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Speaker 1: I think we got it. Hey it's Delilah. Did you
Speaker 1: know I have a new daily podcast. It drops Monday
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Speaker 1: I'm Maya Shunker, host of a slight Change of Plans,
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Speaker 1: about everything from the science of change to personal stories
Speaker 1: like a blind woman who becomes a master chef and
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Speaker 1: change of plans on the I Heart Radio app, Apple
Speaker 1: Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everybody, Robert
Speaker 1: Evans here and I wanted to let you know this
Speaker 1: is a compiletion episode. So every episode of the week
Speaker 1: that just happened is here in one convenient and with
Speaker 1: somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in
Speaker 1: a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening
Speaker 1: to the episodes every day this week, there's gonna be
Speaker 1: nothing new here for you, but you can make your
Speaker 1: own decisions. Oh it could welcome year the podcast that
Speaker 1: happens ship. All right, Well st Andrew, I'm gonna I'm
Speaker 1: gonna I'm gonna pivot to you to to pull us
Speaker 1: out of this tailspin. I've locked. Hello. Hello, what's the
Speaker 1: seen everyone today? I wanted to go on a bit
Speaker 1: of a personal meandering. I guess on um, some of
Speaker 1: the ideas and concepts that just kind of floating on
Speaker 1: my head um surrounding sustainable city planning and city living.
Speaker 1: I want to see a lot of these ideas and stuff,
Speaker 1: um kind of just crimp them from like all over
Speaker 1: the place, and in some cases they are a bit
Speaker 1: less I would say viable and others. But I do
Speaker 1: find like the work of for example, Low Tech Magazine,
Speaker 1: dot com and UM and so on to be very
Speaker 1: inspiring in terms of all abilities, UM, what potential there is,
Speaker 1: an obsolete technologies, what the tech solutions exist for issues,
Speaker 1: and what we can do as people to just kind
Speaker 1: of make living in urban sprawl or suburban hell a
Speaker 1: little bit less hellish. Yeah. That is definitely a topic
Speaker 1: close to my heart as well as someone who lives
Speaker 1: in a city. I would like cities to be less hellish. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that seems and I would like suburbs and not exist
Speaker 1: so internal more on the suburbs. We have to ally
Speaker 1: with rural America and protracted people against the suburbs. Yes, yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: my my my crank proposal has always been reintroducing Macedons
Speaker 1: and just like just having Macedon is just like walking
Speaker 1: through and destroying buildings, because that's that's what the suburbs deserves.
Speaker 1: Masters is in the actual animals. Yes, yes, I thought
Speaker 1: you meant like the social media platform. No, no, I
Speaker 1: think we need to clone leopards so that they breed
Speaker 1: as quickly as rabbits and just let them loose. Wasn't
Speaker 1: Dr diferen Schmitz raised by leopards? Sure? Why not? I
Speaker 1: would Robertino, who doctor difference verches. No, let's just let's
Speaker 1: just let's just let's just let's just move on. Okay.
Speaker 1: I think I'm I think I think we are. We
Speaker 1: are roughly the same, in the same age bracket for television.
Speaker 1: We watched so i'm movies to catch up on. I'm
Speaker 1: very familiar with the Good Doctor period, the platypus pilled. Yes,
Speaker 1: I am very, very very platipilled, as they say, platipilled.
Speaker 1: Let's right. So, um, there are a lot of aspects
Speaker 1: of my evil plan to make the entire tri state
Speaker 1: area more sustainable, But I think I would want to
Speaker 1: start with something that tends to consume a lot of
Speaker 1: the energy in cities, and that is like heating and cooling.
Speaker 1: I mean, for me, living in a tropical country, heating
Speaker 1: has never been a consideration. Um. I mean, the coolst
Speaker 1: it gets isn't like the I would say, like eighteen
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty degrees celsius area. Um, And to me, that
Speaker 1: is like chili, that's like layering up kind of thing
Speaker 1: because I can't handle that kind of cool um, which
Speaker 1: is kind of wild to me that I have a
Speaker 1: considered moving to Canada. I don't think I'll be able
Speaker 1: to handle it. It does, it does get it does
Speaker 1: get much colder. I mean we when I was in Canada,
Speaker 1: we would have not not uncommonly have minus forty celsius weeks.
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, experienced minus degrees before. I don't know, no, no,
Speaker 1: it is. Oh, it's fine, it's it's not a big deal.
Speaker 1: You just put on an extra pair of socks. You're
Speaker 1: good to go. Okay, So when when it when it
Speaker 1: hits negative forty degrees fahrenheit, you've experienced negative forty degrees.
Speaker 1: It's not like it's not like temperatures like negative negative forty.
Speaker 1: Negative forty fahrenheit is the temperature of the surface of
Speaker 1: bars are a sunny day. Well, actually, negative fairness is
Speaker 1: the same as negative forty celsius. Oh is it they
Speaker 1: actually converged that point. Yeah, it's like you just yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just her hain like it's not even cold anymore,
Speaker 1: Like you just like your your face just hurts. It's
Speaker 1: it's great, it's so many time I'm to call my
Speaker 1: my my favorite name again and have negative forty fahrenheit,
Speaker 1: negative forty selfius celsius clapping hands in the middle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: classics anyway, Yes, yea, Honestly, I can't even conceive of
Speaker 1: that kind of temperature. Um. I am an island boy,
Speaker 1: so that's how I operate, and as an island boy. Um,
Speaker 1: how to say that? Like heat is very very uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: Humidic humid heat is even more uncomfortable. Dry heat is
Speaker 1: also extremely uncomfortable. When you have a hot day combined
Speaker 1: with like sahara and dust in the air and no
Speaker 1: clouds in the sky, it is truly, truly miserable. I
Speaker 1: can't imagine, um, what life in a city would be
Speaker 1: like if, um, you know, these sort of temperatures continue
Speaker 1: to climb as they are climbing, Um, as we're seeing
Speaker 1: you know, global average temperatures rising by you know, a
Speaker 1: half degree or a degree or two degrees cells. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's just ridiculous, let alone three or four degrees celsius increase,
Speaker 1: especially compounded with the fact that in a city there's
Speaker 1: this thing called the urban heat island effect. So cities
Speaker 1: are ten degrees it's hotter than the surrounding countryside, and
Speaker 1: the reasons for the other numerous. You know, you have
Speaker 1: like vehicles emitting heat constantly, you have air conditioners pumping
Speaker 1: heat into the air. You have concrete and covering every
Speaker 1: surface just like absorbing and radiating the sun's rays. And
Speaker 1: you have these urban canyons between tall buildings that prevent
Speaker 1: heat from escaping from and to keep it at the
Speaker 1: sort of street level. It's miserable, right, And the typical solutions,
Speaker 1: the individual solutions, the short term solutions, they just make
Speaker 1: the situation worse because, I mean, when you're feeling hot,
Speaker 1: I mean I was just feeling hot just now and
Speaker 1: I fell on the e C. Right when you're feeling hot,
Speaker 1: you know, you're seeing on the e C. Or you
Speaker 1: put on a fan, but not to wash a fan,
Speaker 1: But the a C continues and fuels this vicious cycle
Speaker 1: of heating the outdoors to cool the indoors, making experience
Speaker 1: spaces even more uncomfortable. So you end up with air
Speaker 1: conditioning use accounting for like one five of global energy
Speaker 1: electricity usage of building related global electricity usage, and you
Speaker 1: end up with the thing that'supposed to be cooling us
Speaker 1: heating things even more because you know, as developing countries,
Speaker 1: you know they have access to one and more air conditioning,
Speaker 1: especially and you know, to helping countries and to be
Speaker 1: in the hotter side of the world. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: the use of their condition just continues to sky rop
Speaker 1: it and um the International Energy Agency actually estimated that
Speaker 1: it would take the amount of energy needed to cool
Speaker 1: buildings will triple by twenty which is equivalent to the
Speaker 1: current elecacy demand in the US and Germany combined. So
Speaker 1: on top of all that, you will have an issue
Speaker 1: of like heat and heat deaths, right, the deaths and
Speaker 1: injuries caused by heat, I mean heat stroke is becoming
Speaker 1: more and more of an issue in cities, especially when
Speaker 1: you know temperatures reach above twenty five degrees celsius. People
Speaker 1: you know, manual labels, people who work outside, people who
Speaker 1: have to move around a lot, you know, experience the
Speaker 1: symptoms the symptoms of heat stroke whenever there is like
Speaker 1: the spike in temperature. Right, and then even you know,
Speaker 1: if you don't experience like a heat stroke, Heat is exhausting,
Speaker 1: It is energy draining, is utterly sapping, and it requires
Speaker 1: a lot out of your body to keep you cool
Speaker 1: and prevent you from like eating and surprisingly this overheating
Speaker 1: is you is not just like you know, a tropical
Speaker 1: issue or like a hot country issue like places like
Speaker 1: Moscow had like and asked me to eleven th people
Speaker 1: die due to heat wave in twenty ten, and so
Speaker 1: with all these heat waves and stuff, we need to
Speaker 1: like figure out what to do with all these giant
Speaker 1: concrete buildings. I mean, and for some people like equal
Speaker 1: brutalism is you know, wow, so cool to me personally,
Speaker 1: And this is just my subjective opinion. I find it
Speaker 1: ugly and disgusting and I hated but you know, right
Speaker 1: brutalism discourse. I mean, what what do you all think
Speaker 1: of rutalism. I think Yugoslavia brutalism was cool. Every other
Speaker 1: kind of brutalism is just like my opinions on brutalism
Speaker 1: boiled down to thinking the game control is fun. I
Speaker 1: had stayed in a Yugoslavian brutalist architecture hotel, which was
Speaker 1: one of the weirdest nights of my life because it
Speaker 1: was clearly made. It was like one of these gigantic
Speaker 1: like people's hotels that was meant to provide everyone with
Speaker 1: vacations and so there's like twenty thousand rooms and we
Speaker 1: were like the only three people there, so there was
Speaker 1: one person at the desk and it's just cavern of
Speaker 1: empty rooms such this. Everything felt like a liminal space.
Speaker 1: It was. It was very odd. It can it could
Speaker 1: be very very uncanny. It wasn't like bad, it was
Speaker 1: like reasonably well constructed. It was just deeply strange. I
Speaker 1: mean that's to spend the night. I think that's what
Speaker 1: makes the game control so cool? Is that. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: plays with those uncanny feelings on Brutalism while still being
Speaker 1: like very cool, Like it's still it's the game that
Speaker 1: Jacob Keller made a video voute right, yes he made
Speaker 1: a he he didn't make a video like I watched
Speaker 1: that recently. This is like the sort of oldest house
Speaker 1: kind of thing, right right, right right, yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: wanted to go that game because I mean that's what
Speaker 1: that's kind of like my issue at Brutalism. It feels
Speaker 1: like a boss level in a video game, like you
Speaker 1: have to go through each level clear what's all dominians,
Speaker 1: and it gets it Tot and Pete the boss. It's
Speaker 1: kind of unsettling, yes, and then like Eco brutalism is
Speaker 1: just like, oh what if trees tres Yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: like okay, will But I mean, like one of my
Speaker 1: many occupations, and I still maintain it seasonally. Um. I
Speaker 1: was a power washer and I hate moss, and so
Speaker 1: to see moss all over buildings just really bothers me.
Speaker 1: Like I just want to get you know, my spring
Speaker 1: gun and just clear it all off. Um. And especially
Speaker 1: in like this climate, mass is like a very significant issue.
Speaker 1: So that that makes sense, you know, Yeah, one of
Speaker 1: my pet peeves among many. So I mean there's many
Speaker 1: different ways we could combat the when heat island effects
Speaker 1: um that don't involve eco brutalism. And they can also
Speaker 1: help to facility, you know, creating more attractive spaces to
Speaker 1: live and to play, you know. Um. Obviously the solution
Speaker 1: isn't just like build those every building there ever been
Speaker 1: built and make it more sustainable, you know, with vernacular
Speaker 1: materials and stuff. So of course new buildings should be
Speaker 1: built with principles in mind. Um, but you know, it's
Speaker 1: not practical to us even sustainable to destroy all the
Speaker 1: buildings we've already built and rebuild them. You know, the
Speaker 1: best thing we can do is try to mitigate and
Speaker 1: adapt with what we already have, um, greenery and I
Speaker 1: know it's just roasting eco brutalism just trap slack trees
Speaker 1: and everything is an important part in that, right because
Speaker 1: you know it called it causes evapple transporation, which is
Speaker 1: like where water evaporates and plants leaves and cools the temperature. Um.
Speaker 1: You know it also improve people's like psychological well being. Um.
Speaker 1: And they just the nice look at um, the nice
Speaker 1: look at the keep things cool. In fact, they can
Speaker 1: help cause temperatures to drop by like two to three
Speaker 1: degrees celsius in the like the surrounding area. I think
Speaker 1: people certainly misinterpreted, but like this, this is one of
Speaker 1: the big things you can see with with racism in
Speaker 1: the U S. Where like you can literally like you
Speaker 1: can literally track racial divides in a lot of American
Speaker 1: cities by the by the temperature because like people places
Speaker 1: where not why people live just don't have trees. And
Speaker 1: you know this this has like a just this sort
Speaker 1: of like cascading series of environmental and social effects which
Speaker 1: are a disaster and environmental racism, Yeah, yes, released stock. Honestly,
Speaker 1: if you look at the heat maps or some of
Speaker 1: these it's use and you could literally see, you know,
Speaker 1: where poor black folks live. You know, you can see
Speaker 1: the places with less trees, the places next to factories
Speaker 1: with like talks like you're on off and weese and
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. It's just you know, right there,
Speaker 1: and it sucks. Which is why, of course, parts of
Speaker 1: any sort of efforts to improve cities and make things
Speaker 1: more sustainable would involve you know, social justice, and would
Speaker 1: involve responding to an addressing the compounding effects of like
Speaker 1: environmental racism over the past several decades so. And part
Speaker 1: of the issue again sign things back to environmental racism
Speaker 1: is that a lot of the climate change policies that
Speaker 1: you know, ostensibly amends to fever, like high density urban
Speaker 1: and smart growth, you know, like sustainable blocks and that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. They are not conceived or implemented in
Speaker 1: a way that involves the people being affected by them.
Speaker 1: You know. In fact, a lot of these like sort
Speaker 1: of green um projects raise the cost of food, energy,
Speaker 1: what transport housing for people in the area. You know,
Speaker 1: they create these sorts of like gentrified neighborhoods, essentially whether
Speaker 1: original inhabitants can no longer afford to live there. So
Speaker 1: if we wants to develop like a sustainable city, resiliencity,
Speaker 1: sustainable oversilain neighborhood, it requires social justice, It requires you know,
Speaker 1: equity and you know, like the involvement of all affected
Speaker 1: through you know consensus or democracy UM to just really
Speaker 1: shape the future that you know they will be experiencing
Speaker 1: because they're the ones being affected by it. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of other ways as well to heap proof
Speaker 1: a city. UM reflective roofs and roads. UM can also
Speaker 1: helped reduce the absorbedtive powers of UM solar radiation by
Speaker 1: concrete and asphalt. So in fact, in some cities like
Speaker 1: l A and in New York, there's this wide reflective
Speaker 1: coating that UM has been implemented in some five thousand
Speaker 1: meters square of roof space that saves an estimated two
Speaker 1: thousand two tons of CEO two per year from cooling emissions.
Speaker 1: I mean, all it takes really is just like that
Speaker 1: sort of white reflective coat, and it saves dividends in
Speaker 1: the long run. UM NASA had done some research on
Speaker 1: this and it demonstrated the results demonstrated that a white
Speaker 1: roof could be twenty three degrees celsius or forty two
Speaker 1: degrees fahrenheit ruler than a typical black roof UM on
Speaker 1: a hot New York somebody UM and places where like yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, it's kind of like gloss the river that
Speaker 1: is crazy. That is absolutely absolutely right. And then in
Speaker 1: cities where like we're like of the land area is
Speaker 1: like asphalt, you can imagine how that sort of UM,
Speaker 1: that sort of reflective ceilan can impact, um the cooling
Speaker 1: or the heating of the area. Water. Of course, it's
Speaker 1: another like important aspect of cooling cities. UM. In andaluse Um,
Speaker 1: which was like the Muslim kingdom in Gabrian Peninsula in
Speaker 1: the fourteenth century UM, they used to have these sort
Speaker 1: of like courtyards with pools and fountains. They would stimulate
Speaker 1: water evaporation and cool the air, and so like cities today,
Speaker 1: you know take some hints from that. You know, you
Speaker 1: have ponds and pools and fountains and missing systems and
Speaker 1: stuff that can sort of chill things out. I mean
Speaker 1: we see that being UM implemented in China, where you
Speaker 1: have like, for example, UM water miss does at like
Speaker 1: bus stops which can chill the air and you know,
Speaker 1: cool passengers as they wait um, and they found actually
Speaker 1: that adding water features and like cool coatings reduces the
Speaker 1: cooling requirements of an area by twenty nine and also
Speaker 1: lowers the overall averaging at temperature by one point five
Speaker 1: degrees celsius. So it's like, honestly, why, how like these
Speaker 1: little things can have such a major impact on temperature.
Speaker 1: Speaking of like old methods of cooling um ancient methods
Speaker 1: of cooling, there's this Middle Eastern shading device called the
Speaker 1: mastra bil um or I think it's mastra ba, and
Speaker 1: it's basically an architectural element that is usually built by
Speaker 1: um wooden lattice work and sometimes stay in the glass.
Speaker 1: It's used to like catch and cool the wind through
Speaker 1: like having these basins of water in them. Is I mean,
Speaker 1: so I could try to describe it. It's like a
Speaker 1: window jutting out of a building um with sort of
Speaker 1: decorated by lattice work, with jars and basins of water
Speaker 1: placed within them to let the wind pasture. And as
Speaker 1: the wind is passing through, it's caused an evaporative cooling
Speaker 1: then it chills out the interior. And to these mastra
Speaker 1: beas um. They've been used since the Middle Ages by
Speaker 1: you know, the Coptic churches of Egypt and the Art
Speaker 1: Deco movement in Iraq, and and by you know, the
Speaker 1: architecture um in bad Dad as well. And so these
Speaker 1: sort of construction methods, while they tend to be developed
Speaker 1: for you know, individual homes or individual buildings, um, they
Speaker 1: can in fact be implemented um with even the aesthetics
Speaker 1: of Islamic geometry to help to cool a building and
Speaker 1: produce its overall seor twe missions. So I've been talking
Speaker 1: about heating and cooling and stuff for a while now,
Speaker 1: and speaking of I should probably turn on me easy,
Speaker 1: turn off my a C. Rather, I think I heard
Speaker 1: either either it was you, Andrew, or maybe it was
Speaker 1: Robert talking about the ceramic kind of cooling idea. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's the thing. And like the parts of
Speaker 1: the Americans Southwest, like New Mexico, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: like swamp coolers that are basically worked, right, Yeah, swamp cool,
Speaker 1: swamp cool. It only works in certain climates, right, Like
Speaker 1: you wouldn't really don't because it's if it's too it's
Speaker 1: too humid, it's not gonna work. You're just gonna Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think there's kind of a broader thing there architecturally,
Speaker 1: which is that like we have a lot of sort
Speaker 1: of like like we we've we've lost a lot of
Speaker 1: in the way we do architecturally. We've lost a lot
Speaker 1: of the sort of like building we we've lost a
Speaker 1: lot of sort of building techniques adapted to specific locations.
Speaker 1: Yeah if not, yeah, yeah, And like that's something that
Speaker 1: has to be reversed, like immediately. Guess yeah, Like our
Speaker 1: our current model of building houses out of oil is
Speaker 1: going to get us all killed. Really, what's what's the
Speaker 1: problem there? What's wrong? What's on that? I mean on
Speaker 1: top of that, right, not just vernacular architecture, but vernacular clothing.
Speaker 1: I mean it's I mean as again, so when living
Speaker 1: in a tropical country, I see it for myself, like
Speaker 1: working people going to work wearing like full long sleeve
Speaker 1: dress shoots and long long dress pants and you know,
Speaker 1: like formal shoes, and it's honestly up, you know sometimes
Speaker 1: like they have the whole tie like you know, pull
Speaker 1: up and everything. It's not it's entirely based on like
Speaker 1: European standards of professionalism, and um, it needs to be abolish.
Speaker 1: Abolish dress goods, all right, abolished like this whole idea
Speaker 1: that you know, we have to rest this particular way, um,
Speaker 1: despite you know, the temperature, because it's more professional or
Speaker 1: whatever for professionalism. Honestly, yeah, we we have we have
Speaker 1: podcasting or in the vanguard of this, but we need
Speaker 1: to help to destroy professionalism once and for all. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: ye show up to where can you be then suit
Speaker 1: h um. But yeah, like vernacular buildings as well. You know,
Speaker 1: obviously you had in in Africa, in different parts of Africa,
Speaker 1: you would have difference structures that were particularly ticults. You know,
Speaker 1: if you're in a in a tropical reinforcet environment, you
Speaker 1: would have a bill in a steeler to you know,
Speaker 1: keeping mosquitoes out and maintaining a certain temperature within and
Speaker 1: maintaining comfort as well within or you know, in cooler
Speaker 1: regions you would have um, certain construction that would keep
Speaker 1: heats within the building and prevent um excessive discomfort you know. Um.
Speaker 1: And they were also of course, like when it comes
Speaker 1: to like cooler areas, you will also expected to sort
Speaker 1: of keep yourself warm as well as you know, keep
Speaker 1: your building woman. In fact, it was more so keeping
Speaker 1: yourself personally warm, so keeping yourself lay up even when
Speaker 1: you're indoors, and of course that's kind of lost today
Speaker 1: people are expected to just you know, turn on the
Speaker 1: heater and vibe for the months of winter. But it
Speaker 1: isn't sustainable. A lot of things we enjoy today unsustainable.
Speaker 1: Keeps coming back to that. But yeah, speaking of things
Speaker 1: that we enjoy that are not at all sustainable, how
Speaker 1: about cause get rid of cause? Please get rid of cause.
Speaker 1: I mean, cause are very convenient in terms of like,
Speaker 1: if you want to get somewhere very specific, um, you know,
Speaker 1: if there's a place you want to go, I'm the
Speaker 1: one you need to know. I'm a car. I'm a car.
Speaker 1: I'm a car. You know kind of thing. But my
Speaker 1: little musical interview there, thank you for appreciating it. But ultimately,
Speaker 1: like they honestly aren't sustainable. They honestly on something that
Speaker 1: we can maintain in the nail even for well potentially
Speaker 1: in the neighbuance. Where's the far future. I mean, people
Speaker 1: are already know the problems with gascars, already know my
Speaker 1: gascars are bad. But you know, things just just things
Speaker 1: are just sort of pivoted towards electric cars and who
Speaker 1: electric cars, Let's get a bunch of electric cars. Who
Speaker 1: but electric cars aren't better. I mean the materials they require,
Speaker 1: the energy they required, it's quite frankly not sustainable in
Speaker 1: the long run, and it just lengthens the amount of
Speaker 1: time that we spend dependence on a cause for short
Speaker 1: and long distance travel. And especially how in the States
Speaker 1: we've built our cities around the idea of a car,
Speaker 1: which has expanded the urban terrain unnecessarily. And if you
Speaker 1: look at like all the space taken up by like
Speaker 1: highways and overpasses, and how much of just like urban
Speaker 1: space is taken up but just been built around the
Speaker 1: idea of the car, it really kind of makes the
Speaker 1: whole idea of a city so much less useful. It's
Speaker 1: it's really it's really frustrating. And I think it's also
Speaker 1: working at the cars are so unbelievably dangerous yea, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're very much used to like having these like death
Speaker 1: machines driving around at all times, and that that makes
Speaker 1: for like a very um cool like series of metal
Speaker 1: band song names or whatever. But the death statistics on
Speaker 1: funny when it comes to cause. No, and like the
Speaker 1: average transport transportation time having cars has not actually decreased
Speaker 1: like the amount of time it takes to get from
Speaker 1: place to place based on like where you live in
Speaker 1: your city has not actually increased because now everything has
Speaker 1: just spread further apart. So a hundred years ago would
Speaker 1: take you know, like a fifteen minute trek to get
Speaker 1: to like, you know, the market or something. It can
Speaker 1: take oft times longer, especially if you're driving in like
Speaker 1: rush hour traffic to get just just just like a
Speaker 1: couple of miles, where even in some cases a decent
Speaker 1: job get you there faster. Um, just because of how
Speaker 1: we've just designed the cities all around these rolling metal
Speaker 1: death cages. Um. Yeah, it's not it's it's not great.
Speaker 1: It's one of the reasons I don't currently have a car. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that's kind of that's something that's shocking to a
Speaker 1: lot of people when I tell them that, really, I
Speaker 1: have no intention if I a buying a call of
Speaker 1: ever owning a call. It's not something that I want.
Speaker 1: And I mean I live relatively close to like some
Speaker 1: of the major transport um arteries of the country, and
Speaker 1: you know, not has like this unique ish transportation system
Speaker 1: public transportation systems, So we have these privately owned maxi
Speaker 1: taxis that um, they're like vans with seats in the
Speaker 1: back UM, and you know, you could you just kind
Speaker 1: of jump in UM depending on where they're going with Ruth.
Speaker 1: They're taken UM and they're they're convenient enough for me
Speaker 1: and for my purposes, so I just, you know, I go,
Speaker 1: I need to go um with them. But they're also
Speaker 1: gas guzzling in efficient machines. I mean, they're better than
Speaker 1: you know, all those people driving cars. I mean as
Speaker 1: an island, you know, like I don't know why we're
Speaker 1: so obsessed with having more and more cars on the road, UM,
Speaker 1: but at the end of the day, they still aren't
Speaker 1: the best in terms of sustainability and in terms of viable, reliable,
Speaker 1: sustainable transport. UM. We also have like personal taxis as well,
Speaker 1: but they have the same problems as regular taxis. And
Speaker 1: what's frustrating is that we used to have a train
Speaker 1: line UM that went along the entire east west corridor
Speaker 1: of the country, and that's where most of the people
Speaker 1: internet along the East West corridor UM. But that was
Speaker 1: destroyed in the nineties sixties, I think, to make way
Speaker 1: for highways and a priority bus route. So instead of
Speaker 1: having a nice, convenient, cute, little train that we could
Speaker 1: take to go from place to place. You have to
Speaker 1: rely on busses and maxis and taxis and cause, yeah,
Speaker 1: that is quite that's not cool, that is quite not good,
Speaker 1: quite quite him, because we need to reconfigure. Seriously, I
Speaker 1: would love for them to bring back trains. He was
Speaker 1: to take a train, don't have to rely on I mean,
Speaker 1: government bureaucracy makes all things unreliable. But I think a
Speaker 1: train would have been slightly more reliable than a bus.
Speaker 1: Very much on the pro train, on the on the
Speaker 1: pro train train a fewer, a few fewer, fewer moments
Speaker 1: more happy than writing the Portland's max line and streetcar
Speaker 1: in a no face costume. It's very it's it's very fun.
Speaker 1: I think. Also, like another thing about about cars, right,
Speaker 1: this is just it's just just on a very pure
Speaker 1: political level, like cars is the thing that allowed suburbs
Speaker 1: to exist, and the existence of suburbs has produced just
Speaker 1: generation upon generation of like frothing reactionaries who are the
Speaker 1: source of like enormous percentages of the world's problems. And
Speaker 1: so if you get rid of those places, you produce
Speaker 1: less of them. Yeah, which is just a political benefit
Speaker 1: for anyone who wants to not die exactly exactly. I mean,
Speaker 1: we don't think about it because there already so many
Speaker 1: things to think about. But if you actually sat down
Speaker 1: and pondered the death tool of like cause, um we
Speaker 1: really and really brought to the forefront and really made
Speaker 1: it less of a necessity. I think one more people
Speaker 1: would be open to the idea of rejecting cause to
Speaker 1: keeping them as at most benign a novelty um that
Speaker 1: maybe one or two exists in the entire community, UM
Speaker 1: for use if needs be UM, But otherwise I I
Speaker 1: don't see how each and every person in the world
Speaker 1: owning their own car, is that all the best way
Speaker 1: to go. Also cause it kind of ugly to me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we really didn't design them to look cool, which just
Speaker 1: it's I mean, there's some cars that look kind of cool,
Speaker 1: like some of the more classic ones. But and that's
Speaker 1: part of the issue, right, They're getting uglier to me,
Speaker 1: And they're also getting larger, you know, like people like
Speaker 1: they're raising their grills more and more so, like you
Speaker 1: basically a pedestrian killing machine. We've effectively undone most of
Speaker 1: the benefits of making cars safer for passengers by making
Speaker 1: them much more dangerous for pedestrians, which is entirely a
Speaker 1: marketing choice. Like, if you like the fucking trucks they
Speaker 1: were making twenty five years ago are just as useful
Speaker 1: um and in a lot of cases more useful for
Speaker 1: like practical far more for hauling and whatnot, then the
Speaker 1: trucks they're making today they haven't meaningfully gotten better. They've
Speaker 1: just gotten a lot larger for no real reason other
Speaker 1: than it makes people feel like big men. Well, and
Speaker 1: then you get these fun you get these fun you
Speaker 1: can you can look at the marketing people like explicitly
Speaker 1: talking about how like yeah, like they like basically explicitly
Speaker 1: playing into the fantasy of running over protesters and it's
Speaker 1: it's great, it's yeah, So get rid of cars and
Speaker 1: you won't have to deal with that. But Chris, how
Speaker 1: is that sustainable well viable? M hmm, good question. Introducing
Speaker 1: super blocks. Oh yes, superblocks are basically um neighborhoods of
Speaker 1: nine blocks, So I don't think they have to be
Speaker 1: I think the philosophy and ideas behind super blocks can
Speaker 1: implemented suit different um cities of different histories and different layouts,
Speaker 1: especially localized especially like localized street cars within each city
Speaker 1: block within within each superblock like system exactly. So, just
Speaker 1: to clarify, the idea of super blocks are basically um,
Speaker 1: you know, neighborhood of nine blocks where traffic is restricted
Speaker 1: to the roads on the outside of the block, which
Speaker 1: means that the interior of these super blocks are entirely walkable. That,
Speaker 1: combined with the idea of a superblock being um mixed use,
Speaker 1: means that people are mostly able to access their basic
Speaker 1: necessities within their city block. Are you able to like
Speaker 1: spend more time, have more open space, to spend more
Speaker 1: time to meet with people, to talk, to do do activities,
Speaker 1: to you know, have some relief from noise pollution and
Speaker 1: air pollution from vehicles, and to really like connects people
Speaker 1: with the space they're living in and make the space
Speaker 1: they're living in more livable. I mean, I don't live
Speaker 1: smack tab in the middle of like urban urban town,
Speaker 1: but I could imagine if people living in like New
Speaker 1: York or whatever, and you can't exactly step out of
Speaker 1: your apartment and playing the road on a typically if
Speaker 1: you have kids or whatever, you know, they can't exactly
Speaker 1: just go run outside, um you will die exactly exactly exactly,
Speaker 1: And I mean people complain about like, oh kids, lease
Speaker 1: do some quo outside as much. But I mean, look
Speaker 1: at outside, you know, look at what look at what
Speaker 1: has been created, um and reflect on that. I mean
Speaker 1: part of the assuer is um the way social media
Speaker 1: algorithms are designed to suck people into like cycles of addiction.
Speaker 1: But that's a whole another topic, right, Um, I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people, more people will be willing to
Speaker 1: be able to pull themselves out to that sort of
Speaker 1: harmful algorithmic. Hell, if there was an outside pull themselves
Speaker 1: out too, you know. But honestly, cities, especially a notorious
Speaker 1: for like not having places you can be where you
Speaker 1: don't have to spend money, and that sucks. So I think, um,
Speaker 1: super blocks being places where you know, libraries and um
Speaker 1: place so people can eats community. It does seem to
Speaker 1: be missing or ignoring what we're going to lose with
Speaker 1: super blocks, which is how how am I gonna roll
Speaker 1: down the streets smoking indow sipping on gin and juice
Speaker 1: if I'm not allowed to drive within my block? Wow,
Speaker 1: I think we can. I think I've then you could
Speaker 1: just get a bike who's cruising all the bicycle? Have
Speaker 1: you tried smoking indow? Sipping on gin and juice while
Speaker 1: riding a bicycle. It's it's impossible get a couple holder
Speaker 1: anything as possible as a Snoop dogg eraser. No. But
Speaker 1: the the idea of having like community gardens, community like kitchens,
Speaker 1: like a maker spaces, libraries, all these within like this
Speaker 1: super black framework, you know, like green spaces, it does
Speaker 1: make actual urban city living to seem attractive and not
Speaker 1: like you're just living in nested concrete boxes. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: mean people like living cities because that's where everything's happening, right,
Speaker 1: But yeah, you you want people to take part in
Speaker 1: the things that are happening, but the places aren't livable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you have the table that will continue to complain about
Speaker 1: until the end of time, which the table in Chicago
Speaker 1: Chinatown that threatens to arrest you for sitting at it.
Speaker 1: Like it's yeah, like the hostility tea of this goes
Speaker 1: back to like racism because of course everyone does, everything does,
Speaker 1: but you know a lot of these loitering laws and
Speaker 1: stuff whichly designed to target black people and to target
Speaker 1: you know, poor people, um like vagrancy laws and that
Speaker 1: sort of thing just hostile people's existence. And that gets
Speaker 1: into like hostile architecture and that sort of thing. But
Speaker 1: I think with these super blocks, you know, we open
Speaker 1: up our spaces to make them welcoming to human existence,
Speaker 1: spaces that are not built around cars, built around commutes,
Speaker 1: built around week And this obviously is a transformation that
Speaker 1: requires more than just you know, vote for so and
Speaker 1: so and make this a degree and kind of thing.
Speaker 1: You need. You need something more substantial than that. You know,
Speaker 1: within these superblocks as well, you're you're able to take
Speaker 1: stock of how your block or whatever, you have a
Speaker 1: better mental sense of um community and able to take
Speaker 1: about a sense of even things like how your block
Speaker 1: can communally sustain themselves and you know, reduce waste and
Speaker 1: all these different things. This in conjunction with struggle against
Speaker 1: capitalism in the state, but you know that is implied.
Speaker 1: This is you know, m this is the show. This
Speaker 1: is it could happen here. I don't know if you
Speaker 1: expect and like electoralism, but that's not really what we
Speaker 1: do around here. I mean the benefits to these sort
Speaker 1: of like super blocks, you know, these fifteen minutes soon
Speaker 1: so people can walk within fifteen minutes to get the essentials.
Speaker 1: The benefits are innumerable. You know that'ster airquality, less noise,
Speaker 1: healthy lifestyle, mental health boost But the issue is without
Speaker 1: a combination of you know, these projects and these activities
Speaker 1: with like anti capitalism and anti statism, it's it's tends
Speaker 1: to lend itself towards gentrification. And we've seen that in Spain,
Speaker 1: which is where UM some of these super blocks have
Speaker 1: been implemented. UM They've created like these locations that are
Speaker 1: obviously more desirable because who doesn't want to live in
Speaker 1: a superblock where you know, you actually have a sense
Speaker 1: of community because we're all desperate for that. UM and
Speaker 1: at least an increase in property demand, higher prices, higher
Speaker 1: rent it basically creates these pockets of unaffordable neighborhoods, displacing
Speaker 1: local residents. So you have to get into the fight
Speaker 1: against gentrification in order to make this, you know, idea viable.
Speaker 1: The last thing that I want to get into really is,
Speaker 1: as con mentioned UM community gardens. I want to talk
Speaker 1: about urban farming because that is crucial. I mean, part
Speaker 1: of what UM makes cities cities in all the cases
Speaker 1: is the fact that they import all their food. Right,
Speaker 1: they have the urban rural divide that you know, delineates
Speaker 1: the two areas, UM. But considering the transportation costs, the
Speaker 1: energy costs, all those things that compound UM two sustain
Speaker 1: a city, a city's food needs, we have to look
Speaker 1: to ways that we can sustain cities and sustain neighborhoods
Speaker 1: within cities, UM, within themselves. Before I continue, I just
Speaker 1: want to point out that the future of urban farming
Speaker 1: is not in vertical farms. UM. They look very cool,
Speaker 1: you know, like those tall kind of like pillars of
Speaker 1: like letters or whatever, growing out sort of things, but
Speaker 1: the land that they save is usually canceled out by
Speaker 1: the land they need to produce the energy to power them, like,
Speaker 1: they're very energy intensive UM spaces. So until that issue
Speaker 1: is resolved, and I don't know if it will be
Speaker 1: considering you know how the energy requirements is just sort
Speaker 1: of built into the vertical the concentration of energy requirements
Speaker 1: built in sort of into the vertical farming design, UM,
Speaker 1: we have to look to more practical methods. Landownership tends
Speaker 1: to be a major hurdle UM when it comes to
Speaker 1: organizing community gardens and maintaining community gardens UM. I mean,
Speaker 1: like folks like Black Futures Farm, Oakland Avenue, urban Farm
Speaker 1: and the Victory Garden Initiative. They've been working to like
Speaker 1: provide fresh producers ito was in need, especially in urban
Speaker 1: food desert. But in a lot of these projects, they
Speaker 1: go in good for some years and then the city
Speaker 1: suddenly spins around It's like we need this land for development,
Speaker 1: so they just snatch it up, and you know, those
Speaker 1: years of efforts just basically put on the dream. Um
Speaker 1: Community land trusts have been put forward as a potential
Speaker 1: um solution to that issue. But like a lot of
Speaker 1: these things, I mean, it's a good band aid, I
Speaker 1: would say, but it's not necessarily marking the end of capitalism.
Speaker 1: Another issue that there is with the whole urban farming
Speaker 1: thing is that um the culture that develops around them
Speaker 1: while they provide education and community and connection for people
Speaker 1: within them, and that is extremely valuable. I think some
Speaker 1: organizers fall into this habit of treating of creating this
Speaker 1: sort of like shared delusion around community gardens, you know,
Speaker 1: claiming to be sort of feeding the people couldn't could
Speaker 1: And what really brought this to my attention was Inhabits
Speaker 1: Territories newsletter. We had an article on it the last
Speaker 1: year I think, on you know, urban community Gardens, and
Speaker 1: it was written by Gibriel I've seen, the co founder
Speaker 1: of at Plant, which I find to be a very
Speaker 1: very creative name, basically asked the question are we really
Speaker 1: feeding ourselves? I mean, these local food initiatives, they do
Speaker 1: produce food that people eat, but it can be a
Speaker 1: bit harmful to be overly optimistic about our food autonomy
Speaker 1: at this stage, especially considering how irons we still are
Speaker 1: on big agriculture. You know, like, yes, we are producing
Speaker 1: you know, organic nutritionally this dense crops and stuff, and
Speaker 1: that's great, that's helping people, but you know, oftentimes it
Speaker 1: usually just means that, you know, the people might be
Speaker 1: getting participants and be getting like a salad or you know,
Speaker 1: a couple. To me too, is it's not necessarily they're
Speaker 1: cutting down their grocery build in a sustainable long term way,
Speaker 1: because I mean, if you've tried God, then you know that,
Speaker 1: like when you work here with a limited space, you know,
Speaker 1: you grow your foot set of To me too, is
Speaker 1: it means it was a cool, but they don't last forever,
Speaker 1: you know, and you have to wait until the next
Speaker 1: harvest to get more. To me too, it or whatever
Speaker 1: the case may be, same for like letters or whatever.
Speaker 1: It's kind of rough, you know, it doesn't It helps
Speaker 1: for like a meal or maybe two depending on like
Speaker 1: living situation, but it doesn't meaningfully cut into our reliance
Speaker 1: and groceries and you know, food inputs. Yeah, it definitely
Speaker 1: takes a bit to get to that point, and you
Speaker 1: have to do it with a combination of like food
Speaker 1: preservation and like canning um, and like you know, like
Speaker 1: jarring and a whole bunch of other stuff to actually
Speaker 1: make that a worthwhile endeavor as opposed to just making
Speaker 1: like great, I spent three months making these tomatoes. Now
Speaker 1: they're ready for one meal and then they're all gone. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you do have to really kind of figure out how
Speaker 1: to grow enough to keep enough ready to be harvested
Speaker 1: for jarring and canning for future use um, and make
Speaker 1: sure like you're you know, harvesting them when they are
Speaker 1: ready so that you can you know, you don't lose
Speaker 1: stuff and that you have like you know, an ongoing,
Speaker 1: ongoing process of like preserving the fit that you do
Speaker 1: grow for later um as well. So you can definitely
Speaker 1: take a lot a lot more like until effort and
Speaker 1: planning then just you know, planting it and then you know,
Speaker 1: using it and cooking it when it's when it's all ready. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of energy and self is put
Speaker 1: into growing things like greens and roots and fruit and vegetables.
Speaker 1: And they're healthy, you know, they have the vitamins and micronutrients.
Speaker 1: But you know, people still need meat, dairy, eggs, you
Speaker 1: know protein. Yeah, heavy, high calorie dense stuff, you know,
Speaker 1: like potatoes and other starches, like a really holy boloof
Speaker 1: wheats and that kind of thing, and that just isn't
Speaker 1: being growing right now. You know, wheat and rice and
Speaker 1: soy and nuts and corn and sugar. These staples and
Speaker 1: stuff don't tend to be produced by these community gardens
Speaker 1: and by these garden plots. Not many many, not many
Speaker 1: legume patches at your local community garden. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah yeah. Like I'm I'm in the process of grin
Speaker 1: um some pigeon peas right now, and they are taking
Speaker 1: a very long while. And what I realize is that, um,
Speaker 1: I mean, I just plan to them, so I'm being
Speaker 1: a bit impatient. But what I realized is that when
Speaker 1: they do growth, and I've seen you know, some much
Speaker 1: your pigeon pea trees and stuff. I know how big
Speaker 1: they tend to grow right time harvest rules around. You know,
Speaker 1: you get all those different pots and you you know,
Speaker 1: you put in the work. You put you pick all
Speaker 1: the pods and you m pry open the pods, and
Speaker 1: you know, you put in some more alliteration into the sentence.
Speaker 1: And you know you get those peas out. Once those
Speaker 1: peas out to the pod and you put them in
Speaker 1: a pot, they're not potent enough to whould you over
Speaker 1: for more than one meal. You know, like you pick
Speaker 1: like a trees worth of peas in a pod, and
Speaker 1: you know that's like sometimes like half of I'm you
Speaker 1: and really honestly respect to the people who are producing
Speaker 1: all our food right now, because I can't imagine having
Speaker 1: to be shelling peas all the time. It's kind of ridiculous.
Speaker 1: I mean it can be fun, but I can't imagine
Speaker 1: doing it all day. I mean, workers work, right, it's
Speaker 1: gonna yeah, work as hell, we know this. But yeah,
Speaker 1: So I mean community gardens they're good. You know, they
Speaker 1: have you know, education, they build community, they provide outdoor
Speaker 1: activity and stuff. But you know, I think what community gardens,
Speaker 1: urban gardens and stuff need to do is find ways
Speaker 1: to um and this this isn't a disparate The work
Speaker 1: has been done, you know, like massive support. I'm doing
Speaker 1: that myself kind of thing. But we've got to, like,
Speaker 1: as the article argues, we can't get caught up in
Speaker 1: the fluffing up of the reality for marketing purposes. You know,
Speaker 1: we need to look for ways that can actually um
Speaker 1: feed ourselves. I means getting into caloric foods that means
Speaker 1: um like like dried beans, potatoes, fruit, trees, I kind
Speaker 1: of think grains, nuts, all that jazz. And also connecting
Speaker 1: with farms outside of the city, you know, local farms
Speaker 1: outside of the immediate urban landscape. Seeing what cooperatives can
Speaker 1: be developed that can work aid each other mutually to
Speaker 1: build more potent capacity for food. What's on me? So,
Speaker 1: I mean, get in touch with the soil, you know,
Speaker 1: get this sign your face, but also think about what
Speaker 1: more we can to sort of take this to the
Speaker 1: next level. And ya, that is um that is what
Speaker 1: I believe could in fact happen here. This has happened here. Good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's nice to have a positive one of these. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we should do that more often. If if only we
Speaker 1: had the power, well come back tomorrow when we'll be
Speaker 1: talking about another bad thing and then abandoning you to
Speaker 1: deal with your thoughts about it. Wow, we we try,
Speaker 1: we try, we do try. This is us trying well,
Speaker 1: this is us having st Andrew try. You're welcome, Thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you very much. This is a topic I wanted
Speaker 1: to discuss for a long time. In terms of use.
Speaker 1: We get a lot of people talking about like, yeah,
Speaker 1: how you know and whatever, like post collapse fantasy that
Speaker 1: you can imagine where we're able to kind of reconfigure society.
Speaker 1: How would you plan urban living? And you're like, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there's a lot of actually really cool ideas for
Speaker 1: like keeping people close together can be a very ecological
Speaker 1: idea if you do it certain ways. It's just a
Speaker 1: lot of the ways you've defaulted to over the past.
Speaker 1: Like really three years has made it not that with
Speaker 1: the invention of the car really really screwing us over. Um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, thank you so much for talking about urban
Speaker 1: living and super super blocks and all this kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: Where can where can people find more of your work
Speaker 1: and writing on the interwebs. You can find me on
Speaker 1: YouTube at st Andreism, and you can find you on Twitter,
Speaker 1: which hopefully when you hear this, I am still not
Speaker 1: on at under school seeing fantastic. Um, yeah you uh
Speaker 1: st Andrew just put together a really great episode about
Speaker 1: anti work stuff and the way that tobaccles has has
Speaker 1: happened and what we can learn from it and that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. Um and while you should still actually
Speaker 1: care about anti work um and yeah, so would definitely
Speaker 1: recommend the anti work video for recent recent recent stuff.
Speaker 1: Let's see. Um, if you want to feed your brain
Speaker 1: into the addiction driven social media algorithm, you can follow
Speaker 1: us on Twitter and Instagram. It happened here pod and
Speaker 1: cools on media and uh yeah, let's uh go think
Speaker 1: about go think about microspaces and community gardens. That seems
Speaker 1: like a good a good way to dedicate your thought
Speaker 1: time and roll down the street smoking indow sipping that
Speaker 1: gin and juice while you still can on a bike.
Speaker 1: I am pluly sally used doing my moral judgments upon
Speaker 1: you before before the fascist anarchists take away your fees. Yeah. Look,
Speaker 1: if if if we can democratize military grade weaponry the
Speaker 1: way the Ukrainians have, we can we can we can
Speaker 1: form neighborhoods that cannot be forced to live in the
Speaker 1: traffic the auto industrial complex really reduced fripless air travel.
Speaker 1: What otherwise will end up in a mad max wield
Speaker 1: and I mean wants that right, well aspects of it. Yeah, alright,
Speaker 1: see everybody, Hey there, it's lee In Rhymes and I
Speaker 1: am so excited to share the third season of my
Speaker 1: Holy Human podcast with you. This season, we're creating a
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Speaker 1: explore our whole selves. Season three of Holy Human with
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Speaker 1: get your podcasts podcast, thank you. That is it is.
Speaker 1: It's true. It's true. Actually it could happen here. Listening
Speaker 1: to the podcast is more or less the truth we have.
Speaker 1: We have Dreg Robert out of bed at before the
Speaker 1: crack of dawg at a legend forty two am. Um,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna talk about actually something very fun. I'm
Speaker 1: I've been I've been wanting to talk about this for
Speaker 1: a long time because this is one of actually one
Speaker 1: of my favorite things. Um yeah, yeah, So I'm gonna
Speaker 1: I'm gonna tell a bit of a bit of a
Speaker 1: little story regarding one of my act all time favorite
Speaker 1: events and topics. So back in like there was this
Speaker 1: a cheesy little online university science show made by the
Speaker 1: Rochester Institute of Technology called Can You Imagine UM. The
Speaker 1: the idea was to highlight some of the cool and
Speaker 1: weird things at the university UM in part to promote
Speaker 1: the Imagine r i T Festival, which was like the
Speaker 1: schools annual like innovation and creativity festivals think that they
Speaker 1: put on. So yeah, today I want to talk specifically
Speaker 1: about episode three of the web series because the contents
Speaker 1: of which overlap with some of my like artistic interests
Speaker 1: UM and like just my love of illusions and paradox
Speaker 1: and I will kind of tie into some topics we
Speaker 1: other we always discussed on the show. So yeah, Episode
Speaker 1: three one of probably probably the most interesting episode UM.
Speaker 1: Episode three opens with the hosts Kevin and Steph as
Speaker 1: they like stand awkwardly in a gloriously dated you like
Speaker 1: university film set like it's it's it's only twenties, it's
Speaker 1: only twenty thirteen. But it was like obviously like made
Speaker 1: in the nineties, like like like like the set's like
Speaker 1: it's all it's it's all very dated. What specifically are
Speaker 1: you referred? Oh, like they're they're like they're just like weird,
Speaker 1: like like weird, like like dated science stuff on the walls.
Speaker 1: All the hosts of wearing like dorky orange T shirts
Speaker 1: like like over to over top the regular clothes. They yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's all. It's all that kind of it's
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff. So like dorkey orange T
Speaker 1: shirts with the letters r I T for the Roger
Speaker 1: CRUs Sister Institute of Technology. Um. Of course, because everything
Speaker 1: in this online video series is perfect, Kevin is wearing
Speaker 1: his shirt over top of like a button down. It's
Speaker 1: it's it's it's great. Um. The first fifty seconds of
Speaker 1: the video are taken up with like plugging the upcoming
Speaker 1: of r a t Imagine Festival with a with a
Speaker 1: co host Steph beautifully stumbling over her lines when she
Speaker 1: says the events catchphrase, it's where the left brain and
Speaker 1: the right brain collide. And it's great, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: it's it's it's perfect. So after all the plugs and
Speaker 1: the vamping, the hosts get down to the fun engineering
Speaker 1: feat and they'll be showing us today, which is a
Speaker 1: neat little architectural experiment a part of the r I
Speaker 1: T campus called the a Sharing and Stairwell UM, of course,
Speaker 1: named after the impossible staircases depicted in Dutch artist m
Speaker 1: c eshers artwork. So the video cuts two from the
Speaker 1: little like sound stage they're filming in to this boring, white,
Speaker 1: seemingly typical stairwell. Our host Kevin ascending a flight of
Speaker 1: the gray concrete stairs UM explains that what located in
Speaker 1: Building seven of the campus. The stairwell was designed by
Speaker 1: Filipino architect Raphael Nelson Abegando and was one of the
Speaker 1: first structures put up when Our I T moved their
Speaker 1: campus from downtown Rochester to the more suburban Henrietta UM.
Speaker 1: When when he's taking when he's reaching the top of
Speaker 1: the stairs, he turns the quarter and then suddenly seems
Speaker 1: to appear at the bottom of the lower flight of stairs,
Speaker 1: leading up to the landing that he just left from,
Speaker 1: all while continuing to talk about the architect behind this
Speaker 1: like kind of weird impossible feat um. So, as Kevin
Speaker 1: walks back up to camera, he says that the stairwell
Speaker 1: was built in the eight and it's been wowing ur
Speaker 1: I too students ever since. Um it's it is very cool.
Speaker 1: It's like it's like you're like, okay, you get you
Speaker 1: get the little like like you get a little like
Speaker 1: architectural trick that they're doing. Um, but it's it is.
Speaker 1: It is still pretty fun to see. Before episode three
Speaker 1: of Can You Imagine aired you could, you can already
Speaker 1: find a few articles on the school's UH website about
Speaker 1: the issuaring stairwell, along with some like forum posts debating
Speaker 1: how the architecture in the stairwell works to like achieve
Speaker 1: the effect. UM Also floating around on YouTube was like
Speaker 1: a random segment of what looked like a like a
Speaker 1: PBS style late nineties documentary about the physics and architecture
Speaker 1: of the school and specifically the stairwell that interviewed some
Speaker 1: like professors um and some like architects and like a
Speaker 1: symphysicist kind of discussing what like how to like bring
Speaker 1: paradox into the physical world. Yeah, but but but but
Speaker 1: around the time that can you imagine episode aired, the
Speaker 1: now like infamous r RT stairwell was mostly unknown, so
Speaker 1: it was like, even despite it being very interesting, no
Speaker 1: one really knew about it until this episode of this
Speaker 1: little web series aired. Um. The little episode dedicates around
Speaker 1: half its time to interviewing students, uh and righteously random
Speaker 1: people at the university about if they even know about
Speaker 1: the stareill's existence, um, and if they do, what like
Speaker 1: experiences they have with like me messing around with like
Speaker 1: the looping architecture, because yeah, you can you know, you
Speaker 1: can play a lot of games with this type of
Speaker 1: with this type of design. Uh. So the rest of
Speaker 1: the short video like tries to demonstrate the disorienting ascent
Speaker 1: down and descent back up via the camera in various ways,
Speaker 1: like you know, like human chains or holding hands around
Speaker 1: the weird like vious loop types staircase, then like passing
Speaker 1: objects back and forth in a circle while inside and
Speaker 1: around the enclosed stairwell. Um, there's one where Kevin walks
Speaker 1: around with a cup to show that the stairs aren't
Speaker 1: like clearly like heavily slanted, like the water stays pretty
Speaker 1: pretty level as he walks all the way through, and
Speaker 1: like we follow with him the entire time. UM. So yeah,
Speaker 1: like the overall like nerdy and low fi style of
Speaker 1: the university video match, like the insane feet of our
Speaker 1: chitectural illusion is a really fun mixed like it's like
Speaker 1: it's like it's it's it is very like surreal, but
Speaker 1: not totally on purpose, because it's just all of these
Speaker 1: like regular college students showing this like really cool architecture
Speaker 1: by this really good architect and you're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're just so chill about it. Uh, it is, it is.
Speaker 1: It is pretty fun. It's pretty fun. UM. After the
Speaker 1: third episode of the Imagine r i T video was posted,
Speaker 1: finally the mind boggling looping staircase of building seven in
Speaker 1: of our T started to gain a lot of confused
Speaker 1: appreciation UM, and the dorky University science show went vital.
Speaker 1: People started traveling from out of state even other countries
Speaker 1: to see the Asherian stairwell themselves of and film videos
Speaker 1: on social media as as they walk through it. This
Speaker 1: this one video of like people traveling to a different
Speaker 1: country and they're like harassing like the school staff to
Speaker 1: try to like tell them where it is, and they're like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, you're still doing this because it was
Speaker 1: because like this film was, this video is like like
Speaker 1: years old, but it's it still happens. People still travel
Speaker 1: there to to specifically see it. Um. There is like
Speaker 1: tense online discussion and debate on how the Filipino architect
Speaker 1: Raphael Avugando was able to achieve the effect and what
Speaker 1: kind of other bizarre architectural experiments he may have worked on,
Speaker 1: because you can find his Facebook page and you can
Speaker 1: find some stuff about him, but he has not really
Speaker 1: because like this this steroile was built in the late sixties,
Speaker 1: but you haven't. So he even though he has an
Speaker 1: online presence, he's like he's like he's not like active,
Speaker 1: so it's unclear like what else he's actually been doing. UM,
Speaker 1: but I would I would, I would love to learn
Speaker 1: more about this architect and what else he's done, because
Speaker 1: this it is it is really rare to have these
Speaker 1: very small, condensed but like high effort type like type
Speaker 1: builds and like the the existence of the whole thing.
Speaker 1: Posted some really interesting questions around how extremely clever paradoxical
Speaker 1: design can push the boundary of how we make assumptions
Speaker 1: about spatial physics UM and how we visually and physically
Speaker 1: demonstrate things that we usually can only depict in two dimensions, right,
Speaker 1: Like you can you can easily depict the the issuing
Speaker 1: in stairwell in two dimensions, but when you're scaling that
Speaker 1: up to three dimensions, it's obviously more work like like that.
Speaker 1: That is that is part of the paradox UM. Plus,
Speaker 1: you know, it also demonstrates the importance of art and
Speaker 1: how ideas once thought impossible or merely optical illusions can
Speaker 1: actually with enough data, can an effort break into our
Speaker 1: real reality. Uh. If a brilliant architect can manage to
Speaker 1: build this physically and like logically impossible structure, what other
Speaker 1: types of things can we actually view as possible? Um?
Speaker 1: The video now has like over a million views on
Speaker 1: its original upload UM, and videos about the R I
Speaker 1: T stairwell have ranked up as many as like twenty
Speaker 1: five million views. Yeah it's pretty cool. Yeah. You know
Speaker 1: what else demonstrates the looping nature of time. Having to
Speaker 1: listen to all these ads that we do, Ye, we
Speaker 1: we are we are back. I've I've rounded the corner
Speaker 1: and we are back where we came from. Um. Because
Speaker 1: of the fun paradox of architecture. UM, the one The
Speaker 1: one other thing I should mention before we continue on
Speaker 1: this episode is that the entire thing is fake. It's false.
Speaker 1: No way, not this time. We created it. Not this time, No,
Speaker 1: not this time. It's totally made. Because of course it's
Speaker 1: it's a staircase of breaks the basic rules of movement
Speaker 1: in physics. Kevin walks up the stairs and teleports to
Speaker 1: the lower stairwell. Belief them this this, that's not that's
Speaker 1: that's not an architectural allusion. It's called good video and
Speaker 1: the thing and a don't be after effects like no,
Speaker 1: you're you're really gonna believe a video on the internet
Speaker 1: and some well placed, falsified Internet posts over the very
Speaker 1: basic rules that governed our universe. But like, oh boy,
Speaker 1: did it fool millions of people? Um, and if I
Speaker 1: played my cards right, I hope most of our listeners
Speaker 1: until the last few seconds. Um, yeah it is. Uh
Speaker 1: so the whole the whole thing was a was a
Speaker 1: student like film and art project around around building a
Speaker 1: modern myth. Um the it's because it's sure, it's sure.
Speaker 1: Is interesting how good storytelling can overrule obvious logical processes.
Speaker 1: The tale of the Assarian Stairwell is one of my
Speaker 1: favorite case studies and how disinprobation spreads and it's believed
Speaker 1: while all in defiance of the basic rules of reality,
Speaker 1: because it's not a matter of what facts are true,
Speaker 1: it's about what facts are compelling. And the idea of
Speaker 1: a logically impossible staircase being built by a brilliant Filipino
Speaker 1: architect is more interesting than it being someone's weird and
Speaker 1: disinformation art project. Um. So yeah, like I want to say,
Speaker 1: like how what what were you guys thinking as I
Speaker 1: was explaining the Assarian stairwell, Like where did you see
Speaker 1: this going? Okay? So I had in the back of
Speaker 1: my head, okay, we we should we should mention this.
Speaker 1: Garrison has been hyping up this episode for like I
Speaker 1: don't even a pretty smif amount of times nothing, and
Speaker 1: there's a staircase and I'm like what what? And it
Speaker 1: was like my my brain, my brain started going because
Speaker 1: he said and I was like, my like my counterham
Speaker 1: surgency brain flicked on and I was like wait a second,
Speaker 1: hold time is this like some kind of like weird
Speaker 1: Like we've redesigned the college campuses so they stopped people
Speaker 1: stopped taking the Dean hostage a thing that used to
Speaker 1: happen constantly and with all my favorite party about this
Speaker 1: would happen constantly, and you'd get New York Times articles
Speaker 1: calling it non violent. Yeah, so yeah it was that
Speaker 1: was that was. Yeah. I spent more mental energy that
Speaker 1: I probably should have tried to figure out how it
Speaker 1: would work. And I was like, I don't know, maybe
Speaker 1: they just made it. Like if they just made it
Speaker 1: Acus Razor, it's obviously yeah. I mean I was. I
Speaker 1: was like I was in the like, okay, so they
Speaker 1: built the staircase, they built another the viewers cannot see
Speaker 1: my fingers, and it was like, it's a real staircase.
Speaker 1: It doesn't tell it. It was like it was like,
Speaker 1: but you can't find videos of people traveling to the
Speaker 1: school to see if it's real. And they try it
Speaker 1: and they're so disappointed. They're like, oh, yeah, it's no,
Speaker 1: it's just stairs. It doesn't it doesn't. Yeah, it's disappointed
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways because it's not even like
Speaker 1: a thing where like there's like another back staircase that
Speaker 1: you walk down. Then again it's just it's just nothing.
Speaker 1: It's just stairs. I was hoping there was like so
Speaker 1: actually clever thing is no it's just it's not really,
Speaker 1: It's just it was that meme where all the math
Speaker 1: doesn't add up in the person what is happening? I
Speaker 1: was like, all right, Garrison, you got us here, You
Speaker 1: made Robert get up before noon? What is happening? Well,
Speaker 1: the reason, the real reason I got up before I
Speaker 1: got Bard up before noon is because I actually, um
Speaker 1: have scheduled an interview with the creator of the Assarian Stairwell,
Speaker 1: the actual one be like the online art project and
Speaker 1: building a Modern Myth idea, um, which we are now
Speaker 1: going to segue into. So yeah, what what follows is
Speaker 1: us talking with the creator of the Assarian Stairwell project. Hello,
Speaker 1: we are we are back from our probably very very
Speaker 1: brief break. UM. And with me along with Robert and
Speaker 1: Chris and Sophie is uh Michael, the creator of the
Speaker 1: Assharian Stairwell project and the Building the Modern Myths project. Hello, greetings,
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for joining us to talk about
Speaker 1: one of my one of my favorite things actually is
Speaker 1: which is here a little to us to project? Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've been a fan of this for a long time
Speaker 1: and found it to be really compelling and interesting. UM
Speaker 1: and I so I just walked through Robert and Chris
Speaker 1: and Sophie what what it what it was? But from
Speaker 1: the perspective of it being true, for like for the
Speaker 1: good fifteen minutes I was I was episode was going
Speaker 1: was going through talking about it as if it were
Speaker 1: completely real, but curious to hear how you did that
Speaker 1: it was. It was slightly baffling because again we were
Speaker 1: told nothing, and then what we got is Garrison is
Speaker 1: talking about a YouTube video about an architecture thing and
Speaker 1: I was like, what here? Yeah, and then and then
Speaker 1: then talking about how oh yeah, and I guess one
Speaker 1: more thing is that it's actually fake. Um. And it's
Speaker 1: part of this whole, this whole thing. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: would I would love to talk to you about both
Speaker 1: like how how you like logistically like made the project,
Speaker 1: but also like the underlying you during thoughts that like
Speaker 1: inspired you to do it in the first place, and
Speaker 1: then like retrospected now almost like ten years later, like
Speaker 1: how do you view the project as like happening you know,
Speaker 1: right before like the peak of online disinformation? Um? Right.
Speaker 1: So but first of all, I I just think we
Speaker 1: should probably start started the beginning, like what what was
Speaker 1: your inspirations for this type of like online like there
Speaker 1: because it seems it seems it seems built to go
Speaker 1: viral in a lot of ways. Yes, exactly. So this
Speaker 1: was around twenty eleven, I guess was when I first
Speaker 1: got the idea. It was for my master's thesis, my
Speaker 1: m f A for film at Rochester r I t
Speaker 1: and UM. The idea actually began from this like deep
Speaker 1: anxiety about how to discern fact from fiction. Um. At
Speaker 1: the time, like I came into film school like really
Speaker 1: into like realism in films like Romanian New Wave mckel
Speaker 1: hanaka dar Dan Brothers, Like these are filmmakers who are
Speaker 1: like they're sort of like the modern day version of
Speaker 1: Italian nero neo realism, and they're trying to like depict
Speaker 1: like these um reality as it is. I wanted to
Speaker 1: like learn how to make those types of films um.
Speaker 1: So over like with each year, that's what I tried
Speaker 1: to get better at. And the more I tried to
Speaker 1: do that, um well, like a number of things were
Speaker 1: happening around that time. Right in class, they showed us
Speaker 1: these mockumentaries called No Lies, which was made in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy three by this guy called Mitchell Black actually won
Speaker 1: a student Oscar at the time, and uh Delusions in
Speaker 1: Modern Primitivism two thousand one by this guy named Daniel
Speaker 1: Laughlin UM and these like I was like floored because
Speaker 1: I thought they were real, like real documentaries and um
Speaker 1: and it bothered me, like our teachers still this afterwards
Speaker 1: that these were actually scripted works of fiction with like
Speaker 1: really really good actors, and it like I went into
Speaker 1: kind of like existential crisis mode afterwards, like how do
Speaker 1: I even discern what's true from what's not if I
Speaker 1: got fooled by these things, especially like that's like my concentration,
Speaker 1: that's what I've been studying for years, and even I
Speaker 1: was not even able to tell that they were fake, Right,
Speaker 1: There was that going on, And then there was like
Speaker 1: smartphones were becoming a thing, like I just looked it up.
Speaker 1: Smartphones didn't start out out selling flip phones still, so
Speaker 1: around this time, like it was becoming a thing where
Speaker 1: everyone would have the Internet in their pockets. So I
Speaker 1: guess there was that anxiety going on trying to think about,
Speaker 1: um um, how we're starting to function and how we're
Speaker 1: how I remember when I proposed my thesis to the
Speaker 1: thesis committee, I I UM one of the things things
Speaker 1: that I was telling them was, Um, I have this
Speaker 1: worry about how reliant we are on the internet to
Speaker 1: determine what's true and what's not. And this is like
Speaker 1: like my professors found my concerns like really abstract and theoretical,
Speaker 1: Like why do you even care? Because this right, like
Speaker 1: why didn't you about fact and ficture? It wasn't like
Speaker 1: fake news. That wasn't even a term. It wasn't It
Speaker 1: didn't become part of the every day lexicon, like you said,
Speaker 1: until twenty sixteen when Trump started throwing that term around
Speaker 1: and suddenly we hear about it every day. Um, So
Speaker 1: there was that going on. Trayvon Martin was a thing,
Speaker 1: and for the first time, like nationally, you could see
Speaker 1: like disinformation like on you know, just like exaggerated versions
Speaker 1: of different different accounts from like polarizing sides. So all
Speaker 1: that was going on, and so I I wanted to
Speaker 1: it was it was this film project was about, um
Speaker 1: trying to take something that was Are you familiar with
Speaker 1: with the difference between like a priori knowledge and a
Speaker 1: posteriori knowledge? Yeah? Okay, So so so like you know,
Speaker 1: for for anyone who might be listening that doesn't really
Speaker 1: know the exact difference. A priori knowledge is the type
Speaker 1: of knowledge that you can have without needing to make
Speaker 1: observations or conduct experiments or look at surveys or do
Speaker 1: any research of any any kind. Is a sort of
Speaker 1: knowledge you can know just by reasoning it out, but
Speaker 1: just by sitting in a room by yourself in the dark,
Speaker 1: you could figure things out. This is the sort This
Speaker 1: is a priori knowledge um. So for an example of
Speaker 1: that is like knowing that all bachelor's are unmarried, right,
Speaker 1: or all triangles of three sides. That's a priori knowledge.
Speaker 1: An example of oppos stereori knowledge um is something that
Speaker 1: you find out through observation or you using one or
Speaker 1: more of your five senses, right, like Joe Biden is
Speaker 1: the President of the United States, Um, the masses of
Speaker 1: Mars is six point four one seven one times ten
Speaker 1: to thes you actually have to go out into the
Speaker 1: world and conduct surveys or do research. So that's oppos
Speaker 1: theory or knowledge. So the idea was to take something
Speaker 1: that was a priori false, something that could that could
Speaker 1: um be disproven by reason alone, like you wouldn't have
Speaker 1: you wouldn't need to do any research. In order to
Speaker 1: to know that it was false, you'd simply had to
Speaker 1: reflect on it and UM think about it. Uh. So
Speaker 1: we could have picked anything, right, we could have We
Speaker 1: could have said made up like a fake news report
Speaker 1: that leaves mathematicians that m I T having invented like
Speaker 1: a square with five sides, something like that. You know, Um,
Speaker 1: I remember that weekend up there and SNL had this sketch.
Speaker 1: I think it was like, um, forget who it was.
Speaker 1: It might have been Kevin Nealon or something like that.
Speaker 1: The report was like scientists and mathematicians have discovered the
Speaker 1: new number. The number exists between five and six, and
Speaker 1: they're calling it the numbers spleen, you know, something like that,
Speaker 1: which is like just impossible. So um, so come up
Speaker 1: with something that could be disproven by reason alone and
Speaker 1: at the same time surrounded with this wealth of online
Speaker 1: information UM supporting its veracity. So, like you know, it
Speaker 1: was kind of a social experiment. So I was like,
Speaker 1: have we are we so far beyond rational thinking that
Speaker 1: even something that can be disproven a priori people would
Speaker 1: believe And it was like we didn't really know the
Speaker 1: answer to that, but we were going to commit to
Speaker 1: creating this thing as though it was real and but
Speaker 1: which was like logically impossible. So in a way it
Speaker 1: anticipated the age of like this information absolutely because it
Speaker 1: wasn't just the thing I kind of alluded to in
Speaker 1: my little scripted portion is that like, yeah, it wasn't
Speaker 1: just the YouTube video. There was also all this extra
Speaker 1: online content that was created, um, some of which yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Like there was you can find like articles for them, posts,
Speaker 1: all this kind of stuff like like like if yeah,
Speaker 1: like so if you could look into it more and
Speaker 1: find these other things, but it's still contradicts the basic
Speaker 1: logical processes that we can use to discern what is
Speaker 1: real what is not, um in terms of like yeah,
Speaker 1: in terms of like believing in a five seed square,
Speaker 1: like no that's not what that that that that's not
Speaker 1: how like physics and like spatial like spatial dimensions work. Um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, and then in terms of all the extra
Speaker 1: material you filmed for it, there was like there was
Speaker 1: like I think I read around like nine hours of
Speaker 1: documentary footage. Was also like a lot of footage, but
Speaker 1: it was only made into like probably a thirty minute thing. Um.
Speaker 1: We got our friends like at the very very beginning
Speaker 1: we got our friends to play along with it, like
Speaker 1: so whenever you see posts about this, just comment like
Speaker 1: it's real, Like, yeah, I was there. It was really great,
Speaker 1: and um, eventually people would actually start visiting the stairwell,
Speaker 1: like from all over, like from Canada. They crossed the
Speaker 1: border to get there because it's in upstate New York, right, Um.
Speaker 1: And I actually ran into a couple from India who
Speaker 1: happened to be visiting visiting New York, and they were like,
Speaker 1: since we're here, we'd like to see this starewell that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. Um, I know. I felt really bad
Speaker 1: for a lot of the visitors, so we actually had
Speaker 1: to come up with souvenirs so that they wouldn't leave
Speaker 1: empty handed, right, So we made fake we made postcards
Speaker 1: like saying I've been to the Share and Starell and
Speaker 1: stuff like that program and um what happened and the
Speaker 1: way we explained it, so a lot of people were
Speaker 1: really mad actually you know, as you can imagine when
Speaker 1: they got there, but after or um, we would explain
Speaker 1: what we were doing to them with the project. Like
Speaker 1: a lot of them actually like started playing along and
Speaker 1: thought was really cool, and they went home with their
Speaker 1: souvenirs and told their friends that they just saw this
Speaker 1: amazing thing. So, you know, it kind of built that
Speaker 1: way for a little bit. I mean yeah, because it's
Speaker 1: it's like telling kids that Santa isn't real exactly, and
Speaker 1: then some of them will be like play along with
Speaker 1: like okay, cool, this means I can play along with
Speaker 1: the myth to help you other kids happy. And some
Speaker 1: of them will be like what, oh no, my entire
Speaker 1: reality is broken. And when you find out, is your
Speaker 1: trying to like pass it on exactly that. So a
Speaker 1: lot of that was going on, like Shock the basketball
Speaker 1: player posted about it. At some point, Joe Rogan talked
Speaker 1: about it on his podcast. They got kind of crazy.
Speaker 1: Wait wait did Joe Rogan know it wasn't real? Um,
Speaker 1: it's funny. You should see the clip of him doing it,
Speaker 1: because he was like it was him, and who's the
Speaker 1: other guy, Bert Kreiser or something. Anyway, they were arguing
Speaker 1: about whether or not was really. The other guy was like, no,
Speaker 1: it's real, it's so real. Was like, all you guys
Speaker 1: are fucking idiots. You're all idiots. Let's google it right now.
Speaker 1: They google it and they look up an article and
Speaker 1: Joe Joe Rogan's like Okay, yeah, all right, it's still
Speaker 1: fucking stupid. The guy who built it is fucking you know.
Speaker 1: That is so good. I you have You have no
Speaker 1: idea how happy you have faked me because I in
Speaker 1: my in my research, but like like I have like
Speaker 1: read your thesis. I read all the lots of articles
Speaker 1: about this. I did not come across the Joe Rogan clip,
Speaker 1: but I would right right, Um it's like way back right,
Speaker 1: it's like ten years ago, and it's like a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff to dig through and I found it though. Again,
Speaker 1: um so I'd like to kind of go to like
Speaker 1: the logistics of like actually doing this in terms of
Speaker 1: like creating all the fake like web content, but also
Speaker 1: like you know, dreaming up this like family friendly science
Speaker 1: show that's made by r I T Like how like
Speaker 1: you know the thing between like naturalism and realism and
Speaker 1: making it like playing not trying to replicate reality, but
Speaker 1: playing as if it were reality, and how those those
Speaker 1: are two different things. Um yeah, well, what we wanted
Speaker 1: to make it as real as possible, and like that's
Speaker 1: what I was was. I'd been studying anyway, but in
Speaker 1: like a dramatic context, like making narrative films UM, and
Speaker 1: the idea was to, um, there's this event at r
Speaker 1: I t every year which gets a lot of people,
Speaker 1: like thirty thou people a year. Go to the campus
Speaker 1: and look at like, um, these uh whatever the students
Speaker 1: are working on. It's kind of like a mini like
Speaker 1: festival type of thing. Well, not many is pretty big,
Speaker 1: So we we wanted to make a video for that event.
Speaker 1: UM as though we were promoting the event, Hey, come
Speaker 1: see the assurance there. Well, when you get your r
Speaker 1: I t UM and you know you normally for these
Speaker 1: like for these for these events, if you have a
Speaker 1: booth or something, you'll see reservations and you'll see like
Speaker 1: four people reserve fifteen people. Like we were like started
Speaker 1: getting nervous, and we found out we got a sense
Speaker 1: that this was gonna be big because like when I
Speaker 1: looked at like the reservations for like our non existent stairwell,
Speaker 1: there were like one thousand plus visitors visited. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I still remember like going to campus that day at
Speaker 1: the festival Saturday, and like my friend Ira like comes
Speaker 1: up to me. He's like, Mike, people want to kill you,
Speaker 1: Like cover get over here, And I was like trying
Speaker 1: to not show my faith, but anyway, yeah, that's what.
Speaker 1: So what the way, Like a lot of the legs
Speaker 1: of the project was just like word of mouth, I guess,
Speaker 1: and we actually ran out of money. Um, we didn't
Speaker 1: get to do like the web stuff on the scale
Speaker 1: that we wanted to. But it turned out that we
Speaker 1: didn't even have to. In fact, like within a few
Speaker 1: days or maybe a week or something after the original
Speaker 1: video came out, I posted a video explaining that it's
Speaker 1: a myth. Like I posted it and I was like,
Speaker 1: all right, that was a fun ride. Now I's gonna
Speaker 1: be over because here's a video of me explaining everything, right,
Speaker 1: And people still didn't believe it. People were saying that
Speaker 1: my my video explaining was fake, that was a conspiracy.
Speaker 1: Like people were, you know, like there so invested the
Speaker 1: inside the actual myth of it. Yeah, because it is
Speaker 1: it is so much for a lot of people, they
Speaker 1: thought that is more compelling than the idea that it
Speaker 1: is this like you know, project around what is real
Speaker 1: what's not. They've got so invested in the reality of
Speaker 1: it that they'll explain away every other explanation, right right,
Speaker 1: um exactly, Like my I had a teacher at Rutgers
Speaker 1: where I did my undergrad to Maudlin. He used to
Speaker 1: say that, you know, there's two types of thinking. There's
Speaker 1: reasoning and there's rationalizing. Reasoning is when when you start
Speaker 1: from a play so ignorance, and you, um, look at
Speaker 1: the best evidence and the best arguments you can find
Speaker 1: and follow that through to the you know, the rational conclusion.
Speaker 1: Rationalizing is when you start from what you want to
Speaker 1: believe and working backwards and looking for you confirmations right,
Speaker 1: looking for the arguments that are already support where you're thaying. There.
Speaker 1: There was a lot of a lot of rationalizing going on.
Speaker 1: I guess people wanted to believe it. Yeah, for for
Speaker 1: the how much how many people because they assume for
Speaker 1: all of the filming like like everyone was all like
Speaker 1: in on it. But yeah, you know, there a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of great stuff around, like all of like the
Speaker 1: Men on the Street segments are are are like perfectly
Speaker 1: done in terms of like people like just acting like
Speaker 1: regular university students, like talking about the stairwell and like
Speaker 1: how they've got like lost, and then they're like looping
Speaker 1: around in a circle. Um, and all the segments with
Speaker 1: you with like inside the stairwell with all like the
Speaker 1: very like the very clever other thing. I assume you're
Speaker 1: using stuff like Adobe after effects um, and yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it is played. It's played so well like it's it's
Speaker 1: I think part of the part of why it's so
Speaker 1: successful is that it's not filmed like you would film
Speaker 1: something too high like like like for a lot of
Speaker 1: films when they want to do like like you know,
Speaker 1: like like ah the term is like a wonner where
Speaker 1: they has like one long shot and then they like
Speaker 1: hide the transitions in between. You can you can obviously
Speaker 1: tell like they're filming it to make these transitions work
Speaker 1: versus the way you film. This is just how people
Speaker 1: would film it if they were filming this four reel
Speaker 1: um and they tell that, and it's it is so
Speaker 1: carefully done because it's not trying to be something it is.
Speaker 1: It is just being the thing so earnestly in terms
Speaker 1: of like how how the actors like stumble over their
Speaker 1: lines and the like the opening segment, um, like the
Speaker 1: aesthetics of like all of like the title cards and
Speaker 1: everything is just so it has this has this like
Speaker 1: aura of earnestness, which I think helps sells the whole
Speaker 1: project so so much. Yeah. Yeah, actually speaking of the
Speaker 1: show and like the cheesy title cards and stuff, my
Speaker 1: girlfriend at the time was a producer for this show
Speaker 1: called this local show called Homework Cutline and where kids
Speaker 1: calling with their homework and they answer questions about it.
Speaker 1: I studied the ship out of that show, just looking
Speaker 1: at how they built the sets and how cheesy and
Speaker 1: how awkward like the hosts were, because a lot of
Speaker 1: it was like a lot of the realism I think
Speaker 1: of it is just um, yeah, the awkwardness of the people,
Speaker 1: how it's not, um, it's not really meant to be
Speaker 1: and and like like the best the most convincing untruths,
Speaker 1: right is a combination of fact and fiction and you
Speaker 1: know a lot of and blending in the actors with
Speaker 1: real people you know, in in in the in the
Speaker 1: actual video stuff like that. It's like, yeah, like it
Speaker 1: comes goes pretty viral. Um, you like pretty quick create
Speaker 1: a very easy explanation for no, it's not it's not real.
Speaker 1: It's started this project. People still believe it for years
Speaker 1: and years. Um. As kind of the decade progresses and
Speaker 1: we go into like the era of disinformation, everyone starts
Speaker 1: getting phones in their pockets. Everyone has Facebook with them
Speaker 1: wherever they go, everyone has Twitter with them wherever they go.
Speaker 1: How is kind of your views on like the ethics
Speaker 1: of the project and what it demonstrates in terms of
Speaker 1: like a case study and like a social experiment, Like
Speaker 1: how has that changed over the years from like you
Speaker 1: like ten years ago when you're dreaming this up to
Speaker 1: you now after you know, we've had stuff like you know,
Speaker 1: like January six and two and on, you know, all
Speaker 1: these types of things which I feel like if are
Speaker 1: almost like foreshadowed in this in this weird way by
Speaker 1: showing how successful your little project is. Yeah, so a
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of the criticisms that it was
Speaker 1: face from the get go, like from R I. T. Professors,
Speaker 1: even it's still facing right now, Like it's still the
Speaker 1: type of thing people bring up, which is set actually
Speaker 1: that hey, there's so much disinformation out there. At the time,
Speaker 1: we weren't even using those terms disinformation disinformation, right, but
Speaker 1: basically people were. We're bringing up the same complaints, which
Speaker 1: is there's so much disinformation out there, you're basically just
Speaker 1: adding to it. What what are you even doing? So
Speaker 1: I guess the idea is that and you know, It's
Speaker 1: a very noble idea, which is what's our response to disinformation? Right,
Speaker 1: we should I guess the idea is we should call
Speaker 1: out every instance of it when we can flag posts, UM,
Speaker 1: report posts that violate community community standards, you know, speak out, UM,
Speaker 1: provide counter evidence when you see fake news that sort
Speaker 1: of thing, And I think that's great, that's a good thing, UM.
Speaker 1: But disinformation. The problem of disinformation is at the time.
Speaker 1: This is kind of how I explained that, like ten
Speaker 1: years ago, I I described it as a pen as
Speaker 1: an epidemic, Yeah, no, absolutely right, or or like a
Speaker 1: cockroach infestation, like every time you kill one, ten more
Speaker 1: spring up. And the this this notion of like we
Speaker 1: gotta call out every instance of disinformation and stomp it
Speaker 1: away is like it's great, but you're focused on killing cockroaches. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like addressing the symptoms not the actual problem. Right,
Speaker 1: I want to get to the cockroach's nest. Right. And
Speaker 1: whenever whenever I give talks about this UM this project,
Speaker 1: people always approach me afterwards, you know, like wanting me
Speaker 1: to kind of because we we don't just talk about
Speaker 1: this project. We talk about like deep fake stuff, like
Speaker 1: we show speeches of Obama like looking like the real Obama,
Speaker 1: but it's like completely fake, right, And people start to
Speaker 1: realize the holy sh it, like I don't even know
Speaker 1: what's real or not anymore, Like what can I trust?
Speaker 1: And they approach me expecting me to ease their anxiety
Speaker 1: somehow and kind of like guide them through how to
Speaker 1: discern what's true from what's not, as though my project
Speaker 1: was about finding some sort of solution, And I tell
Speaker 1: them that, like, my project wasn't about solving the problem.
Speaker 1: It was about seeing the problem, right, It's about it's
Speaker 1: about trying to get to the heart of the matter.
Speaker 1: And it's like to me, I think, like the heart
Speaker 1: of the matter, like the cockroach's nest is the I
Speaker 1: don't know you. There are different ways to say, but basically,
Speaker 1: the the lack of critical thinking and individuals and like
Speaker 1: in this society we shaped together or um or lack
Speaker 1: of a willingness to think through things carefully. Maybe that's
Speaker 1: that's um. That's like if we had a society of
Speaker 1: critical thinkers, this wouldn't be much of a problem. I
Speaker 1: think it's because so many people come at a lot
Speaker 1: of information from like when you would say the rational
Speaker 1: viewpoint it's like they're trying to use reason and stuff,
Speaker 1: like they're trying to think critically, they're trying to think logically,
Speaker 1: but they come at it in terms of rationalizing stuff
Speaker 1: they already believe. Um. And I think that's a very
Speaker 1: prevailing type of idea in terms of like, yes, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna believe in this thing, so I'm gonna find evidence
Speaker 1: to support it um, which isn't critical thinking. I don't think.
Speaker 1: I not really know that it is. That is itself
Speaker 1: a logical fallacy. But that is so calm, especially on
Speaker 1: the Internet, because the Internet encourages the backfire effects. You know,
Speaker 1: whenever someone calls in on something, you want to be right.
Speaker 1: So you're gonna as soon as as soon as someone
Speaker 1: calls something, you're going to backfire. You're going to like
Speaker 1: become even more entrenched in what you believe. Um when
Speaker 1: you you know, when when you explain to someone that know,
Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton is bad, but she doesn't eat the blood
Speaker 1: of children, like, no, she does. I saw all this thing.
Speaker 1: I have to believe it because like all of the
Speaker 1: things that are tied up in what makes you a person,
Speaker 1: and now all of these ideas that have that where
Speaker 1: used to be just be. Conspiracy theories that you could
Speaker 1: believe in for fun are now so a part of
Speaker 1: like what people's sense of being are and how they
Speaker 1: have their entire world view that there's so much more
Speaker 1: because the Internet is such a bigger part of their lives.
Speaker 1: Everything on the Internet is a bigger part of the
Speaker 1: lives for each person. So it is more of an
Speaker 1: ontological threat because these things are so closer together now, right,
Speaker 1: They used to be much more distinction between the Internet
Speaker 1: and you because you can only ask the computer every
Speaker 1: once in a while. We can now carry around a
Speaker 1: supercomputer wherever we go, so it is like a part
Speaker 1: of you. Like you bring it with you almost everywhere.
Speaker 1: It's always in your pocket. So these things are so
Speaker 1: like stitched together that prying them apart and telling people
Speaker 1: know this thing you would carry around actually probably most
Speaker 1: don't you see on it isn't isn't actually true? Like
Speaker 1: there is People can like believe that in their heads
Speaker 1: but don't actually don't. Actually the belief doesn't actually impact
Speaker 1: them because like we all know that there's like well
Speaker 1: we all know that people can still on the Internet
Speaker 1: and lie, right there is like part of the joke,
Speaker 1: but we still don't act like it, Like oftentimes we
Speaker 1: get so we get so like encased into the stories
Speaker 1: that we tell ourselves. Right, the part of why the
Speaker 1: Issharing stairwell is so good is that it's such a
Speaker 1: it's such a compelling story like that, Like the idea
Speaker 1: of like a brilliant architect bringing like you know, building
Speaker 1: is paradox in the real world is like, is so
Speaker 1: much more fun than being like, yeah, some dude just
Speaker 1: knows how to use Adobe after effects. Like right, So
Speaker 1: you get so entrenched in the storytelling because the story
Speaker 1: of like politicians eating the eating the blood of children
Speaker 1: is so much more interesting than no, politicians just don't
Speaker 1: care about you, like, and getting to the heart of
Speaker 1: that problem is so much more difficult than just you know,
Speaker 1: debunking things, because you can debunk things all day and
Speaker 1: does that actually matter? Yeah? I think there there's there's
Speaker 1: a secondary problem that like you know, there's another like
Speaker 1: a lether level of it, which is that, yeah, like
Speaker 1: everyone knows that there's information now, like everyone does. But
Speaker 1: but that just makes it worse because now if you
Speaker 1: want to do this information, what you can claim is like, oh, hey,
Speaker 1: look at all these other times that all the stuff
Speaker 1: has been fake, and then you know, and this is
Speaker 1: how you get everyone like doing frame by frame analysis
Speaker 1: of like a bombing and going oh, these are all
Speaker 1: crisis actors. And it's like you know, and you like
Speaker 1: you talk to these people and they're like, oh, no,
Speaker 1: I I did. I did the research. Look I like
Speaker 1: I saw through the lives. It's like, no, You've just
Speaker 1: completely made this thing up in your head. You can
Speaker 1: see the green screen compression. They're like, no, it's just
Speaker 1: regular video compression. And it's like yeah, like everyone can
Speaker 1: be a detective now, so everyone can be so convinced
Speaker 1: to their own conclusions even when the conclusions turn out
Speaker 1: to be not true. Right, it's a problem. If there
Speaker 1: was an exy solution, we wouldn't have the problem. Right.
Speaker 1: It's one of those things where it's like your project
Speaker 1: is a very good example of like it's it's it's
Speaker 1: it's a very demonstrative thing. You can like you you
Speaker 1: take someone along this journey and demonstrate, hey, this can
Speaker 1: happen to you, so you should watch out for us. Right,
Speaker 1: Look look at the story I crafted. Look how you
Speaker 1: become convinced of it for these six minutes and then
Speaker 1: you think, oh wait, no, you can't teleport to a
Speaker 1: bottom stairwell. That's not that's not how that works. Um.
Speaker 1: But because you take them on that journey, it's a
Speaker 1: very it's a I love it so much as like
Speaker 1: a demonstrative process being like like this can happen, so
Speaker 1: watch out for in the future. Do you think is
Speaker 1: honestly more useful than just debunking somebody because you can
Speaker 1: debunk all day, you can have the backfire effect and stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And you're right about the demonstrative stuff, because it's like
Speaker 1: if a bunch of film students and volunteers with no
Speaker 1: connections and no resources pulled this off like we did,
Speaker 1: like a tally of all the videos at the end
Speaker 1: of the year of um, you know, all the videos
Speaker 1: that ripped it off and posted on their own channels
Speaker 1: and all that, Um, it was like fifty million, right.
Speaker 1: So if if a bunch of film students like had
Speaker 1: that much influence, what more can like people who are
Speaker 1: actually fun like power and resources, right, what could they do?
Speaker 1: And we were just doing and ours was about like
Speaker 1: this innocuous, silly stairwell. It wasn't about anything that would
Speaker 1: cause you know, anyone's death or anything like that, or
Speaker 1: and like you know, something like in me and are
Speaker 1: where the ME and MAR military basically systemically systematically created
Speaker 1: fake articles and fake photos to create like to arouse
Speaker 1: dis dame for the row hinge of people and basically
Speaker 1: they incited a genocide through Facebook, just through fake news
Speaker 1: right in the Philippines where I live right now. Um,
Speaker 1: which a lot of commentators call like the patient zero
Speaker 1: of disinformation because this guy called was elected president basically
Speaker 1: ran running his entire campaign on disinformation, and after him
Speaker 1: was Brexit like a month later, and after that was
Speaker 1: Trump got the nomination. So like what's her named Kate
Speaker 1: Katie Barth, Barth or or something like that. One of
Speaker 1: the executives of Facebook referred to the Philippines as patient
Speaker 1: zero in the era disinformation because like, um, and the
Speaker 1: thing that the president here right now was running on
Speaker 1: was basically like the same sort of um bothering and
Speaker 1: scapegoating of a certain group. And he said, basically he's
Speaker 1: the guy who said, like basically, if you're a drug
Speaker 1: user or a drug dealer, it should be okay to
Speaker 1: murder you and kill you. And that's what happened. That's
Speaker 1: exactly what happened because they were posting all these stories
Speaker 1: about um, you know the same sorts of stories that
Speaker 1: you that that we saw in the US in twenties
Speaker 1: sixteen about undocumented immigrants or Muslims or something like that.
Speaker 1: This like oh, this undocumented immigrant raped the five year
Speaker 1: old girl, you know that sort of thing. And he
Speaker 1: would the the the organized campaign um making up stories
Speaker 1: about drug addicts like murdering and raping people. Basically like
Speaker 1: got an entire nation too, well, not an entire nation,
Speaker 1: but basically this guy on the election and you know,
Speaker 1: we have a country right now that basically lived through
Speaker 1: just atrocities the last five six years, you know. And
Speaker 1: like the double edged sort of this, like Chris mentioned,
Speaker 1: is like yeah, this type same type of thing. Because
Speaker 1: it exists, people also like retroractively apply it to like
Speaker 1: you know, like Sandy Hook was staged or like even
Speaker 1: stuff now with like you know the pandemic, right, people
Speaker 1: like what if what is what if the pandemic is
Speaker 1: a real? What if all these people have just you
Speaker 1: know conjured this thing into being and it's all a
Speaker 1: giant insifferation campaign, right, So it has this dual it
Speaker 1: has this double edged sword nature um, which makes combat
Speaker 1: and information so challenging. It's like disiforation to combat information,
Speaker 1: to connect the idea of disinformation, and there's so many
Speaker 1: layers of it. Now, this, this, this, it's just yeah,
Speaker 1: it makes it, It makes actually get into the heart
Speaker 1: of it so much more challenging. It's been abstracted so
Speaker 1: many times. One of the things what didn't didn't the
Speaker 1: New York Times weren't it the first people to come
Speaker 1: up with the term fake news? And then Trump started
Speaker 1: using it after like were watching Potificate, which newsuper was.
Speaker 1: But my memory if it was like it was, it
Speaker 1: was it was the media that came up with fake
Speaker 1: news and then like Trump just took it and it
Speaker 1: became this like this just like demon they absolutely could
Speaker 1: not control and was just turned on them. Do you
Speaker 1: do you remember the context in which they used it.
Speaker 1: They were like they were I think they were calling
Speaker 1: like stuff that Trump said fake news. M M I am.
Speaker 1: I'm unsure at the moment who specifically coined to that term.
Speaker 1: But I mean we definitely see in terms like even
Speaker 1: in even terms like desperation, which used to be more
Speaker 1: tied to like a discording in philosophy, breaking like in
Speaker 1: like even even back even as back far as like
Speaker 1: the eighties, getting you know, turned into an actual like
Speaker 1: political term that everybody uses. It was actually somebody from
Speaker 1: buzz Speed. An editor at buzz Speed was one of
Speaker 1: that makes sense, is one of the ones who first
Speaker 1: popularized it. Was Yeah, but there could be there could
Speaker 1: be you know, several other people that say that they
Speaker 1: coined it. I don't know, I mean, I even there's
Speaker 1: even uh an illustration from eight nine four by by
Speaker 1: Frederick Offer with reporters carrying newspapers labeled humble news, cheap sensation,
Speaker 1: and fake news. So it's I mean, in terms of
Speaker 1: in terms of just mashing words together. I'm sure it
Speaker 1: has has had a decent history, but definitely Trump is
Speaker 1: the one that like launched it into the zeitgeist. Right right, right,
Speaker 1: Let's see, Robert, you've been pretty quiet. I know it's
Speaker 1: pretty early in the morning for you. Do you have
Speaker 1: any do you have any kind of thoughts to help
Speaker 1: us kind of generally start closing us out, not not
Speaker 1: not like super immediately, but generally having that direction. I
Speaker 1: mean you no, not really kind of brought up everything.
Speaker 1: I would say, all right, all right, it's a yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess, uh, Mike, what have How is this project
Speaker 1: of impacted how you approach film and just like how
Speaker 1: you how you use the internet yourself in the past decade?
Speaker 1: Mm hmm, Well, I I'm fully aware of what we did.
Speaker 1: Every time I'm like looking at something, I'm like, they
Speaker 1: had done that? Could they have done this? And that,
Speaker 1: you know that sort of thing. Um, I don't know
Speaker 1: if it's if yeah, I don't I'm not sure how
Speaker 1: it's how this project specifically impacted me, other than just
Speaker 1: trying to think through things a bit more carefully, trying
Speaker 1: to go through things like, um, I mean, like so
Speaker 1: we we basically came up with this idea of what
Speaker 1: eventually became troll farms, right like me and like my
Speaker 1: classmates would hey, we even make fake accounts and like
Speaker 1: talk about the stairwell and um, so, I don't know,
Speaker 1: like a few years later, people we we learned that
Speaker 1: people were actually doing this, like to influence like elections
Speaker 1: around the world, and a lot of the strategy of
Speaker 1: like the Russian troll forms and stuff, um was to
Speaker 1: basically create caricature versions right of arguments from whatever side,
Speaker 1: like you know, whether they might present an argument from
Speaker 1: like the left or the right, but in like a
Speaker 1: caricaturized version of it. And um, so what people would
Speaker 1: see when they see that, they'd see an argument coming
Speaker 1: from the other side, and they'd ridicule it, like look
Speaker 1: at these people who just seem crazy espousing this whatever view,
Speaker 1: you know, or they might say things like, um, like yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're a Democrat, you want to abort babe bees
Speaker 1: that like the ninth month or something like that, which
Speaker 1: no reasonable person actually argued. So what happens is like, um,
Speaker 1: people talk about how the goal of Russia was to
Speaker 1: like polarize, you know, um, polarize the political spectrum. I think,
Speaker 1: like the bigger goal and the the goal that we're
Speaker 1: going to be untangling for many many years. And the more, um,
Speaker 1: the more difficult problem to deal with was that they
Speaker 1: oversimple They successfully oversimplified discourse, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: Like they found a way to like oversimplify the type
Speaker 1: of discourse we're having because everyone's like arguing with such
Speaker 1: simplistic I'm not sure if I'm making sense. It's like
Speaker 1: it's like it's like the term I use is like
Speaker 1: politics as fandom, right, right, And that's why I think
Speaker 1: that like intersect not not exactly what you're saying, but
Speaker 1: like in a next with that type of idea of
Speaker 1: like condensing down actual discussions on like what you believe in,
Speaker 1: um and what politics you want and how you want
Speaker 1: to improve the world into this weird fandom lens of
Speaker 1: like this team versus this team which we we we
Speaker 1: we we we we. We've had a degree of that
Speaker 1: for a long long time. But with the Internet and
Speaker 1: how how discussions on the Internet are designed to work, right,
Speaker 1: how algorithms want to boost content, how there's always these
Speaker 1: short snippets just in mirrors the way people discuss, like
Speaker 1: what Star Wars character is their favorite? It's just that.
Speaker 1: But for politics, um, so it's it's just this, like
Speaker 1: what if politics is just this idea of fandom and
Speaker 1: you can debate what fandom is more valid than the other? Right,
Speaker 1: I like the last Jedi more you like Rise of Skywalker.
Speaker 1: This means your version of reality is less good than mine.
Speaker 1: So which is which is? But that it's that same
Speaker 1: idea but for how we like make social programs and
Speaker 1: how we address racism, how we like give food to
Speaker 1: poor people, and how we do affordable housing, and how
Speaker 1: we handle the police. So it's that type of idea,
Speaker 1: which is just the disinformation kind of impacts this in
Speaker 1: part because when you flood the zone with so much
Speaker 1: conflicting information that people can't really get a handle on
Speaker 1: or easily sort of like when there when when you
Speaker 1: when you've put that much confusion into the air, um,
Speaker 1: it makes people more likely to just kind of grasp
Speaker 1: its sides because everything coming out is way too complicated
Speaker 1: and messy, and it's it takes too much work what's
Speaker 1: actually true. So holding to some lubric of well, I
Speaker 1: believe this, so that means these are the good guys,
Speaker 1: these are the bad guys, and I don't have to
Speaker 1: analyze it any deeper than that I can reject information
Speaker 1: that comes from this group, where I can reject information
Speaker 1: that says this, because I just category categorically reject you know,
Speaker 1: anything that that fits in with that. Like that's the
Speaker 1: benefit of disinformation for authoritarians of all stripes. You're seeing
Speaker 1: in Ukraine right now, where um, you've got all of
Speaker 1: these different authoritarian powers. You've got Turkey, you've got Russia,
Speaker 1: you've got um, you know, sucking the United States at
Speaker 1: least to the extent that like we impact a lot
Speaker 1: of things internationally. Um, and you've got them all coming
Speaker 1: down on different sides of this issue and of what's
Speaker 1: happening in Ukraine. And because there's so much disinformation and
Speaker 1: misinformation about what's going on, people just kind of grasp
Speaker 1: at whatever side I'm have been more sympathetic to recently,
Speaker 1: I'm just going to believe whatever they say because it's
Speaker 1: way too complicated to actually analyze what's going on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And this was this was the thing that I mean,
Speaker 1: this was explicit on the left. I remember this. There
Speaker 1: was this around um that Sheen. There was a whole
Speaker 1: thing about how like people people like talking about anti
Speaker 1: imperialism would would literally say like nuance nuances liberalism. I
Speaker 1: don't like nuance of liberalism. Don't don't research this, don't
Speaker 1: think about this because nuances how liberals like you know,
Speaker 1: spread sort of pro promishing and change proplicanda, Like I
Speaker 1: remember those people like Ember Frost just just straight up
Speaker 1: said this. And this was a huge and you know,
Speaker 1: like I I got a lot of shift for this
Speaker 1: because you know, like I remember when when when the
Speaker 1: coupon Bolivia happened, Like I I made a giant thread
Speaker 1: that was trying to that was like, okay, we need
Speaker 1: to figure out like how specifically the CIA was involved
Speaker 1: in this, Like okay, so did they plan the whole thing?
Speaker 1: Was it like were they working with local partners? Wasn't
Speaker 1: a thing where someone else planned it and they signed
Speaker 1: off on it? And like to this day people think
Speaker 1: that I supported the coup because I was like, we
Speaker 1: should figure out who was who the actors were in
Speaker 1: the ground, because no one like this, this this, this
Speaker 1: this became like a like like like a tenant, like
Speaker 1: like an actual sort of like political tenants of of
Speaker 1: how a lot of anti impurialism, like in American left
Speaker 1: worked was you you were not supposed to do nuanced
Speaker 1: You were not supposed to look at who was like
Speaker 1: you know if if if you spent too long looking
Speaker 1: at what was going on in the ground, people would
Speaker 1: be like you you worked for the CIA, and that
Speaker 1: you know, I think like we we we've we've finally
Speaker 1: seen that basically blow up in their faces because you know,
Speaker 1: oh hey, look how many of these people just like
Speaker 1: would up supporting Russia and then spent like three months
Speaker 1: saying that Russia would never invade Ukraine, that this happens.
Speaker 1: But it's I don't know, it's it's it's it's extremely
Speaker 1: depressing how people who otherwise are you know, like in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways, like I've spent a lot of
Speaker 1: their time like trying to you know, filter out stuff
Speaker 1: from the media that's false just go into this because
Speaker 1: they just do not want to deal with the complexity
Speaker 1: of reality. Yeah, just easier not to. Again, if there
Speaker 1: was a simple problem, we wouldn't mean, if there was
Speaker 1: a simple solution, we wouldn't need to discuss the problem. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I guess basically, like just to like, um, answer
Speaker 1: that question about how it I guess at the time,
Speaker 1: I'd say, like we got an up close look at
Speaker 1: how things were gonna be, Like you know, with with
Speaker 1: all these things, we we kind of anticipated the next
Speaker 1: few years. Um. So yeah, that's basically what happened. Um,
Speaker 1: sorry to interrupt your clothing, but no, no, no, it's
Speaker 1: the it's the best note that that we can go. Um, Michael,
Speaker 1: do you where can people find you online? And if
Speaker 1: people want to look into some of your other projects,
Speaker 1: I mean you found me, Like, if they want to
Speaker 1: find me, they'll find me, right, I don't know, I
Speaker 1: still don't know you got my email, but Garrison is
Speaker 1: extremely good about this. Tope, not have any people? Are
Speaker 1: that good? Uh? Yeah, well they can check out the
Speaker 1: YouTube channel like I'm gonna be posting some new films
Speaker 1: this year probably, um so my name Michael Lock. Canna
Speaker 1: allow or just search the issarians there. Well, I guess
Speaker 1: that's a way. Yeah yeah, I'll add your YouTube channel
Speaker 1: to to the description. Yeah. I just want to thank
Speaker 1: you so much for coming on to talk about your
Speaker 1: your project. Yeah, thanks for having me. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: that that does it for us today. You can follow
Speaker 1: us on the internets for some reason, um on Twitter, Instagram,
Speaker 1: that happened here, pod and cool some media and yeah,
Speaker 1: go go create a myth that people will believe and
Speaker 1: travel from out of country to walk over some stairs.
Speaker 1: Because that sounds like fun. Go to something like that
Speaker 1: for fun funzies. All right, bye bye, Hey everyone, It's
Speaker 1: Bobby Brown. You might know me as the makeup artist
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Speaker 1: Elizabeth Dutton. Wait sorry, do you want to see your name? No,
Speaker 1: I'm good, good, go ahead. We're the hosts of Ridiculous Crime.
Speaker 1: People love true crime, right, the mystery, the intrigue, the
Speaker 1: human frailty totally. But what a lot of us don't
Speaker 1: like is the blood and the guts and the mayhem.
Speaker 1: Wait wait, wait, wait, some of us do like the mayhem. Okay,
Speaker 1: but let's be real, there's nothing funny about murder. Our
Speaker 1: show gives you stories like the kidnapping of Frank Sinatra Jr.
Speaker 1: And the Max Headroom signal hijacking. Oh so you mean
Speaker 1: ridiculous stories like the UK cat Shaver and Pablo Escobar's
Speaker 1: cocaine hippos. Yeah, stories like the dudes who stole Buzzy,
Speaker 1: the animatronic whatever he was from Disney World and the
Speaker 1: woman whose husband tried to kill her but came back
Speaker 1: from the dead and surprised him at her own funeral. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that does sound good. You can find this new podcast
Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime all over the place, the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: the Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. I
Speaker 1: don't know how you live ridiculous Crime. It could happen here. Uh,
Speaker 1: it being a number of things. Uh. This is the
Speaker 1: podcast about things falling apart and also maybe putting them
Speaker 1: back together. And assuming there is not a nuclear war
Speaker 1: in the immediate future, you will probably be hearing this
Speaker 1: episode sometime in early March. I am Robert Evans. My
Speaker 1: co hosts as always well as often Chris and Garrison,
Speaker 1: and that's that's my job for the day. Done. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna I'm gonna sit back and chill. You guys want
Speaker 1: to take it from here, Yeah, I'll take it from here.
Speaker 1: We are doing one of our perennial things fall apart
Speaker 1: but also we sort of put it back together again episodes.
Speaker 1: And joining us today is j MC from Strange Matter
Speaker 1: is a new libertarian, socialist cooperative magazine. J MC, great
Speaker 1: to have you here. Yeah, this is really great. So
Speaker 1: I guess we should probably explain what the magazine is,
Speaker 1: not just in of itself, but also because it's a
Speaker 1: good lead in into um um into what we're gonna
Speaker 1: be talking about so we basically there's five of us
Speaker 1: as co editors and we're all equal worker owners in it.
Speaker 1: It's a magazine called Strange Matters, and the point of
Speaker 1: it is to explore radical new ideas, not just in
Speaker 1: terms of politics and economics, which is going to be
Speaker 1: kind of half the focus is trying to figure out
Speaker 1: like you know, libertarian socialists talk a lot about dual power,
Speaker 1: which I know y'all talk about on the show a
Speaker 1: lot talk about building independent institutions under the direct democratic
Speaker 1: control the working class to control real resources and are
Speaker 1: not the state or capitalist firms. But like we talk
Speaker 1: a big game, but we actually know how to do
Speaker 1: that stuff, And do we know how to do stuff
Speaker 1: like run like you know, a big company as a
Speaker 1: as a self managed democracy, or do we know how
Speaker 1: to like run a city as a as a radical
Speaker 1: democracy like rooted in neighborhood councils or anything like that.
Speaker 1: The answer kind of is not really. And there's a
Speaker 1: lot of like, um open questions that we don't know
Speaker 1: yet the answers to, and that very few people are
Speaker 1: working on those answers. So Strange Matters is um partly
Speaker 1: about discovering, uh, those answers, not because we the editors
Speaker 1: have the answers, but because we need like some kind
Speaker 1: of space within which we can bring lots of different people,
Speaker 1: different life experiences together, uh, in order to talk about
Speaker 1: the stuff and figure it out. And then the other
Speaker 1: mission of it is to be a kind of general
Speaker 1: interest literary intellectual magazine doing the kind of journalism and
Speaker 1: philosophy and poetry and memoir and stuff like that that
Speaker 1: uh that uh perhaps gets shut out of capitalist society
Speaker 1: because it's not commercial, older because it's too weird, because
Speaker 1: it's like, I don't know, historiographical essay about it's been
Speaker 1: called doon or something like that, you know. And and
Speaker 1: we think that there should be a place for that, um,
Speaker 1: just because it brings delight and meaning into people's lives,
Speaker 1: and it's what we're fighting for a more democratic society
Speaker 1: in order to do so. That's basically our vibe UM.
Speaker 1: And the essaying question is a collective editorial that we uh,
Speaker 1: that we collectively drafted and edited uh, talking about our
Speaker 1: political views in particular and the recent history of libertarian
Speaker 1: socialism UM and then asked for me, I'm I'm a
Speaker 1: writer who's written for a couple of other places like
Speaker 1: the point in the Brooklyn rail Um. And I also
Speaker 1: was involved in the d S as Libertarian Socialist Caucus
Speaker 1: and also the yeah yeah right, yeah, but a lot
Speaker 1: of history there, trauma, you know, some some uh yeah,
Speaker 1: but any who uh and also the Symbiosis Federation UM,
Speaker 1: which is a federation across Mexico, the US, and Canada
Speaker 1: that is trying to put together. It's a it's a
Speaker 1: confederation of local organizations that are trying to do this
Speaker 1: kind of direct democracy stuff. Yeah. So I guess, well, okay,
Speaker 1: so the pandemic isn't I guess the perfect jumping in
Speaker 1: point for this. But I wanna go back and I
Speaker 1: guess getting into the meat of this piece because I
Speaker 1: think it's very interesting. I wanted to sort of talk
Speaker 1: about the origins of like what's called sort of neo
Speaker 1: anarchism and how it's sort of begin to decay after
Speaker 1: after the collapse of occupying after well, I guess the
Speaker 1: sort the sort of kind of revolutionary arc of the
Speaker 1: two tens, so basically before you do the decline at
Speaker 1: least is the way that we wrote it. And I
Speaker 1: kind of think that it's the way that I would
Speaker 1: tell it Um, you have to kind of do the
Speaker 1: rise first, right, because like there was this moment from
Speaker 1: roughly the fall of the Soviets in two roughly like
Speaker 1: two thousand and even kind of lingering in an afterlife afterwards,
Speaker 1: where it kind of looked like anarchism was going to
Speaker 1: take over the world. And that's a bit of a joke.
Speaker 1: But it's also not a joke because in the context
Speaker 1: of like the radical left, which is of course obviously
Speaker 1: a kind of like you know, dissidents seen in any
Speaker 1: country where it happens to exist. Um, you know, everything
Speaker 1: receded in terms of the traditional parties because the fall
Speaker 1: of the Soviet style uh Leninists states uh either through
Speaker 1: their collapse as in the case of the USSR, or
Speaker 1: in the case of their transition to a much more
Speaker 1: like clearly and obviously like state capitalist, uh semi liberalized
Speaker 1: model like in China, like the you you basically had
Speaker 1: like this total recession, not just in Leninism interestingly, which
Speaker 1: obviously enough, right, like you know, it's basically a global
Speaker 1: collapse of anist style of governments, but also in like
Speaker 1: social democracy. Um, because it's a lot of the I mean,
Speaker 1: it's actually kind of interesting why it's it's unclear why
Speaker 1: it is. Uh, people have different theories, but they're you know,
Speaker 1: people often describe it in in um you know Fisher's
Speaker 1: term the writer Mark Fisher capitalist realism. The attitude in
Speaker 1: the nineties was that, uh, you know, there's there's only
Speaker 1: one world that's possible, and it's the best of all
Speaker 1: possible worlds, and that's the capitalist world, where everybody's gonna
Speaker 1: have McDonald's in every country, and two countries that have
Speaker 1: the same McDonald's are never going to go to war,
Speaker 1: which we kind of found out the hard way this
Speaker 1: week that that's not really the case. Well, and if
Speaker 1: people had paid attention more to other parts of the world,
Speaker 1: they would know that, like, well, there were civil wars
Speaker 1: in a bunch of countries that had McDonald's. Is it
Speaker 1: didn't stop people from shooting each other, as as the
Speaker 1: United States should tell you, people will kill each other
Speaker 1: whether or not they have access to chicken McNuggets. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean I think like that. That's that's
Speaker 1: a period that has it's full of the most wrong
Speaker 1: anyone has ever been, Like you got your Frantis Fukiyama,
Speaker 1: like the most wrong person ever You've got Yeah, you've
Speaker 1: you've got a lot of sertif idealogues, you like, have
Speaker 1: sort of deluded themselves into thinking this stuff is over
Speaker 1: and yeah, and I think you're right that that that
Speaker 1: sort of plays into this, you know, into sort of
Speaker 1: the collapse of of I guess, the party state left,
Speaker 1: and then the way in which that, you know, the
Speaker 1: alternative to that I guess becomes new anarchism, and anarchists practice,
Speaker 1: even if it's not necessarily ideology with all the groups,
Speaker 1: kind of seeps its way into the rest of the
Speaker 1: activist scene. Yeah. So basically the story that we tell
Speaker 1: is that there's some you know, the stuff of East
Speaker 1: and rebellion in triggers these h It's not just that
Speaker 1: the stuff of East is are able to create their
Speaker 1: autonomous territory and chap us, but they it triggers this
Speaker 1: wave U that UM. We use such term that sometimes
Speaker 1: it's used in academia called neo anarchism for this UM.
Speaker 1: You know, there's an anarchist revival in the nineties UM
Speaker 1: around the world, and it's not just people calling themselves anarchists.
Speaker 1: It's all these movements that were inspired by the libertarian
Speaker 1: socialist broadly speaking, um sabathistas UM adopting kind of similar
Speaker 1: methods in their local contexts in different countries, fighting against
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of things. Initially it's against like
Speaker 1: you know, neoliberal trade deals, but it also ends up
Speaker 1: being against like sweatshops, because that's basically what a lot
Speaker 1: of outsourcing is is. You know, if if they have
Speaker 1: unions in this country from a social democratic period, they
Speaker 1: shut down the factory fire, everybody moved it to someplace
Speaker 1: where some dictatorship is going to shoot anybody who tries
Speaker 1: to do a union. Uh, and then that you know
Speaker 1: that that lowers Uh. Logistics has gotten sophisticated enough by
Speaker 1: this point that you know, it ends up being cheaper
Speaker 1: for the company, even though they have to transport goods
Speaker 1: all across the world and do just in time delivering
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. So UM. The a lot of
Speaker 1: the the the anti globalization movement that sprouted up around
Speaker 1: the two thousands was like UM, against all these things
Speaker 1: and usually using the kinds of direct actions, which is
Speaker 1: when you act kind of independent of the state and
Speaker 1: not trying to like, you know, convince politician to do something,
Speaker 1: but taking direct action to get your results, your desired result. UM.
Speaker 1: You know, and all this kind of stuff uh that
Speaker 1: we're at using like direct democratic consensus methods. Uh. In
Speaker 1: the way that they organized stuff, uh, that was that
Speaker 1: was all basically an artistic And so there was this
Speaker 1: way in which anarchist methods, anarchist tactics, anarchists like attitudes
Speaker 1: towards what activism even is, started filtering into all these
Speaker 1: other movements. And this has been happening a little bit
Speaker 1: the eighties too. So there was like the anti nuclear
Speaker 1: movement had a lot of this, the feminist movement had
Speaker 1: a lot of this. Um there was a whole um
Speaker 1: stream of single other ecological movements were actually like pioneered
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways by anarchists in the nineties
Speaker 1: um so, as well as indigenous movements in places like Mexico, Believia, etcetera.
Speaker 1: So the this is the kind of like rise of
Speaker 1: this neo anarchist movie you that we're talking about, which
Speaker 1: is not just about anarchists, it's about people who act
Speaker 1: and think like anarchists without necessarily identifying as it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's the kind of thing that I hope
Speaker 1: we can kind of more encourage as well in the
Speaker 1: next few decades as those typicode ideas can be I
Speaker 1: want I want to make sure that we can take
Speaker 1: these ideas and make them very approable for people, even
Speaker 1: if they don't use the terms that we might use.
Speaker 1: You can still kind of suggest these types of thoughts.
Speaker 1: And this suggests these types of kind of lenses and
Speaker 1: viewpoints as much as we're about to get to how
Speaker 1: this sort of goes wrong or fails in some sense, Like,
Speaker 1: I think that was the strength of this movement was
Speaker 1: that it was it's tactics really easy to spread, and
Speaker 1: that led to a lot of people adopting me. It
Speaker 1: led to it sort of becoming this I guess activist
Speaker 1: consensus that you know, like you used in the consensus process.
Speaker 1: You you know, you have horzontal organizations, you have you
Speaker 1: do direct actions, you mobilize people. You don't have these
Speaker 1: sort of like particle like parties. But that yeah, And
Speaker 1: I think I think the next part of the story
Speaker 1: that you want to tell is about I guess how
Speaker 1: that fell apart and the consequences of that. Basically what
Speaker 1: ends up happening is that, like there was this moment
Speaker 1: of our ascent because I would identify myself as being
Speaker 1: definitely like part of these, uh, the this generalan of you.
Speaker 1: I mean I came, I hopped to board a lot
Speaker 1: later with like Occupy Wall Street, but a lot of
Speaker 1: the kind of explosion of movements that happened around the
Speaker 1: world in again not always right. It started with the
Speaker 1: Arab Spring, which started with somebody seeing themselves on fire
Speaker 1: in Tunisia and like you know, and then that spreads
Speaker 1: to um a, their countries in the Middle East and um,
Speaker 1: you know, protest against dictatorships and so on. But it
Speaker 1: starts getting kind of like transported beyond its initial Middle
Speaker 1: Eastern context. And what a lot of people don't know
Speaker 1: is that the uh, the Occupy Wall Street movement in
Speaker 1: North America, uh, and like other movements that you know,
Speaker 1: some of them were called occupy some of them, I'm
Speaker 1: one of them was Maidan in Ukraine as a matter
Speaker 1: of fact, um, and other like you know, the the
Speaker 1: Hong Kong, the the the umbrella movements, yeah, the and
Speaker 1: all these kind of movements that that proceeded from after
Speaker 1: a lot of them were basically in a single kind
Speaker 1: of wave, a protracted wave of copycat movements, uh that
Speaker 1: we're trying to adopt the same kind of tactics of
Speaker 1: like occupying public squares, uh, declaring them basically autonomous, and
Speaker 1: doing like direct democracy in those squares, modeling the kind
Speaker 1: of society that they that people wanted to create. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, in this moment where it seemed like you
Speaker 1: could have this direct democratic uh sorts of movements the
Speaker 1: end in the US, there's like a direct line of
Speaker 1: succession from like occupy Wall Street through to like Black
Speaker 1: Lives Matter through to like the anti pipeline Indigenous protests.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of like shared movement experience, a lot
Speaker 1: of the same people showing up to it or teaching
Speaker 1: the next generation UM in those movements. And I think
Speaker 1: this is something I mean, uh, it's difficult to find
Speaker 1: like sources on this, but I mean, y'all are involved
Speaker 1: in social movements. I think that that's like a rough
Speaker 1: that's roughly a description of of what's happened, right unless
Speaker 1: unless we're crazy. Yeah, I think you know what I think,
Speaker 1: I guess what you call the last wave that is
Speaker 1: occupied ice in Yeah. Yeah, you know, like I remember,
Speaker 1: like that was a sort of mix of I guess
Speaker 1: two crowds. One is you know, I mean, like I
Speaker 1: I remember it was a bunch of you know, people
Speaker 1: who'd been in occupy and then also it was a
Speaker 1: lot of people who radicalized essentially about Trump. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: was there was a pretty big new way of people, yeah,
Speaker 1: around around til sixteen and that you know, And I
Speaker 1: guess the other thing that that that's going on through
Speaker 1: this period is the the the ascension of consension of
Speaker 1: the right and the return also not just of you know,
Speaker 1: not just a sort of the fascist right, but of
Speaker 1: Leninism and social democracy as well. Um. Lapped around like
Speaker 1: when Bernie's Hands was getting more popular. Yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 1: I think I think I think there's there's you know,
Speaker 1: there's a couple of there's like two threats here. There
Speaker 1: there's the sort of Bernie Sanders thread, and then there's
Speaker 1: you know, the the rise of the rise of the tankies,
Speaker 1: which has to do with Syria and has to do
Speaker 1: with sort of this backlash against the Just and eleven
Speaker 1: revolutions that you know, like some some of that backlash
Speaker 1: turns into like just you know, like air to one's
Speaker 1: like hard right. I mean there's never like not a
Speaker 1: right wing, but like air to wants turn into just
Speaker 1: like fire bombing cities and um, and the living barrel bombing,
Speaker 1: you know, peaceful protests stuff. Um can overthrow governments if
Speaker 1: the government is not willing to bomb and shoot people
Speaker 1: who gather on mass in the central square because they're
Speaker 1: afraid of what the world's response would be if they
Speaker 1: did start doing that. But you know, when Bashar Alasad
Speaker 1: did that in Syria against the democratic opposition movements, Um,
Speaker 1: you know, that basically sent the signal nothing, I mean
Speaker 1: nothing happened to us side, right, So that basically sent
Speaker 1: the signal that like, oh he has but yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: right right, yeah, like like you can you can just
Speaker 1: shoot people and bomb them and like it. And that
Speaker 1: basically defanged the kind of central tactic that a lot
Speaker 1: of these movements were trying to do, which is to
Speaker 1: have like large numbers of people do nonviolent civil disobedience
Speaker 1: and then through those like direct actions, cultivate this culture
Speaker 1: of like direct democracy in the hopes that, um, you know,
Speaker 1: the assemblies that are created in that space could in
Speaker 1: some way become the germ of the organs that could
Speaker 1: run society, or at least that's like when it's taken
Speaker 1: to its logical conclusion. Because usually people who are involved
Speaker 1: in this, they get involved in it. They think the
Speaker 1: assembly stuff is really cool, they start learning more about it.
Speaker 1: They get radicalized by being in the assembly because like
Speaker 1: when you're in a direct democratic assembling, you're actually making
Speaker 1: the decisions like together, and then you come to an
Speaker 1: agreement and you execute the decision. You start asking yourself
Speaker 1: like why can't we do everything like this? Um? And
Speaker 1: then um, you know all that that's what directs a
Speaker 1: lot of people in this kind of anarchistic direction. But yeah,
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why these movements starts to decline
Speaker 1: is because they get smashed, um the But I think
Speaker 1: that there's always this other thing going on, which and
Speaker 1: I wonder how y'all felt about this, like reading it,
Speaker 1: like you know, there's there was this kind of both
Speaker 1: like an external critique at first from people like you know,
Speaker 1: Bascar Syncer of Jacobin and things like that, but then
Speaker 1: also like this, increasingly over the years in the last
Speaker 1: half of the internal critiques of anarchism coming from anarchists themselves.
Speaker 1: Are people in this general kind of milieu libertarian socialism
Speaker 1: talking about how like anarchists didn't have solutions to the
Speaker 1: most pressing crises in the twenty century, Like if you
Speaker 1: like if you guys had to say, I know it's
Speaker 1: like kind of pretentious, but like, what is the most
Speaker 1: pressing crisis of the century? What are like the top
Speaker 1: three just off the top of your heads without thinking?
Speaker 1: What would you list if you have to list three
Speaker 1: two or three separate things? Climate change, creeping authoritarianism, and
Speaker 1: rampant disinformation about basic facts of reality. Sweet? Okay, so
Speaker 1: let's tackle each one of those, right, Like, what's what's
Speaker 1: an anarchist got to say about climate change? Well, okay,
Speaker 1: disrupt the pipelines, like you know, do uh, Like, you
Speaker 1: can't have infinite growth on a finite plan it, so
Speaker 1: you have to have like, you know, we we have
Speaker 1: all the slogans, right, I mean we've all heard them
Speaker 1: like a million times. Yeah, you have the diagnoses of
Speaker 1: the problem. But yeah, yeah, but then like, okay, so
Speaker 1: how are we going to like you know, I guess
Speaker 1: we're gonna build some co ops and then the co
Speaker 1: ops are gonna democratized production and then we can do
Speaker 1: d growth somehow, but like also disrupting existing production. But
Speaker 1: there's like a missing step here, right, because like you know,
Speaker 1: the reason why we have all this production in certain
Speaker 1: ways because the entire economy depends on it's been set
Speaker 1: up that way. Uh So you implied in the idea
Speaker 1: that we're going to do de growth somehow, is that
Speaker 1: we need some way of constructing a different economy. And
Speaker 1: how do you construct a different economy right through some
Speaker 1: kind of planning? So really the question is like how
Speaker 1: do you do economic planning? Uh? Second one, um, I
Speaker 1: goin to skip creeping authoritarianism for now because that's actually
Speaker 1: like feeding into the more the ending of the essay.
Speaker 1: But the but the other one, right, disinformation? Another great question, right,
Speaker 1: like what do you do with social media? Like? Okay, again,
Speaker 1: anarchists talked in general a lot about like, okay, we're
Speaker 1: going to democratize all the companies because we're democratizing everything.
Speaker 1: We're democratizing neighborhoods or democratizing cities. So it's kind of
Speaker 1: the same thing, turning everything into like a radical direct democracy. Okay,
Speaker 1: But if we're going to have social media, first of all,
Speaker 1: should we like, was it a mistake to invent a
Speaker 1: centralized system instead of the more decentralized internet that created
Speaker 1: that existed before social media? Right, that's kind of an
Speaker 1: interesting question. But then assuming that we do how do
Speaker 1: we restructure it? Not just in terms of how it's managed,
Speaker 1: but like, okay, we have the democracy of Facebook or whatever,
Speaker 1: and let's say that we're the workers at Facebook. What
Speaker 1: do we do, like, how do we structure it so
Speaker 1: that it's not a giant misinformation engine? Right? Like once,
Speaker 1: once you actually have like the responsibility and the power
Speaker 1: of being in the saddle, which is what we spend
Speaker 1: so much of our time kind of just trying to do.
Speaker 1: You have to actually make decisions about what to do.
Speaker 1: And honestly, there aren't that many. I mean, do you
Speaker 1: what do you do with with the within with the
Speaker 1: utility like that? Like, for example, who ought to be
Speaker 1: in control of the utility? Like that? Is it really
Speaker 1: just the workers of Facebook? Aren't all the people who
Speaker 1: are users of it? Don't they have a right to
Speaker 1: be making decisions about it too? And is it just
Speaker 1: an American institution just because it's an American LLC? Or
Speaker 1: is it like a global institution because everybody on the
Speaker 1: planets on it? Um is there? You know? Are o
Speaker 1: there ways that it could be reconfigured, like fundamentally in
Speaker 1: terms of how users use it that would change the
Speaker 1: experience in some way to actually make it, uh, make
Speaker 1: you less liable to misinformation. But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: if you try to manipulate people in order to um,
Speaker 1: you know, not see something that's going to be misinformation,
Speaker 1: isn't that well, you know, like censorship or or or
Speaker 1: some other thing that we generally would oppose, right, like
Speaker 1: the tool of centralized social control. So they like, these
Speaker 1: are really deep questions, and again this is generally a
Speaker 1: kind of silence, and of course, you know in that case,
Speaker 1: there's silence from the social democrats too, and there's silence
Speaker 1: from the Leninists. I mean, well, the Lenist just kind
Speaker 1: of fantasized about turning Facebook into the tool of the
Speaker 1: central party state uses in order to crush dissent forever
Speaker 1: or whatever. But you know, social democrats are like list
Speaker 1: nationalized Facebook, and it's like, you know, yeah, sure we could,
Speaker 1: we could do that, and then you know the n
Speaker 1: s A owns on Facebook. I'm sure that that's a
Speaker 1: that's a better scenario. Yeah, I mean I tend to
Speaker 1: think somewhat differently about what it means to have an
Speaker 1: anarchist solution to those problems, Like, for example, I don't
Speaker 1: I don't see anarchists or social democrats or leninists having
Speaker 1: any kind of stopping climate change solution um, Because I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't realistically see the organizing potential UM capable of
Speaker 1: actually stopping what's going on in any kind of reasonable
Speaker 1: time frame. And I certainly don't think that the existing
Speaker 1: you know, neoliberal structure are the authoritarian structures that exist
Speaker 1: in you know, other countries or in this country, are
Speaker 1: going to stop it either. So when I think about
Speaker 1: solutions to climate change from an anarchist perspective, I think
Speaker 1: about how can anarchist organizing help people deal with the
Speaker 1: consequences of climate change? And I see I tend to
Speaker 1: see the potential for actually like mitigating climate change coming
Speaker 1: more from there's as the consequences of this become more
Speaker 1: dire to people. If anarchists are better, are good at
Speaker 1: providing relief and helping people and organizing through that, and
Speaker 1: eventually there's some potential to actually get people organized to
Speaker 1: stop the causes of the problem. But UM, I just don't.
Speaker 1: I'm not an optimist of about our ability to stop
Speaker 1: the worst of it at this point, UM, especially not
Speaker 1: after the most recent IPCC report. And I guess I'm
Speaker 1: kind of in the same boat when it comes to disinformation. UM.
Speaker 1: I and this is not just like anarchists. I feel
Speaker 1: like lack, as you've stated, at a like a good
Speaker 1: idea about like what do we do with Facebook, what
Speaker 1: we do with you do? What do we do with
Speaker 1: the way all of these things are set up in
Speaker 1: the harms that they do at scale? Um, Nobody, and
Speaker 1: I include the people currently in charge, has any real
Speaker 1: good ideas for that because they haven't. Like I've been
Speaker 1: working in this space for a very long time, I've
Speaker 1: I've spent a lot of time talking with and debating
Speaker 1: with a lot of the folks who are leading minds
Speaker 1: kind of in the fight against disinformation, and I just
Speaker 1: don't feel like there's any sort of solution that is
Speaker 1: an immediate term solution because so many the problem is
Speaker 1: so advanced as it is so as I guess that's
Speaker 1: kind of like where I land on a lot of
Speaker 1: this stuff is we certainly need to be thinking about solutions,
Speaker 1: but I kind of like, I think it's less likely
Speaker 1: that there's going to be like you were you were saying,
Speaker 1: the kind of debate is between is there some way
Speaker 1: of like reforming or fixing making Facebook more democratic or
Speaker 1: is it just we need to decide that maybe we
Speaker 1: don't have some of this stuff. And I tend to
Speaker 1: land towards that that, like, well, I think the solution
Speaker 1: is going to be maybe maybe Facebook's a bad idea,
Speaker 1: Maybe we should maybe we shouldn't have. There's aspects of
Speaker 1: it that are necessary, obviously, and I think aspects of
Speaker 1: things like Telegram and Twitter that are useful, But um,
Speaker 1: I I think the they're also fundamentally tied to the
Speaker 1: algorithms that drive them, which is also what drives so
Speaker 1: much of the toxic aspects that I think if you're
Speaker 1: divorcing the medium from the algorithm, you're talking about something
Speaker 1: that is very different and no longer than media. It's
Speaker 1: no longer than media. It's it's so radically different that
Speaker 1: it's just it's it's not even useful to compare them.
Speaker 1: It's like it's like comparing Discord to Facebook. It's like
Speaker 1: they're not they don't operate the same way. That's the Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's exactly kind of where I where I tend to
Speaker 1: be on on that. And I know that's not like
Speaker 1: I I to the extent that like, uh, that's pessimistic.
Speaker 1: I guess I am kind of pessimistic about anarchisms ability
Speaker 1: to stop the worst of things that's happening. Where I
Speaker 1: kind of look at myself as an optimistic anarchist is
Speaker 1: in the I believe anarchism offers solutions when these things
Speaker 1: go as badly as they're going to do, in a
Speaker 1: way that you know, the present systems or you know,
Speaker 1: more authoritarian systems that people propose can't solve the worst
Speaker 1: consequences of these problems as as well. That's that's kind
Speaker 1: of where I feel like it is can feel a
Speaker 1: lot simpler to default to, like the dual power framework
Speaker 1: of a lot of these things, because otherwise the problems
Speaker 1: are so complex that you cannot approach them from from
Speaker 1: from every angle, because you really do need to simplify
Speaker 1: and condense them and collapse them into something that is
Speaker 1: more simplified, which often results in like a dual power
Speaker 1: kind of framework for what you actually start doing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think you have to. I think if you're
Speaker 1: an insurrection anist, if you're a revolutionary, whether you're an
Speaker 1: anarchist or you know, a Leninist or whatever, you have
Speaker 1: to be looking at what's actually happening in Ukraine right
Speaker 1: now and recognize that. All right, well, to what extent
Speaker 1: do you think you're going to be able to organize
Speaker 1: people in such a way that allows them to deal
Speaker 1: with thermobaric weapons? You know? In what way are you
Speaker 1: going to organize people that allows them to effectively resist
Speaker 1: cluster musician munitions? Um? And I think that when you
Speaker 1: kind of look at it that way, which is what
Speaker 1: it would take to overthrow any of the large hegemonic
Speaker 1: powers in the world right now, a much more realistic
Speaker 1: set of solutions is, all right, well, let's work on
Speaker 1: building power by building organizations and communities that are capable
Speaker 1: of taking care of themselves in the holes that these
Speaker 1: powers are increasingly going to be experiencing because because they
Speaker 1: too are crumbling. And that's much smarter than being like,
Speaker 1: all right, well, I'm gonna try to get a bunch
Speaker 1: of my friends with rifles and and arm up a
Speaker 1: couple of drones and and go up against you know,
Speaker 1: people who have access to m l r s, you know,
Speaker 1: weapons systems and whatnot. Yeah. No, I think that that's
Speaker 1: a really great point. Um. I. The way that I
Speaker 1: would think about it is the starting with the big
Speaker 1: picture problems is a bit misleading because, as you said,
Speaker 1: like nobody, it's quite like that nobody has solutions to
Speaker 1: these problems, certainly the social Democrats. Yeah, you know, and
Speaker 1: I say this as somebody who's like half a social
Speaker 1: Democrat by temperament. Um, it would be really nice if
Speaker 1: we like did it a little social democratic government and
Speaker 1: they swooped in and you know, did like new deal stuff.
Speaker 1: I like new deal stuff. I like w p A
Speaker 1: stuff as much as the next. Uh. You know, um
Speaker 1: person who likes arts programs and infrastructure development. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: some infrastructure development, not others. Right, the war the war complex,
Speaker 1: we can do a little without. But you know, the
Speaker 1: the thing about it is those big problems. You're right,
Speaker 1: it looks like there's not going to be like a
Speaker 1: big solution, uh, and that we're going to kind of
Speaker 1: have to cope with the consequences of of it, at
Speaker 1: least at first. Even coping this is this is kind
Speaker 1: of where I think the real kind of substance of
Speaker 1: of of the problem that libertarian socialist are facing right now.
Speaker 1: Even coping would require a greater level of organization than
Speaker 1: we have proven able to muster up to now. Not
Speaker 1: because the methods that we choose don't work. Because in fact,
Speaker 1: as you point out, and as I actually really want
Speaker 1: to forcefully argue, and because because we do in the
Speaker 1: end of the essay, like authoritarian methods don't work and
Speaker 1: can't work for a lot of the specific problems that
Speaker 1: we face. Uh. And history shows that very definitively. But um,
Speaker 1: there is also a serious way in which even kind
Speaker 1: of developing these like you know, local highly like you know,
Speaker 1: rooted in a community, uh like direct democratic institutions that
Speaker 1: control real resources, scaling that up to the point where
Speaker 1: it actually could start replacing some of the gaps left
Speaker 1: behind by uh you know, uh states and capitalist firms
Speaker 1: that are too dysfunctional or too focused on their own
Speaker 1: goals to to to to meet those needs that would
Speaker 1: actually require us to be able, for example, to know
Speaker 1: how to build up a cooperative sector in a city,
Speaker 1: or how to kind of like network the tennis unions
Speaker 1: that already exist you know, across different uh you know, regions,
Speaker 1: maybe even across like a continent, and then construct like
Speaker 1: the way in which they self manage each other or
Speaker 1: or not each other self managed together the you know,
Speaker 1: the larger group or would require and you know, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of people working on these problems, but sometimes
Speaker 1: there is a kind of like you know, you'll you'll
Speaker 1: see this like obstacle in the road because for example,
Speaker 1: like what do you do when and the it might
Speaker 1: not even be the state properly speaking, right, It might
Speaker 1: be like a posse that's funded by some rich billionaire
Speaker 1: asshole who's got like his uh, you know, his notion
Speaker 1: that some people are just better than others and that
Speaker 1: you should institute the dictatorship of the tech bros um,
Speaker 1: you know, And then that billionaire's funding a bunch of
Speaker 1: people who have got now like you know, some industrial
Speaker 1: access to industrial infrastructure, and they don't like the fact
Speaker 1: that you're doing your d I Y like you know,
Speaker 1: commune or whatever stuff in there on their turf. So
Speaker 1: how do you fight back against that? I mean, some
Speaker 1: of it you can fight back against that kind of
Speaker 1: our current level of capacity, but some of it does
Speaker 1: kind of require us to start thinking like, well, how
Speaker 1: do you how do you build up financial independence? What like,
Speaker 1: how do you build up the kind of independence where
Speaker 1: it's like if we get kicked off of the capitalist uh.
Speaker 1: Social media, for example, which is a great deal of
Speaker 1: what we use for fundraising. What kind of institutions could
Speaker 1: we create that would be like alternatives, um, that are
Speaker 1: not like the ones that the Nazis created when there
Speaker 1: was a purge of some of them that gab like
Speaker 1: highly dysfunctional, like you know, it didn't even work for them.
Speaker 1: Uh not that I mean I'm happy about that, but
Speaker 1: like you know, my point is like the same thing
Speaker 1: could happen to us, So what would we do? Um
Speaker 1: the like they're there are all these kinds of things
Speaker 1: that are more little picture questions in a way, but
Speaker 1: they scale up relatively quickly to at least like medium
Speaker 1: sized questions where we need this kind of like um,
Speaker 1: these these because because part of what it is is
Speaker 1: also that like it's not that these questions are impossible,
Speaker 1: it's that they're kind of neglected. And there's um there,
Speaker 1: there's these uh the thinkers like Christian Williams, who is
Speaker 1: an anarchist from the Pacific Northwest, who wrote a pamphlet
Speaker 1: about this called Wither Anarchism. And there was another pamphlet,
Speaker 1: uh an essay and CounterPunch by a person named Gabrielle
Speaker 1: Cohn who's an autonomous Marxist basically like a libertarian Marxist
Speaker 1: Marxist anarchist type um called What Happened to the Anarchist Century?
Speaker 1: And both of those essays, which I highly recommend that
Speaker 1: people read, they may they make points basically like this,
Speaker 1: you know, like where where the focus on how to
Speaker 1: construct those institutions and the nitty gritty of how to
Speaker 1: do that has kind of receded from anarchism um as
Speaker 1: it's actually practiced. Uh In like so there's like a
Speaker 1: rhetoric of revolutionary transformation, but not always the attention to
Speaker 1: the nitty gritty of how you actually can like build
Speaker 1: resilient institutions that actually like carry that through which you know,
Speaker 1: a hundred years ago people talking about like the one
Speaker 1: big union and the general strike. But that's kind of like, um, well,
Speaker 1: a it didn't work in exactly the way that they
Speaker 1: were thinking it. What even in the most successful revolutions
Speaker 1: like in Spain and b it was also like the
Speaker 1: there's there's there's a certain way in which our tensions
Speaker 1: are focused on other things. And it's not that those
Speaker 1: things are bad, it's just that like there's been this
Speaker 1: kind of neglect of the question of large scale organization
Speaker 1: and how you do coordination, like you know, in order
Speaker 1: to tackle problems that are kind of like at the
Speaker 1: scale that that I was talking about before um. And
Speaker 1: so basically the argument of the essay is that in
Speaker 1: the absence of that, like for the socialist movement that
Speaker 1: emerged after turned away from neo anarchist, I'm thinking basically
Speaker 1: that it had no solutions, which I don't think it's
Speaker 1: true either, but it's like, you know, like rather it
Speaker 1: was true in the moment, but it doesn't have to
Speaker 1: be true, but it was true, but enough people thought
Speaker 1: that it was that they turned to like the social
Speaker 1: democratic route. But with the failure of Corbin and Bernie
Speaker 1: that kind of burned a lot of people out too,
Speaker 1: and a lot of what is seems like it's coming
Speaker 1: up now, and I'm wondering, I wonder what you guys
Speaker 1: think of this, Like a lot of the people that
Speaker 1: we see showing up in movement spaces, who we see
Speaker 1: kind of like getting politically activated for the first time
Speaker 1: or whatever, a lot of those people are really interested
Speaker 1: in Leninism and on specifically, because I don't I don't
Speaker 1: know how true that is, that's at least that's that's
Speaker 1: that that part is not true, at least at least
Speaker 1: at least here in Portland. That's very much not the
Speaker 1: case or Portland. Yeah, got no other No other part
Speaker 1: of the country is like Portland, other than maybe Eugene.
Speaker 1: Like okay, that's that's fair. That's why a little bit
Speaker 1: too like Portland. Portland is a big enough anarchist city
Speaker 1: that there are entire decade long like like inter anarchist
Speaker 1: wars that no one else in the US has ever
Speaker 1: heard of, that are like the most important thing that's
Speaker 1: ever happened in Portland's Oh boy, welcome to the Green reds.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you, Chris, you have just piste off
Speaker 1: sixty people who could not explain to you if you
Speaker 1: gave them a year, could not explain to you why
Speaker 1: they're angry. And I mean to be to be fair,
Speaker 1: like I I am an anarchist in Chicago. When the
Speaker 1: first time I introduced two of my Twitter mutuals together,
Speaker 1: they almost got a fist fight. So like that makes yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that completely scans even with like DSA stuff, I
Speaker 1: feel like there's there was at least was a trend
Speaker 1: a little bit too stale way from some of the
Speaker 1: more Russia communist kind of like types of aesthetics and
Speaker 1: en ideas because it is a turn off for so
Speaker 1: many people and it does not encourage us, and it
Speaker 1: has like encouraging forefront a form of authoritarianism that maybe
Speaker 1: is not great. Yeah, I don't know, Like I've seen
Speaker 1: sort of both friends in walk. So I think the
Speaker 1: last like a year has been very different than I
Speaker 1: think the previous five. I've seen it on Twitter, but
Speaker 1: I don't know how much it expands into as I think.
Speaker 1: I think it's like I saw more things happens in
Speaker 1: the d s A is that the Leninists essentially took
Speaker 1: over the International Committee and they had this kind of
Speaker 1: delicious division label inside the d s A where like
Speaker 1: you have like you have a part of the d
Speaker 1: s A that's essentially a social democratic machine, and then
Speaker 1: you have the International Committee, which is which is the
Speaker 1: foreign policy wing essentially run by by essentially run by
Speaker 1: by the Leninists. And I think, I don't know, I
Speaker 1: think I saw it there. And the other thing I
Speaker 1: think I saw a lot of that I've seen even
Speaker 1: from people who are ordinarily not Stalinist, is what you know,
Speaker 1: part of what is talking about this is the sort
Speaker 1: of like climate Stalinism or like climate wow stuff like that.
Speaker 1: That is a huge problem that you know, I mean
Speaker 1: I think I think part of it also just has
Speaker 1: to do with the fact that people don't like Okay,
Speaker 1: so like we we have actually existing uh climate Leninism,
Speaker 1: like we have it. It's it's it's it's it's China,
Speaker 1: Like the CCP changed, it's literally changed. State ideology in
Speaker 1: in in the mid two thousand tends, as you know,
Speaker 1: as an attempt to deal to deal with with within
Speaker 1: with pollution and climate change. It did nothing, Like they
Speaker 1: pressed every price. It doesn't it didn't like, it didn't work. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean they did carbon markets, they did. They literally
Speaker 1: just banned coal and entire provinces and it didn't work.
Speaker 1: They they changed the contrat evaluations. I I the problem people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like Late lays this out specifically with China to an
Speaker 1: excruciating degree, like like in detail. If you're really interested
Speaker 1: in this type of like climate left authoritarianism. They call
Speaker 1: it climate now in the book, but you can call
Speaker 1: it climate climate leninism, you can call it whatever. But
Speaker 1: they lay out how it could work and how use
Speaker 1: cases of it have not worked. Um to a pretty
Speaker 1: pretty intense degree. If you're interested in that, I would
Speaker 1: recommend reading the book Climate. Leviathan definitely influenced a large
Speaker 1: portion of the writing for this show. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: mean to your point, I don't think that this is
Speaker 1: the only trend I do. I agree with you that
Speaker 1: out of like the conjuncture, there was this um I
Speaker 1: I think that a lot of the more like establishment
Speaker 1: reformist aspects of the movement were discredited and that pushed
Speaker 1: people in different radical directions, like one of which very
Speaker 1: much is anarchism and libertarian socialism. I am seeing a
Speaker 1: lot more faces that are interested in in in those
Speaker 1: questions for sure. Uh. And that's kind of counter to
Speaker 1: the trend that I was describing from the last like
Speaker 1: five years of like, you know, people becoming more disinterested
Speaker 1: because of the real or perceived lack of Lucians. However,
Speaker 1: I do think that it's important, and this is kind
Speaker 1: of following on Chris's Climate Leninism point, to understand that
Speaker 1: there's at least a counter trend where a lot of
Speaker 1: people are have not only moved away from libertarian socialism,
Speaker 1: have not only moved but they've also moved away from
Speaker 1: democratic socialism. And if you follow that pattern, which is
Speaker 1: a pattern that I at least have seen within the
Speaker 1: d s A, within various trade unions, in a lot
Speaker 1: of among a lot of like intelligencia type people like journalists, professors,
Speaker 1: blah blah, you see a very common set of arguments.
Speaker 1: And I think it's very clear that as the century
Speaker 1: proceeds and the crises get worse and start killing like
Speaker 1: even larger numbers of people than they already are, we're
Speaker 1: going to see this argument a lot more. Um and
Speaker 1: and the argument is something like this. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: a quote from a tweet. Uh and and you know,
Speaker 1: one could argue that the tweet doesn't matter, but you
Speaker 1: are naive if you think this is the tweet climate.
Speaker 1: You are naive if you think climate can ever be
Speaker 1: solved without an authoritarian government at this point. That's and
Speaker 1: that's that's the whole thing. So it's a it's a
Speaker 1: nasty little tweet because it's ambiguous, right, it has this
Speaker 1: like shocking and scandalous effects. You know, we need authoritarianism
Speaker 1: to to to solve climate change a scandalous you know,
Speaker 1: bougeois or whatever. But then it's like okay, wait, but
Speaker 1: what do you mean by authoritarian? Am I just being
Speaker 1: hysterical reactor. It's the same as saying you're naive if
Speaker 1: you think that, um, climate change can be solved without
Speaker 1: nuclear power, or climate change can be solved without really
Speaker 1: big hammers, Like we have authoritarian governments, we have nuclear power,
Speaker 1: we have really big hammers, and climate change does not
Speaker 1: be solved been solved. Is it possible that any of
Speaker 1: those things might be a part of a theoretical solution
Speaker 1: that may happen someday, Yes, but it hasn't. And there's like,
Speaker 1: if you're trying to say that authoritarian governments are better
Speaker 1: at dealing with climate change than the governments that currently dominate.
Speaker 1: Number on, hell of a lot of authoritarian governments are
Speaker 1: responsible for our current situation, our climate change. Number two
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union, which I suspect most of these people
Speaker 1: see as a guiding light, horrible for the environment, turned
Speaker 1: the largest body of water in Eurasia into a poison lake. Yes,
Speaker 1: not not not good at the environment, you know. And
Speaker 1: here's here's what's interesting about the thing. To me. The
Speaker 1: other thing that it's doing is kind of signaling that
Speaker 1: it's like patently ridiculous to oppose this idea without specifying
Speaker 1: what the idea is like and like in other words,
Speaker 1: authoritarianism like but like, I mean, let's let's be blunt right,
Speaker 1: what they're implying as a Leninist is the one party state,
Speaker 1: the secret police, press censorship, in the command economy. So
Speaker 1: does that help you fight climate cheese? That's actually an
Speaker 1: interesting and a kind of like you know, distant five
Speaker 1: thousand foot view, you know, from the god's eye view
Speaker 1: or whatever, like, uh, the that's an interesting technical question.
Speaker 1: Do the has actually helped or hinder a response? But
Speaker 1: we're not even having that conversation because instead it's this
Speaker 1: kind of underhanded attempt to get you to think that.
Speaker 1: So again, does a tweet matter? Well, I think a
Speaker 1: tweet matters if it comes from a member of the
Speaker 1: National Political Committee of the d s A, because at
Speaker 1: least ostensibly if d s A is, which is who
Speaker 1: the person who did that tweet? Because at least ostensibly,
Speaker 1: if d s A is a mass movement, as it
Speaker 1: purports to be the mass movement of socialists in the US,
Speaker 1: and you know, and and the National Political Committee is
Speaker 1: ostensibly the leadership of the d s which I personally
Speaker 1: don't believe, but that's certainly how they think of themselves. Um.
Speaker 1: Then this indicates that the largest most important socialist mass
Speaker 1: movement in the US, at least self branded UH, has
Speaker 1: people in its leadership who believe that the secret police
Speaker 1: might help in addressing climate change. That's an interesting thing
Speaker 1: and it's also very disturbing. And the thing is this,
Speaker 1: this person is not actually like important, He's a symptom
Speaker 1: be because this is something that's happening across the board.
Speaker 1: And a more intellectually serious version of this argument was
Speaker 1: put forward by the Marxist intellectual and historian um a
Speaker 1: professor of human ecology called Andreas Mom. And people who
Speaker 1: are really into like Marx Nerds stuff will probably have
Speaker 1: heard Mom's Yeah, what a very good book called Fossil Capital.
Speaker 1: Everything he's written after Fossil Capital is a disaster. I
Speaker 1: like some of the sabotage. It's it's I mean, it's
Speaker 1: a little romantic and impractically. He wrote an ethical discourse
Speaker 1: instead of a thing about like the risk of eco sabotage,
Speaker 1: which is the actual important part of the degree to
Speaker 1: which it can matter. Because eco sabotage, there's this idea
Speaker 1: on the left that like what we need to do
Speaker 1: is be targeting fossil fuel infrastructure. And again it's like
Speaker 1: what it's it's like what that ds A dude said, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that could theoretically be a part of but also process.
Speaker 1: If it's like nine dudes who do it and then
Speaker 1: they go to prison or get shot, well that doesn't
Speaker 1: really fix climate. I think the book, the book A
Speaker 1: Ministry for the Future really lays out all of the
Speaker 1: all kind of like the best case scenario for all
Speaker 1: these types of things and how they can work together
Speaker 1: to overall trend in this direction. Because yeah, that type
Speaker 1: of like eco sabotage in conjunction with other like political
Speaker 1: effects can be impactful on what things happen. But it's
Speaker 1: can won't necessarily be you know, it's not it's not
Speaker 1: as simple as we would like it to be, because yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it turns out a complex world has complex consequences
Speaker 1: and complex and I think I think this is you know,
Speaker 1: the trend that Mom was on, the trend on that
Speaker 1: you know, there's there's a big environmental authoritarian like thing
Speaker 1: among among liberals is a huge thing. In political science,
Speaker 1: was a big thing, and in ecological studies that was
Speaker 1: essentially making a similar argument to to I'm almost making
Speaker 1: this like, well, okay, you need some kind of air
Speaker 1: quotes vague authoritarianism to deal to a climate change, and
Speaker 1: you know it's it's it's it's basically this this attempt.
Speaker 1: There's like these people have have seen climate change, but
Speaker 1: they have no actual solution to it, so they wave
Speaker 1: their hands and pretend that like this, like you know,
Speaker 1: the state is going to descend from this guy and
Speaker 1: save them, and it's not. And I think that's you know,
Speaker 1: I think I think we're we're sort of I don't know,
Speaker 1: I think as we just I guess kind of wrap
Speaker 1: this up because we unfortunately they're running out of time.
Speaker 1: But you know this like this exact moment like like
Speaker 1: these like few weeks are this moment of incredible like
Speaker 1: rupture on the left right, because we have we've had
Speaker 1: we've had in some way social democrats be discredited by
Speaker 1: the fact that like Corbin and Sanders both lost, right,
Speaker 1: their political project has been discredited. Um, we've had a
Speaker 1: serious sort of anexist failures. But then you know, in
Speaker 1: the last couple of weeks, right, it was all of
Speaker 1: the sort of big state like authoritarian people like tied
Speaker 1: themselves through a bunch of imperialists, and you know, may
Speaker 1: staked their whole entire politicy off of them being the
Speaker 1: anti imperialist class. And then you know the state who's
Speaker 1: like a bunch of their press people like literally work
Speaker 1: for right and who who they've been arguing like is
Speaker 1: the count imperist powers does imperialism? And so like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think we have this moment where everything is in chaos,
Speaker 1: in which we have to be the ones that that
Speaker 1: that have solutions or have or have the tools to
Speaker 1: build them. And I think that's why that's why this
Speaker 1: project is important, because that's that's something that we need
Speaker 1: in this exact moment. Yeah, I think there's a tremendous
Speaker 1: value in being humble about seeking out solutions to these
Speaker 1: questions and not doing what so many do on the
Speaker 1: left and pretend that their tendency has an absolute answer,
Speaker 1: because all we have is theories. And the reason I
Speaker 1: know that to a point of certainty is that no
Speaker 1: one has solved any of these problems yet absolutely, And
Speaker 1: and so there is a tremendous degree of humility that
Speaker 1: people need to have in terms of like, all right,
Speaker 1: well we are attempting to to arrive at the conclusions
Speaker 1: that can lead us to a better world, as opposed
Speaker 1: to we are trying to force through this thing that
Speaker 1: we know will work. Um, because you don't you know,
Speaker 1: if you're a Marxist Leninist and you think that we
Speaker 1: need climate MAU, you don't know that that will work
Speaker 1: because it hasn't yet. And if you're an anarchist who
Speaker 1: thinks the solution is bombing as many oil refineries as
Speaker 1: you possibly can, well, you don't know that you're ever
Speaker 1: going to get enough people on board for that to
Speaker 1: mean anything. Um. And I think that there's the conversations
Speaker 1: that we need to be having. I think it's it's
Speaker 1: important to see them as conversations as opposed to polemics
Speaker 1: aimed at just getting people in line behind this shining
Speaker 1: vision of a of a clear set of steps. Um.
Speaker 1: It's important to envision the end goal. I say that
Speaker 1: a lot. You know, we need to be looking and
Speaker 1: and accepting the possibility of a better future, but it's
Speaker 1: important not to be dogmatic about the road to get
Speaker 1: there because nobody, nobody really has a clear idea of
Speaker 1: what that looks like. Yeah. So the piece ends up
Speaker 1: and if you want to see the ending of it,
Speaker 1: it'll it'll be up in um in sometime in the
Speaker 1: next couple of weeks. But the basic gist of where
Speaker 1: it goes is precisely to the practical question, right, instead
Speaker 1: of like making these like polemical arguments that are rooted
Speaker 1: more in like kind of like what tribe you've decided
Speaker 1: to identify with within the broad family of socialism than
Speaker 1: in like actually trying to like solve problems for the
Speaker 1: people around you, right, or help contribute to the solutions,
Speaker 1: Like it's actually what we want to ask is like,
Speaker 1: if we have like the giant ecological crisis, Uh, how
Speaker 1: do you how do you actually do it? Is it
Speaker 1: by trying to force people from the top down to
Speaker 1: do it as Um under his mom kind of draws
Speaker 1: on the failed uh policies of war communisms and inspiration
Speaker 1: for that. Or is it potentially by having like democrats
Speaker 1: democratized institutions that incentivize people with carrots instead of sticks,
Speaker 1: Like Naomi Klein basically uncovered a want of our journalism
Speaker 1: and this changes everything. So this is kind of like
Speaker 1: the debate that we have to start having in order
Speaker 1: to be able to together formulate these kinds of solutions. Yeah, alright,
Speaker 1: well I think that's gonna do it for for us today. Um,
Speaker 1: what do we what do we? We do? You go,
Speaker 1: you guys gotta gotta gotta plug. You want to throw up?
Speaker 1: Throw up before we roll out? Yeah. If if you
Speaker 1: want to follow us at at Strange Underscore Matters UM
Speaker 1: on Twitter. UM. We also have a Facebook and you
Speaker 1: can read our articles at Strange Matters dot co op,
Speaker 1: which is our website. Uh. And if anything that you
Speaker 1: read there that you've heard here inspires you at all,
Speaker 1: please consider donating. We're going to be in the next
Speaker 1: month raising money, uh for for the magazine and we
Speaker 1: want to pay writers above market rate because we think
Speaker 1: market rates too low. So but in order to actually
Speaker 1: do that, and none of the money is going to
Speaker 1: the editors from the fundraisers, so if if, if we're
Speaker 1: gonna be able to do that, we've got to meet
Speaker 1: our fundraising target. All right, Well support them and you know,
Speaker 1: figure out how to save the world. It's it's up
Speaker 1: to you. And I'm speaking to exactly one person right
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Speaker 1: see the wrinkled face of a wizard with arms outstretched
Speaker 1: to the sky. They see treasure and pebbles. They see
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Speaker 1: Forest Service and the AD Council. Hi, I'm Katie Lows.
Speaker 1: You might also know me as Quinn Perkins from Scandal
Speaker 1: for Rachel from Inventing Anna. I'm also a mother to
Speaker 1: my son Albi and my daughter Vera. I wanted to
Speaker 1: create a space for open and honest conversations about all
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Speaker 1: my podcast, Katie's Crib. It is super raw, vulnerable, and hilarious.
Speaker 1: Katie's Crib in no way shape form is judgmental or
Speaker 1: telling you exactly how to parent or exactly how you
Speaker 1: should be. I think it really just makes you feel
Speaker 1: less alone and gives you a community. We're going deep
Speaker 1: with guests like inventing Anna's Anna club Ski, how to
Speaker 1: Get Away with Murders, Asian Naomi King, and yes, sometimes
Speaker 1: my finality when he burst into my studio. So that's cool.
Speaker 1: Listen to Katie's Cram every Thursday on the I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: Welcome to It could Happen Here, a podcast about things
Speaker 1: following apart and putting it back together again. And today
Speaker 1: we're doing one of our I guess increasingly less rare
Speaker 1: but still sort of uncommon putting things back together again
Speaker 1: episodes and with Me today is Ted Men from Amazonians
Speaker 1: united to talk about different kinds of union union workers organizing,
Speaker 1: UM and the work that you all have been doing.
Speaker 1: So Ted, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me
Speaker 1: so all right, one of the things that I wanted
Speaker 1: to talk about right off the bat is that Amazonians
Speaker 1: United is running a very very different kind of organization
Speaker 1: than a lot of the union efforts that we've talked
Speaker 1: about on the show, and a lot of the sort
Speaker 1: of like I guess, classical sort of business union model
Speaker 1: stuff that that you know, we've we've we've we you know,
Speaker 1: than than what you see in the press, and then
Speaker 1: also that we've been covering. So I wanted to start
Speaker 1: off by asking you about solidarity unionism and how it
Speaker 1: sort of differs from other kinds of union organizations and campaigns. Sure,
Speaker 1: I think it's pretty simple. Actually. I think solidarity unionism
Speaker 1: is workers who believe in ourselves. By that I mean
Speaker 1: and it's workers recognizing that we don't need someone to
Speaker 1: save us UM when because we are the ones doing
Speaker 1: the work, we know how to run our workplaces, we
Speaker 1: know how to do it best, and we also deserve
Speaker 1: the wealth that we produce. So UM, solidity unionism to me,
Speaker 1: is UH, building organization with each other where the fabric
Speaker 1: of our organization is our relationship and our solidarity as
Speaker 1: co workers engaging in struggle against UM, bosses, managers, owners,
Speaker 1: UM everyone. That's that's telling us what to do while
Speaker 1: UH taking the lion's share of the wealth that we create. UM.
Speaker 1: And it's by uniting, coming together around issues that we
Speaker 1: care about, taking direct action in the workplace, UM, building
Speaker 1: our confidence and our strength and our consciousness. UM and
Speaker 1: our organization. To me, a solidary unioniszone UH. It is
Speaker 1: distinctly different from business unionism, which is the dominant form
Speaker 1: mainstream unionism, you know, legalistic unionism, whatever you want to
Speaker 1: call it, UM, that model that has been failing for
Speaker 1: several decades. UM actually is predicated on a deep distrust
Speaker 1: of workers, the disbelief that workers can organize ourselves, run
Speaker 1: our own workplaces, represent ourselves, defend ourselves and each other. UM.
Speaker 1: And in business union I mean you know you you
Speaker 1: see the ads when they're posting UH for union staff job,
Speaker 1: come lead these workers, Come come join this union and lead.
Speaker 1: You're not even a worker in the work place? Are
Speaker 1: you going to lead someone in there? Like you know,
Speaker 1: you're you're a lawyer, you're you know you have a
Speaker 1: different professional expertise. You're not moving the packages with us
Speaker 1: from with from within the warehouse and so um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's that's the main difference to me of
Speaker 1: the model. Do you are you a worker? Do you
Speaker 1: believe in workers? Do you trust and have faith that
Speaker 1: workers we ourselves can build our own organization, lead ourselves? Um?
Speaker 1: And um? And when or do you think workers need
Speaker 1: to be led, need to be represented, need to be
Speaker 1: told what to do? Um, need to pay you to
Speaker 1: go and save that? Um? And uh. Yeah, I believe
Speaker 1: in workers almost. I'm a solidarity unionist. Yeah. And I
Speaker 1: think we were talking a bit before the show about this,
Speaker 1: and I think there's there's a lot of aspects about
Speaker 1: this that are I think very powerful in you know,
Speaker 1: in in in in secrecy, the economy that haven't been
Speaker 1: unionized and I haven't or unions ever treated from more
Speaker 1: people who were never sort of organized and to begin with,
Speaker 1: And I think that's you know something that there's there,
Speaker 1: there's the there's this problem that happens like with with
Speaker 1: a lot of unions where you know, you you you get,
Speaker 1: you get this sort of beureacratic structure that builds up
Speaker 1: and the bereacratic structure that builds up like doesn't have
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily have the same interests as the people in
Speaker 1: the union, and that's a real problem. And you get
Speaker 1: these entrenched like you know, you can get these in
Speaker 1: trenched caucuses, you control unions, and you get this the
Speaker 1: sort of proliferation of of these people. And I think
Speaker 1: this is this was part of why a lot of
Speaker 1: the sort of the anti union techniques that you saw
Speaker 1: in like the sort of anti union persis in the eighties.
Speaker 1: I mean you've been seeing them for a while. Like
Speaker 1: why they started working in the eighties was that, like
Speaker 1: you know, when when when when someone like starts ranting
Speaker 1: about union bureaucrats right like they're they're actually like there
Speaker 1: actually was a divide there, Like there there there was
Speaker 1: a sort of like I guess like like there was
Speaker 1: a sort of like a kind of fundamental class difference,
Speaker 1: which I think has a lot I mean, also has
Speaker 1: a lot to do with you know, when when you
Speaker 1: get into your sort of like more more revolutionary context
Speaker 1: that that has to do with why a lot of
Speaker 1: unions when you know, France is infamous for this, right,
Speaker 1: Like France has had these giant like comunist trade unions
Speaker 1: and every time a revolution started at the trade union
Speaker 1: just like sits there and does nothing. And yeah, and
Speaker 1: you have to sort of ask yourself like, okay, so
Speaker 1: why is this happening? And I think, yeah, soldier to unionism,
Speaker 1: it has, it has a lot of answers to this
Speaker 1: sort of I guess you call it like that. There's
Speaker 1: there's a there's a sort of like right wing critique
Speaker 1: of unions that has to do with like, well, okay,
Speaker 1: so we don't want workers to organize, we don't want
Speaker 1: them to reflective power at all. But then there's also
Speaker 1: you know, but but the reason that it works in
Speaker 1: a lot of cases because it's able to tap into
Speaker 1: a sort of like into these structural problems that a
Speaker 1: lot of unions have. And I think so my understanding
Speaker 1: of how Yells organizing has been going, and correct me
Speaker 1: if I'm wrong that I've been interesting is that like
Speaker 1: unlike a lot of other campaigns that you've seen, even
Speaker 1: specifically with Amazon, but like a lot of other the
Speaker 1: sort of the campaigns that are getting a lot of press,
Speaker 1: like you're not active, like your goal isn't to just
Speaker 1: get like recognition as a collected bargaining in it. Right.
Speaker 1: That's another key part of our key difference between solidarity
Speaker 1: unionism business unionism. UM. In business unionism, you're what defines
Speaker 1: you as a union is whether you are legally recognized
Speaker 1: by the state, by n l r B, um, by
Speaker 1: the appointed government body. Yeah. That is the point at
Speaker 1: which the folks in these organizations like, are we a
Speaker 1: union or are we not? Okay, let's let's do an election.
Speaker 1: Let's follow all these rules that, by the way, we're
Speaker 1: designed to demobilize us. Yeah, century ago, but let's follow
Speaker 1: these rules. Let's try to fight in the courts UH
Speaker 1: to be recognized as a union. And then once we're
Speaker 1: a union, then we can fight for a legal contract
Speaker 1: that has benefited a lot of people in different ways.
Speaker 1: I'm not you know what I mean. Like, but that
Speaker 1: approach is different than solidity unism, where it's like, we
Speaker 1: know our power is in the workplace, on the shop floor,
Speaker 1: where our power is based on our unity and numbers
Speaker 1: as co workers. We see this when we walk out
Speaker 1: and within a month they give us a raise. Along
Speaker 1: would it have taken to get a raise if we
Speaker 1: went for an l RB election. Yeah, what organization are
Speaker 1: we even building in that way? And so um our
Speaker 1: instead of seeking legal recognition and waging our uh struggle
Speaker 1: again bosses in the courts, we are choosing to wage
Speaker 1: engage in struggle in the shop floor, where we are
Speaker 1: the experts, where we have the power, where we have
Speaker 1: the organization, where we are doing the work, where that
Speaker 1: is our home turf um. We have more power there, Like,
Speaker 1: it makes more sense to build power where we have power,
Speaker 1: not in the institutions that were specifically designed to disempower
Speaker 1: us and give large employers to the upper hand. Um.
Speaker 1: All the different ways that they can manipulate how the
Speaker 1: votes happen, what is considered part of the voting unit, um,
Speaker 1: the contract negotiation process, I mean, all of these legal hurdles.
Speaker 1: I mean, for the vast majority of workers, you'll need
Speaker 1: lawyers to be even understand how to engage in that world.
Speaker 1: That's not our world. It was not built for us
Speaker 1: to be in. It was built to control and so um,
Speaker 1: it just doesn't make logical sense to try to wage
Speaker 1: our struggle in that arena. We should be in waging
Speaker 1: it in the places that we work and so um.
Speaker 1: That yeah, that's I think another core UM principal solid
Speaker 1: or unism like build power where we have it um
Speaker 1: and that's the shop for Yeah, and I think, I
Speaker 1: mean that's something that I've seen. Like in when I
Speaker 1: was in college there there was a big Grand Student
Speaker 1: Union organization campaign and it kind of they had this
Speaker 1: huge problem which was that Okay, well they were trying
Speaker 1: to do they were trying to get a National Labor
Speaker 1: Relations Board like vote under Trump. But they couldn't do
Speaker 1: it because if you know, because because the National Labor
Speaker 1: Relations Board was controlled by just like the even even
Speaker 1: by National Labor Relations Board standards like like just unbelievably
Speaker 1: anti union, like viscerally anti worker forces. It was like, well,
Speaker 1: if if we try to get a vote, like there's
Speaker 1: a chance they could just you know, like literally destroy
Speaker 1: the right like destroy the organizing rights of all grad
Speaker 1: students of the country. And yeah and you get you
Speaker 1: get that with the Nissan election or something like that. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and definitely delayed it. Yeah, and it's and it's you know,
Speaker 1: and yeah, I think this this is a trap that
Speaker 1: like a lot of people, even even people who are
Speaker 1: really highly organized like get stuck in where you know,
Speaker 1: and end like eventually, uh, the Grand students just like
Speaker 1: essentially just started doing walkouts because that was you know,
Speaker 1: that that was the thing they could do when they
Speaker 1: start doing their own strikes, even til they weren't like
Speaker 1: legally recognized, because that was the thing that you could
Speaker 1: do to you know, actually fight in a terrain that
Speaker 1: wasn't just inherently rigged against you. So, okay, so you've
Speaker 1: you've you've you've decided to to take to take a
Speaker 1: fight in the workplace, like on the shop floor where
Speaker 1: where you're where you're at your strongest. What does that
Speaker 1: actually look like in terms of actions, in terms of organization. Yeah, honestly,
Speaker 1: I think it's simpler and more rudimentary um than one
Speaker 1: might think or that you might read about and you know,
Speaker 1: an academic article or something analyzing. I think it comes
Speaker 1: down to comes down to building community, comes down to
Speaker 1: building culture, and the principles of the community and culture
Speaker 1: that you build together with their coworkers is one where
Speaker 1: we value ourselves and each other. We respect ourselves and
Speaker 1: each other, and that means that we fight for what
Speaker 1: is fair in the workplace. That means that we maintain integrity.
Speaker 1: Anytime a boss disrespects one of us. We need to
Speaker 1: confront it. We we need to address it. H if
Speaker 1: not immediately, uh soon after. In numbers, UM, it means
Speaker 1: if we're getting overworked and underpaid, then we need to
Speaker 1: strategize and figure out how do we how do we
Speaker 1: compel the employer to stop overworking and underpaying us, How
Speaker 1: do we hit them in a place that they are
Speaker 1: forced to respect? And um as it goes In the
Speaker 1: world we are today, it's always the numbers. It's always
Speaker 1: the money, it's always the profit. So UM what that
Speaker 1: means on the day to day, I mean m Amazon
Speaker 1: warehouses are a very isolating place. UM. Amazon has basically
Speaker 1: uh giggified warehouse work. You know, it's like the Uber
Speaker 1: for warehouse where you can pick up shifts. You can
Speaker 1: you know, exer shifts, you can take uh furlough days.
Speaker 1: You know, we called them videos. Um. Many warehouses like
Speaker 1: your work the ten twelve hour shift and you're for
Speaker 1: that entire time, you're near one or two be max
Speaker 1: because they're spaced out and it's loud, and there's machinery
Speaker 1: and your packing boxes and and so UM. On top
Speaker 1: of that, you know that everyday dehumanizing. It's also um,
Speaker 1: you're pushed to work faster and faster. Um, it's difficult
Speaker 1: to have you know, deep human interaction when you're busting
Speaker 1: your gass, moving you know, thirty to forty five pound
Speaker 1: packages as quickly as you can. UM. And so the
Speaker 1: day to day of building and fighting in the workplace,
Speaker 1: building community means uh. For example, every week we have
Speaker 1: a potluck during lunch, bring coworkers together, new coworkers that
Speaker 1: you know, someone could start last week. That's something that
Speaker 1: we hear a lot. You know. Part of the challenge,
Speaker 1: it's the turnover is so high. How can you possibly
Speaker 1: organize the turnover was so high? Um. That is a
Speaker 1: specific weapon that boss is used against us. High turnover
Speaker 1: means what it means we frequently have new cowork is
Speaker 1: harder to build relationship and organization. It means that the
Speaker 1: job feels more precarious. So people are always uh afraid
Speaker 1: that we'll lose our job. You know, we could get fired.
Speaker 1: We could uh they could change uh staffing numbers, that
Speaker 1: could close warehouses. It create you know, as a tool
Speaker 1: higher turnover. They just they turn through workers. Okay, who
Speaker 1: who's willing to do the most work for the lowest
Speaker 1: pay and sacrifice the most of their body. Okay. If
Speaker 1: if you can't handle it, then you quit. If you can,
Speaker 1: then you stay in here. Okay, let's find the workers
Speaker 1: in society that are most able to you know, produce
Speaker 1: the most that so on and so forth and so
Speaker 1: basic things you know, having every day. Uh. Sometimes it's
Speaker 1: just like talking with your coworkers is something that is
Speaker 1: that they try to keep you from doing in the workplace,
Speaker 1: and by engaging conversation, you're already resisting that isolation, already resisting. UM.
Speaker 1: Boss is trying to just control everything, keep everyone divided.
Speaker 1: So weekly pot lunches, UM, having meetings inside or outside
Speaker 1: of the workplace, coming together. What are the issues that
Speaker 1: we care about? UM? How do we bring How do
Speaker 1: we build more unity around these issues that we know
Speaker 1: many people care about. Isn't doing a petition people sign
Speaker 1: on together? Are we delivering the petition in the group? UM?
Speaker 1: If the management doesn't respond, it doesn't give us a
Speaker 1: reasonable response. How do we escalate? Do we need to
Speaker 1: walk out? Do we need to take other action? UM?
Speaker 1: Anytime we see a manager disres disrespecting a coworker, UM,
Speaker 1: how do we post up next to them, pull out
Speaker 1: a notepads, start taking notes ask questions, Um, we're a witness,
Speaker 1: you know, how do we defend each other in all
Speaker 1: of these basic ways? How are we addressing um and
Speaker 1: being honest with ourselves and each other of uh? Just
Speaker 1: the depth of disrespect when they're waiting for us outside
Speaker 1: of the bathrooms to write us up for time off task,
Speaker 1: when they're telling us to work faster when you know
Speaker 1: we're already on a ten hour shift. We're on our
Speaker 1: ten of the ten hour shift. They sent a bunch
Speaker 1: of people home and are forcing us to finish all
Speaker 1: the work for a small number of people. Do we
Speaker 1: continue putting up with it? Or do we immediately walk out?
Speaker 1: Or do we talk with their co works about what
Speaker 1: we want to do? Just being mindful of being honest
Speaker 1: about what how we are being treated? What is fairwood
Speaker 1: is not in taking the necessary action to uh demand
Speaker 1: the the fairness to respect that each of us deserve.
Speaker 1: I think like that's what the workplace struggle looks like. UM,
Speaker 1: I don't yeah, And I think it comes down to
Speaker 1: building that community um with each other and then building
Speaker 1: the culture of not putting up with bullshit, defending each other,
Speaker 1: looking out for each other. Um, there's them there's an
Speaker 1: us UM. Make sure you know inside you're on UM,
Speaker 1: and you know, I think that's the that's the foundation
Speaker 1: of it. Yeah. I think that the aspect especially of
Speaker 1: culture building is really interesting to me because I think
Speaker 1: that's something that's not really talked about much with with
Speaker 1: with organizing efforts in both because you know, a lot
Speaker 1: of like a lot of what is discussed with you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's especially not in academic circles. When when when
Speaker 1: you're when you're just you know, when when when you
Speaker 1: have people writing about union organizing, and when even when
Speaker 1: sort of like other union organizers are writing about unions,
Speaker 1: is that, Yeah, you don't hear much about the cultural aspects,
Speaker 1: and you don't hear much about just resisting the actual
Speaker 1: like psychological degradation that you get. And that strikes me
Speaker 1: I think also as as yeah, as as you've been
Speaker 1: saying something that's that's very important not discussed enough as
Speaker 1: I mean both as just something that that is a
Speaker 1: goal in itself, like not having this sort of you know,
Speaker 1: not not having the just sort of horrible all de
Speaker 1: meeting and abusive sort of tyranny of the boss is
Speaker 1: just like existing as this kind of like normal force.
Speaker 1: But then also like yeah that that this destructs me.
Speaker 1: Something that that is really important for anyone who's who's
Speaker 1: thinking about organizing is you know, getting getting people getting
Speaker 1: people to organize around just like how get get people
Speaker 1: to organize around just the sort of like the psychological decordation,
Speaker 1: like I think is really important because otherwise, you know,
Speaker 1: you get you can get you can just get these
Speaker 1: cultures where like I mean, I remember I had a
Speaker 1: job where I was in like we had a union,
Speaker 1: but like it didn't I mean I was so I
Speaker 1: was I was a temp workers where I wasn't in
Speaker 1: the union, like they had a union, and it just
Speaker 1: sort of didn't do anything, and no one like you know,
Speaker 1: and this this is a real source that sort of
Speaker 1: right reing resentment because the union just didn't do anything,
Speaker 1: and then you know everyone's getting treated terribly like by
Speaker 1: by the bosses and by sort upper management and no one.
Speaker 1: But it never even like it never really like is
Speaker 1: on a culture level, never occurred to them to sort
Speaker 1: of like use the union for that, because that's not
Speaker 1: really what the union was there for. It was just
Speaker 1: to sort of like it was just this thing that
Speaker 1: existed and like occasionally when contracts came up, it would appear,
Speaker 1: and I guess, on on on that note, one of
Speaker 1: the things I was also wondering is what sort of
Speaker 1: so for for for for people who are who are
Speaker 1: interested in their own workplaces and starting doing this kind
Speaker 1: of organizing and starting to sort of, I mean, just
Speaker 1: fight back against their bosses in ways that don't you know,
Speaker 1: either because they don't want to or because they literally can't,
Speaker 1: which I think is is true of a lot of
Speaker 1: people like who who want to organize outside of the
Speaker 1: business union model. How how do you how did you
Speaker 1: all start organizing like this? And what what sort of
Speaker 1: immediate lessons do you think people should should take away
Speaker 1: and should sort of bringing bring into their own organizing
Speaker 1: in the workplace. Yeah, Um, I think at the base
Speaker 1: of the is that, um, I guess I mentioned something
Speaker 1: like this earlier, but that we we can organize ourselves.
Speaker 1: We can. You know, if you're talking if you have
Speaker 1: two coworkers that you're friends with, and um, you say like, hey,
Speaker 1: let's meet up them talk about what's going on at work,
Speaker 1: you're starting to organize, you know, UM. And I think
Speaker 1: part of part of the damage, part of the harm
Speaker 1: that business unionism has done. And also just I don't know,
Speaker 1: hierarchical organizing Umlinsky and organizing UM. I think they're all
Speaker 1: part of uh sort of connected school of thought where
Speaker 1: it's like organizing and you know, building an union is
Speaker 1: something that like you need to be like professionals too,
Speaker 1: or you know, they're experts at it, the experts, and
Speaker 1: then if you're not an expert, then you need to
Speaker 1: consult an expert to figure out how to do it. Um.
Speaker 1: And I think that's bullshit. I think it's if you're
Speaker 1: a worker, then uh, you can be a union organizer.
Speaker 1: If you're a worker and you talk with you know,
Speaker 1: another worker about what's going on in your workplace, like
Speaker 1: you're already starting to organize. Um. Like I said earlier,
Speaker 1: if you're calling a meeting, if you're you know, and
Speaker 1: workers do this all the time, confronting management about disrespect,
Speaker 1: you know, I think it's very much more frequently on
Speaker 1: an individual basis, But it's a matter of like connecting
Speaker 1: your issue with a couple other coworkers and then figure out, okay, well, um,
Speaker 1: what what's our next step? But we need more numbers?
Speaker 1: How we you know, how do we build more numbers. Uh,
Speaker 1: if each of us can invite one more person, that
Speaker 1: six people. If you know, if the six of us
Speaker 1: can are starting a petition, we could probably get you know,
Speaker 1: signature is a fifty or sixty, you know, like it's
Speaker 1: it's step by step and saying if we want to
Speaker 1: build organization, we can do it from the bottom up.
Speaker 1: We can start it UM and we can figure this out.
Speaker 1: I mean, every even within the same company, even within
Speaker 1: the same company in the same city there. You know,
Speaker 1: I work at UM a delivery station, Engage Park, other
Speaker 1: delivery stations in the city of Chicago have a completely
Speaker 1: different culture, you know, the neighborhood that it's in, the
Speaker 1: workers that are the bosses, you know. And so even
Speaker 1: in the same company, the same type of workplace in
Speaker 1: the same city, it's gonna be a different story for
Speaker 1: how that work place is gonna you know, get united,
Speaker 1: come together, UM, figure things out, build organization. And it's
Speaker 1: just anyone there that is thinking about that that that
Speaker 1: kind of just begins the process of putting together the basics.
Speaker 1: All right, we need to start building up some numbers.
Speaker 1: We need to start having you know, addressing some issues
Speaker 1: that people care about and there's always I mean, there's
Speaker 1: always the you know, overworked and underpaid and that's gonna
Speaker 1: exist everywhere. And can always go after those issues, but
Speaker 1: frequently they're small ones. Like our first issue was a
Speaker 1: water petition uh or or or or at was access
Speaker 1: to water UM and this is how we started as
Speaker 1: an organization UM. Basically, they were taking away bottled water.
Speaker 1: They said we were leaving around too much garbage. They're
Speaker 1: saying bottled water is only there for the summer, and
Speaker 1: now that's not the summer. That whatever. They're trying to
Speaker 1: save a few dollars a day on bottled water to
Speaker 1: make us, you know, work without it UM. And we said,
Speaker 1: that's fucked up. We're doing warehouse work like this, hard
Speaker 1: manual labor and it's hot in here. We need a
Speaker 1: bottle water. It's you know, not just that broken, unfiltered
Speaker 1: fountain across the warehouse that you can't even get to
Speaker 1: while you're working. UM. And so, uh, just a few
Speaker 1: of us that we're talking at break it was like, okay,
Speaker 1: well there's six of us here. Well we're kind of
Speaker 1: you know, this is the this is the break room
Speaker 1: at work. They're like managers walking around their cameras in here,
Speaker 1: like let's meet outside, uh and figure this out. UM.
Speaker 1: So you know, we we met at a at a
Speaker 1: Crispy Cream down on like ninety three, um, and uh
Speaker 1: we just basically said like, well, how are we gonna
Speaker 1: get this water? We've been asking management? Uh, you know
Speaker 1: they've given us the same reasons. We need to do
Speaker 1: something bigger that that they can't ignore. Um, how about
Speaker 1: a petition, and so we just drafted it. The six
Speaker 1: of us, we drafted it. We went around. We got
Speaker 1: hundred fifty signature. Is I think from our coworkers are
Speaker 1: just like basic commands. We need bottle water stocked every day.
Speaker 1: They need to be you know, filters need to be clean.
Speaker 1: We need to get be able to take a break
Speaker 1: to get this water. Um. And we delivered uh, the
Speaker 1: hundred fifty signatures to management. UM. I think it was
Speaker 1: within thirty or forty minutes. They drove to a grocery store,
Speaker 1: bought you know, went to the nearest pizza bought every
Speaker 1: case of bottle. While they have brought it and passed
Speaker 1: it out to everyone, We're like, oh, okay, like that
Speaker 1: was you know, people like that's just hey, we gotta
Speaker 1: do a petition for this thing we gotta do, you
Speaker 1: know what we should? Probably it was that I don't
Speaker 1: want to say easy, because it's definitely not easy to like,
Speaker 1: but the steps, the step by step of like how
Speaker 1: do you begin, how do you get something started? How
Speaker 1: do you start building some munity? Um? These are steps
Speaker 1: that we have taken. These are you know, what we
Speaker 1: think is can be applicable um with everyone's own kind
Speaker 1: of personal tweaks based on you know, your own workplace, UM,
Speaker 1: to start getting something going from more coworkers to start realizing,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, like we should be in more control of
Speaker 1: what's happening around here because we're the ones that are
Speaker 1: doing all the work. We're the ones that are suffering
Speaker 1: the most from it in our bodies getting ground down
Speaker 1: from doing it. And so um, yeah, I think that
Speaker 1: I think I look back to a previous question to
Speaker 1: but like how we started, how you engage in the struggle,
Speaker 1: and just like what that looks like for building building
Speaker 1: something up from nothing to something like that's what that's
Speaker 1: what we you know what I mean, that's what we did. Yeah,
Speaker 1: from what I've seen, you all have been extremely effective,
Speaker 1: like at at getting management to recognize it but essentially
Speaker 1: getting them to like a seed to your demands because
Speaker 1: like this, this this kind of organizing like so solid
Speaker 1: you need what what I'm trying to say, this is
Speaker 1: all there. The unison of works. Like it's not like
Speaker 1: like and you know in yeah, it's it's a thing.
Speaker 1: I think one of one of the things you're talking
Speaker 1: about it is like, yeah, it's like when like when
Speaker 1: you win, even on something fairly small, right, and you
Speaker 1: can show people that this works and that like you know,
Speaker 1: if if, if, if you actually come together on something,
Speaker 1: you can force management to do stuff like I think
Speaker 1: that also become becomes an important sort of like I
Speaker 1: don't know if catalyst is the right word, but it
Speaker 1: becomes it becomes becomes an engine that like feeds itself definitely.
Speaker 1: I mean, especially for a big company like Amazon, Like
Speaker 1: I think the most common perspective, at least at the
Speaker 1: start is like, this is such a big company, Like
Speaker 1: what could we possibly do? They have a thousand warehouses,
Speaker 1: like what you know, they could choose to close one
Speaker 1: and open another one, you know, they do this, or
Speaker 1: they could suddenly you know and with two weeks notice,
Speaker 1: like change the schedule from an even time to overnight time,
Speaker 1: which is what they did to us. Basically, UM, what
Speaker 1: can we possibly do? And so you know, but I
Speaker 1: think it's like the moment, it's like there's a a
Speaker 1: cliff or what do you call, like the watershed a point,
Speaker 1: like the moment you kind of take that first collective
Speaker 1: action and then get what you want. UM. It's like,
Speaker 1: oh wait, it's not as like within this space like
Speaker 1: we can actually make our lives a lot better pretty quickly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we just come together and do it ourselves and recognize
Speaker 1: the power that we have. UM. And I think it's
Speaker 1: like mhm. That's one of the reasons why it works
Speaker 1: so well is because it is different from the mainstream approach,
Speaker 1: which UM bosses in these companies understand very well and
Speaker 1: can easily maneuver around, such as, oh if we do
Speaker 1: if if one of our managers does something wrong, what
Speaker 1: will happen next is we'll receive one of our lawyers,
Speaker 1: will receive a grievance from one of their representative lawyers,
Speaker 1: and you know, this business union will have this many
Speaker 1: months respond and then we can do this and then
Speaker 1: you know, uh, we'll do this paperwork and have this
Speaker 1: legal back and forth and then maybe we'll address this
Speaker 1: issue six to twelve months down the line. UM, no disruption,
Speaker 1: you know, nothing to worry about. UM. Let the bosses
Speaker 1: run amuck and we'll get a six to twelve month
Speaker 1: ad start to you know, and maybe get a slap
Speaker 1: on the wrist and a fix wherever you need to
Speaker 1: or pay a small fine. UM. As opposed to that's
Speaker 1: business unions, like as opposed to Southern unism, where it's
Speaker 1: like they just disrespected us in a way that like
Speaker 1: we're not trying to put up with, like we are hurting.
Speaker 1: We can't even finish the shift without hurting ourselves more.
Speaker 1: We're just gonna group up the walk out right now. UM,
Speaker 1: they're gonna figure out, they're gonna have to figure out
Speaker 1: how to get the rest of these packages out without us. UM.
Speaker 1: And when we come back tomorrow, uh, we'll see, we'll
Speaker 1: see if they want to keep treating us the same way. UM.
Speaker 1: And so it's like to me, you know, we we've
Speaker 1: had basic basic management confrontations where either immediately uh you know,
Speaker 1: they were understaffing and we grouped up rolled into office
Speaker 1: just like with seven of us, not even like the
Speaker 1: whole shift. Um, seven out of fifty people rolling off
Speaker 1: and said, you have too few people on the lines.
Speaker 1: You're you need an add extra person. We've been asking
Speaker 1: you have it. Um, we've folded our arms. Within five minutes,
Speaker 1: they send an extra person over there. They're working the
Speaker 1: rest of the shift. UM. In the in the business
Speaker 1: union approach, like I don't even know, Like how you
Speaker 1: followed you know, understaffing grievance, Like what are the details?
Speaker 1: How does that happen? Does a union representative have to
Speaker 1: be contacted and then negotiate in some way? Um? But
Speaker 1: that like, let's just address us right now and fix it. Um.
Speaker 1: I don't want to wait for some outside activity. Let's
Speaker 1: just improve our working conditions right now, like confronting and
Speaker 1: addressing it. UM. I think it's just you know, that's
Speaker 1: something that Um, the bosses are less it's less predictable
Speaker 1: for them, it's less in their control, it's less in
Speaker 1: their wheelhouse. UM. And I think that's a cury reason
Speaker 1: why it works better. Yeah, And I think one of
Speaker 1: one of the things the thing this reminds me of.
Speaker 1: It reminds me of the kind of stuff that you
Speaker 1: needs used to do when they were strong, Like it
Speaker 1: reminds me of like yeah, you're you're like c I
Speaker 1: O like sit down, strike, right, It's like, well, okay,
Speaker 1: if if the manager is something we didn't we don't
Speaker 1: like so and blows a whistle, everyone sits down, and
Speaker 1: like it's like it's that that kind of not just
Speaker 1: sort of like way to go to the legal channels,
Speaker 1: but just just like im immediately taking action is like
Speaker 1: it's it's something that it's like it's it's something that works,
Speaker 1: and it's you know, like that that's that's the kind
Speaker 1: of stuff that like build you built the original like
Speaker 1: labor movement. And it's really interesting to me that, like
Speaker 1: because because I think there's a lot of like I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people look back at that era
Speaker 1: sort of like nostalgically and go like, well, Okay, if
Speaker 1: unions were stronger, we could do this, but like that's
Speaker 1: not really true. You can't actually just like like you
Speaker 1: can do the same things that like, you know, you're
Speaker 1: like nineteen thirties c I O was doing like and
Speaker 1: and and if you know and you don't you don't
Speaker 1: need the kind of institutional backing that that those people had.
Speaker 1: If if like if if you're organized enough in your
Speaker 1: in your specific location. I think that's a really interesting
Speaker 1: I don't know, I'm curious if you agree with us.
Speaker 1: It seems like a skord of interesting lesson about like
Speaker 1: what happens to the labor movement, where like the more
Speaker 1: the more you get into this sort of like okay, well,
Speaker 1: the the union is now two lawyers sitting down with
Speaker 1: each other, right, the what what you're doing basically is
Speaker 1: and then like this is the this is this is
Speaker 1: explicitly what the National Labor Relations Act was, right, Like
Speaker 1: it was an attempt to get labor, labor and capital
Speaker 1: sit down at the table and stop fighting so that
Speaker 1: they could, like you know, basically Selft production could go on.
Speaker 1: And like some sometimes sometimes that that you know, sometimes
Speaker 1: a favor the union. Right, sometimes you'd have the president
Speaker 1: be like like the actual like US president will be like, okay,
Speaker 1: you come you like steal company. You have to like
Speaker 1: give workers what they're asking for because our steel production
Speaker 1: shut down, right, But like you know, the problem with
Speaker 1: that is that it's based on like it's based on
Speaker 1: at all costs trying to sort of preserve like it's
Speaker 1: based on cost like trying to preserve the labor peace.
Speaker 1: And you know, I mean there's reasons for that too, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: like I'm not gonna like like obviously there's there's any
Speaker 1: time you take a direct action, there's a risk and yeah,
Speaker 1: like I'm not gonna like, you know, I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: be like like it's it's hard to be really mad
Speaker 1: at people who don't want to go on strike because
Speaker 1: they don't like because you know, how how am I
Speaker 1: going to defeat my family, etcetera, etcetera. But like, you know,
Speaker 1: bringing like having that kind of militancy in the workplace,
Speaker 1: just you know, without without any kind of formal recognition,
Speaker 1: I think is an extremely powerful tactic. And is I
Speaker 1: mean literally how the original labor movement like got built.
Speaker 1: It's difficult though, and it can be scary, you know.
Speaker 1: And it's like I think you you posed kind of
Speaker 1: the question or or or kind of questioning the idea
Speaker 1: like where did how did the labor movement get to
Speaker 1: where it's at if the origins were more conscious um
Speaker 1: in the ways that you've been describing UM. I think that. Um.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's definitely, you know, the risk is
Speaker 1: always there. You're always confronting the power I mean in
Speaker 1: the workplace when it comes down to it like that. Obviously,
Speaker 1: the power dynamics shift, and it's more complex than you know,
Speaker 1: bosses have more power than workers unless workers organized, and
Speaker 1: workers have more power than bosses. That is true. And
Speaker 1: also for example, on the day to day, you know,
Speaker 1: the boss can fire anyone and then you're you know,
Speaker 1: however you end up dealing with it, Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: you could be out anywhere between two or twenty paychecks
Speaker 1: until something is resolved legally or even through direct Actually,
Speaker 1: there's obviously very directly oppressive power dynamic there, um, and
Speaker 1: I think that um to speak truth to power, to
Speaker 1: directly confront it um. Of course it's frightening. I mean
Speaker 1: I would be lying if you know, like I'm I'm
Speaker 1: you know, talking on this on this podcast about doing this,
Speaker 1: and yeah, we're doing this, and like you know, I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna pretend that like when we were even when
Speaker 1: we were in a forty person mass, you know, confronting management,
Speaker 1: addressing everyone together, it's still like, you know, there's there's
Speaker 1: there's still this para dynamic here and we're punching up
Speaker 1: like it's a punch, but like we're punging up to
Speaker 1: someone that's like a bigger, heavier, UM adversary, and so
Speaker 1: it's like they could swing back to like you gotta
Speaker 1: gotta be ready to and so UM, I think that
Speaker 1: what I'm describing on a kind of like face to
Speaker 1: face and the personal that moment in the workplace, I
Speaker 1: think on a broader scale also exists where it's like
Speaker 1: waging an extended you know, organizing struggle to be fighting
Speaker 1: this fight millions of times in many different ways and
Speaker 1: then continually trying to bring people together. You know, people
Speaker 1: move on because everything that's happening in life. They got
Speaker 1: evicted from their place, so they had to move to
Speaker 1: a different place far away. Okay, suddenly they had to
Speaker 1: leave a job and they were someone that was contributing
Speaker 1: a lot to the organizing. Some happened, someone has a
Speaker 1: family member, Uh, you know that they need to spend
Speaker 1: a little bit more time with um, everything that's happening,
Speaker 1: everything that's making, you know, reducing our time as working
Speaker 1: people to take care of ourselves and each other, like
Speaker 1: all of this, we're fighting against all of this, and UM,
Speaker 1: they're definitely ups and downs. They're definitely times it was
Speaker 1: like thing like we're you know, and then it seems
Speaker 1: I get times. Uh, all of the struggles and life
Speaker 1: like it's like you take like two steps forward and
Speaker 1: then two steps backwards. Get that, and so you know,
Speaker 1: there's definitely a difficult reality permitting everything, you know, all
Speaker 1: of the organizing wins, the advents that we're talking about.
Speaker 1: We need to be fully honest about that and also
Speaker 1: recognize that there's still like nothing more. There's like nothing
Speaker 1: more beautiful, powerful, There's there's no there's nothing that feels
Speaker 1: better than the that moment when you when the power
Speaker 1: dynamic was like this and you pull something off and
Speaker 1: it's like yeah, I was like, oh, like you you
Speaker 1: just did what we wanted, you know, and more. And
Speaker 1: then now like you're being real careful with us, like
Speaker 1: we we change things here, like our lives are better concretely, UM,
Speaker 1: and we made it happen, and uh, you know, I
Speaker 1: think those are like celebrating the winds and like taking
Speaker 1: joy not always thinking so far, okay, we got more
Speaker 1: to go. Yeah, they're always there's always more that UM
Speaker 1: we can and have to be building. And let's make
Speaker 1: sure that we're taking the time to recognize UM and
Speaker 1: celebrate each of the steps that we are UM advancing.
Speaker 1: So that you know, we we don't get lost in
Speaker 1: you know, assuming in the cycle of like taking permanent,
Speaker 1: infinite growth and organizing and being constantly stressed out about it,
Speaker 1: rather than like taking those breathers, taking those moments. Okay,
Speaker 1: like let's take this and strive, let's do this sustainable,
Speaker 1: let's not burnout. Um. Yeah, I think that's all part
Speaker 1: of figuring out how to how to how to make
Speaker 1: it happen. Yeah, And I think that's that's important. I
Speaker 1: think that that that's an important thing to understand with
Speaker 1: any kind of organizing, which is that like yeah, if
Speaker 1: if if you like if if if if, there's never
Speaker 1: sort of a moment in which you're reflecting on or
Speaker 1: or just celebrating like that the goals that you've actually accomplished, Right,
Speaker 1: you're just going to sort of be endlessly bashing your
Speaker 1: head against the wall, and you know that this is
Speaker 1: this is like yeah, I mean, this is this is
Speaker 1: sort of a burnout machine. This is a a way
Speaker 1: that you know, it's something that also just sort of
Speaker 1: feeds despair, which is that yeah, like you know like yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: your your victory is a small victory, but it is
Speaker 1: a real one and that's that's something that it even
Speaker 1: in the face of sort of like the Cyclopean horror
Speaker 1: of like just the world that we're living in, Like no,
Speaker 1: your your small victories dude lead up to bigger ones
Speaker 1: and yeah, and you know, and getting people to lose
Speaker 1: sight of that is a like it's it's in made
Speaker 1: your way. The system is held together by just sort
Speaker 1: of like manufacturing hopelessness, even when there there there are
Speaker 1: reasons for hope and there are reasons to sort of
Speaker 1: look at what you've done and go, hey, we we
Speaker 1: won this thing. Definitely. Yeah, I think that's a I
Speaker 1: guess unexpectedly cheery for the show not to end on
Speaker 1: do you have anything else? Yeah? I mean I think
Speaker 1: we touched on a lot um. I guess I have
Speaker 1: a usual pits or some version of it um. But
Speaker 1: I think, um, maybe something to bring together different elements
Speaker 1: that we touched on and bringing some of the sheery,
Speaker 1: hopefulness and also put out some encouragement too. I think
Speaker 1: now is a time where there's a whole lot of
Speaker 1: uncertainty and I'm uh, you know, definitely and a global
Speaker 1: week to week or year to year scale, but also
Speaker 1: on an individual level, I think a lot of individuals
Speaker 1: right now. UM, likely those that are listening UM, that
Speaker 1: that end up listening to this or UM those that
Speaker 1: are like seeing what's happening around the world, is like,
Speaker 1: what is my role in all of this? What am
Speaker 1: I trying to do? Different people are joining different organizations
Speaker 1: and and trying to figure out how they should be
Speaker 1: living their lives, what the what principles they should be
Speaker 1: living out, how they should be applying themselves to for example, UM,
Speaker 1: combat and dismantle UM, I don't know capitalism and and
Speaker 1: and uh you know, prison industrial complex and reverse climate
Speaker 1: destruction and find fascism and everything all of the existential
Speaker 1: threats that we face. It's like, what, you know, what
Speaker 1: is my role? And I think, UM, if if you
Speaker 1: at all have the capacity and curiosity, UM two, engage
Speaker 1: in some of this deep work yourself for building community relationships,
Speaker 1: culture among um, you know, just with workers, build building
Speaker 1: your own organization, building your own acts of resistance, building
Speaker 1: your own forms of of of you know, own forms
Speaker 1: of reclaiming your time and minds and bodies, and build
Speaker 1: something beautiful that can you know, be part of a
Speaker 1: broader movement that that you know, lifts up working people
Speaker 1: that kind of gets back what we are building and
Speaker 1: what we what we deserve. UM. You think about think
Speaker 1: about the logistics industry, think about warehouse work, UM, think
Speaker 1: about joining in UM and Uh you know it's uh,
Speaker 1: it's hard work. It's hard manual labor, it's hard mental
Speaker 1: and emotional work. UM. But I think this is the
Speaker 1: future of what the winning, fighting, uh successful labor movement
Speaker 1: UM will need. UM. And I think many people engaging
Speaker 1: in building more genuine, more worker focus, worker centered, worker
Speaker 1: run UH solidarity unions of our own democratic horizontal bottom
Speaker 1: up UM. I think building this way and connecting with
Speaker 1: each other, I think this is the way forward. I
Speaker 1: think this is the examples that we need. We need
Speaker 1: more people engaging in this work. We need more UM,
Speaker 1: more of that attention, energy and focus, Like how do
Speaker 1: we build the real stuff? UM. That's gonna be the
Speaker 1: powerful organizational influence to transform society and and avert these
Speaker 1: forms of extinction and continued extraction, exploitation, oppression of all
Speaker 1: of us. UM, join us, join join the struggle, get
Speaker 1: get some of these jobs. Talk to your co workers,
Speaker 1: build something that It's really that simple, UM And UH, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's my that's my every day pitch. Um. So if
Speaker 1: if people want to find Amazonians United specifically, where where
Speaker 1: where can they find y'all? Um, so in Chicago. So
Speaker 1: Amazonians United, Chicago Land, um is our name. We have
Speaker 1: a Facebook page, we have a Twitter. Um. Those are
Speaker 1: probably where we're most active. UM, and where you can
Speaker 1: follow and get into contact with us, tweet out us,
Speaker 1: message us on Facebook. UM. If you're really so inclined, UM,
Speaker 1: you can email us at a you Chicago Land at
Speaker 1: gmail dot com. Um. But otherwise, yeah, just look up,
Speaker 1: you know, follow our social media. You'll see what we
Speaker 1: post occasionally about what's going on. UM. And uh, you know,
Speaker 1: feel free to reach out, get into contact, asking any
Speaker 1: questions you might have. UM, and you know, let's connect,
Speaker 1: let's build community. Yeah. And that's that's a Chicagoland at
Speaker 1: a Chicago Land on Twitter by the way. Yeah. Um yeah,
Speaker 1: sweet Ted, thank you, thank you so thank you so
Speaker 1: much for joining me. Yeah. Thanks havn't me. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: really great. Um. Yeah, if you want to find us
Speaker 1: at you can find us at having here, a pod
Speaker 1: on Twitter, Instagram and cool and media in the same places. UM. Yeah,
Speaker 1: go go go organize with your coworkers. Go do cool things,
Speaker 1: go be to a well a better place. Yes, yes, yes, sure,
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Speaker 1: l D. I'm Carrison. Welcome to this tech centric episode.
Speaker 1: This is very exciting with me, is Chris to help
Speaker 1: us discuss libraries and piracy or permanently pirate brained and
Speaker 1: and pay walls and all this all this fun stuff.
Speaker 1: So yeah, we're talking about kind of free access to
Speaker 1: information and uh, I don't know, like I really like
Speaker 1: libraries and I think a library based economy would be
Speaker 1: pretty cool. Yeah, you know, libraries for everything. Uh, food
Speaker 1: libraries you to take food, you know, deposit compost. Um,
Speaker 1: it's the decent, decent system. Got the tool libraries so
Speaker 1: you can get you know, your angle grinders for taking
Speaker 1: apart in federal fences. You can get your you know,
Speaker 1: soldering irons for building your f GC nines, you know,
Speaker 1: all all of all of the basic stuff. And I
Speaker 1: guess book libraries are cool too. Um, but we already
Speaker 1: have those and we're gonna be We're gonna be talking
Speaker 1: with them a little bit. Where are we having a
Speaker 1: discussion on paywalls, piracy, ar and uh and how access
Speaker 1: information is actually good? Um, contrary to what many people
Speaker 1: want to tell you. Yeah, I know. So Yeah, as
Speaker 1: as the Internet became easier to access and information flow accelerated.
Speaker 1: There's been kind of questions and speculation on how physical
Speaker 1: book libraries will fit into our increasingly digital media landscape. Now,
Speaker 1: it's important to mention that the library is also one
Speaker 1: of the main ways for lower income people to access
Speaker 1: the internet, um, with their you know, collection of free
Speaker 1: to use computers as well as you know, a decent
Speaker 1: WiFi connection UM and many many libraries all so are
Speaker 1: expanding their scope to include stuff like maker spaces as
Speaker 1: well as you know, their printers and standard kind of
Speaker 1: office supplies. So libraries are already kind of beyond just
Speaker 1: places to get printed media. But of course it is
Speaker 1: that is kind of there one that has been their
Speaker 1: main their main premise, but you know, they've been they've
Speaker 1: been including stuff regarding e books, computer use, WiFi access,
Speaker 1: all the stuff has been a part of libraries for
Speaker 1: like the past years. Um. Yeah, like it's it's not,
Speaker 1: it's not, it's not, it's not. It's not a new thing.
Speaker 1: But I think when when people think of libraries, we
Speaker 1: just think of books are newspapers and stuff, but it is,
Speaker 1: it is definitely more than that. Because yeah, obviously physical
Speaker 1: libraries are mostly known for printing materials. And because we'll
Speaker 1: be talking about paywalls and piracy are um and and
Speaker 1: fears that access to free content will negatively impact creator's
Speaker 1: ability to make such content. I figured let's start by
Speaker 1: talking about book libraries, since they're one of the oldest
Speaker 1: examples of providing information for free. So based on kind
Speaker 1: of surveys and data collected from you from library users
Speaker 1: across the country, it would seem that libraries and loaned
Speaker 1: e books are actually a very powerful economic engine for
Speaker 1: the book business. Now, yes, libraries do have special deals
Speaker 1: to buy the books that they you have in stock,
Speaker 1: sometimes they're donated. But even beyond that fact, like library users,
Speaker 1: like the fact that libraries exist for the users in
Speaker 1: and of themselves increase book sales. Um, it's it's a
Speaker 1: it's it's pretty fun. So even as far back as
Speaker 1: there's been studies that show that libraries do increase book sales. Now, yes,
Speaker 1: this is this is this is a capitalist argument. But
Speaker 1: sometimes when arguing with let's you know, let's call them normies, um,
Speaker 1: you can convince them to agree with a lot of
Speaker 1: kind of like anarchy leaning improvements to the world by
Speaker 1: carefully using their own rhetoric against them, right, this is
Speaker 1: this is like the same thing with the giving out
Speaker 1: free drugs and having safe drug in in like intake sites,
Speaker 1: and giving houses to homeless people, you know, all all
Speaker 1: the type of stuff. You know, all of those things
Speaker 1: are cheaper for the taxpayer than what we're currently doing
Speaker 1: with how we use emergencies, like how for how we
Speaker 1: use emergency services spending. So yes, it's a capitalist argument,
Speaker 1: but you can still kind of you know, paint someone
Speaker 1: into a corner to to agree that like actual good
Speaker 1: improvements by using hey, this is actually cheaper, you know
Speaker 1: that that type of argument. So yeah, libraries they do
Speaker 1: increase book sales, so that is mostly cool. There is
Speaker 1: There was a study that shows around this is studying
Speaker 1: around showed that library users report purchasing books by an
Speaker 1: author that they were introduced to through the library system,
Speaker 1: which debunks the myth that want a library bias books
Speaker 1: the publisher will lose future sales um Instead, it confirms
Speaker 1: that the public library does not only incubate and support
Speaker 1: literacy as it's you know, generally understood in our culture,
Speaker 1: but it's also an active partner with the publishing industry
Speaker 1: for building up the book market, and also so including
Speaker 1: in that is the ever growing e book market, which
Speaker 1: I don't really like the books for reasons will kind
Speaker 1: of discuss in a bit for how I kind of
Speaker 1: have an aversion to the idea of like a digital ownership.
Speaker 1: But the books are undeniably a very growing industry that
Speaker 1: also you know, does does support writers in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways. Um, but I think physical books are a
Speaker 1: lot cooler and more reliable. They are, as you can
Speaker 1: tell by my very nice physical book collection behind me,
Speaker 1: which you cannot listen to because this is a podcast
Speaker 1: and you can't listen with your ears unless you're on
Speaker 1: a lot of drugs, which good luck hearing the books
Speaker 1: behind me. People who listen to yeah you too, But
Speaker 1: yeah I'm not. I'm not talking about them. Um, this
Speaker 1: is an anti people who have jug induced cynthesia podcast.
Speaker 1: Now Lucky Bastard's gonna get canceled. Yeah, that's what's gonna
Speaker 1: get me after all. Well bleep that I can't you
Speaker 1: said that? Whoa Chris just said one of the just
Speaker 1: one of the most one of the most one of
Speaker 1: the most horrible authors that I would never be caught
Speaker 1: dead reading any of their books. Um, anyway. Ah, So
Speaker 1: the idea that like piracy and free information will like
Speaker 1: tank creative industries, and you know, the idea that you know,
Speaker 1: just having access to free versions of media will hurt
Speaker 1: the ability to make more of the media is definitely
Speaker 1: proven wrong simply by the modern existence and popularity of
Speaker 1: nu may uh in the United States, because we would
Speaker 1: not have anime Animal will not be what it is
Speaker 1: today without piracy. Uh and uh because in the in
Speaker 1: the specifically like two thousands, late nineties, the piracy of
Speaker 1: anime became you know, big massive reason why it is
Speaker 1: the cultural jug or not that it is today over
Speaker 1: half of nime related sales revenue comes from overseas. Is
Speaker 1: not not Japan. It comes from places like the States. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, and it's also what I think worth
Speaker 1: mentioning here, Like it wasn't even just that they were
Speaker 1: like pirating the show, right, they were pirating they were
Speaker 1: getting a worse version of it, oh because like you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: terrible resolutions like I mean literally like VCRs that people
Speaker 1: had figured out how to like right like get subtitles on.
Speaker 1: Like these versions of it are terrible. The translations are awful,
Speaker 1: and it's still just like absolutely like just catapulted anime
Speaker 1: from like an incredibly fringed thing for weirdos to a
Speaker 1: thing that is also still for weirdos, but it's still
Speaker 1: largely mainstream. Yeah, I'm gonna gonna take take this opportunity
Speaker 1: to plug our future episode just dissecting the politics of
Speaker 1: attack on tited dot dot. It's coming, folks, It's strap in. So, yes,
Speaker 1: what not would not be the thing is today without
Speaker 1: without without privacy and again but the majority of of
Speaker 1: sales revenue comes from not Japan. So yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: a pretty pretty pretty clear. So the discovery of new
Speaker 1: books and authors through the library system um is definitely
Speaker 1: searching right now, actually specifically due to e books and
Speaker 1: audio books being available online anytime, well like via library means.
Speaker 1: So there's like, you know, there's there's ways you can
Speaker 1: access you can quote unquote borrow these types of things
Speaker 1: via via the library systems, despite them being like digital media,
Speaker 1: which again I prefer physical, but that's that's something we'll
Speaker 1: talk about later. So even even while visits to libraries
Speaker 1: and like physical bookstores A pommeted during COVID nineteen digital
Speaker 1: library usage sword, which is you know that that that
Speaker 1: that that that tracks um more than four hundred and
Speaker 1: thirty million titles were borrowed from the Overdrive library platform
Speaker 1: in alone, and it would you know it, You could
Speaker 1: you could assume that this would cause a drop in
Speaker 1: the purchasing of books during the same period, but the
Speaker 1: opposite is true. Actually, the overall purchasing of books also
Speaker 1: rose in including an eight percent lift in these sales
Speaker 1: of print books, despite a lot of people being out
Speaker 1: of jobs, out of work. You know that turns out
Speaker 1: people are boards They're going to spend money on books
Speaker 1: because books are cool, and even when they have access
Speaker 1: to library stuff, they still buy books. Yep, it's a.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a simple truth that the library patrons
Speaker 1: are usually also book buyers. It's it's me. I am
Speaker 1: literally surrounded by books on all sides that they have
Speaker 1: me surrounded. I have no escape. And this is what
Speaker 1: happens when you grow up in a library. I mean
Speaker 1: I also grew up in a library. Mean I was,
Speaker 1: I was homeschooled. I grew a library. To my to
Speaker 1: to my left, I have books on urban exploration and
Speaker 1: Lemony Snicket. My right, I have books on alchemy. Behind me,
Speaker 1: I have books which I should I'll not name um
Speaker 1: and behind me I have a massive techo comic book
Speaker 1: of Yeah, I have usually surrounded by books. It's the
Speaker 1: books are great and you you have them unless they
Speaker 1: burn up. You're gonna have them, no matter whether the
Speaker 1: Internet goes out, whether whether an online provider shuts down,
Speaker 1: you're gonna You're gonna have physical books. They are they are,
Speaker 1: they are pretty, they're pretty cool. So in libraries and like,
Speaker 1: the library system offers a really great way to discover
Speaker 1: new books, new series, new genres, or new authors before
Speaker 1: deciding whether to permanently purchase those titles. So it's it's
Speaker 1: this isn't just like an assumption used to hype up
Speaker 1: the idea of a library. But this has been proven
Speaker 1: by lots of studies, like the why I mentioned a
Speaker 1: few minutes ago from two US and eleven m. Also
Speaker 1: there was the Panorama Projects Immersive Media and Books Consumer Survey,
Speaker 1: which is a way too long the title real Mouthful,
Speaker 1: which found that one third of responders bought a book
Speaker 1: that they discovered through the library in So it turns
Speaker 1: out you you discover a book, you turn it and
Speaker 1: you're like, hey, that book actually pretty all just buy
Speaker 1: a copy myself. I did that. I still do that
Speaker 1: all the time. It's a yeah, it's it's it's it's
Speaker 1: it's a thing. So why I own all my Star
Speaker 1: Wars books. This is why I have a beautiful copy
Speaker 1: of Splinter in the Mind's Eye, which I am very
Speaker 1: curious to see. Who will get that joke? I was.
Speaker 1: I was trying to think of the worst Star worst
Speaker 1: book that I have, and then you said that, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, I can't. I think I actually have that. Well,
Speaker 1: there I go, there's there's two. There's two for you
Speaker 1: to uh. Yeah. So in our kind of in our
Speaker 1: life technology driven world of like, you know, wanting things
Speaker 1: very quickly, you know, instant instant gratification. UM library users
Speaker 1: are no different. Right, they still have that instant gratification
Speaker 1: drive and many times they will want a specific a
Speaker 1: book and they'll be happy to pay for it instead
Speaker 1: of waiting for at the library. Right, you can put
Speaker 1: a book on hold await a month, or you can
Speaker 1: buy it for ten bucks, and oftentimes people will buy
Speaker 1: the book because we want things quickly. It's according to
Speaker 1: the same Panorama Project immers of the Media and Books
Speaker 1: consumer survey, about of respondents said that they just bought
Speaker 1: books rather than waiting for them if they are unavailable
Speaker 1: from from the library at the time. So and it's
Speaker 1: it's it's a great system. Like libraries are also frequently
Speaker 1: used just as like a really good browsing tool. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, if you're unsure of what you want to
Speaker 1: read next, you can go to library, look at stuff
Speaker 1: and be like, Okay, this is what I'm interested in,
Speaker 1: and then purchase it online or in person at a
Speaker 1: later date. And it's not just it's not not not
Speaker 1: not just physical books. Library users are also are also
Speaker 1: driving the purchase e books and physical books um and
Speaker 1: audio books. Audio books have been actually very big at library.
Speaker 1: I used to listen to a lot of audio books
Speaker 1: actually from the library because I would get c d
Speaker 1: s back when those great for road trips, back in
Speaker 1: the old days when you had a CD, I say
Speaker 1: with my gen z uh um outlook yes uh CDs
Speaker 1: classic Classic. According to the Audio Publishers Association also known
Speaker 1: as the a P A just acronym, daily audio consumption
Speaker 1: has grown seventy one since which is not surprising me.
Speaker 1: Like there's there's there's stuff like Audible and you know,
Speaker 1: big big platforms that are are making high quality audiobook content. Uh,
Speaker 1: but that's that's that's a lot in alone. Audiobook revenue
Speaker 1: grew by sevent even even though the number of people
Speaker 1: who were commuting plummeted, right because a lot of people
Speaker 1: listen to audiobooks while like driving to work. So the
Speaker 1: number of you know, of commuting dropped in because there
Speaker 1: was this plague. I'm not sure if you've heard about that,
Speaker 1: but they know that's true. They're pretending it's not real.
Speaker 1: But if yeah, if if, if, if you look at
Speaker 1: most if you look at you know, the the audiobook revenue,
Speaker 1: it grew despite their being much less, much less, much
Speaker 1: less work commuting. And that was the eighth straight year
Speaker 1: of double of double digit growth in the audio book
Speaker 1: revenue sector. And it aligns with other kind of digital
Speaker 1: library usage statistics. So yeah, like libraries and booksellers, will
Speaker 1: they work in tandem. They they library's drive interest for
Speaker 1: content both physical and digital. You know, rising tide races
Speaker 1: all all of those floaty things on the water. Um
Speaker 1: as the saying goes are it's a piracy joke, everybody. Yeah,
Speaker 1: over drive has found that when a reader uses one
Speaker 1: or more digital library apps like a Libby I've never
Speaker 1: heard of until I had to research on this podcast.
Speaker 1: But once you if you use more than one one
Speaker 1: or more digit digital library apps you're sixty, you are
Speaker 1: more likely to increase your book resumption year over year
Speaker 1: versus people who do not. So yeah, it turns out
Speaker 1: when you read more books, you want to read more
Speaker 1: books because it's fun. It's fun. So instead of instead
Speaker 1: of reading a book, I'm going to give our audio
Speaker 1: listeners an opportunity right now to listen to this carefully
Speaker 1: curated selection of ads unless they're by like I don't know,
Speaker 1: the National Guard or whatever. So here you go. Here's
Speaker 1: here's some ads, and we are back. What a lovely,
Speaker 1: lovely collection of audio treats to tickle your ears. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: you're God speaking speaking of tickling your ears. Sonic the Hedgehog.
Speaker 1: So a lot of a lot of the reasons why
Speaker 1: we're gonna so this this this will make sense, I promise, um.
Speaker 1: We're about to talk about fly genetics, Sshnic Hedgehog. We're
Speaker 1: talking about how like when people are allowed to like
Speaker 1: do piracy and allowed to do like their own things
Speaker 1: with media and actually boosts the overall kind of like
Speaker 1: the presence of the franchise, right, So Sonic the Hedgehog
Speaker 1: would not be a current cultural steak if it wasn't
Speaker 1: for fan culture and the use of like fan games
Speaker 1: and fan media related to Sonic. So this the same
Speaker 1: thing was like anime. Right. Um, you know, Sonic Sonic
Speaker 1: fan games which were allowed to be existed for years,
Speaker 1: which they get encouraged, are the only reason why there's
Speaker 1: a good Sonic games right now, like Sonic Mania, which
Speaker 1: were just they just hired people who made fan games. Um,
Speaker 1: the person who redesigned Sonic the Hedgehog for the movie
Speaker 1: what used to make Sonic fan comics and then got
Speaker 1: hired to make the actual official Sonic comics. Then they
Speaker 1: got hired to fix them. They got hired to fix
Speaker 1: the horrible movie design. So yeah, say it has been
Speaker 1: very good about like not being horrible about like copyright
Speaker 1: stuff and trademark stuff. They've like really encouraged it because
Speaker 1: it turns out when you when you yourself don't make
Speaker 1: good games, you need to rely on fans to actually
Speaker 1: make the good games. So we get we so wee
Speaker 1: that's how you get beautiful creations like the Sonic Dreams collection,
Speaker 1: which is a heartwarming, nostalgic look at Sonic through the
Speaker 1: Ages um and other great games like Sonic Mania, which,
Speaker 1: so we can compare this to like a Nintendo who
Speaker 1: unfortunately makes good games um, but also hates when fans
Speaker 1: make games or do like emulation or any like ports.
Speaker 1: They will clamp down on that so fast. If you
Speaker 1: ever emulate the Nintendo game, you know, watch Watch your back,
Speaker 1: there will be there will be men in black studits
Speaker 1: following you around, just you know, like to do understanding
Speaker 1: of like how far this goes? Right, So super smash
Speaker 1: Bros And Bile. This game is like maybe older than Garrison.
Speaker 1: It is. I think I actually don't know what that treade,
Speaker 1: but yeah, literally old and Garrison, right, this game has
Speaker 1: a still still to this day, Like copies of this
Speaker 1: game are extremely expensive because there's an enormous professional scene
Speaker 1: around it. Uh. Nintendo like basically was working to actively
Speaker 1: smash them because they were they were playing a yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: because they because they were playing on like an emulated
Speaker 1: like they're playing an emulated version of it for tournaments
Speaker 1: because emulated software. Yeah yeah. And Nintendo again, who is
Speaker 1: literally getting like millions of views of completely free good
Speaker 1: publicity was like, no, we hate you. Nintendo will like
Speaker 1: this when people use they're they're like their their content
Speaker 1: and stuff in ways that are not not non official.
Speaker 1: And because they make decent games, they can actually get
Speaker 1: away with that. Um, Sega, let's not make decent games
Speaker 1: that are questioning, So they have to rely on fans
Speaker 1: doing that. But yeah, that's the reason why Sonic is
Speaker 1: still a thing, just because fans have have been able
Speaker 1: to you know, through through piracy, through emulation, through creating,
Speaker 1: through ucing like Sonic code to code their own games
Speaker 1: all stuffs. Is the reason why that's still like a
Speaker 1: cultural staple that is releasing a new movie next month.
Speaker 1: But I'm very excited about I'm very excited about some
Speaker 1: Sonic the Headshug too. It's gonna be, It's gonna be.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, I'm thinking it could we could finally clamp
Speaker 1: down on the video game Oscar this time. I feel it. Well,
Speaker 1: that's that's look, this is this this this is just
Speaker 1: because Ace Attorney got Robbed. Okay, greatest movie of all time.
Speaker 1: That is that is my little side bit about about
Speaker 1: about about Sega. Um. Yeah, we should also briefly mentioned
Speaker 1: that Nintendo just like put literally put a guy in
Speaker 1: prison for helping for helping jailibrate consoles like put put
Speaker 1: a man in prison for this for modifying people's software
Speaker 1: and a game console. I guess the other thing I'll
Speaker 1: talk about is, like, I mean, part of the reason
Speaker 1: why I really don't like digital ordership of media is
Speaker 1: because you don't actually own the thing. You own a
Speaker 1: license to use the content as long as the online
Speaker 1: services active. So even if you buy a game on
Speaker 1: you know, the Nintendo Switch Store, you're not actually buying
Speaker 1: the game, you're buying a license to use the game.
Speaker 1: The same thing for whether you're buying media on like
Speaker 1: Amazon Prime, right, it's it's it's it's the same thing
Speaker 1: if if you're if you're buying digital copy of it,
Speaker 1: it's a license to use it, so you can take
Speaker 1: You know, what Nintendo has done a few years ago
Speaker 1: is they shut down the U Shop channel, which means
Speaker 1: if you bought a game and it wasn't creanty downloaded,
Speaker 1: you can now you've just it's gone. You just cannot
Speaker 1: you cannot play it anymore because they just completely took
Speaker 1: service down. So you don't actually you're not you're not
Speaker 1: actually buying the thing, you're just buying license to use
Speaker 1: the thing. Now. They did the same thing a few
Speaker 1: months ago for the w U Shop channel and the
Speaker 1: three D S channel. So yeah, rip ripped to that.
Speaker 1: If you, if you, if you have, if you bought
Speaker 1: games on there that we're not currently running, then you
Speaker 1: cannot get them anymore. They're just gone, like you can,
Speaker 1: they're just lost, lost of time. Well and you know,
Speaker 1: and again if if you, if you modified the software
Speaker 1: on the game console that you like nominally own in
Speaker 1: order to play the games that you bought and paid for,
Speaker 1: they will throw you in prison. Nintendo will send men
Speaker 1: in suits to come and get you and throw you
Speaker 1: in the prison. Yeah. Who he it's a it's a Mario.
Speaker 1: It's a Mario joke, everybody. Um. Yes, So it's the
Speaker 1: same thing with like subscription services. Like obviously, if you
Speaker 1: have a subscription service, you don't own the content you're watching.
Speaker 1: You are just getting permission to use it from a
Speaker 1: certain amount of time. So this is obviously, this is
Speaker 1: this is more obvious. Right, you don't owe what's on Netflix.
Speaker 1: You just are able to watch what Netflix has legal
Speaker 1: rights to show. But you even see this thing extended
Speaker 1: to like cars, like Toyota was was trying out a
Speaker 1: program and that this may even it may even still
Speaker 1: be active for some cars where you need a subscription
Speaker 1: service to use the key fob on your cars like
Speaker 1: automatic like like door locking like fob, like you need
Speaker 1: a subscription to use that service of it. Just like why,
Speaker 1: Like it's it's just turning everything, it's turning everything into
Speaker 1: us to us like a subscription service. It's horrible, like
Speaker 1: everything is becoming a new subscription service, a new a
Speaker 1: new thing to get your monthly payments for. It's it's
Speaker 1: it's awful, like you don't actually buy things anymore. It's
Speaker 1: just a subscription services and digital copies. It's not nothing
Speaker 1: is nothing is actually the thing anymore? Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's all just rent extraction and the entire economy. Instead
Speaker 1: of you know, having a thing, they figured out way,
Speaker 1: what if we just distract rent and then you also
Speaker 1: don't own it. The same thing with like Tesla cars
Speaker 1: you have to like buy by you know, upgrades via
Speaker 1: software that are already built in and like subscribe to
Speaker 1: keep your car running nicely. Like what it's not like no, yeah,
Speaker 1: like I'm gonna I'm gonna go on a very small
Speaker 1: gamer rent here because this this is a this is
Speaker 1: a thing. A lot a lot of the worst practices
Speaker 1: for this origidated gaming and this this was this was
Speaker 1: a big fight back in like the early thousand pens
Speaker 1: about okay, if you buy a game, right, do you
Speaker 1: own everything on the game? And there was a huge
Speaker 1: fight about you know, they'd have these like delayed DLC,
Speaker 1: like they have these new content packages that would be
Speaker 1: on the disc right that you've bought, but you can't
Speaker 1: access it unless you pay the money. And this was
Speaker 1: like a fight and some gamers were like, you know,
Speaker 1: they're trying to fight it, right, but most gamers didn't care.
Speaker 1: And then they became the weaponized shock troops to the
Speaker 1: far right instead of you know, dealing with this ship.
Speaker 1: And now literally everything has fucking day and day one
Speaker 1: DLC on it that you buy the thing, you don't
Speaker 1: even get all you have to you have to buy
Speaker 1: the if you have to buy the season pass to
Speaker 1: get all the content in the future. It's like you
Speaker 1: have to buy the season pass for your car to
Speaker 1: work properly. Yeah, so this is just how it started
Speaker 1: with start started with the season past for sixty for
Speaker 1: a sixty dollar game to then buy season pass to
Speaker 1: get more of the game, and now it's for your
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's fun. It's it's not, it's it's kind
Speaker 1: of sucks. So but yeah, a lot of these, a
Speaker 1: lot of these like play to win practices, these like
Speaker 1: free models which then like which lead into like a
Speaker 1: subscription service based model. Um have did have definitely started
Speaker 1: in online gaming, and it's yeah, it's it's really frustrating
Speaker 1: because as we'll talk about here in a bit, like
Speaker 1: the Sega model is like better, Like turns out when
Speaker 1: you encourage your fans to play around with the stuff,
Speaker 1: it only helps your property. Like that's the reason why
Speaker 1: they there's still Sonic March available now and it's not
Speaker 1: like a dead franchise. It's because they like because they
Speaker 1: allowed that to happen. So it's actually really cool when
Speaker 1: we're allowed to access free information and play with it
Speaker 1: how we want to, instead of like having this weird
Speaker 1: strict copyright like rules for not allowing certain usage of
Speaker 1: certain things. Like it's it's it's not. It's not great
Speaker 1: when you're restricting like emulation, restricting fan games, restricting the
Speaker 1: access to information. It's not, it's not it's it's not
Speaker 1: it's not fun, but yeah, this is kind of it's
Speaker 1: kind of place into why I am very skeptical of
Speaker 1: digital media, which is why I start started collecting Blue
Speaker 1: Rays and all of all the things they like, because
Speaker 1: I've boughtened things on Amazon Prime which are now no
Speaker 1: longer available on Amazon Prime and that sucks. So like,
Speaker 1: why do that instead just by your physical copy? Yeah? Well,
Speaker 1: the thing is like it didn't and it's so true
Speaker 1: to some extent, like if if you buy physical copies,
Speaker 1: like it didn't used to be like this, like Blue
Speaker 1: Rays used to it to some extense, so dubious the
Speaker 1: most times. Yeah, but like like if you buy the
Speaker 1: physical copy of it, they will give you a code
Speaker 1: that lets you use the online version, a digital download code. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know that's a much better way of the
Speaker 1: thing working than uh, instead of you know, you don't
Speaker 1: buying it, you don't have the physical product, and also
Speaker 1: they can take it away from you. Yeah. It's I'll
Speaker 1: circle back to this idea towards the end, but I
Speaker 1: kind of want to, I want I want to a
Speaker 1: little bit segue to like the idea of the same
Speaker 1: type of like paywalling subscription service issues, and like the
Speaker 1: restriction of for information regarding like online news. So you know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of people, whether they be like reporters, editors, authors,
Speaker 1: or just annoying people online. Um. But there's a decent
Speaker 1: collection of people that perpetuate the notion that readers or
Speaker 1: consumers are actually responsible for the dire straits of the
Speaker 1: media industry. But the problem with journalism and many other
Speaker 1: media you know industries. But the problem isn't that people
Speaker 1: aren't paying for news. The problem is that newspapers and
Speaker 1: outlets are being decimated and dismantled by hedge funds, capital
Speaker 1: investment firms, venture capitalists, and tech companies in search of profit. Um.
Speaker 1: You can look at how Facebook tricked a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of companies and just switching over to video content, and
Speaker 1: then a whole bunch of companies we had to fire
Speaker 1: tons of people because there was a lie. You can
Speaker 1: look at how Sinclair Broadcasting dominates local news channels and websites, um,
Speaker 1: and how well established local papers are struggling while big
Speaker 1: companies buy up all the competition. So it's it's it's
Speaker 1: especially the venture capitalist thing is actually a really uh
Speaker 1: is a really interesting idea that has been documented decently
Speaker 1: well and in a bed, I'll teach you how to
Speaker 1: bypass uh newspaper headlines via different methods. But there's this
Speaker 1: actually good article in the Washington Post um that is
Speaker 1: titled as a secretive hedge fund gets its newspapers, journalists
Speaker 1: are fighting back. It kind of just details all of
Speaker 1: the different hedge fund adventure capitalists firms instead of like
Speaker 1: just totally destroyed so many local papers throughout the entire country.
Speaker 1: It's actually kind of surprising once you learn how many
Speaker 1: of these papers are just getting destroyed by like just
Speaker 1: a few, like just like a few hedge funds are
Speaker 1: just doing all this damage. And it's it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean this is why the current like journalism industry
Speaker 1: kind of sucks right now, is because of these types
Speaker 1: of practices. And I mean, like no one likes it,
Speaker 1: like no one's happy with it, Like everyone hates journalism.
Speaker 1: Journalists hate journalism, people who read journalism hates journalism, like
Speaker 1: activists hate journalism, like everyone's met at it um. And yeah,
Speaker 1: you can look at these these hedge funds and venture
Speaker 1: capitalists who are just like making it such an impossible industry. Uh,
Speaker 1: and then you know how you have like you have
Speaker 1: internet sites and culture sites like Vice, BuzzFeed and Cracked,
Speaker 1: who had to frequently lay off large swaths of their
Speaker 1: editorial and writing teams, whether for like union reasons or
Speaker 1: because the company made failed attempts to chase some big
Speaker 1: tech companies or made your giants you know, proposed money,
Speaker 1: like in the Facebook switching over to video content kind
Speaker 1: of debacle that happened a few years ago, and like
Speaker 1: it's it's, it's it's understandable why these writers, artists, the
Speaker 1: journalists are frustrated because, yeah, the work is hard and
Speaker 1: the salaries are low. Well, the work should be hard,
Speaker 1: and some people kind of slack off, but you know,
Speaker 1: for the good journalism is more is challenging, and salaries
Speaker 1: typically aren't great. But even if audience monetary is support,
Speaker 1: where the solution to making creative and writing industries more
Speaker 1: profitable again, the kind of anti piracy folks would still
Speaker 1: be missing. A fundamental point is that kind of the
Speaker 1: the pro paywell people want you to get it through
Speaker 1: your head that journalism is just like other types of
Speaker 1: things you buy, whether it be food, you know, alcohol
Speaker 1: or entertainment um saying you know, all these things. You know,
Speaker 1: Netflix isn't free. You know, Coca Cola isn't free. Right,
Speaker 1: This isn't journalism's fault. It's just how the world works.
Speaker 1: You have to buy it to use it. It's you know,
Speaker 1: it costs money to make. You have to buy it
Speaker 1: to use it. It's just it's it's it's like, it's
Speaker 1: dumb to think otherwise. This is kind of their framework,
Speaker 1: But I beg to differ because enjoying art and worthwhile journalism,
Speaker 1: I think should always have the option of being free,
Speaker 1: because when information is in the public interest, it should
Speaker 1: just always be available to everybody, whether or not you've
Speaker 1: already used up your three free articles. Like this is
Speaker 1: really important, especially now when there's you know, the whole
Speaker 1: the whole war thing happening, and finding like pay all
Speaker 1: the articles about it is incredibly frustrating. Uh. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there was even when the there was a
Speaker 1: right wing right ring extremist who opened fire and killed
Speaker 1: someone at a Portland's uh black Lives Matter protests a
Speaker 1: few weeks ago. Uh, that that is you know, still
Speaker 1: definitely impacting the city because it was it's it's still
Speaker 1: very recent, but a lot of the news coverage. First
Speaker 1: of all, it wasn't great. Uh, there was a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of news coverage was like was parroting the police
Speaker 1: lies and framing the framing the attacker is like an
Speaker 1: innocent homeowner who was defending himself. It was pretty gross.
Speaker 1: But even when even when the news articles started to
Speaker 1: like correct their previous agree with errors, um, almost all
Speaker 1: of it was paid walled, like all like all, like
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of stuff was pay welled about it.
Speaker 1: And that's incredibly frustrating because this is like, you know,
Speaker 1: when information is in the public interest, it should be
Speaker 1: free to access. Like that's just there's like a good
Speaker 1: moral thing like uh and even um, and we've seen it.
Speaker 1: We've seen this before. Back in when the plague was
Speaker 1: a new thing, news organizations across the country started to
Speaker 1: lift pay walls to share coverage of the coronavirus pandemic um,
Speaker 1: which was great. And you know, you can you can
Speaker 1: obviously see that once that changed over, a lot of
Speaker 1: people who we're making this happen behind the scenes probably
Speaker 1: hoped that which just convince people to become paying customers.
Speaker 1: But it was still like that's still the way things
Speaker 1: should be, is to have have the option of it
Speaker 1: being free than having the option to donate. And this
Speaker 1: actually seems to be kind of the trend. Uh. The
Speaker 1: University of Texas at Austin surveyed about like a thousand
Speaker 1: Chicago residents about their local news consumption, and they found
Speaker 1: that respondents were more willing to give a ten dollar
Speaker 1: donation to support a free news site than pay ten
Speaker 1: dollars for a subscription to access premium news content. So yeah,
Speaker 1: like that's and that I definitely share that same like, uh,
Speaker 1: that same idea. I will weigh sooner donate money to
Speaker 1: a newspaper that I enjoy that is also free, that
Speaker 1: I will pay ten dollars a month to read subscription
Speaker 1: service based news. It's a it's because it turns out
Speaker 1: when you like this, this applies to all cyps of media.
Speaker 1: But like when you enjoy media, you want to support
Speaker 1: its creators, whether that be anime, whether that be Sonic
Speaker 1: the fucking Headgehog, whether that be whether that be news
Speaker 1: or books. Right, if you like something, you're gonna buy it.
Speaker 1: I got to introduced to te Lemony, stickets books to
Speaker 1: be the library, and now I bought lots because I
Speaker 1: wanted to I wanted to buy the books from the
Speaker 1: person that I like. Yeah, and there are entire like industries.
Speaker 1: I mean that literally just work on this person. This
Speaker 1: is why free to play games work. Yeah, exactly. There
Speaker 1: there's another conversation with free to play games here about
Speaker 1: like addiction and gambling and manipulation about that, but like that,
Speaker 1: that's you know, like setting that aside for a second.
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, these things if if if people didn't want,
Speaker 1: if didn't spend money on things they like, free to
Speaker 1: pay games would not work like fundamentally as a model. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: definitely definitely the idea of like, yeah, you get someone
Speaker 1: starts to enjoying the service, then they start paying for it,
Speaker 1: whether it be buying useless you know, skin for whatever
Speaker 1: third person shooter you have, or that be you know,
Speaker 1: buying books or copies of the film or like anime,
Speaker 1: body pillows whatever like you do. You want to financially
Speaker 1: support the things that you enjoy. This is just a
Speaker 1: part of this is what humans do. So yeah, maybe
Speaker 1: more stuff should be have the option of being free. Uh,
Speaker 1: that definitely might take on it. Let's let's have a
Speaker 1: quick let's have a bit of a speaking of free content.
Speaker 1: This podcast is brought to you by these lovely sponsors,
Speaker 1: so you can listen for free while just skipping the ads.
Speaker 1: So good for you. We're back and now we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about different ways of bypassing pay walls, specifically for
Speaker 1: online news, because paywalls frustrate me and as someone who
Speaker 1: likes messing around with kind of computer e stuff. There's
Speaker 1: definitely a long list of ways to buy pass pay walls,
Speaker 1: depending on what types of paywalls we are talking about.
Speaker 1: So types of pay walls there are. There are typically
Speaker 1: two general types of pay walls. There's hard pay walls
Speaker 1: and soft pay walls. Um, hard pay walls require payment
Speaker 1: up front, so usually some some form of subscription fee
Speaker 1: before accessing any content websites with hard pay walls. Maybe
Speaker 1: we'll let you lead like a tiny snippet of the
Speaker 1: article what you need access you need you need to
Speaker 1: pay subscription to access the full the full content. Soft
Speaker 1: pay wells are are are typically allow you to read
Speaker 1: a number of articles before you need to buy buy
Speaker 1: a subscription. So it's either's you have a set number
Speaker 1: of articles that you can read for a fixed period
Speaker 1: or session. Um, you know a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of websites operate like this. Most of
Speaker 1: the New York Times operates like this. A lot of
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of news sites have a
Speaker 1: soft paywall model, which is great because they're typically a
Speaker 1: little bit easier to bypass the first first method. This
Speaker 1: works some of the time. It depends on how the
Speaker 1: website is constructed, but you can try to stop the
Speaker 1: loading page before it fully loads. UH so generally a
Speaker 1: quick technique. It's effective on several different types of webpages. UH.
Speaker 1: You have to stop your browser from fully loading the
Speaker 1: webpage as soon as your breaser displays the text element
Speaker 1: of the pay well to content. So you you know,
Speaker 1: enter a page U R L into the search bar,
Speaker 1: press enter, and then press the x icon or the
Speaker 1: escape key as soon as you see some of the
Speaker 1: text on screen before a paywall window pops up. UM.
Speaker 1: A major limitation of this is that stopping the website
Speaker 1: may not load all content elements, so it may only
Speaker 1: render like a portion of the text, or it may
Speaker 1: like miss out on like files like images, animations, or videos. UM.
Speaker 1: And it also depends on the order of which the
Speaker 1: website loads the page elements. So for example, if the
Speaker 1: website loads to pay well first, then this trick won't
Speaker 1: be successful. Also, you gotta have to be kind of
Speaker 1: pretty fast in order to make this one work. Typically
Speaker 1: this isn't the first way I do it, because there's
Speaker 1: generally generally easier ways. But if you can do this,
Speaker 1: then cool. It's definitely it's definitely a fast one if
Speaker 1: you can't get it to succeed for soft paywall So
Speaker 1: like I, I will say the stopping the browser from
Speaker 1: loading is actually successful at some hard paywall sites because
Speaker 1: if they do like load a portion of the text
Speaker 1: to read as like a stippet, sometimes it will actually
Speaker 1: load the entire text, but then just block it off
Speaker 1: with a separate window. So sometimes with a hard paywall
Speaker 1: you can actually stop it via this method. So that's
Speaker 1: always fun um. But second method, generally more for soft
Speaker 1: paywalls is for is to delete your pages cookies. So
Speaker 1: you know, websites store cookies to track your browser um activities,
Speaker 1: including how much content you backsesst so blog publishers, news
Speaker 1: newspaper sites can track the number of frege articles you've
Speaker 1: read using the cookies stored on your browser. If you
Speaker 1: hit the limit for for non subscribers. If like the
Speaker 1: limited articles allotted, then you can delete the website cookies
Speaker 1: to refresh the to refresh that counter and it will
Speaker 1: possibly reset the limit of articles. Um. You can go
Speaker 1: to the privacy or security section of your web browsers,
Speaker 1: like the option that allows you to check the cookies
Speaker 1: and site for all data, and then search for the
Speaker 1: website that you're looking for in the in the cookie
Speaker 1: management page and then click remove all. You can do
Speaker 1: this on like Firefox, Chrome, Microsoft Edge if you want
Speaker 1: to use that for some reason. Um Safari. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: this trick may not work very well on hard pay
Speaker 1: walls because it that's that they don't really use cookies
Speaker 1: for the same purpose. And also you'll have to you know,
Speaker 1: do if you're doing if you're doing this for soft
Speaker 1: pay walls, you have to do it every time you
Speaker 1: you reach the limit. UM. And if this won't work
Speaker 1: if the website is using other kind of more advanced
Speaker 1: tools to track your activity like I p logs, right,
Speaker 1: so if it's tracking your AP data instead of your cookies,
Speaker 1: then this probably won't work. So this one's this one.
Speaker 1: I mean you you should clear cookies every once in
Speaker 1: a while anyway, just like generally a good practice, but
Speaker 1: to do this all the time, it's kind of a
Speaker 1: kind of a bit of work, especially because the next
Speaker 1: method is typically easier and does the same thing, which
Speaker 1: is just reading articles inside a private or incognito mode
Speaker 1: or in the tour browser. Um. So, as as as
Speaker 1: as explained earlier, not all paywalls are about the same.
Speaker 1: If you know, if a website uses a soft pay wall,
Speaker 1: you should be able to read a subscription based content
Speaker 1: through incognito or private browsing because it'll check the it'll
Speaker 1: it'll check the website into thinking you're a brand new visitor,
Speaker 1: granting you access to the content before it had before
Speaker 1: it racks up enough of views to uh to throw
Speaker 1: up the paywell window. So this is this is a
Speaker 1: lot easier than just manually to leading the companies every
Speaker 1: single time. Because yeah, most web browsers do not transmit
Speaker 1: pre existing cookies onto an incognito or private mode browser mode,
Speaker 1: so it doesn't switch those back over. And then although
Speaker 1: the website will deposit new cookies onto your browser during
Speaker 1: private browsing sessions, they will be removed as soon as
Speaker 1: you close the window. Uh. One bummer is that some
Speaker 1: news pages are getting wise and actually are programming their
Speaker 1: websites to be able to be able to detect if
Speaker 1: they're opened in a private or browsing mode or even
Speaker 1: on tour um and they just like won't open. They'll
Speaker 1: they'll say, sorry, you have to we we've detected that
Speaker 1: you're using this in private browsing mode to view this content.
Speaker 1: Boot up a regular browser, which which really sucks for
Speaker 1: the tour users because a lot of people getore are like, hey, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm in China, I'm trying to get past the Great
Speaker 1: Firewall and fuck you eat ship. You should have somehow
Speaker 1: paid a subscription service to us to see information on
Speaker 1: this site that is literally illegal here. Like it's great,
Speaker 1: it's really bad for people who are like actually facing
Speaker 1: government censorship who need to use tour to view content.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that that is Uh, it's what we call
Speaker 1: a major bomber. Uh A major sucks a major Oh no,
Speaker 1: capitalism did a whoopsie Um. Yeah, but yeah, this is
Speaker 1: definitely this is one of the modes I do most often.
Speaker 1: It's like I can typically get a lot of sites
Speaker 1: to be able to view through incongo or private or
Speaker 1: private browsing. But again, it does depend on what the
Speaker 1: site is. UH is a built to do but bar
Speaker 1: far my favorite me. Oh yes, I'll mention. Another one
Speaker 1: that I don't really use very often is the paywall
Speaker 1: or removable extensions for for your browser, which is like
Speaker 1: third party browser extensions which UH try to automatically bypass
Speaker 1: pay walls. These are really hit and miss um and
Speaker 1: it's they're also a really great way to get nice
Speaker 1: fancy malware onto your computer. UM, So I would I
Speaker 1: typically steer clear of this, but there there is allegedly
Speaker 1: a browser extension called bypass paywalls for Chrome and Firefox
Speaker 1: that allegedly has been found to be effective, UM that
Speaker 1: allows you to read the subscription based articles on hundreds
Speaker 1: of publications like New York Times, Wired, Wall Street Journal,
Speaker 1: Washington Post. Um, it is it is. It is free,
Speaker 1: but you have to manually load it onto your browser.
Speaker 1: And just typically amount a big fan of browser extensions
Speaker 1: in the first place, so I kind of steer clear
Speaker 1: of these. But some some some people, some people swear
Speaker 1: by them, so maybe maybe they can work. They're not
Speaker 1: They're They're not only my thing. But my favorite method
Speaker 1: is archive websites, UH, specifically archived dot is. So there
Speaker 1: are Internet archiving tools that preserve copies of web pages
Speaker 1: and social media posts for reference purposes, and you can
Speaker 1: use these tools to access paibled content and read subscription
Speaker 1: based news articles for free, including a lot of hard
Speaker 1: payworld pages. Archive dot i S or archive dot is
Speaker 1: is my favorite one. Um. Also it's it functions under
Speaker 1: archive dot today. Uh just it just it depends on
Speaker 1: what surfers they're running at the moment. Of course, there's
Speaker 1: also the classic and pretty reliable archived dot org, which
Speaker 1: has a nice calendar feature. But it's definitely good to
Speaker 1: check both of these because sometimes an article will be
Speaker 1: archived on archived dot is really easily and it won't
Speaker 1: be our available on archive dot org. Sometimes it will
Speaker 1: be on archive dot org and not archive dot is
Speaker 1: currently the one that's currently live. I think it's not
Speaker 1: pH It automatically switch is usually I could. I usually
Speaker 1: just type in our cave dot is um and it
Speaker 1: switches me over automatically. But yes, there is, there is,
Speaker 1: there is. There is a few of them. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you are right correct. It does automatically revert to archive
Speaker 1: dot phr at the moment. So yeah, but these these
Speaker 1: are the ones I use them because people who have
Speaker 1: access to hard paywalled content will often archives the hard
Speaker 1: paywalled stuff so it's available to people without the paywall.
Speaker 1: This this this can include the screenshot mode for archive
Speaker 1: dot is and the regular archival method for archived dot org.
Speaker 1: But both these are great UM and they're also really
Speaker 1: good for looking at past versions of the articles, so
Speaker 1: you can look to see what how the articles have
Speaker 1: changed over time, and so is your great just research
Speaker 1: tools and archive dot is is very easy to even
Speaker 1: upload stuff yourself, even if you don't have um the paywall,
Speaker 1: Like even if you're blocked off from reading the full thing,
Speaker 1: you can try to submit it to our chaive dot
Speaker 1: is and there's a good chance I'm and actually grab
Speaker 1: an unpaywalled version of it because because of how because
Speaker 1: of how the site works. So let's go to archive
Speaker 1: dot pH r or or archived dot is, enter the
Speaker 1: web page u r L that you're wanting to access
Speaker 1: in the designated dialect box at the bottom. It's like
Speaker 1: to save. It'll go through a little process um and
Speaker 1: then then you will then you'll be able to select
Speaker 1: the screenshop mode or the webpage mode and be able
Speaker 1: to see what type of thing in archives. It's pretty
Speaker 1: it's pretty cool. Um It's. The last thing I'll mention
Speaker 1: is outline dot com and twelve foot Ladder. These are
Speaker 1: web based tools, but not specifically archival sites. They're generally
Speaker 1: used to just get to the text of an article
Speaker 1: it would via like web page nonsense and bypassing paywall stuff. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: websites have also gotten wise to this, so stuff like
Speaker 1: New York Times and Wall Street Journal have figured out
Speaker 1: a way to get to these sites blocked so you
Speaker 1: cannot use outline dot com or twelve foot Ladder on them,
Speaker 1: but they still work on stuff like The Washington Post,
Speaker 1: so it always depends. But I definitely generally will prefer
Speaker 1: the archive dot is and archive dot org method to
Speaker 1: viewing any kind of paybled content. Um. Yeah, and that's
Speaker 1: kind of my I mean, I'm not now, I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna explain how to do like regular piracy on the
Speaker 1: podcast because I don't have enough time. But like it's easy.
Speaker 1: There are there are lots of people who will tell you,
Speaker 1: I mean, like kiss Cartoon is like a very popular website,
Speaker 1: Like you don't even need to, like you don't even
Speaker 1: have to like properly tour and stuff anymore, there is
Speaker 1: like so much pyraated media. Help. Yeah, and it's like okay,
Speaker 1: so like you've gotta be a little bit careful with
Speaker 1: your parting stuff. Sounds like you can get copyright strike,
Speaker 1: but if you stream it, they don't copy strike you
Speaker 1: for that. So yeah, yeah, I guess The other thing
Speaker 1: I will plug is a PLEX, which is a kind
Speaker 1: of an online movie hosting service like Netflix, except you
Speaker 1: upload all of the content to it. So let's say
Speaker 1: you buy Blue Rays, it comes it comes with the
Speaker 1: digital download code, So now you can upload the digital
Speaker 1: copy into Plex and watch that wherever you want, as
Speaker 1: long as you're signed into the Plex account and you
Speaker 1: actually own the stuff on the service. So as long
Speaker 1: as the services online, you can use it because you
Speaker 1: actually own the stuff on it. Um that includes if
Speaker 1: you have if you have pirated versions of movies downloaded,
Speaker 1: you can upload this versions onto Plex then then delete
Speaker 1: the actual hard copies of it on your hard drive.
Speaker 1: Then just watch the ones in Plex and you're totally fine.
Speaker 1: So Plex is great for having like ease of access
Speaker 1: because right, sometimes I don't want to sort through my
Speaker 1: Blu ray discs and make sure that I have a
Speaker 1: Blu ray Player with me so to watch my stuff.
Speaker 1: So using plex is a great wet method to keep
Speaker 1: your stuff that you actually own accessible online to watch
Speaker 1: it as long as you sign into a web browser. Um.
Speaker 1: And the last thing I'll plug is library submission forms.
Speaker 1: So if you really want media and you don't wanna
Speaker 1: pay for it, and you don't want to like pirate necessarily,
Speaker 1: you can get libraries to buy stuff. Um. I did
Speaker 1: this all the time when I was younger. I I
Speaker 1: found out that you can submit items for purchase via
Speaker 1: the via via the library on the online forum, and
Speaker 1: I submitted so many comic books. Uh, most of the
Speaker 1: comic books, I would say, I'm not like a good
Speaker 1: majority of the comic books in the Molton Moon County
Speaker 1: Library system are because of me. Every every Wednesday, when
Speaker 1: a new trade paperback would be released, I would upload
Speaker 1: it to the library submission form and they would buy it. Uh,
Speaker 1: and not just one coffee, they would buy like twelve copies.
Speaker 1: So there's so many Batman comics in the in the
Speaker 1: in the Molton McKinney system because I would studiously upload
Speaker 1: upload all that stuff so that I didn't need to
Speaker 1: pay for comics. I could just get them from the
Speaker 1: from the library. So definitely look into library submissions to
Speaker 1: kind of grow what your library has in stock, and
Speaker 1: then also looking to see what other things your libraries doing,
Speaker 1: because I know more libraries are looking into building like
Speaker 1: maker spaces and like tool libraries to um have access
Speaker 1: to things that are not just like books, you know,
Speaker 1: power tools, and then you know had to access to
Speaker 1: even cool stuff like stuff like vacuum formers and like
Speaker 1: three three printers, laser cutters. All these things are kind
Speaker 1: of growing. So look into what your library is doing
Speaker 1: because oftentimes libraries have some pretty cool stuff. Um. So yeah,
Speaker 1: this is my little little bit on why I don't
Speaker 1: like pay wells, why I think content should be free
Speaker 1: because it actually helps creators in the long run any anyway,
Speaker 1: and how to get past news articles that don't want
Speaker 1: you to read them without paying too much money yep.
Speaker 1: And remember folks, if Japan invaded your country pirrating anime
Speaker 1: as reparations. If you're mad about this tweet, find me
Speaker 1: on Twitter and I write, okay, yeah, make sure your
Speaker 1: tweet and I right, okay if you have complaints about
Speaker 1: that take So yeah, that is that is my little
Speaker 1: my my little bit talking about piracy argue and uh
Speaker 1: and yeah, I mean morest we should, we should, we should.
Speaker 1: I think it's I've always had I've always hold this
Speaker 1: opinion that I think we can all learn a lot
Speaker 1: of lessons from Sonic the Hedgehog. Um. And I think
Speaker 1: one of the greatest ones is that turns out when
Speaker 1: you make stuff available to use, uh, for free and
Speaker 1: allow emulation, people like people like, people like the stuff,
Speaker 1: more people enjoy it, and it will actually support official
Speaker 1: uses of it as well. So more stuff for free,
Speaker 1: more more library based economies. Having having gold rings, having
Speaker 1: an enormous number of gold rings makes you nearly invincible.
Speaker 1: That that is this is this is also true. I
Speaker 1: mean this, multiple franchises exist with that exact premise. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So it turns out when you have more, more libraries,
Speaker 1: more rings, people are happier. Yep. That's the episode. Hey,
Speaker 1: We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from
Speaker 1: now until the heat death of the Universe. It could happen.
Speaker 1: Here is a production of cool Zone Media. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone
Speaker 1: media dot com, or check us out on the I
Speaker 1: Heart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1: You can find sources for it could happen here, updated
Speaker 1: monthly at cool zone media dot com slash sources. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening. M Hey, Elizabeth, you're the co host of
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