Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted to let
Speaker 1: you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode
Speaker 1: of the week that just happened is here in one
Speaker 1: convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
Speaker 1: listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
Speaker 1: you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
Speaker 1: there's gonna be nothing new here for you, but you
Speaker 1: can make your own decisions. Welcome to It could happen
Speaker 1: here a podcast about things falling apart, and today it's
Speaker 1: it's there. There's there's a little bit of getting put
Speaker 1: back together, but today's mostly them falling apart. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Christopher Wong. With me, I have Lucy who is a
Speaker 1: teacher in Chicogo public schools and as part of the
Speaker 1: Teachers Union, and today we're going to be talking about
Speaker 1: just the absolute shit show that is being inflicted on
Speaker 1: teachers and students in public schools. And Lucy, how how
Speaker 1: are you? How are you doing? Um? You know, it's
Speaker 1: it's been kind of weird, but all in all, I'm
Speaker 1: in good spirits. I think my sisters and brothers and
Speaker 1: CTU are in good spirits. So we're going to keep
Speaker 1: fighting the good fight. Hell yeah. So before before we
Speaker 1: fully start to get into the teachers Union and Lord
Speaker 1: Lightfoot's foory, I want to sort of get a bit
Speaker 1: of context for people who don't live in Chicago or
Speaker 1: just don't know much about the only politics because LORI,
Speaker 1: you know, if you read sort of like media accounts
Speaker 1: of this, like you you, you you may be sort
Speaker 1: of misled into into thinking that there's like even some
Speaker 1: semblance of good faith going on here from Loyd Lightfoot,
Speaker 1: And like, I just I just want to like do
Speaker 1: a great like a Lord Lightfoot Greatest hits real for
Speaker 1: a second. So Lightfoot, like immediately after she got elected,
Speaker 1: like the like the first thing she does is she starts,
Speaker 1: she's she literally she's like, Okay, there's too much crime
Speaker 1: on the subway. We're gonna put swat teams on them.
Speaker 1: And so you know, you just be on the red
Speaker 1: lane and there's a wat team and you know, because
Speaker 1: again this is what happens when you put a swat
Speaker 1: team on the fucking subway. They immediately shown a dude
Speaker 1: in the back for nothing, literally no reason. They shot
Speaker 1: him in the back. Um So that that was like
Speaker 1: that was like like the first like few weeks of
Speaker 1: lightfoot and then during the uprising, she like she she
Speaker 1: turned the rich part of Chicago and she like a
Speaker 1: medieval castle like she like like like raised all the
Speaker 1: drawbridges into the middle of the city so that no
Speaker 1: one could get into the central part of the city.
Speaker 1: It was like awful. And then you know, then as
Speaker 1: as as we sort of like there there's more and
Speaker 1: more sort of bad lightfoot stuff. Most recently so Chicago
Speaker 1: got a bunch of aid money from the federal government
Speaker 1: and she spent two and one million dollars of it
Speaker 1: paying the police, not the schools. Yeah, nope. And CPD
Speaker 1: like these again I think I talked about this before,
Speaker 1: but like when when the CIA was like our initial
Speaker 1: torturing program failed, where do we go to like find
Speaker 1: people who know how to torture? They brought into Chicago
Speaker 1: Police Detective like and you know, and this is the
Speaker 1: the CPD. Like there's there's two have a CPD. Right,
Speaker 1: there's there's like the torture CPD. And then related to them,
Speaker 1: but not necessarily identical is the part of the CPD
Speaker 1: that's just a cartel. Like there there was there was
Speaker 1: a thing in at the beginning of the tens were
Speaker 1: like it turned out that like the almost like the
Speaker 1: huge parts of the CPD were literally just a cartel.
Speaker 1: They're running drugs. They were just like doing shakedowns for
Speaker 1: and and like one person total, like you got arrested
Speaker 1: by the FBI four and everyone else is just still there.
Speaker 1: It's great, it's a it's a time. So that this
Speaker 1: is this is who Lorily Lightfoot is. Um, she sucks.
Speaker 1: Like everyone hates her like her. The people who should
Speaker 1: be her political allies hate her. Like Chicago Chargo got
Speaker 1: like a police reform bill, and the reason it was
Speaker 1: like a very mild one, but the reason it happened
Speaker 1: was just that like like the like the Alderman passed
Speaker 1: it out of just pure spite because of how much
Speaker 1: they don't like Lightfoot. So this is this is the
Speaker 1: this has been my Christopher shouts that led Lightfoot instruted this.
Speaker 1: But yeah, needless to say, Lightfoot not acting in good faith.
Speaker 1: Just absolutely Yeah, an villain's incredible. No, actually that's not
Speaker 1: fair because a lot of Batman villains are kind of right. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: she's she's, she's she's she's like the nightmare refusion of
Speaker 1: like batman and a Batman villain, like what if what
Speaker 1: do you think the worst aspects of booth and then
Speaker 1: made them the mayor. It's it's a yeah, I've been
Speaker 1: kind of um so, I moved here almost a year
Speaker 1: ago from a smaller city, and I did not like
Speaker 1: the mayor in my city, and he really was a
Speaker 1: big fan of like the Lory lay Put playbook. But um,
Speaker 1: I guess people weren't as politically involved there. And my
Speaker 1: first week working in Chicago public schools, um, somebody mentioned
Speaker 1: the mayor mentioned Laurie, and everybody kind of groaned, and
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, you don't like her, you don't
Speaker 1: like you're theyre And I mean I knew they didn't,
Speaker 1: but I was just kind of testing the waters. And
Speaker 1: this lady looks at me and goes, we hate her.
Speaker 1: I swear, like, if you mentioned her name in this city,
Speaker 1: people practically spit on the ground. It's like it's amazing
Speaker 1: because like men demon Yeah, it's like like Chogo dotoriously
Speaker 1: we all hate her. Politicians but like Lightfoot like like that,
Speaker 1: there were you would find rama Manuel supporters right, Like
Speaker 1: I don't know a single lord like outside of the
Speaker 1: schools within the schools, everyone I know, like even even
Speaker 1: the even the cops don't like her, Like she keeps
Speaker 1: funneling hundreds of billions of dollars in them and they
Speaker 1: still don't like her. It's like, it's incredible. How do
Speaker 1: you unite the teachers union and the police union. One
Speaker 1: something that's the only thing that they've ever agreed on
Speaker 1: is fuck Lory Lightfoot. It's really incredible. So Lifefoot's latest scheme, Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: do you want to explain? I guess go back a
Speaker 1: little bit in in into the history of sort of
Speaker 1: how how Chicago and Chicago Public schools have kind of
Speaker 1: been responding to COVID and then how they just did
Speaker 1: this stuff, and yeah, I guess, like, yeah, give us
Speaker 1: a background, like what's going on right now? Well, I'm
Speaker 1: going to preface with two things. One, I am fairly
Speaker 1: new here, so I don't know all of the details.
Speaker 1: And two, I really want to emphasize that I'm just
Speaker 1: here talking for myself. I don't represent CTU in any way.
Speaker 1: This is just I wanted to talk about my feelings
Speaker 1: on things. So, um, what I do know is they
Speaker 1: were doing remote learning and when I arrived here in March,
Speaker 1: we were fully remote and UM. Then in the fourth
Speaker 1: marketing period, so like around like after spring break, UM,
Speaker 1: we moved to a hybrid at all, so we had
Speaker 1: parents and kids could like choose if they wanted to
Speaker 1: stay online or if they wanted to be in person. UM.
Speaker 1: I think like sixty percent or more depending on what
Speaker 1: school UM chose the online option. Like a lot of
Speaker 1: parents just were not comfortable putting their kids in UM.
Speaker 1: I know that there's been like a ton of talk
Speaker 1: about UM, you know, like the most economically disadvantaged families
Speaker 1: need the schools open, But it's kind of been the reverse.
Speaker 1: It's been the people who have UM more means are
Speaker 1: more interested in opening, and people who UH are less
Speaker 1: well off are a little more resistant to it. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's not the same across the board. I don't want
Speaker 1: to generalize too much, but that's been what I've seen UM.
Speaker 1: I think, if I had to guess it, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of history behind that. Like UM, I mean, first
Speaker 1: of all, just can your family afford an illness like this?
Speaker 1: And people living in multi general generational households. And I
Speaker 1: think something that CPS and our government in general really
Speaker 1: fail to acknowledge is just how how much mistrust there
Speaker 1: is between government institutions, public schools, and UM people of color,
Speaker 1: and for good reason. You know, they have been repeatedly
Speaker 1: just screwed over by these institutions. And I can absolutely
Speaker 1: understand why they might not trust a school district that says, hey,
Speaker 1: we'll keep your kids safe, because they weren't doing it
Speaker 1: before the pandemic. UM. So we had I had like
Speaker 1: seven kids in one of my classes, and like ten
Speaker 1: and another and then the rest of them were online.
Speaker 1: And I'm like sitting at a computer teaching to the
Speaker 1: kids online and to the kids in their room. All
Speaker 1: the kids in the room are on their computers too,
Speaker 1: so that we can like still be like one cohesive class. UM.
Speaker 1: It was hard, and it was like kind of like
Speaker 1: mentally fatiguing, like just going back and forth like that.
Speaker 1: But you know, we made it work. I was kind
Speaker 1: of I was really proud of us, Like we made
Speaker 1: it work. We made it happen. We stayed in contact
Speaker 1: with the families and the kids constantly, UM, and like
Speaker 1: as things moved on and as numbers started going down,
Speaker 1: more people started warning their kids back UM. And then
Speaker 1: after spring break they UM well, so like after springbreak,
Speaker 1: they let people come back, and then as we moved
Speaker 1: towards on our more and more kids were coming back.
Speaker 1: Which it was the school I was in was UM
Speaker 1: handling it very well. Our principle was really committed to
Speaker 1: like keeping us safe. So there was UM testing, like
Speaker 1: once a week somebody would come back and be like, yo,
Speaker 1: go get your COVID test. UM. I don't know if
Speaker 1: kids were being tested, but I know teachers were. UM.
Speaker 1: Then summer happens. I ended up in a different school
Speaker 1: in the Austin neighborhood, which is UM a lot less
Speaker 1: advantage than the one that I had been working in,
Speaker 1: and we open back up fully in person no remote
Speaker 1: option like at all, like UM. The only people who
Speaker 1: could get remote were kids that were deemed medically fragile,
Speaker 1: but they had to one submit like tons of paperwork
Speaker 1: to prove that and to their siblings could not stay removed.
Speaker 1: So at that point it's like, why, what's the point.
Speaker 1: And if you were a teacher who had a medically
Speaker 1: fragile child in the schools, your kid could be remote,
Speaker 1: but you couldn't, So then you know, how is that
Speaker 1: going to work? UM? And I found in the school
Speaker 1: where I was. You know, this is the issue with
Speaker 1: Chicago and with you know, most of the country is
Speaker 1: some schools have more resources than others, and the school
Speaker 1: I didn't know where to get tested. Nobody like told me.
Speaker 1: I think there was some kind of testing program, not sure,
Speaker 1: definitely nothing for students UM. I've since moved to a
Speaker 1: high school that has more resources, but still I have
Speaker 1: not been able to figure out where the hectic at testing.
Speaker 1: Which has been one of the biggest things that uh
Speaker 1: CTU is asking for is we want um opt out
Speaker 1: testing instead of opt in testing, so you would automatically
Speaker 1: be registered to test, and if you didn't want to test,
Speaker 1: then you would have to opt out, which would end
Speaker 1: up with far more people getting tested and make it
Speaker 1: a lot easier because a big part of why people
Speaker 1: are in signing up is it's really hard, like I
Speaker 1: don't know where to find it. That everyone's like, it's
Speaker 1: in your emails somewhere. I've searched my email. I don't know,
Speaker 1: Like we get like emails a day like yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's yeah, Like you know, I think anyone anyone who
Speaker 1: remembers what being in a school is like those they have,
Speaker 1: I mean, just the absolute worst bureaucratic stuff like it's
Speaker 1: it's it's it's like honestly like it like my experiences
Speaker 1: with like academia and like back in the high school,
Speaker 1: like their tech stuff was like worse than corporate sex stuff,
Speaker 1: which is like astounding. Mm hmm, it's it's ridiculous. Do
Speaker 1: you want to jump into here into Lightfoot's like, okay,
Speaker 1: Lightfoot has like invented a new kind of COVID denialism,
Speaker 1: which is like she she's now turned into like a
Speaker 1: COVID test denihilist, like it's incredible, like she she she has.
Speaker 1: She went on this rant about how like COVID testing
Speaker 1: is a quote quasi medical procedure and how you're gonna
Speaker 1: get lost, like it's it's bizarre. So this this journalist
Speaker 1: asked her about the testing because and I don't know
Speaker 1: which journalist that was, but I want to thank them
Speaker 1: so much because they have seen a lot of the
Speaker 1: reporters are actually out there trying to keep c t
Speaker 1: use demands in the conversation as opposed to this like
Speaker 1: whole oh lazy teachers don't want to work like off,
Speaker 1: we do want to be working. Um. But so I
Speaker 1: almost thought that she had like mixed up with this
Speaker 1: person said and thought that they were talking about vaccines.
Speaker 1: But even so, like stop it, stop, just stop doing that.
Speaker 1: But who is having a reaction to a COVID test?
Speaker 1: It is like literally a cute tip, like like you
Speaker 1: just stick They don't even stick it that far up
Speaker 1: your nose anymore. They just do a little in your
Speaker 1: nostril or like a mouth smile. Yeah. Like actually, like
Speaker 1: as someone who had like like I genuinely did have
Speaker 1: a kind of bad reaction because the guy jabbed it
Speaker 1: up really far and like I was like sneezing a
Speaker 1: lot afterwards. But it's like what, oh, no, you sneezed
Speaker 1: a little bit, Like what what does it even mean?
Speaker 1: Like not like I feel like people are acting like
Speaker 1: this test is like this weird new technology. It is.
Speaker 1: It isn't like right before the pandemic, like a couple
Speaker 1: of months before I had the flu and I had
Speaker 1: exactly the same kind of test. They stuck a thing
Speaker 1: up my nose. It was hella uncomfortable. Um it took
Speaker 1: like two seconds. They stuck it on a little plastic thing.
Speaker 1: I'm a bob and said, oh, looks like you have
Speaker 1: the flu. Yeah, it's I don't know where this is
Speaker 1: coming from. I think it's just she is not a
Speaker 1: very charismatic person and she's not someone who does well
Speaker 1: under pressure. And right now she's back into a corner
Speaker 1: and she's acting out and it's been kind of wild,
Speaker 1: like I've seen she's she's also throwing other people around
Speaker 1: her under the bus. Yeah, Like she says something about
Speaker 1: Pedro Martinez, Like she says, the teachers aren't in charge
Speaker 1: of this. Paedro Martinez is in charge. She's the CEO.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, okay, so you're being this is setting
Speaker 1: him up to take the blame on this everything that
Speaker 1: you tweeted about like it was. She was like, no, no,
Speaker 1: it's actually the mayor's and not sorry, it's it's actually
Speaker 1: the Uh, it's the principles. Responsive to the principles were
Speaker 1: like no, yeah, CPS is kind of interesting. Um, this
Speaker 1: can be really good or really bad depending on what
Speaker 1: school here put. The principles really have a lot of
Speaker 1: autonomy over their school. Um. I have now been in
Speaker 1: two schools where that's worked out great. My principal rocks. Um.
Speaker 1: If she ever hears this, I hope she knows that
Speaker 1: I said that. I think she's great. Um. Also, the
Speaker 1: principle I worked at the beginning of school year was awful.
Speaker 1: Um so, but when it comes to like district wide protocols,
Speaker 1: like that's district wide. And so CPS apparently had a
Speaker 1: meeting with principles where um, I heard some rumors about
Speaker 1: this too, but I also saw that letter that they
Speaker 1: had posted. Um. The principles are one really frustrated because
Speaker 1: CPS isn't communicating stuff with them very effectively, and so
Speaker 1: parents will be calling like do we have school tomorrow
Speaker 1: and they don't know, but CTU knows and it's telling
Speaker 1: their members. So the teachers all know the like more
Speaker 1: answers than the principles do, which is obviously really embarrassing
Speaker 1: if you're supposed to be in charge. Um. And then
Speaker 1: there they were told in this meeting with CPS, school's
Speaker 1: gonna be closed on Friday. Okay, school's closed on Friday. Great,
Speaker 1: sounds good. And then Lightfoot gets on the dang news
Speaker 1: and tells everybody that it will be done on a
Speaker 1: school by school basis at principles discretion, depending on if
Speaker 1: they have staff. So now all of these principles, who
Speaker 1: had already told their students and families that um we're
Speaker 1: closing look like they're the ones who closed it as opposed,
Speaker 1: like and that's it is rare for me to feel
Speaker 1: bad for a school principle because that's my boss. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't know, but I feel bad for them right now.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. Like you're just trying to like make
Speaker 1: sure that people have the information they need in a
Speaker 1: timely manner, and this lady is up here making you
Speaker 1: look like a monster. It's so unfair. Yeah, should we
Speaker 1: talk about what's been happening and we were up to
Speaker 1: the past sort of winter break and then the stuff
Speaker 1: that's happening now because it's very grim and bad. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So a lot of schools have been having COVID cases. Um,
Speaker 1: there's I'm not really sure what's going on with cps
Speaker 1: IS data. It kind of seems like they're not reporting
Speaker 1: it very faithfully or accurately. Like if you look at
Speaker 1: their tracker, they'll be cases and then suddenly they'll be gone. Um,
Speaker 1: we never really get a hard number ever, Like will
Speaker 1: be like if you have a student in your class
Speaker 1: who has been quarantined and we all know what it is,
Speaker 1: but they don't say it, they'll be like, um, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: Johnny will be out for the next X amount of
Speaker 1: time due to health reasons, please let him join via
Speaker 1: Google Meet. And they never do. That's the other annoying
Speaker 1: thing is like the students I think because they are
Speaker 1: either close contact or they're sick, um you know, to them,
Speaker 1: it's like a a break almost like they're not going
Speaker 1: to log in randomly. Like it's it's just with I
Speaker 1: think with kids, like once it stops being consistent and
Speaker 1: it's like back and forth all the time, it becomes
Speaker 1: very difficult for them to stay motivated because they're out
Speaker 1: of their routine. Like I I sometimes hate it when
Speaker 1: people say this, but it is kind of true. Kids
Speaker 1: kind of thrive on routine. Um. So at this point
Speaker 1: now I have like a third of my class at
Speaker 1: any given moment will just not be there and it
Speaker 1: will be different third of the class every you know,
Speaker 1: it kind of like rolls through. So all of my
Speaker 1: students are like different points in the curriculum. It's hard
Speaker 1: to like know what to teach each day because I
Speaker 1: don't know who needs what. It's hard to reach out
Speaker 1: to the kids that are at home and make sure
Speaker 1: that they get what they need. Because I'm so busy
Speaker 1: trying to catch these kids up and move these kids
Speaker 1: on and all that stuff. UM, which I have seen
Speaker 1: some research. I'll see if I can find it. UM
Speaker 1: after we're done that like pointed out that like remote
Speaker 1: learning isn't the worst thing that can happen. The worst
Speaker 1: thing that can happen is just flipping back and forth
Speaker 1: all the time and having huge numbers of kids absent
Speaker 1: from in person learning. UM. So we go on break
Speaker 1: and obviously we have O macron like sweeping through the
Speaker 1: country and we all knew that they were going to
Speaker 1: be spikes, Like we knew that in Chicago had what
Speaker 1: was I Illinois had some like astronomically high number of
Speaker 1: new COVID cases, like breaking records all over the place.
Speaker 1: UM CPS has had huge increases. Yesterday we had forty
Speaker 1: three four cases in Illinois. It's that's a lot. Like yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah, So overbreak, like the last like the Union
Speaker 1: had been trying has been trying forever to get CPS
Speaker 1: two come in and agree to UM a few things.
Speaker 1: So one in February we had a um an agreement
Speaker 1: that schools would flip to remote if they reached a
Speaker 1: certain threshold that agreement has expired and CPS has refused
Speaker 1: to come to the bargaining table and negotiate a new one.
Speaker 1: They're just like, no, we don't need it. We also
Speaker 1: have been trying to get them to do the opt
Speaker 1: out testing and a like surveillance testing program in school
Speaker 1: so we can kind of just have little bits of
Speaker 1: data to understand like where are these cases. CPS doesn't
Speaker 1: want to do this. They don't want a threshold for
Speaker 1: flipping to remote because then they would have to flip
Speaker 1: to remote, And they don't want the surveillance testing because
Speaker 1: then they would have to flip to remote, and they
Speaker 1: just don't want to flip to remote. Um. So finally
Speaker 1: over break, you know, it kind of came to a
Speaker 1: head like they were still refusing to negotiate, like um,
Speaker 1: one of the union delegates in my building said something about, um,
Speaker 1: they've been meeting. They go to these meetings like you know,
Speaker 1: like twice a week. They try to get these meetings
Speaker 1: to happen, and the mayor never comes and the CEO
Speaker 1: never comes, like they will either send lawyers or they
Speaker 1: don't show up. And it's like, dude, sounded so tired
Speaker 1: into moralized when he said that, I felt bad for him. Um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, So we voted that we were going to
Speaker 1: go in on Monday and Tuesday meet with our safety committees,
Speaker 1: get a feel for what's going on in school, and
Speaker 1: then we are going to have a vote on Tuesday
Speaker 1: night as to whether or not we will do a
Speaker 1: remote work action on Wednesday. And I know a lot
Speaker 1: of people have been like trying to make it sound
Speaker 1: like this was very sudden, but it absolutely wasn't. Like
Speaker 1: we had a vote about whether or not we were
Speaker 1: interested in doing this, and then we had a vote
Speaker 1: on whether we're still interested on having a vote, and
Speaker 1: then we had the vote and the delicates voted on
Speaker 1: if they wanted to hold an official like should we
Speaker 1: do an action vote? We did. Um, it was like
Speaker 1: seventy voted yes. Um. There were some complaints that some
Speaker 1: people didn't get their ballots, but they did wait till
Speaker 1: they had enough yes votes to preach that to third
Speaker 1: majority that we needed. So, you know, CT, you has
Speaker 1: every step of the way really been making sure, Um,
Speaker 1: this is actually what we want. This isn't just like
Speaker 1: unilateral things like Lorie keeps throwing that work unilateral around
Speaker 1: it wasn't unilateral. It was like at least two there's
Speaker 1: the teachers in this district said I don't feel safe
Speaker 1: at school. There's not enough staff in the building right
Speaker 1: now to even teach half my kids. A third of
Speaker 1: my kids are out. This isn't working. So yeah, so
Speaker 1: we voted that we're going to stay home and work
Speaker 1: remotely and then we got locked out. Yeah, which again,
Speaker 1: like and I want to almost refocus on this for
Speaker 1: a second because even a lot of people who were
Speaker 1: sympathetic to to to the teachers unions on Twitter, you
Speaker 1: see this a lot, they'll they'll be like the CTU
Speaker 1: went on a strike. It's like, no, they didn't like
Speaker 1: teachers and teachers are not on strike. The teachers are
Speaker 1: attempting to work from home and the school district will
Speaker 1: not let them. Yeah, it's it's every morning. I get
Speaker 1: up at six thirty, I make my coffee, and I
Speaker 1: sit down and I try to log in, and I
Speaker 1: know I won't be able to, but I do it anyway. Um. Thankfully,
Speaker 1: I had thought to download as much of my materials
Speaker 1: as I could prior to this one to my personal device,
Speaker 1: so I am still able to create lessons lands been
Speaker 1: making some very cool social study slides. I'm I'm so
Speaker 1: sure that my students are gonna love lots of cool
Speaker 1: assignments for them to do to um. But yeah, like
Speaker 1: this is a lockout, and LORI keeps starting this word
Speaker 1: like illegal work stoppage around. It's not a work stoppage.
Speaker 1: We are actively working. She has illegally. It is in
Speaker 1: our contract that she can't lock us out and she
Speaker 1: did so. So yeah, everyone's doing each other and saying illegal.
Speaker 1: But I know which side is right. Yeah, yeah, you know.
Speaker 1: I I am not an enormal perspector of the law,
Speaker 1: but like this is this is both is one of
Speaker 1: the rare occasions where the thing that is happening is
Speaker 1: both illegal and also just wrong. The reporting on this
Speaker 1: just has not gotten the actual fundamental thing which is
Speaker 1: happening here, which is a lockout, and it's enormously frustrating
Speaker 1: a lot of ways because you know, and i'd say this, okay,
Speaker 1: so the like local media reporting has been a lot better,
Speaker 1: but any like any national coverage has just I've seen
Speaker 1: it's just been like, yeah, it's gonna be it for
Speaker 1: part one at this interview, come back tomorrow for part two,
Speaker 1: when we will talk more about what's actually going on
Speaker 1: inside the schools and you know, generally do the media's
Speaker 1: s job for them, because Lord knows they're not actually
Speaker 1: getting it right. You can find us that Happened Here
Speaker 1: pod on Twitter and Instagram as usual, or you cannot
Speaker 1: find us. In fact, I encourage you not defined us,
Speaker 1: because good Lord, the internet is bad. Goodbye, Welcome to
Speaker 1: it could Happen Here a podcast about things going badly
Speaker 1: and falling apart. And today we are back with part
Speaker 1: two for interview with Lucy about how the Chicago Public
Speaker 1: school system is following apart under the relentless assault of
Speaker 1: cruelty and malice and incompetence by the Chicago Public Schools
Speaker 1: and by the Mayor, Lord Lightfoot. Enjoy. There's everything I
Speaker 1: want to talk about a bit, which is when you've
Speaker 1: been back, when you've been sort of teaching in the
Speaker 1: in these really like sort of what what is it
Speaker 1: actually like to teach in these classrooms? And like you know,
Speaker 1: how how safe actually is it? So, I mean I've
Speaker 1: been in a lot of different environments. When I was
Speaker 1: teaching middle schoolers, I did not feel super COVID safe.
Speaker 1: Um they are. I don't have people know this about
Speaker 1: middle school age kids. They love to touch each other,
Speaker 1: especially boys. They love to like wrestle. They're was putting
Speaker 1: each other in headlocks. I am constantly having to just
Speaker 1: be like six feet six ft or three ft or
Speaker 1: whatever CDC said we are now. Um, they don't put
Speaker 1: their masks on. They put their masks in their mouths
Speaker 1: all the time, like in their mouths. Um. There's they're
Speaker 1: constantly finding like weird little excuses to have their mask off.
Speaker 1: Like they'll just sit there with like like there're a
Speaker 1: lot to have water bottles because they can't use the
Speaker 1: water contains. They'll just sit there with like a straw
Speaker 1: in their mouth for like extended amounts of time. And
Speaker 1: I'm like, I need you to put your mask up,
Speaker 1: take quicksips and put your mask up. And they're like
Speaker 1: I'm drinking, Like I'm going to be drinking at the
Speaker 1: end of this day, but like, I know, take a
Speaker 1: quick sip, put your mask back up. It's really really
Speaker 1: important for your safety. Um. And then I have other
Speaker 1: kids who are absolutely straight up like terrified of this
Speaker 1: because like they've lost parents, they've lost grandparents. Um, It's
Speaker 1: it's really scary. UM. At the high school level, it's
Speaker 1: been a little better. High school kids are a little
Speaker 1: more rational. Um, but I still have a few who
Speaker 1: are just like, their masks are down around their chins
Speaker 1: all the time, we're under their nose, and I'm I'll
Speaker 1: like several times of class fear, like, okay, time for
Speaker 1: everybody to do a mass check. Make sure your mask
Speaker 1: is covering your nose, your mouth, your chin. Um, I'll
Speaker 1: remind them like I have a spouse at home who
Speaker 1: has an underlying condition, and like, please don't have me
Speaker 1: bring home a deadly disease to him, because that would
Speaker 1: really not be great. Um. Most of them are pretty good,
Speaker 1: but still they're getting sick. Like I think we had
Speaker 1: like forty kids out of my building one Monday and
Speaker 1: like twenty eight staff members or something like that. We're
Speaker 1: out and we had one sub which is the other
Speaker 1: That's the other issue is this isn't really a question of, um,
Speaker 1: if we should go remote. It's a question of when
Speaker 1: will we be forced to go remote. And we can
Speaker 1: either do that now before everybody has gotten sick and
Speaker 1: wait for this to subside and get some better mitigation
Speaker 1: strategies in place, or we can do it after everybody
Speaker 1: is sick, and then we're going to be scrambling to
Speaker 1: figure it out and also be sick at the same time.
Speaker 1: I don't really see how that makes any sense. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the part of this. And I've just been like
Speaker 1: I just like I don't get it, Like I just
Speaker 1: like fundamentally, there's there's like a mental break where it's
Speaker 1: like I don't understand why like Lightfoot and CPS so
Speaker 1: insistance about not going remote, Like I get that, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's hard on kids, but it's like it's it's
Speaker 1: you know, it is the years two Like no matter
Speaker 1: what you do, it's it's hard on the kids. And
Speaker 1: it's like, yeah, I also I wonder how much of
Speaker 1: it is the remote learning that's hard on them, and
Speaker 1: how much of it is just the um everything around
Speaker 1: them is crashing and following and burning around their ears
Speaker 1: because um, the messaging that they've been getting is that
Speaker 1: they don't matter. They're not important, their safety isn't important,
Speaker 1: their families aren't important, and um some of them like
Speaker 1: want to be remote, A lot of them, a lot
Speaker 1: of their parents want them to be remote. They're like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not as good, but at least I
Speaker 1: feel safe. Some of them even thrived in remote like
Speaker 1: actually did pretty well. And I really wish that it
Speaker 1: was just an option for those students who actually did
Speaker 1: well with it, that they could just like if we
Speaker 1: even ended up with like a third of our students
Speaker 1: choosing it, it would mitigate this so much because that's
Speaker 1: a third of the people. Not they're to spread it around. Um,
Speaker 1: So how how big? How big your class sizes are? UM?
Speaker 1: Right now the building I'm in now, I have like
Speaker 1: thirty in some my It was kind of similar at
Speaker 1: the last building, Like they're in that range. I have
Speaker 1: like always have like one or two that are like
Speaker 1: the twenty year below that are usually um special education
Speaker 1: like inclusion classes where I have co teacher. UM. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's you know, some of them are pretty crowded, and
Speaker 1: it really varies by school. Like there's definitely schools that
Speaker 1: have over thirty kids in a room, um and don't
Speaker 1: have the staff because it's just that's the other thing
Speaker 1: is like they keep talking about, you know, I keep
Speaker 1: seeing people be like fire all the teachers, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: good luck, Like, yes, is chronically understaffed. What are you
Speaker 1: gonna do? Yeah? I think again, Like this job is
Speaker 1: really hard, like it's being a teacher. Yeah, it's hard.
Speaker 1: It's exhausting, and it's very very rewarding. Like when it's good,
Speaker 1: it's great. When it's bad, it is miserable. Um so, yeah,
Speaker 1: and like what it looks like and I mean that's
Speaker 1: you know, it depends, it really depends on what school
Speaker 1: you're in. Um I think everybody can agree that it
Speaker 1: is difficult right now. Um So, we we have like
Speaker 1: air purifiers going and masks on, and I cannot understand
Speaker 1: what my kids are saying a lot of the time,
Speaker 1: Like I do not know, and they speak so quietly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like I need you to shout it, say it like
Speaker 1: you mean whatever it is. So but you know, that's
Speaker 1: been challenging and frustrating and exhausting. But um the worst
Speaker 1: thing ever is finding out that one of my students
Speaker 1: is sick. Like I hate when they're I hate it
Speaker 1: when they hurt. Like whenever that one of them is hurting,
Speaker 1: I feel bad. And knowing that their home sick is
Speaker 1: it's it's really upsetting and just it's you know, it's
Speaker 1: distressing for teachers to know that their kids are struggling
Speaker 1: in a way like that. So that's you know, we
Speaker 1: want them to be safe, you know, like these kids,
Speaker 1: it's like and this is this is true of the
Speaker 1: staff too, when you're when you're getting sick, it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: like some of these people will be okay, but enormous
Speaker 1: numbers of people are like so man, these people are
Speaker 1: gonna die. So some of these people, a lot of
Speaker 1: these people are going to get disabled. Um, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean the long term, long terffects is really bad. And
Speaker 1: you know, one off, if people remember we we did
Speaker 1: an episode with on our Friends who's a nurse and like, yeah,
Speaker 1: like he he had long COVID. His long COVID was
Speaker 1: like he he couldn't do more than like like getting
Speaker 1: out of bed or like like walking across the room,
Speaker 1: which just put him in bed all day. Because there's
Speaker 1: you know, there's there's an enormous range of sort of
Speaker 1: like of of long COVID side effects and yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like it's it's it's like CPS is just child cope
Speaker 1: of schools. It's just like they're getting people killed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's and it's you know that's like the question like
Speaker 1: they keep talking about percentages and I'm like, these are
Speaker 1: human beings. Every one of those numbers is a human.
Speaker 1: So when you say like only you know, point whatever
Speaker 1: percent are going to be long term affected, like, okay,
Speaker 1: those are people. Can we stop like dehumanizing them with
Speaker 1: these later like data points and um as for like
Speaker 1: the issue with like how like kids are less affected
Speaker 1: by or whatever, Like the fact is like the more
Speaker 1: we allow this to spread around, the more variants we're
Speaker 1: going to see. And we don't know that the next
Speaker 1: variant isn't going to be the one that is really
Speaker 1: significantly harmful to children. And we are basically turning our
Speaker 1: schools into these peatree dishes where this thing can mutate
Speaker 1: and become stronger. And now we have vaccinated people who
Speaker 1: are in that mix, and it's becoming resistant to the vaccine.
Speaker 1: So you know, I'm a social studie teacher, not a
Speaker 1: science teacher, but this seems like a bad move to make. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's I don't know, it's it's just sort of heartbreaking
Speaker 1: a lot of ways. I mean, it's just like they've
Speaker 1: just decided that you And again, like I don't I
Speaker 1: don't know why Lightfoot's doing this, Like maybe it's just
Speaker 1: like she wants to share up her base thing because
Speaker 1: she's trying to build a base among like the just
Speaker 1: like rich, weird noorsiders or something. But like it's she's
Speaker 1: a small business person. That's always when people are the
Speaker 1: small business owners who don't want to close schools because
Speaker 1: then you know, their workers won't come in, and you know,
Speaker 1: I want to feel sorry for them, but I know,
Speaker 1: I don't know, like like you, because there's also a
Speaker 1: lot of small business owners who have been very supportive
Speaker 1: of us. We had uh there's like a taco place
Speaker 1: offering free burritos to us, Like I really appreciate that.
Speaker 1: Like there's the community who understand that, like the lives
Speaker 1: of our children are so much more important than you
Speaker 1: missing two weeks of profit, Like you will figure that out.
Speaker 1: And if you want to bail out businesses, um, we
Speaker 1: can figure that out. But right now. And also like
Speaker 1: is is saying like we have we aren't we refused
Speaker 1: to do anything that might be inconvenient for business owners,
Speaker 1: Like what is that? Yeah, and it's like it's like yeah,
Speaker 1: so you know. And also yeah, but like business owners
Speaker 1: did get bailed out, like they got they got they
Speaker 1: got zero presented loans. Most of those loans got written
Speaker 1: off and meanwhile, yeah, it's like, well, okay, what did
Speaker 1: life to do with the COVID buddy? She she gave
Speaker 1: it to the cops. And oh hey, guess guess who's
Speaker 1: also just a rapperance better of COVID. Oh yeah it's
Speaker 1: the cops. Yeah, resisted vaccines the most, the cops. I mean, actually,
Speaker 1: there there there There is one funny thing which I'm
Speaker 1: actually very excited about, which is that the cops are
Speaker 1: doing they're having their first so they have a new
Speaker 1: class graduating. But for the police academies, which is really bad,
Speaker 1: and there's a whole well, one of one of the
Speaker 1: like life Foot's things was that there there was a
Speaker 1: huge campaign against building more police academies because you know,
Speaker 1: everyone hates child to police apart, right, they're awful. And
Speaker 1: if you have a hundred billion dollars for a new
Speaker 1: police academy, why or a hundred million or whatever it was,
Speaker 1: why can't you you put some better ventilation into schools? Yeah,
Speaker 1: well it's gonna Yeah, it's because because because like the
Speaker 1: CPD are like basically feudal lords. They have nights, they
Speaker 1: go out, they can shoot you, like they rob you.
Speaker 1: They just like any any any large number of like
Speaker 1: black kids on the streets. Like if you just have
Speaker 1: like fifteen kids walking around, like eight quad cars will
Speaker 1: show up. And you know that there was in Lightfoot
Speaker 1: was like no no, not her, like one of her
Speaker 1: campaign thing big and pain things like no, no, We're
Speaker 1: gonna make sure we build these academies. And but so
Speaker 1: they're they're having their first like rounded that they've been
Speaker 1: having trouble recruiting because the cod is good. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: and they're they're about to have their first police Academy
Speaker 1: exam and it's gonna be in person, and I am
Speaker 1: this is the only what are the few? Is this
Speaker 1: jaire Bosonaro where it's like I am rooting for the
Speaker 1: virus here, like please God save us from these cops.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean it's it's but they're just at
Speaker 1: home and spread it around. Yeah. Yeah, that's a sad thing.
Speaker 1: It's it's just it's grotesque. And yeah, it's been this
Speaker 1: thing where I'm like watching like the school system is
Speaker 1: just throwing their hands up, been saying we don't care,
Speaker 1: We're done. The health system, the health care system is
Speaker 1: like crashing and burning all around us. Nurses are quitting
Speaker 1: hospitals are like, we don't have room for more patients, Like,
Speaker 1: did you have a cancer treatment schedule? Sorry? Did you
Speaker 1: have a surgery scheduled? Sorry? I just saw somebody on
Speaker 1: Twitter saying she um has a brain tumor and she's
Speaker 1: supposed to have a surgery for it and she can't
Speaker 1: now because of COVID because they have no beds. There
Speaker 1: aren't any. And you're telling me that the right move
Speaker 1: right now is to keep the schools open, which has
Speaker 1: always been in every every pandemic that we've ever had.
Speaker 1: Schools and hospitals and prisons are like the place where
Speaker 1: the whatever diseases spreads. And I know we've been claiming
Speaker 1: that like there's not been spread in schools, but we've
Speaker 1: now seen the data that there, in fact is a
Speaker 1: huge amount. Which I've been like screaming about this since
Speaker 1: we started that their contact tracing models are they're absurd.
Speaker 1: They are like kafka esque, Like basically, um, so we
Speaker 1: start from the assumption that everybody is six ft apart
Speaker 1: and wearing their mask at all times, which it's not.
Speaker 1: It's not even it's not even physically possible in a
Speaker 1: lot of classrooms for that to be happening, and then too,
Speaker 1: we start with the assumption that those things work, and
Speaker 1: so you'll get a call from a contact racer that's like, hey,
Speaker 1: um on, you know, like last Tuesday, Tuesday of last week,
Speaker 1: were you within six ft of any of your eighth
Speaker 1: graders for more than fifteen minutes? Funck if I know
Speaker 1: Tuesday of last week, was I near an eighth grader
Speaker 1: for fifteen minutes? I don't know. I have no idea
Speaker 1: even if, like, even if I did, know, what difference
Speaker 1: does it make. It is an aerosolized virus. It is
Speaker 1: in the air, and the more you sit in classrooms,
Speaker 1: the more it accumulates. Like we have seen like studies
Speaker 1: about um this, We've seen studies about how CEO two
Speaker 1: accumulates in the air when there's crowds. We know that
Speaker 1: stuff accumulates like that in classrooms very very quickly. And
Speaker 1: you're gonna tell me that as long as I wasn't
Speaker 1: within fifteen or within six ft for more than fifteen
Speaker 1: continuous minutes, not even like um, not even fifteen minutes
Speaker 1: like added up throughout the day, just fifteen minutes continuously,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to get a virus. But you're shipping
Speaker 1: me like that makes no sense. And so then if
Speaker 1: and if and if you're answer to those questions are no,
Speaker 1: because whatever you were following the rules, then they're like, Okay,
Speaker 1: you got COVID somewhere else. It wasn't at school. Yeah
Speaker 1: no it does. It's nonsense. It's like I go to
Speaker 1: work and I go home. I don't do anything else,
Speaker 1: so I don't know where else is coming from, like yeah,
Speaker 1: like and also just wanted a brief digression about like okay,
Speaker 1: so like like I like I went to like a
Speaker 1: like a pretty good like like a pretty well like
Speaker 1: a very well funded like a Chicago area school, and like, okay,
Speaker 1: those places, those places ventilation sucks. Like again, like again,
Speaker 1: I went to a very well funded school. Like we
Speaker 1: had a we had drowned dead rats falling out of
Speaker 1: the ceiling like it was. It was incredibly my my
Speaker 1: my great high school memories with my principle, just like
Speaker 1: running full tilt pushing a trash can because dead drownd
Speaker 1: friend up. See my god lord, my school was wild.
Speaker 1: We had how bad it was like a kind of
Speaker 1: a chemistry teacher let a kid set off a smoke
Speaker 1: bomb like that. They made like in a classroom, but
Speaker 1: it didn't work, so it just like actually blew up
Speaker 1: like it was a time but like like like learning, Okay,
Speaker 1: I got to light the school on fire, but like
Speaker 1: like this is a this is like yeah, like like
Speaker 1: these schools are not like they're not the environments Yeah
Speaker 1: I worked in at the beginning of the year was
Speaker 1: a hundred years old. It was built in nineteen twenty
Speaker 1: and there was always this like sewage smell around the
Speaker 1: background as the pipes were messed up. It was weird,
Speaker 1: like and they couldn't fix it. I think it was
Speaker 1: it was the second or third time by building lived
Speaker 1: on fire. Like we there was a there was a
Speaker 1: whole thing in the building that was made of asbestos
Speaker 1: and they just had left it there because it was
Speaker 1: like it wasn't exposed. Yeah, abestos over like I get
Speaker 1: like I I went to like a good, well funded
Speaker 1: one of these schools, right Like it's I think there's
Speaker 1: there's like there's there's these two there's two things. I
Speaker 1: think it is. Interestingly, there's when you like talk to
Speaker 1: like the people who want the schools to open back up, right,
Speaker 1: they'll they're also talking about like oh no, it's fun.
Speaker 1: Everyone wears masks, everyone's vaccinated, everyone succeeds Like no, no,
Speaker 1: they're not like this. This is how it works in
Speaker 1: this like imaginary play world you've like created. Have you
Speaker 1: ever met a child? Like have you met your own children?
Speaker 1: Like oh and that's the best is like, well, I've
Speaker 1: been having my kids wearing masks like you have your
Speaker 1: full of ship. Okay, because I hold that kid to
Speaker 1: put their masks on like fifteen times yesterday and I
Speaker 1: love them beautiful face. I hope they get to show
Speaker 1: it off someday, but right now, cooped up, please, I'm
Speaker 1: begging you. And I'm like, I'm not like that teacher
Speaker 1: who's really authoritarian, Like I've never been good at like
Speaker 1: writing kids up and getting on them for stuff because
Speaker 1: it's just like I don't know, I hate doing that.
Speaker 1: I hate being that person. So it's been like really,
Speaker 1: it's like a struggle. It's like am I going to
Speaker 1: be the person who nags them every five seconds? Or
Speaker 1: am I gonna be um the teacher that they like
Speaker 1: and want to learn from? Like you know, this isn't sustainable.
Speaker 1: So but you're asking like the attitudes of people who
Speaker 1: want to open schools back up, and I it's it's
Speaker 1: hard because I have talked to parents who are worth read,
Speaker 1: but they are also very upset because they see that
Speaker 1: their kids are struggling. And I really do feel for
Speaker 1: them on that, like I really really do. It is
Speaker 1: hard to see a kid struggle, but it is harder,
Speaker 1: I think, to see a kid sick. That is really hard.
Speaker 1: And it's just this, like there are ways that we
Speaker 1: can overcome the difficulties of remote learning, Like we we
Speaker 1: can find ways to give them the emotional support, um,
Speaker 1: we can find better socializing outlets, but I don't know
Speaker 1: how we fix like you've become very ill and your
Speaker 1: body isn't going to recover in the way that you
Speaker 1: thought it would, Like I don't. I can't fix that.
Speaker 1: So's something I've heard from other teachers that like the
Speaker 1: preparing remote learning stuff like is harder and takes more
Speaker 1: work than Yeah, it does. It's it's really rough. I
Speaker 1: don't like doing it. I want to be in the
Speaker 1: classroom but and I just I just want to like
Speaker 1: once again, yell at all of the people who are
Speaker 1: like the teachers are lazy and it's like no, people
Speaker 1: like they're like yeah, like you're you are advocating to
Speaker 1: do more work because that's that's the thing that will
Speaker 1: keep the kids safe. And it's yeah, I think a
Speaker 1: lot of people don't understand like the behind the scenes
Speaker 1: how the sausage gets made of a classroom. But I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people have this idea that like
Speaker 1: we are given curriculum and plans and materials pre made.
Speaker 1: And sometimes that's true. It depends on your subject. Mine
Speaker 1: is social size is not a subject where that happens
Speaker 1: very much, which is part of why I like it
Speaker 1: because I like to be creative. UM. So like my
Speaker 1: week looks like UM, there are a lot of hours
Speaker 1: after school where I am sitting down, I'm looking at
Speaker 1: the standards that I need to teach, the topics that
Speaker 1: I need to teach, and I'm researching it and learning
Speaker 1: it and finding a way to teach that to kids
Speaker 1: who don't have the same like baseline knowledge that I have. UM,
Speaker 1: And then I'm creating like an activity for them. I'm
Speaker 1: creating UM, You're I'm finding like material sources and like
Speaker 1: videos and stuff that they can watch that are going
Speaker 1: to help them, or things to read. I'm modifying those
Speaker 1: things for the kids who have UM. You know, learning differences.
Speaker 1: I'm translating some of those things into Spanish for kids
Speaker 1: who don't really read very well in English yet. So
Speaker 1: like that's a ton of work on its own. And
Speaker 1: then when we switch to remote, we have to figure
Speaker 1: out how to do all of that on Google Classroom,
Speaker 1: where now it has to all be typed like or
Speaker 1: you know, like how do I figure like how do
Speaker 1: I do a group project online? How do I let
Speaker 1: them do something creative that isn't just sitting here answering
Speaker 1: questions on a worksheet. That's hard, and We've been really
Speaker 1: good at it, and I've found all kinds of really
Speaker 1: cool tools to do that with. But it's so much work,
Speaker 1: and it's work that I'm willing to do because I
Speaker 1: care about my job. I enjoy my work. I love
Speaker 1: my students, but um, you know, and I want them
Speaker 1: to be safe. But like, you know, it is a
Speaker 1: ton of work. I'm not just sitting here eating bond
Speaker 1: bonds all day or drinking cocktails. Yeah, And I think
Speaker 1: there's there's like a larger sort of like like Americans
Speaker 1: have this like the sexist sort of like hatred of
Speaker 1: like or in disrespect to people who do both care
Speaker 1: work and a lot of creative work both and then
Speaker 1: simultaneously there's this sort of like you know, the the
Speaker 1: there's there's there's a resentment to people who get to
Speaker 1: actually do something that helps people. And you know, I
Speaker 1: think right now we're seeing just the most toxic fusion
Speaker 1: of that, which is that like, yeah, I know, like
Speaker 1: these like you know, and instead of like you know,
Speaker 1: recognizing the enormous amount of work that that's going into
Speaker 1: all like this going into into teaching, like the amount
Speaker 1: of sort of like the care and love that's going
Speaker 1: into the creativity it's going into it, and just like
Speaker 1: the people people's willing, like you're willing listen to make
Speaker 1: like enormous sacrifices to try to keep these kids safe.
Speaker 1: They're just like no, Like the teachers are lazy, they
Speaker 1: don't want to work, they're going on strike, like and
Speaker 1: it's you know, and and and it's like they're doing
Speaker 1: this and it's like yeah, like you you were like
Speaker 1: they're killing their own kids. It's just like it's it's
Speaker 1: this weird fusion of like we we I've had. The
Speaker 1: spaces is like a combination of like feminized care labor,
Speaker 1: emotional labor, and UM, that's sort of like like intelligence. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like professional, UM, white collar intellectual kind of thing. And
Speaker 1: then also we're teaching a UM more introductory level of
Speaker 1: our subjects, so we're seeing as like discount intellectuals who
Speaker 1: are also women who do care work. So it's it's
Speaker 1: very frustrating, and I don't think a lot of people
Speaker 1: understand the amount of UM skill and expertise it takes
Speaker 1: to be a teacher and be effective at it. Like
Speaker 1: it's not just I need to know social studies to
Speaker 1: the level that a twelfth grader would know it. It's
Speaker 1: I need to know social studies beyond that level and
Speaker 1: know how to communicate it to a high school student.
Speaker 1: And also I need to know a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: about like child development. It's it's really it's something and UM,
Speaker 1: I you know, I find that to be fun and challenging,
Speaker 1: but I wish it was respected and you know, and
Speaker 1: then you're talking about like people are sacrificing their own kids.
Speaker 1: I want to point out a lot like I think
Speaker 1: there's a racial component to this. UM. The people who
Speaker 1: are in wealthier schools and who are mostly white know
Speaker 1: that their kids are gonna be fine, like they are
Speaker 1: in schools that actually do have the resources to distance,
Speaker 1: that have air filters, that have good ventilation. Um, they're vaccinated,
Speaker 1: their kids are probably going to be fine. The kids
Speaker 1: that aren't going to be fine are lowing, um, students
Speaker 1: of color. And it has always been this way. It's
Speaker 1: always been this way with schools, Like when schools were desegregated,
Speaker 1: we started with private school vouchers, and we started with
Speaker 1: all of these like uh, state testing requirements and withholding
Speaker 1: funding from schools that don't meet those, you know, test
Speaker 1: standards and all of these like, um, this extra oversight
Speaker 1: on teachers like that stuff all comes back to white
Speaker 1: people don't want to have to worry about black people's kids.
Speaker 1: That's it. And you know, they will move their kids
Speaker 1: out to the north side or the suburbs or whatever.
Speaker 1: Notice that all of those suburbs schools have flipped remote.
Speaker 1: Noticed that Lorry Lightfoot's kids are in a charter school
Speaker 1: that is not remote. Well, and more than Lightfoot Lightfoot Lightfoot,
Speaker 1: Lightfoot will not put herself in a room with the
Speaker 1: with the same number of people like a teacher should
Speaker 1: go to every day. You won't. And she was telling
Speaker 1: people at the press conferences they had to wear their masks,
Speaker 1: and then she wasn't wearing hers, which was very challenge
Speaker 1: to me. Like that's what they like when when you
Speaker 1: when you get to the politician level, they know it's dangerous,
Speaker 1: Like they know they they you can tell what they
Speaker 1: do right now. Yeah, like they won't do it, but
Speaker 1: like no, no, they're they're perfectly willing to just send
Speaker 1: to send you off the die, to send all these
Speaker 1: kids off to die. And it's just yeah, sometimes I
Speaker 1: feel I get kind of dumer and I wonder if
Speaker 1: like if that's not the plan, Like is it that?
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't really believe that. I think what
Speaker 1: it really is is this just like malicious neglect. Like
Speaker 1: if you're somebody who's a policymaker and someone comes to
Speaker 1: you and it's like, I need you to care about
Speaker 1: this population here that doesn't have a lot of money
Speaker 1: and needs a lot of things, and you, the policymaker,
Speaker 1: are going to be like, oh, it sounds like so
Speaker 1: much work. And then somebody else is going to come
Speaker 1: to you and be like I need these things over here,
Speaker 1: and I do have a lot of money, and I
Speaker 1: do have a lot of influence, and I'm gonna make
Speaker 1: your life difficult if you don't do what I want,
Speaker 1: they're gonna do with that other side once. And what
Speaker 1: the other side once right now is for kids to
Speaker 1: get back into school so they can have free daycares,
Speaker 1: the parents can go to work, and that's and that's it.
Speaker 1: And teachers are standing here being like, I didn't get
Speaker 1: a master's degree and do you know countless hours of
Speaker 1: professional development to be a babysitter, you know, and no,
Speaker 1: not to knock babysitters. I was in nanny for a
Speaker 1: long time. That is hard work. But um, I didn't
Speaker 1: get a master's degree to be a babysitter. I got
Speaker 1: a master's degree to be a teacher. And I'm in
Speaker 1: an environment right now where I can't really teach effectively
Speaker 1: and all I'm doing is babysitting. They want to wear
Speaker 1: house kids. That is what we're doing with the schools.
Speaker 1: That's why they want them open. And it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's hard not to feel like they just started
Speaker 1: doing it because they hate us, even though I know
Speaker 1: it's not. It's just it does feel that way. I
Speaker 1: will like, I will say that, like you're so if
Speaker 1: you become elected as the mayor of Chicago, Like your
Speaker 1: job is to break the teachers union. Like that's that's like,
Speaker 1: that's that's that's that's like the role you're auditioning for.
Speaker 1: And they have been they have been trying to do
Speaker 1: this for literally my entire lifetime. They've been trying to
Speaker 1: do this, like since before I was born. Like that's
Speaker 1: and honestly, like, wouldn't surprise me if this was another
Speaker 1: part of this was just them once again trying to
Speaker 1: break the teacher's union. Oh absolutely, like and if and
Speaker 1: not even just that like yeah, you know, like not
Speaker 1: just on the sort of political level, like on the
Speaker 1: incredible cynical level, we'll just kill them. Well, it's it's
Speaker 1: a labor thing. Like it's not just a Chicago teachers
Speaker 1: union or even a teacher's union thing. It is a
Speaker 1: labor movement across the board thing that. Um, the largest,
Speaker 1: I think the largest unionized workforce in the country is
Speaker 1: teachers and we on top of that are a union
Speaker 1: of workers who have the power to absolutely bring our
Speaker 1: economy to a grinding hole if we want to. We
Speaker 1: could all go on straight right now and no, but
Speaker 1: he's going to do ship until we go back to work. Um.
Speaker 1: They could if they, you know, they could try to
Speaker 1: like replace us with like people who are basically like
Speaker 1: hall monitors and give kids like canned curriculums, but they
Speaker 1: wouldn't really be learning very well, and parents wouldn't be
Speaker 1: happy with it, and they wouldn't be entering the workforce
Speaker 1: with the skills. They need to make money for the economy,
Speaker 1: to you know, make money for the almighty Tao. So um.
Speaker 1: The it has been a project for decades in this
Speaker 1: country to try to break teachers unions because teacher unions
Speaker 1: occupy this space where they allow other unions to happen. Um.
Speaker 1: We have, you know, enough influence on politicians that they
Speaker 1: can't just disband the labor board and make unions illegal,
Speaker 1: which they would absolutely fucking love to do. And if
Speaker 1: they could just get rid of these damn teachers unions,
Speaker 1: maybe they could do it. Um. So you know, and
Speaker 1: that's what you see with the education reform movement where
Speaker 1: you have all these people advocating for bouchers and charter schools,
Speaker 1: and it's you know, they want to break labor and
Speaker 1: I see a lot of I mean, now I'm gonna
Speaker 1: I'm gonna scold some of my comrades. But I see
Speaker 1: a lot of leftists who are really skeptical of teachers
Speaker 1: and don't want to support the teachers union. And I
Speaker 1: get it, like there are a lot of teachers who
Speaker 1: really suck, and there's a lot of teachers who are
Speaker 1: not radical, like most teachers are not radical, a lot
Speaker 1: of them are pretty conservative. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: if you were to abolish schools immediately right now and
Speaker 1: break up the teachers unions and all that, you're gonna
Speaker 1: get end up with. Rich people go to school, poor
Speaker 1: people don't. If your poor your kid goes to work,
Speaker 1: probably won't be in a coal mine, but you know,
Speaker 1: they'll probably be like soldering my computer chips or coding
Speaker 1: or something for like pennies an hour. And I don't
Speaker 1: want that world. And if you actually care about labor,
Speaker 1: then you need to support teachers unions because, um, the
Speaker 1: public schools are central to all these communities that we
Speaker 1: want to be reaching, and the unions are the only
Speaker 1: thing making sure that they stay public. Yeah. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: like I almost like again like to to to to
Speaker 1: Ayannaka's comrades were anti school. It's like, yeah, like, okay,
Speaker 1: I hate school. I'm for d D schooling is great,
Speaker 1: but we need to do other things first. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: have to and like again like that you need to
Speaker 1: like just like support the workers, not the institution. Like
Speaker 1: it's like it's like saying I'm a vegan, so I'm
Speaker 1: going to go after McDonald's in place like like like
Speaker 1: so like I I my high school was like all
Speaker 1: them like incredibly conservative, but everyone was still in the Union.
Speaker 1: That was like the one that was the one thing
Speaker 1: that was like, well, okay, they were there. There. There
Speaker 1: there were two counter fanidling forces. One was that I
Speaker 1: the Christians didn't seem to understand liberation theology was so
Speaker 1: occasionally they'd accidentally hire leftist because they were like, oh,
Speaker 1: you're a Christian, You're fine, you're from from America. We're
Speaker 1: not gonna question you further. The second thing was that
Speaker 1: even everyone everyone was in the Union, and that was
Speaker 1: like that was that was literally the only those are
Speaker 1: the only two left wing. Like I've gotten into so
Speaker 1: many teaching spaces by talking about how I like critical
Speaker 1: pedagogy and I don't understand Frary was a compete, or
Speaker 1: being like oh, I'm really really really into Chicago history.
Speaker 1: I especially love the history of like labor in Chicago,
Speaker 1: because it's it's huge people here here about it and
Speaker 1: they don't get that like I'm an anarchist, you know,
Speaker 1: And and a lot of the like um sort of
Speaker 1: like education reform language. I think it's very funny. It
Speaker 1: is just lifted from radical like sociologists and anthropologists and
Speaker 1: educators who are trying to find way is to um
Speaker 1: dismantle like authoritarian structures in schools, and so they'll come
Speaker 1: up with these like um, you know, like restorative practices
Speaker 1: and all this stuff, and then they kind of get
Speaker 1: they make their way up to the Ivory Tower and
Speaker 1: then get repackaged in this It's it's like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's like a machine or something that like sucks up
Speaker 1: radical ideas, brings them up to the academy, repackages them
Speaker 1: to make them nice for politicians, and then spits them
Speaker 1: back out. And it is exhausting and I hate it.
Speaker 1: It makes me so mad. I'll never forgive people for
Speaker 1: what they did to the term restorative justice. Yeah, do
Speaker 1: you have anything else that you want to make sure
Speaker 1: that people like understand about what's happening in the schools
Speaker 1: right now? UM, I guess just The biggest thing is
Speaker 1: I want people to understand that, like, this is a
Speaker 1: question of when and under what conditions are we going
Speaker 1: to be forced into a remote learning situation. This isn't
Speaker 1: like we want remote learning because we like it because
Speaker 1: it's fun. It's because it's going to happen if you
Speaker 1: like it or not. The schools are going to close
Speaker 1: if you like it or not, because the unless you're
Speaker 1: okay with, just like people are going to get sick
Speaker 1: and die and or going to work sick, which I
Speaker 1: think most of us agree that's insane. Um it is
Speaker 1: there are you We're going to be in a situation
Speaker 1: where we don't have enough staff to keep buildings open.
Speaker 1: So either we can try and mitigate that now and
Speaker 1: keep that from happening, or we can just start our
Speaker 1: hands up and stay fine. Let let the schools collapse.
Speaker 1: I don't want the schools to collapse. So, um, if
Speaker 1: we could just go remote for two weeks and get
Speaker 1: some good testing in and have a vaccine requirement, and personally,
Speaker 1: I would like to advocate for remote as an option
Speaker 1: for parents who want it. I don't think that's on
Speaker 1: the table right now, but um, I think more parents
Speaker 1: out there should be demanding it. And I also would
Speaker 1: like to say to parents, you have a lot of
Speaker 1: power that you don't understand. Um, the school districts listen
Speaker 1: to the parents so much more than the teachers. One
Speaker 1: parents voice is worth like ten teacher voices. So if
Speaker 1: you see something going on in your schools that you're
Speaker 1: not comfortable with, if you have questions, contact your principles,
Speaker 1: contact the district, talk to people, talk to the other
Speaker 1: parents that you know, organize yourselves. Um, if we had,
Speaker 1: you know, strong parent organizations on our side, we would
Speaker 1: be absolutely unstoppable and we could have the school system
Speaker 1: that we want and that our kids deserve. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I think I like the right figured this out a
Speaker 1: long time ago that you absolutely, yeah, look at what
Speaker 1: they're doing to the school board meetings with CRT. We
Speaker 1: could have that for people who are actually good people
Speaker 1: who care, like there's no there's no reason that all
Speaker 1: of the other parents couldn't be going and saying I
Speaker 1: want my kids to learn about race, and I want
Speaker 1: them to be wearing masks, and I want everybody to
Speaker 1: be vaccinated. Yeah. So I think I think I think
Speaker 1: that's a good note to end on. We you know,
Speaker 1: we can make this better. We just have to, you know,
Speaker 1: work together. Yeah, do you have anything that you want
Speaker 1: to plug? Like, do you have a way to support
Speaker 1: the teacher shore Um? I think I'll send you a
Speaker 1: flyer that we have. It has some information for contacting Alderman,
Speaker 1: getting COVID tests and potential to sign um. If you
Speaker 1: could post that, I would really appreciate. I definitely can
Speaker 1: definitely do that. Awesome, Thank you, thanks for coming on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: good talking to you. All right, Robert, do you want
Speaker 1: to open on us up with something? I don't know? Nope,
Speaker 1: you're opening the opening is is that is what you
Speaker 1: just did's already opened? Well, come to take it happen
Speaker 1: here the podcast about how things things do be crumbling sometimes,
Speaker 1: including our ability to introduce the podcast that page. It's
Speaker 1: actually a very meta art piece about the Yeah, we
Speaker 1: started off very polished and slowly commentary on I don't
Speaker 1: know something. It's called out figure out what. It's a
Speaker 1: commentary on it. It's called metamodernism. It's the post it's
Speaker 1: post postmodern anyway. Um, what are we talking about? Disinformation
Speaker 1: and various bullshit today? So among the many disinformation vectors online,
Speaker 1: Joe Rogan's podcast is obviously one off, like the largest
Speaker 1: single single vectors. Yeah. I mean, I've said this before,
Speaker 1: but I'll say it again. I don't think there's a
Speaker 1: cable news station as influential as Joe Rogan. You know,
Speaker 1: you could, you could make commentary on like, oh maybe
Speaker 1: they have a larger viewership in terms of like their
Speaker 1: actual ability to influence large numbers of people. Um, there's
Speaker 1: certainly no single cable news host that comes close to
Speaker 1: Joe UM, and I would argue probably no network that does.
Speaker 1: He's extremely influential by virtue of the fact that he's
Speaker 1: um a meathead of people seem to find friendly and engaging,
Speaker 1: and he is very charismatic. He's good at what he does,
Speaker 1: he's good at talking. Yeah. So, multiple times during the
Speaker 1: past three weeks, Rogan has brought on two separate quote
Speaker 1: unquote doctors who have started to pedal something called mass
Speaker 1: formation psychosis, which is kind of a new vector in
Speaker 1: the anti vax kind of argument and like headspace, so
Speaker 1: like as for like the it could happen near portion
Speaker 1: of the episode, This one's pretty simple. Could mass formation
Speaker 1: psyches this happen here? No way, not this time. We
Speaker 1: created it. Not this time, No, not this time is
Speaker 1: totally made up, pure fiction. It's fiction. It's fiction. We
Speaker 1: made it up. We made this one up. It's a
Speaker 1: made up tip, it's a total fabrication. Nope, not really
Speaker 1: ever happened anywhere. I might also argue, no, nope, fiction,
Speaker 1: We've solved the podcast, total fabric This is not a thing,
Speaker 1: total fabrication, made up tale. So yeah, well, but when
Speaker 1: whenever these like cook doctors bring up mass formation psychoses,
Speaker 1: you can actually kind of watch them get close to
Speaker 1: understanding something real, but then they veer off into reactionary nonsense.
Speaker 1: Like most powerful nonsense, there is an element of truth
Speaker 1: that it is uh spinning off of, you know. So
Speaker 1: let's start off with some of the more kind of
Speaker 1: deranged examples and well then eventually providing at least some
Speaker 1: background onto the whole massformation psychoa, this, this idea, and
Speaker 1: then we'll kind of discuss some of the more slightly
Speaker 1: interesting aspects of this argument that Eurogan seems fond of
Speaker 1: pushing right now. So, the first thing I want to
Speaker 1: talk about is Dr Peter McCole, which is not the
Speaker 1: the guy that was trending on Twitter last week or whatever,
Speaker 1: this was. This is someone else that Rogan brought on
Speaker 1: a few weeks previously who actually started talking about this
Speaker 1: first um so background on McColl. By most accounts, he
Speaker 1: was like a top cardiologist for many years. You know.
Speaker 1: He he shares a similar story to other doctors who
Speaker 1: have become kind of COVID conspiracy celebrities. Former friends and
Speaker 1: co workers say he was a pretty reasonable guy and
Speaker 1: a good doctor, and then COVID he realized he could
Speaker 1: be worth millions of dollars. Yeah, COVID head that he
Speaker 1: started to kind of go off the rails, and he
Speaker 1: he initially began an helping conspiracy theories, in particular around
Speaker 1: hydroxy chlora quinn um. And McColl was also in the
Speaker 1: news earlier this year due to or I guess uh,
Speaker 1: due to a legal dispute with his former employer, Baylor
Speaker 1: University Health So, according to a lawsuit, for nearly six
Speaker 1: months after McCall's employment had ended, he continued to use
Speaker 1: his professional titles such as the Vice Chief of Internal
Speaker 1: Medicine at Baylor University, and this represented himself as a
Speaker 1: Baylor and ploye dozens if not hundreds of times in
Speaker 1: media interviews in which he spread disinformation about the pandemic.
Speaker 1: So the type of misinformation that he talks about, you know,
Speaker 1: pretty basic stuff. Vaccines are neither safe nor effective. Um.
Speaker 1: He was a very early hydroxical orkin proponent. Um. He
Speaker 1: claims that there's no asymptomatic COVID transmission at all, even
Speaker 1: if you're not vaccinated. Um. And he claims that you
Speaker 1: cannot get COVID twice once you have it once, the
Speaker 1: post infection natural immunity is a protective against all future
Speaker 1: COVID disease, which, of course this thing works that way,
Speaker 1: works that way. Yeah. No, everything I just said is
Speaker 1: not true. All of it can individually be disproved by
Speaker 1: the existence of Jay Bosonaro. Every single to say that, Chris,
Speaker 1: I'm looking over at my digital picture frame that is
Speaker 1: just loaded with like a dozen photos of JayR bolsa
Speaker 1: Yaro in the hospital dying. Um. Yeah, I recommend everyone
Speaker 1: do that. It improves every morning. As soon as I
Speaker 1: walk up to my recording studio, I see JayR. Bolsonaro
Speaker 1: getting ship sucked out of his nose from a tube,
Speaker 1: and I just feel ready to take on the day.
Speaker 1: It beats coffee. Wow, that's strong words. Um. The other
Speaker 1: big thing. And since how since I want to get
Speaker 1: into the mess uh psychosis bullshit is that he he.
Speaker 1: McCall also asserts that fifty thou Americans have died from
Speaker 1: the vaccine shots. This is not true, um, looking at
Speaker 1: like deaths possibly associated with it, it is like maybe
Speaker 1: a thousand or two thousand, which sucks um. And but
Speaker 1: like that's that's the highest amount because again it's not
Speaker 1: even a lot of these things are not necessarily direct
Speaker 1: directly causal um, So it's hard to figure out what
Speaker 1: is what. But if there is a number, it's around
Speaker 1: the two wish thousand range. Uh not um. And McCall
Speaker 1: thinks that or at least promotes that the idea that
Speaker 1: like the vaccine is a conspiracy theory to suppress hydroxical
Speaker 1: work win and therapeutic treatment for COVID. And this conspiracy
Speaker 1: is organized at every level, uh, three different regions, corporations,
Speaker 1: big pharma, Hollywood, and and this is this is the
Speaker 1: mass formation psychosis is that we've believed that both COVID
Speaker 1: is like a big problem and that the vaccine is
Speaker 1: the solution. So I'm gonna I'm gonna play clip. Hopefully
Speaker 1: you guys can hear this of of of McColl talking
Speaker 1: about mass formation psychosis. Dope. We've seen mass psychosis in
Speaker 1: history before the horrific group suicides that have happened with
Speaker 1: religious culture. We knew a Nazi Germany where people in
Speaker 1: a sense offered their children up to eugenics programs and
Speaker 1: a progressive mass psychosis, and they themselves walk into gas
Speaker 1: chambers and my gas that they didn't fight, go kicking
Speaker 1: and screaming. This type of that's a mass psychosis. So
Speaker 1: what Desmond says is it must be four conditions not
Speaker 1: for a mass psychosis. The first is the population must
Speaker 1: be isolated. People must be isolated for a plot period.
Speaker 1: Number two, we must have things taken away from us
Speaker 1: that we previously enjoy. Number three, there must be constant,
Speaker 1: free floating anxiety. Anxiety of more virus is more disability,
Speaker 1: more depth, more anxiety. And then the last one is
Speaker 1: that cap or number four is there must be a
Speaker 1: single solution offered by an entity and authority, the vaccine.
Speaker 1: The only solution to the pandemic is the vaccine. We're
Speaker 1: in a mass echosis. And what Desmond says is with
Speaker 1: the vaccine, there is no limit to the absurdity that
Speaker 1: we will see no limit to the absurdity. So this
Speaker 1: idea of here, take a vaccine, Take any vaccine. That's absurd.
Speaker 1: Vaccines are different. There must be a winner, there must
Speaker 1: be a loser, must be something. Why would it be
Speaker 1: any vaccine. It's the same with the masks, where mass
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter what kind of mask, just put it
Speaker 1: over your absurdity, the absurdity of well, I've already had COVID.
Speaker 1: The CDC says you can't get COVID again. Okay, so
Speaker 1: listeners at home should know so that you understand what
Speaker 1: this video is that the entire time he's talking, there's
Speaker 1: what appears to be the eviscerated corpse of a black
Speaker 1: woman lying underneath it. Like it's horrifying. It's like very
Speaker 1: like I think it's like one of the dolls that
Speaker 1: medical students learned how to do autopsies on. It's not
Speaker 1: a real person, but it does look like the corpse
Speaker 1: of an eviscerated woman as he's just like chatting face
Speaker 1: really does look like it took me. I thought it
Speaker 1: was like I couldn't forget what was going on for
Speaker 1: like yeah, I mean, yeah, they're the real person. The
Speaker 1: cadaver dolls that they have for trading are quite good. Um,
Speaker 1: I kind of want to get one for the next
Speaker 1: time I'm in Texas and want to use an Hi
Speaker 1: e lane. But that's the story for another day. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's pretty dumb. Actually, the notion that people were
Speaker 1: hypnotized into peacefully walking into gas I just need to
Speaker 1: stay like that's the not not only is that like
Speaker 1: that is objectively untrue to the extent that I could
Speaker 1: provide anyone interested with thousands of pages of reading from
Speaker 1: people who survived concentration camps about how they worked and
Speaker 1: why people walked into them, and a lot of it
Speaker 1: just boils down to the fact that it was they
Speaker 1: were making a very rational choice, which was I have
Speaker 1: no options here. I cannot get out of this, but
Speaker 1: I can at least make sure that my children are
Speaker 1: not panicking in the last seconds before we're killed. And
Speaker 1: a lot of the people the the because a lot
Speaker 1: of the actual like grunt work of of key of
Speaker 1: loading humans into the gas chambers was done by other
Speaker 1: inmates who were also not going through psychosis. They were
Speaker 1: given a chance to survive longer by helping to operate
Speaker 1: the camps UM, and those people you can read some
Speaker 1: of them did survive, UM, and some of them wrote
Speaker 1: about their ex arians is um, which is some of
Speaker 1: the most harrowing ship like imaginable for a human being
Speaker 1: to possibly go through. It is all tremendously well documented.
Speaker 1: And the most offensive thing I can imagine is saying
Speaker 1: that these people were somehow is saying Number one, it's
Speaker 1: incredibly offensive to say that they were going through some
Speaker 1: sort of psychosis and that's why they walked into the
Speaker 1: chambers and not this was the best option available to them,
Speaker 1: given what was going on and what like the situation
Speaker 1: they had been forced into. They did not have other options. Um.
Speaker 1: It was that or get machine gunned to death. UM.
Speaker 1: And maybe you think you would choose a different option. UM.
Speaker 1: But if you're critiquing them or trying to claim that
Speaker 1: like the only reason they would do that what they
Speaker 1: did was that they had lost their minds UM, I
Speaker 1: will I will hit you in the face with a brick,
Speaker 1: fuck you like that. That That's my answer to that. Actually,
Speaker 1: if you are someone who is interested academically and why
Speaker 1: people did some of the things that they did at
Speaker 1: at the death camps um, and like why how that
Speaker 1: actually function? And psychologically it's like a short book. It's
Speaker 1: this way for the gas ladies and gentlemen. And it
Speaker 1: is a quasi fictionalized book by a guy named Taddius
Speaker 1: Borowski who was a survivor of the death camp. So
Speaker 1: it's based on his experiences at Auschwitz and Dachau. UM
Speaker 1: and he he describes the way in which the world
Speaker 1: of the camps worked and the psychology of the camps worked. Um.
Speaker 1: And he's not and he's not a piece of ship
Speaker 1: grifter asshole. He's a guy who lived through all of this.
Speaker 1: So if you actually care about any of this, just
Speaker 1: read that everything this guy says is wrong. And if
Speaker 1: I had a chance to, I would hit him in
Speaker 1: the face with a brick. Please continue, Garrison. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: really sucks because it's not just a combination of medical
Speaker 1: misinformation but also just the most ship sociology. Um. And
Speaker 1: it creates this a really a really disgusting package of
Speaker 1: of of really bad sociology medical misinformation. Um. And like
Speaker 1: yeah he's doing this too, like because he can make
Speaker 1: a profit off of it. So he's saying these things
Speaker 1: so I know, Um. He mentioned a name, Desmond Desmond's
Speaker 1: the guy who kind of coined this term. We'll we'll
Speaker 1: talk about more about him at the end, but for now,
Speaker 1: let's go on an ad break and we'll be back
Speaker 1: to talk about Dr Robert Malone, the other other guy
Speaker 1: who's been pushing this nonsense. So I probably will want
Speaker 1: to hit with a break even more so, honestly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And we're back talking now about mass formation, psychosis and
Speaker 1: the dumb people who are well or smart people who
Speaker 1: are using they're they're evil. That tough. So yeah, So
Speaker 1: after after McColl went on Rogan's show, it got that
Speaker 1: that show got pretty popular. Um one, one big right
Speaker 1: wing kind of Trumpett media personality named Melissa Tate was
Speaker 1: permanently banned from Twitter after posting about the podcast and
Speaker 1: making the following post to her half a million followers,
Speaker 1: Global Mombshale. Dr Peter McCall on The Joe Rogan Show
Speaker 1: says Maderna made the code vaccine long before COVID actually hit,
Speaker 1: and that the pandemic was a premeditated and concerted scheme
Speaker 1: by government and medical entities to then force vaccinations as
Speaker 1: the solution. So that's the type of narrative that they're
Speaker 1: trying to foster because the pandemic has been so good
Speaker 1: for Biden's approval ratings. It's really working out great for everybody.
Speaker 1: UH us U S Senator Ron Johnson also promoted the interview,
Speaker 1: saying Rogan asks excellent questions and McColl provides the answers.
Speaker 1: So yeah um. So Apparently the mass formation Psychosis Doctor
Speaker 1: Guy was enough of a hit that Rogan's team decided
Speaker 1: to very soon after bring on another line, conspiracy doctor
Speaker 1: Dr Robert Malone. So during the last week one, Rogan
Speaker 1: invited Malone onto his show. Malone's of of a virologist
Speaker 1: and and a immunization doctor who claims credit for inventing
Speaker 1: the m RNA vaccine in a pair of papers from
Speaker 1: the late eighties spoilers, He did not There was work
Speaker 1: on the vaccine before him, and work continued after him.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, um yeah. And in eighty nine he published
Speaker 1: a paper um kind of positing maybe mr NA can
Speaker 1: be binded with with other kind of UH proteins. He
Speaker 1: did not really do any work on it besides just
Speaker 1: saying I wonder if this could maybe happen, um, And
Speaker 1: then knowledge into this due a bit. There were people
Speaker 1: asking similar questions and publishing papers at the same time
Speaker 1: of the question and before. Yeah, so Malone actually thought
Speaker 1: this was too hard and abandoned this project very soon
Speaker 1: and then went to work for like the military to
Speaker 1: develop other random like uh, he thought the RNA vaccines
Speaker 1: were too hard, so he went on to develop more
Speaker 1: stuff around DNA vaccines and has been working with like
Speaker 1: the military and various like big farmer companies fund vaccines
Speaker 1: for a while. More accurately, Dr Carrico and Drew Wiseman
Speaker 1: are two doctors that are widely agreed and acknowledged to
Speaker 1: have put the most development work and actual like like
Speaker 1: actually doing the science to make m M RNA vaccines
Speaker 1: a thing. Um, And the of course development of them
Speaker 1: was due to you know, work of hundreds of researchers. Um.
Speaker 1: So it's it's not you know, one person does not
Speaker 1: invent something like this. It's it's a group of a
Speaker 1: lot of people. But but it makes it for an
Speaker 1: easy title for your viral video. Yes, and in fact,
Speaker 1: actually um uh logically, the That's a Journalist website reached
Speaker 1: out to Malone and for an article, and Malone replied
Speaker 1: back stating that he did not actually literally invent the vaccine,
Speaker 1: but instead developed a vaccine technology platform. Um. Then he
Speaker 1: presented logically copies with nine patents, none of which are
Speaker 1: the patents for functioning mRNA vaccines. Um. But but he
Speaker 1: he claims to have patented mr and A technology. I
Speaker 1: mean he did. It's technology that doesn't work and never
Speaker 1: has and and never has worked and the patents are expired. Um. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I need to past some ship. That just sounds like
Speaker 1: a real easy way to make a good grift. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: you know, as we've seen with my but because because
Speaker 1: Malone has crafted this you know, narrative that I'm the
Speaker 1: inventor of this thing. You know, like just like we've
Speaker 1: seen with my like COVID griff name Doctor's episode behind
Speaker 1: the Bastards, just a little shred of like medical authority
Speaker 1: can be more often transformed with propaganda into something much
Speaker 1: greater than what it is, you know, whether that be
Speaker 1: claiming to be the inventor of the m R and
Speaker 1: A or you know, claiming to be the former head
Speaker 1: scientist adviser. Neither of those have to actually be true
Speaker 1: to work, because propaganda makes it true via like repetition.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's it's the kind of thing where like
Speaker 1: dunking on these guys like it's important here to correct
Speaker 1: the record. It doesn't do anything. No, the fact that
Speaker 1: they're nothing that they say is true does not matter
Speaker 1: when it comes to them having an influence in the
Speaker 1: community they have. If you get on Rogan, it doesn't
Speaker 1: like like you've already done the thing that you need
Speaker 1: to do to be able to to profit from this.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter that you're lying. A few months ago,
Speaker 1: Malone went on to Steve Bannon show to talk about
Speaker 1: how the vaccines make cod worse worse actually, and you
Speaker 1: know this is this is the equiped from Steve Bannon.
Speaker 1: You're hearing it from the individual who invented the M
Speaker 1: R and A vaccines and has dedicated his life to vaccines.
Speaker 1: He's the opposite of an anti vaxer, right, So it's
Speaker 1: it's that. So, yeah, start starting around June one, Malone
Speaker 1: began to make the rounds you know, Bennon Tucker, Glenn
Speaker 1: beck Um and now Joe Rogan. So you know, starting
Speaker 1: in June, he had like less than five thousand Twitter followers.
Speaker 1: Uh and just before his suspension at the end of
Speaker 1: December for spreading misinformation, he had like over half million. Um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so right after his Twitter suspension for lying
Speaker 1: about COVID and causing you know, misinformation to run to
Speaker 1: run rampant around a health issue. Um, that's when Rogan
Speaker 1: invited him on. It was right after he got suspended
Speaker 1: from Twitter. And there's been one particular clip from the
Speaker 1: interview that has really caught like the far right's attention. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, the tweet that's it's it's connected to is
Speaker 1: captioned on Joe Rogan. Dr Robert Malone suggests we are
Speaker 1: living through a mass formation psychosis. He explains how and
Speaker 1: why this could happen and its effects. He draws analogy
Speaker 1: to the nineteen twenties and thirties Germany. They had a
Speaker 1: highly educated population and they went barking mad. Um, they
Speaker 1: did not. They made a series of logical The Nazis
Speaker 1: did not go mad. They were not crazy, They were
Speaker 1: not out of their mind. They were doing they were
Speaker 1: a large part of what they were doing was saying
Speaker 1: things that they knew were were nonsense and lies in
Speaker 1: order to get elected because it riled people up. And
Speaker 1: then a large chunk of their policy was figuring out, well,
Speaker 1: if this is the ship that we've been saying, how
Speaker 1: do we how do we translate that into policy again?
Speaker 1: Realms have been written on this by credible researchers. The
Speaker 1: people who ran the camps were not insane, although they
Speaker 1: were often deeply depressed and suicidal because it's not good
Speaker 1: to run a death camp. They were all making rational decisions.
Speaker 1: And the people who let it happen, we're letting it
Speaker 1: happen because it was dangerous and scary to interfere in
Speaker 1: any way. They were all making rational decisions. There was
Speaker 1: no insanity responsible for the Holocaust, which is worse like
Speaker 1: and then everything, yeah, yeah, yeah, what they're like, they're
Speaker 1: they're what they're doing is like they're they're they're they're
Speaker 1: trying to give people a way out right like that.
Speaker 1: You know this is this is sort of like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's well, the Nazis went insane. All the people who
Speaker 1: followed them went and saying it's like, no, no, they don't.
Speaker 1: You don't get that way out like you they chose
Speaker 1: to do this. Yeah. The the scariest and most meaningful
Speaker 1: lesson to take from the Holocaust is that you yourself
Speaker 1: could be a part of a Holocaust, even if you
Speaker 1: didn't support the killing because it's extremely easy to not
Speaker 1: get involved and stop something like that once it reaches
Speaker 1: a certain level. And it's easy for the kind of
Speaker 1: political organizations that can make things like that possible to
Speaker 1: reach a point where they can carry that sort of
Speaker 1: ship out because again, it's scary to fucking fight them. Uh.
Speaker 1: Let's what the clips like a minute long, and I
Speaker 1: think it's worth watching to see both in the context
Speaker 1: of when Rogan decides to interject and when he decides
Speaker 1: not to basically European intellectual inquiry into what the heck happened?
Speaker 1: I hate this guy already in the twenties and thirties,
Speaker 1: you know, very intelligent, highly educated population and they went
Speaker 1: barking mad um And how did that happen? Um? The
Speaker 1: answer is mass formation psychosis when you have a society
Speaker 1: that has become decoupled from each other and has free
Speaker 1: floating anxiety in a sense that things don't make sense,
Speaker 1: we can't understand, and then their attention gets focused by
Speaker 1: a leader or a series of events on one small point.
Speaker 1: Just like hypnosis, they literally become hypnotized and can be
Speaker 1: led anywhere. And one of the aspects of that phenomena
Speaker 1: is the people that they identify as their leaders, the
Speaker 1: ones typically that come in and say, you have this pain,
Speaker 1: and I can solve it for you. I and I alone,
Speaker 1: okay can fix this problem for you. Okay. Then they
Speaker 1: will lead. They will follow that person through how It
Speaker 1: doesn't matter whether they lie to them or whatever. The
Speaker 1: data are irrelevant. And furthermore, anybody who questions that narrative
Speaker 1: is to be immediately attacked. They are the other. This
Speaker 1: is central to mass formation psychosis. And this is what
Speaker 1: has happened. We had all those conditions. If you remember
Speaker 1: back before, everybody was complaining the world doesn't make sense
Speaker 1: blah blah blah. Um. And we're all isolated from each other,
Speaker 1: we're all on our little tools, not connected socially anymore
Speaker 1: except through social media. Um. And then this thing happened
Speaker 1: and everybody focused on it. That is how massformation psychosis happens.
Speaker 1: And that is what's happened here. Horrible, completely wrong um
Speaker 1: in every single way. UM. They the Germans were not
Speaker 1: confused because nothing made sense. They were angry because of
Speaker 1: the terms of the Treaty of Verst Si That were
Speaker 1: also angry because of what they saw as and what like,
Speaker 1: because of a myth that had grown up about why
Speaker 1: they had lost the First World War, which was spread
Speaker 1: by people who were the equivalent in that time of
Speaker 1: Joe Rogan. They were scared of the left, of communism,
Speaker 1: of disorder, of riots in the streets. Um and one
Speaker 1: win Hitler took power. Most Germans did not like him,
Speaker 1: They did not blindly follow him. He gradually gained the
Speaker 1: vast the support of the vast majority of Germany through
Speaker 1: a number of different, very logical things. One thing that
Speaker 1: he did that got him a lot of support was
Speaker 1: he took businesses and homes and money Jewish people and
Speaker 1: from members of other groups that the Nazis were targeting,
Speaker 1: and he gave it to Arians. There was a direct
Speaker 1: financial interest for a lot of people who got in
Speaker 1: line behind the Nazis, and he established a series of
Speaker 1: programs like the Strength through Joy program that really did
Speaker 1: benefit in a way that they had not known before
Speaker 1: the German working class um and A lot of this
Speaker 1: was again subsidized through the appropriations of things that had
Speaker 1: been owned by people that the Nazis were targeting. People
Speaker 1: fell in line behind Hitler for logical reasons. He did
Speaker 1: not reach the highest point of his support from the
Speaker 1: German populace until the taking of Paris, which obviously that
Speaker 1: was something that a lot of Germans supported. They had
Speaker 1: spent four years failing to take the city in World
Speaker 1: War One. UM. Anyway, sorry, it's all nonsense, it's all lies.
Speaker 1: I think the reason why this is latching on so
Speaker 1: much to people on the right, like people on the
Speaker 1: right who who don't consider themselves fascists, who who think
Speaker 1: who would say Nazis are bad. Right, there's they still
Speaker 1: are latching onto this because it provides a way for
Speaker 1: them to not understand how fascism actually works, right, It
Speaker 1: provides an alternative explanation that makes them not have to
Speaker 1: actually think about what fascism is. Um. And that's why
Speaker 1: they're latching onto it. And it also is already it's
Speaker 1: already a part of the conspiracies they have around vaccines
Speaker 1: and power structures. So because because it's the conspiratorial basis,
Speaker 1: instead of like thinking about power structures from like an
Speaker 1: anarchist or like like hierarchy lens, it reinforces the world
Speaker 1: views they have and makes them not have to interrogate
Speaker 1: the ones that they don't want to. UM. It sucks.
Speaker 1: Malone's Substack goes into more of this and it's it's
Speaker 1: it's pretty bad. There's a this is a few quotes
Speaker 1: that I think really kind of tied this together. And
Speaker 1: then he has some horrible statistics. Um, he says, as
Speaker 1: many of you know, I've spent time researching and speaking
Speaker 1: about mass psychosis theory. Most of what I've learned is
Speaker 1: come from Dr Desmond. Dr Desmond is like the guy
Speaker 1: who pointed this term um and uh malone writes Desmond.
Speaker 1: Realize is that this form of mass hypnosis, the madness
Speaker 1: of crowds, can account for the strange phenomenon of about
Speaker 1: the population in the Western world becoming entranched with the
Speaker 1: noble lies and dominant narrative concerning the safety and effectiveness
Speaker 1: of the genetic vaccines, and both propagated and enforced by politicians,
Speaker 1: science bureaucrats, pharmaceutical companies, and legacy media. Of course, the
Speaker 1: obvious examples of massformation is Germany in the thirties and forties.
Speaker 1: How could the German people, who are highly educated, very
Speaker 1: liberal in the classic sense, Western thinking people, how could
Speaker 1: they go crazy and do what they did to the Jews?
Speaker 1: How could this happen to a civilized people. A leader
Speaker 1: of a mass formation movement will use the platform to
Speaker 1: continue to pump the group of information to focus on.
Speaker 1: In the case of COVID nineteen, I like to use
Speaker 1: the term fear porn. Leaders through mainstream media and government
Speaker 1: channel and government channels continuously feed the beast with more
Speaker 1: messaging that further hypnotize their adherents. Studies suggest that mass
Speaker 1: formation follows a general distribution. People are in washedt and
Speaker 1: hypnotized fully doctor in the group narrative. In the middle
Speaker 1: are persuaded and may follow if no where the alternatives perceived,
Speaker 1: and thirty percent will fight the narrative. Those who rebel
Speaker 1: and fight against the narrative become the enemy of the
Speaker 1: brainwashed and the primary target of aggression. So that's the
Speaker 1: way he thinks. That is how which is really it's
Speaker 1: really subject like in terms of how he's building a
Speaker 1: narrative in his head and specifically building a narrative for
Speaker 1: other people's heads to to view. Why do I feel
Speaker 1: distrustful of certain pieces of power but love other pieces
Speaker 1: of power? Yeah, And it's again like this idea that
Speaker 1: like well, Germany was liberals there Germany had an enormous
Speaker 1: right wing movement, like it was a hugely conservative country
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways, it would also had a
Speaker 1: lot of leftist organizing and a lot of leftists in it,
Speaker 1: especially after World War One, But like the Free Corps ship,
Speaker 1: there were these massive, million strong right wing armed street
Speaker 1: movements that existed for the tyrety of the Weimar Republic.
Speaker 1: Like it's again everything he says is wrong. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: again it's like the notion that like are fully burnwashed,
Speaker 1: are in the middle of persuadable fight the narrative, it's
Speaker 1: like these these people who are upset, these like these
Speaker 1: specifically conservatives were obsessed about thinking like I would have
Speaker 1: fought the Nazis. And because they don't understand how fashion
Speaker 1: and works in powerdy namics, they don't understand how how
Speaker 1: they're actually getting pulled into the same thing. But they
Speaker 1: still view themselves as the rebel right. They're right, yeah,
Speaker 1: like they're still focused on being Yeah, it's absolutely like
Speaker 1: they're still focused on being the rebel and like we're
Speaker 1: rebelling against the vaccine that that is just like rebelling
Speaker 1: against the Nazis. And you're like, what, um, so, I
Speaker 1: just want to say about those numbers if they're too
Speaker 1: completely made up. Yeah. Yeah, when when people start throwing
Speaker 1: even numbers statistic exactly like that, it's because they're lying. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's because yeah, yeah, absolutely not not. Yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: complete nonsense. For one. Yeah, it's so so I get
Speaker 1: because now the other thing that happened around this interview,
Speaker 1: because it didn't give a lot of traction among the right,
Speaker 1: is that whenever these things gain traction, they also developed
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories that people are trying to suppress it. Like
Speaker 1: look at the Google algorithm when you type in certain
Speaker 1: keywords like I know that. The day this was trending,
Speaker 1: it was like if you google Dr Malone the interviews,
Speaker 1: only like the sixth result, the first one is this
Speaker 1: YouTube video debunky and like I did this, and like no,
Speaker 1: the first result was the obviously viral video of him
Speaker 1: saying the thing, Like they just they can take one
Speaker 1: screenshot that maybe someone made or maybe because of one
Speaker 1: person's computer algorithm that's what gave them and use this
Speaker 1: as like evidence that this is the entire system of
Speaker 1: the Internet suppressing the thing, Like no, the Internet wants
Speaker 1: things to go viral. Now, there's certain things where they
Speaker 1: like trying to shut down the spread of of dangerous stuff.
Speaker 1: But this got very viral. This was not contained in
Speaker 1: any way. But because of this notion like they're trying
Speaker 1: to hide it, you know, it plays into their them
Speaker 1: thinking they're like they're them thinking that they are the
Speaker 1: rebels or something. And there's also a very practical reason
Speaker 1: why the people who particularly know that they're lying do this,
Speaker 1: and it's because all of their success is based on
Speaker 1: a foundation of the way in which YouTube and Facebook
Speaker 1: and Twitter algorithmically amplified them and their predecessors, and they
Speaker 1: know that creating controversy over the fact that they're being suppressed,
Speaker 1: um leads to more content that jin's that basically algorithmically
Speaker 1: spreads their stuff more because more people are talking about it,
Speaker 1: because other people's channels start debating it, because idiots on
Speaker 1: the left are like, well, we should at least have
Speaker 1: them on platform them because we're anti censorship too, so
Speaker 1: let's debate them. And like all of this stupid ship
Speaker 1: feeds into spreading their stuff. It's a very intelligent strategy. Um,
Speaker 1: I hate it, but just in just in terms of
Speaker 1: how ridiculous it is. I know, a few days ago,
Speaker 1: a Congressman Troy Knells said that I that the transcript
Speaker 1: from the Joe Rogan Experience podcast episode with Dr Malone
Speaker 1: to the Congressional Record. Big tech wants to restrict your access,
Speaker 1: your access to information, but they cannot censor of the
Speaker 1: Congressional Record. Not te is the entire reason why you
Speaker 1: know about these people. Yeah, yeah, entirely. So if we're
Speaker 1: not for big Tech, Joe Rogan would be narrating videos
Speaker 1: of robots fighting. So Jack Sobiak got real into this
Speaker 1: because he loves anything that goes viral. If it weren't
Speaker 1: for big Tech, Jacks Beak would have died in the
Speaker 1: ditch of an oxycontent overdose. So he got real into it.
Speaker 1: He changed his like he changed his Twitter name to
Speaker 1: Jack mass Formation, psychosis psychosa Beck or some bullshit like that.
Speaker 1: Stupid and it was. It was tweeting about a NonStop
Speaker 1: for a week and like like a kid learning about
Speaker 1: a new topic because of synchronicity' He's gonna like projected
Speaker 1: onto everything he sees now because like this this new
Speaker 1: all encompassing topic that makes you avoid what fashions an
Speaker 1: act really is and then point out at the things
Speaker 1: you don't like because of course, he's gonna apply to everything.
Speaker 1: He He made a tweet right before January six, um
Speaker 1: as the anniversary of the capitol intermpted ku thing Regime
Speaker 1: media has launched a propaganda push against Ashley Babbitt today
Speaker 1: to psychologically prep their flock for the upcoming mass formation
Speaker 1: event planned for January six this week. This this is
Speaker 1: called priming as a textbook mass formation theory tactic, wait
Speaker 1: till you see what comes next? And six today has anything?
Speaker 1: What happened? Goddamn thing? They got fucking lin Manuel Morenda
Speaker 1: to sing songs? Did you see that that wasn't He
Speaker 1: might have said something in the beginning that was due,
Speaker 1: but the performance has been played before on other things. Well,
Speaker 1: and I am you know what, if we're taught trying
Speaker 1: to reach across the aisle, I am willing to admit
Speaker 1: that the pop ularity of lin Manuel Miranda might be
Speaker 1: a mass formation psychosis. Absolutely, the popularity of Hamilton's is
Speaker 1: a vest formation psychosis. Absolutely, we're just being assholes, But like,
Speaker 1: like seriously like it again, but it doesn't. It does.
Speaker 1: The fuck is when it when it comes to again,
Speaker 1: like the fact that he said there's gonna be this
Speaker 1: whatever psych mass formation psychosis event on the anniversary of
Speaker 1: January six, then it's going to be huge watch for
Speaker 1: and nothing happens, doesn't matter, never matters, will never matter,
Speaker 1: um because again, like it's it's I think one of
Speaker 1: the issues that we have here is the degree to
Speaker 1: which brain brainwashing and hypnosis and stuff are talked about
Speaker 1: within kind of discussions of a cultic milieu when they're
Speaker 1: not really a factor, not a factor in cults, not
Speaker 1: nearly as much as you think. Yeah, and not in
Speaker 1: the way that you think. There's things that like you
Speaker 1: could call brainwashing, but the the and you could even
Speaker 1: maybe call hypnosis, although that's a lot murkier, it is
Speaker 1: a very technical, Yeah, but but the what actually like
Speaker 1: the stuff that's actually happens. Again, it's always much more
Speaker 1: logical and rational if you can just inhabit the mental
Speaker 1: space of the people who are in those communities because
Speaker 1: of what they're primed to believe first and because of
Speaker 1: what is happening socially, because of the degree to which
Speaker 1: they isolate themselves from people who are outside of that bubble.
Speaker 1: Like that's why you it's so hard to get them out.
Speaker 1: It's not that like magically their brains have been taken over.
Speaker 1: It's that they have pretty methodically been put into a
Speaker 1: position where rejecting what is being told to them within
Speaker 1: this context is immensely more painful, um than just continuing
Speaker 1: to believe things that are not true. Um. And there
Speaker 1: are more consequences for it, you know. Um, you lose
Speaker 1: a support network, you lose a great deal of of
Speaker 1: of your own opinion of yourself and your self worth
Speaker 1: if you start to reject this stuff. Um. And once
Speaker 1: you can trap people in that, it's the same way
Speaker 1: that like scientology works. Once you can trap people in that, Um,
Speaker 1: it's the evidence of their eyes and the fact that
Speaker 1: like they're obviously being lied to and the things that
Speaker 1: they're being told about don't come to pass. It's this.
Speaker 1: It's the reason why you have a bunch of apocalyptic
Speaker 1: cults who say the days the world's going to end
Speaker 1: on this day and time that day in time comes,
Speaker 1: the world doesn't end, and the cult goes on. You know, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty it's pretty ridiculous. This this whole thing was
Speaker 1: started by this professor of clinical psychology at at a
Speaker 1: university in Belgium, Matthias Desmott. He seems to have a
Speaker 1: pretty bad understanding of history and actual like power structures,
Speaker 1: and does not know the least bit about fascism um,
Speaker 1: and has tried to craft this thing to fill in
Speaker 1: the gaps in his own knowledge and applies it to everything.
Speaker 1: And I've read some of his stuff. It's it's nonsense. Um.
Speaker 1: Again that just like the doctors who talked about it,
Speaker 1: they're like, yeah, he's using this also as a way
Speaker 1: to explain how COVID is not real and how the
Speaker 1: vaccine is a is a ploy to do bad thing.
Speaker 1: It's it's all ridiculous. It's irresponsible, um. And they're using
Speaker 1: it as a tactic and hopefully it's just gonna blow over.
Speaker 1: But I'm sure it'll pop up everyone every once in
Speaker 1: a while, again, just like it popped up, you know,
Speaker 1: a few weeks ago. But that's that's really all. I
Speaker 1: all I want to get into it. I I could
Speaker 1: say more, but I think we have said enough. I
Speaker 1: think that's said enough. Um, all right, well fuck it, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's it. That's all I've got. UM Read This Way
Speaker 1: for the Gas Ladies and Gentlemen by Thaddius Borowski. Um.
Speaker 1: It will, it will have a major impact on the
Speaker 1: way you see the entire world if you if you
Speaker 1: actually read it. Um, there's some incredible pieces in there.
Speaker 1: One of one of the things that the Taddy has
Speaker 1: points out, does that like people only ever have like
Speaker 1: one kind of language for for talking about like the
Speaker 1: things that they feel, where whether it's something they they
Speaker 1: kind of vaguely care about or something they care about
Speaker 1: enough to murder over. And so when people engage in
Speaker 1: acts of like horrific violence on a mass scale, they
Speaker 1: often do it looking and acting like they would if
Speaker 1: they were irritated at somebody in traffic. Um. And it's
Speaker 1: the most unsettling thing about being the victim of a
Speaker 1: genocide that you don't see the kind of hate and
Speaker 1: the kind of rage and the kind of like what
Speaker 1: you would expect someone would need to be amped up to.
Speaker 1: It's more of like you see, more like kind of
Speaker 1: boredom and and irritation and all that stuff. Like it's
Speaker 1: not anyway read read Read Daddy a Sbarowski. Um, He's
Speaker 1: I desperately wish Joe Rogan would just sit and narrate
Speaker 1: this book on his show because it would do actually
Speaker 1: a service to the world anyway. Um. That's that's the
Speaker 1: episode could it happen here. It maybe I Robert Evans,
Speaker 1: host of this podcast, UM to introduce this today's episode,
Speaker 1: which is not my episode, it's it's Andrew's, uh episode.
Speaker 1: So how are you doing, Andrew? How do you feel
Speaker 1: in that introduction? I'm good. I think it's um could
Speaker 1: use some work, but you know we'll shop it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We we never work shop anything. We just we just
Speaker 1: roll right ahead. UM. So abolished work and all that
Speaker 1: abolished introductions you know start in the middle. Why don't
Speaker 1: we just do that now in media res podcast? Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll make every podcast like Finnigan's Wake, where the opening
Speaker 1: of the podcast is like halfway through a paragraph at
Speaker 1: the end of the aerographs at the end of the
Speaker 1: episode starts every everything will be a circle. Let's just Sophie.
Speaker 1: I think that's the new plan. Okay, okay, Andrew, what
Speaker 1: do you guys for us today? Right? So, today I
Speaker 1: wanted to talk about bio regions and bioregionalism. It's uh
Speaker 1: philosophy slash movement slash way of viewing things is there's
Speaker 1: a lot. So today we'll be exploring what it is,
Speaker 1: where it came from, and the rule I see it
Speaker 1: playing in our strides towards anarchy. But first, of course
Speaker 1: we should really get some context bioregionalism. Have any of
Speaker 1: you heard of it? By the way, I have heard
Speaker 1: the tournament right right, So it's actually pretty recent, um,
Speaker 1: all things considered. UM. It was coined as a tomb
Speaker 1: by a guy named Alan Van new Cook, founder of
Speaker 1: the Institute for Bioregional Research in and as a movement
Speaker 1: it really gained a lot of popularity in the late
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies in the Osaks, Appalachia, Hudson River, and San
Speaker 1: Francisco Bay Area regions. UM. They had a conference in
Speaker 1: a prairie, interestingly enough near Kansas City, and they've also
Speaker 1: had conferences in the Squamish bioregion of British Columbia as
Speaker 1: well as the Gulf of Main bio region on the Atlantic.
Speaker 1: And of course, with all these different people coming together
Speaker 1: sharing all their different ideas talking about cool nature stuff,
Speaker 1: they developed a sort of a platform which they outline
Speaker 1: in papers on subjects changing from agriculture to forestry, to arts, economics,
Speaker 1: to community. So while it was a very North American
Speaker 1: focused movement and philosophy at first, it has also expanded
Speaker 1: to Europe in Australia and these groups there are hundreds
Speaker 1: of them all over. Um. They get involved with local
Speaker 1: ecological work like preservation and restoration, plumic culture or that.
Speaker 1: And they also form networks so they would link on
Speaker 1: specific issues like water conservation or organic farming or cheap planting.
Speaker 1: And of course bioreginal groups also get involved in attempts
Speaker 1: to make communities more self sufficient by mapping and utilizing
Speaker 1: local assets and well, as you come to see um,
Speaker 1: bioregionalism and maps kind of go hand in hand away
Speaker 1: um because it really is about that sort of big
Speaker 1: picture looking at the earth and the environment and outplace
Speaker 1: in it. So what is bioregionalism exactly? In essence, it's
Speaker 1: a philosophy based around the organization of political, cultural, and
Speaker 1: economic systems around naturally defined areas called bioregions. Sort of bioregions.
Speaker 1: There are areas defined through physical and environmental features, including
Speaker 1: watershed boundaries, soil and terrain characteristics, flora, fauna, and climate.
Speaker 1: Bioregionalism also stresses the determination of a bioregion is a
Speaker 1: cultural phenomenon and emphasizes local populations, local knowledge, and local solutions.
Speaker 1: Because humans are actually surprisingly part of nature. Our cultures
Speaker 1: or settlements they arise from nature. They arise from the
Speaker 1: characteristics of the bio regions that we inhabit. So I
Speaker 1: mean that to me is a clear bradish routine and
Speaker 1: bioregionalism and land back. And it also points to me, um,
Speaker 1: the fact that while bioregionalism maybe a fairly recent philosophy
Speaker 1: starsh movement, its roots and the ideas it presents are
Speaker 1: nothing new, you know, Um, I mean bioregionalism posits that,
Speaker 1: you know, human societies must learn to honor our bioregions
Speaker 1: and the connections between them if we have to be
Speaker 1: ecologically sound. And this was sell active is really old news,
Speaker 1: you know, for the indigenous peoples who have maintained these
Speaker 1: lands and been stewards of these lands for thousands of years.
Speaker 1: I think that thinking in a bioregional scale allows us
Speaker 1: to establish regenerative and circular economies, effectively restore local ecosystems,
Speaker 1: restructure our systems using ecological design principles, and of course
Speaker 1: deepen our cultural connections to the land we inhabit. So
Speaker 1: that to me really stresses the importance of bioregionalism in
Speaker 1: our approach to environmental issues. Before I continue, I just
Speaker 1: wanted to say that for those who want to like visualize,
Speaker 1: because I know this is a podcast, you can only
Speaker 1: hear my voice. UM One Earth has a pretty decent
Speaker 1: map of bio regions on their website, so you could
Speaker 1: just google bio regions and it should come up. They
Speaker 1: basically have like five bio regions on their map, and well,
Speaker 1: according to that map, trend that is part of bioregion
Speaker 1: anti NT standing for neotropic and E standing for East,
Speaker 1: and tadas grouped with South America and particularly the Venezuela
Speaker 1: Guyana's region for obvious reasons being that the Urn cou
Speaker 1: and other rivers that come from the Amazon flew out
Speaker 1: to you know, trend ads shows really so clunky segue um.
Speaker 1: There are a couple of different concepts that one might
Speaker 1: want to keep in mind when approaching or attempting to
Speaker 1: curate a bio regional understanding of the world. Of course,
Speaker 1: perspective and a bioregional perspective is important, and it's basically
Speaker 1: one that seeks to ensure that political boundaries match ecological boundaries,
Speaker 1: highlighting the unique ecology of the bio region, encouraging the
Speaker 1: consumption of local foods where possible, encouraging the use of
Speaker 1: local materials where possible, and encouraging the cultivation of needs
Speaker 1: of plans in the region. I will point out like
Speaker 1: from now that from what I've read about bioregionalism and
Speaker 1: the talks that I've seen, there are definitely some you know,
Speaker 1: liberal sensibilities, some capitalist realism um in the way that
Speaker 1: some bioregionalists talk about, you know, things like organizing our
Speaker 1: politics and our states and stuff around bio regions. Obviously,
Speaker 1: you know, they are pushing things pretty far because they
Speaker 1: do talk about, you know, going and really orienting our
Speaker 1: economy around you know, bio regions and thinking in terms
Speaker 1: of that. But at the same time, there's still like
Speaker 1: an almost passive acceptance in some of the readings that
Speaker 1: I've seen of capitalism. You know, I think that's pretty
Speaker 1: common in a lot of what I like to call
Speaker 1: almost radical um ideas and philosophies and stuff. Of Course,
Speaker 1: when I approached these ideas and these philosophies and stuff,
Speaker 1: I always try to, you know, keep that anarchist analytical
Speaker 1: freework in my head, understanding that you know, these ideas
Speaker 1: are still being filtered through announcemately like campus society and
Speaker 1: capitalist world and too you don't want to try to
Speaker 1: navigate that and sift that out and really get the
Speaker 1: nuggets of gold within these ideas. I don't see states, UM,
Speaker 1: and I think you would agree with me being the
Speaker 1: path out of you know, that's a climate catastrophe UM.
Speaker 1: For those who have been reading like you know, Against
Speaker 1: the Green and you know Grievers work, you know that
Speaker 1: states have been pretty equalsider from their very inception. So
Speaker 1: I think that if power regionalism would be effective, I
Speaker 1: think it would be best if it stayed away from
Speaker 1: that sort of status um conception. They do emphasize localism
Speaker 1: UM as the political localism, but it's always in the
Speaker 1: context of was often within the context of like the
Speaker 1: relationship between the local and esteem and that sort of
Speaker 1: thing almost like a kind of I don't know if
Speaker 1: I'm using this to in correctly, but like monarchism, does
Speaker 1: that makes sense some kind was it? Some kind of
Speaker 1: like municipalist almost something like that, But yeah, yeah, we
Speaker 1: should probably talk a little bit about like what what
Speaker 1: minarchism and municipalism are um, just so people don't get
Speaker 1: kind of caught up on the terms UM, and particularly
Speaker 1: I think that like within a context of like the
Speaker 1: United States, UM municipalism is kind of an easier way
Speaker 1: to sell folks who may be more conservative on certain
Speaker 1: anarchists principles. It's basically the idea of yeah, strong community
Speaker 1: sort of control and autonomy UM, as opposed to uh,
Speaker 1: strong overarching kind of federal or state control over over
Speaker 1: you know, different communities. Yeah. Yeah, because say menarchisms kind
Speaker 1: of like a weird grab bag thing that's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's sort of like, Okay, so you want
Speaker 1: to be in an arco capitalist, but you can't because
Speaker 1: you're just smart enough to realize that you can't have
Speaker 1: a rights out of state. So either the Minerica state
Speaker 1: is the only thing it does is enforced property rights.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I think that's a slightly terrifying vision, but
Speaker 1: I think but you know, it's it's yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: more self away than the average Yeah, you know this
Speaker 1: is yeah, And I think that is less of a
Speaker 1: focus specifically on property rights and more of more based
Speaker 1: out of an understanding that UM like strong hierarchical federal
Speaker 1: or even state level control UM generally winds up creating
Speaker 1: reach a lot of a significant amount of like regional
Speaker 1: um uh, what's the word I'm looking for, um inequalities
Speaker 1: UM and and is responsible for a lot of like
Speaker 1: ecological devastation and whatnot. This idea that you can have
Speaker 1: like like one of the things that you would have
Speaker 1: with an actual municipalist system, as you wouldn't be allowed
Speaker 1: to operate a company like Coke Industries that's able to
Speaker 1: UM you know, be based out of I think Kentucky, UM,
Speaker 1: but operate a series of refineries in the Gulf Coast
Speaker 1: that render large sections of that area uninhabitable because you
Speaker 1: would leave kind of control over what can be actually
Speaker 1: done in that area to the people who live there,
Speaker 1: rather than being able to have UM a corporation by
Speaker 1: land there and have its right to pollute enforced by
Speaker 1: the state. Right. That's kind of like one little example.
Speaker 1: UM there's municipalists. The system in northeast Syria and Rojava
Speaker 1: is is sort of a municipalist system and one of
Speaker 1: the specifically libertarian. Yeah, I mean there's an distinction between
Speaker 1: like well generally and yeah, we're we're getting into the
Speaker 1: weeds a little bit here, but these are these are
Speaker 1: like that's kind of the basics of what those terms means,
Speaker 1: just so that people don't get lost when you when
Speaker 1: you bring them up, because I think a lot of folks, um,
Speaker 1: you know, down't have necessarily that kind of those definitions,
Speaker 1: don't just pop up in their head when you use
Speaker 1: that word, right right, yeah, fair enough. UM. I also
Speaker 1: mentioned that states have been eco sidle from the inceptions,
Speaker 1: I feel like I should probably trying to find that
Speaker 1: as well. UM equal side and ecosidal is um is
Speaker 1: basically um, this idea that came out to the environmentalist movement.
Speaker 1: UM meant to points to the surveyor harm to nature,
Speaker 1: the last damage and destruction of ecosystems that's you know,
Speaker 1: caused over decades by you know these companies and really
Speaker 1: by the system as a whole. So it's often viewed
Speaker 1: through like a legal lens, as in, you know, these
Speaker 1: companies should be tried for their crimes um and as
Speaker 1: like for committing go side and that kind of thing,
Speaker 1: because it's often viewed like as like illegal like lower
Speaker 1: street put in please to classifiy equoside as a crime
Speaker 1: and that sort of thing. Um. Only a few countries
Speaker 1: have done that, like actually quotified eco side but it
Speaker 1: is something that um, so environmentalists pushed, you know, really
Speaker 1: raise awareness as a crime against humanity and the planet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's also kind of important to understand with
Speaker 1: Equal Side is that like there's a lot of focus
Speaker 1: I think in like left like in fronmutal movements just
Speaker 1: purely incorporations and even if you go back to the
Speaker 1: companies memes just like Hunter companies destroying the planets like
Speaker 1: well yeah, like like half of the merse they don't. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so you know, yeah, this this is something like
Speaker 1: like with Equal Side, it's like yeah, it's like it's
Speaker 1: not just corporations that do this. It's you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's the the state as a structure. It's the state
Speaker 1: as the institution, is the state as exactly, Yes, their
Speaker 1: agencies as they're sort of and that's that's what I
Speaker 1: try to Like, what I realized is is kind of
Speaker 1: sports now and I guess this is kind of like
Speaker 1: slowly like shifting away from birationalism, but that's fine. Um.
Speaker 1: What I will say that I've tried to like consciously,
Speaker 1: um sort of put into practice is emphasizing that like
Speaker 1: capitalism is not the only issue, you know, Um, like
Speaker 1: and those people like try to separate capitalism on the state,
Speaker 1: as if they could ever truly be separated. Even people
Speaker 1: who understand that, you know, aca capitalists are misguided and
Speaker 1: that you know, the state is necessary to maintain capitalism,
Speaker 1: there's some sort of like disconnect where there's like a
Speaker 1: whole ton of you know, organization and meming and all
Speaker 1: that about capitalism, and you know, oftentimes these sort of
Speaker 1: efforts are like particularly reformist types and unions and stuff.
Speaker 1: They try to mediate with capitalism through the state, you know,
Speaker 1: through the government, local re local government or federal government
Speaker 1: have the case. And what I really tried to emphasize
Speaker 1: is that it's not enough to have like a theory
Speaker 1: of capitalism. I think it's even more important to have
Speaker 1: a theory of hierarchy because I think it avoids it
Speaker 1: helps to avoid getting into these sort of traps of
Speaker 1: like um, well, class reductionism for one, but also like
Speaker 1: recreating certain structures within your organizations and in your efforts
Speaker 1: to change things, recreating the very you know, circumstances you're
Speaker 1: fighting against. You can't like condense everything into one problem,
Speaker 1: because try as we might, it's not that everything is
Speaker 1: one problem. It's an interconnected mesh that binds all of
Speaker 1: our problems together, and you can focus on, you know,
Speaker 1: really big extensions of that mesh, but it still is
Speaker 1: kind of just the mesh, and the mesh isn't the thing,
Speaker 1: but it connects to the edges of all of the things.
Speaker 1: And yeah, that type of ecology can be useful and
Speaker 1: even even relating to bioregions in terms of how they
Speaker 1: also connect with other territories and entities. I think it also,
Speaker 1: you know it this is one of the sort of
Speaker 1: problems that you have if you know, it's like, okay,
Speaker 1: so your plans to take sort of sovereign state power.
Speaker 1: It's like, well, you do it, right, But I mean
Speaker 1: the thing is, if if you if you you know,
Speaker 1: you seeze control of power of a state, right, your
Speaker 1: borders are essentially just like where the state's war machine
Speaker 1: ran out of steam, and you know, and this this
Speaker 1: becomes a normal problem because like I mean, if if
Speaker 1: you look at the bioregional maps, right, it's like there's
Speaker 1: there's literally no way you could ever have states with
Speaker 1: these borders because yeah, it's not like this, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's impossible, like you just you you cannot do it.
Speaker 1: And you know what that means is that states are
Speaker 1: sort of necessarily going, well, they're either going to be
Speaker 1: like a small fraction of a bioregion or they have
Speaker 1: multiple in them. And that's another sort of that becomes
Speaker 1: a sort of logistical problem because you know, like if
Speaker 1: if you want to look at like a lot of
Speaker 1: the worst sort of ecological sort of like human disasters,
Speaker 1: it's when you get states attempting to apply like states environmentalists. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's more certifically like it. It's it's you know, they
Speaker 1: have something that like sort of works in one test
Speaker 1: environment and then they broadly apply it across you know,
Speaker 1: an enormous sort of variety of areas and regions to
Speaker 1: have their own biospheres and have their own and that stuff.
Speaker 1: That's like that's like the fastest way to kill an
Speaker 1: enormous number of people. Yeah, just like it's like forcing
Speaker 1: a jigsaw piece that obviously doesn't fit into a spot
Speaker 1: where you wanted to, but you're just breaking the pieces.
Speaker 1: I want to say as well, that like that sort
Speaker 1: of I mean, at least the state's attesting it, right, Um,
Speaker 1: I remember I kind remember the exact name of like
Speaker 1: the the sort of like ideology or whatever. I think
Speaker 1: it was like this Elie Soviet Union probably one of
Speaker 1: your name, this Elie Soviet Union practice related to like
Speaker 1: farming that they just applied over like a vast, vast
Speaker 1: region end up with like a huge decrease in like
Speaker 1: food production. I can't remember the name of it. Like Senku.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, he just had this, he had this
Speaker 1: theory and it's just like push it and yeah, it
Speaker 1: led to some serious issues. Yeah, and I think, you know,
Speaker 1: if we're gonna talk like what's important about sort of birationalism,
Speaker 1: it's you have to have if you're going to implement
Speaker 1: anything right, you know, especially when you're trying to sort
Speaker 1: of manipulate biospheres, you're trying to preserve biosphares, you have
Speaker 1: to have local knowledge from the people who have been
Speaker 1: living in these biospheres for you know, enormous amounts of time.
Speaker 1: And that's something that states are really bad at and
Speaker 1: you know, tend to act to be suppressed and it's
Speaker 1: something you know, and I all said this there there's
Speaker 1: there's there's a kind of like there's like a kind
Speaker 1: of neoliberal version of this stuff. First, like oh, well
Speaker 1: do you know who local have like local knowledge blah
Speaker 1: blah blah. And then they're like, well, well we'll have
Speaker 1: local knowledge, but they that this will help them create
Speaker 1: market solutions to things like that also doesn't work and
Speaker 1: it's basically just tootized. Like yeah, but because that I
Speaker 1: really like sits le doesn't sit well with me. You know,
Speaker 1: like these sort of like see that. You see a
Speaker 1: lot of liberals like doing it a lot of these days.
Speaker 1: Whether they'll be like doing the whole land Acknowledge months
Speaker 1: thing and they'll be doing the that thing where they
Speaker 1: would just like say that, oh this is from so
Speaker 1: and sue culture and whatever, and then's just like boom,
Speaker 1: carry yeah, carry on with business as usual. Yeah, which
Speaker 1: I learned this technique from so and so tried, no,
Speaker 1: let me work as a consultant for your company. Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: It's it's commod it's commodifying the thing, and that that
Speaker 1: both produces a warped replication and then it also kind
Speaker 1: of makes the original thing seem like used in a
Speaker 1: weird way as well, like it wasn't designed. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I once reminded a bit of alienation and how we
Speaker 1: are just sort of separated from you know, aspects of
Speaker 1: our actual humanity because of the structure as we live under. Right,
Speaker 1: So instead of relating with the environment, or relating with
Speaker 1: our culture, or relating to other people, we're just relating
Speaker 1: through like these commodities and these products and these you know,
Speaker 1: just bastardized versions of things. And I think that it
Speaker 1: is also something that sort of pleagues like some environmentalists
Speaker 1: in terms. So there's there's there's almost like this subtle
Speaker 1: ill nation from the nature that um many of them
Speaker 1: seek to preserve, right where on the one hand, yes,
Speaker 1: you're trying to you know, preserve it and protect it
Speaker 1: and as commendable brand the other hand, the way you're
Speaker 1: going about it is basically like anti tactical to those schools,
Speaker 1: because you don't have that connection with the nature that
Speaker 1: you're trying to help. You know, what it seems like
Speaker 1: a lot of people not recognizing is that you know,
Speaker 1: humans are of hearts nature, right, and this is not
Speaker 1: a bioregional concept, right, This thing called bioregional reinhabitation in
Speaker 1: it in being that um meaning that we must come
Speaker 1: who to the geographical and biophysicalter and reinhabit understand its
Speaker 1: ecologically uniqueness and familiarize ourselves with the stories woven into
Speaker 1: the fabric of said land. It's history, it's people with
Speaker 1: it's cultures, it's flora, it's fauna. You know. It's only
Speaker 1: once we come home to the our byo regions and
Speaker 1: to our ecosystems, to all places, that we can really
Speaker 1: work together to see its potential, to see how we
Speaker 1: fit into it, how we can facilitate its healing, you know,
Speaker 1: bio region by bioy region. Yeah, that definitely mirrors stuff
Speaker 1: I've been working on relating to that type of like
Speaker 1: cognitive dissonance that you're talking about, and that alienation not
Speaker 1: just from like human human, but human to human to place,
Speaker 1: because yeah, we have like developed this like this commodified
Speaker 1: other version of nature that isn't actually what nature is. Um,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's we formed this thing that separate from us,
Speaker 1: which is not how we need to think about it,
Speaker 1: because it should be. We are all part of the
Speaker 1: same of of of that same system. We are not
Speaker 1: separate from it, and we're not isolated from it or
Speaker 1: its effects. We are just another part of it. So
Speaker 1: it's about getting in like getting a sense of ecology
Speaker 1: with both your bioregion and then the biosphere as as
Speaker 1: as a whole, and getting that ecology, which kind of
Speaker 1: will break down this notion of nature being in other
Speaker 1: and and I think because of the idea of nature
Speaker 1: being another that really kind of fosters our extraction that's
Speaker 1: led to our current problems because we don't use problems
Speaker 1: affecting us. We give you them as a practice as
Speaker 1: affecting the territory. And if we're if we're not the territory,
Speaker 1: then we can be safe. But that's not so I think.
Speaker 1: I think I may have talked about this on this
Speaker 1: show before, but you know that there's another aspect here,
Speaker 1: which is that viewing humans is sort of like separate
Speaker 1: from like this abstract nature is how you get a
Speaker 1: lot of really bad like racist environmentalism. Like if you
Speaker 1: haven't read The Trouble with Wilderness by Yeah Coroning, the
Speaker 1: Trouble with Wilderness is one of the things that like
Speaker 1: if you, yeah, if if you do environmental studies at all,
Speaker 1: like this is one of the first things they hand you.
Speaker 1: And the reason they hand it to you is because
Speaker 1: it you know, so the the the image of wilderness
Speaker 1: that we have is sort of like oh it's this
Speaker 1: like completely untapped thing. And it's like, well, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so that the reason the reason we have this image
Speaker 1: of like a wilderness with nothing in it is because
Speaker 1: there used to be people there and we killed them
Speaker 1: all or fortunately reported them. Yeah. Yeah, and it's especially yeah,
Speaker 1: it was for us literally planted those forests were I
Speaker 1: think even more pointedly should it should be stated those
Speaker 1: forests were a work of engineering that's on par with
Speaker 1: the Pyramids at Giza, if not like absolutely massively in
Speaker 1: excess of it there. They are a work of engineering
Speaker 1: that's every bit as impressive as any city ever built. Um,
Speaker 1: and every bit is like intense and required as much
Speaker 1: knowledge and scientific understanding. People just all we had, all
Speaker 1: of those people had died by the time white folks
Speaker 1: really because of the spread of disease or just because
Speaker 1: of acts like yeah, like I I think that's true
Speaker 1: definitely the East coast. With the West coast, I think
Speaker 1: it's even grimmer because the West coast you and this
Speaker 1: this happened, You still see this where like a lot
Speaker 1: of like the Incan National parks were literally like but
Speaker 1: people would go in and ethnically cleanse the population that
Speaker 1: was there. And then be like, oh hey, look it's
Speaker 1: it's now wilderness. This is now and this this is
Speaker 1: like the origin of the environmental movement. It's all of
Speaker 1: these like just like the most racist people you've ever
Speaker 1: seen in your life, like people yeah, well and even
Speaker 1: even even before them, like in you know, like like
Speaker 1: early hundreds, like not people like those guys. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like when when when when those guys are talking about
Speaker 1: like the purity of the wild like they're everything they
Speaker 1: think about the wilderness is also just about the purity
Speaker 1: of the white race, and it's it's yeah and if
Speaker 1: if if when you when when you start making that
Speaker 1: this like that's the separation between humans in nature, Like
Speaker 1: that's that's how you get this, Like that's how that's
Speaker 1: how you get these you know, ethnic cleansing, like genocide forests.
Speaker 1: I've been reading this very good book, just started last night,
Speaker 1: and I think we're gonna have the author on the
Speaker 1: show soon. Chris Begley. He's an underwater archaeologist and he
Speaker 1: wrote a book called The Next Apocalypse that's about collapses
Speaker 1: throughout history and how they actually differ from the popular
Speaker 1: conceptions of them. And he actually talks about a lot
Speaker 1: of the stuff we talk about in this show UM.
Speaker 1: And one of the points he makes is that this
Speaker 1: idea of like lost cities in dark jungles and whatnot,
Speaker 1: UM is based entirely on misconceptions first of all about
Speaker 1: like what jungles are, and then second on like these
Speaker 1: these very eurocentric ideas towards what lost means. Like he
Speaker 1: points out that every time there's in a lost city
Speaker 1: or civilization discovered, it's because archaeologists just like asked the
Speaker 1: people living there where the ruins were in there, Like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, it's like right over there, Like we we've
Speaker 1: known about this since forever. It was never lost, we
Speaker 1: just stopped living in that specific area. And the other
Speaker 1: thing he points out is that like this idea of
Speaker 1: a jungle as like a difficult and primeval place is ridiculous.
Speaker 1: If you had to pick anywhere to be stranded in
Speaker 1: the world of in terms of bioregions, you would pick
Speaker 1: a jungle like the Amazon, because it's pretty easy to
Speaker 1: survive there. That's why people live there for so long. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a ton of the Amazon Amazon as you know,
Speaker 1: as we've discovered, you know, there were cities and stuff
Speaker 1: happening in the Amazon. You know, it was like planted.
Speaker 1: There's food jungle like food forests and whatnot. Is the
Speaker 1: term people use it within the jungle like people set
Speaker 1: the people set the jungle in the Amazon up to
Speaker 1: provide them with food in a way that isn't exactly
Speaker 1: isn't the same as like what we considered to be agriculture,
Speaker 1: but it's absolutely a kind of agriculture. And because people
Speaker 1: don't see it as aricle, just like well, that's just
Speaker 1: you know, they were just running around the forest before
Speaker 1: we arrived, you know, it's like, yeah, no, they had
Speaker 1: they had essentially built themselves a big smart house in
Speaker 1: the middle of the woods that provided them with everything
Speaker 1: they needed. Um with upkeep that we would consider minimal
Speaker 1: based on like what a lot of our European ancestors
Speaker 1: that certainly like did in terms of labor to keep
Speaker 1: farms going. Like if you compare, I mean you could
Speaker 1: also talk about how like peasants in the medieval period
Speaker 1: probably worked less than a lot of people in the
Speaker 1: United States Dudish like everyone works less we do now.
Speaker 1: But it's a lot harder to keep like a mono
Speaker 1: culture farm going than it is to to keep a
Speaker 1: food forest going yeah, because I mean, once it's established,
Speaker 1: it literally maintains itself. M But what was the name
Speaker 1: of the book that you were talking about just now?
Speaker 1: It's called The Next Apocalypse and it's it's very good
Speaker 1: so far. Chris Begley is the author. I think we're
Speaker 1: gonna have them on next week. But um yeah, I've
Speaker 1: I've found it so far about a third of the
Speaker 1: way and very good it or someone check that out. Okay,
Speaker 1: who wants to say we're back Just that's now, that's
Speaker 1: the exit area. You're welcome here we are or some
Speaker 1: so yeah, once we have like embraced our understanding that
Speaker 1: you know, we belong to the land and not vice
Speaker 1: and was therefore pattern ourselves and societies based on its needs. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, that's when we get to that place of
Speaker 1: bioregional regeneration, which is another key concept of bioregionalism. And lastly,
Speaker 1: there's the concept of bioregional sensibility, which was developed by
Speaker 1: Mitchell Thomas Show and it's about developing the observational skills
Speaker 1: to observe the bioregional history, to develop the conceptual skills
Speaker 1: to juxtapoose you know, the scale of you know, the
Speaker 1: community and the region, and the ecosystem, the bioregion, all
Speaker 1: these different levels. Ability to like think in terms of
Speaker 1: all of them, to develop the imaginative faculties too. Really,
Speaker 1: I would say, play with multiple landscapes and developed the compassion.
Speaker 1: Two empathize with and work with both local and global neighbors,
Speaker 1: not just local and global human neighbors, but also you know,
Speaker 1: the flora and fauna living next door. There are a
Speaker 1: lot of different bioregional practices happening all of the world.
Speaker 1: Um I didn't note that it started in North America,
Speaker 1: but I noticed a lot of the big projects happening
Speaker 1: in like South America, you know in Brazil Sinaldo Ville,
Speaker 1: in Costa Rica Regenerativa, to then Colombia Regenerativa and the
Speaker 1: Pluriversity in the Himalayas as well, and many others. They're
Speaker 1: basically engaging in efforts involving applied education, alternative agriculture systems, mapping,
Speaker 1: green belt restoration. There's the you know, the Green Belt
Speaker 1: project in Africa as well, and these are all efforts
Speaker 1: to really understand and work with the bio regions that
Speaker 1: these people inhabit. So just a few tips that I
Speaker 1: wanted to end this off with you before we and
Speaker 1: things off UM. I was trying to link, um, the
Speaker 1: things that I talked about in some way to what
Speaker 1: people on the groups they are part of, the organizations,
Speaker 1: they are part of, the communities, they're part of can
Speaker 1: do you know, as an action to strengthen their resilience
Speaker 1: or to develop you know, autonomy. Right in this case,
Speaker 1: it is the strength and resilience and also to develop
Speaker 1: the vitality of the bio region you inhabit. So, first
Speaker 1: of all, I think it's important done that we learn
Speaker 1: as much as we can about our areas, and learn
Speaker 1: especially through action, whether it be through cleanups, you know,
Speaker 1: observing the space around you, whether it be through observing
Speaker 1: weather patterns, UM bet to be through looking at the
Speaker 1: we're on hikes and looking at the way that the
Speaker 1: temperature changes and the texture of the soil changes as
Speaker 1: you go up and down and um altitude. I think
Speaker 1: it's also important to try to get involved with actions too,
Speaker 1: um restore natural features and to understand the police that
Speaker 1: those natural features have in the broader by region. Of course,
Speaker 1: there are lots of sustainable projects happening all over the world.
Speaker 1: You know, if they aren't any new area. UM be
Speaker 1: the change you want to see Art one, make it happen.
Speaker 1: And really also, I would say, find ways to link
Speaker 1: projects for environmental sustainability and restoration with projects for human umanancipation.
Speaker 1: Find ways to support access to you know, basic human
Speaker 1: needs within your locality. To find ways to sort of
Speaker 1: because when we speak of bioregions and you know, living
Speaker 1: within our bioregions and so on and so forth, that's
Speaker 1: all well and good. But if, for example, your region
Speaker 1: has to import whole bunch of food all the time
Speaker 1: to support the population, I think there needs to be
Speaker 1: ways to um decrease that sort of import and to
Speaker 1: find ways to um live sustainably within the area. Raise
Speaker 1: awareness of course as well, um about bioregional thinking, systems thinking,
Speaker 1: social ecological thinking. And yeah, just get to work anti work,
Speaker 1: work for figuring the structures of more horizontal, originally ethical
Speaker 1: and sustainable way of life. And of course disrupt the
Speaker 1: projects like getting the way of those schools. And I
Speaker 1: see that as tentatively as I can to avoid legal trouble.
Speaker 1: That's it. Take care everyone and be kind to every piece.
Speaker 1: Welcome to it could happen here A podcast that is
Speaker 1: remarkably today not really so much about things falling apart
Speaker 1: and is mostly about things in fact getting better and
Speaker 1: how we can do that. Um, I'm your host, Christopher.
Speaker 1: With me today is Garrison and we're also joined by
Speaker 1: Nick and Max, who are two members of the artist
Speaker 1: collective solar Punk Surf Club, who have released a very
Speaker 1: very interesting you game that we are here in part
Speaker 1: of talk about called solar Punk Features. Hello, Dick, I, Max,
Speaker 1: How how are you doing? Hey? Doing well? Thanks? Yeah,
Speaker 1: doing great. Thanks for having us on. Yeah, excited to
Speaker 1: have you too on. So I guess my first question
Speaker 1: is how did you too get into game design and
Speaker 1: sort of first have the idea to do a sort
Speaker 1: of like political gaming project like this. That's a good question.
Speaker 1: So we're not, um, we're definitely not game designers by
Speaker 1: profession or trade. UM. We're members of the artist collective
Speaker 1: Solar Punk Surf Club, and we're particularly interested in creating
Speaker 1: artwork and social practice that pre figures these kinds of
Speaker 1: egalitarian futures that we'd like to see in the world.
Speaker 1: And so this game was something that we've been kind
Speaker 1: of a project that we've been thinking about and sitting
Speaker 1: on for a little while and was kind of something
Speaker 1: that made us excited, got us excited, and we think
Speaker 1: there's a whole bunch of other reasons that we think
Speaker 1: it's a really cool um project to work on an
Speaker 1: important project, and um yeah, so it kind of took
Speaker 1: a took a deep dive headfirst into the world of
Speaker 1: game design and learning how to how to do that
Speaker 1: over the past year or so. Okay, so how about we,
Speaker 1: I guess also start with I guess explaining what solar
Speaker 1: Punk features is and sort of how it works, and
Speaker 1: then we can get into the sort of political aspect
Speaker 1: of this sort of game design project. So, solar Punk
Speaker 1: Futures is a storytelling game where players imagine pathways to
Speaker 1: a desirable future by collaboratively overcoming real world challenges. The
Speaker 1: object of the game is to collectively remember one of
Speaker 1: the stories that grew into our utopia. Um. The idea
Speaker 1: is that through back casting, where you assume within the
Speaker 1: context of the game that players are already in utopia
Speaker 1: and merely remembering back to their ancestors struggle, that players
Speaker 1: can transcend the idea that what currently exists must necessarily exist,
Speaker 1: which social theorists Murray book Chain described as the acid
Speaker 1: that corrodes all visionary thinking. So we wanted to make
Speaker 1: a system to facilitate collaborative performance sort of we call
Speaker 1: it a collaborative performance of memory, but one that combines
Speaker 1: sincerity with laughter and speculative storytelling. The game also combines
Speaker 1: a lot of different elements that we saw in other games, um,
Speaker 1: collaborative you know, the collaborative storytelling, cooperative gameplay, uh, some
Speaker 1: elements of role playing, and different kind of mechanics that
Speaker 1: we thought would build out that kind of, like I
Speaker 1: said earlier, those prefigurations of those egalitarian world So we're
Speaker 1: trying to you know, we're trying to make a game
Speaker 1: that had the fiction and the idea of utopia built
Speaker 1: in uh in terms of the goals of the game,
Speaker 1: but it was also we wanted to build it into
Speaker 1: some of the mechanics of how the game is actually
Speaker 1: played too. Um. But my question from here is sort of, well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess firstly is I think what sort
Speaker 1: of specifically drew you to solar Punk is sort of
Speaker 1: an aesthetic for for this, Like I know there's been
Speaker 1: a lot of sort of like the kind of social
Speaker 1: coology solar punk fusions, but I'm interested in what you
Speaker 1: specifically to it. So we see solar punk as a
Speaker 1: visionary utopian politics and aesthetic that critically engages the reality
Speaker 1: of capitalist catastrophe while maintaining a radical optimism about humanity's
Speaker 1: hopes for a communal, ecological future. Nick was just speaking
Speaker 1: to this. UM. We see it as a restorative justice
Speaker 1: process on a planetary scale among people, between humans and
Speaker 1: non human nature. So that means reclaiming pieces of the past,
Speaker 1: pre pre capitalist culture. UM, that means material accountability for
Speaker 1: old practices, and it also means radical adaptability towards new ones.
Speaker 1: I think it provided a useful way of synthesizing several
Speaker 1: currents that we had already been thinking about and involved
Speaker 1: in between new media and social practice, thinking not just
Speaker 1: about images and objects in space, but also the set
Speaker 1: of social relations that those things produce. Yeah, we're also
Speaker 1: we're like partisans within solar punk. I don't think there's
Speaker 1: I don't think there's too many pro capitalists within solar punk,
Speaker 1: but I think there are some people who are maybe
Speaker 1: drawn to the aesthetic but don't necessarily have a politics.
Speaker 1: But we do think that there's a kind of a
Speaker 1: latent horizontalism, a latent anarchistic politics in a lot of
Speaker 1: the aesthetics around solar punk and so uh as a
Speaker 1: as a collaborative as an aesthetic that is being defined
Speaker 1: collaboratively by people online and elsewhere. You know, we wanted
Speaker 1: to kind of stick out of position about what we
Speaker 1: thought a really realistic utop be in world might look
Speaker 1: and feel like, Yeah, and I think this is something else.
Speaker 1: I know YouTube, I'm very passionate about. Um is about
Speaker 1: specifically using games as a medium to do this and
Speaker 1: sort of this as like this kind of storytelling membrance
Speaker 1: as a specifically political intervention. So could you talk a
Speaker 1: bit more about you know, like a yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: good questions like okay, so why this and not on
Speaker 1: you know, on this sort of less more like like
Speaker 1: why this and not a guerrilla gardening? Why this and
Speaker 1: not some other kind of organizing etcetera, etcetera. Um, Yeah,
Speaker 1: her you tube say about that. Yeah, well, I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna hite on guerrilla gardening. I definitely think it's a boation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's also in the game. Yeah, that's true. It's it's
Speaker 1: one of the cards, one of the tools that you
Speaker 1: get to use as an ancestor. Um. Yeah, I think,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a lot of different things that we
Speaker 1: were thinking about when we were thinking about why game
Speaker 1: that I got a little bit into earlier. But you know,
Speaker 1: for one, UM, I think it helps reach abroad and
Speaker 1: often dep politicized audience with a fun way to kind
Speaker 1: of engage in some thorny political questions. I think that
Speaker 1: games as a participatory medium were especially interesting for people
Speaker 1: who are interested in sort of anarchistic modes of teaching
Speaker 1: and education, like education through doing rather than lecture. Although
Speaker 1: you know, we were also read a lot of good
Speaker 1: political theories, so I'm not I'm not opposed to that. Um.
Speaker 1: And then I think, uh, you know, games are also fun,
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of there's a lot of political
Speaker 1: organizing and activism work that happens out there that feels
Speaker 1: that's hard and that is necessary to do. But just
Speaker 1: because a lot of the important work to be done
Speaker 1: is hard doesn't mean everything that's hard is important, and
Speaker 1: everything that's fun is you know, trifling or not going
Speaker 1: to help us get where we're going and and overthrow
Speaker 1: capitalism and build a new world. So um, yeah, those
Speaker 1: are those are some of the reasons. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: think that's especially sort of interesting point because I think
Speaker 1: a lot of what happens in left to spaces you
Speaker 1: get a lot of people doing stuff and they burn
Speaker 1: not really fast because you know, you're doing an enormous
Speaker 1: amount of work. It's all miserable. A lot of the
Speaker 1: times you're getting physically assaulted, and like, I think that's
Speaker 1: one of the things that's interesting to me about this
Speaker 1: is you need other forms of sort of community building
Speaker 1: and sort of like you need other forms of organizing
Speaker 1: that do not involve you being repeatedly traumatized over and
Speaker 1: over again. And that, yeah, especially just working on something
Speaker 1: like this, and then I don't know, just playing with
Speaker 1: your friends and having having things that are like collaborative
Speaker 1: and joyful and community building is I think very important
Speaker 1: as a way to just you know, even just this
Speaker 1: is on a very basic logistical level, but prevent people
Speaker 1: from burning out. Yeah, And and I definitely think that
Speaker 1: there's a role there to prevent people from burning out
Speaker 1: and and inspiring people with some of the fun ideas,
Speaker 1: the ideas that they come up with when they're not
Speaker 1: looking at a Google doc meeting notes but instead they're
Speaker 1: playing a card game and maybe drinking a couple of beers,
Speaker 1: and they're like, oh, how would I combine guerrilla gardening?
Speaker 1: And um, you know performance are too who bring about
Speaker 1: you know, to solve a specific challenge of capitalism like
Speaker 1: deforestation or these are some of the cards in the game. Um.
Speaker 1: And so I think it can be inspiring, you know,
Speaker 1: it's also um, it can be educational. I played with
Speaker 1: some family. Uh. I think the first time I played,
Speaker 1: when we got the physical copy that wasn't a play test,
Speaker 1: was with some family and they don't necessarily identify as
Speaker 1: leftists of any kind, but we had a really fun
Speaker 1: game where we explored ideas of deconstructing borders, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, they were It wasn't like I was guiding
Speaker 1: them in this direction. It was just kind of the
Speaker 1: assumption of the game that there was utopia, got beyond
Speaker 1: this ingrained capitalist realism, that there just isn't that there
Speaker 1: isn't an alternative. And they're like, okay, well the game
Speaker 1: says we're already in utopia, so that means there's no
Speaker 1: private property. And I was like, whoa, that's a that's
Speaker 1: a jump I didn't expect from my from my family.
Speaker 1: One thing I'm interested in in terms of how it
Speaker 1: functions as a game is like balancing the actual more
Speaker 1: I don't know, fund based like role playing game elements
Speaker 1: with like it's kind of structure as a thought exercise,
Speaker 1: and like a world building game, like how how how
Speaker 1: do you approach trying to get a balance of like
Speaker 1: fun role playing as well as this type of like
Speaker 1: reverse world building. I was kind of I was still
Speaker 1: a little bit on the y A game in the
Speaker 1: first place question, but I'm also intrigued by the balancing
Speaker 1: fun and politics question. If you don't mind, I wanted
Speaker 1: to go back to the y A game for just
Speaker 1: a second, um, because I think maybe it will lead
Speaker 1: to this. Games are, you know, an ancient form of art.
Speaker 1: I know, I said we work in new media before,
Speaker 1: but games are actually an ancient form of art, and
Speaker 1: I would argue social practice. Um. There's a game called Senate.
Speaker 1: There's a game called The Royal Game of r which
Speaker 1: both date to five thousand years ago in ancient Egypt
Speaker 1: and ancient Mesopotamia, respectively. We did in making the game,
Speaker 1: we did a bunch of research on the history of
Speaker 1: of games. There's a fifteenth century game called the Game
Speaker 1: of the Goose from uh well, present day Italy that
Speaker 1: paired like these gorgeous illustrations, also with like didactic moral instruction.
Speaker 1: In the early early twentieth century, the Surrealists created a
Speaker 1: series of games UM with the intention of breaking through
Speaker 1: traditional thought patterns and unleashing the potentials of the unconscious.
Speaker 1: They also wanted to subvert academic modes of inquiry. UM.
Speaker 1: And then today, you know, some of our most popular
Speaker 1: table top games. You know, I think Nick was mentioning
Speaker 1: this earlier, how they can sometimes inscribe oppressive logics. So,
Speaker 1: you know, rather than a game where you're competing against
Speaker 1: other players to drive them into poverty, or a game
Speaker 1: where you're trying to colonize other players land, you know,
Speaker 1: for the purpose of world domination, we wanted to make
Speaker 1: a game that actually practices the cooperation, interdependence, care, consent, uh,
Speaker 1: these things that will be needed, you know, if we
Speaker 1: actually to transcend the social ecological crises of our day.
Speaker 1: And kind of to that point, you know, I would
Speaker 1: say that games always reflect the beliefs and norms of
Speaker 1: their historical context. So with Solar Punk Futures, we wanted
Speaker 1: to kind of flip the script and UM project using
Speaker 1: you know, the modalities of like speculative fiction, collaborative performance.
Speaker 1: As I mentioned, the values and more is of a
Speaker 1: of a desirable future. So games are are very human thing,
Speaker 1: an ancient human thing. And why do people play games? Uh?
Speaker 1: As I mentioned, you know, education is part of it
Speaker 1: um but also building social bonds is another important piece
Speaker 1: and that always is a company. It's a very like
Speaker 1: academic way of talking about it, maybe, but it is.
Speaker 1: It is fun. It has to be fun. That's why
Speaker 1: people do it. In terms of the To get a
Speaker 1: little deeper into the balancing question, you know, every game
Speaker 1: is a balance between a bunch of different competing factors.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of people who were talking about the
Speaker 1: balance between randomness and planning in in games, and the
Speaker 1: balance between structure and free form and it's definitely something
Speaker 1: if there's any game designers out there thinking about making,
Speaker 1: you know, games like this, play testing it will help
Speaker 1: you so much because you know, the game in a
Speaker 1: rough form existed in the spring of last year, but
Speaker 1: playtesting really helped us refine a lot of those questions
Speaker 1: and find that kind of balance between structure and freeformness.
Speaker 1: We wanted it to be accessible to people who aren't
Speaker 1: d n D players. But we've also played with people
Speaker 1: who play a lot of d n D and GM
Speaker 1: and all this stuff, and they took it in a
Speaker 1: lot of fun and wild directions that we didn't expect.
Speaker 1: That helped inform kind of new ways that we could.
Speaker 1: You know, we added some optional rules in there for
Speaker 1: people who want to take it in a different direction
Speaker 1: or or add more complexity, or or even or for
Speaker 1: other people who need a little bit like a handhold
Speaker 1: and want to flip a coin to decide something rather
Speaker 1: than um, you know, come up with it totally on
Speaker 1: their own. So I think, um, yeah, it's a hard
Speaker 1: it's a hard thing to balance, you know, all the
Speaker 1: different factors that go into a game. But I definitely
Speaker 1: think play testing and all the people who played with
Speaker 1: us in those early games really helped helped us figure
Speaker 1: out the right balance. And to your earlier point about burnout,
Speaker 1: like activists burnout, Um, some people who we've invited to
Speaker 1: play the game maybe have have expressed this idea of like, well, um,
Speaker 1: I'd love to, but I don't have time, and maybe
Speaker 1: maybe they they think of of gaming And I know
Speaker 1: I've certainly been guilty of this too, of feeling guilt
Speaker 1: over things that feel like it indulges like you should
Speaker 1: be doing the real work all the time. But you know,
Speaker 1: I think it's important to hold that in the perspective
Speaker 1: of the tradition of of feminism, civil rights advocates, others
Speaker 1: on the left that have talked about the importance of
Speaker 1: um joy that needs to be integral to our struggles.
Speaker 1: There's the famous I'm a Goldman quip. If I can't dance,
Speaker 1: it's not my revolution. So perhaps you know, these ideas
Speaker 1: of like guilt and shame or martyrdom or whatever need
Speaker 1: are kind of toxic parts of the old world that
Speaker 1: we need to to let go of. UM. So I
Speaker 1: guess this is kind of coming back to say that there's,
Speaker 1: as as Nick was saying, there is an ethical, pre
Speaker 1: figurative case of um of how games can allow people
Speaker 1: to um express themselves through play, but there's also a
Speaker 1: tactical one, and that games can be a structured way
Speaker 1: of thinking about how do we create a liberated society
Speaker 1: one everything I think is sort of interesting about. Well, like,
Speaker 1: I guess this is somewhat less true of tabletop games
Speaker 1: as in medium, because tapletop games are a lot of
Speaker 1: sort of cloudy storytelling is stuff. But like I know,
Speaker 1: like like so like I play a lot of video games, right,
Speaker 1: and it's like it's like a lot of the structure
Speaker 1: of what gaming is is sort of like it basically
Speaker 1: it turned into like another job that you have and
Speaker 1: it's interesting. Yeah, I mean, you know, and you you like,
Speaker 1: you get, you get the same you even get like
Speaker 1: bogo like crossover between the terminology of like like you know,
Speaker 1: like I think like grinding is like mind yeah, like mind.
Speaker 1: I think I think that came from gaming first and
Speaker 1: then moved over into the weird grindset stuff. But like
Speaker 1: I think you're right, yeah yeah, and gamification, right, that's
Speaker 1: another way that like gaming is being almost like weaponized
Speaker 1: by capitalism to get squeezed just a little bit more
Speaker 1: out of everyone. Yeah, there's there's a really interesting article
Speaker 1: whose name I am forgetting because I am yeah, I um,
Speaker 1: but Vicky Oustawal wrote it like a while ago that
Speaker 1: was about how like games are like it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's used sort of mechanically doing the same thing
Speaker 1: over and over and over again. But it's it's a
Speaker 1: problem because it's like it's it's labor that's like too perfect.
Speaker 1: I gues it doesn't create anything. There's no sort of
Speaker 1: like I like, there's there's no sort of like um
Speaker 1: like aspect that produces like value that could be extracted.
Speaker 1: You're just sort of you're just doing a thing and
Speaker 1: over again, and it's like and you know, and that
Speaker 1: then then that you know, becomes a problem for capital
Speaker 1: in some sense, is why there's all these panics about
Speaker 1: like everyone being addicted to gaming, because it's like, well, okay,
Speaker 1: you're not making money for us. But I think it's
Speaker 1: interesting truck simulator you could be driving some actual yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know, I think it's interesting that this is
Speaker 1: a political intervention into that of creating something that's you know,
Speaker 1: precisely the opposite of that that it's you know, you're
Speaker 1: not sort of like it's not just like an incredible
Speaker 1: intensification of the sort of like reward systems of working.
Speaker 1: It's hey, we're gonna come together and we're gonna tell
Speaker 1: we're gonna you know, make collaborative decisions and overcome challenges.
Speaker 1: And I think I think that's a very interesting sort
Speaker 1: of political angle to come at this from. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think a lot of a lot of tabletop games in
Speaker 1: particular compared to video games. I think, well, I'll say
Speaker 1: role playing games in particular put you in a driver's
Speaker 1: seat in a way that I think can is is hard, right,
Speaker 1: Like sometimes I'm too tired to or if I think,
Speaker 1: you know, I have a I have a D and
Speaker 1: D night, and I'm like, I don't know if I
Speaker 1: have the energy for this after working all day. Um,
Speaker 1: whereas I might have energy to play you know, a
Speaker 1: video game RPG that kind of walks me, you know,
Speaker 1: handholds me through a story. Um, it's kind of more
Speaker 1: like watching more passive. Um. But I do think that
Speaker 1: there's I just think there's something so important about thinking
Speaker 1: through what it might be like to live in this
Speaker 1: utopian society. And it's important, I think because if we don't, well,
Speaker 1: for one, a ton of people just don't even think
Speaker 1: about it. Um. And so to the extent that this
Speaker 1: game is something that gets bought or played with families
Speaker 1: of people who are you know, one of the many
Speaker 1: people who have been de politicized in this country, UM,
Speaker 1: I think that can be really helpful. But I also
Speaker 1: think that um, I've played it, and I've found really
Speaker 1: fun and exciting ideas that I wouldn't have thought about
Speaker 1: if I was staring at a power map or something
Speaker 1: and thinking where can we intervene in my city too,
Speaker 1: you know, help help solve this or that problem. So
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, I think there's power there. So I think.
Speaker 1: One of the other things I think is interesting to
Speaker 1: me about how you Tube sort of the team put
Speaker 1: this project together is And it's also like you know,
Speaker 1: so like you can buy the versions of it that
Speaker 1: have like very very nice art, but you also just
Speaker 1: put the cards and the rules up for free and
Speaker 1: you can just sort of print and play it. So owner, yeah,
Speaker 1: if you could talk a bit about decision you do
Speaker 1: that democratic accessibility is really important to us. It's part
Speaker 1: of the concept that we wanted to integrate into every
Speaker 1: aspect of the game's production and distribution. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: the whole thing is available as a free print and
Speaker 1: play PDF download. UM. It's all Creative Commons licensed UM.
Speaker 1: So that's yeah. And you know, at the same time,
Speaker 1: as you mentioned, we we uh are interested in materiality
Speaker 1: and want wanted to create, um something that could could
Speaker 1: accompany you know, a face to face interaction as well,
Speaker 1: which is you know, frankly, well, I'll just speak for myself.
Speaker 1: That's probably more my interest. Um, even though I think
Speaker 1: you know like that we have a tabletop simulator version two,
Speaker 1: which I think is really cool. But as far as
Speaker 1: the decision to make the game, you know, free, free forever. Um,
Speaker 1: we want people to play, We want it to be
Speaker 1: genuinely useful. Um. This is not a this is not
Speaker 1: a capitalistic business venture. We're running a break even budget
Speaker 1: and want to just keep doing projects and you know,
Speaker 1: elaborating like the solar punk tradition and connecting it to social, ecological,
Speaker 1: communalist politics. So if this can be a catalyst towards
Speaker 1: being able to do more of that, then um, then
Speaker 1: that's you know, we'll have we'll have succeeded on our
Speaker 1: on our terms at least. What's the set us of
Speaker 1: physical copies of how can people if they want to
Speaker 1: use cards and stuff? What is how how would one
Speaker 1: go about getting those? Yeah, so there's a couple of
Speaker 1: different ways people can download the free print and play
Speaker 1: if they like. If they really love it, they want
Speaker 1: to buy the physical copy. We sold out of the
Speaker 1: kind of first edition that we were able to afford
Speaker 1: to print. But we're raising money on Kickstarter for a
Speaker 1: second edition. So if people back us at a certain
Speaker 1: tier there, I think it's forty five dollars or higher. Uh,
Speaker 1: you get a copy of the game when we're able
Speaker 1: to print them. Uh and so yeah, so it's a
Speaker 1: um and of course, as Max mentioned, you can also
Speaker 1: play on tabletop simulator. But yeah, we're we're really excited
Speaker 1: about it. I think we're also hoping to take it
Speaker 1: around to some you know, political workshops, probably on Zoom
Speaker 1: for the foreseeable future, get maybe game convention, tabletop game
Speaker 1: conventions and stuff, and also some art art shows um
Speaker 1: to be announced, to be announced, but there's a couple
Speaker 1: of art shows that we're excited to be showing it in.
Speaker 1: So um yeah. Yeah. One one thing I'm really excited
Speaker 1: about in terms of playing this at some point is
Speaker 1: the I think starting from the point of like you're
Speaker 1: trying to build the world now, you can really easy,
Speaker 1: it's really easy to run into ruts um starting at
Speaker 1: the end point than working backwards, I think because that
Speaker 1: produces that reverse type of thought. I think it's a
Speaker 1: little bit easier for to find the path than just
Speaker 1: starting here and looking at the world to be like oh,
Speaker 1: how do we do anything to make it better? Instead
Speaker 1: of being at the opposite place and being like, what's
Speaker 1: what is the way to backtrack? I think can maybe
Speaker 1: give you some connections and ideas that you may not
Speaker 1: have had otherwise because we're kind of always stuck in
Speaker 1: the now. How do we get now better? So I
Speaker 1: would be very excited to uh try try this out
Speaker 1: at some point and uh and experience that backtrack thinking,
Speaker 1: because I think it's a Yeah, I'm really intrigued with
Speaker 1: that specific aspect of the game because yeah, I'm sure
Speaker 1: there's gonna be a lot of solar punk games within
Speaker 1: the next decade probably, um, and this is one aspect
Speaker 1: that I think actually is unique and something that's not
Speaker 1: just intrinsic to sell their punk um, you know, it's
Speaker 1: something that's kind of been added on. So uh, that's
Speaker 1: something I'm really excited about. And yeah, I would love
Speaker 1: to love to pick this up uh soon. Yeah, thank
Speaker 1: you for saying that. Um. I think one of the
Speaker 1: things that we hope that the game does is help
Speaker 1: people break through that capitalist realism. Yeah, Like there is
Speaker 1: no alternative. It's easier to imagine the end of the
Speaker 1: world than the end of capitalism, etcetera. UM. And you know, similarly,
Speaker 1: if you ask people to imagine the future, uh, it's
Speaker 1: very hard and uh and if they are able to
Speaker 1: at all, it is often extrapolating sort of the worst
Speaker 1: trends of today into a dystopian future. Yeah, I remember slightly.
Speaker 1: I remember so when when I was in I was
Speaker 1: in middle school or something, we had this acietm where
Speaker 1: we had to like write a you like, right, what
Speaker 1: are perfect like utopian society would be? And we like
Speaker 1: did it, and like three quarters of the like society
Speaker 1: people come up with were just like the worst imaginable
Speaker 1: dystopia and it was just like, it's just really grim certific. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if I was gonna if I was gonna make what
Speaker 1: I thought was an accurate prediction of the future, it
Speaker 1: might be more similar to the first season of this
Speaker 1: podcast than uh, some of the hopeful futures. But I don't.
Speaker 1: I also don't think. I don't think the door is
Speaker 1: closed on any kind of solar punk future. I think
Speaker 1: it's important. One of the important aspects that we included
Speaker 1: that that is that makes solar punk different than just
Speaker 1: kind of vague utopianism is that we think we asked
Speaker 1: people to also think about the barriers they run into,
Speaker 1: to think about, you know what, who's gonna who's gonna
Speaker 1: oppose you if you're trying to um, you know, deal
Speaker 1: with polluted water and you find some really great system
Speaker 1: and improve a region's water supply. You know, Nestley might
Speaker 1: come in and buy the rights to the whole region,
Speaker 1: the whole watershed. So you know, imagining those that opposition,
Speaker 1: the material conditions that might change, and how you adapt
Speaker 1: to them. We hope that's something that people also benefit
Speaker 1: from who played this game and and make some predictions
Speaker 1: about the strategic decisions that capital is going to make
Speaker 1: to oppose your your utopian vision. And I hope there
Speaker 1: are more solar punk games, Like you said, I hope
Speaker 1: there's a preponderance of solar punk art in the in
Speaker 1: the next decade. That would be amazing. And you know,
Speaker 1: to what you were just saying, you're right, solar punk
Speaker 1: doesn't mean the end of politics, doesn't mean the absence
Speaker 1: of conflict. Um. So I think we tried to integrate
Speaker 1: that into the game. What makes a good solar punk
Speaker 1: stories that it is plausible yet distinctly anti utopian, anti dystopian,
Speaker 1: rather um it you know, provides a glimpse into a
Speaker 1: future possibility for say, the reharmonization of humans with other humans,
Speaker 1: humans with non human nature. Um and that is going
Speaker 1: to involve some amount of opposition on the one hand
Speaker 1: and reconstruction on the other. In short to to critique
Speaker 1: by building as the slogan goes, all right, yeah, plugs time,
Speaker 1: what do you what do you need to have plugs? Uh? So, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we have an upcoming live stream on Twitch with Veterans
Speaker 1: for Peace. They have some gamers for Peace and Tuesday
Speaker 1: night at eight p m they're gonna be playing solar
Speaker 1: Punk solar Punk Features with us. Uh. If people are
Speaker 1: interested in the game, they can download it for print
Speaker 1: and play on our website at h T T P
Speaker 1: colon slash Slash the Future dot WTF uh and uh.
Speaker 1: People can also find a link to our kickstarter on
Speaker 1: that website if they're interested in pre ordering physical copy,
Speaker 1: which we very much appreciate. We're getting close to funded.
Speaker 1: That's very exciting. I hope, I hope, I hope it
Speaker 1: gets fund and I want to see more of these
Speaker 1: because the art is extremely cool. And yeah, well, thank
Speaker 1: you to you for coming on this has been It
Speaker 1: could Happen here, and we'll see you the next time
Speaker 1: an episode goes up. I don't know when that's gonna
Speaker 1: be right now, So yeah, wonderful extros. Hey, We'll be
Speaker 1: back Monday with more episodes every week from now until
Speaker 1: the heat death of the Universe. It Could Happen Here
Speaker 1: is a production of cool Zone Media. Or more podcasts
Speaker 1: from cool zone Media, visit our website cool zone media
Speaker 1: dot com, or check us out on the I Heart
Speaker 1: 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.