazine describing how he ended up going to college because my dad is a retired forest keeper and he at the age of 58, he went back to school. He never went to college, but he started college education at that age. So I wrote a big piece on that.
But regardless of that was the question of objectivity. It's a very high skill dance that people need to master quite early on because there is an obsession almost to a point with this objectivity in journalism, which I think once you get enough experience, you realize that it doesn't fully exist. Like, yes, you shouldn't come up with facts that you have not witnessed or heard of or anything, and you should double check everything you see.
But I think one of the lessons I learned in journalism is it's not about what you say is important, but what you don't say is also very important. So we can claim that someone is more objective than me because he reported on all my parents' stories about not being a family member, but he left out so many other things that I might have included. And I think that that's a little dance. I was saying that people need to master or get their head around. And honestly, my journalistic experience has been, I would say, quite inclusive of this notion. And everyone I've worked with really has understood from early on that or told me that, you know, we don't really expect objectivity of you. What does it mean?
Shaylyn: I'm glad that we can have this conversation about objectivity because like you said, as you move through this industry, you start to understand that like, yeah, everyone's identities and everyone's experiences do change their perspective. So I just really like to know, have you grown through this experience working with Inherited? Have you found some things you want to work on? You said that you're going to get some more equipment after this, which is awesome.
Radu: It's a bit difficult self reflecting, of course, but going with a different medium that I have not been fairly familiar with exposed me, I would say, to a different way of communicating with people and basically adjusting a story to all the it's something when you write it and it's something going, record it. That's what I realized took me a while. So I think the style and second editing the the producing team, yeah, it's been a lovely, good experience working with all of you guys. And not only that, but you know, it teaches you a lot about the way you would like to work with other people in the future. I would say, yeah.
Shaylyn: So what advice, Radu, would you give to young climate journalists that are just coming into that space?
Radu: I think climate storytelling, it's interesting to think about. I would say there is a lot of space for people and there's a lot of space for people to grow and report on stories, especially coming from areas that there hasn't really been much reporting done on. We get a lot of stories. Let's say, for example, right now from New York with the smog or the haze, the heat that's over the city, you know, the sky is looking like they're coming out of Half-Life want the video game. But I think what we don't really see are like climate stories from countries such as Romania.
Shaylyn: For for context to listeners, Radu and I are talking just the day after New York experience having the worst air quality that they've ever had in history, the sky turned red like it did here in the Bay Area due to forest fires. So just a little context on that for people.
Radu: And there's a lot of space here, I would say. I know in the beginning it looks daunting because there is a lot of science behind it and it is a craft and I'm a bit of a perfectionist at heart. And I do my research and I love researching and I think it is necessary. I think you can write a story and just assume that you know things just because you think plastic is bad, you know, you should really understand how plastic works and how the composition of it works. Before we actually dive into writing a story, we need more people to actually be to understand how to look at financial data regarding climate change. We have a journalist in the United States for sure that look at it and do a fantastic job. You know, they track corporations that look at their statements to look at their 1000 K forms or however they're called in in other countries don't really have. And I think that will be interesting for people to look at.
There is something about data, about legal arguments and about finance that really can build a very strong case, you know, that might be picked up as a policy paper that later can actually influence politics. Climate news are very important and I don't think we give them enough credit in many, many places, like I think the United States is a beautiful seat. You know, big publications take them very seriously. Like I think outside gets a bit difficult, especially outside of the English press. What I would say is that if you I don't know if you're from a country where you know that the climate reporting in your country is not done to the extent that you love to see, I would say maybe try to learn from the outside and see what you can bring in as well. Keep an open mind to it. Don't neglect climate journalism. It will be everywhere. We'll talk about it more than ever. I was in New Delhi for a couple of weeks, a couple of week, a couple of months ago. You are burning alive at 44, 50 degrees Celsius on the street. You really, truly feel like you're melting into the asphalt. If there is like a climate emergency that we don't feel it yet in Romania doesn't mean we'll be protected forever, you know, So I would think get a head start on it. That's my take.
Shaylyn: Cool, we are nearly done. I wanted to ask if you wanted to plug anything. What would you like us to look out for? For you. And if you don't have anything, you can't. You can just tell me and I won't include that question.
Radu: I mean, I'm excited to report more, I would say, on climate and labor stories. There will be more from me in the Romanian press in the coming months. I'm working a lot more on this and I'm looking to add some more financial data. I would say that's what I'll be doing. Wonderful months. Yeah, I think I think as I said, I think it's necessary and I think I can build a very strong argument about what I really want to do in the next months. We are very close to my house there.
They're trying to build some small nuclear reactors. It's quite an interesting project. It is funded mostly by I'm not sure if it is the American government but somewhat so minded in the United States. They just demolished a coal plant very close to my house ten kilometers away that was defunct for many years. And they want to replace it with a nuclear reactor. And the problem is that the nuclear reactor is placed next to people's homes. And not only that, but it's placed like ten kilometers away for like six miles, let's say, away from my house and six miles away from a big urban center. So I think I want to cause some trouble. I don't know, just want to stir the pot, see how it goes. Yeah, I'm kind of annoyed by it.
Shaylyn: Good luck on that. Like, make some trouble. I love hearing that. Well, thank you so much, Radu. I really appreciate it.
Shaylyn: Lovely. Lovely. I'm so glad. And I cannot wait to hear your episode. Thank you for joining us for this bonus episode. Season three of Inherited continues Wednesdays, wherever you get your podcasts. Next week, storyteller Vi Pham shares the voices of young Pasifika climate activists working to combat Australia's restrictive immigration laws.
Inherited is brought to you by YR Media, a national network of young journalists and artists creating content for this generation. We’re distributed by Critical Frequency, a podcast network founded by women journalists. For more information about our show team and storytellers, visit our website at why yr.media/inherited. See you next week.
S3E6 BONUS: “Interview with Radu”
SHAYLYN MARTOS: Hey everyone, you're listening to Inherited – a sound-rich, solutions-focused, youth storytelling podcast about the climate crisis. I'm Shaylyn Martos, your season 3 host.
In episode 6, storyteller Radu Stochita critiqued the environmental policies and trends in Romania, post-the Communist Revolution. In his story “Bag of Bags,” Radu interviewed some experts on traditional recycling practices – his parents.
We linked up about halfway through production to talk about objectivity, and how science data can be daunting, but illuminating.
RADU: My name is Radu Stochita. Some people know me as “Stoch.” It's a nickname from my last name. Uh, He/him is pronouns, and the title is… storyteller. Journalist. Anything, anything goes really!
SHAYLYN: So you've done some audio work and podcasting through college, but this is your first time doing podcasting professionally. So what's it like to know that this time you're going to get paid for it and you have the support of your producers instead of just doing it by yourself?
RADU: Well, the team is amazing. It's way more understanding than I would have expected any journalistic team to be. I've worked with teams in the past and they're, they’re like, deadly. You know, they said they set high deadlines. They're not really understanding, and I understand why. So it's how they call it. It's a highly stressed, high-stress, I think, profession that we choose. And once you find those little oasis or like, you know, those little zens, those groups where you can actually, I think take it as you can, basically, you know, take your time and do it and their understanding and then they respect it if an emergency comes and, you know, it's it's been beautiful.
I mean, the paying part of it is lovely. I mean, the first gigs in the journalistic world, regardless if it's audio or video or writings, are most likely to be unpaid. And it takes a long time, I think, for someone to actually get money and get recognition and get experience. I was fortunate enough to do that, I would say, two years ago, maybe for the first time, or one year ago. For a podcast, I've never been paid. So this will be my first time and it's great. I'm investing the money into more equipment, actually. I'm not sitting on it.
SHAYLYN: At this point, you know, we're still in the production process. You still need to track your script. And I took a look, and I read over it. I even felt a little bit guilty thinking about how I've contributed to green consumerism. And I feel like maybe some people are going to be a little butthurt. So how does that make you feel? Does that kind of drive the story for you?
RADU: Yeah. Partially, because I still believe in agency, like in the individual powers, I would say, to change. And I think that if you might have the chance to choose between, I don't know, a paper straw and a plastic straw, maybe go with a paper straw. But that's, that's kind of irrelevant at the end of the day. I think that's what they want us to believe. You know, they really – and by they, I mean the big corporations and and those corporate-bought governments – they just want to focus all the blame and the responsibility on the individual. To the extent that you go into a store and you feel bad for buying something that's plastic wrapped. And I feel the same way, trust me.
But like, imagine I go with my girlfriend on a date or something and she expects me to buy her a box of chocolates, whatever, it’s plastic. Am I going to stop buying that? No. You know, yeah, of course I can come up with a different gift. But maybe if she really likes those chocolates, I'm still going to buy for her. And I think there are other avenues and maybe other people. And by people, I mean entities, such as corporations and governments, should be the ones that actually, you know, make sure those candies do not end up in plastic boxes anymore. But the lobbies are so high that it just puts so much pressure, I think, on the individual.
And at the end of the day, I think some people, while we might be able to think about it, they’re like, poor people that have no chance to ever think about this. You know, what they really have to think is, I have to put food on the table. Do I really care if it comes packaged in plastic or paper? It's irrelevant. And it should be to them, because they're striving for survival and someone is putting the blame on them, “Oh, you haven't bought my, I don't know, over the counter granola,” or something. You know that if you really come up with an argument, you're lacking empathy, in my opinion.
SHAYLYN: It's really, really difficult for a lot of people to avoid that, to avoid contributing to either green consumerism or just capitalism in general, and how that is affecting our food and everything else around us. So I feel reading the script that your parents are like the glue in this story. And so one thing I wanted to bring up is this ever-shifting debate of objectivity in journalism, and how your parents’ perspectives and your experiences shaped this episode. So I'm wondering what it's like to report on your own family. And you, as someone who's had experience in journalism before, did that kind of occur to you? Have you had issues with that? Like what does that feel like for you?
RADU: Well, it's lovely. I think the idea was that I will not write for a news agency, you know, just like a reporter reporting on the ground in the South. So I allowed myself a lot of subjectivity, which I've done in the past, as well. It’s not the first time I included my parents in a journalistic piece. I've I think I might have started, or this might be a later article where I was documented a strike my mom was taking part in, and they interviewed my mother for an article, and then I wrote an entire article, a profile of my father for a Romanian magazine describing how he ended up going to college because my dad is a retired forest keeper and he at the age of 58, he went back to school. He never went to college, but he started college education at that age. So I wrote a big piece on that.
But regardless of that was the question of objectivity. It's a very high skill dance that people need to master quite early on, because there is an obsession, almost, to a point with this objectivity in journalism, which I think once you get enough experience, you realize that it doesn't fully exist. Like, yes, you shouldn't come up with facts that you have not witnessed or heard of or anything, and you should double check everything you see.
But I think one of the lessons I learned in journalism is, it's not about – what you say is important, but what you don't say is also very important. So we can claim that someone is more objective than me, because he reported on my parents' stories, not being a family member, but he left out so many other things that I might have included. And I think that that's the little dance, I was saying, that people need to master, or get their head around. And honestly, my journalistic experience has been, I would say, quite inclusive of this notion. And everyone I've worked with really has understood from early on that, or told me that, you know, we don't really expect objectivity of you. What does it mean?
SHAYLYN: I'm glad that we can have this conversation about objectivity because like you said, as you move through this industry, you start to understand that like, yeah, everyone's identities and everyone's experiences do change their perspective.
[MIDROLL BREAK - 7:24]
SHAYLYN: So I’d just really like to know, have you grown through this experience working with Inherited? Have you found some things you want to work on? You said that you're going to get some more equipment after this, which is awesome.
RADU: It's a bit difficult self reflecting, of course, but playing with a different medium that I have not been fairly familiar with exposed me, I would say, to a different way of communicating with people, and basically adjusting a story to audio. It's something when you write it, and it's something when you record it. That's what I realized. Took me a while. So I think that’s – and second the editing, the the producing team, yeah, it's been lovely, a good experience working with all of you guys. And not only that, but you know, it teaches you a lot about the way you would like to work with other people in the future, I would say, yeah.
SHAYLYN: So what advice, Radu, would you give to young climate journalists that are just coming into that space?
RADU: I think climate storytelling, it's interesting to think about. I would say there is a lot of space for people, and there's a lot of space for people to grow and report on stories, especially coming from areas that there haven’t really been that much reporting done. We get a lot of stories, let's say, for example, right now from New York, with the smog or the haze, the heat that's over the city, you know, the sky is looking like they're coming out of Half-Life One, the video game. But I think what we don't really see are like, climate stories from countries such as Romania.
SHAYLYN: For, for context to listeners, Radu and I are talking just the day after New York experienced having the worst air quality that they've ever had in history. The sky turned red, like it did here in the Bay Area due to forest fires. So just a little context on that for people.
RADU: And there's a lot of space here, I would say, I know in the beginning it looks daunting, because there is a lot of science behind it. It, it is a craft and I'm a bit of a perfectionist at heart. And I do my research, and I love researching and I think it is necessary. I think you can’t write a story and just assume that you know things just because you think plastic is bad, you know, you should really understand how plastic works and how the composition of it works before you actually dive into writing a story. We need more people to actually be, to understand how to look at financial data regarding climate change. We have journalists in the United States for sure that look at it and do a fantastic job. You know, they track corporations, that look at their statements to look at their 1000 K forms or however they're called in, in other countries don't really have. And I think that will be interesting for people to look at.
There is something about data, about legal arguments and about financial arguments that really can build a very strong case. You know, that might be picked up as a policy paper that later can actually influence politics. Climate news are very important and I don't think we give them enough credit in many, many places, like I think the United States is a beautiful seat. You know, big publications take them very seriously. Like, I think outside gets a bit difficult, especially outside of the English press. What I would say is that if you, I don't know, if you're from a country where you know that the climate reporting in your country is not done to the extent that you love to see, I would say maybe try to learn from the outside and see what you can bring in as well. Keep an open mind to it. Don't neglect climate journalism. It will be everywhere. We'll talk about it more than ever. I was in New Delhi for a couple of weeks, a couple of week, a couple of months ago. You are burning alive, at 44, 50 degrees Celsius on the street. You really feel like you're melting into the asphalt. If there is a climate emergency that we don't feel it yet in Romania, doesn't mean we'll be protected forever, you know. So I would think get a head start on it. That's my take.
SHAYLYN: Cool. We are nearly done. I wanted to ask if you wanted to plug anything. What would you like us to look out for, for you? And if you don't have anything, you can just tell me and I won't include that question.
RADU: I mean, I'm excited to report more, I would say, on climate and labor stories. There will be more from me in the Romanian press in the coming months. I'm working a lot more on this and I'm looking to add some more financial data, I would say, that's what I'll be doing in the next months. [SHAYLYN: Wonderful!] Yeah, I think I think as I said, I think it's necessary and I think I can build a very strong argument.
What I really want to do in the next months, we have very close to my house, they’re trying to build some small nuclear reactors. It's quite an interesting project. It is funded mostly by, I'm not sure if it is the American government, but somewhat somewhere in the United States. They just demolished a coal plant very close to my house, ten kilometers away, that was defunct for many years. And they want to replace it with a nuclear reactor. And the problem is that the nuclear reactor is placed next to people's homes. And not only that, but it's placed like ten kilometers away, maybe like six miles, let's say, away from my house, and six miles away from a big urban center. So I think I want to cause some trouble. I don't know, just want to stir the pot, see how it goes. Yeah, I'm kind of annoyed by it.
SHAYLYN: Good luck on that. Like, make some trouble. I love hearing that. [RADU: Yeah.] Well, thank you so much, Radu. I really appreciate it.
RADU: It was a lovely time.
SHAYLYN: Lovely. I'm so glad. And I cannot wait to hear your episode.
[outro music]
Thank you for joining us for this bonus episode. Season 3 of Inherited continues Wednesdays, wherever you get your podcasts. Next week, storyteller Vi Pham shares the voices of young Pasifika climate activists, working to combat Australia's restrictive immigration laws.
Inherited is brought to you by YR Media, a national network of young journalists and artists creating content for this generation. We’re distributed by Critical Frequency, a podcast network founded by women journalists. For more information about our show, team, and storytellers, visit our website at yr.media/inherited.
See you next week!