Speaker 1: What spicy Pumpkins? From Robert Kevins. No, it was where
Speaker 1: it's not clipping. You just don't like me saying, what's
Speaker 1: spicy my pumpkins? But I said it and it can't
Speaker 1: be unsaid. It was because this is it could happen
Speaker 1: here a daily podcast about the end of some things
Speaker 1: and the beginning of other things. And right now it's
Speaker 1: an episode about the beginning of fall. Because it's officially
Speaker 1: fall and I'm drinking a pumpkin spice black coffee. It's
Speaker 1: also not officially fall yet, it may it may be
Speaker 1: officially fall by the time that podcast. It is legally fall.
Speaker 1: When I have my first pumpkin spice black coffee of
Speaker 1: the year and it's cool outside. That's because you're a monster.
Speaker 1: That's because I'm a happy man who is enjoying a
Speaker 1: fault beverage. On this episode today, we have, of course
Speaker 1: Garrison Garrison. Hello, I Garrison, are you doing I'm doing
Speaker 1: fine great. We also have my friends be in a
Speaker 1: Lane b E Lane you you you are on the
Speaker 1: show recently to talk about terrorism a year ago. Yeah,
Speaker 1: everything before yesterday is a year ago. And uh and
Speaker 1: now you're on to talk about surviving yeah, yeah, like
Speaker 1: crafty surviving punk. Yeah, I know, we we brought made
Speaker 1: it this far. You on because you were like two
Speaker 1: of the most useful skill filled people that I know.
Speaker 1: You're both wilderness survival instructors primitive skill instructors for a while,
Speaker 1: and you have a small farm in a town that
Speaker 1: I won't name, and you do all sorts of cool
Speaker 1: ship like storing food and making arrows and other things
Speaker 1: that are alleged. And what I like about that is that,
Speaker 1: you know, we talk about like collapse and things falling apart,
Speaker 1: there's this kind of like I don't know, almost like
Speaker 1: mimetic obsession with like I want to get out into
Speaker 1: the woods and away from the city, and that's the
Speaker 1: only way to survive, and like the reality of the situations,
Speaker 1: that's a terrible way to survive. There's nobody in the wood.
Speaker 1: There's nobody in the woods, and it's you know, there's
Speaker 1: there are there are a small chunk of the human
Speaker 1: race that is capable with with just themselves of like
Speaker 1: surviving in the middle of nowhere with nobody. But there's
Speaker 1: even among that population, there's a small fraction who are
Speaker 1: capable of doing that and not shooting themselves after a
Speaker 1: long enough period of time, and you wouldn't want to
Speaker 1: meet that person generally. Well, and I think the other
Speaker 1: the other thing about that is like the sort of
Speaker 1: fetishization of of you know, individualists. Survival skills is based
Speaker 1: on this idea that what people when people were like
Speaker 1: living off the land, that they were doing it by
Speaker 1: themselves alone, which is community. There's very few people that
Speaker 1: survived alone for a long time, and even of the
Speaker 1: people that had the skills, like even I she wandered
Speaker 1: out of the woods after I think eight years of
Speaker 1: being by himself and was finally like fuck it. He
Speaker 1: was the last of a indigenous group in California, where
Speaker 1: everyone else in his tribe had been basically withen genocided
Speaker 1: and him and like the last like five people went
Speaker 1: off and hid for very good reason um. And then
Speaker 1: after disease and stuff, then it was just him and
Speaker 1: he spent I forget how many years by himself, and
Speaker 1: after a while he finally was like fuck it, being
Speaker 1: by myself is not worth it, and he came out.
Speaker 1: And it was just after the turn of the century,
Speaker 1: and so he ended up being adopted by a bunch
Speaker 1: of anthropologists and spending the rest of his time in
Speaker 1: San Francisco. It's actually where we get most of a
Speaker 1: lot of like the anthropological knowledge of how to make arrows,
Speaker 1: because he was very much like, I'm the last of
Speaker 1: my group, so I will actually show people how to
Speaker 1: do flint napping and how I make arrows and how
Speaker 1: I hunt and yeah, and that's but I mean, and
Speaker 1: that's there's kind of the point there that like, with
Speaker 1: all of those skills, being one of that very small
Speaker 1: number of people who could you dropped that guy alone
Speaker 1: with nothing in the woods and he'll figure it out.
Speaker 1: He didn't want to do that because it's miserable. Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: He in fact went into San Francisco and was like, well,
Speaker 1: white people wiped out my entire I go make friends
Speaker 1: with these anthropologists that live with them and teach them
Speaker 1: what I know. Yeah. Again, a lot of the folks
Speaker 1: who are kind of reaching out online being like, hey,
Speaker 1: I don't have a lot in the way of money.
Speaker 1: I'm never gonna be able to move to the woods
Speaker 1: and buy a farm or something, well you don't, you
Speaker 1: don't really need to. And like if shi it really
Speaker 1: does hit the fan where you live, there's probably parks
Speaker 1: unless it's Detroit UM, in which case there's abandoned Walmart's
Speaker 1: like you can make it work like there's it's so
Speaker 1: so this is an episode about kind of the skills
Speaker 1: that you can acquire and build for not a lot
Speaker 1: of money, more or less wherever you live that will
Speaker 1: help you build resiliency UM, but also build resiliency is
Speaker 1: part of a community, as opposed to living in the
Speaker 1: woods with a knife, sleeping under mud. There's a great
Speaker 1: short story that y'all turned me onto by Cory Doctor
Speaker 1: in a book of short stories called Radicalize that was
Speaker 1: was it just called The Mask of the Red Death?
Speaker 1: I mean that's that's yeah. The original Mask of the
Speaker 1: Red Death is set obviously during UM. I'm sure everybody
Speaker 1: read it in high school, like right. It's is set
Speaker 1: during the Bubonic plague with these rich people who like
Speaker 1: decided to just hold up in party to escape the
Speaker 1: plague and they all die of the plague. And Doctors
Speaker 1: is a bunch of like libertarians, survivalist crypto bros who
Speaker 1: build a fortress in the desert in order to survive
Speaker 1: the end of days. And it turns out that like
Speaker 1: a bunch of bad stuff happens like there's disease in
Speaker 1: in in civil conflict, but like people figure it out
Speaker 1: and all of the crypto bros die shooting themselves to
Speaker 1: death because the water system. It's obvious from the start
Speaker 1: what's going on, and everybody who comes along to help them,
Speaker 1: they start shooting at you will just wait until you're
Speaker 1: dead because you're shooting yourself because your water is bad.
Speaker 1: I think we all have, we all have elements of
Speaker 1: some libertarian tendencies in US, which you know, it's not
Speaker 1: bad to learn self reliance, and it's certainly not not
Speaker 1: even bad to want to like live outside of the city.
Speaker 1: But in a lot of ways living in a living
Speaker 1: in an urban environment surrounded by a community, depending on
Speaker 1: the situation, can be even more resilient because like, yeah,
Speaker 1: an isolated farmstead there's benefits to but also it's really
Speaker 1: easy to surround and just shoot people who were living
Speaker 1: on their farm in the middle of nowhere. If ship
Speaker 1: really does hit the fan, it happens all the time.
Speaker 1: It happened in like Al Salvador and ship when they
Speaker 1: had their economic crash. So I don't know, where do
Speaker 1: you want to Where do you guys want to start?
Speaker 1: I know you had a couple of different things that
Speaker 1: you want that I want to talk about, Like preserving
Speaker 1: food is a big one, and then I mean making
Speaker 1: stuff and doing things is kind of they're sort of different.
Speaker 1: Where would you like to actually start with that? I
Speaker 1: think we can start with kind of the d I
Speaker 1: Y element, branching off of our original discussion on primitive skills,
Speaker 1: and then in like parts two, we can go born
Speaker 1: to like food and like like like foraging, um and
Speaker 1: preservation and stuff. Cool. I mean, so d I why um?
Speaker 1: I guess now there's a lot of stuff about like
Speaker 1: there's I don't know, there's all this stuff of like
Speaker 1: survival skills and all this stuff, and both of us
Speaker 1: kind of came into the idea of making stuff and
Speaker 1: doing things by being punks, um, and it's kind of yeah,
Speaker 1: having no money, but also just their d I Y
Speaker 1: like do it yourself was a very like kind of
Speaker 1: nineties punk thing that came into the mainstream. Like I
Speaker 1: actually was pulling out some of my old books and
Speaker 1: I think it's funny to see the like progression because
Speaker 1: I have you know, the really lovely like food not
Speaker 1: lawns that goes into a whole pile of really fantastic
Speaker 1: things that came out that I don't know, the first
Speaker 1: food not lawns House I saw at the town as
Speaker 1: in was in like two thousand five or six, but
Speaker 1: this book came out in two thousand and six. But
Speaker 1: this was this entire movement of like making community and
Speaker 1: doing and like how to do stuff yourself on your
Speaker 1: front lawn. Yeah, and then of from eleven the bus
Speaker 1: d i Y Guide to Life that includes everything from
Speaker 1: like how to do worm composting to how to make
Speaker 1: your own makeup and like finance House and that's that's
Speaker 1: like the magazine. Yes, So it's kind of interesting because
Speaker 1: it definitely like was the thing that I watched come
Speaker 1: into the mainstream. But you know, it started as a
Speaker 1: lot of punks trying to figure out how to do
Speaker 1: things because they had no money. And but also different
Speaker 1: from a lot of you know, like woodworking or craft
Speaker 1: books that really are you know by these seven thousand
Speaker 1: dollars worth of tools and now you too can learn, Yes,
Speaker 1: And there's also there's also an ethos behind it, right
Speaker 1: that like before I was, I came at it first
Speaker 1: and foremost through being like a bike punk in the
Speaker 1: in the late nineties, early two thousands being a bike
Speaker 1: punk and the idea of like the d I y
Speaker 1: ethos was less about the grid is going to collapse
Speaker 1: and like everything is going to fall apart and you're
Speaker 1: gonna need to survive by the skin of your teeth.
Speaker 1: And it was a lot more you know, at the
Speaker 1: tail end of the nineties and like the sort of
Speaker 1: golden era of neoliberal capitalism and office space and that
Speaker 1: whole cultural moment, the idea that life was alienated and
Speaker 1: shitty and it felt better to know how to do
Speaker 1: things that you needed in your day to day life
Speaker 1: for yourself, using stuff you had made yourself or gotten
Speaker 1: from your community members. Um. Yeah, resiliency is less about
Speaker 1: knowing you have a pile of dried food in the
Speaker 1: house and know more about looking at fresh food and knowing,
Speaker 1: I know how to make that last the winter. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it's been interesting to see the way that like
Speaker 1: as that has gotten kind of mainstreamed into like, you know,
Speaker 1: the the what is it primitive. There's a bunch of
Speaker 1: different like Primitive x y Z YouTube channels that get
Speaker 1: lots of show and ship and as that all gets mainstreamed,
Speaker 1: there's this idea of like expert teath that creeps back
Speaker 1: into it, and d I Y was like firmly committed
Speaker 1: to the idea that everybody could learn stuff and listening
Speaker 1: to somebody who said they were an expert was a trap.
Speaker 1: And a lot of that was coming out of like
Speaker 1: the seventies when there was all of the like you know,
Speaker 1: CULTI lifestyle ship that was like, hey, look we're going
Speaker 1: to teach you how to change your life, and yeah,
Speaker 1: we're gonna we're gonna buy up all this land and Antelope, Oregon,
Speaker 1: and so d I Y was emphatically not that. It
Speaker 1: was like, there's skills, and you can learn skills, and
Speaker 1: the internet doesn't really exist yet or not really, so
Speaker 1: you can read books about it and you can have
Speaker 1: skill share because there wasn't Twitter. We also all had
Speaker 1: a lot more time on our hands and like each
Speaker 1: other more. But there's also expertise was something that was
Speaker 1: handy to have, you know, like if I needed to
Speaker 1: rebuild my wheel on my bike and respoke, it wanted
Speaker 1: someone who knew how to do it. And so it's
Speaker 1: good to have a people who had really intense, deep
Speaker 1: knowledge of skills. But the idea that you would ask
Speaker 1: someone like I need to change my bike tire two
Speaker 1: because I popped it with everyone would have been kind
Speaker 1: of like really really like everyone should know how to
Speaker 1: do basic stuff and it's and it's okay. Like the
Speaker 1: whole you know, Jack of All Trades was is as
Speaker 1: a desirable goal, like it's okay to dabble in a
Speaker 1: million little things and be kind of mediocre but have
Speaker 1: a sort of baseline understanding of a bunch of stuff. Now,
Speaker 1: you know, there's places that I kind of think that
Speaker 1: we went too far, but also, you know, before the
Speaker 1: American Healthcare Act, we all definitely did a lot of
Speaker 1: at home medcare that we should not have. But there's
Speaker 1: also a lot of low stakes places that I think
Speaker 1: people have gotten away from just practicing and trying all
Speaker 1: sorts of crafty stuff as an ethos that is actually
Speaker 1: really good and there's no harm to learning things like that.
Speaker 1: You're not going to afford anything, and the only thing
Speaker 1: that's going to happen is you will have more skills
Speaker 1: and more to offer the people around. There's this idea
Speaker 1: under capitalism that we should all specialize because that is
Speaker 1: like the most profit generating thing to do is just
Speaker 1: specialize anything that makes you the most money, but it's like,
Speaker 1: not only is it like not the best in a
Speaker 1: dangerous situation to only know how to do one thing
Speaker 1: that makes you money, but it's like it's not particularly
Speaker 1: good for your soul either. And there's also lots of
Speaker 1: different behavioral psychology, like group analysis of if you present
Speaker 1: people with a situation that they feel unprepared for and
Speaker 1: there's a person that they identify as an expert in
Speaker 1: a group who they can defer to pretty much every time,
Speaker 1: the group that's like, oh, we'll defer to this one
Speaker 1: expert because they know everything and we'll just do whatever
Speaker 1: they say ends up making worse decisions. Then if you
Speaker 1: have a group where everybody feels like, oh, well, I
Speaker 1: like I can at least get a handle on what's
Speaker 1: going on and we can all talk through it and
Speaker 1: like make make calls, deferring to experts doesn't necessarily help you.
Speaker 1: Know that, there's obviously cases we've mentioned medical care already
Speaker 1: where like there's actually knowledge is very important. Skill sets
Speaker 1: are very important, But the idea that there's people who
Speaker 1: are just like yeah, inherently more knowledgeable of things that
Speaker 1: you couldn't possibly understand is so where where do you
Speaker 1: recommend Like people start with like, like, you've got a
Speaker 1: bunch of books right now, and obviously, if you can
Speaker 1: afford books, that's a good call or libraries. A lot
Speaker 1: of these books on a preserving food and like growing
Speaker 1: stuff on your law, and but even if you don't
Speaker 1: have a law and you can still like there's certain
Speaker 1: like one thing that strikes me because we've been canning
Speaker 1: and pickling a bunch lately, is you know, different vegetables
Speaker 1: and fruits and whatnot are cheaper at different points in
Speaker 1: the year. And even if you live in an apartment
Speaker 1: in the inner city and will never have more than
Speaker 1: a garden box at best, you can buy food when
Speaker 1: it's cheap and preserve it um and not only save
Speaker 1: yourself a little bit of money, but you can like also, uh,
Speaker 1: you'll you'll understand every time you encounter preserved food, and
Speaker 1: like a grocery store, you'll be looking at a thing
Speaker 1: that you know where it comes from. It's not just
Speaker 1: like a mystery jar of preserved food that was made
Speaker 1: by some process of science. So I don't know, I'm
Speaker 1: interested in Like where you guys someone coming in having
Speaker 1: only uh specialized in whatever it is allowed them to
Speaker 1: pay the rent. Where where where's your where's your recommended
Speaker 1: start point for people? UM, I think it's picking something
Speaker 1: that is low stakes that you enjoy. Like, honestly, one
Speaker 1: of my friends, UM, her entry in to doing d
Speaker 1: I Y stuff was, you know, she had lots of
Speaker 1: makeup and everything, and she was like, I'm going to
Speaker 1: make body scrubs? How do I do that? And you know,
Speaker 1: looked up how to make body scrubs, how to make
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of it is, oh, getting salt
Speaker 1: and grinding up rosemary that she found in someone's front
Speaker 1: yard and putting it together, you know, But just something
Speaker 1: simple that you enjoy, that you would love to be
Speaker 1: able to, you know, have a little bit more say
Speaker 1: over because it's most basic. A lot of the d
Speaker 1: I Y stuff is you can make something very specific
Speaker 1: to what you like. So for myself, actually, one of
Speaker 1: the first things I ever started doing was in high
Speaker 1: school just altering clothing. I had an old I had
Speaker 1: an old thirty dollar junk practice uh like kids sewing
Speaker 1: machine and just the cheapest one that Sears used to sell,
Speaker 1: and could definitely just take that and start putting scenes
Speaker 1: in an altar clothing and like this shirt is now
Speaker 1: a T shirt. It was long sleep before and that
Speaker 1: also ties in with you know, d I I just
Speaker 1: to sound like old punks for a minute. That d
Speaker 1: I I definitely also came out of things like the
Speaker 1: riot girl scene in a big way, and like the
Speaker 1: attention to like body awareness and like moving away from
Speaker 1: body negativity and the recognition that as a general rule,
Speaker 1: off the rack clothes are not and certainly twenty years
Speaker 1: ago were extra not actually designed to fit most people's bodies,
Speaker 1: and it was hard to find clothes that fit you right.
Speaker 1: And yeah, so like sewing was a big one. Um
Speaker 1: bikes because we were broke and didn't have cars, so
Speaker 1: figuring out how to fix bikes and you know, everything
Speaker 1: that mechanically happens on a bike is right there and
Speaker 1: you can see it happen, and it maybe requires a
Speaker 1: screwdriver and then eventually maybe some other tools. But there's
Speaker 1: lots of free resources. A lot most cities I've spent
Speaker 1: any amount of time and you can find like you
Speaker 1: can find like a community bike shop where if you
Speaker 1: have to pay anything, it's very minimal, and a lot
Speaker 1: of cases are just sort of like show up and
Speaker 1: you know there's space to use. Yeah, when um, like,
Speaker 1: I know in Santa Cruz there was the bike Church.
Speaker 1: In Portland there's the bike Farm, and yeah, in Philly
Speaker 1: there was also a bike church because it turns out
Speaker 1: the basements of churches are There were a couple of
Speaker 1: spots like that in Dallas, and it's uh yeah, And
Speaker 1: I think it is like this mix of, like with
Speaker 1: the body script stuff, like what is something that appeals
Speaker 1: to you that you you're interested in, and also what
Speaker 1: is with the bike stuff, what is something that's like
Speaker 1: just doggedly practical, Like you get a bike, you need
Speaker 1: a bike to get around, you should probably know how
Speaker 1: to fix it on it. I think the reason I
Speaker 1: say you should pick saying that appeals to you especially
Speaker 1: is because a big thing with d I Y was
Speaker 1: that you're doing it yourself. And there are so many
Speaker 1: skills that are valuable to learn from other people. It
Speaker 1: is wonderful to craft in community. It is wonderful to
Speaker 1: work with other people in community. It's wonderful to teach
Speaker 1: skills and gain them. But also I've seen this growing
Speaker 1: idea with the as specialization for so many things, especially
Speaker 1: services comes in that people are always like, oh wow, knitting.
Speaker 1: I've always wanted to learn I need to take a
Speaker 1: class in that, or I need to And it's really important,
Speaker 1: I think, for people to realize that you can learn things.
Speaker 1: We are very good at learning things, and you don't
Speaker 1: necessarily need a teacher for more complex things you do.
Speaker 1: But starting with something that you really like and that
Speaker 1: you find really interesting, you've already thought about it. So
Speaker 1: when you start with you know, for my friends, starting
Speaker 1: with making bath salts and face masks and stuff, it
Speaker 1: was something she had already been thinking about quite a
Speaker 1: bit and thinking about stuff. So when she started looking
Speaker 1: at recipes to mix and looking on the internet and
Speaker 1: looking at ingredients, it was saying she already cared about.
Speaker 1: So it's easier to learn something that you are interested in,
Speaker 1: and it's easier to learn something that you want to do.
Speaker 1: But we are all capable of learning for ourselves, not
Speaker 1: every single thing, but especially just for craft projects. And
Speaker 1: so starting with that so that you can pick up
Speaker 1: a book, or you can read an article, or you
Speaker 1: can watch a YouTube video and you don't need to
Speaker 1: take some like hundred and fifty dollar a weekend class
Speaker 1: before you can. It's you know, a big part of
Speaker 1: the resiliency building like something you may scoff like when
Speaker 1: you're thinking about survivalism and talking about like making bath scrubs,
Speaker 1: But a lot of the skills you would learn putting
Speaker 1: that together are useful in making like a salve or
Speaker 1: making like a soap, making soap things that you actually need.
Speaker 1: Like when I was traveling, I lived on the road,
Speaker 1: like out of a car and out of backpacks for
Speaker 1: off and on all over the world for years, and
Speaker 1: I would make my own medicated because we would get
Speaker 1: would get cuts and scrapes and rashes, and we were
Speaker 1: poor as ship and often there weren't doctors where we were.
Speaker 1: So I learned how to use things like plantain and
Speaker 1: comfrey and yarrow and like bees wax and stuff in
Speaker 1: order to make medicated sabs and it it was something
Speaker 1: that interested me. But like there's also a lot of
Speaker 1: like there's there's a number of roots into learning that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. And if you're learning how to make
Speaker 1: again something as simple as like a face scrub, learning
Speaker 1: where to find that information for free learning some of
Speaker 1: the basic techniques in order to do that. That learning
Speaker 1: how to learn is is applicable in a wider variety
Speaker 1: of skill sets, and it I think it's so important
Speaker 1: to focus on what are you what are you interested
Speaker 1: in first, as as opposed to just being like okay
Speaker 1: at first. Now I have to learn how to like
Speaker 1: splint a broken arm, because like ship is gonna hit
Speaker 1: the fans, like, well, maybe focus on something that's more
Speaker 1: exciting to you first, and and and and build time
Speaker 1: in your life to learn things. That's an enjoyable process.
Speaker 1: One of the first things I did, like years ago,
Speaker 1: was I learned to so specifically to make a cause
Speaker 1: play because you know, so I would just I would
Speaker 1: make me and my whole family to an outfits for
Speaker 1: comic Con. So every year I would, I would sew
Speaker 1: us whole whole new things. But then not only taught
Speaker 1: me sewing, it taught me how to do like like
Speaker 1: vacuum forming, to molding, how to use like a heat gun,
Speaker 1: how to use like all these other types of tools. Um,
Speaker 1: how do you like molding and castings, Like all of
Speaker 1: these types of things. I learned just wanting to make
Speaker 1: silly costumes. But now they're like, you know, useful in
Speaker 1: a lot a lot a lot of other ways. And
Speaker 1: that can be that can be expensive at the high
Speaker 1: end when you're like vacuum forming and stuff your storm
Speaker 1: trooper armor. But the cheapest side of that thing again,
Speaker 1: you can get a basic hand sewing kit for like
Speaker 1: five dollars from a Walmart. And there's also maker to
Speaker 1: your Ship, and there's maker spaces and like YouTube will
Speaker 1: do the teaching. You don't have to pay for a teacher.
Speaker 1: The Taliban learned how to fly helicopters on YouTube. You
Speaker 1: can learn how to fix your pants. And then I
Speaker 1: think also you mentioned specialization before. It's come up a
Speaker 1: couple of times um, and there is you know, the
Speaker 1: idea of specialization. The rationale behind specialization is, oh, well,
Speaker 1: you'll be better at it because that's what you do
Speaker 1: all the time. But that cuts both ways because if
Speaker 1: you only do one thing all the time, then as
Speaker 1: you know, whatever the maximum threshold of your abilities is
Speaker 1: that's required of you, that becomes your baseline, like whatever
Speaker 1: in your day to day life, whatever it is that
Speaker 1: you're being asked to do, that's what you feel capable of.
Speaker 1: And on the flip side, there's with with the d
Speaker 1: I Y approach, with like teaching yourself ship learning interesting ship.
Speaker 1: It's also practical and important and useful to be like
Speaker 1: this is a thing that I'm gonna do on a
Speaker 1: regular basis so I'll get better at it. But also
Speaker 1: it's not you know, there was you know, the whole
Speaker 1: idea of there's what you do and then there's your job,
Speaker 1: and that these need not be the same thing because
Speaker 1: you want to be able to think think through things
Speaker 1: in a way that's not the way you're supposed to
Speaker 1: process things to make your boss happy. That it is
Speaker 1: not just what you do when you clock in. You
Speaker 1: are more than your career. More than your career and
Speaker 1: in your skill set need not be purely extracted, as
Speaker 1: you know, not just like Okay, I have to go
Speaker 1: do the thing in order to make money and then
Speaker 1: everything else's consumption. Like you can you can transition, like
Speaker 1: we're but and this is not a societal level solution
Speaker 1: because we talk a lot about like, well, yeah, you're
Speaker 1: not gonna you're not gonna make small personal changes to
Speaker 1: fix climate change, but changing your own particular attitude on
Speaker 1: how you approach the world from one that is I
Speaker 1: I produce and that I consume to to when we're
Speaker 1: you're thinking more about resiliency and what do I know
Speaker 1: how to do and what can I learn how to do?
Speaker 1: UM is helpful in a variety of ways on the
Speaker 1: note of you know, the transferability of skills and recognizing
Speaker 1: that you already do things on a day to day
Speaker 1: basis that requires specialized knowledge and require skill sets. UM.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I try and trot out
Speaker 1: at every possible opportunity. I worked with somebody in one
Speaker 1: of those volunteer bike shop spaces down New Orleans years ago, UM,
Speaker 1: and the whole purpose of that particular space was to
Speaker 1: make the skill set of bike repair more accessible to
Speaker 1: a population that relied on likes to get places. And
Speaker 1: one of the folks I worked there with was like
Speaker 1: a very fami lady and was great because we would
Speaker 1: have young girls come into the shop and be like,
Speaker 1: my bike doesn't work. Somebody fixed my bike. My bike
Speaker 1: doesn't work. I don't know how to fix a bike.
Speaker 1: And she was the one who would just be like,
Speaker 1: your tires flat and they're like, yeah, I don't know
Speaker 1: how to fix it. Can you fix it? And she'd
Speaker 1: be like, well, you're wearing press on nails, right, And
Speaker 1: I'd be like yeah, I'm like cool, how do you
Speaker 1: put on your press on nails, and they'd walked through
Speaker 1: the steps of like, well, you stand your nails, and
Speaker 1: then you put the glue on your nails, and then
Speaker 1: you hold the press on nails on your fingernails for
Speaker 1: a little while and let them set, and then you're
Speaker 1: good to go. And it's like, great, you've just described
Speaker 1: exactly how you patch a bike inner two. So now
Speaker 1: we just need to get the bike inner two out,
Speaker 1: and here's the part that corresponds to your nail, and
Speaker 1: here's the part of the corresponse, like here's the glue
Speaker 1: and here's the you know, it's the same process. We
Speaker 1: just have to get the bike inner two out and
Speaker 1: then back in again. But you already know how to
Speaker 1: do the part where you make the bike to work again,
Speaker 1: and that does hit on another important like you know,
Speaker 1: apocalypse or whatever survival point where again all of our
Speaker 1: like fiction and movies focuses on like knowing how to
Speaker 1: use a gun or like being a woodsman. One of
Speaker 1: the most useful skills, maybe the most useful skill you
Speaker 1: can have in any disaster situation, is being able to
Speaker 1: teach people, like like knowing how to understand figure out
Speaker 1: what people know and how to get them the additional
Speaker 1: information they need in order to be more resilient and competent,
Speaker 1: because you're always better in a community of people who
Speaker 1: know to handle their ship than alone. And it builds
Speaker 1: on itself too. You know, we both come from different backgrounds,
Speaker 1: but as we've been together and with the different trainings
Speaker 1: that we've had in just light, the projects that we
Speaker 1: take on have become more and more complex. So you know,
Speaker 1: where I used to like to practice gardening and stuff
Speaker 1: and doing a little bit of woodworking and things, and
Speaker 1: now you know, we're doing various construction projects that we're
Speaker 1: kind of self taught, and we have some various home
Speaker 1: depot books on how to do them. But it's it
Speaker 1: doesn't feel nearly as intimidating because we've done steps to
Speaker 1: go to it, and because it's not an all or nothing,
Speaker 1: you don't have to suddenly be like I'm going to
Speaker 1: d I why my entire life. Like I definitely get
Speaker 1: that way sometimes where I'm like, I want to one
Speaker 1: day have everything in my house be made by someone
Speaker 1: that I know or myself. And it's really lovely to
Speaker 1: know crafts people or to you know, make do sit
Speaker 1: down at a pottery wheel and make your own bowls
Speaker 1: or whatever. But a lot of it is about practicing
Speaker 1: stuff when it's not an emergency so that when you
Speaker 1: later on have need or you have the ability, you
Speaker 1: have the time, like you can do a bunch of
Speaker 1: different things. So you know, we refloored. The room that
Speaker 1: we're in right now a process, but we didn't get
Speaker 1: there from nothing, And we've both done lots of different
Speaker 1: construction and measuring and other things in little bits just
Speaker 1: for fun, for work for other stuff beforehand, And a
Speaker 1: lot of these projects are things that are fun to
Speaker 1: do as a one off as a project. I've done,
Speaker 1: you know, embroidery with my kids just for fun, not
Speaker 1: because they need to suddenly embroider all of their clothing
Speaker 1: or they have to sew everything, but it's because it's
Speaker 1: a fun thing to do on a rainy day. Or
Speaker 1: you know, try fixing a book, not because there's no
Speaker 1: ability to go on Amazon and order another book. But hey, look,
Speaker 1: I just we didn't add one thing to the landfill
Speaker 1: ways and we don't have to fix all of the
Speaker 1: stuff we have. It's a one time craft. But then
Speaker 1: later on when stuff's falling apart or when we have
Speaker 1: supply chain issues, or when stuff's not there, it's handy
Speaker 1: to know, like, oh, you know what, Like we're having
Speaker 1: water rationing right now, because during the one of the
Speaker 1: droughts I grew up in California, we had water rationing
Speaker 1: and it was my mom hauled out of the basement
Speaker 1: my grandmother's old ringer machine and we were doing the
Speaker 1: laundry and that because it could conserved a hell of
Speaker 1: a lot of water and you could use the same
Speaker 1: water for load after load. It's good to just have
Speaker 1: those things just kind of on hand that you've tried,
Speaker 1: because when an emergency hits, you don't want to be
Speaker 1: trying to search the internet are looking for something because
Speaker 1: you've never done it before and now it's necessary. And
Speaker 1: it's it's again to the point of like how the
Speaker 1: how collapse really looks versus how it's often pictured. You're
Speaker 1: not trying to replicate when you're when you're doing your
Speaker 1: own laundry that way, you're not trying to replace civilization.
Speaker 1: You're patching a hole, like and and that's a lot
Speaker 1: of building resiliency is knowing that you have. It's like
Speaker 1: it's being able to fix a bike tire, it's patching
Speaker 1: a hole and I do want to acknowledge that like
Speaker 1: this is a little bit more outside of the dead
Speaker 1: center of mainstream in you know, the United States and
Speaker 1: some other like wealthy industrialized countries, and it's not like
Speaker 1: it has never stopped being the way most people in
Speaker 1: the world. Kind of one story to tell from these people.
Speaker 1: I was billeted with an Iraq. These these guys were
Speaker 1: like pulling people out of air strike craters every day,
Speaker 1: and we wanted to watch TV one nine. We were
Speaker 1: in like a bombed out mosque that isis had been
Speaker 1: using and they had a refrigerator that worked in a
Speaker 1: TV that isis had cut the chords with. And this
Speaker 1: guy just started pulling chords out of the fridge in
Speaker 1: about five minutes, had the TV working, had like hooked it,
Speaker 1: lashed everything together. It was like he wasn't a TV
Speaker 1: repairment or refridge. He just knew how electricity and ship
Speaker 1: worked and was able to figure out like, Okay, I
Speaker 1: can just put all this ship together. We're good to go.
Speaker 1: And and just also to loop background to the whole,
Speaker 1: like survival mentality a little bit. One of the things
Speaker 1: that like people that we've worked with, people who like
Speaker 1: have been in emergency situations that require you know, complex
Speaker 1: skill sets and things of One of the big things
Speaker 1: is to have a role that you are competent in
Speaker 1: that you are ready to fulfill, so you don't have
Speaker 1: to figure out your first step. You can get moving.
Speaker 1: You can figure out your first step. So, for example,
Speaker 1: in the you know, the supply chain issues that hit
Speaker 1: at the start of COVID and are recurring. Um the
Speaker 1: idea of like oh there's no way to like there's
Speaker 1: no laundry stap. Say okay, well we've got borax and
Speaker 1: these others and some making soda borax, right, we can
Speaker 1: we can make our own laundry detergent in a pinch
Speaker 1: and it'll work well enough. Cool. Don't have to have
Speaker 1: that be the thing that stresses us out and like
Speaker 1: adds to our like paralysis. Yeah, and get A huge
Speaker 1: part of is even how you approach to the problem.
Speaker 1: It's not freaking out like oh my god, there's no
Speaker 1: laundry soap. Hell am I going to clean the clothes.
Speaker 1: It's being like, oh, there's no laundry soap, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go online because we still have that and try to
Speaker 1: figure out either other things that can make laundry soap
Speaker 1: that there are and like it's it's accepting. Like you
Speaker 1: talk about like wanting to be competent in a role,
Speaker 1: you don't have to know what that is from the start,
Speaker 1: as long as like the starting point isn't I'm going
Speaker 1: to be the medic I'm going to be this, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be the food or it's like no, I'm going
Speaker 1: to start learning how to do things I don't know
Speaker 1: how to do, and over a period of time, if
Speaker 1: I am dedicated that I will figure out the thing
Speaker 1: that I want to get most competent at. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: I mean none of none of what we've been talking
Speaker 1: about in terms of the various crafts and projects that
Speaker 1: we've undertaken are things that are like our primary function
Speaker 1: in the world. It's just like, well, at some point
Speaker 1: it seemed like it was worth doing, and so we
Speaker 1: did some of it, and then we kept doing it
Speaker 1: now and there's always pretty good at literally if anything
Speaker 1: we've talked about, there's the you're, I don't know, bougie
Speaker 1: hipster version of like doing it expensively. Even with like woodworking,
Speaker 1: there could be a dirt cheap I built a table
Speaker 1: for almost nothing when I was younger, because it was like, well,
Speaker 1: I found this would that the city chopped down, and
Speaker 1: I bought sand paper and stain for fifteen dollars and
Speaker 1: then I got like a fucking base for my Ikea
Speaker 1: and I had a functional table and I figured it
Speaker 1: out using YouTube. And it's you know, not as good
Speaker 1: a table as I could have made if I had
Speaker 1: ten or thousands of dollars in woodworking tools, but I
Speaker 1: had a table for years because of it um And
Speaker 1: it's it's accepting the because I think people do get
Speaker 1: freaked out. There's such an emphasis on like having the gear,
Speaker 1: getting the equipment, stockpiling things, and like, really stockpiling competency
Speaker 1: is better because yeah, and I think the Amazon wish
Speaker 1: list ability to just be like, oh I want this
Speaker 1: specific thing, I can in three seconds look it up
Speaker 1: online and find the exact thing that I want definitely
Speaker 1: pushes in the opposite direction and makes people, well, a
Speaker 1: little less resilient in that capacity because there's less of
Speaker 1: that idea that you can just have stuff. And I
Speaker 1: would just say, if people want to get started with it,
Speaker 1: it's really pick something low stakes, pick something simple, because
Speaker 1: you build the abilities, you build the ability to learn
Speaker 1: and um I had to explained to me once that
Speaker 1: it's like a hangar. Every skill you get X as
Speaker 1: a hangar, and having really basic simple things is actually
Speaker 1: super necessary because even even the like hardcore primitive skills.
Speaker 1: I have some amazing books that I bought when I
Speaker 1: was eighteen, and I remember I had them and I
Speaker 1: looked through and I read it and I was like,
Speaker 1: this is like reading magic. I understand absolutely none of it.
Speaker 1: And after a few years of doing things, not even
Speaker 1: necessarily traditional skills, but just things practicing stuff, picking stuff,
Speaker 1: there was so much more framework that I had that
Speaker 1: I looked through it and suddenly there was stuff concepts
Speaker 1: that I could hang all of these incredible skills on.
Speaker 1: And we're like, oh, that never made sense to me.
Speaker 1: I understand it now because I've done simpler things and
Speaker 1: starting with thing that doesn't seem like overwhelming to learn
Speaker 1: something simple and something something low stakes, something that if
Speaker 1: you utterly mess it up, if you have ah, what
Speaker 1: are the like like the regrets the like craft epiccraft
Speaker 1: fails that it's okay, it's not a big deal because
Speaker 1: failing is part of learning, and so pick things that
Speaker 1: it's okay to fail at as your as your projects
Speaker 1: and and don't as many of us did in the
Speaker 1: late nineties and early two thousand's when we didn't have
Speaker 1: health insurance of any description, you know, experiment on ourselves
Speaker 1: and our friends with herbs because we didn't have healthcare,
Speaker 1: access to doctors. Avoid doing that is not low stakes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I'm about to go do and surgery on my
Speaker 1: own infected wound now that you've told me this, and
Speaker 1: I'm really excited. Excited I got I got an exact deal.
Speaker 1: I got some vodka. At least we're good to go. No,
Speaker 1: the key is really hot glue same as surgical stitches.
Speaker 1: I have similar not hot, because then it sterilizes the
Speaker 1: wound doesn't stick to anything. This is how I know
Speaker 1: you are not a crafter. Is hot glue does not anything.
Speaker 1: You just you squirt it in there, You get it
Speaker 1: in there real good, and then you cover it with
Speaker 1: with superglue. I do have a grand that has plug
Speaker 1: in the world. I would put superglue in first. I
Speaker 1: do have a grandpa that has used superglue so many
Speaker 1: times to glue his body back together. It's actually what
Speaker 1: it was made for. Ye, that's very funny. It's effective
Speaker 1: at that anyway, here's armatical advice. Yeah, don't do any
Speaker 1: of the things that were just said. But if you
Speaker 1: do want to learn how to do suits, you you
Speaker 1: can find guides where people do it on chicken and
Speaker 1: which is how if you're an e m T you
Speaker 1: learn how to do it. And it's that's a that
Speaker 1: is a skill you can build for very little money.
Speaker 1: That's useful and you don't have to start on your
Speaker 1: friends bodies. And I will put in a plug for like,
Speaker 1: wilderness first aid courses are not cheap and there are
Speaker 1: some real good ones out there, and as a as
Speaker 1: like a baseline that is a real handy and helps
Speaker 1: you think about things creatively because wilderness first aid unlike
Speaker 1: an ambulance driver. An ambulance driver is driving in a
Speaker 1: box with all the tools they need, and wilderness first
Speaker 1: aid the assumption is don't have a box. You don't
Speaker 1: have and so you have to work it out probably
Speaker 1: you know, uh, some plantain or something or some the
Speaker 1: right fucking kind of SAP. There's like ship you can
Speaker 1: use and which we will not proceed to attempt to
Speaker 1: lift off here and provide medical advice. Don't go to
Speaker 1: a doctor, no use pine needles, make your own needle
Speaker 1: t don't cure your COVID. Find a bee hive and
Speaker 1: start sucking. Any other sources are any other sources making
Speaker 1: stuff and doing things from way back in the day.
Speaker 1: Definitely recommend that one UM country know how like there's
Speaker 1: some a lot of old craft books actually, UM the
Speaker 1: entire back collection of the Mother Earth magazine skills stuff
Speaker 1: like I have definitely made any studying magazine, not Emma
Speaker 1: Goldman's Anarchists newspaper, but I've definitely made solar powered dehydrators
Speaker 1: out of cardboard boxes and saran rap from the from
Speaker 1: Mother Earth magazine stuff And it's absolutely fantastic. The just
Speaker 1: old school guide books UM, and but also anything that's
Speaker 1: listened as like d I Y guides that have stuff
Speaker 1: that you would like to make and like to do
Speaker 1: are great. The library is great. Use the library. Research
Speaker 1: librarians at the library are great. And if you're like,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to learn how to do this thing, can
Speaker 1: you help me find books on it? Research librarians at
Speaker 1: the library they have doctorates in how to help you
Speaker 1: do that, and that's they just sit at desks all
Speaker 1: day waiting for me and that's that. And what you'll
Speaker 1: learn from them about how to answer those questions for
Speaker 1: yourself is also useful in their long run. Well, go
Speaker 1: out and make a reflux. Still is that legal? Well no,
Speaker 1: not in most places, but it's easy. You just need
Speaker 1: a box inside of a box, and you pour old
Speaker 1: beer in the center box and that's like saran wrap.
Speaker 1: On topic,