Jane Fonda on How to Turn Rage Into Hope

Jane Fonda has been fighting for social justice for over five decades, but in the past year, she’s kicked things up a notch. This past fall, she relaunched the Committee for the First Amendment, and her environmentally focused political action committee, Jane Fonda Climate PAC, is gearing up for the midterm elections. The iconic actor and activist talks to Kara about how to fight for democracy and the environment when both are under attack. She breaks down her PACs electoral strategy, explains why artists’ voices matter, and how to use action to beat back depression and despair. And she shares a couple secrets for living well at any age. Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find us on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Threads, and Bluesky @onwithkaraswisher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  I was so depressed. And then I said, fuck it. I said, I'm gonna make a difference.

• 0:19Kara Swisher?

  Hi, everyone. From New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is On with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher. My guest today is legendary actor and activist Jane Fonda. Over the past five decades, Jane has fought for peace, civil rights, indigenous rights, women's rights, and the environment, among others. And Jane is fighting harder than ever. She recently relaunched the Committee for the First Amendment. She's been outspoken in her defense of democracy against the threat of Trumpist authoritarianism. And her political action committee, the Jane Fonda Climate PAC, has helped elect over 200 candidates across the country. I'm excited to talk to her because I'm exhausted, and she's not, and therefore, I can't be. One of the things about Jane Fonda is she was very right during Vietnam, and she's very right now.

• 1:03Kara Swisher?

  She's always been on the cutting edge of things. And most importantly, as opposed to a lot of people from Hollywood, which you feel kind of is a mile wide and a foot deep, she really walks the talk and does do activism in a way that I think is very effective and is part of, you know, the broader culture of people in Hollywood and celebrities doing it. But she's incredibly effective. Our expert question comes from someone else I really like, Chelsea Handler, who Jane did a solid four once, and you can hear about that soon. Jane isn't just a legend, she's an inspiration. So, stick around.

• 1:46Kara Swisher?

  Support for this show comes from The Guardian and their new show, Stateside, where journalists Kai Wright and Carter Sherman use the entire independent reporting resources of The Guardian to slow down the news and wrestle with the questions we all have about what is actually happening in the world. Join Kai and Carter three times a week as they utilize all the reporting resources The Guardian has across news, international coverage, climate, culture, wellness, and more. And The Guardian's not owned by a billionaire, they fearlessly report the facts without interference. Go to theguardian.com/stateside to learn more. And listen wherever you get your podcasts, or watch on YouTube. That's theguardian.com/stateside.

• 2:30Speaker 02

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• 3:00Speaker 03

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• 3:47Kara Swisher?

  Jane, thanks for coming on ON.

• 3:50Speaker 00

  Thank you for having me, Kara.

• 3:51Kara Swisher?

  It's an honor, obviously, for lots of reasons. But we ran into each other in Aspen, I think, correct? In the airport. And we talked about this a long time ago.

• 3:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, I remember.

• 4:00Kara Swisher?

  So let's talk about what you're doing now. You've been an activist for much of your life. You got a lot of pushback for that. The National Security Agency spied on you. You spent your 82nd birthday in jail, getting arrested for protesting in a climate change protest. Talk a little bit about what's happening now, because now you've, again, you've never stopped, but you've re-engaged on these issues around Renee Good and Alex Preddy and federal agents and all these arrests.

• 4:24Speaker 00

  Well, I'm going to step back to the macro view of it, I think. Where, basically globally, we face two existential crises.

• 4:34Speaker 00

  Climate and democracy. And they're totally interrelated, interdependent, and they have to be solved together. And the clock is ticking on the climate crisis. So after the Fire Drill Fridays, which were the rallies that we had for about five months in DC in 2019, and then for a couple of years online during the COVID crisis. When that ended, me and my team looked at each other and said, you know, all of us collectively have been involved in decades of protest and civil disobedience and writing books and articles, et cetera. And we haven't gotten the legislation that we need that's commensurate with what science is saying.

• 5:19Speaker 00

  This is during the Biden administration.

• 5:21Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 5:22Speaker 00

  And so we said, and we know the reason. The reason is because so many of our elected officials take money from the fossil fuel industry. And so we decided to create the Jane Fonda Climate PAC. And we decided strategically to focus down ballot. This was five years ago. This is what the Tea Party did. State legislators, city councils, boards of supervisors, school boards, public utilities. These positions have tremendous power when it comes to decision making on climate, you know, whether a toxic dump has to be taken away, whether a pipeline will come through the town. So we started and we have been very successful.

• 6:06Speaker 00

  You know, we had no, none of us had ever done anything like this before.

• 6:09Kara Swisher?

  Right, gone on a local level.

• 6:11Speaker 00

  Or been this invested in electoral politics. We only support candidates who don't take money from the fossil fuel industry. And it's a pretty rigorous process that we put our candidates through. And we've had a lot of success. We have, last year, we supported 79 candidates and 80% of them won. In Virginia, last year, we won all 22 races, including flipping nine GOP seats in Virginia. In Pennsylvania, we helped flip the coal mining region of Luzerne County Council. Very proud of that. And we have, we have over 50,000 small donors and volunteers across the country, which is extraordinary.

• 6:56Speaker 00

  And I, you know, I really, especially once Trump was re-elected, it's become even more strategic in my mind. We're building a firewall.

• 7:04Kara Swisher?

  Mm-hmm.

• 7:05Speaker 00

  We're also creating a deep bench for the Democratic Party because, you know, some of the people that we supported early on are now in the Senate. And of course, this year, we are gearing up to, to help try to take back the House. We'll continue with our down-ballot focus, but we will also help take back the House.

• 7:25Kara Swisher?

  So, the through-line to all this is you're like a tea party, like, but a different version of that, correct? Rather than protests. Are either of them more effective than the other, from your perspective?

• 7:36Speaker 00

  Well, I think we need, we need everything. You have to look at what's strategic right now.

• 7:41Kara Swisher?

  Mm-hmm.

• 7:42Speaker 00

  You know, protests are important because they force us to see, oh, we're not a minority. We really, there's a lot of us. It's, somebody described protesting as flossing the movement.

• 7:53Kara Swisher?

  [laughing]

• 7:56Speaker 00

  It's important for that reason, but when you, when you have someone in office on the federal level who can be pressured, then protests are really important. Right now, they're not going to change anything except make us feel good. So, you know, they're important because what we're facing has never happened here, at least to white people. We're facing an authoritarian regime who's broken through for the first time in American history to every sector of our government. And the theory of change right now is, all governments, democratic or, or fascistic, are held up by pillars of support. And if the pillars of support become weakened, the regime is weakened.

• 8:40Speaker 00

  Pillars like the military, like the financial, like art.

• 8:45Speaker 00

  Professionals, et cetera, and so forth.

• 8:47Kara Swisher?

  So let's talk about that threat because you said in an interview last fall that it takes, quote, "18 to 22 months for an authoritarian to consolidate power. Once that happens, it's very hard to defend democracy." On my other podcast, Scott and I are publicizing a resistance unsubscribe movement. He's organized, as you call it, noncompliance. Do you think Americans are showing the required levels of urgency to meet the moment?

• 9:09Speaker 00

  It's starting, but, you know, what is not visible, it's like the rhizome underground, is organizing is happening all across the country, in all the pillars. And that should give us great hope. Also, there's been a major overstepping of red lines and people are really starting to wake up to what's happening, which leads me to the second, I said, two crises. Climate, and then there's the democracy crisis that we're talking about. This coming to power of an authoritarian regime. They have to be solved together, these two crises. You can't have a stable democracy without a stable climate. And you can't have a stable climate unless you have a democracy.

• 9:52Speaker 00

  I mean, what we're seeing now is worse and worse things happening vis a vis the climate. So when I won the Lifetime Achievement Award at Screen Actors Guild, I did some research to find out what kind of resistance has been in existence in the entertainment industry. And I was reminded that in the late 40s and early 50s, the House Un-American Activities Committee, when it was, and then later McCarthy, were destroying lives and careers in Hollywood, blaming people for, or accusing people of being friendly to communists, or anyway. Hollywood created the Committee for the First Amendment. My dad was a part of it.

• 10:34Speaker 00

  And so in October, I thought, now's the time to recreate this. Because, you know, if you look at the history of authoritarianism, they always first go for art. They go after art and education because those are the sectors that affect how people feel, how they think. We're the storytellers. We can control the narrative to a large extent. So we come under attack right away. So we created this. We now have over 3,000 members. And we're being trained in how do you confront authoritarianism because it's different. As you said, it's not just protest, it's non-compliance. And what does that mean? It means, it means what happened when Kimmel was threatened with being booted off his

• 11:19Speaker 00

  show and millions of Americans threatened to cancel their subscription to Disney. Whoa. When it affects pocketbooks, suddenly everything changes. That is an example of non-compliance. The reporters who, who had posts at the Pentagon and were told they couldn't report on things they were seeing, amass they turned in their badge, including Fox. Non-compliance, strikes, boycotts, boycotts. All those things are examples of non-compliance and ideally they're things that can affect the economy of the country.

• 11:57Kara Swisher?

  There was a lot of opposition to ICE at the Grammys, for example. You also seen celebrities pull back. For example, Jennifer Lawrence said she'd reconsider previously outspoken approach to politics and said, quote, "Celebrities do not make a difference whatsoever on who people vote for." And then you look at Bad Bunny at the Super Bowl, which I thought was very effective. He was doing all kinds of messaging that was very subtle, but very clear.

• 12:18Speaker 00

  Beautiful.

• 12:19Kara Swisher?

  Beautiful, right? It's also joyful, it's fun.

• 12:22Speaker 00

  Yeah. I never cried at a halftime before.

• 12:25Kara Swisher?

  Really?

• 12:26Speaker 00

  But it was the joy, it was the joy and the love.

• 12:28Kara Swisher?

  But there were tons of political messages in there, all over the place. So talk about, you know, this idea of, I guess it's celebrity activism, oh, that's kind of discounting it. Talk about where it is now.

• 12:39Speaker 00

  I think the fact that we're attacked, I mean, it's proof that it matters. You know, if they didn't attack us the way they did, then I would think, well, maybe it really doesn't matter. We're called coastal elite, you know? Why are you speaking out? What do you know about this? But the fact is, artists model courage. Courage is contagious. Also, comics in particular.

• 13:09Speaker 00

  Ridicule and humor are the best ways of confronting authoritarianism. They don't know what to do about it. It's it. The goal of the authoritarians is always to show we're impermeable, impenetrable. We are inevitable. There's nothing you can do about it. You know, and then a kid comes along or a comic and says, look at you with no clothes. Makes fun of the authoritarianism. It exposes their weakness. It's the last thing that authoritarians want. When we first formed October 1st and launched, there was a lot of publicity.

• 13:47Kara Swisher?

  This is the Committee for the First Amendment.

• 13:49Speaker 00

  The Committee for the First Amendment. I was stunned at the response that we got from movement leaders all around the country, from Europe, from all the major foundations. Wow, you know, if we don't matter, why is everybody so excited that this has happened?

• 14:08Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 14:09Speaker 00

  And little by little, I began to understand. It's because they're trying to organize other pillars. And if celebrities and people in the arts pillar start to stand up and show courage, it's much easier for people in the banking pillar or in the, you know, the professional pillar to say, well, gosh, if he can do that, if she can do that, I can stand up and be brave. So it's, it's really, really important.

• 14:34Kara Swisher?

  Now, you call it the Committee for the First Amendment. It was originally founded during the Red Scare, as you mentioned, your father. Henry Fonda was a member. Talk a little bit, because free speech, this idea of the First Amendment, has been co-opted by the right. It's been co-opted by the tech overlords, even if only superficially. You could also make the case the less of abandoned it a little bit. Talk about what it means to you and why you thought it was important to revive this at this moment in time.

• 14:59Speaker 00

  Well, it's the cornerstone of democracy. It's also the cornerstone of art. I mean, you can't have art if you don't have free expression. But the First Amendment isn't just free speech. It's the five freedoms. It's freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and freedom to protest.

• 15:18Kara Swisher?

  Mm-hmm.

• 15:19Speaker 00

  And that means for anybody.

• 15:22Speaker 00

  You know, we have to recognize that a far-right winger has all those same rights. And if you really believe in the First Amendment, you have to support her or his right, even if you don't agree with it. That's the strength of it. This is a nonpartisan issue. As I said on the Colbert Show, this is not a question of left or right. It's a question of right or wrong.

• 15:46Kara Swisher?

  We'll be back in a minute.

• 16:01Kara Swisher?

  Support for this show comes from The Guardian. Trying to locate news sources that reliably separate fact from fiction can seem like looking for a needle in a haystack these days. Social media feeds, cable news, and subscription-based news outlets might be able to give you one version of the news, but not in the way that you need. You want news fast, but slow enough to actually absorb the information. Stateside with Kai Wright and Carter Sherman is here to do just that. The podcast tries to slow down the news and wrestle with the questions regarding the world at large at your own pace. Three times a week, hosts Kai Wright and Carter Sherman bring their expertise together to showcase different and engaging perspectives regarding the world today. They will use their collective knowledge to discuss the news, international affairs,

• 16:45Kara Swisher?

  climate, culture, sports, lifestyle, fashion, and wellness. Plus, The Guardian wants to emphasize they're not billionaire-owned, meaning they're free to report the whole picture without interference. Go to theguardian.com/stateside to learn more and listen wherever you get your podcasts, or watch on YouTube starting May 13.

• 17:05Speaker 02

  Ripple has been powering modern finance for a decade. We're leading the charge to bridge the gap between existing financial systems and the future of finance. You can have it all: legacy, stability, and digital innovation. Systems that work with your other systems. Because with the right partner, the question isn't crypto or traditional finance. The question is simply, why choose? A new standard of modern finance. It's happening with Ripple. For informational purposes only, availability of products can vary and may be provided by different Ripple entities.

• 17:36Kara Swisher?

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• 18:21Kara Swisher?

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• 18:42Kara Swisher?

  In the 1970s, during the middle of the Vietnam War, you traveled to 80 cities in three months. You did an anti-war slideshow about women in Vietnam. Talk about that time, and what did you learn that's relevant for today, when everyone is living in algorithmically-controlled media bubbles, as you know?

• 18:58Speaker 00

  The big problem now is that the right has taken over all the media. They have their own media, and they've been very, very smart in taking over the new media. And so, we have to become ubiquitous to the extent that we can. Back in the 70s and 80s, the 60s and 70s, that wasn't the case. And because we didn't have phones, we didn't have, you know, we didn't have this, we had to talk to people. And that was the big difference, and that was both good and bad. It takes longer, it's harder, but when you get through, it's more meaningful.

• 19:41Speaker 00

  You've really made contact, and you've changed people. And so, what we did, starting in 1972, traveling to 80 cities in three months, two years in a row, we changed people. We went into the middle of the country. And we talked to people where they were. We started at the Ohio State Fair. And that was a huge learning.

• 20:10Kara Swisher?

  Well, tell me what you learned there.

• 20:11Speaker 00

  That it's important to talk to people, to not be partisan, to listen hard and then present all the facts. And it was very simple. That's what we did. We weren't people, you know, McGovern was campaigning, there were campaigns going on. We didn't take part in that. We just talked about what was really happening on the ground in Vietnam, which was contrary to what Nixon was saying. And it had an effect on people.

• 20:39Kara Swisher?

  So how do you do that today? How do you apply that today when you're doing this?

• 20:43Speaker 00

  Organizers are on the ground in a way that the Democratic Party hasn't been. I think a lot of what's happening today is because the Democratic Party got in bed with its donors and stopped talking to people, especially in the middle of the country. People used to see the party come in and put money into a community. Here, $10,000, organize your community. That kind of thing isn't happening anymore. And you can't organize with this. You can rally, but you can't organize. And we have to get back to the organizing. You know, Mam Dany's big success was because he talked to people. He listened. It was

• 21:26Speaker 00

  local. And I think that that needs to happen again.

• 21:29Kara Swisher?

  You said that the Democratic Party leader is not good enough and they aren't doing what they need to do to stand up to authoritarianism. They are not in power right now, too, at the same time. But are there any Democrats like Mam Dany bucking the trend and impressing you? Do you see it around the country as you go around?

• 21:46Speaker 00

  On down ballot levels and in Congress, some of the people that we've gotten, I mean Greg Kesar, for example.

• 21:52Kara Swisher?

  In Texas. I've interviewed him. He's very impressive.

• 21:55Speaker 00

  Yeah. And he was like the very first year that we formed the PAC, he was one of our candidates. There are people like him. Now, you know, everybody's saying, who are you going to vote for president? It's too soon. We don't know what's going to happen

• 22:11Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 22:11Speaker 00

  between now and 28.

• 22:14Speaker 00

  And, you know, also, the president is already telling us that he's prepared to mess with the midterms. And we can see signs of that, trying to do away with mail-in ballots, all kinds of ways in which they're trying to get in the way of a really fair election in the midterms. And what this means is that registering voters and inspiring people to vote is an organizing tool. We have to, we have to put all of our energy now into inspiring people to vote. Not even so much to do with who the candidate is. This is a tool that we still have, and if we don't use it now, it's not going to be there later. I mean, this is a real case of use it or lose it.

• 22:54Kara Swisher?

  Right, right, absolutely.

• 22:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, so exercise democracy.

• 22:58Kara Swisher?

  So, one of the things you talk about is the ability for, you know, you're a well-known person, and one of the things you've also been doing, you just talked about mainstream media being taken over also.

• 23:08Speaker 00

  And the new media, too.

• 23:09Kara Swisher?

  And the new media. Now, you've been speaking out against Netflix's proposed purchase of Warner Brothers Discovery. You haven't minced your words in opposition. I'm going to read part of the statement you put out. "Today's news that Warner Brothers Discovery has accepted a purchase bid is an alarming escalation of the consolidation that threatens the entire entertainment industry. The democratic public it serves in the First Amendment, make no mistake, this is not just a catastrophic business deal that could destroy our creative industry, it's a constitutional crisis exacerbated by the administration's demonstrated disregard for the law." On the other hand, the other bidder is Larry Ellison and the Paramount folks, who have their own agendas, let's just say. So, talk about what you would like to see happen, because if you're talking about the

• 23:52Kara Swisher?

  arts as a culturally important pillar of these changes and in speaking out, what happens in these kind of consolidations?

• 23:59Speaker 00

  The Committee for the First Amendment isn't taking sides in terms of which party that's trying to merge is better than the other. We're opposed to mergers because, A, a lot of people lose jobs.

• 24:13Speaker 00

  We have less bargaining power. We have fewer studios to go to to negotiate. And because Trump has taken over, I can't remember what it's called, merger control. He has say so now over who gets to merge. He is imposing limits on the First Amendment. He's saying you have to do this, you can't hire this, you can't say these things in our major cultural and media institutions. We have to stop that.

• 24:44Kara Swisher?

  So whichever merger you think, because the traditional business model is under strain. Ticket sales are down more than 20% since 2019. We're recording this on Monday, just after SAG-AFTRA is about to again, again, enter negotiations with the studios. There'll be issues over AI, compensation, creative control. Given the damage caused by the last strike and diminishing demand for the product, talk about the moment that Hollywood is in then. If they're going to be someone that's going to defend the First Amendment, the business is under enormous strain.

• 25:14Speaker 00

  There've been a lot of mergers that were, including just towards the end of my marriage to Ted Turner. There was so much pressure on him to merge with AOL and Time Warner. And then all those other mergers that happened after that. You know, it's interesting because I said to Ted, why? You know, you have such a successful business. He said, because I'm paraphrasing. He said, if I don't become part of a bigger institution, I'm going to get eaten. You know, this is capitalism. You have to keep getting bigger. And it turned out very badly for Zasloff and Warner Brothers.

• 25:57Speaker 00

  So, you know, I am, I am not a business.

• 26:00Kara Swisher?

  It was Jerry Levin for that one. I wrote a whole book on it. That was Jerry Levin. Yeah.

• 26:05Speaker 00

  There were a lot of people saying to do, you know, John Malone and a lot of really smart people. Milken were telling him to do this and Ted didn't, he didn't feel good about it.

• 26:17Kara Swisher?

  It was the wrong deal. You were, you had the correct instincts on that one.

• 26:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, Ted had the correct instincts.

• 26:22Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, yeah. So when you look at today, what do you say then? Given they've got pressure from tech, they've got pressure from the audiences who are rushing towards technology faster than they're, and running away from Hollywood. And AI obviously plays an enormous part.

• 26:39Speaker 00

  I can't pretend to have answers to that. I don't, I don't know. I've asked a lot of people in the entertainment, business people in the entertainment industry. If Warner Brothers Studio, can it really stand on its own? And they all say, yeah, it can.

• 26:57Kara Swisher?

  Mm-hmm.

• 26:58Speaker 00

  And so, then why not? Just leave that there, remaining as it is, this great historic movie factory. And, you know, maybe the, the smaller things go to other entities, I don't know. But the major mergers that absorb all these studios, I mean, there were so many more studios when I started out. It's bad for us.

• 27:22Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 27:22Speaker 00

  And the industry is hurting enough to then restrict even more is gonna really, and it, it's so hard right now to have a middle-class life if you're, unless you're a, you know, above-the-line A-list actor.

• 27:35Kara Swisher?

  Mm-hmm.

• 27:36Speaker 00

  It's sad, and I don't know what the future is. I don't think the mergers are the solution, though.

• 27:41Kara Swisher?

  No, I think they'd just like to merge. So you've been a mentor to women in Hollywood for decades, too, and every episode we get an expert to send us a question. So same for you, we've got an expert who's been on the receiving end of your kindness, comedian Chelsea Handler. Let's listen.

• 27:55Speaker 05

  Jane Fonda took me, like, to school one day, invited me to her house, and basically told me that my behavior had been terrible at one of her parties at her house. Like, so she, like, took me to town. And in the most gentle, loving way, and I wrote a chapter in my book about it. And it's the story of her doing that and how that changed my life forever, because she was like, "Your behavior was awful." And like, the fact that she took the time to say that to me was huge, you know? Most people would be like, just, "I'm not gonna talk to that person again." Because nobody has those difficult conversations, you know what I mean? People are so avoidant, especially in Hollywood. And it was really like, it made me realize the type of woman that I wanted to be.

• 28:33Kara Swisher?

  Why did you go out of your way to help Chelsea? Talk about that, like, you've done that quite a bit. Why are you doing this now? Like, everyone's like, Jane Fonda doesn't have to do any more work. She, she did a lot, so it's much easier to walk away.

• 28:44Speaker 00

  Just that, that philosophy, I don't, I don't relate to it at all. Like, there's some point in life where you stop getting better, or stop trying to get better, or stop mattering. No, I...

• 29:00Speaker 00

  I love Chelsea Handler. She is an extraordinary human being. You know, not many people are able to say, "Ooh, I don't like that about myself. I'm gonna change," and then actually do it. She has changed.

• 29:16Kara Swisher?

  Mm-hmm, she has.

• 29:18Speaker 00

  And she's the only other person besides me that I know that has done that, because I've done that. And it can be done. And I just respect her tremendously for that. I don't do that with everybody, just a few people.

• 29:32Kara Swisher?

  Just a few people. But what is the impetus for you in doing that? When people are looking, I often point to you, and when they were like, "Oh, I don't know if I can do anything," I'm like, "Look at Jane fucking Fonda." Like, look over there, because she's-

• 29:45Speaker 00

  What is, everybody always says, "Fucking Fonda."

• 29:47Kara Swisher?

  I don't know why. It just goes together with you. Sorry, apologies, excuse me.

• 29:52Speaker 00

  No problem. It's common, though. Anyway, so what is the question?

• 29:56Kara Swisher?

  Well, it's a compliment, I believe.

• 29:57Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 29:58Kara Swisher?

  When you have that impetus, when people do feel hopeless, what is your, do you ever feel that way? And do you, what do you tell people when they feel like they don't have a say? Because being small is a good way to stop people, making them feel small is a good way to stop people from activism or their best instincts, for example.

• 30:17Speaker 00

  I am part of a long line of very depressed people. And for a good part of my life, I was a glass-half-empty kind of gal. Okay, so it doesn't come naturally to me. But I remember there was a time when it was about 112 degrees in Los Angeles, and there were wildfires. And I stepped out and I looked at the sky. It was brown-orange, apocalyptic. I read that birds were falling dead out of the sky. I'm a birder. I, I, I was so depressed. I got a bird cheater, I got a bird bath, and went to bed, and it was hard to move. And then I said, "Fuck it." I said, "I'm gonna make a difference." And I knew I wasn't doing enough.

• 31:00Speaker 00

  And so I called the woman who, at the time, was the director of Greenpeace USA, Annie Leonard. I said, "I wanna come and make a diff, I wanna come to DC and make a difference. I wanna raise a ruckus. What can I do?" And together with her, we created Fire Drill Fridays. And the minute I did that- My depression lifted. Then I heard Greta Thunberg say, you know, everybody goes looking for hope. Look for action and hope will come. Hope is very different than optimism. You know, optimism is everything's going to be fine and you don't do anything about it. Hope is a muscle. Hope is when you fight.

• 31:42Speaker 00

  Hope can be rage filled, breaking down the door with a battering ram. Baklava Havel was in prison in 1984, 85 by the communists in Czechoslovakia. He was the famous playwright.

• 31:57Kara Swisher?

  Yes, of course. Amazing playwright, too.

• 31:59Speaker 00

  Yeah. And I'm paraphrasing, but in prison, he said, you know, "Hope is not about fighting for something because you think it's going to succeed. Hope is about fighting because it's right." And then was president of the country. You know, you never, we never know what the future holds, but it's within that unknowing that hope can grow.

• 32:24Kara Swisher?

  I'd been in that in California during one of those periods. What got you moving? Because I want to talk about this foundational work as an activist right now, the environmentalism. But what got you moving to that?

• 32:36Speaker 00

  Well, because I know I have a platform and I knew that I wasn't using it fully enough. And I just made the decision that I was going to do it, no matter what. I was going to step up. I'd been an activist for decades, but I knew that it wasn't enough right now.

• 32:55Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 32:56Speaker 00

  And so I'm going to do it. And I just made the decision. And the minute I did that, I became hopeful and I've remained hopeful ever since, even now I am.

• 33:07Kara Swisher?

  We'll be back in a minute.

• 33:22Speaker 06

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• 34:04Speaker 06

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• 34:33Speaker 03

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• 35:57Kara Swisher?

  So the Jane Fund, a climate PAC, it's helped elect over 200 candidates. And just for people who don't know, the stated goal is to unseat politicians in the pocket of big oil and replace them with climate champions. And you talked about your down ballot strategy and the deep bench. Can I have more details about those plans for the midterms? What is the strategy from your perspective that you can talk about?

• 36:16Speaker 00

  We want to elect as many people as we can to the House. So my team is small, but they have a great deal of expertise and they're looking at which are the winnable seats all around the country. And then in some instances, we just give money. In some instances, I go there. That's always interesting because we triple the amount of money they can raise. We quadruple the amount of volunteers they can get. We also train and we help in many ways besides just giving money.

• 36:49Kara Swisher?

  So when you think about that, when you give these young activists, climate activists, advice, do you try to focus their pressure? Because there's the courts, the elections, the tech companies who right now are building these data centers. How do you resist that, given the, you know, here you are trying to stop one climate thing with cars and then it moves to AI data centers and then it moves, et cetera?

• 37:12Speaker 00

  At our last PAC board meeting, we had a presentation from experts on data centers. They can be less destructive. They can be run on alternative energy.

• 37:27Speaker 00

  Which, of course, the Trump administration is opposing. But we decided as a board to, now, we not only won't support anybody that's in favor of expanding fossil fuels, but we don't support people that are in favor of data centers or SMRs, small modular reactors. I've done quite a bit of research into these.

• 37:50Kara Swisher?

  Oh, good for you to know about that.

• 37:51Speaker 00

  You know, they're being touted as, this is the solution to climate. They take just as long to build, which means that we go beyond the red line for climate. You know, 10 years, 20 years is too late. That's how long it takes for them to get online, even the small ones. Another really bad thing is the radioactive waste from SMRs is different chemically than from a traditional reactor. It's exotic chemicals, they can't be mixed together. So now we're talking about, we haven't even solved the problem of the traditional waste. Now we have a whole new set of radioactive waste that we have to try to figure out.

• 38:31Speaker 00

  Also, you know, the use of water and the amount of money it costs, which taxpayers, this is, I didn't realize it, taxpayers end up paying for the bulk of the costs of nuclear reactors, even if they never go online.

• 38:45Kara Swisher?

  Yeah. And they're also paying a lot of the data center costs and things like that, which is interesting when you think about.

• 38:52Speaker 00

  So it's SMRs, it's data centers, and it's fossil fuels. These things are critical.

• 39:00Kara Swisher?

  Yeah. Does it feel like you're still in the China syndrome? That was a million, when was that? That was like so long ago, when that was, you know.

• 39:09Speaker 00

  Early 80s, maybe?

• 39:10Kara Swisher?

  Yeah. I interviewed Oliver Stone and he said, "Jane Fonda's done more damage to nuclear energy than anyone else."

• 39:16Speaker 00

  Good.

• 39:18Kara Swisher?

  I said, "Well, I guess we can't put it at her feet, but fine, whatever." Because, you know, as you know, he's for, he's for nuclear energy, as you know. What do you make of some leaders, like Elon Musk used to be a climate change supporter, right, meaning, "Deal with it." He's now gone the other direction, in a direction none of us quite understand. And at the same time, he's talking about leaving Earth, going to Mars today or yesterday. He said he's building a moon city so he can get to Mars. Now, he's sort of the personification of villainous tech, essentially, wanting to get off the planet. How do you look at people like that, where that's their solution? It's like, "We're not going to deal with climate change. Instead, we're just going to leave for Mars," which is not a very nice place to live, by the way. Neither is the moon.

• 40:01Speaker 00

  Well, I mean, I think that, I think all of them have changed because of money. You know, I think it's based on greed. I can't think of any other reason why he's made such a switch. Maybe he was always that way, but he covered it up because he was getting so popular, you know, because he had a little sense of humor and he had all the electric cars and everything. I don't know.

• 40:24Kara Swisher?

  What would you say to someone like him or some of these tech overlords?

• 40:27Speaker 00

  I would try to reason with them. I would try to explain that we have to have soil and diversity and wildlife and trees and plants and air and water so that human beings can continue to live here. Because you're never going to remove everybody from here to some other planet. How dare we consider ourselves so much more important than the other, the other sentient things that are on this planet, that we could just dismiss them and assume that a few of us will get up there somehow? You know, is this how you want to be remembered? Even that is a stupid thing to say, because who's going to remember at that point?

• 41:08Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, that's true. That's a good point. Right, because it's all over, unless they bring the books that they're interested in. So when people are thinking about these issues, I have two more questions. How do you keep them, you seem like a very, I know you said you, you know, had some depression and everything else, but how do you keep people hopeful? Because people feel, I do feel there's energy returned within some of the movements. You can feel it after Minnesota or, you know, even Don Lemon of all people really like went out there and did stuff, right? Like someone who was an anchor at a traditional CNN. What advice do you give to people to keep going? Because people do have a hopelessness to them and yet you see these, as you said, these seedlings of hope.

• 41:49Speaker 00

  People are ready. People are saying, tell me what to do. And right now, what to do is get trained. It's called Freedom Trainers. They do non-cooperation 101. I've had them done both on the east and west coast for members of the Committee for the First Amendment. Get ready, understand authoritarianism and how it can be defeated, and learn how to be safe. Develop a community that can help each other. One of the reasons that the resistance in Minneapolis has been so robust is because they were organized. They were trained to know what to do. Who's going to be in charge of medical? Who's going to be in charge of

• 42:28Speaker 00

  food? You know, they knew how to de-escalate. We all have to become like Minneapolis. And it can be done. Again, Freedom Trainers is one example of a, they're training people, hundreds of thousands of people all across the country.

• 42:44Kara Swisher?

  You know, one of the things, I'm wrapping up a documentary series for CNN about longevity, and it was inspired by all these tech billionaires that want to stay, live forever, which I think is enormously narcissistic. But there are all these, well, I'm sure you agree, right?

• 43:00Speaker 00

  Yes, I do.

• 43:01Kara Swisher?

  And at the same time, my feeling is that mortality gives us creativity. It gives us impetus to do things, right?

• 43:08Speaker 00

  It makes sense of life.

• 43:09Kara Swisher?

  That's correct. That is correct.

• 43:11Speaker 00

  Unless you embrace and understand and, and kind of are okay with death, life has no meaning.

• 43:18Kara Swisher?

  That's right. Right. And there's actually studies showing if you ignore death, you become hateful. And if you accept it, you become community-based, which is really interesting. There's all these scientific studies showing it.

• 43:29Speaker 00

  When I was 60, I did the smartest thing in my whole life. I realized, okay,

• 43:37Speaker 00

  I'm not scared of dying. I'm scared of getting to the end with a lot of regrets when it's too late to do anything about it. So that means, because I was confused, how am I supposed to live my last act? How I'm supposed to live my last act is so I'll be okay when the end comes. Obviously, none of us know when the end is going to be, but you have to make a vision of how you want. I want to die at home in my bed. I want to be surrounded by loved ones. That means between now and then, I've got to be sure people love me. I have to be sure I deserve love.

• 44:08Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 44:09Speaker 00

  I'd like to be able to have a few wise things to, you know, figure out how you want to be at the end, even if you know you don't have any control over it. And then that informs how you're going to live between now and then. And it's made all the difference in my life. I've gone into therapy at 82 years old. Never too late to figure it out.

• 44:31Kara Swisher?

  Mm-hmm. Did you find anything really good out?

• 44:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, but it takes too long on this.

• 44:36Kara Swisher?

  I'm teasing you. I'm teasing you. But when you think about that, that idea of living your best life, right? And you show no signs of slowing down. Do you have, I know it sounds crazy, but a secret? I'm not talking about your skin regimen, which your skin is excellent, by the way. But when you think about what the kind of things you can put into it. Now, when you were doing your career when you were in 30s, you took a great risk and turned out to be right, but at the time, you got attacked relentlessly, right? What you're doing now, you're certainly getting more celebrated for. Obviously, your activism is more celebrated. But I think one of the things, the reason I want to talk to you is because I want people to feel they don't have to be Jane Fonda to do this, right? You don't have to have, you don't have to be you, essentially.

• 45:21Kara Swisher?

  So do you have a secret or anything else? Or not? Just getting up?

• 45:28Speaker 00

  I meditate, and I meditate to keep myself hopeful, to keep myself grounded, and to keep myself present. Also, sometimes, when I'm meditating, problems arise and get solved.

• 45:42Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 45:43Speaker 00

  So interesting. And I've started on Substack recently, and I took, I just began, and people loved, I took them on a meditation with me. And the reaction was so positive, but I'm gonna do it every time. So, that's one thing. Another thing is sleep. Getting enough sleep, so that I have energy, because I get very depressed if I don't get enough sleep. Then, maybe as important or more, don't be alone. You're vulnerable when you're alone. You're vulnerable to depression. You're also vulnerable to danger, to ice, to all kinds of things, to being not impactful.

• 46:24Speaker 00

  You know, all of us, those of us who are alive right now, are blessed, because we have the chance to turn everything around. I feel so lucky to be born right now. And in order to do it right, I gotta do it with other people, and make sure that what we're doing is the right thing to do, that it's not just frivolous, or it doesn't really make any difference. And what got me to be smart was calling on smart people to help me, to guide me. And I now have a team around me that is very experienced, and totally strategic, and very connected to the entire ecosystem of movement across the country.

• 47:07Speaker 00

  So, you know, okay, so not everybody can do that necessarily, but you can join a local indivisible. You can organize your neighborhood. This is, these local pods of people who will help each other. When not only authoritarianism shit hits the fan, but when the climate shit, we have to harden our communities and make them resilient in all kinds of ways, including security. And you can't do that alone. Get to know your neighbors, know their phone numbers and emails. Talk about who's gonna do what if this happens or that happens. And being in the training helps you think in those kind of ways.

• 47:45Kara Swisher?

  Right, absolutely.

• 47:47Speaker 00

  Know things like if you risk going into an area where there's tear gas, take out your contacts, you know.

• 47:53Kara Swisher?

  Good to know. Good to know. Thank you for that piece of advice, Jane Fonda. So one of the things, you were, when you did your original activism during Vietnam, obviously Nixon was your foe, right? On the larger scheme of things.

• 48:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:09Kara Swisher?

  Today, it's Trump. What would you say to him right now? Do you think you can change his mind?

• 48:16Speaker 00

  Here's what I, I couldn't, I tried, I wanted to, I know him, I've met him. He used to really like and admire Ted, my ex-husband Ted Turner. And I feel because I spent a decade with Ted Turner, I understand Trump a little bit because they have certain things in common, early trauma at the hands of the father, et cetera. And in my mind, sometimes when I lie in bed, I have conversations with him. And I want to say to him, you know, I, I feel like I understand something about, because I lived with Ted Turner for 10 years. You have things in common.

• 49:01Speaker 00

  Do you understand what's happening? You know, I would try to touch his heart. There was one, when he first got elected in 2017, I wanted to go and meet with him with a bunch of really brilliant sexy women and kneel at his feet. And, because I thought, well, this would work with Ted.

• 49:18Kara Swisher?

  Yeah.

• 49:19Speaker 00

  And tell him he could be a global hero if he saved the planet. And Pamela Anderson was willing to go with me. And then Ivanka and Jared, it didn't happen, it was a...

• 49:35Speaker 00

  No help getting there.

• 49:36Kara Swisher?

  Mm hmm.

• 49:37Speaker 00

  It's important to understand what he does and what he says. The behavior is the language of the traumatized. And you have to see through it. You can hate what the behavior, but you have to see through it to the traumatized person and not hate them. Because if you hate them, then it's your, it brings you down. I don't hate him. I don't. Joy Behar got really mad at me on The View when I said that.

• 50:08Kara Swisher?

  Yeah.

• 50:08Speaker 00

  But I feel better. I view all these guys and Musk and the others, they're just, they're not well.

• 50:17Kara Swisher?

  No.

• 50:19Speaker 00

  They're, you know, it's the not wellness that we see acted out. I'm so sorry that this happened to them in their lives. And I would try to touch that early Trump. But I don't, I don't think I'd succeed.

• 50:35Kara Swisher?

  Yeah. If you could get to it, I don't think you can at some point. There is one point. I said one time to one of these tech moguls, I'm so sorry your parents didn't hug you enough as a child, but you need to stop. And they, and they looked at me and I go, I got you. But you need to stop. They're dead.

• 50:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:53Kara Swisher?

  Like you need to move on.

• 50:54Speaker 00

  There's a statute of limitations.

• 50:56Kara Swisher?

  Yes. Get some help.

• 50:57Speaker 00

  And now move, see, this is what happened with Ted Turner. There was a point in his life where he intentionally moved towards the light.

• 51:07Kara Swisher?

  Mm hmm.

• 51:07Speaker 00

  Moved to the side of the angel. He decided and he changed himself. God bless him.

• 51:14Kara Swisher?

  God bless him. Anyway, Jane Fonda, thank you so much.

• 51:17Speaker 00

  Thank you very much.

• 51:23Kara Swisher?

  Today's show was produced by Christian Castor-Russell, Michelle Aloy, Megan Burney, and Kalen Lynch. Nishat Kurwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts. Special thanks to Annika Robbins. Our engineers are Fernando Aruda and Rick Kwan, and our theme music is by Track academics. If you're already following the show, you deserve love. If not, go meditate on why you haven't subscribed. Go over your listener podcasts, search for On with Kara Swisher, and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from Podium Media, New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us. We'll be back on Monday with more.

• 52:05Speaker 03

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• 52:50Speaker 08

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