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 everyone to the It
Speaker 1: Could Happening a podcast. My name is Saint Andrew and
Speaker 1: I'll be a host as we talk about politics stuff
Speaker 1: with me. Today is Garrison Hello, and Christopher Hello, and
Speaker 1: Sufi Hi. And today we will be tackling or rather,
Speaker 1: we'll be taking a trip to the anarchist activism in
Speaker 1: Latin America with a specifies more. But first we need
Speaker 1: to get into some context here. The first organization to
Speaker 1: promote the concept of a SPECIFISEMO was the Federation Anarchista
Speaker 1: Uruguaya or the FAU, which is founded in nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: six by anarchist Milton's who embraced the idea of an
Speaker 1: organization there was specifically anarchist, but those who don't know.
Speaker 1: Not long after rather two decades after six UM, the
Speaker 1: US install a dictatorship in Uruguay, the last from nineteen
Speaker 1: the f A you survived that dictatorship and went on
Speaker 1: to establish connections with other South American anarchist revolutionaries. So
Speaker 1: they helped to support the founding of the Federa Shao
Speaker 1: Anarchista Gaocha or f a G. I don't know if
Speaker 1: I'm pronounced that correctly, the Federal ANARCHISTAKABOA and the Fedshaw
Speaker 1: and Arkista the Rio de Janero or f the r
Speaker 1: G in their respective regions for so and they also
Speaker 1: helped to found the Argentinean organization nas Alka, which means
Speaker 1: rebel while when you coming onto stage in Latin America
Speaker 1: in the last few decades, the ideas that really make
Speaker 1: up A specifies more Sasha, a historic threat that's really
Speaker 1: run through the anarchist movement internationally since the beginning. UM.
Speaker 1: It may as we get into like what is and stuff,
Speaker 1: it may sound very similar to platform is UM. Are
Speaker 1: you all familiar with that current? Yeah, I'm from familiar
Speaker 1: with platforms a little bit, but we can probably I
Speaker 1: don't know, explain it for the people at at at
Speaker 1: home who are not as who do not spend as
Speaker 1: much time thinking about old, old, old anarchist terms, right
Speaker 1: right right, so they're generic listener or viewer or whatever. UM.
Speaker 1: Platform is UM began with a document that was written
Speaker 1: in nine by the former Peasant Army leader Nestor macne
Speaker 1: either Met and other militants of the Yellow Truder or
Speaker 1: Workers Cause group. They published a document called Organizational Platform
Speaker 1: of the Libertarian Communists, and it was written in response
Speaker 1: to well being exiled from the Russian Revolution UM and
Speaker 1: having to struggle really to find their foot in after
Speaker 1: the Bolsheviks turned the work of Soviets into instruments of
Speaker 1: one party rule. UM, so the Power Space group, the
Speaker 1: Yello Truder, they really criticized the anarchist movement for a
Speaker 1: lack of organization. So they proposed an alternative that is
Speaker 1: controversial to some anarchists, but it's just actually a general
Speaker 1: union of anarchists based on anarchist communism that would strive
Speaker 1: for theoretical and tactical unity and I focus on class
Speaker 1: struggle and labor unions. Obviously, platform is UM, like all
Speaker 1: political ideas, it's not a static you know, the world
Speaker 1: has progressed. Sickness significantly in a century. So um, while
Speaker 1: there is an emphasis and workers struggle and class struggle. UM,
Speaker 1: when you speak to most platforms today, I would say, Um,
Speaker 1: obviously I don't have stats on that. I would say
Speaker 1: most platforms can recognize that, you know, the no war
Speaker 1: with the class war is a bit reductive. Um. I've
Speaker 1: also noticed, actually that platformism has been getting a bit
Speaker 1: more popularity lately. I don't know if it's just me
Speaker 1: and my perception, but I don't know if you'all seen
Speaker 1: that I have. I've not seen tons of it here.
Speaker 1: A lot of the type of anarchist of my it around,
Speaker 1: or at least see is is not is not in
Speaker 1: this vein. But most most of the stuff I see
Speaker 1: is like around um, like the kind of like live
Speaker 1: anarchy type kind of strings um and more individualists. Right.
Speaker 1: But that's just I think a very like Pacific Northwest
Speaker 1: specific thing that the anarchists here just kind of generally
Speaker 1: trend in that direction. So I'm not sure what it's
Speaker 1: literally like across like this country in other places around
Speaker 1: the world. Yeah, I know, I know, I know, I've
Speaker 1: definitely seen it especially I think I think it's it's
Speaker 1: I don't know almost. I think it's bigger a few
Speaker 1: years ago, but back like there is a big spike
Speaker 1: of black Rose, um serious group for a while, and yeah,
Speaker 1: people who like called themselves like anarcho communists or anarcho
Speaker 1: syndicalists kind of generally swam in this general ocean. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I definitely saw that as a bigger thing in than now,
Speaker 1: at least like locally from my area. And I think
Speaker 1: I will say, yeah, the blacks people, a lot of them,
Speaker 1: like very very specifically were specifi based on a lot
Speaker 1: of it was based on like people who had like
Speaker 1: experiences with a specific various ways, right right, Yeah, Because
Speaker 1: I was actually just about to say, I think that
Speaker 1: black Rose is more a specificity than Platform is. But
Speaker 1: of course there is you know, a lot of overlap
Speaker 1: between these two currents, right. Um. As for my experience
Speaker 1: with like platform and some and stuff, have seen um
Speaker 1: discussions of it happening more. I mean that's all I
Speaker 1: can really see that I've seen. Um I have you
Speaker 1: ever read once? But at least if discussions are happening,
Speaker 1: the likelihood of things coming out of it might be
Speaker 1: a bit. In Greece, I guess another current that m
Speaker 1: has been part of the anarchist milieu, psycheist wave whatever
Speaker 1: is organizational dualism, which came out to the nineteen twenties
Speaker 1: Italian anarchist movement. So they used the tomb to describe
Speaker 1: involvements of anarchists both as members of anarchists specific political
Speaker 1: organizations and also as militants in the labor movement. In Spain,
Speaker 1: the Friends of Druti group emerged to oppose the Gradual
Speaker 1: Reviews of the Spanish Revolution, and they also ended up
Speaker 1: emulating some of the ideas of the Platform by criticizing
Speaker 1: you know, cnt F phase, c ant f AIS, gradual
Speaker 1: reformism and collaboration with republican government. Um, So the sparks
Speaker 1: of war and stuff. You know, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: forces that play and we're gonna get into it now,
Speaker 1: but it is, I would say, as a side note,
Speaker 1: important to recognize that there is no model it when
Speaker 1: it comes to like these sort of civil wars and
Speaker 1: historical events. Um, you really have to look at things
Speaker 1: in context, and you know, it's not trying to strip
Speaker 1: them away from the goings on at the time. Also,
Speaker 1: the Chinese anarchist movement of the nineteen tens um advocated
Speaker 1: for similar ideas. I'm going to try to pronounce the
Speaker 1: name of the group, hopefully don't get castled. But it's
Speaker 1: them who Shuang Fu Kongshan Jui Tong. She's a way,
Speaker 1: I think, which is the Society of Anarchists Communist Comrades.
Speaker 1: And yeah, they advocated for a lot of similar ideas.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of different currents around the world,
Speaker 1: influenced by you know, the historic conditions. But the general
Speaker 1: thread that you know, anarchists need to get together and
Speaker 1: work as a unit is you know what's thrust in
Speaker 1: it right and specifies more is just a fresh continuation
Speaker 1: of this threat of this trend. So what is what
Speaker 1: is the specificies more exactly, the three key concepts um
Speaker 1: that I see emphasized again and again. One the need
Speaker 1: for specifically anarchist organization built around a unity of ideas
Speaker 1: and practice. Two, the use of the specifically anarchist organization
Speaker 1: to theorize and develop strategic political and organizing work. And
Speaker 1: three active involvement in and building of autonomous and popular
Speaker 1: social movements, which is described as the process of social insertion.
Speaker 1: So kind of core to the whole specificity current is
Speaker 1: which is rather anti tectical some of the trends that
Speaker 1: I've seen in the past couple of years. It's sort
Speaker 1: of a rejection of this left unity idea, right, this
Speaker 1: idea that there can be these this sort of big
Speaker 1: tent organization that can somehow establish all these different visions simultaneously. Right. So,
Speaker 1: I specificity reject the idea of just unity for unity's
Speaker 1: sake because they feel it boils down to sort of
Speaker 1: Louis common denominate to kind of wishy washy politics. They
Speaker 1: feel that when unity is preferred at all costs, it
Speaker 1: leaves very little room for unified action or develop political discussion.
Speaker 1: In fact, in my experience, when you have like a
Speaker 1: lot of political heterogene um, there tends to be a
Speaker 1: lot of unproduct to drama lack of better word. Obviously,
Speaker 1: people of different political stripes should work together, um, and
Speaker 1: there's no like harm in that. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: when it comes to certain types of organizations, having a
Speaker 1: sense of ideological unity is I would say pretty important,
Speaker 1: as you know, you don't want to have all these
Speaker 1: different groups constantly butting heads for all these different visions.
Speaker 1: You know, you want to have at least some sense
Speaker 1: that we're moving in sync. Right, So you're not going
Speaker 1: to have some people who are trying to establish social
Speaker 1: democracy and some people who are trying to get like
Speaker 1: this workers State code and code, or you know, people
Speaker 1: who just want I don't know, like a higher minimum reach. Right.
Speaker 1: I mean, everyone's on a different stage of their political journey.
Speaker 1: But what a specificity trys emphasize is that while we
Speaker 1: can work within these larger social movements, um, it's important
Speaker 1: that anartists specifically come together to try to shape those
Speaker 1: movements in an organized way. And I'll explain because it
Speaker 1: kind of sounds a bit like vanguardism for some people,
Speaker 1: this idea that you know, these this cabal of like
Speaker 1: revolutionaries are trying to manipulate things behind the scenes. But um, really,
Speaker 1: what a Specificitts argue is that anarchists needed space, the
Speaker 1: near space for like common strategy and reflection and collective
Speaker 1: responsibility and you know, a place to discuss plans and
Speaker 1: build trust and share analysis and you know, put together
Speaker 1: short and long term goals all that jazz. Um. So,
Speaker 1: while the specificitys do reach out too and work with
Speaker 1: social movements regardless of whether they fit this code and code,
Speaker 1: anarchist purity test um, and I see that with my
Speaker 1: tongue planted filmily and cheek. Of course, Um, they want
Speaker 1: to make sure that they can sue still as an
Speaker 1: active minority, so that these movements aren't diluted. And so
Speaker 1: I noticed IM like throwing out a lot of different
Speaker 1: woods and freezers and ideas, um, you know, things like
Speaker 1: ideological unity and the need for sort of a consensus
Speaker 1: within the group. Um. And speaking of I've spoken about
Speaker 1: consensus on my channel before, so I have a breakdown
Speaker 1: on it people to check out if they like. Um,
Speaker 1: I was spoke of unified strategy, right, so you're not
Speaker 1: just joking around. You actually have mapped out sort of strategy,
Speaker 1: like for example, black socialists in America. They aren't like
Speaker 1: a specifically a specificity or to my knowledge, but you
Speaker 1: can see um that they have unified like clearly leader
Speaker 1: of strategy, and they're making moves to make it to
Speaker 1: achieve it, and they're very public about those moves, right. Um.
Speaker 1: I also want to emphasize, of course, and the specifies
Speaker 1: more the whole idea of this active minority. You know,
Speaker 1: it's not just a bunch of like it sounds like
Speaker 1: a passive book club, right, and a specificity group is
Speaker 1: a group of people who are passionate about you know
Speaker 1: this cause, um, And obviously passionate people have this habit
Speaker 1: of for they can more than they can chew. Right.
Speaker 1: So what I would advise like a specificity and a
Speaker 1: specificity judgment, adjacent groups, and really just organizations in general,
Speaker 1: is that keep your size in mind, keep achievable goals
Speaker 1: within sight, because if you don't, you know, it's very
Speaker 1: easy to burn out very quickly. Yeah. Um. With the
Speaker 1: specificity groups, it's important that they understand their responsibility, but
Speaker 1: also that they understand their limits. Lastly, and very importantly,
Speaker 1: social institution I think is one of the most important
Speaker 1: parts for specifiesmo. And I think even if you don't
Speaker 1: take anything away from like a specificity specifies more, you
Speaker 1: at the very least like implement social institution or at
Speaker 1: least concepts within social institution into organizing, right Because obviously
Speaker 1: um and I guess a kind of fewer number. But
Speaker 1: what social institution tries to point out, I guess, or
Speaker 1: tries to develop within a movement, it's just awareness that
Speaker 1: the people who are making these moves from organizing and whatnot,
Speaker 1: that they don't relinquish their power to like other figures
Speaker 1: or forces or parties or whatever the case may be. Right, um,
Speaker 1: social institutions times in the belief that the oppressed of
Speaker 1: the most revolutionary sector of society and the seed of
Speaker 1: future revolutionary transformation of society lies already in these classes
Speaker 1: and social groupings. So it doesn't mean socialization doesn't mean
Speaker 1: like acting within single issue advocacy campaigns or you know,
Speaker 1: like trying to take over people's existing struggles. It means
Speaker 1: getting involved in daily fights and daily struggles for people
Speaker 1: to better their own conditions. It means, you know, connecting
Speaker 1: with workers, connecting with immigrants, connecting across neighborhoods, um working
Speaker 1: towards racial liberation, working within students struggles and tenant struggles.
Speaker 1: As people are like part of these uncles, they become
Speaker 1: conscious of their place in society. Right, And part of
Speaker 1: our rule is to try to develop their consciousness. So
Speaker 1: as people are tempered and tested and recreated, they see
Speaker 1: their position in the what's what we're looking for in
Speaker 1: the pecking order? Right, They see that there are forces
Speaker 1: that play that are keeping them down, their structures play
Speaker 1: that are keeping them down, and they change from just
Speaker 1: being like social classes to being active social forces. So
Speaker 1: they're brought together by organic methods and by self organized cohesion.
Speaker 1: What you notice of the popular movements, like, for example,
Speaker 1: Black Lives Matter, is that, unlike what some conservatives might assume,
Speaker 1: the Black Lives Matter organization wasn't the one like pulling
Speaker 1: the strings, you know, like the official group wasn't there,
Speaker 1: you know, telling people okay, march here, burned that right here,
Speaker 1: move that. You know. It's like the people themselves came
Speaker 1: together and you know, really expressed the desire for change.
Speaker 1: And so really, as they become self conscious actors, aware
Speaker 1: of their power, of their voice, of their nemesis, which
Speaker 1: is the ruling elites that control their social order, a
Speaker 1: specificitys try to keep that thrust right. What a specificity
Speaker 1: argue is that essentially there's an anarchist on the current
Speaker 1: two popular social movements that should be preserved and maintained
Speaker 1: and cultivated. Right with popular movements, um, they're very quickly
Speaker 1: co opted by in positions of leadership or by you know,
Speaker 1: academically eats, or by political parties. But specificity aren't there
Speaker 1: to try to make groups identify as anarchists, right, They're
Speaker 1: there to just maintain that thrust to be self organized
Speaker 1: and to fight for their own interests, because ultimately that's
Speaker 1: our natural impulse as humans, you know, it's really the
Speaker 1: propaganda that tells us, you know, um, like you have
Speaker 1: to go through these proper channels. You know, you have
Speaker 1: to vote with your dollar or you know, food for
Speaker 1: these politicians or whatever the case may be. Converse and
Speaker 1: all these different things call up your representatives. The natural
Speaker 1: thrust of a person is not to like relinquished control
Speaker 1: of themselves, you know, is to try to maintain that
Speaker 1: um and so a specifics trying to push against the
Speaker 1: propaganda that keeps us from maintaining that, push against the
Speaker 1: co optation that ships that from us. So, yeah, do
Speaker 1: any sort of automatic critiques of a specifies move come
Speaker 1: to mind? We all, I'm not sure about like critiques
Speaker 1: per se. We need to think about it more. But
Speaker 1: a few things that come to mind around so, like
Speaker 1: you talked a bit about like the difference between like
Speaker 1: left unity and creating like an anarchist unity, um, and
Speaker 1: for people at home, I would like to maybe extrapolate
Speaker 1: why those are different things. I know you have a
Speaker 1: good video on left unity already, but like in terms
Speaker 1: of trying to like, you know, if if one of
Speaker 1: the goals being creating like an anarchist organization that kind
Speaker 1: of unifies different anarchists, how that is a different type
Speaker 1: of unity than just left unity in general. Um. I
Speaker 1: think that might be a point of clarification. And then
Speaker 1: the other thing I was wondering about is like, how
Speaker 1: does this intersect in terms of like individual goals versus
Speaker 1: like group goals or like organizational goals and so like,
Speaker 1: because like there's a there's a back and forth between
Speaker 1: like personal autonomy and then you know these type of
Speaker 1: social movements that kind of almost gained their own thrust
Speaker 1: right right, Yes, to the point about the difference between
Speaker 1: left unity and anarchist unity, um well, obviously artists, oh
Speaker 1: soon fairly heterogeneous. Um. I think our general thrust for
Speaker 1: self determination and autonomy and that kind of thing is
Speaker 1: it brings us together. You know. The difference between like
Speaker 1: say anarchist unity where they defferently some I would say
Speaker 1: key disagreements within the milieu and left unity is that
Speaker 1: I feel there are some extremely incompatible factors that prevent
Speaker 1: left unity from being viable. Yeah, when there's a thrust
Speaker 1: among significant segments. I mean really every non libertarian segment
Speaker 1: of you know, they couldn't get left two fun known
Speaker 1: our popular energy towards state institutions, whether it be through
Speaker 1: insurrectionary social democracy or reformist social democracy in a case
Speaker 1: of amounts and stock damage respectively. Um, I think that
Speaker 1: that really keeps us from really working together on anything
Speaker 1: more than small goals and small projects. I mean, we've
Speaker 1: really seen the whole left unity idea of fall apart,
Speaker 1: you know, through wars and through even just like what
Speaker 1: should be discussions between people, you know, like the First
Speaker 1: International literally split because of the differences between you know,
Speaker 1: the so called left currents, you know, between the anarchists
Speaker 1: and the other socialists. So lat unity is not something
Speaker 1: that I even to achieve. I think most people know
Speaker 1: that about me by now, um. But regard to like
Speaker 1: anarchist unity, and of course the differences between artists, I
Speaker 1: think the general rusted to maintain the autonomy and self
Speaker 1: termination of the people and of the social movements via
Speaker 1: inserting ourselves in is what really clues us together. And
Speaker 1: of course that alone, I don't know if that's enough
Speaker 1: to maintaining a specificity organization, because you know, like I
Speaker 1: noted a specificitys try to um develop deeper level you know,
Speaker 1: strategies and theoretical discussion and that kind of thing. And
Speaker 1: so with those sort of discussions, you know, you're gonna
Speaker 1: see a lot more of the distinctions bearing out. But
Speaker 1: at the very least, um, I think anarchists generally could
Speaker 1: benefit from a degree of at least unity in the
Speaker 1: sense of maintaining as aularity in the sense of maintaining
Speaker 1: the libertarian thrust of popular movements. Actually, other thing that
Speaker 1: you had noted about the sort of friction between individual
Speaker 1: goals and organizational goals, between autonomy and sort of how
Speaker 1: social movements end up taking on like an energy of
Speaker 1: their own. Um. To be quite honest, I don't think
Speaker 1: I have like a fully developed answer for that. Yeah, um, Because,
Speaker 1: on the one hand, a social movement that forgets that
Speaker 1: it is about, you know, deliberation of individuals is you know,
Speaker 1: in my view of social movement that's quickly going to
Speaker 1: and obtaining against the people who are you know, fueling it.
Speaker 1: At the same time, I've interacted with like a lot
Speaker 1: of people what pretty selfish or pretty egotistical or just
Speaker 1: argumentative for the sake of it sorry, So if you're
Speaker 1: gonna say something, yeah, I was just like the thing
Speaker 1: that keeps popping up into my head is, you know,
Speaker 1: one of the things that gets misconstrued all the time
Speaker 1: is who's calling the shots. And I kind of feel
Speaker 1: like what you're saying is everybody in a way, right, Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that like, which is good sometimes but not
Speaker 1: good other times obviously exactly, Yeah, because I think it's
Speaker 1: it's very easy to fall into this sort of um
Speaker 1: almost reactionary I like island mentality not island mentality is
Speaker 1: in Caribean is mentality is in personessn't as an island
Speaker 1: around like autonomy and you know personal freedom, you know,
Speaker 1: like this rendering idea that you know on step map property,
Speaker 1: you know that kind of thing just let people do whatever.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like more so alchocalyst conception of what
Speaker 1: like freedom and autonomy is I think an important part
Speaker 1: of autonomy and you know freedom and yeah, like this
Speaker 1: project is you know, accountability and is you know, like
Speaker 1: consequences like social consequences and how your actions affect others.
Speaker 1: You know, like what ant say he was to recognize
Speaker 1: is that we are not in fact island you know,
Speaker 1: our actions or behavioral words affect other people. And so
Speaker 1: I think it's going to be a constant projects of
Speaker 1: balance um individual personalities and goals. But I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's tricky, right, Like you know, we're you're talking
Speaker 1: about like some kind of you know, group organization to
Speaker 1: work together to kind of you know, think of achievable
Speaker 1: goals and create steps to get there um. And I
Speaker 1: feel among a lot of people who proudly declare themselves
Speaker 1: anarchists and at least like and they're extremely vocal. Like
Speaker 1: these are like people both like online and in person
Speaker 1: organizing that are very are very like vocal and try
Speaker 1: to very much like make their place known. We've seen
Speaker 1: trends away from this direction in terms of like rejecting
Speaker 1: the idea of goals and demands and just you know,
Speaker 1: like this this more insurrectionary kind of tendency of just
Speaker 1: making total destroy for the sake of it and if
Speaker 1: a simple committee, yeah, and and and and that. I mean,
Speaker 1: like I know that like platform is m is kind
Speaker 1: of like it's not like Antiens instructionary, but it's like
Speaker 1: it's it definitely critiques that type of instructionary trend. UM.
Speaker 1: So I'm thinking about like, you know, this idea and like,
Speaker 1: how with with with this kind of general you know, decentralized,
Speaker 1: no no demands, no goals kind of general kind of
Speaker 1: direction that like capital a anarchists are are doing. How
Speaker 1: like what's what's maybe some parts of specifics that we
Speaker 1: can actually take into account to be like, hey, maybe
Speaker 1: there's you know, like I I don't like I don't
Speaker 1: like being called like any adjective anarchist. I think it's silly.
Speaker 1: I like I like the um I think earlier this
Speaker 1: year or yeah, they last year, Like I just got
Speaker 1: to the point for I'm anarchist, you know that's yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I like the part in Desert. It's like, I'm an
Speaker 1: anarchist of many adjectives. I'm not, I'm not I'm not
Speaker 1: always an insurrectionary, I'm not always a syndicalist. I'm not
Speaker 1: always you know, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah um.
Speaker 1: And I feel like that's would be really useful kind
Speaker 1: of thing for people to focus on more in terms of, yeah,
Speaker 1: it can be fun to make total destroying that it's
Speaker 1: a very base instinct, but it also would be great
Speaker 1: to like improve people's lives a little bit um and yeah,
Speaker 1: and there's like to to to kind of like dueling things,
Speaker 1: um and in terms, that's why I do really like
Speaker 1: the part of like this type of stuff that it's
Speaker 1: really appealing to me just because I kind of already
Speaker 1: work on this myself, so I'm like, oh, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: already doing this. But it's like the it is it
Speaker 1: is like the social the social insertion side of things,
Speaker 1: I think is something that would be a much a
Speaker 1: much better way of thinking about. Like everyone hates talking
Speaker 1: about optics because yeah, it's frustrating, but I think the
Speaker 1: social insertion method is a better framework for kind of
Speaker 1: dealing with some of those same problems, um and yeah.
Speaker 1: And then like you know, there is even among insurrectionaries
Speaker 1: and all those you know, all those types, there still
Speaker 1: is like a decent amount of like group projects and stuff,
Speaker 1: and that is I think a really good thing to
Speaker 1: focus on because but yeah, there's not many anarchists and
Speaker 1: it would be cool if there was more. And if
Speaker 1: we just focus on the parts that make people go,
Speaker 1: oh that's kind of silly and pointless, then we're not
Speaker 1: really going to grow anarchism that much. Um. So highlighting
Speaker 1: the parts they're like, oh, yeah, you're actually helping people.
Speaker 1: That's gonna convince a lot more people who are kind
Speaker 1: of already trending in that general general direction, and then hey,
Speaker 1: maybe in a few years they can also be doing
Speaker 1: silly destruction for fun because it is it is fun sometimes. Um, Yeah,
Speaker 1: like this, as you mentioned, optics reminded it is kind
Speaker 1: of pet peeve I have with some you know, instant
Speaker 1: people where they try to treat like ideologies or specifically
Speaker 1: anarchism as like a pr project that we have to
Speaker 1: like constantly be trying to shift the optics and micromanaged
Speaker 1: like every aspect. Like No, I think the best remedy
Speaker 1: for like, because you're not going to match the power
Speaker 1: of mass media, what you can do to push back
Speaker 1: against the sort of propaganda is help people, and help
Speaker 1: people and identify as anarchists as you're helping people, right, Like,
Speaker 1: that's the easiest and quickest way to dispel people's notions
Speaker 1: and like conceptions of what an anarchist is. If we
Speaker 1: were to take like socialization right and sort of, I
Speaker 1: would say, there's still it's a bit and individualize it
Speaker 1: a bit. Um. I would say that as a practice
Speaker 1: you know, just even if you don't know any any
Speaker 1: other anarchists in your area, right, just being there, being
Speaker 1: in these movements helping people and you know, saying you know,
Speaker 1: this is what I believe. Um, just talking to people
Speaker 1: about what you believe as a police and as you're
Speaker 1: helping them. You know, that goes a long way, much
Speaker 1: longer than any you know, poster um campaign or like
Speaker 1: wheat pasting initiative or artwork, um you know wall arts
Speaker 1: or whatever. You know, like actively helping people. Of course
Speaker 1: wall lot has its place and double atle bit myself,
Speaker 1: but you know there's um, it's not it's ultimately like
Speaker 1: talking to people and helping people and being their people
Speaker 1: and being honest about your intentions that I think, you know,
Speaker 1: we should working towards. And I think those types of
Speaker 1: projects are something that the specific model like excels that
Speaker 1: in terms of like creating like a unlitay anarchists who
Speaker 1: get like who have like a goal in mind and
Speaker 1: then go out to achieve the goal. Helping people like
Speaker 1: doing like doing like like like direct directly helping people
Speaker 1: is something that that type of organization model is kind
Speaker 1: of the best at UM because you can yeah, really
Speaker 1: like organize things much better with a small group like that,
Speaker 1: and create goals that are actually very achievable, whether it
Speaker 1: be you know, building a community kitchen or building you know,
Speaker 1: heating centers for like for the winter, like under under
Speaker 1: bridges or whatever. You know, all those types of starting
Speaker 1: comming to the gardens, all those kinds of things are
Speaker 1: I think what this type of model really excels at.
Speaker 1: And yeah, you don't need to change your ideology to
Speaker 1: this one word because that's that's silly. But you can
Speaker 1: pick up different parts of it be like, yeah, that
Speaker 1: actually seems like a useful way of the world you want,
Speaker 1: you know, politicians just ruling hand co opt our project,
Speaker 1: you know, like just basic things like that, you know.
Speaker 1: And then from there, you know, as you are talking
Speaker 1: with people and meeting people who are passionate about issues
Speaker 1: in these social movements, you know, no need to say
Speaker 1: keep you from developing this sort of um partumilarly online
Speaker 1: um in group kind of mentality. It also opens up
Speaker 1: opportunities you to develop your and this is on the
Speaker 1: topic of like the individualist social institution. It prints or
Speaker 1: presents opportunities for you to develop your own I had
Speaker 1: no like book club, and then from that book club
Speaker 1: could come and a specificity organization. You know, as you
Speaker 1: begin to develop your politics and your shared politics, more
Speaker 1: can come out of it. So don't underestimate, you know
Speaker 1: the potential of just putting in the work and talking
Speaker 1: to people. Yeah, you know, just being there on the ground.
Speaker 1: One of the best things you can do to help
Speaker 1: stay alive in the well things are heading in the
Speaker 1: direction that they're heading societally, is like making friends and
Speaker 1: forming a friend group and then yeah, like a doing
Speaker 1: stuff together that makes dealing with everything else that's happening
Speaker 1: so so much better. And hey, remember our old friends
Speaker 1: less remark started with a book club, so hey, you know,
Speaker 1: you never know where book clubs can lead exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: It's actually really interesting. Um video clip of Marie book
Speaker 1: Gin talking about book clubs and like the power and
Speaker 1: potential of book clubs. Um. I don't know if we
Speaker 1: could probably link that in the show notes, but it's
Speaker 1: like a really interesting make sure drink. So ultimately, a
Speaker 1: specificity believe that social movements we reached their own logic
Speaker 1: of creating revolution, not when they all just decide to
Speaker 1: identify as anarchists and weave the black flag. But when
Speaker 1: the majority reach a consensus and a consciousness of their
Speaker 1: power and the ability to exercise their power and their
Speaker 1: daily lives. So even if they do not adopt anarchism,
Speaker 1: they still consciously adopt the ideas embedded within it. They
Speaker 1: are multiple political currents will exist within any movement, and
Speaker 1: so it's important that we as anarchists and I guess
Speaker 1: specifically as a specificity, are there to actively combat the
Speaker 1: opportunism that come from you know, these forces from this
Speaker 1: whether electoral or find goddess within these social movements as well,
Speaker 1: we can also help to push them further through um,
Speaker 1: you know, pushing for more direct democracy and consensus, through federalism,
Speaker 1: and confederating with other social movements through you know, building
Speaker 1: up the mutual aid within these movements. Like if you are,
Speaker 1: for example, part of a mutual aid group in one neighborhood,
Speaker 1: you can push them to start reaching out with mutually
Speaker 1: groups and other neighborhoods and creating a network of mutual
Speaker 1: aid groups that can build into something bigger, you know,
Speaker 1: combining resources and manpower to really push the revolution. You know. Lastly,
Speaker 1: we'll say that for those who are trying to like
Speaker 1: get into the whole specifies more thing. Um, I mean,
Speaker 1: you could start a new organization from scratch. But again,
Speaker 1: like the easiest thing to do is suggest getting there
Speaker 1: to people and be honest with the people. And I
Speaker 1: keep saying the people, even though I have my critiques
Speaker 1: of this amorphous conception of the people, but the point
Speaker 1: remains that our goal is to spread our ideas, not
Speaker 1: to get people on any particular ideology, but to get
Speaker 1: a liberatory consciousness underground and to generalize that consciousness. And
Speaker 1: for those who are curious about the specifies more in
Speaker 1: action and social institutions, specifically the Federal Show. Anarchista GAUSA
Speaker 1: in Brazil has worked with neighborhood committees and urban villages
Speaker 1: and slums. They've built alliances with the rank and file
Speaker 1: members of the rural land as workers movement the must
Speaker 1: and they've also worked with trash and recyclables collectors UM Brazil.
Speaker 1: For those who don't know, as a lot of high
Speaker 1: levels of temporary uh and contingent employment, unde employment and unemployment.
Speaker 1: So the working class isn't how will you traditionally conceive
Speaker 1: it as like just surviving primarily off of wage labor,
Speaker 1: but it's more so this is sort of subsistence work
Speaker 1: informal economy, gig economy can deal. So being able to
Speaker 1: connect with these when char collectors, for example, who are
Speaker 1: part of this sort of economy, the EFIG has built
Speaker 1: a strong relationship with them and help them to form
Speaker 1: their own national organization to you know, push for their
Speaker 1: interests and to collective eyes their recycling operations. Specifies More
Speaker 1: is also um worked with the has also worked in
Speaker 1: the efforts of the Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front in South Africa,
Speaker 1: as they also are strong opponents of social institution and
Speaker 1: you know, really being embedded in these social movements in Argentina,
Speaker 1: in Brazil, in South Africa, and in the US in
Speaker 1: the case of Black Rose Anarchist Federation, specifies More has
Speaker 1: been building as a key point reference. And so I'll
Speaker 1: leave us off with a code from the use of
Speaker 1: Front Collective an anarchist group online. If libertarian socialists the
Speaker 1: organized with libertarian socialists, then they will lose contact with
Speaker 1: the broader population they need to be reaching. If libertarian
Speaker 1: socialists merely joined social movements without advocating various libertarian socialist
Speaker 1: practices that can be used, then social movements can easily
Speaker 1: drift into being susceptible to reformist and strategic liberal and
Speaker 1: Lendinis tendencies and opportunists. If libertarian socialists merely joined social
Speaker 1: movements and try to spread ideas and practices in mere
Speaker 1: individual ways, they will be far less successful than a
Speaker 1: well thought out, coordinated effort. And if theoretically specific libertarian
Speaker 1: socialist groups try to control social movements and popular organizations
Speaker 1: from the top down, then such specific groups sacrifice their
Speaker 1: own principles and would reproduce hierarchical organizing. In contrast to
Speaker 1: authoritarian fine goddess conceptions, specifies more groups and a specificity
Speaker 1: put their activity towards a self organization of movements and organizations. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: as I honestly love this court from Shanty Alston, power
Speaker 1: to the people, where it stays with the people. Peace. Yes, Andrew,
Speaker 1: please please plug your plugables because they are good and
Speaker 1: people should in fact listen to them, right, thank you. Safety. First,
Speaker 1: of course, I will say that you could follow me
Speaker 1: on Twitter at underscore st Drew and on YouTube at
Speaker 1: St Andrew's um and you can find me here apparently
Speaker 1: twice a month, which is pretty great shout out. It
Speaker 1: could happen here. Take care everyone, peace again he's again.
Speaker 1: What's new? My shit? Yeah, new year, same ship. I'm
Speaker 1: Robert Evans. This is behind the we retired. We retired
Speaker 1: this bit? Who where is this time for a new bit?
Speaker 1: This is it could happen here the podcast about how
Speaker 1: things sometimes feel like they're falling apart sometimes and maybe
Speaker 1: we can do things about that. You know what's falling
Speaker 1: apart is me because I, during my break woke up
Speaker 1: at like one thirty every day and now it's someone
Speaker 1: speakable hour in the morning. I hate this the time
Speaker 1: you packed the time. So for for for one of
Speaker 1: our first episodes of the new year, we have decided
Speaker 1: to subject ourselves to your para social whims um and
Speaker 1: we are going to be doing maybe one, maybe two
Speaker 1: Q and A episodes um uh, giving as to your cues.
Speaker 1: And I've been in the queue. It's okay. I've been
Speaker 1: told that our producer Sophie has a list of questions
Speaker 1: already prepared so that I can stop talking and she can.
Speaker 1: Now you've been told you're the one who posted the thread.
Speaker 1: Sophie said that she would read them. I did volunteers tribute,
Speaker 1: but I might I might I might take that back,
Speaker 1: it's so how much attack. Uh, let's let's let's start
Speaker 1: with let's start with a a simply a good one. Uh.
Speaker 1: What has been your favorite episode slash topic to research
Speaker 1: in this past season so since we started season two?
Speaker 1: Oh god, Um, I enjoyed the metaverse Facebook episodes because
Speaker 1: there's a part of me that really likes shipping on
Speaker 1: bad tech industry stuff. Um. It fills a deep part
Speaker 1: of me just just really comprehensively thinking about how how
Speaker 1: terrible the vision of the future these people have it.
Speaker 1: So that was probably my favorite. I liked the Climate
Speaker 1: Leviathan stuff. Um, the Climate Leviathan, Climate Behemoth, Climate Now,
Speaker 1: Climate X kind of four quadrants. I I liked learning
Speaker 1: about that, like, jeez, almost a year ago actually by
Speaker 1: the time I started researching for the show. Um, And
Speaker 1: I'm decently happy with the way that those topics were
Speaker 1: presented and how they keep popping back every once in
Speaker 1: a while. I think in terms of just the favorite
Speaker 1: episode I recorded, it was probably the interview with the
Speaker 1: Common Humanity Collective people, just because like listening to a
Speaker 1: bunch of people who have very sophisticated and well developed
Speaker 1: mutual aid project and then listening to you know, them
Speaker 1: talking about their political development and how they've been sort
Speaker 1: of solving their problems was really reassuring and cheerful in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways. And then research wise, it was
Speaker 1: definitely the Spooky A fifty one episode where I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do a fun episode about uh, the government
Speaker 1: and aliens and it was like, oh no, here's every
Speaker 1: war crime ever and like sixteen people almost killing everyone
Speaker 1: on earth. This is This is probably probably the most
Speaker 1: fun I had was with the Chaos, Magic and Esotericism
Speaker 1: episode How Silly It Is? Um? Yeah, that one. That
Speaker 1: one also was just just a pleasure to record. I
Speaker 1: also loved having Corey doctor owen um totally because that
Speaker 1: was cool. That was cool. That was that was very cool.
Speaker 1: How cool of us. I've enjoyed our our fiction episodes
Speaker 1: with Margaret and with Rebecca those those have been great.
Speaker 1: And I've loved having sat Andrew. Yeah, that has been
Speaker 1: also very cool, fantastic. What were you gonna say, Robert, nothing?
Speaker 1: Oh great, this person says. I think I've got my
Speaker 1: head wrapped around mutual aid, community resilience and all the
Speaker 1: stuff you talk about. Any tips on how to effectively
Speaker 1: communicate it to people who might not be at least
Speaker 1: initially open to it. H Um. I mean it kind
Speaker 1: of depends on why they're not open to it, right.
Speaker 1: So it's it's a matter of are they just somebody
Speaker 1: who has a lot of faith in in systems as
Speaker 1: they exist, or they someone who's kind of coming at
Speaker 1: it from more of a traditional like liberal um status
Speaker 1: perspective where they think the option is to get in
Speaker 1: line with you know, the Democratic Party and support that
Speaker 1: and that will make things better. Um. Like basically, are
Speaker 1: they a top down er um, or there's somebody who
Speaker 1: rejects it because it's like communism um, and they don't
Speaker 1: they don't think that people have any kind of fundamental
Speaker 1: responsibility to themselves. Um. Because you are going to have
Speaker 1: kind of a different approach to trying to reach either
Speaker 1: of those people, um if they're coming at it from
Speaker 1: kind of more of a right wing standpoint, but they're not,
Speaker 1: you know, uh talking about shooting vaccine doctors. Um, they're
Speaker 1: just kind of conservative. I think the way to do
Speaker 1: it is to sort of hearken back to some of
Speaker 1: these very traditional ideas of like, um, American homesteaders and
Speaker 1: and independent you know, communities on the frontier and self
Speaker 1: reliance and how mutual aid is people taking responsibility UM
Speaker 1: for their communities rather than you know, this idea I
Speaker 1: think a lot of conservatives have of like people um
Speaker 1: just kind of lazily taking charity. How it's it's different
Speaker 1: from charity, and that it's a community UM seeing its
Speaker 1: own needs and becoming independent as much as is possible
Speaker 1: on the state from the state UM by trying to
Speaker 1: meet its own needs, and how that UM is better
Speaker 1: for people than just sort of um boging like being
Speaker 1: dependent upon government programs. I think that's kind of the
Speaker 1: way in which to reach out to those people with
Speaker 1: that idea if they're coming at it from more of
Speaker 1: a liberal top down approach, UM, I think you can
Speaker 1: get more into the weeds and may argue about kind
Speaker 1: of inefficiencies within the system, problems within the system. I
Speaker 1: think one thing to really point out that will probably
Speaker 1: still be fresh to a lot of people of that
Speaker 1: persuasion is how frightening the first couple of weeks of
Speaker 1: quarantine were and all of the supply line issues and
Speaker 1: kind of the early breakdown to be like, look, um,
Speaker 1: that didn't go away, like right, you can see that
Speaker 1: that we're still dealing with a lot of this and
Speaker 1: we're still having supply line disruptions and the state really
Speaker 1: has not kind of even under Biden sailed and to
Speaker 1: clear the gap. And so we need these community resiliency
Speaker 1: programs UM. And you can you know, depending on the
Speaker 1: kind of person there, you can also sort of point out, um,
Speaker 1: the degree to which there is our attempts at kind
Speaker 1: of sabotage of any sort of of of of top
Speaker 1: down government programs by the right and how UM that's
Speaker 1: part of why you need community resilient and see programs
Speaker 1: because you can't guarantee who's going to be in the
Speaker 1: White House, you can't guarantee what's going to continue to
Speaker 1: get funded. Um. And outside of kind of any of
Speaker 1: the the structural issues um that make that stuff difficult.
Speaker 1: So I think, UM, that's kind of broadly speaking, the
Speaker 1: two different ways you you can broach those conversations with people,
Speaker 1: depending on the tendencies they're they're looking at it from, uh,
Speaker 1: let's let's let's get into an unpleasant one. What's the
Speaker 1: gang's outlook on this year's election and how do you
Speaker 1: think it might position us for do we see more
Speaker 1: violence letting up to the next presidential election. I know
Speaker 1: we'll be doing a prediction z Is episode later. Um.
Speaker 1: But as for this election, I have I've not looked
Speaker 1: at anything about it. I think the Steelers are going
Speaker 1: to take it all. What what will what's border? Are
Speaker 1: the Steelers? Um one of them? That's great? Uh uh?
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, I mean I feel like if Democrats
Speaker 1: want to keep the power that they currently have, they
Speaker 1: will probably need to do some type of symbolic action
Speaker 1: that makes people think they actually do things. They've managed
Speaker 1: to have control of every and done absolutely nothing that
Speaker 1: they So I'm guessing if they want to keep that,
Speaker 1: they should probably do something really soon um or else.
Speaker 1: I don't see people being super eager to vote in
Speaker 1: two for the Democrats. Yeah. Yeah, I mean one of
Speaker 1: the issues they've got is this this thing that you know,
Speaker 1: kind of the Technocrats always have where you know, as
Speaker 1: we as Corey pointed out when we had them on
Speaker 1: there have been some really positive moves by the Biden
Speaker 1: administration in terms of like appointments and how different kind
Speaker 1: of agencies are being handled. Um, But when it comes
Speaker 1: to the things that he actually campaigned on, like it
Speaker 1: just hasn't It hasn't happened, should it ain't been done? Um,
Speaker 1: Like the closest we've gotten recently is yet another kick
Speaker 1: the can down the street a little bit for student
Speaker 1: loan repayments, And I agree, I think they need to do.
Speaker 1: There's like two big things they could do that might
Speaker 1: have a significant shifting effect. One of them would be
Speaker 1: student debt forgiveness, and one of them would be fucking
Speaker 1: de schedule marijuana. Even without Congress, Biden could could not
Speaker 1: factively make marijuana not and like that would be number
Speaker 1: one politically, the easiest fucking win in the world because
Speaker 1: the vast majority of Republicans don't give a shit about
Speaker 1: that anymore. Um, it will piss off cops, which is
Speaker 1: probably why you won't do it. But like, those two
Speaker 1: things could have an impact on mid terms. That's certainly
Speaker 1: a thing that would like you can campaign on more,
Speaker 1: but I don't. I don't know that I think he'll
Speaker 1: do that. And of obviously I guess another big old
Speaker 1: payment to stay home, but I think that shipped un sailed.
Speaker 1: Like I honestly like, I don't think they want to win,
Speaker 1: so they can sit there and then and go, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: we can't do anything because Republicans control the House, and
Speaker 1: you guys need to like, you guys need to like
Speaker 1: save us in four this is the most important election
Speaker 1: of our lifetime. It's like, and they will keep doing
Speaker 1: this over and over and over again until literally the
Speaker 1: seize boil and everyone, you know, everyone is being heard
Speaker 1: into concentration camps, like they will just keep doing this
Speaker 1: and and like I think that's that's the thing that's
Speaker 1: actually important about the two cycle is that like the
Speaker 1: Democrats have you know what you know what what the
Speaker 1: rejection of Bernie Sanders sort of is is the Democrats
Speaker 1: essentially going, we are not a popular party, right, like
Speaker 1: we we are not a party that is going to
Speaker 1: like like we will not even give the pretense of
Speaker 1: like having a base that we represent and we do
Speaker 1: things for like we're just we're just in it for ourselves.
Speaker 1: We're in it's just like, you know, give all of
Speaker 1: our weird like black Rock friends positions in the government,
Speaker 1: and we don't, you know, and it's you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's we we don't have a policy agenda, and we
Speaker 1: don't care if we lose, because if we lose, all
Speaker 1: you people just have to go put us back into
Speaker 1: office because the alternative is just more death camps. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think there's a broad belief within kind
Speaker 1: of the Democratic Party that things are still business as usual,
Speaker 1: and that the Republican Party is still a political party,
Speaker 1: and so kind of the handing off and switching of
Speaker 1: power is fine. That's seen as business as usual, rather
Speaker 1: than the Democrats are the Republicans are continually ratcheting away
Speaker 1: from there being any chance of a switch of power,
Speaker 1: um at least through legal means. Like that's the whole
Speaker 1: thing they're doing. And the failures to pass any kind
Speaker 1: of voting rights and the failures to see like a
Speaker 1: voting right reform as an existential issue for not just
Speaker 1: the party, but like the concept of of uh democracy
Speaker 1: in this country is is I think evidence that however,
Speaker 1: you kind of try to rationalize in your head why
Speaker 1: it's happening. There's a real disconnect between the party leadership
Speaker 1: and understandings of the new nature of reality. Yeah, well
Speaker 1: that's the other thing. I mean, they'll be fine, right
Speaker 1: like outside of like another January six killing them all,
Speaker 1: Like they'll be fine. It doesn't like for them, it
Speaker 1: basically doesn't matter if Republicans take power. Maybe maybe some
Speaker 1: of them will get impeached, they'll be like a show
Speaker 1: trial for like two people or something, but like they're
Speaker 1: gonna be fine, and you know, that's that's the thing
Speaker 1: that motivates all of their thinking, is that they can
Speaker 1: survive another public administration. Like we're you know, we're dying
Speaker 1: under both of them, and you know, like I mean,
Speaker 1: this is this is partially you know, if we want
Speaker 1: to talk about sort of the COVID response for a
Speaker 1: second and the relation that has to the election, it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: the Democrats are just like completely given up even the
Speaker 1: pretense of doing literally anything about COVID literally because literally anything, yeah,
Speaker 1: go out and die, like so we can talk about that.
Speaker 1: That's a separate Yeah, yeah, that's a separate issue, I think,
Speaker 1: just in terms of like how how to interpret what
Speaker 1: they're doing with COVID and the degree to which I
Speaker 1: think they even have a chance of uh whatever. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I was like, like, they don't care if
Speaker 1: we live or die, Like we care if we live
Speaker 1: or die, and we're gonna have to do stuff on
Speaker 1: our own outside of this because they're just gonna kill us.
Speaker 1: All yep. Yeah, I mean, I think that it's hard
Speaker 1: for me to tell where the elections are going to
Speaker 1: go precisely. Uh Biden's polling certainly isn't great. It's also
Speaker 1: not like wildly out of step with how where presidents
Speaker 1: often are kind of at this point UM in in
Speaker 1: their cycle. So and also it's pretty normal for the
Speaker 1: party that just won the presidential election to lose at
Speaker 1: the midterms. That's more normal than not UM, I think. So,
Speaker 1: I think the big questions are number one, like the
Speaker 1: degree to which it's a wide sweep, which is going
Speaker 1: to depend on the actual impact a lot of these
Speaker 1: UM efforts to kind of restrict voting and jerrymander, Like
Speaker 1: what the actual on the ground impact is UM, and
Speaker 1: the degree to which we've seen an actual shift, because
Speaker 1: one of the things that the polls don't often tell
Speaker 1: us is like, yeah, Democrats are not popular. Most people
Speaker 1: seem to be aware that a lot of promises have
Speaker 1: gone unfulfilled, But it doesn't also mean that they like
Speaker 1: the Republicans UM, who as the party of Trump, are
Speaker 1: still kind of widely disliked by people. So it's kind
Speaker 1: of unclear to me what precisely is going to go
Speaker 1: down by which I mean whether or not it's going
Speaker 1: to be a pretty normal midterm, whether Republicans pick up
Speaker 1: some seats or like a nightmare blowout. Um. And I
Speaker 1: do think that has a lot to do with whether
Speaker 1: or not Biden and like does a couple of the
Speaker 1: things that a president can do unilaterally that would be
Speaker 1: really easy for other people to campaign on. Um. Like
Speaker 1: he they have to, like if they actually do want
Speaker 1: to win, they have to they have to make a
Speaker 1: couple of big hail mary's they have to do again,
Speaker 1: Biden has to do a couple of the big things
Speaker 1: that a president can do and then say, okay, see
Speaker 1: I did a thing, put more Democrats in, and we
Speaker 1: can do this other big thing that a president can't
Speaker 1: do on its own or something like that. Like I
Speaker 1: I just don't see, Um. I mean, you know, anything
Speaker 1: could happen. Still, it's fucking January. I think there's a
Speaker 1: positive if you want to be in terms of things
Speaker 1: that are making me kind of optimistic, um And and
Speaker 1: in terms of things that are better about when the
Speaker 1: Democrats are in powder and then the Republicans. You can
Speaker 1: bully the Biden administration to taking broadly positive action, which
Speaker 1: is what happened with student loan repayments. Right, that's why
Speaker 1: that did get kicked down the can a couple of
Speaker 1: kick down the road a couple of months. Um. And
Speaker 1: so I do think there's potential in um harassing the
Speaker 1: Biden administration to taking actions that can make Democrats more popular. Um.
Speaker 1: That would not be the reason to do it. The
Speaker 1: reason to do it is so that people don't starve
Speaker 1: trying to pay back student loans. Um. But it does
Speaker 1: point to, I think in an avenue of hope. UM,
Speaker 1: if we're trying not to be complete dooomers in January two. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and speaking of avenues of hope, it's time for an advert. Ah.
Speaker 1: The only thing that gives me hope is the products
Speaker 1: and services that support this podcast. And we are back back,
Speaker 1: we are, we are, i've i've I have a question.
Speaker 1: I would like us to talk about. UM new year
Speaker 1: book list? Oh yeah, that's so, what's what's some I
Speaker 1: think we could answer this like and then they also
Speaker 1: someone else followed up with saying a recommend some books
Speaker 1: that maybe not just left left this theory of climate change.
Speaker 1: Also some like fiction stuff as well. And I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna say the books that i'm reading or is on
Speaker 1: my reading list. Not. I'm not gonna recommend books I've
Speaker 1: already read. I'm just gonna say the ones i'm currently reading. UM.
Speaker 1: I'm still making it through hyper objects for an upcoming episode. UM.
Speaker 1: I picked up a really a book I wanted to
Speaker 1: get for a long time called Islands of Abandonment, which
Speaker 1: is about um people, Well, no, it's it's it's about
Speaker 1: places that have kind of been forgotten and regrown or
Speaker 1: taken have been kind of reclaimed by the area that
Speaker 1: they were, that they were built on. And then I
Speaker 1: also have a random few books on alchemy that I'm
Speaker 1: going through as well. That's most of my books. Horrible. UM.
Speaker 1: I read. The last book I finished in was in
Speaker 1: the Garden of Beasts, which is by what is his name?
Speaker 1: I think it's Eric larson Um. He's a guy who's
Speaker 1: written He wrote like Devil in the White City and
Speaker 1: a couple of other books that people have probably read
Speaker 1: Eric larson Um, And it's about the first US ambassador
Speaker 1: to Nazi Germany or what becomes Nazi Journey. He gets
Speaker 1: sent there right before, like like months before Hitler takes power,
Speaker 1: and the book largely traces he and his family's journey
Speaker 1: in Nazi Germany from like kind of didn't really care
Speaker 1: about German politics and were often broadly sympathetic towards the Nazis.
Speaker 1: They melt met like his daughter kind of is very
Speaker 1: much like on board with Nazi revolution for like the
Speaker 1: first half year that she's there. She's also like simultaneously
Speaker 1: dating the head of the Gestapo and the Soviet um
Speaker 1: like assistant ambassador, which is fascinating. Like, it's a very
Speaker 1: interesting book, um, And the story, like the journey this
Speaker 1: kind of family goes on realizing like what the Nazis
Speaker 1: are in the perspective of that. It's it's very well written. Um,
Speaker 1: it's very detailed. I really enjoyed it. The thing that
Speaker 1: I liked the most was the detail it goes into
Speaker 1: about the kind of the fates of because it's it's
Speaker 1: a more you know, obviously as much of a nerd
Speaker 1: on the history of fascism as I am, I've read
Speaker 1: a lot about the Night of Long Knives. This did
Speaker 1: the best job of kind of going into detail about
Speaker 1: the kind of dudes who the dudes who were purged
Speaker 1: in the Night of Long Knives. So these guys who
Speaker 1: were Nazis, and that they wore swastikas and they were
Speaker 1: part of the party and whatnot, but also weren't Nazis
Speaker 1: enough to not get purged and in a lot of
Speaker 1: cases were like starting to fall out of love with
Speaker 1: the party when the Night Long Knives had And so
Speaker 1: it's these it's really interesting, UM and I recommend it
Speaker 1: to people. And the last book I started in the
Speaker 1: first book I finished in two was called Ministry of
Speaker 1: the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson, who is UM an
Speaker 1: interesting science fiction author, in part because Ministry of the
Speaker 1: Future is about climate change. UM. It is a a
Speaker 1: science fiction look at about like a thousand different potential
Speaker 1: solutions to climate change. And Kim Stanley Robinson is actually
Speaker 1: like an expert UM. He works for the Sierra Center.
Speaker 1: I think it's called UM. He's won a bunch of
Speaker 1: awards for his work on like trying to like posit
Speaker 1: different solutions to climate change. He's he he understand he's
Speaker 1: not like coming at this from the perspective of an
Speaker 1: even even a well researched author. He's he's writing from
Speaker 1: the perspective of someone who is an actual scientific expert
Speaker 1: in what happens and how the different solutions might work.
Speaker 1: And the thing that's really interesting about Ministry of the
Speaker 1: Future is it's this fascinating melange of UM. Like a
Speaker 1: number of the character the Ministry of the Future is
Speaker 1: this kind of hypothetical new u N agency that's put
Speaker 1: in place after a horrible wet bulb heat event kills
Speaker 1: twenty million people in India UM, and they're they're kind
Speaker 1: of trying to push for very technocratic solutions to climate change. So,
Speaker 1: like one of the big things the book focuses on
Speaker 1: a lot is this idea of a climate coin, which
Speaker 1: is a kind of UM international backed by banks cryptocurrency
Speaker 1: that that pays as a kind of long term bond
Speaker 1: for sequestering carbon, so that like countries like Saudi Arabia
Speaker 1: that have huge oil reserves actually make more money by
Speaker 1: refusing to pump out oil and thus get paid in
Speaker 1: these coins. So it's really technocratic solutions like that. And
Speaker 1: then also terrorist groups that may be funded by this
Speaker 1: UN agency building fleets of drones to murder people on
Speaker 1: commercial air flights UM in mass in order to cripple
Speaker 1: the entire air travel industry and stop carbon emission and
Speaker 1: carrying out mass assassinations on like CEOs of of oil
Speaker 1: companies living in their private island. So it's this really
Speaker 1: interesting mix of like kind of liberal politicians and like
Speaker 1: bankers like working out these very wonky solutions to things,
Speaker 1: and like terrorists who have lost people in climate emergencies
Speaker 1: mass murdering um billionaires uh and and so it's it's
Speaker 1: a very it's the widest possible ranging look at kind
Speaker 1: of different solutions to climate change and how they might work.
Speaker 1: And it's a very optimistic book. Um. And there's there's
Speaker 1: elements of it that I kind of the optimism I
Speaker 1: kind of disagree with. I think oddly enough Kim doesn't
Speaker 1: give enough weight to the dangers of authoritarian populism and
Speaker 1: and the threat I think they present to any of
Speaker 1: these kind of potential solutions. But it's still a very
Speaker 1: well thought out look at climate change and I think
Speaker 1: really worth reading um if you want something that will
Speaker 1: both bring up different because he also goes into a
Speaker 1: lot of like very scientific solutions like pumping up water
Speaker 1: from underneath glaciers in order to stop glaciers from sliding,
Speaker 1: and like slow the rate of melt and all these
Speaker 1: these other kind of like very much like, technical, here's
Speaker 1: a thing that we can do that will reduce the
Speaker 1: effect of this specific um kind of climate change. It's
Speaker 1: really a very good book. Um and it's apparently was
Speaker 1: Barack Obama's favorite book of the year, which, considering the
Speaker 1: degree which it talks about murdering politicians and business leaders,
Speaker 1: is interesting to me. I think he was maybe more
Speaker 1: paying attention to the carbon coins stuff than the shooting
Speaker 1: oil industry executives in their face while they're sleeping. Well,
Speaker 1: he was also a fan of parasite, so he may
Speaker 1: just have been told this is a book you should
Speaker 1: say you like, but it is. It is a very
Speaker 1: good book. It is really worth reading. Um and it's
Speaker 1: it's it is a work of science fiction. But honestly
Speaker 1: it's like it's also it's well again, Kim really understands
Speaker 1: his from a technical level, so I think it's pretty
Speaker 1: unimpeachable from that point of view. There are some kind
Speaker 1: of sociological areas where I don't think the book. I
Speaker 1: think there's some ship missing, particularly as regards the problems
Speaker 1: authoritarianism is going to cause in reaching for these solutions.
Speaker 1: But I think it's still really really valuable. And Chris,
Speaker 1: we're going to hear your responses. But first capitalism, Chris
Speaker 1: reading reading a few things, Um reading more Chuang, which
Speaker 1: is a theoretical journal about China that writes a lot
Speaker 1: of very very good stuff. They have probably the best
Speaker 1: account I've ever seen of just what was going on
Speaker 1: during the socialist period and then also the sort of
Speaker 1: transition to capitalism. Those are those are Those are issues
Speaker 1: one and two, And they just published an issue about
Speaker 1: basically how the pandemic response happens in China. It's it's
Speaker 1: absolutely fascinating. Um. It's also about sort of is this
Speaker 1: something that yeah, I've I've talked about a lot of
Speaker 1: their stuff on the show, sort of obliquely or directly,
Speaker 1: but like, you know, one of one of the big
Speaker 1: things is about how, in a lot of ways, the
Speaker 1: pandemic reveals the sort of weakness of the Chinese state
Speaker 1: and in a way that you know it is you
Speaker 1: don't see really because both both you know, both the
Speaker 1: Chinese state and the sort of like American media have
Speaker 1: this vested interest in showing like China's is sort of
Speaker 1: like all powerful authoritarian police state or whatever, like the
Speaker 1: miliar image of it is like this isn't but you
Speaker 1: know what, what you really see is that like this,
Speaker 1: the state has a very strong ability to intervene in
Speaker 1: like one province at a time, and they can you
Speaker 1: know when when when they focus, when they focus all
Speaker 1: of the sort of administrative power on like one area, right,
Speaker 1: they're extremely effective. They can't really do it in you know,
Speaker 1: multiplayers at the same time. And this means that you're
Speaker 1: dealing with all these sort of regional government stuff and
Speaker 1: it's it's very interesting. The the other thing that I have, well, okay,
Speaker 1: so do do we want to talk like a little
Speaker 1: bit about dawn of everything or do you want to
Speaker 1: save that for just like yeah, I I'm down to
Speaker 1: talk about that at any point. Yeah, Yeah, that's definitely
Speaker 1: on my list. That is a long one that's less
Speaker 1: of a read I think where most people are going
Speaker 1: to be less of a read in one sweep than
Speaker 1: like maybe for over the course of the year, like gradually. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's very very dense and very long, but very readable.
Speaker 1: Like not to say that it's like dense in the
Speaker 1: I gotta like slog through this textbook. It's extremely readable.
Speaker 1: It's just like there's a lot in there, and you're
Speaker 1: gonna want to pause and think about ship. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: so they don't have everything is this is the last
Speaker 1: book David Graeber ever wrote, and it's David wen Grow
Speaker 1: also they wrote it together, and it's it's this basically
Speaker 1: an attempt to reassemble I guess, early human history. And
Speaker 1: but the thing that they're doing that that's that's really
Speaker 1: unique is that so they they're David one Grows as
Speaker 1: archaeologist David Graeber's and an apologists and they're they're going there,
Speaker 1: you know. So they spent a whole bunch of time
Speaker 1: going through the sort of early archaeological records, and what
Speaker 1: they find basically is that none of the things that
Speaker 1: you see make any sense at all unless you're willing
Speaker 1: to unless you're willing to accept that people you know,
Speaker 1: years ago, and then even you know, people like four
Speaker 1: hive thousand years ago, we're as smart as we are
Speaker 1: and have the have the capacity to recreate and redesign
Speaker 1: their own political arrangements selfconsciously, which is something that doesn't
Speaker 1: sound that weird, except everyone assumes that they can't, and
Speaker 1: that you know, everyone that's you know, one of the
Speaker 1: other things that they're they're really sort of heavily doing
Speaker 1: here is trying to break this idea that you know,
Speaker 1: human society sort of evolves in these this linear progression.
Speaker 1: You know, you start out with like these small hunter
Speaker 1: gatherer bands and they get more complex quote on quote,
Speaker 1: eventually the developed farming, and farming developed the state. And
Speaker 1: the answer is just, you know, when you look through
Speaker 1: the actual archaeological record, none of this is true. You have,
Speaker 1: you know, they have a lot of very interesting sort
Speaker 1: of historical examples of this, looking at like what looked
Speaker 1: like incredibly democratic and egalitarian cities, and then you know,
Speaker 1: on the outskirts of those cities you have the emergence
Speaker 1: of the states among the things that look like states
Speaker 1: among barbarian groups. And they have and what I think
Speaker 1: is maybe the most interesting part of it is that
Speaker 1: they're they're very concerned with the question of human freedom,
Speaker 1: but freedom in a way that like we don't like
Speaker 1: freedom on a level fundamental enough that like we can
Speaker 1: barely imagine it. So they have these things called the
Speaker 1: Three freedoms, which is one of them is so the
Speaker 1: first one is the freedom just move to leave and
Speaker 1: to it's it's the freedom to to you know, be
Speaker 1: in a place and then leave and know that you
Speaker 1: will be cared for when you get to wherever you're going. Yeah,
Speaker 1: these kind of networks that were set up so that
Speaker 1: people could travel that have like the descendant of those
Speaker 1: ideas is sort of the way if you ever if
Speaker 1: you've ever spent time in the Middle East, not in
Speaker 1: like hotels and ship like it's that same idea that
Speaker 1: kind of deeper than religious belief about the importance of
Speaker 1: that has gotten added to like Islam and into a
Speaker 1: number of other faiths in the area. Like, but this
Speaker 1: idea that like there's nothing more sacred than taking care
Speaker 1: of a of a guest um like and and how
Speaker 1: that that that existed to enable kind of a sort
Speaker 1: of cross cultural contract and contact and like recreational travel
Speaker 1: in a way that I think it would be deeply
Speaker 1: surprising to people who just sort of assumed everyone before
Speaker 1: a certain age died within five miles of their house
Speaker 1: or was you know, yeah, part of a band of
Speaker 1: wandering hunters. Yeah. And it's interesting in that like, like,
Speaker 1: like we we in a lot of ways travel less
Speaker 1: than early people did, because you know, people would just
Speaker 1: leave and people, you know, people just didn't like their
Speaker 1: families and so they'd walk like five miles and they
Speaker 1: they'd come to a place and they'd be accepted. And yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, and like the second one that I
Speaker 1: think is the one that is the one we have
Speaker 1: the least capacity, I think to understand, which is just
Speaker 1: the ability to disobey orders. Just like anyone tells you
Speaker 1: do something, you could just tell them know at any time.
Speaker 1: And it's not only can you just tell them no,
Speaker 1: Like the social expectation is that you is that you
Speaker 1: don't act, is that it's it's it's it's not just
Speaker 1: that you have the ability to do it. It's that
Speaker 1: someone giving you an order is treated as weird. And
Speaker 1: this is a thing that you know, like like this,
Speaker 1: this is the thing. This is a freedom that used
Speaker 1: to exist and no longer does and what sort of
Speaker 1: destroying various ways along with sort of the the third
Speaker 1: freedom to talk about, which is about how people have
Speaker 1: the right to sort of just shift and recreate their
Speaker 1: their social political arrangements. And yeah, and people used to
Speaker 1: do this sort of I mean people, you know, a
Speaker 1: lot of the what their early part of the book
Speaker 1: is about is about how societies you there's a lot
Speaker 1: of societies that would you know, flip seasonally, right, so
Speaker 1: what like one half of the year you have this
Speaker 1: just like absolutelytatorship. The other half of the year it's like,
Speaker 1: well it's looks hippie commune. And you know, the fact
Speaker 1: that we do not like the fact that like we
Speaker 1: we we just don't like it, cannot conceive of completely
Speaker 1: shifting our political arrangements like that is It's also there's
Speaker 1: this fascinating discussion of like the fact that and this
Speaker 1: is kind of counter to what I I had always
Speaker 1: kind of thought that like once as a group groups
Speaker 1: of people when they when they made the decision to
Speaker 1: like move to agriculture um and like set founded cities,
Speaker 1: that it was kind of a one way street, you know,
Speaker 1: you you just keep going along that road. And there's
Speaker 1: actually multiple examples of people's like this is what what
Speaker 1: happened to the British Aisles, or at least in what
Speaker 1: is currently Great Britain. People's like developing agriculture, settling down
Speaker 1: and then being like oh, you know what, fuck this
Speaker 1: and like going back like that that should should happen
Speaker 1: all the time. And and one of the things that's
Speaker 1: really kind of optimistic about the vision of of the
Speaker 1: sweep of human history in the dawn of everything is
Speaker 1: the idea that like, no, we don't have to keep
Speaker 1: like it's not inevitable that we just keep doing more
Speaker 1: of what we're doing now. All throughout history, large groups
Speaker 1: of people have been like, it's time to let's do
Speaker 1: something else, let's make a radical change, like it happens,
Speaker 1: um And it's probably more normal to do that than
Speaker 1: it is to do what we've been doing. And when
Speaker 1: you I think one of the things that kind of
Speaker 1: one of the things that leads to the sense of
Speaker 1: inevitability of development along the lines that we have is
Speaker 1: is the fact that we only really have about ten
Speaker 1: thousand years of even vaguely reliable like data um or
Speaker 1: vaguely comprehensive data on human history. But people have been
Speaker 1: around for tens of thousands of years longer than that,
Speaker 1: and for most of it we've been a lot more
Speaker 1: experimental than we are now. And it's it's always possible
Speaker 1: for people to try different things in a way that
Speaker 1: um maybe seems impossible to us now but but necessarily
Speaker 1: won't for our kids. Oh yeah, The last thing I
Speaker 1: would tell people to listen to if they're looking for
Speaker 1: a fictional optimistic thing is Corey Doctors walk Away. Um,
Speaker 1: give it a read. And if you're if you're looking
Speaker 1: for like a like a beautiful like not to get
Speaker 1: your head out of the One of the things I'm
Speaker 1: really passionate about is plants. And I have this beautiful
Speaker 1: book called the Planet Pedia and it's really helpful for
Speaker 1: caring for your house plants. And it's just like aesthetically
Speaker 1: just so. The photographs are beautiful and it's one of
Speaker 1: my favorite things to give friends and family. To check
Speaker 1: that one out as well. Another another plant book that
Speaker 1: I just got for somebody that I really like. I
Speaker 1: think it's called Wicked Plants. It's about all the poises
Speaker 1: plants that you can get, um and the ones all
Speaker 1: the like the poison plants you can cultivate in your
Speaker 1: own garden. And that's been a lovely read. Um, And
Speaker 1: I do hope to set up a decent poison garden
Speaker 1: here in the spring. So yeah, me too. It's going
Speaker 1: to be great. Well, let's get to another question. Um,
Speaker 1: do you guys want like a fluff question or like
Speaker 1: a real question? Uh, let's do a fluff one and
Speaker 1: we can start the next episode with a real juicy
Speaker 1: fluff me daddy. All right, Okay, that's a little gift
Speaker 1: to all of you at home. On the topic of hobbies,
Speaker 1: so so I just Garrison likes poisonous plants. I like
Speaker 1: non poisonous plants. Uh, what hobbies are you into that
Speaker 1: we may not know about? Um? I guess I can
Speaker 1: only say one thing here. Really, well, I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you should be really careful about how you answer this one.
Speaker 1: I know what your hobbies are. Let's have everyone else
Speaker 1: go first. UM. I just got into three D printing.
Speaker 1: I'm currently trying to figure out how to get a
Speaker 1: BS to act adhere properly. Yeah, that was the problem
Speaker 1: I had with my printer is that it would I
Speaker 1: would get like a decent way through the first part
Speaker 1: of the print, and then part of it would cut
Speaker 1: curl off, so then it wouldn't print the next layer
Speaker 1: on correctly. Then it must up the print. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I was between mental health stuff and that at the time.
Speaker 1: I was s today on my printer. This is when
Speaker 1: I just gave up because it was too much. So
Speaker 1: I'll be excited to see how you get past this turtle. Well,
Speaker 1: I've I've got a glass bed coming in so I'm
Speaker 1: gonna have Yeah, and I've I've got the enclosure. One
Speaker 1: of the issues I'm having is just that I'm having
Speaker 1: a heating issue with the bed. It won't heat up.
Speaker 1: It stops before it gets to one tin, which is
Speaker 1: what it should be able to go up that high.
Speaker 1: But it's just, yeah, can you manually heat it up hotter?
Speaker 1: It doesn't seem to matter. It doesn't seem to matter
Speaker 1: if I if I said it, like I can't obviously,
Speaker 1: like you can. You can set it up to heat,
Speaker 1: but it just keeps I keep getting that like loud
Speaker 1: error beep. So there's like there's this is going to
Speaker 1: be it's going to be a process of jiggering to
Speaker 1: to to figure it out. Um, but you can come
Speaker 1: pretty fun. Yeah, I have, I have, I've I have
Speaker 1: a similar problem with my setup right now that I've
Speaker 1: been trying to troubleshoot for the half a year. Um,
Speaker 1: I can manually control the heat bed and it does
Speaker 1: get that hot. But still I think it may just
Speaker 1: be a leveling issue. I may need to like clean
Speaker 1: the bed. I also should have talked to someone who
Speaker 1: has done more three D printing than me. Um, But yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's it's it's fun. I I enjoy it. It's
Speaker 1: very it's radically different from the stuff that I like
Speaker 1: do for a living um, which is always my favorite
Speaker 1: thing for like a a task to engage in in
Speaker 1: order to be relaxing, because it's it's not at all
Speaker 1: like reading and writing. No, it's very different. It's very different.
Speaker 1: So so far, I'm enjoying it. And I already I
Speaker 1: printed the thing I need to do to make the
Speaker 1: the bio um, the bio lab for like the Four
Speaker 1: Thieves stuff. If you want to check out our episode
Speaker 1: with Michael from the Four Thieves Vinegar Collective. I've three
Speaker 1: D printed that part, so I'm ready to get the
Speaker 1: other parts and put that thing together. Um, I'm just
Speaker 1: trying to figure out how to print other stuff with
Speaker 1: better plastics and whatnot. But yeah, it's it's fun. So far,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm enjoying it a lot. Um. Maybe I'll get bored,
Speaker 1: Maybe I'll wind up spending way too much money on
Speaker 1: different three D printers, like the ones that lift the
Speaker 1: goo out of the resin printers are there. They's so
Speaker 1: they're much like this is what this is what Corey
Speaker 1: Doctor was talking about. Like, like they are much better
Speaker 1: at the filament printers in a lot of ways, but
Speaker 1: a lot of like a lot of the stuff. A
Speaker 1: lot of the really useful machines that you can make
Speaker 1: with three printers require you to use filaments right now, um,
Speaker 1: but the resin ones are like so much more elegant.
Speaker 1: They're beautiful. Um. I also am really interested in the
Speaker 1: idea of printing would which I did not realize until recently,
Speaker 1: you could do but it's absolutely possible with certain kinds
Speaker 1: of printers. Um, And that seems pretty dope. So I
Speaker 1: don't know. We'll see how. Maybe I'll be tired of
Speaker 1: it in a month because my mental health will take
Speaker 1: a dive, But so far I'm pretty excited. Cool Chris,
Speaker 1: what do I do? Well? Okay, so before the pandemic,
Speaker 1: I was getting into rock climbing, but unfortunately, like like
Speaker 1: I like rock climbing, I'm not like, oh, it's like
Speaker 1: the best thing you can do for it's a lot
Speaker 1: of fun, but unfortunately, I mean it's not like the
Speaker 1: worst pandemic thing you could possibly do, but like it's
Speaker 1: no if you get up high enough on the rocks,
Speaker 1: COVID can't get up there. It's like the opposite of
Speaker 1: a bear. It's really bad at climbing. Yes, so I
Speaker 1: guess the other what do I even do? Is okay?
Speaker 1: So my other thing? Okay, so it's so deep, like
Speaker 1: deep Twitter lure. People will probably know this about me,
Speaker 1: But I am I have been for a very very
Speaker 1: long time, like an inveterate fan of competitive StarCraft two. Okay,
Speaker 1: I am awful at it, Like I am terrible at
Speaker 1: that game. But I have watched so much StarCraft two,
Speaker 1: like I I StarCraft two has become enough of my
Speaker 1: life that like like the game was part of my
Speaker 1: radicalization process, like so, yeah, I wake up extremely early
Speaker 1: or stay up extremely late and watched Korean StarCraft two
Speaker 1: and non Korean StarCraft two, and yeah, it's it's a
Speaker 1: good time. It's I My favorite thing about StarCraft in
Speaker 1: general is thinking about the fact that Blizzard was initially
Speaker 1: trying to make a Warhammer for video game and games
Speaker 1: Workshop was as always too paranoid of their I p
Speaker 1: to let it happen, and thus lost how many god
Speaker 1: knows how many. They would be worth more money than
Speaker 1: most countries like that been printing an impossible amount of money,
Speaker 1: like Indie Chambers would have been able to buy a
Speaker 1: mountain of cocaine to live inside. But but no, instead
Speaker 1: we got all of the infrastructure of modern esports. Mm hm,
Speaker 1: which it seems fine, like it's whatever, I don't care,
Speaker 1: but it is very funny to me that they were like, nah,
Speaker 1: this doesn't seem like a good financial decision for games Workshop,
Speaker 1: this StarCraft thing, Like I wonder like that. That's the
Speaker 1: kind of thing where it's like, if they made that
Speaker 1: much money, would they all just retire? Like well, I
Speaker 1: mean it's a publicly traded company, like the stock the
Speaker 1: shareholders would have made a fortune and the but yeah,
Speaker 1: I I don't know. It's very it's very funny that
Speaker 1: they didn't think that was going to be worth it.
Speaker 1: Let's see in terms of how these people may not know.
Speaker 1: I do really like cooking. I take cooking classes for
Speaker 1: a long time. Um that's been the main cook in
Speaker 1: my family since I was a very little kid, so
Speaker 1: I definitely definitely enjoy that. Um. I did go to
Speaker 1: film school for a few years. I want to get
Speaker 1: back into making short video projects. Have been writing some
Speaker 1: random kind of new weird esque stuff that I would
Speaker 1: love to like rent a studio space and actually shoot
Speaker 1: some silly things in the next year and throw them
Speaker 1: up online just for kind of my own fun. Um.
Speaker 1: And then I also been still doing random occultism stuff. Um,
Speaker 1: that's kind of how I feel my time. Yeah, it's fun. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that's an answer. That is an answer. We
Speaker 1: did it. That's an answer, and more importantly, that's an episode.
Speaker 1: That is an episode, that is an answer, that is
Speaker 1: a single content. You all got a content out of us,
Speaker 1: and will be proud of yourselves, replicate and reproduce another
Speaker 1: content tomorrow that's more eased to your cues. So a
Speaker 1: content every day except for the weekends, because that's the
Speaker 1: problem that we make in some holidays. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: it could happen here the podcast where Jay your Boltonaro
Speaker 1: was once again in the hospital getting all of the
Speaker 1: feats sucked out of his in the hospital. The most
Speaker 1: consistently dying man in the world. You know what, this
Speaker 1: man in history, you know actually literally full of ship again.
Speaker 1: You know what? You know what this means. It approximately
Speaker 1: three four weeks Stephen Crowder is going to get some
Speaker 1: horrible illness. And if we said to the hospitals, well,
Speaker 1: this cycle, this is the only like the cycle. My
Speaker 1: hope for both of them is that they find out
Speaker 1: that each has an obscure disease that can only be
Speaker 1: cured by piping ship from the other into them, and
Speaker 1: so they just hook m via a tube and they're
Speaker 1: just sucking poop out of each of them and putting
Speaker 1: it into the other person. That would be very funny hot,
Speaker 1: All right, what's our first question? Our first question? So
Speaker 1: this was specifically addressed to Chris, so Chris, you can
Speaker 1: answer first, But I think this is a question for
Speaker 1: for everyone. Really, what is your favorite piece of history
Speaker 1: that you haven't been able to talk about yet on
Speaker 1: the show that isn't deserving of a whole episode? Favorite
Speaker 1: piece of I mean, we ain't talked about the Zapatista
Speaker 1: as yet because I don't I don't yet feel comfortable,
Speaker 1: uh with with my level of knowledge there. But it's
Speaker 1: definitely history that's extremely relevant to the kind of ship
Speaker 1: we talked about on the show. Have I talked about
Speaker 1: the water and gas Wars o Bolivia on the show?
Speaker 1: We've talked about that at all? Either? Yeah? I mean,
Speaker 1: I thought, I mean that that probably is deserving of
Speaker 1: its own episode, but absolutely a bunch of people just
Speaker 1: literally like blocking every road in an entire country and
Speaker 1: starving out the ruling class because they can't like import
Speaker 1: food into the city because they've blocked every single road.
Speaker 1: Extremely cool, I guess in terms of like really short,
Speaker 1: not deserving of its own episode. I don't know either,
Speaker 1: because I've I've been able to elongate all my periods
Speaker 1: into episodes. Yeah, I don't know that there's anything we
Speaker 1: wouldn't cover. There's certainly things we haven't covered yet for
Speaker 1: a variety of reasons, often just like I don't feel
Speaker 1: like we've had the time to work. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of work. Yeah, it's like why why haven't why haven't
Speaker 1: we done a MAO episodes? Like do you know how
Speaker 1: much ship that motherfucker got in his life? I have
Speaker 1: been like mentally, like psychologically preparing myself to start working
Speaker 1: on MAOT like this is a ah, that's that? Actually, No,
Speaker 1: it's the Mango Colts. It's definitely the Mango Colts. Did
Speaker 1: you did you did you know about this? No? The
Speaker 1: Mango Colts. Yeah, okay, So so MAO got like I
Speaker 1: forget who was I want to say it was the
Speaker 1: Prime Minister of Pakistan. Some some like dignitary like gave
Speaker 1: him a man. This is this is like this is
Speaker 1: the beginning of the cultural revolution. Somebody gives him a
Speaker 1: mango and he like hands this mango off to like
Speaker 1: a red mango and like they like like this this
Speaker 1: turns into like a cult. Like people like they take
Speaker 1: this mango, they like preserve it. It's it's like they
Speaker 1: have they have like a shrine to the mango and
Speaker 1: like like there's this whole cult apparatus like builds up
Speaker 1: around just people getting mangoes as like tokens of Mao's favor.
Speaker 1: Is this this like this this massive things that is
Speaker 1: this This this spreads like wildfire. It's like people are
Speaker 1: doing this in like the far western reaches of China
Speaker 1: where like like in places where like there's like like
Speaker 1: like there there are places in China where like civil
Speaker 1: wars breakout and it takes people like a week to
Speaker 1: like send representatives like across China to go like talk
Speaker 1: to the Central Committee to argue their case. And like
Speaker 1: even in those places they have mango cults and it
Speaker 1: is it is wild The culture revolution is a is
Speaker 1: a it is a time. It is well I know
Speaker 1: what I'm getting everyone for Christmas this year. They're my
Speaker 1: favorite fruit. Like, we'll see, we'll see if the species
Speaker 1: survives this next summer. Oh we will. Yeah, we'll just
Speaker 1: be growing, just be growing in Siberia. Mangoes sprouting from
Speaker 1: the corpses of fucking antelope. That is beautiful. Um. I
Speaker 1: can't think of anything. Next question, okay, uh speaking of history,
Speaker 1: I like this one. If you could fight anyone in history,
Speaker 1: wait for it and lose, who would you fight? And why?
Speaker 1: Who would I fight and lose and lose? Like you'd
Speaker 1: still get like a few good hits in or something,
Speaker 1: but you'd lose David Bowie because it would be hot.
Speaker 1: Next question other people can answer. I guess no, I
Speaker 1: think that's a good that's the perfect answer. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: would happily be hit by David Bowie, so sure, why
Speaker 1: not there? Yeah? And I know that David Bowie really
Speaker 1: loved to hit teenagers. I would be totally hitting in
Speaker 1: the other sense, scared. I would be fine with anything.
Speaker 1: I don't care when it comes to Bowie. Wow, that's problematic. Problematic.
Speaker 1: Uh huh. We got a few questions about the ethics
Speaker 1: of leaving the United States as things get worse, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's yeah. And this is something that I know we've
Speaker 1: talked about. You've got that get out of America and
Speaker 1: I see. That's the thing is that, like I already
Speaker 1: have my Canadian passport, so that is something that I
Speaker 1: can do at any time. And that's something that I
Speaker 1: probably will do at some point because one I can
Speaker 1: see myself in my theorties and forties, living in Canada
Speaker 1: will be a lot easier in a lot of ways
Speaker 1: in terms of like how much money it will cost
Speaker 1: for me to live and pay certain things, Like living
Speaker 1: in Canada at a certain point will just make a
Speaker 1: lot more sense for me. So yeah, I probably will
Speaker 1: move up. Um. And I also know that getting past
Speaker 1: Canadian border patrol not that hard in terms of other
Speaker 1: people wanting to go legally or illegally. That's it is
Speaker 1: actually pretty easy to get to get up there. Um,
Speaker 1: if you want to do it legally, that's definitely a
Speaker 1: lot a lot more work, but also not impossible. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think. I mean, like it's important to know that
Speaker 1: like moving to somewhere else is not escaping the effects,
Speaker 1: because the effects are going to reach everywhere, but it
Speaker 1: can have a lot of advantages. Um, especially kids. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I I say moving up is or moving away
Speaker 1: from the States is a decent thing for a lot
Speaker 1: of people. I don't feel the need to stay and
Speaker 1: fight for something that I don't really care about what's
Speaker 1: in the first place that anyway, UM, so sure do
Speaker 1: what makes you happy in the time that you have alive.
Speaker 1: I feel like that's a that says as ethical as
Speaker 1: you need to get Yeah, I don't think anyone has
Speaker 1: a responsibility to like stay in uh fight to the
Speaker 1: death uh in in a collapsing country. UM. As as
Speaker 1: a general rule, I'm very sympathetic towards refugees. And that's
Speaker 1: kind of what you would be if you're talking about
Speaker 1: fleeing the United States because you're it's in the process
Speaker 1: of falling apart and things are you suspect a lot
Speaker 1: about to get a lot more violent, especially if you
Speaker 1: have again like a family kids. Um. I I had
Speaker 1: options to do that that I've I've chosen at this
Speaker 1: point not to um not to pursue UM but uh,
Speaker 1: I get white people would and as a general rule,
Speaker 1: like I spent I spent once when I was um
Speaker 1: in ah in Bosnia and Serbia talking to survivors of
Speaker 1: the genocide there in the nineties, UM, I took a
Speaker 1: train ride um from Sarajevo to like a little town
Speaker 1: near Strabernitza, and Uh, during the train ride, I wound
Speaker 1: up like hanging out with this dude who had been
Speaker 1: born and raised in Yugoslavia and had been living in
Speaker 1: Canada since the Civil War. And he, like very through
Speaker 1: in his kind of broken English, explained like, yeah, when
Speaker 1: the war broke out, all of my friends, all of
Speaker 1: these other young guys I knew, were like, well, you
Speaker 1: know we're gonna fight, We're gonna fight. And I said, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: no to Canada And this is the first time I've
Speaker 1: been back, and that was the smart thing to do. UM.
Speaker 1: So I'm not I mean, if you can get the
Speaker 1: if you can get out and find a place that's safer,
Speaker 1: as Garrison said, like, there's there's nothing I think that
Speaker 1: inherently behooves you to spend your uh limited time on
Speaker 1: this planet struggling, And especially if you've got a family,
Speaker 1: like doing what you can to put them in a
Speaker 1: safer position is great. That's none of it's a permanent
Speaker 1: or even necessarily a long term solution, like the idea
Speaker 1: of moving to Canada has a lot of appeal, But like,
Speaker 1: if you think that Canada is going to keep being
Speaker 1: what would a lot of Americans see it as as
Speaker 1: the United States collapses into like fascism. I don't know
Speaker 1: how realistic a proposition that really is. And it's the
Speaker 1: same for a lot of places. Like all of these
Speaker 1: problems are global problems, and moving geographically unless you're wealthy
Speaker 1: enough to move to like some fortified compound protected by
Speaker 1: contractors in a place that is actually insulated from climate
Speaker 1: change to a significant extent, um is not the does
Speaker 1: not bring the degree of security you might expect. Um.
Speaker 1: I do think there is. I do think it is,
Speaker 1: generally speaking, a noble and positive thing, uh to to
Speaker 1: to stay and try to make things better where you are.
Speaker 1: But um, you know, I think everybody. I think everyone.
Speaker 1: I think every single person, whether they admit it or not,
Speaker 1: would leave at a certain point if they possibly could. Um.
Speaker 1: And I don't think anyone is. I don't think anyone
Speaker 1: owes it to the world to like, uh, die in
Speaker 1: a place that they hate just because, um that's where
Speaker 1: they were born. And we're back. Okay, Oh, this is
Speaker 1: a good one. What tool besides bolt cutters. Should we
Speaker 1: all own in a collapse situation? First of all, bolt
Speaker 1: cutters That should not be your first picture to for
Speaker 1: a tool. No, No, it should be an angle grinder
Speaker 1: with a diamond blade. No. Even like water filters gotten
Speaker 1: me out of a number of types water filtration systems.
Speaker 1: There's starters, like, there's a lot of there's a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff. If not evens not water filtration, you can
Speaker 1: get tablets or honestly, like you can have a little
Speaker 1: hand pump filter and water purification tablets along with a
Speaker 1: little you know, there's a number of things that are
Speaker 1: that should be in a go bag. A way to
Speaker 1: get some amount of of already clean water and a
Speaker 1: way to get more clean water. Are enough food to
Speaker 1: at least deal with three to five days. UM, some
Speaker 1: rope UM. A good knife multi tool is even better
Speaker 1: in most situations if you have if you don't mind
Speaker 1: the weight, a belt knife and a multi tool would
Speaker 1: be great, or a multi tool in a little hand axe, which,
Speaker 1: depending on where you live, might be more useful in
Speaker 1: splitting wood. A good fire starter, UM, some amount of
Speaker 1: rubbing alcohol, which is always a handy thing to have
Speaker 1: on hand. UM. Either maps or you know, batteries for
Speaker 1: an electronic device that might be able to act as
Speaker 1: a map. Um. Yeah, that that's all useful stuff. Um
Speaker 1: I do I I do keep in the boot of
Speaker 1: my car generally an angle grinder. Um. I have come into,
Speaker 1: especially living out in the middle of nowhere, a couple
Speaker 1: of situations like sometimes somebody has a health emergency and
Speaker 1: there is a fence in the way, um, and it's
Speaker 1: it has been something that is and is I think
Speaker 1: going to be easier form. Old cutters are good at
Speaker 1: what they do, they also require a lot of forearm
Speaker 1: and upper body strength that is not going to be
Speaker 1: as much of an option for people. So angle grinder
Speaker 1: not a bad thing to have in any sort of like.
Speaker 1: It's especially if you like if you're if you're planning
Speaker 1: a kid, like I want to keep ship in my
Speaker 1: car because the wildfires are coming right. Um, well, you're
Speaker 1: probably don't want a battery powered saw. Um because depending
Speaker 1: on the capable even if you have a very capable
Speaker 1: off roading vehicle, everyone I know who does serious overlanding
Speaker 1: is like, well you keep a fucking chainsaw in there,
Speaker 1: because sometimes you need to cut wood out of the
Speaker 1: way and you're just not going to get your car
Speaker 1: over it. Um. So it really depends on what you're
Speaker 1: doing and like what the what the the kind of
Speaker 1: potential threats you're worried about are um, But yeah, I
Speaker 1: think the basics are way to get water, some amount
Speaker 1: of food, ability to start a fire. Something like a
Speaker 1: space blanket is useful. If you live in a place
Speaker 1: where it actually gets cold, you should have a space
Speaker 1: blanket and a wool blanket or a couple of wool
Speaker 1: blankets because those will retain heat much better. Wool keeps
Speaker 1: like eight of its insulating capacity even when wet, and
Speaker 1: like layering wool and survival blankets um can be a
Speaker 1: really effective way to keep yourself from dying in in
Speaker 1: in bad weather situations. UM. That said, depending on where
Speaker 1: you are, there may be no realistic way to protect
Speaker 1: yourself in the like if you are in certain parts
Speaker 1: of the Midwest at certain parts of the winter, it
Speaker 1: may not matter so much, like what blankets you have
Speaker 1: at access to frustrating the will there's and there's no
Speaker 1: like structures around you, then yeah, it's negative, there's only
Speaker 1: so much. Yeah, I do love collecting a lock bypass tools.
Speaker 1: It's one of my favorite things is just to have
Speaker 1: these practice using them. Um. Something I got for when
Speaker 1: I went to the Earth First Gathering that worked out
Speaker 1: pretty well was a foldable solar panel that connects to USB.
Speaker 1: That's enough to keep my phone allow. I've always so
Speaker 1: in terms of always wanting a map, this little foldable
Speaker 1: thing is enough to keep my phone able to have
Speaker 1: a map assuming I have cell service. So I was
Speaker 1: skeptical of how much this thing could work. Um, and
Speaker 1: it it did a decent enough job. It even kept
Speaker 1: it even kept like my iPad pro um uh powered
Speaker 1: as well, so it had had had a decent amount
Speaker 1: of square footage once you unroll it. So that was
Speaker 1: very useful. But yeah, I mean I I really like
Speaker 1: luck Bypass stuff. Um, it's one of one of one
Speaker 1: of my other hobbies. So this is you know a
Speaker 1: variety of tools in that type that it's nice to
Speaker 1: get like a decent collection of also, like especially now,
Speaker 1: but probably in general, like have masks like just I
Speaker 1: mean just in general, like have masks, have lots of them,
Speaker 1: make sure you can change them. Yeah, I have a
Speaker 1: gas mask if that's at all physically like respond like
Speaker 1: fiscally possible for you mirror is the one I think
Speaker 1: Garrison and I would both recommend to the really good
Speaker 1: gas wonderful again all of these kids, there's the kid
Speaker 1: are like, okay, what is the what is what's necessary?
Speaker 1: And then there's like, all right, if you have money
Speaker 1: or if you have time that you want to learn
Speaker 1: extra skills? What are other things like lock picks? If
Speaker 1: you're just a random Joe and you've never like, don't
Speaker 1: throw lock picks in your kid, if you've never done
Speaker 1: any lock picks ship, they're not going to help you. Um,
Speaker 1: but if that that is a skill that is worth
Speaker 1: picking up and that will make you like more resilient.
Speaker 1: Um yeah um oh. And a fourteen point nine millimeter
Speaker 1: anti material rifle. Um, you're always gonna need one of those.
Speaker 1: They're they stay supersonic. It up to three and a
Speaker 1: half miles UM, which is really useful. So definitely, definitely,
Speaker 1: And they're only you probably aren't going to spend more
Speaker 1: than dollars getting one set up, So it's it's really
Speaker 1: for the price of a of a fairly new Toyota Prius,
Speaker 1: you could have um an anti materi, a real rifle
Speaker 1: that con pierce armored vehicles. At at several miles distance,
Speaker 1: and really what is more pragmatic a survival tool than that?
Speaker 1: And we for it. It's only like thirty around. That's
Speaker 1: just a moderately expensive meal per bullet. Christopher, Uh, do
Speaker 1: you think that corporations like Walmart or Amazon could become
Speaker 1: more militarystic? Yeah? I mean yeah, I think I think absolutely.
Speaker 1: The trend that worries me is Amazon's increasing um collaborations
Speaker 1: with and deeper connections with like the FBI and other
Speaker 1: kind of law enforcement agencies. Um. The degree to which
Speaker 1: target has also like with the FBI and like with
Speaker 1: other agencies, because they're they're anti shrink Department and whatnot.
Speaker 1: They're like, they're the surveillance they've built to stop theft
Speaker 1: is so advanced. They have one of the best crime
Speaker 1: labs in the whole United States. Yeah. UM, organizations like
Speaker 1: Tiger Swan, which is a mercenary group that the Dakota
Speaker 1: Pipeline people, the Dapple folks like hired to crack down
Speaker 1: on the Standing Rock protests and have have worked in
Speaker 1: other There's other organizations like that that we're active during
Speaker 1: the BLM protests and kind of the I I do
Speaker 1: think we're seeing a pair of militarization of a lot
Speaker 1: of these corporation, a lot of these corporations in order
Speaker 1: to protect their what they see is their financial interests
Speaker 1: UM and that that is that is proceeding rapidly, And
Speaker 1: it's not the thing that I'm not most I'm not
Speaker 1: most worried about them, like do like having armed forces,
Speaker 1: although there will be some degree of that. There's already
Speaker 1: that's already happen, Like in Portland and downtown Portland there
Speaker 1: are armed effectively like mercenaries guarding certain businesses in certain areas,
Speaker 1: like as a result of like you know, to deal
Speaker 1: with quote unquote the gun crime or whatever property crime
Speaker 1: that's raised. But the thing that I think is most
Speaker 1: concerning is the degree to which they are professionalizing a
Speaker 1: paramilitary surveillance apparatus UM and Amazon has done it to
Speaker 1: do stuff like crackdown on union organizing and whatnot, like,
Speaker 1: So yeah, I'm very concerned with that. I'm I I
Speaker 1: think that the the dimension of it that's most frightening
Speaker 1: is not necessarily like the shadow run corporations buying armies,
Speaker 1: but rather corporations buying like intelligence agencies. UM. Is kind
Speaker 1: of the thing that I think will actually be the
Speaker 1: biggest threat um because in a lot of cases, generally speaking,
Speaker 1: if I have to deal with an armed security guard
Speaker 1: or a cop, that security guard is going to be
Speaker 1: less of a pain in the ass than the cop. Um.
Speaker 1: Not always, but as a general rule, I'm less worried
Speaker 1: about security guards than cops, even armed ones. I think
Speaker 1: another thing that's important to keep in mind is that, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's like, I don't, I don't. I really
Speaker 1: don't think there's a danger that we're going to go
Speaker 1: back to like East India company style, like people with
Speaker 1: mass armies, because it's it's literally too expensive, Like you can't,
Speaker 1: it's it's too expensive. And the armies that exist already
Speaker 1: do that. Yeah, yeah, you don't need them. But but
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that the thing the thing that's
Speaker 1: like scary outside of the intelligence stuff, which is terrifying,
Speaker 1: but it's the stuff they do down like acus you
Speaker 1: call it down the supply chain, which is like you know,
Speaker 1: the cocol and murder and union organizers with paramilitaries, right,
Speaker 1: they tend to work through like like you know, the
Speaker 1: corporations will back rebel groups, right, corporations will back like
Speaker 1: you know, in Colombia, you see a lot of this
Speaker 1: is like you have these sort of like these I
Speaker 1: mean something about some of the back just directly by
Speaker 1: landholding holding corporations. Some of them are backed by just
Speaker 1: individual large landholders. But you get these like you know,
Speaker 1: you get basically these paramilitaries that are sort of the
Speaker 1: third wave after the army goes in, and that stuff
Speaker 1: is very scary or probably we're probably gonna see more
Speaker 1: of that, and yeah, but but but but I think
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of important that there's there there's an
Speaker 1: extent to which again you'll see them having their own mercenaries.
Speaker 1: But a lot of the time it's there's some kind
Speaker 1: of thing when when when companies really need to kill someone,
Speaker 1: they tend to outsource that to aid like another sort
Speaker 1: of paramilitary organization that's like not directly in their supply chain.
Speaker 1: It's like that it's not directly under their training command. Mhm.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's that's a good and fun time that
Speaker 1: we'll probably just get worse mhm. Speaking of corporate uh
Speaker 1: funkori or whatever, a Coca Cola ad I hope, I
Speaker 1: hope we do get a Coca Cola add because nothing
Speaker 1: soothes my quench like a cherry vanilla Coca cola. Nothing
Speaker 1: soothes your quench. That's what I said. Those are words
Speaker 1: that came out of a Now we're back, okay, Robert.
Speaker 1: Somebody had a question about an article you wrote back
Speaker 1: when you worked at Crack about a woman who was
Speaker 1: hiding from their family. The end an article. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: mentioned that you haven't heard from her in a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks leading up to and they want to know
Speaker 1: if you've ever heard from her again. So yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a bummer. The pseudonym I'm I'm not going to use
Speaker 1: her real name in this, but the pseudonym I used
Speaker 1: for her in the article was as Ame. She was
Speaker 1: a woman who lived in Um the EU, and Uh
Speaker 1: was under threat of honor killing from her family, who
Speaker 1: were from Pakistan in origin Um because she was an atheist,
Speaker 1: was not Um religious hardliner UM and didn't want to be.
Speaker 1: And for years she had kind of hidden that from
Speaker 1: her family, Like she'd moved out on her own, but
Speaker 1: she'd hidden the fact that, like she had a boyfriend,
Speaker 1: she'd hidden the fact that she'd liked played dungeons all
Speaker 1: of this stuff, like she played D and D and
Speaker 1: was like scared that like that was like her dad
Speaker 1: would literally kill her. And this is a thing that happens.
Speaker 1: This is a thing that happens in the United States
Speaker 1: and the EU. UM it's a problem with like fundamentalist
Speaker 1: um Islam, and that's not the only religion there's honor
Speaker 1: killings as a result on. But that was her specific situation.
Speaker 1: One of the things she was frightened about is her
Speaker 1: family go back to Pakistan regularly, and she was concerned.
Speaker 1: She wanted to go because it was the only way
Speaker 1: to see her grandparents, but she was also concerned that
Speaker 1: if her parents found out when they went back, they
Speaker 1: would basically imprison her somewhere where she would not be
Speaker 1: able to get out and get back to her home
Speaker 1: and she would be forced to be married off or something.
Speaker 1: So she was working with an organization um in the
Speaker 1: country in the EU where she lived that helped people
Speaker 1: extricate themselves and and the kind of one of the
Speaker 1: last things she told me is that, like, well, the
Speaker 1: things she was looking at doing because she was so
Speaker 1: worried about her dad was a total break. Was like
Speaker 1: one day, with the help of this organization, she would
Speaker 1: just be gone and in another part of the EU
Speaker 1: and would have a complete break from her life and
Speaker 1: would completely stop living as the identity UM she had
Speaker 1: had her entire life. UM. And I never heard from
Speaker 1: her again after that, after like three or four different
Speaker 1: interview sessions, and I still have not uh. And my
Speaker 1: hope is that she did the thing she said she
Speaker 1: was going to do, and she just completely burned that
Speaker 1: email and every their way people had of getting in
Speaker 1: touch with her. UM. And she's doing great now. But
Speaker 1: I really have no idea. UM, I have absolutely no
Speaker 1: idea what happened to her? Oh uh, So we would
Speaker 1: people want an update on the quest for eel horse.
Speaker 1: Uh Still no, still no horse. Still have not found
Speaker 1: an entire horse carcass um. But but one day it'll happen.
Speaker 1: You know, it will happen. Okay, it's gonna be good, Garson.
Speaker 1: That gator that I shoved a turkey or a duck
Speaker 1: inside and a turkey next too, was pretty good. It
Speaker 1: was great. After I took it out of the pit
Speaker 1: as you were wrestling people screaming, Well, that's the only
Speaker 1: way to properly cook it the right amount of time
Speaker 1: is to get drunk enough that people have to fight
Speaker 1: you to remove it from the fire gear. That's how
Speaker 1: cooking works. I don't know, if you've done much of
Speaker 1: it in your life, you'll you'll understand one day. This
Speaker 1: This is a question that I find interest doing because
Speaker 1: I feel like it really must understand, not to like
Speaker 1: insult the first asking it, but at think that that's
Speaker 1: not That's not what I'm trying to do. Um. The
Speaker 1: question is, um, what population can the post capitalist world
Speaker 1: sustain and thrive on with our ideas and concepts? A billion?
Speaker 1: Like we currently have six billion to a billion less
Speaker 1: than ability, Like, how how do people are you willing
Speaker 1: to lose to achieve sustainability? Because I forget the community
Speaker 1: and are optimistic with proper technology and ecosustainability techniques, we
Speaker 1: can maintain a population close to what we have now.
Speaker 1: And Yeah, I feel like just the framing of this
Speaker 1: question kind of approaches our current problems and the solutions
Speaker 1: we have in a weird way, because I don't think
Speaker 1: we're not trying to reach a peak population. We're trying
Speaker 1: to make sure the people that we have have enough
Speaker 1: stuff to live well. And we have that right now.
Speaker 1: We we we overproduce everything. We make about one and
Speaker 1: a half times as much food as we need to
Speaker 1: to feed everybody, yet there are billions and millions of
Speaker 1: people who go hungry. So it's not a so like
Speaker 1: it's approaching this issue. Yeah, so approaching this question in
Speaker 1: terms of like how could the post capitalist world thrive
Speaker 1: on our ideas, and like, I we're not trying to
Speaker 1: like reach a certain population number, where I think going
Speaker 1: it from that way is kind of a little silly
Speaker 1: because I feel like it should be the opposite is.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I I don't know why we don't think
Speaker 1: we need to start with population and then go down.
Speaker 1: The point is is look what we have, here's the people.
Speaker 1: Let's distribute this like a network instead of a top
Speaker 1: down kind of system. Yeah. I I think that one
Speaker 1: of the things you have to if you're taught, if
Speaker 1: you're trying to talk about social ecology, one of the
Speaker 1: things you have to resist, um is this idea that
Speaker 1: like they're overpopulation is any part of the problem. It
Speaker 1: is not. Consumption is a problem, um, But there's plenty
Speaker 1: of resources. The problem is again one of allocation, and
Speaker 1: if you were to actually develop a much more equitable
Speaker 1: society where people were getting enough, one of the things
Speaker 1: that we have seen demographically all over the world when
Speaker 1: um the level of kind of um when the the
Speaker 1: sort of resources available per capita and a population increases,
Speaker 1: is people have less kids um and and like I
Speaker 1: think that, Yeah, it's certainly good to say that, like,
Speaker 1: in a world that is more equitable, the human population
Speaker 1: will naturally level off and decrease somewhat. But that the
Speaker 1: thing that's not the same as saying that, like we
Speaker 1: need to decrease the population, we need to increase um
Speaker 1: equity um and and make sure that people have access
Speaker 1: to the resources that they need um and also that
Speaker 1: people who are massively over consuming aren't allowed to do
Speaker 1: that anymore. You know, that will solve the problems and
Speaker 1: scale back all of the resources being put towards useless
Speaker 1: growth and predict towards better distribution. Thus, actually, like the
Speaker 1: Questionnaer used the term like post capitalist. I don't think
Speaker 1: we're gonna get to a post capitalist world ever, Like,
Speaker 1: at least at least not when I'm allowed. I don't
Speaker 1: think like a world no. Will there be post capitalist areas, probably,
Speaker 1: but we're never gonna get there. There's never gonna be
Speaker 1: a post capitalist world. I don't. I don't. I don't
Speaker 1: think that I also think it's entirely possible that we
Speaker 1: will reach points that people in the time will not
Speaker 1: necessarily consider post capitalist because it will be the same
Speaker 1: states and a lot of the same institutions organizations that
Speaker 1: were there as a kid. But people who were, you know,
Speaker 1: looking at it from a perspective today might consider post
Speaker 1: capitalist because that's generally how change happens. You know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: about like how democracy increased in in the UK, but
Speaker 1: they still had like a king. It's like when did
Speaker 1: they They're not, they never really reached post monarchy. But
Speaker 1: it's also not the same system that they were run
Speaker 1: by in like fourteen hundred. You know, it's wildly different,
Speaker 1: and there's much more representation for more people, but it
Speaker 1: it's that is not you know that there's also you
Speaker 1: also have your your Soviet unions and you're you're killing
Speaker 1: csars and which are very which which is fine, and
Speaker 1: and and and I I like killings ours. But change
Speaker 1: happens in a variety of ways, and change can be
Speaker 1: revolutionary in its effect without being a clear break. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to think of like how we're talking
Speaker 1: about like the capitalist world thriving, Like I don't I
Speaker 1: don't view eight billion people thriving right now. Even with
Speaker 1: that like a lot of a lot, Like it's not
Speaker 1: like it's that's not what's happening right now, and we
Speaker 1: need to change the way like distribution of resources works drastically,
Speaker 1: and doing that will make everyone's lives a whole lot
Speaker 1: better and it will also maybe limit some of the
Speaker 1: endless growth. And those things aren't opposites, um, And I
Speaker 1: just I don't know how like we can say those things,
Speaker 1: but the path to getting there is certainly a lot
Speaker 1: more ambiguous. Yeah, I think that that's I think one
Speaker 1: of the ways in which the Left goes wrong often
Speaker 1: is kind of looking at things that have been tried
Speaker 1: before and and didn't didn't didn't do the trick and
Speaker 1: saying like, what we need is we need us another
Speaker 1: Bolshevik revolution, you know, we need to bring us back
Speaker 1: that you hammer and sickle. And it's like, well, you know,
Speaker 1: they gave it the old College try and they did
Speaker 1: not win. Um, And you can be angry at that
Speaker 1: or whatever, or you can be like, Okay, it's the same,
Speaker 1: and hey, it's it's every tendency. I can look at
Speaker 1: the fucking maknos and be like, well, that was based
Speaker 1: as hell, and you know what, it didn't do the
Speaker 1: fucking trick UM. So I think there's a degree of
Speaker 1: humility that needs to be had in terms of like
Speaker 1: what actual, what actual change that makes a more livable
Speaker 1: world will look like in the way in which That's
Speaker 1: one of the reasons I did enjoy Kim Stanley Robinson's
Speaker 1: Ministry of the Future is a lot of it is
Speaker 1: about the end of capitalism in a way that is
Speaker 1: not UM. It's it's it. It doesn't look like a
Speaker 1: lot of ends of capitalism have have kind of been
Speaker 1: posited by UM. There's a lot of uh strong arming
Speaker 1: bankers into like forcing high level economic changes that put
Speaker 1: insto like really extractive systems and whatnot. UM, And it's
Speaker 1: it's it's interesting. It was kind of an imagining of
Speaker 1: how the transition could begin UM in a way that
Speaker 1: that isn't commonly talked about UM, at least on the left.
Speaker 1: And I thought it was valuable for that, and I
Speaker 1: think people should be I think there's I think that
Speaker 1: UM UM people can be more creative in how they
Speaker 1: envisioned the way that might look than they they often are.
Speaker 1: And I feel like this question actually relates to like
Speaker 1: stuff like dual power really well, because our our goal
Speaker 1: as individuals is not feeding eight billion people. Our goal
Speaker 1: is to get a garden enough so that we can
Speaker 1: feed most of our friends off of stuff that we
Speaker 1: grew for like the summer, right, Like that's like, that's
Speaker 1: what our goal is to is to fild it from
Speaker 1: that way, instead of saying, like, how how can we
Speaker 1: feed New York in a climate sustainable way? That is
Speaker 1: a very different question than being like if we want
Speaker 1: to integrate solar punk and like ecosustainability stuff into our
Speaker 1: lives now, because if we don't do it, no one
Speaker 1: really else is really going to. Let's start with the
Speaker 1: people you actually already have connections with, because a lot
Speaker 1: of it is is about building like horizontal connections as
Speaker 1: opposed to defaulting to this top down system of who
Speaker 1: has what, who needs what? And this is when we
Speaker 1: when we venture, when we dare to venture into the subreddit.
Speaker 1: One of the things I see people like critiquing a
Speaker 1: lot is like, well, you're you know, they keep talking
Speaker 1: about like all of these little like home gardening and
Speaker 1: like canning and and and kind of these community level solutions,
Speaker 1: but that's not going to deal with like this massive
Speaker 1: systemic problem. It's like, it's not all about that. There's
Speaker 1: there's one. One of the methods in which you can
Speaker 1: ensure change is keeping you and yours alive and committed
Speaker 1: on change. And part of that is ex hyper local
Speaker 1: solutions UM that also involve increasing your own idea of
Speaker 1: your autonomy and your own and your own understanding of
Speaker 1: things like the food cycle, which have an impact on
Speaker 1: what you like, vote for and what you support pushing
Speaker 1: for on like a societal level, the things that you
Speaker 1: come to better understand in your daily life, and and
Speaker 1: so getting involved in all of these things guerilla gardening
Speaker 1: and whatnot UM has an impact on that. All. I
Speaker 1: do think people underestimate, Like the largest crop by acreage
Speaker 1: in the United States by a long shot is fucking
Speaker 1: lawns and replacing lawns with either zero escaping just to
Speaker 1: increase carbon capture and reduce water usage, or with some
Speaker 1: sort of food growth. Doing a mix of that for
Speaker 1: the vast majority of like lawn area in the United
Speaker 1: States actually would be a significant thing on a global level.
Speaker 1: Recommend everyone the Book of Food not lawns. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: it's that that would not be a meaningless change, and
Speaker 1: it is something that people can have an impact on
Speaker 1: because it is the kind of thing that if we
Speaker 1: were to get popular enough, there's a Pokemon point, you know,
Speaker 1: where it where it becomes a trend um and and
Speaker 1: like Pokemon, if it gets popular enough, it will never die.
Speaker 1: That's what we say about all of our stuff on
Speaker 1: our show. If it if it becomes like Pokemon or
Speaker 1: or n f T point, if that's But I don't
Speaker 1: think in FT Pokemon is so much better than any
Speaker 1: n f T. Although the day that this drops, that
Speaker 1: will probably announce the Pokemon n FT game, which will
Speaker 1: be the final coffin in the biosphere. All of all
Speaker 1: of all of my Pokemons are gone. I've been had
Speaker 1: all my apes gone. That was my favorite post of
Speaker 1: the holiday season. Oh, Robert, do you want to give
Speaker 1: an update on After the Revolution? That was asked a
Speaker 1: couple of times. Yeah, I'm three chapters in UM so
Speaker 1: it'll be done hopefully at some point this year. Garrison
Speaker 1: Garrison has a question on that. Are you gonna pay
Speaker 1: someone else to code the book? No, no, we pay you, Garrison,
Speaker 1: I don't want to code this. Yeah, well, I have
Speaker 1: to work on the Daily Show. Now I cannot code
Speaker 1: this game. We all have things to do we don't
Speaker 1: want to do. Oh gosh, alright, I'm so sorry, Garrison,
Speaker 1: so sorry. Well have you code some other people's books
Speaker 1: just to get stuff? No more coding. I will not
Speaker 1: allow it. There are there, there are experts who can
Speaker 1: do this a lot prettier than I can with my
Speaker 1: I think, Garrison, I consider you an expert. Now Ope, no,
Speaker 1: in in in E pub coding. I'll put that on
Speaker 1: my resume. Well, I think that does it for us today. Folks.
Speaker 1: If you want to follow us on social media so
Speaker 1: you can watch us promote our own shows again, you
Speaker 1: can go to Cool's own media on Twitter, Instagram and
Speaker 1: happen here pod And wouldn't that be level? We get
Speaker 1: so much more connections through online. That's wow? That really? Do?
Speaker 1: I love online? Yeah? And uh we're doing it behind
Speaker 1: the Bastards live stream digital show with prop on. That
Speaker 1: doesn't sound right, doesn't This bit is so not funny
Speaker 1: everything time, it's not a bit. I'm just dreading it.
Speaker 1: I'm dreading it to but we're doing it. February moment
Speaker 1: House dot Com tickets still available. They are a moment
Speaker 1: how come slash behind the bastards. Can I scalpel them
Speaker 1: to the fans? I to get in there. Scarcity is
Speaker 1: the key. Well do that if you have disposable income
Speaker 1: and want to watch Roberts talk. Yeah, yeah, more than
Speaker 1: we already do. I guarantee you it'll be worth it. Well,
Speaker 1: that's the episode. Thank you for listening. I hope everyone
Speaker 1: has uh better that would be not And I hope
Speaker 1: everyone has an identical two down to the day and
Speaker 1: until in May you realize that you're actually in like
Speaker 1: a groundhog Day style loop. Um, and then you would
Speaker 1: achieve nirvana if I'm remembering how the movie groundhog Day
Speaker 1: went properly. Sure, Uh yeah, that sounds that sounds great.
Speaker 1: Have a good year, make some changes, make connections with
Speaker 1: people around you. There there, you just just define them.
Speaker 1: Talk to people who look like they have cool politics
Speaker 1: or or start doing cool things, you know, and started
Speaker 1: starting start doing cool things. Yeah. We should address one
Speaker 1: last thing, which is the question people ask that gets
Speaker 1: asked a lot, but we probably can't address enough, which
Speaker 1: is like, there's no one around me doing any of
Speaker 1: this mutual aid stuff. There's nobody around me engaging any
Speaker 1: of the stuff that I want to get how do
Speaker 1: how do I get organized and get involved? Number one,
Speaker 1: there are people around you doing that kind of ship.
Speaker 1: It may just be hard to find because of where
Speaker 1: you are. UM. But if you start doing ship, if
Speaker 1: you like, the simplest thing I can say is try
Speaker 1: and figure out where there's a need and start filling
Speaker 1: it UM. Often you will start meeting other people who
Speaker 1: are engaged in adjacent projects or even the same thing UM.
Speaker 1: And that's a way to get into it. If you
Speaker 1: are trying to start. If you actually get so far
Speaker 1: as to start serving a need in your area in
Speaker 1: a mutual aid capacity UM and trying to start organizing
Speaker 1: and whatnot, and you're doing shit, feel free to hit
Speaker 1: us up on email reach out. We are happy to signal,
Speaker 1: boost and signpost people who are have actually started doing
Speaker 1: shit UM. It's one of those things. Please don't come
Speaker 1: to I think this might be a cool idea. But
Speaker 1: if you start doing shit UM, and you can provide
Speaker 1: some evidence that you're you're doing something in your community
Speaker 1: that's not currently being done that is a mutual aid
Speaker 1: type thing, or even even a charitable type thing. If
Speaker 1: it's if you're doing it, we will try to help
Speaker 1: signal boost and and can be very useful in that capacity.
Speaker 1: So so it's not easy necessarily, especially depending on where
Speaker 1: you live. But like you do, it's always possible to
Speaker 1: find a need and fill it, you know. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: found that uh uh definitely was easier before the pandemic.
Speaker 1: But a way that I've met people that are a
Speaker 1: little bit more open minded to the same things that
Speaker 1: I'm open minded too is going to like local comedy
Speaker 1: shows or things things that comedy shows I'm guessing like
Speaker 1: farmers markets, farmers you know, wherever kind of weird not
Speaker 1: not in the normal culture people will go to. You'll
Speaker 1: probably find someone there with radical politics, and yeah, that's
Speaker 1: problem all those types of like like you know, countercultural
Speaker 1: subcultural spaces. You'll probably find someone there who's wearing a
Speaker 1: back patch that is something like smashed or something. You know,
Speaker 1: So like just like you you have to you know,
Speaker 1: you're not going to find them by staying at your
Speaker 1: in your house and scrolling on Twitter. They probably not.
Speaker 1: You have to kind of go into the real world,
Speaker 1: um as scary as the meat space maybe, yeah, And
Speaker 1: I would say another thing to keep in mind if
Speaker 1: you are in kind of a more conservative area. And
Speaker 1: even if you do identify as an anarchist, you don't
Speaker 1: have to frame it that way. You can always call
Speaker 1: yourself a libertarian municipal list and none of the people
Speaker 1: who might be offended by anarchists will listen past libertarian
Speaker 1: and they'll decide you're fine. And that's a great way
Speaker 1: to to start that. Uh, ironic means the same thing,
Speaker 1: more or less. I mean, there's other kinds of anarchists
Speaker 1: who are But like most people who say they're anarchists,
Speaker 1: if you were to call them libertarian municipalists would be like,
Speaker 1: all right, whatever, yeah, not me, don't call me that.
Speaker 1: But I call call Chris that constantly. That's that's that's that's,
Speaker 1: that's it. We'll be back tomorrow or maybe not. I
Speaker 1: don't know, probably tomorrow maybe Yep. That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: And it's been said, say so, this is gonna be ship,
Speaker 1: this is gonna suck, this is gonna be trash, because
Speaker 1: no one knows what's gonna happen. I have not actually
Speaker 1: come up with a prediction yet. I don't know this one.
Speaker 1: Have I hoped one that I came up with before
Speaker 1: the show. Have we have we opened it. Yeah, we've
Speaker 1: already started. Um, we were supposed to. This is it
Speaker 1: happen here? Everybody podcast things falling apart? How to maybe
Speaker 1: make them fall apart less? Um, Sophie pitched the great
Speaker 1: idea of why don't we do an episode that is
Speaker 1: our predictions? It's really not my idea when people ask,
Speaker 1: so this is Sophie's idea that she's been Sophie's idea alone.
Speaker 1: It's sprang fully formed from the side of her head,
Speaker 1: like Athena from Zeuss skull um. And we all agreed
Speaker 1: it was a good idea for an episode. And then
Speaker 1: I did not come up with the prediction. Did you
Speaker 1: get that's a bit of time thinking about not a second,
Speaker 1: not even absolutely love the Athena Zeus reference. That's how
Speaker 1: I tell people I got Anderson. Yeah, Well, my prediction
Speaker 1: for the year is that I'm going to keep making
Speaker 1: references to Athena whenever I do something that pisses Sophie off,
Speaker 1: so that she' I will it will absolutely work. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's my prediction for prediction. Uh, okay, okay, okay, wait
Speaker 1: before we go into the to the to the big,
Speaker 1: Bigger thing, I want everybody to give one word prediction
Speaker 1: for how you would describe this coming here. One word
Speaker 1: prediction borning an f t H. I was just gonna
Speaker 1: say fucked. But I don't think because it's gonna be
Speaker 1: hot too, I don't think it's going to be that fun. Actually,
Speaker 1: I think I was gonna say mediocre. Yeah, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: foreseeing a lot of blandness, a lot of blandness. My here,
Speaker 1: here's a prediction I'll make. I think that one of
Speaker 1: the things that we were seeing last year, especially in
Speaker 1: the streets, with like the far right being so much
Speaker 1: more uh active um than the left in a lot
Speaker 1: of places and in a lot of ways, is UM
Speaker 1: really tired. A lot of people on the left out,
Speaker 1: a lot of organizers, a lot of street level people. UM.
Speaker 1: Not just like oh I'm tired, but like I was injured, Um,
Speaker 1: I'm fighting charges. My funds were depleted. I had to
Speaker 1: I couldn't keep going out because I have a family
Speaker 1: and I had to deal with that sort of ship. UM.
Speaker 1: And I think I don't think that energy is back yet,
Speaker 1: but it always ebbs and flows, and it does on
Speaker 1: both sides, because at the end of the day, whether
Speaker 1: you're a fascist or a progressive people have X amount
Speaker 1: of energy, you know, um, and I think we are.
Speaker 1: I believe we are kind of at the beginning process
Speaker 1: of folks on the left starting to recover some of
Speaker 1: that energy. Um. And I think that that is a
Speaker 1: process we're going to see building throughout the year. UM.
Speaker 1: I don't agree with that. Yeah, yeah, And it will
Speaker 1: be a multi year process. And I'm I'm kind of
Speaker 1: hoping folks are ready to throw down again. But but
Speaker 1: we'll see like where that goes. We might have like
Speaker 1: a few days of people throwing down in the streets
Speaker 1: for some reason, like something bad may happen, like like
Speaker 1: late summer. I I can I can definitely see like
Speaker 1: a few days in July or all gust where it's like,
Speaker 1: oh is the thing starting again, and it goes on
Speaker 1: for a bit and then it kind of peters out.
Speaker 1: I kind of I definitely see that being a decent possibility, um,
Speaker 1: because yeah, I think there will be more energy for
Speaker 1: that this year and more mental like like like ability
Speaker 1: to to do to do that this year than yeah.
Speaker 1: But overall, I don't see anything super eventful, and I
Speaker 1: hopefully just doesn't like drink anything and then we get no.
Speaker 1: I mean, my my big eventful prediction is that, and
Speaker 1: I will explain what this is based on in a bit.
Speaker 1: I think we are going to see a significant sized
Speaker 1: urban metropolitan area be rendered uninhabitable, either permanently or for
Speaker 1: a significant period of time in the United States due
Speaker 1: to climate change. And part of what this is based
Speaker 1: on is the December wildfires that just destroyed a significant
Speaker 1: chunk of Boulder, Colorado. Right not talking about like New
Speaker 1: York City gets swallowed by the waves, but like a
Speaker 1: place where there's a couple hundred thousand people living, they're
Speaker 1: not able to be for either ever or an extended
Speaker 1: period of time because a climate based disaster hits. Um.
Speaker 1: Maybe it'll be a heat dome type thing. Maybe it'll
Speaker 1: be like a wet bulb event, maybe be um fires.
Speaker 1: Obviously always possible, hurricane tornado. You know, we we saw
Speaker 1: enough just in the last couple of months in terms
Speaker 1: of those, like record hurricanes that killed like a hundred
Speaker 1: people in um in the South, or the fires sweeping
Speaker 1: Boulder right now and again fucking December. UM. But but
Speaker 1: I do think there's a pretty good chance we see
Speaker 1: something like that this year. I think my big one
Speaker 1: is that I mean, okay, so the the the obvious
Speaker 1: freebe is that we're gonna cross a million COVID deaths
Speaker 1: or like the the the official count. We were like
Speaker 1: we we've had ward US count hit. That's that's the
Speaker 1: free b. The not free b is that like it's
Speaker 1: not even a prediction. If that's that's that's that's what.
Speaker 1: I think. It's going to be warm in the summertime. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like you know, and the warm in the summertime is
Speaker 1: probably like a bigger gamble at this point than very
Speaker 1: very warm, but the summer st yeah. But but but
Speaker 1: I think the real thing is that like there there
Speaker 1: is never going to be never locked down the U
Speaker 1: S never, like you of the United States could die
Speaker 1: and there would be no lockdown, like and this is
Speaker 1: you know, and I think this this is the result
Speaker 1: of I don't know, I wonder what you do do this.
Speaker 1: My thesis for what was going on was that like
Speaker 1: I actually think the like the like Liberate Wisconsin stuff,
Speaker 1: I think that actually worked. Like those number they were
Speaker 1: all those giant like like a mount of people show
Speaker 1: up with guns to captain absolutely it worked. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it worked, and it was like and but but they
Speaker 1: did they did works. It's a very effective way to
Speaker 1: get things done well. But I think there's an important
Speaker 1: lesson here though, which is that, like, so the state
Speaker 1: will never like very very rarely will the state ever
Speaker 1: like directly like they they won't immediately back down. Right.
Speaker 1: What they'll do is like they'll make an enormous show
Speaker 1: about how they didn't grant any concessions, and then they
Speaker 1: will grant concessions. Like this is the thing with the
Speaker 1: riots rights, Like people are talking about, why do we
Speaker 1: not there's not gonna any more stimulus checks, right, And
Speaker 1: the reason there's not going the more simular checks because
Speaker 1: nobody's writing and you know, like what kind of stimulus
Speaker 1: checks you get if a couple of targets get redacted. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like you know if if if if you burn down
Speaker 1: another police station, we will get more stimulus checks. It's
Speaker 1: just that you have to you know, there has to
Speaker 1: be another police station burned down. Right, But like this
Speaker 1: is and this is the this is the you know,
Speaker 1: the right was extremely effective at this, right, and in
Speaker 1: a way that people just don't really talk about, which
Speaker 1: is that it is now politically impossible in the US,
Speaker 1: Like no, no one, no one will ever do anover
Speaker 1: lockdown because people will show up with guns and they
Speaker 1: don't want to do that, and they've decided that just
Speaker 1: just just kill, just kill. Look, you know we we've
Speaker 1: already killed the entire population of Seattle, like they're dead.
Speaker 1: Like we'll just keep killing more people, more people, and
Speaker 1: just never. I think people often are going I think
Speaker 1: people on the left attack the Biden's COVID response for
Speaker 1: a lot of the wrong things. Like the thing that
Speaker 1: I I would go after him for is like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we didn't he didn't just say here's a bunch of money,
Speaker 1: don't go to work, We're not going back to school,
Speaker 1: Like stay at home is a pile of cash, which
Speaker 1: might have worked, it was worth a shot, But past that,
Speaker 1: a lot of this was beyond. By the time he
Speaker 1: came into office, the the armed militant cultural movement against
Speaker 1: the idea of COVID precautions was so advanced that like
Speaker 1: what do you what? What? What more could have been
Speaker 1: realistically done other than trying to give people enough money
Speaker 1: again to actually stay home, which again is the thing
Speaker 1: I think it's most fair to attack him on. Like okay,
Speaker 1: I mean like ships beyond Biden and a lot but
Speaker 1: like like I don't, like, okay, it was like, well,
Speaker 1: what could have been done? I don't know, like if
Speaker 1: you're looking from the perspection of the state, they could
Speaker 1: actually have deployed the intelligence services against them instead of
Speaker 1: doing like one dumb and trapment plot, right, Like well sure,
Speaker 1: but that's that's also that starts before Biden and by
Speaker 1: again by the time, I mean it's like you know,
Speaker 1: but like like yeah, I called her bluff, right, have
Speaker 1: wht people show up to the capital and then it's like, okay,
Speaker 1: here's the FBI, like like that that that's a thing
Speaker 1: that like if if you're a liberal status you could
Speaker 1: do and they just don't want to because like partially
Speaker 1: I don't want the conflict of partially because it would
Speaker 1: actually it would look like it would look really bad
Speaker 1: for them heading into the midterms. It would look so
Speaker 1: they're bad. And and also I think this is less
Speaker 1: the FBI is kind of much more centrist in terms
Speaker 1: of their politics as an agency. But like there were
Speaker 1: a lot of state Yeah, well, I mean the most
Speaker 1: federal and state, Like I don't know that they can
Speaker 1: rely on them like they do that they can even
Speaker 1: even the FBI, it's like, yeah, they're using the proud
Speaker 1: ways informants like on against synarchists, Like yeah, so yeah,
Speaker 1: like they're not they're not, They're not like the I
Speaker 1: have an appreciation. What I will say is I have
Speaker 1: an appreciation for the fact that by the time Biden
Speaker 1: was in office it may have been an unsolvable problem,
Speaker 1: which doesn't let him off the hook for things that
Speaker 1: were objectively bad decisions like not doing ship for stimulus, um,
Speaker 1: like pushing to open the schools, like you know a
Speaker 1: number of other things that he's done, but also like
Speaker 1: if he had done all of the right things, we
Speaker 1: still might be at exactly this death toll because there
Speaker 1: are cultural issues here that we're very advanced by the
Speaker 1: time he took office. Um. And I do think like
Speaker 1: it's whatever. I'm not I'm not saying this to let
Speaker 1: Biden off the hook or support the Democratic Party. I'm
Speaker 1: saying this because people need to have an accurate conception
Speaker 1: of the problem. Um. And the problem is so much
Speaker 1: deeper than what a technocrat could have handled by making
Speaker 1: smart policy. At break a break and we're back. Actual
Speaker 1: prediction Republicans will win the Senate. Yeah, which seems pretty
Speaker 1: I think there's a decent chance Democrats can keep the House. Um,
Speaker 1: but I'm pretty sure, and it's going to go back
Speaker 1: to the Republicans. I mean, they are damn near in
Speaker 1: control of the Senate as it is, but they Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I I do believe that's gonna happen. Um, And
Speaker 1: let's see other which yeah, it does does not seem
Speaker 1: that's not that far fetched of a thing. And I
Speaker 1: don't know, there'll be some other kind of tech factory
Speaker 1: the space between Elon Musk Peter Teel Silicon Valley, there's
Speaker 1: gonna be I think there's gonna be some worsening development
Speaker 1: of like tech like technocratic stuff, possibly in like possibly
Speaker 1: with like the mask of trying to like fix climate
Speaker 1: change or something. But I think they'll be a decent
Speaker 1: growth of tech power and possibly there like um cooperation
Speaker 1: with the state or the state like fund giving more
Speaker 1: explicit like funding and permission to tech power to like
Speaker 1: do terraforming or like some geongineering. Like there's there's gonna
Speaker 1: be something related to that sphere that is a it's
Speaker 1: going to get a lot more visible than it is.
Speaker 1: My big tech prediction is that there is going to
Speaker 1: be a crime against humanity at some point this year,
Speaker 1: like on a massive scale, not like just a mass shooting,
Speaker 1: but like a state level crime against humanity. And we're
Speaker 1: going to find out that for the last like eight months,
Speaker 1: Facebook had been paying the perpetrators asignificant amount of money
Speaker 1: as a result of like some ill thought out ad
Speaker 1: program that they had. Yeah, like we're going to we're
Speaker 1: going to leave to Facebook actively funding and ethnic cleansing.
Speaker 1: Um because some somebody thought up some sort of affiliate
Speaker 1: program that was not well conceived. Um. That's my fun
Speaker 1: tech industry prediction. My fun tech industry prediction is that, uh,
Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos will increasingly become the most cringe eest man
Speaker 1: in the world. Yeah, it is very funny that the
Speaker 1: picture him on New Year's he's just wearing a Dan
Speaker 1: Flash his shirt. He's he's absolutely wearing a Dan Flash
Speaker 1: his shirt. And that's incredibly fine. Robert, Robert, that shirt
Speaker 1: costs him three thousand dollars because the pattern is so
Speaker 1: very complicated and how much the lines crisscross. I I
Speaker 1: just I just don't like you insisting that it's not
Speaker 1: as much money. But despite its complicatedness, that that photo
Speaker 1: was my version of a holiday. Carnes said to for one,
Speaker 1: I know, um yeah, I think I think we're going
Speaker 1: to see a lot more unions this year. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: does seem to be a positive trend that we're seeing
Speaker 1: is a lot more unionization and some significant successes for
Speaker 1: and and a lot more like like general acceptance of
Speaker 1: the concept of a union. Other prediction related to to
Speaker 1: tech industry stuff, I think one of the billionaire space
Speaker 1: ships things is going to have a disastrous launch. Positive
Speaker 1: prediction of spaceship is gonna blow up with people inside
Speaker 1: it as it tries to take off. That's that's my
Speaker 1: positive prediction that it can take some people with it. Um,
Speaker 1: sorry to the people, Sorry to the workers who are
Speaker 1: going to be probably harmed at that, but it can
Speaker 1: take some people out. So it's gonna be funny. Um
Speaker 1: that is that's possibility. Also, uh, there's gonna be a
Speaker 1: there's gonna be a disastrous effect around Austin, is right,
Speaker 1: and that's where that's where a lot of the spacehip
Speaker 1: stuff is getting set up. There's no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: it's that's just where the offices are. It's like Chica,
Speaker 1: it's like on the coast of Texas, not close enough
Speaker 1: to Austin. Some some piece of a spaceship is gonna
Speaker 1: fly through someone's house. No one's gonna care about it. Um,
Speaker 1: there gets brought, gonna kill a family or something, No
Speaker 1: one's gonna care. Nothing's gonna happen. It'll be fine that
Speaker 1: Those are my more my tech industry predictions related to
Speaker 1: spaceship stuff. Yeah, um yeah. I I also think on
Speaker 1: on a more I don't know how the current civil
Speaker 1: war in Myanmar is going to shake out, but I
Speaker 1: think there's a chance that it becomes the first kay
Speaker 1: place where there is a successful or at least partially
Speaker 1: successful revolutionary movement that is to a significant extent armed
Speaker 1: via three D printed weaponry. Um. They've all we've already
Speaker 1: seen a lot of that deployed by um, the the
Speaker 1: rebels in Myanmar. Um. I'm interested in watching that because
Speaker 1: it's kind of the first time we've seen that technology
Speaker 1: used on a meaningful scale by people that aren't like
Speaker 1: organized crime. UM. And yeah, I think it's still too
Speaker 1: early to tell, like how much of an actual like
Speaker 1: whether or not it's just kind of a distraction from
Speaker 1: the more meaningful aspects of the struggle or the more
Speaker 1: meaningful like kind of deployments of weaponry and other tools
Speaker 1: in the struggle, or whether or not it will actually
Speaker 1: play a significant role in the armed struggle. But it's
Speaker 1: it's very much worth watching if you're somebody who pays
Speaker 1: attention to insurgent movements and what is increasingly possible as
Speaker 1: a result of new technology. I have another really bad prediction.
Speaker 1: J K. Rowling is going to release a book on
Speaker 1: gender orcial fund to YouTube channel, yeah something. I think.
Speaker 1: I think there's a decent chance she has been writing
Speaker 1: a book about gender and she's going to release in
Speaker 1: two I think that as an actual, actual series prediction.
Speaker 1: Just go away and a whole bunch of liberal moms
Speaker 1: are gonna buy it for each other and they're gonna
Speaker 1: read it, and it's gonna be bad. And that is
Speaker 1: that is my that's my that's my horrible prediction. She
Speaker 1: could be so beloved if she had limited her comments
Speaker 1: after publishing Harry Potter, if she repeatedly telling people that
Speaker 1: are constantly shifting their pants, if she just didn't use
Speaker 1: Twitter after anything at all, and she could have been
Speaker 1: a different person. It's it's the Dave Chappelle thing. Just
Speaker 1: stay off. We all we all would have loved you. Forever.
Speaker 1: If you just just gone off and counted your money
Speaker 1: and left us alone. Yeah, go be rich somewhere. It's
Speaker 1: fine to be done. It's fine to be done being
Speaker 1: famous and influential. You you had, you did great, You
Speaker 1: did great. You never needed to come back. She I
Speaker 1: don't she did. I'm not sure if she did great?
Speaker 1: She did? She did, she did. Look again, this is
Speaker 1: all colored. But if she had never come back into
Speaker 1: the public eye, all it would have been as like
Speaker 1: you remember that lady who got like twelve year olds
Speaker 1: to read seven d page books that one time, Like,
Speaker 1: people would not be as critical of the actual content
Speaker 1: of the Harry Potter books if she just hadn't kept
Speaker 1: coming back and saying ship so that and and and
Speaker 1: and then like didn't stop and then did not stop,
Speaker 1: and then was told bad, really really bad, and then
Speaker 1: kept doing it and kept doing it, and kept doing
Speaker 1: it and kept doing it. You know what people should beat. Look,
Speaker 1: if you're if you're listening to this and you're a
Speaker 1: millionaire who was like hugely popular for some cultural reason
Speaker 1: in the late nineties and early two thousand's, think about
Speaker 1: Bill Waterson. Bill Waterson ends the most popular comic strip
Speaker 1: in the history of comics and spends the rest of
Speaker 1: his life and fucking Iowa painting landscapes and never talks
Speaker 1: to anybody with a platform again, and I everybody loves
Speaker 1: Bill Waterson. Like not a single person has a criticism
Speaker 1: of Bill Waterson. Um, just do that, Just do what
Speaker 1: he did. Just go paint landscapes in Iowa and don't
Speaker 1: talk to journalists or get on Twitter. It's fine. Does
Speaker 1: Bill Waterson believe regressive things about gender? Nobody knows because
Speaker 1: he doesn't say anything. I think another prediction that is
Speaker 1: actually decently possible. I think we will get more and
Speaker 1: more cities and or states to decriminalize hard drugs in
Speaker 1: in certain possession amounts. Um. I think there is a
Speaker 1: there's a number of bills going around California, UM and
Speaker 1: a lot of other states, and I believe that will
Speaker 1: be start to become more and more common, which will
Speaker 1: be great. It would be nice if they get legalized.
Speaker 1: But you know, get get get what you can for now. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: speaking of drugs, Uh, here's CDD oil sponsored by heroin,
Speaker 1: by by big drug. Here we go have fun to
Speaker 1: stay safe. We're back, and I just want to let
Speaker 1: everybody know that if if everything gets legalized, we will
Speaker 1: be sponsored by meth amphetamines so fucking quickly it will
Speaker 1: make your head spin. I will never turn down a
Speaker 1: drug sponsor, um, except for like super foods. We don't
Speaker 1: do super foods, we don't do brain pills. But heroin.
Speaker 1: I would advertise the ship out of heroin. I'm already
Speaker 1: ready to advertise hair the hair lost. Drugs we don't do,
Speaker 1: but heroin. H Hey, is life depressing? You know it?
Speaker 1: He hated that I helped that bit. Uh, Chris, you
Speaker 1: were you were saying something before break My My one
Speaker 1: serious prediction is I don't think we've I think we're
Speaker 1: gonna get one more big like Latin American uprising, and
Speaker 1: it will not be in Argentina. I have been eating
Speaker 1: ship for three goddamn years predicting it's gonna be Argentina.
Speaker 1: It's like, oh, they're getting an IMF bailout, Like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's never Argentina. It won't be Argentina. It will be
Speaker 1: somewhere else. But someone is someone is going to spend
Speaker 1: like two months doing a bunch of stuff that's extremely
Speaker 1: cool outside of Argentina. I kind of think, Um, I
Speaker 1: don't know I'll be interested to see what happens in
Speaker 1: Brazil because um, it's hard to get a sense for
Speaker 1: the exact numbers, but there's potential there. There is potential
Speaker 1: there with what's happened in Bolivia and what's happened in Chile.
Speaker 1: There's there's momentum in its exciting broad area. Like I mean,
Speaker 1: like the os there's shoot, there's like enormous protests in
Speaker 1: Brazil like all the time. Yeah, yeah, there's like massive,
Speaker 1: it just hasn't sort of like like it hasn't turned
Speaker 1: into like everyone fighting the cops and like yeah, and
Speaker 1: maybe I don't know if it will because like I
Speaker 1: don't know. I mean, this is this is This is
Speaker 1: my vibes based interpretation of it. But it feels like
Speaker 1: the Workers Party has enough of a handle on the
Speaker 1: protests that they're not gonna sort of like explore load
Speaker 1: because the PC just wants to win its election and
Speaker 1: get out of bulson Aro. Well yeah, and I mean
Speaker 1: the possibility of any kind of like actual revolutionary insurrection
Speaker 1: anything relies heavily on like that path not working for people,
Speaker 1: Like they're not that they're not being that kind of safety.
Speaker 1: But well, I mean I say this if they arrest
Speaker 1: Lula again, Like yeah, I don't think Bolson like I
Speaker 1: think there will die in his own ship, Like yeah,
Speaker 1: that might happen even if his party stays in power.
Speaker 1: I mean that he was actively dying as we record
Speaker 1: this episode, which is very funny. Um, I got as
Speaker 1: a result of one of our ad campaigns, several or
Speaker 1: a picture frames uh this year, and right now we're
Speaker 1: loading one up. That's just pictures of sick Bulson narrow
Speaker 1: to keep in my living room. So anytime I walk past,
Speaker 1: I can look at JayR. Bolson naro and hacking up
Speaker 1: a lung or having ships sucked out of his nose
Speaker 1: from a tube. Um, I will say, oh, by my
Speaker 1: one more. Like very fast prediction about this is that
Speaker 1: Kissinger is gonna live. He's not gonna die. Damnit, Chris.
Speaker 1: You allow myself to hope for one for about I
Speaker 1: allow myself to hope for about eight hours, and I
Speaker 1: think it's gonna live, but immediately wrong. I don't know.
Speaker 1: It would have been pretty cool if Betty White's last
Speaker 1: action had been some sort of anti takeout Kissinger. She
Speaker 1: becomes the most loved American and human history, like goes
Speaker 1: out just like jumping out of an airplane, like she
Speaker 1: parachutes Kissinger's house with a Flansing knife. I'm gonna say,
Speaker 1: in Colorado, Oregon, or Washington, we're going to get our
Speaker 1: first safe uh drug injections side opened. I know they've
Speaker 1: been very pretty good. They've been They've been very successful
Speaker 1: inside different parts of Canada, specifically Vancouver, BC. And I
Speaker 1: believe one of those three states is going to get
Speaker 1: the first one. Um. I hope it's all of them.
Speaker 1: If you want to support some of those people up
Speaker 1: in Canada, go to heroin Martin by a shoot dope
Speaker 1: fu the cops hoodie. Yeah, but say like safe safe
Speaker 1: drug injection and ingestion sites are have been have been
Speaker 1: very good at preventing deaths in Vancouver, BC. And there's
Speaker 1: just a good idea in general, and I will be
Speaker 1: excited at the prospect. They're an incredibly good idea. And
Speaker 1: they also if you're trying to again talk about this
Speaker 1: to conservatives in your life, they're cheaper than just letting
Speaker 1: people be addicted to drugs on the street because people
Speaker 1: don't steal stuff. Also, their heroin is free. Also, they
Speaker 1: won't have ridiculous medical bills. They get paid by the state,
Speaker 1: and they're more likely to seek treatment even if you
Speaker 1: don't mandate that, especially if you don't mandate that, because
Speaker 1: as a rule, people don't like having problematic addictions to drugs,
Speaker 1: and if they can deal with their immediate needs and
Speaker 1: also know that there's help available, they will often choose
Speaker 1: to get help. So and I think I have I
Speaker 1: have one more actual prediction is that a new Matrix
Speaker 1: video game what will be announced? And that is that
Speaker 1: is all of my predictions. Oh, we should probably talk
Speaker 1: about Matrix for briefly. That's what the people want. Garrison
Speaker 1: it and and for the record, this is going to
Speaker 1: be controversial because some people have no taste, but we
Speaker 1: both think it fucking ruled. It is possibly the best
Speaker 1: Matrix film. It was really fun. It's it's very good.
Speaker 1: If you think about it for any amount of time,
Speaker 1: it gets very good in the way it addresses um
Speaker 1: the system's power to incorporate Revolt as a part of
Speaker 1: the system, which was already teased inside me monti asthetic, Yeah, reloaded,
Speaker 1: but yeah, like the Matrix using the weapon that wants
Speaker 1: to find you against you, and the Matrix weaponizing all
Speaker 1: of your ideas against you, Um is very good. Um.
Speaker 1: I know Lana put a lot of thought into this,
Speaker 1: particularly around who she is, how she's developed, and how
Speaker 1: her work has been turned against her and what she believes. UM,
Speaker 1: both by like the people and also like corporately in
Speaker 1: terms of like achieving the correct amount of meta that
Speaker 1: it's not useless drivel while still actually being aware of
Speaker 1: what it is. Um. I think was done. Well. I
Speaker 1: know there's there's some people and like the postmodern thing,
Speaker 1: who think it don't, who think it doesn't go meta enough.
Speaker 1: And I think that's nonsense because if you go any
Speaker 1: if you if you point out that pointing out, that
Speaker 1: pointing out revolt against the system is part of the system,
Speaker 1: then you've lost everybody. Like no one cares because you
Speaker 1: can add on those layers endlessly and it's just dribble. Um.
Speaker 1: So I think they got the correct amount of meta. Well,
Speaker 1: then a band not not abandoned that idea but moving
Speaker 1: it on mean, like you know, you know, it's more
Speaker 1: important than being meta is making friends and finding human
Speaker 1: connections because going through the world like this isolated, like
Speaker 1: Thomas Anderson is when he's in the Matrix, as like
Speaker 1: as as games that are A big part of that
Speaker 1: problem is that he's very isolated, and the whole point
Speaker 1: is like, no, you need to find friends, find connections,
Speaker 1: get like like be have people around you to build
Speaker 1: a network of and they actually start like like loving
Speaker 1: other people is really one of the only ways out
Speaker 1: of this looping cycle and layering of Matrix is that
Speaker 1: we always live in um. It was. It's a wonderful film.
Speaker 1: I can talk about I could, I could talk about
Speaker 1: it for hours, but we could do a whole podcast
Speaker 1: about why we enjoyed Matrix four UM, but it's it's
Speaker 1: pretty fun and my only the only thing I'll add
Speaker 1: to that is a lot of people fools is what
Speaker 1: I call them, are angry at the fact that it
Speaker 1: ended with the Brass Against cover of It was so
Speaker 1: good it was, and it the cover of that song
Speaker 1: opens an exactly so that the singer, the lead singer
Speaker 1: of Brass Against, became briefly famous mid late last year
Speaker 1: UM when during while playing that exact song on stage
Speaker 1: into a fan's mouth and the song that the cover
Speaker 1: that ends the Matrix starts at exactly the moment where
Speaker 1: she pete in that guy's mouth during the live show,
Speaker 1: and I am certain that Lana Wachowski was planning to
Speaker 1: use the original Rage against the Machine version of that song,
Speaker 1: and then that news dropped and was like, well, let's
Speaker 1: get these brass against people I I want, I want
Speaker 1: the Piste song, the other thing I wanted. They is
Speaker 1: reflecting on the analyst as a character and how he
Speaker 1: relates to kind of the meat space argument and how
Speaker 1: digital systems and algorithms and social media operates. He if
Speaker 1: you listen to him talk um and within the whole context,
Speaker 1: within the whole context of the film, he um. They
Speaker 1: think there's actually some more insightful points than what you
Speaker 1: might originally suspect around like social media um and digital
Speaker 1: nous versus realness um just always you know, always a
Speaker 1: factor in in matrix films. But the way, the way
Speaker 1: they into it and this so much thing is a
Speaker 1: lot more mature than all the topics they handle in
Speaker 1: their previous films. And I mean there's just so many
Speaker 1: like really good like single lines that offer like really
Speaker 1: good like oh wow, like that's just like a very
Speaker 1: good point, and then they just move past them so
Speaker 1: like so effortlessly, like you could focus on any one
Speaker 1: of those really good lines, and they just offer up
Speaker 1: so many and at many points, and I like that
Speaker 1: they turned the Mayor of Engian into Ted Kaczynski. Um,
Speaker 1: it's just fun. Like at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: it's just actually really fun and it doesn't feel exactly
Speaker 1: like the other movies in the series, which is what
Speaker 1: I want. I don't like reboots. I wasn't a fan
Speaker 1: of the Star Wars reboot because it was like I've
Speaker 1: seen this again, Yeah, yeah, I I like I like
Speaker 1: that it. I like that a lot of the action
Speaker 1: in this movie, right up until kind of the end
Speaker 1: feels perfunctory and like I like like kind of saying
Speaker 1: like I don't care about this part anymore. Like I've
Speaker 1: done the guy's fighting agents and bullet time. Um that
Speaker 1: you know, at the end, there's some more some more
Speaker 1: loving action set pieces, but like from the beginning, it's
Speaker 1: very much it's much more like a really fun commentary
Speaker 1: on how Hollywood works and how the video game industry works.
Speaker 1: There's a fucking mass effect joke in there. There's a
Speaker 1: joke about like the nineteen nine or two thousand Matrix
Speaker 1: video game that happened before Garrison was born. It's so fun.
Speaker 1: It's it's just a lot of fun as a movie.
Speaker 1: It's frad m well um any any other final final
Speaker 1: predictions before we wrap up this, this extremely well thought
Speaker 1: through episode that we've poured our hearts and minds into.
Speaker 1: We really did. Dr oz is going to go down
Speaker 1: in flames. Oh I hope so, oh man. I really
Speaker 1: have no idea what to expect from I have no idea.
Speaker 1: I'm not making I'm not making any prediction on that
Speaker 1: because I too have no idea. The only thing that
Speaker 1: I'll say is that one way or the other, it's
Speaker 1: going to be a bell weather. If it like goes
Speaker 1: great for him and he wins easily, we're going to
Speaker 1: see a lot more like Dr phil is absolutely rolling
Speaker 1: into Congress. If that works for oz Um and other
Speaker 1: other people who are kind of occupy similar cultural spaces
Speaker 1: will do the same thing, and then we'll have congressional
Speaker 1: inquiries about whether or not this simple trick will burn
Speaker 1: belly fat. It's if it's like like, if that's what happens,
Speaker 1: Like the think the thing Trump is going to be
Speaker 1: remembered for like is being like, well, the thing the
Speaker 1: thing Reagan is going to be remembered for is being
Speaker 1: just like like fifty years ahead of his time. Before
Speaker 1: we're literally all entirely ruled by just reality TV stars.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. Whose wives are great at giving a head?
Speaker 1: Should I? Did anyone? Did? Everyone already forget that Nancy
Speaker 1: Reagan throat goat discourse? Everyone was so exhausted. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: you didn't catch this, it's a very well known secret
Speaker 1: and has been for like fifty years. That back before
Speaker 1: they got married and probably after. Nancy was famous for
Speaker 1: giving the best blow jobs in Hollywood, as as as
Speaker 1: Garrison tosses the cat every single episode. So I disdained
Speaker 1: this discourse. Now, yeah, twy two, it's a year. We're
Speaker 1: in it. Okay. My last prediction is I actually do
Speaker 1: think this year is gonna suck slightly less. Did Now
Speaker 1: this is probably the big one. I'm gonna eat it on,
Speaker 1: but like, hopefully happen. Hopefully you're right about it. So
Speaker 1: I'm hoping. Um No, Yeah, I think that there's a
Speaker 1: decent chance that we're that it's better. Um, it's at
Speaker 1: least in some ways. The climate stuff, as it nearly
Speaker 1: always will for the foreseeable future, we'll keep getting worse.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I think there's actually a chance that COVID
Speaker 1: will get better, not because of any policy decision, because
Speaker 1: macron literally nine of human beings and in the world
Speaker 1: get it, and those that survive COVID stops passing on
Speaker 1: as much, which is kind of vaguely speaking what happened
Speaker 1: with you know, the influenza. I will be probably foolish
Speaker 1: in making one more prediction. That is, like around the fall,
Speaker 1: we will not see spikes as big as we saw
Speaker 1: this last year. Um. I I do think there will
Speaker 1: probably still be some, but I do think the numbers
Speaker 1: are going to be generally trending down. Um. Yeah, after
Speaker 1: O Macron hits its peak, just because how many people
Speaker 1: will get infected, how many antibodies plus vaccines will be circulating, um,
Speaker 1: and how many people have already been who don't take
Speaker 1: the vaccine have will already have like died off. It's
Speaker 1: I do not say that to be like flip into
Speaker 1: to be like, but it's like that. It's the world
Speaker 1: that we live in it um. But I do hope
Speaker 1: and I do hope and some slightly predict that we'll
Speaker 1: have less less spiking numbers around this next fall and
Speaker 1: winter as we did of this current you know falling
Speaker 1: winter season. I wouldn't mind ending on a note of
Speaker 1: appreciation for the fucking booster, because we got it. You
Speaker 1: and I both garrison, as did most of our friends,
Speaker 1: and had just a shipload of COVID flying around us everywhere.
Speaker 1: I love a lot of infections, and we were fine. Fine.
Speaker 1: I have one of my friends got COVID and her mom,
Speaker 1: who they lived in the same house did not has
Speaker 1: not gotten COVID because they're wearing masks and they got
Speaker 1: the booster. And for for all my friends that that
Speaker 1: did get COVID that had that were boosted, the vaccine
Speaker 1: didn't shop there. You're not in the hospital. You're double
Speaker 1: test positive on a rapid test and then test negative
Speaker 1: on a PCR, probably because by the time he got
Speaker 1: to the PCR like the next his viral load was
Speaker 1: just so fucking low. UM, get the third vacs the
Speaker 1: vaccine works. Who could have predicted? Who could have predicted?
Speaker 1: The things that are literally the entire basis of our
Speaker 1: modern concept of the value of human life continue to
Speaker 1: be very effective. All right? Well, that that does it
Speaker 1: for us, UM unplugged, Go spend time outside, touch grass,
Speaker 1: touch your mirror like trying to go through it because
Speaker 1: trying to go through what's real what's not see if
Speaker 1: see if Maybe you were the digital Messiah and you
Speaker 1: have been trapped in a simulation where you work at
Speaker 1: a food lion, um and and you can break free
Speaker 1: of it, um, but not fly anymore because now your
Speaker 1: girlfriends he does he does fly with Trinity at the end,
Speaker 1: he does fly with Trinity. Sure, just as we all
Speaker 1: can only fly with of our love well with Carrie
Speaker 1: Admosson's Yeah, specifically, who has gotten so much hotter as
Speaker 1: they've made all right, Well, that's that's where we are. Hey, everybody,
Speaker 1: welcome to it could happen here. I am Robert Evans,
Speaker 1: and this is the show where we talk about how
Speaker 1: everything is kind of falling apart and how we might
Speaker 1: put it back together again in a way that works
Speaker 1: better than it did before, um, or do something different
Speaker 1: that is even anyway, whatever, It's a show about the
Speaker 1: future and about the messed up present um And as
Speaker 1: a result of that, one of the things we talked
Speaker 1: about a lot is self sufficiency. We've had a number
Speaker 1: of episodes kind of covering the values of like replacing
Speaker 1: your lawn with food, guerilla gardening, that sort of stuff.
Speaker 1: And one of the critiques we get is people saying, well,
Speaker 1: you know, that's never gonna work on a large scale,
Speaker 1: it's never going to replace industrial agriculture or whatever. And
Speaker 1: that's perfectly true. But the point we're going for here,
Speaker 1: and why we encourage these kind of resilience building activities
Speaker 1: is because they do improve the ability of communities to
Speaker 1: resist when they need to resist, and also provide opportunities
Speaker 1: by which people can reimagine their relationship to, for example,
Speaker 1: the food supply chain, or reimagine the relationship to their
Speaker 1: community and the kind of things that communities provide for
Speaker 1: each other rather than having them shipped in by Amazon. Um.
Speaker 1: And when we start talking about that, and we start
Speaker 1: talking about improving community resiliency for things like, you know,
Speaker 1: a general strike or even potentially more radical stuff, one
Speaker 1: of the big issues that any community has to con
Speaker 1: front is not just food but medicine. I'm I do,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure a lot of other people have friends
Speaker 1: who cannot survive without medications that are very like reliant
Speaker 1: upon existing supply chains um, and to some extent, even
Speaker 1: the stability of the government, you know, um, getting your insulin,
Speaker 1: getting your medication for whatever, kind of disease you have
Speaker 1: that needs constant medication. There's a bunch of different reasons
Speaker 1: why people are reliant upon the medical um supply lines
Speaker 1: and upon the kind of pharmaceutical industry. And that's one
Speaker 1: of the big when we talk about building more resilient communities,
Speaker 1: one of the big hurdles to jump. Well. Today, my
Speaker 1: guest is someone who is working on bridging some of
Speaker 1: these problems. UM. His name is Michael Lawfer, and he
Speaker 1: is the founder of an organization called the Four Thieves
Speaker 1: Vinegar Collective. They are bio hackers, UM, and they are
Speaker 1: working on cracking certain pharmaceutical medications to allow individuals with
Speaker 1: resources that are generally available to people who are not
Speaker 1: rich or pharmaceutical companies UM, to produce life saving medications. UM.
Speaker 1: The number one thing you would have heard of from
Speaker 1: Four Thieves is the EPI pencil, which we'll talk about
Speaker 1: in a bit. But first, Michael, thank you for coming
Speaker 1: on the show. Thanks so much for having me. It's
Speaker 1: exciting to be able to shot and talk with you
Speaker 1: and all the people surrounding you who are trying to
Speaker 1: just unfunned things a little bit. Yeah. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: most of the conversation I want to have today is
Speaker 1: on the unfucking of things variety. But I do think
Speaker 1: we should start with a little bit of technical talk first.
Speaker 1: Can you give people an idea of what kind of
Speaker 1: medications you and other people in the collective have figured
Speaker 1: out how to produce um and what kind of resources
Speaker 1: and individual needs to be able to do some of
Speaker 1: this stuff. Sure, so from a technical perspective, most of
Speaker 1: the things that we focus on are what's called small
Speaker 1: molecule chemistry, And to kind of describe that blanketly, if
Speaker 1: you can draw the molecule on a cocktail napkin, it
Speaker 1: probably qualifies as a small molecule if it's one of
Speaker 1: these things that like, you know, if you look at
Speaker 1: the diagram for the molecules approaching, it's got being ribbons
Speaker 1: that are colored and stuff that's a that's a biochem thing,
Speaker 1: and it's a whole different set of problems. Now, the
Speaker 1: mean focide that we've had have been surrounding access to abortion,
Speaker 1: access to HIV medications, access to hepatitis C medications, and
Speaker 1: access to reversal of drug overdose medications. So that's been
Speaker 1: sort of our main focus, but there's been a handful
Speaker 1: of others. The things that we tend to look for
Speaker 1: our where are there things that there's a great need
Speaker 1: and there's a huge barrier, And so you see those
Speaker 1: in those places a lot, because the three main barriers
Speaker 1: that tend to pop up between somebody and access to
Speaker 1: the medication they need are either price or legality, or
Speaker 1: lack of infrastructure. And typically the weirdness that comes up
Speaker 1: mostly surrounds price because of intellectual property laws and marginalization
Speaker 1: of people who suffer from particular ailments or seem to
Speaker 1: suffer predominantly from particular ailments. And so if you're if
Speaker 1: you're poor, and you're in a class of people that
Speaker 1: is seen as something not to be cared about because
Speaker 1: they're not a strong voter base, then the ability to
Speaker 1: move access away from those people and put in more
Speaker 1: barriers and raise prices becomes easier to defend um. So
Speaker 1: the first drug that we focused on was a an
Speaker 1: anti parasitic um. Toxoplasmosis is a parasite that's pretty innocuous
Speaker 1: for most people. Anbody when you get from cats, right
Speaker 1: or is this not Gandhi? It is? It is the
Speaker 1: one you get from cats, and it's a really fascinating
Speaker 1: parasite too, if if if you ever dig into the
Speaker 1: behavioral biology of it, it's really really fascinating parasite. Um,
Speaker 1: I probably have it. Yeah, I have three cats. I
Speaker 1: definitely have it, right, So and so it's not a
Speaker 1: big deal for those people. But if you have a
Speaker 1: massively compromised immune system, especially with people with HIV or
Speaker 1: advanced stages of cancer, and that's why it was labeled
Speaker 1: sort of you know, HIV drug, it's not it's a
Speaker 1: it's an anti parasitic, but it's used almost exclusively by
Speaker 1: people who are an advanced stages of cancer. Uh, people
Speaker 1: with fairly compromised immune systems from HIV or something else,
Speaker 1: and then pregnant women. Um. And it's not that big deal.
Speaker 1: If you have access to the medication, you can merely
Speaker 1: take it and eradicates from body. The difference was, is
Speaker 1: that something that was a short course of treatment. You
Speaker 1: take I think four um, yeah, four doses the first
Speaker 1: time around, and then one dose each day subsequently for
Speaker 1: something like ten days. Um And that's not a big
Speaker 1: deal when each dose, each pill was about thirteen and
Speaker 1: a half dollars. And then Martin cruently jacked up the
Speaker 1: price to seven fifty a pill, and so we're like, well,
Speaker 1: this is ridiculous. So that was the first one that
Speaker 1: we went after. Then of course access to abortion drugs, um,
Speaker 1: that's a big one. That's pretty topical. Lately we released
Speaker 1: a video I don't know, maybe three months ago on
Speaker 1: how you can make your own abortion pills without too
Speaker 1: much fuss. This would be Preston right, uh, Mytho, pristone
Speaker 1: and Mr Cristall. So you can do it with just
Speaker 1: Mr Purstall, or you can do it in combination, and
Speaker 1: when you do it with just the one with just Miso,
Speaker 1: you have about an eighty five percent chance of it
Speaker 1: wor king and if you have both the bumps it
Speaker 1: up to about and what is the like what when
Speaker 1: you're doing this? And we'll talk a little bit with
Speaker 1: the hardware, but like what is the re agent that
Speaker 1: you have for this? Because I know that's been a
Speaker 1: big part of some of the discussions is like how
Speaker 1: do you get the things you make the medicines from?
Speaker 1: Which is easier for some than it is for others. Sure,
Speaker 1: there are a couple different ways that you google about that.
Speaker 1: The the interesting but more difficult way, of course, is
Speaker 1: to do the chemistry from scratch, where like you say,
Speaker 1: you get access to the agents, you do some chemistry,
Speaker 1: and you end up with the active pharmaceutical ingredient, which
Speaker 1: we lovingly referred to as the A p I, and
Speaker 1: then you package it somehow into a tablet or a
Speaker 1: pill or or some other means of ingress into the body. Um.
Speaker 1: The instructions that we distributed skip the difficult part because
Speaker 1: mr Pristal is an ulcer medication, and so, for instance,
Speaker 1: if you have access to Mexico or are in Mexico,
Speaker 1: it's kind of not a big deal because as an
Speaker 1: ulcer medication, it's over the counter and you can just
Speaker 1: go in and say, oh, you know, my grandmother can't
Speaker 1: get out of bed, she needs this ulcer medication. I
Speaker 1: need just a little bit of it to get her
Speaker 1: through the weekend. Um, and then no problem. Uh. Not
Speaker 1: so easy in places where it's a little more controlled
Speaker 1: like the US. However, one amazing trick when looking for
Speaker 1: medicines access to medicines that are generally blocked from people
Speaker 1: that the existing power structure tries to disenfranchise from access
Speaker 1: is you look and see if it's similarly used for
Speaker 1: other classes of person or being that the infrastructure does
Speaker 1: care about. So interestingly, you look for ulcer medications, you say, well, like, well,
Speaker 1: who else has ulcers that you know, people might think
Speaker 1: are important people. That doesn't really come up, And there
Speaker 1: are other ulcer medications are a little bit better. However,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of really wealthy people in the
Speaker 1: United States, and really wealthy people tend to keep horses,
Speaker 1: and horses interestingly um nine or something or maybe more,
Speaker 1: some ungodly percentage of domesticated horses have ulcers. Um. Now
Speaker 1: why that is, I'm not entirely clear about. But my
Speaker 1: own theory is that it has something to do with
Speaker 1: taking a gigantic wild animal and putting it into a
Speaker 1: very small box for most of its life. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: doesn't seem like the thing that horses evolved to do. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: so that said, people who are horse owners typically have
Speaker 1: to treat them constantly for ulcers. And the best thing
Speaker 1: for that is Mr Cristall And so you can get
Speaker 1: Mr Crystal powder in a tub from places that, yeah,
Speaker 1: feedstore or something. Yeah, I go to a feed store
Speaker 1: every week. I'm sure I could buy a bucket of
Speaker 1: this ship probably, so it comes in tubs and the
Speaker 1: other thing that's great about it coming in a tub
Speaker 1: is that it's already in with a buffer. Part of
Speaker 1: the thing about Mr. Crystall is that the dosages in micrograms,
Speaker 1: and that's very hard to weigh unless you have a
Speaker 1: really high precision scale. Even your good drug dealers generally
Speaker 1: don't have a scale that can do that. Right. So,
Speaker 1: but the magic is this isn't a tub with a
Speaker 1: bunch of inert powder, and it's it's already mixed up
Speaker 1: to be homogeneous. And so what you can do is
Speaker 1: you can do a bit of back of the envelope
Speaker 1: arithmetic and you can measure out much larger quantities and
Speaker 1: know how much active ingredients you have and then pack
Speaker 1: that into a tablet. Now yeah, um, I mean that
Speaker 1: makes so much sense. And it's also like like the
Speaker 1: you have kind of the dark side and light side version.
Speaker 1: It's kind of the light side version of all of
Speaker 1: those people buying up ivermectin for for nonsense. It's like, well, no,
Speaker 1: there's reasons to buy you know, like uh, livestock medication especially. Um.
Speaker 1: I mean, I have a lot of friends who took
Speaker 1: fishing antibiotics back in the day, and this is kind
Speaker 1: of a much more um using it in a much
Speaker 1: more rigorous way to provide people with something that can
Speaker 1: is getting it will be getting increasingly difficult to access
Speaker 1: in a lot of parts of the country. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: just such a smart way of approaching it, I think. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that becomes philosophic quickly a
Speaker 1: bit sticky is when you end up talking about the
Speaker 1: importance of independent management of one's own health and decision
Speaker 1: making not coming from above. There's this difficult moment that
Speaker 1: I've had kind of having to cop to the reality
Speaker 1: that if you're building mechanisms to empower people to have
Speaker 1: access to make decisions about managing their own health. H
Speaker 1: part of that entails realizing that that will also lead
Speaker 1: to a lot of people making what I might think
Speaker 1: are bad decisions, but that the important thing is that
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter what I think. That people should not
Speaker 1: be controlled by other people, and if they make bad decisions,
Speaker 1: that sucks, and hopefully we can help that. But not
Speaker 1: not lamenting the importance of or not not backtracking, not
Speaker 1: having some sort of retrograde Yeah, about offering more access
Speaker 1: even if people misuse that access to the miss manage
Speaker 1: their own health. Mismanagement of health happens no matter what right.
Speaker 1: It happens constantly, and people will ignore things that seem
Speaker 1: like they're bigger problems and don't get them addressed. And
Speaker 1: so I have to sort of retreat into this idea
Speaker 1: that more access to more tools is better and that's
Speaker 1: just the way of it. And yeah, the problem, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, the problem with ivermectin isn't the problem. The
Speaker 1: problem is that that people have access to ivermectin and
Speaker 1: so they're taking it in a way that is harmful
Speaker 1: to them. The problem is that people have been have
Speaker 1: have been blinded by disinformation and so are making a
Speaker 1: horrible health care decision. And the fact that they have
Speaker 1: it's possessed to veterinary medication is fine, right, exactly. And
Speaker 1: and it's and it's interesting that you say that because
Speaker 1: I have a friend of Doctors Without Borders and they
Speaker 1: are starting a couple of pretty strong programs to try
Speaker 1: and combat misinformation because just from a metric standpoint, they
Speaker 1: look for sort of like what's killing the greatest number
Speaker 1: of people at the greatest rate in the worst way,
Speaker 1: and currently the thing that's killing the most people in
Speaker 1: the worst way at the greatest rate is a misinformation
Speaker 1: and so yeah, that's that's really the great danger. And
Speaker 1: one of the things I found really interesting about kind
Speaker 1: of what you all have been doing because obviously the
Speaker 1: question of how to fight the misinformation in the medical
Speaker 1: sphere is a much larger conversation without simple answers. When
Speaker 1: it comes to a question like, oh, hey, this pharmaceutical
Speaker 1: company jacked up the price by what set for this
Speaker 1: necessary medication for people a lot of people who have
Speaker 1: HIV um. What are we The solution to that is simple,
Speaker 1: you find a way for them to get it without
Speaker 1: paying hundreds and hundreds of dollars per dose um. The question.
Speaker 1: Some of the work you all have done is with
Speaker 1: very uh mass needed products like the methopristone, like the
Speaker 1: epipencil um, where there's large numbers of people who need it.
Speaker 1: But a lot of what I think, one of the
Speaker 1: things I think is really cool is y'all are also
Speaker 1: working on hacking medications that are very niche like, very
Speaker 1: very few people have this particular disease, and so the
Speaker 1: medication is costs as much as the fully loaded Toyota tacoma,
Speaker 1: you know, in order to sometimes far worse than that.
Speaker 1: Because of this Orphan Drug Act that got past in
Speaker 1: the US and equivalence that exists in other places. You
Speaker 1: have all of these allowances that are granted to people
Speaker 1: who invent I put in air quotes because really they
Speaker 1: just purchase the rights to it. Uh, these these orphan
Speaker 1: drugs where when you talk about controls, it's kind of
Speaker 1: the most tragic incidents of that entirely because what's happening
Speaker 1: is you've got somebody who has a very rare disease,
Speaker 1: and in many cases you have something that's the difference
Speaker 1: between somebody who just cannot function and they're dealing with
Speaker 1: their life kind of moment to moment. They're they're mostly
Speaker 1: cared for, and if they have access to a particular medication,
Speaker 1: then they can go through life in a fairly normal
Speaker 1: sort of way where they don't need to be an
Speaker 1: assisted living, where they can do sort of basic things
Speaker 1: for themselves, and that that seems so much more predatory.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's important, of course, you know, to look
Speaker 1: at things with that macro lens as well and say
Speaker 1: what can what can do a lot good for a
Speaker 1: lot of people, But then the sort of micro ethical
Speaker 1: lens needs to come out from time to time and say,
Speaker 1: all right, well, here's something that only affects a few
Speaker 1: hundred thousand people across the world. But these are people
Speaker 1: who could just go through life normally if only they
Speaker 1: had access to a little bit of medicine. And the
Speaker 1: only reason they don't is because of misplaced average or
Speaker 1: all averice is misplaced because yeah, and you're you're you're
Speaker 1: providing individuals or a way for people to help individuals
Speaker 1: who have this problem and who can't couldn't possibly afford
Speaker 1: this because they don't have health care or something a
Speaker 1: way to deal with these illnesses. Um and often times,
Speaker 1: like even even people who are ensured get the medication
Speaker 1: that they need or don't get an affordable rate because
Speaker 1: it's not seen as critical. It's like, oh, well there's
Speaker 1: a there's a solution that's not as good, but it's
Speaker 1: much less expensive. So that's the only thing we're going
Speaker 1: to cover. And so yeah, and you're saying, well, it
Speaker 1: should be your decision whether or not this is something
Speaker 1: you want to treat this way, and we're this is
Speaker 1: a way if you you know, have access, this is
Speaker 1: a way for you to kind of as you've been saying,
Speaker 1: like take your health care and your ability to get
Speaker 1: medication into your own hands and produce the things that
Speaker 1: you need without needing to beg an insurance company or
Speaker 1: go fund me eight dollars or whatever. Yeah. Those go
Speaker 1: fund me break my heart so much. Yeah. It's especially
Speaker 1: when people say, oh, look, how great somebody got the
Speaker 1: money that they needed, and I say, look, I am
Speaker 1: happy that people get healthcare, but this should be entirely unnecessary,
Speaker 1: and the fact that this comes up is criminal. Yeah
Speaker 1: we can. We can as a species produce this ship
Speaker 1: for less than the cost of like a lamp, you know,
Speaker 1: Like why why don't why isn't this available? Um now?
Speaker 1: I And that's what I think is kind of so
Speaker 1: powerful about what y'all are doing, And is that so
Speaker 1: so often we kind of get stuck in this like
Speaker 1: the horror of how bad health care is, of how
Speaker 1: fund up the pharmaceutical industry is, and then we get
Speaker 1: our relief from that in these stories of people like
Speaker 1: crowdfunding so they can get their medication. And what you're
Speaker 1: saying is, well, what's actually much more inspiring than that
Speaker 1: is people just making finding ways to make what they need. Um. Again,
Speaker 1: kind of the most popular popular is the wrong word.
Speaker 1: The most press y'all have received, I think is for
Speaker 1: the epipencil, which is an EpiPen is a device that
Speaker 1: you take that is used when people are going into
Speaker 1: anaphylactic shock, which is when they have an allergic reaction
Speaker 1: that will kill them if untreated. Generally, UM and it
Speaker 1: you injected into your muscles or generally, like an EpiPen
Speaker 1: does the injecting, you just kind of put it in place.
Speaker 1: Um and it. It is a life saving medication when
Speaker 1: people need it. It's the true between that and death.
Speaker 1: UM and they are very expensive. There is a company
Speaker 1: that owns the patent because of how the EpiPen actually
Speaker 1: does the injecting. The actual medicine is very cheap and
Speaker 1: very easy to make, but it's unbelievably expensive, and people
Speaker 1: die as a result of lack lack of access. UM
Speaker 1: and you've provided a way using both kinds of this
Speaker 1: thing called a bio lab that people You've developed plans
Speaker 1: that people can build it for themselves in order to
Speaker 1: make this and also using a three D printer, you
Speaker 1: can make UM an epipencil, which is a little less
Speaker 1: kind of a more analog version. I think I guess
Speaker 1: you'd say, uh, no, it's it's it's equivalent. It's equivalent.
Speaker 1: It works the same way. The things that are different
Speaker 1: about it that are critical. The first one that you mentioned,
Speaker 1: of course, is that you can you can build it
Speaker 1: for all over thirty dollars US, and you can reload
Speaker 1: it for about three dollars, unlike the EpiPen, which is
Speaker 1: I think it's about fifty dollars for yeah. Um, and
Speaker 1: that might be for a pair, but even so. Um.
Speaker 1: But the other two critical differences are that EpiPens are
Speaker 1: single use, so you can't test whether it's faulty or
Speaker 1: not until you use it. Yeah. And there have been
Speaker 1: a lot of failures. In fact, there was a big
Speaker 1: EpiPen recall a bunch of years ago, and there were
Speaker 1: just these tragic, tragic stories. Some guy had to watch
Speaker 1: his little kid die. He had had a pair of EpiPens.
Speaker 1: The kid went into shock, he used it, the thing failed,
Speaker 1: he brought the other one. The other one failed, and
Speaker 1: they're in the air and you can't land in fifteen
Speaker 1: minutes and the little kid died, which just and I'm
Speaker 1: sure there are dozens of dozens of stories like that
Speaker 1: that just happens to be one of the ones I know.
Speaker 1: So one of the things that's great about the epipencils
Speaker 1: because you're putting it together yourself and it only takes
Speaker 1: four parts, you can test it. You can make sure
Speaker 1: that it works as many times as you need to.
Speaker 1: You can dry run it with saline and just double
Speaker 1: check that it does what it's supposed to. Um. And
Speaker 1: so it's safer. So the fact that it's you can
Speaker 1: control yourself, you can reload it, and you can test it.
Speaker 1: All these things fix a lot of these immediate problems
Speaker 1: that come with and it still has the benefit that
Speaker 1: everybody wants from the EpiPen which is that it doesn't
Speaker 1: require um, you know, measurement or like knowing how deep
Speaker 1: to press the needle before you depress the plunger. All
Speaker 1: of that happens automatically, and it happens very quickly. UM.
Speaker 1: And Yeah, we as you say, we've got a lot
Speaker 1: of press for that because essentially a good timing. We've
Speaker 1: released the same time that Heather Brush was lying to
Speaker 1: Congress about why they hit raised the price on the
Speaker 1: epi pens and then so it was in the public eye. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and that's that's a huge one, being able to
Speaker 1: produce that because that is I mean, there's a tremendous
Speaker 1: number of people who rely on uh EpiPens um and
Speaker 1: and I think the potential of that project is staggering.
Speaker 1: UM And there's some there's some you know, when we
Speaker 1: talk about kind of the different people who are who
Speaker 1: are working on similar problems to you, there's also a
Speaker 1: group of people who are working on UM cracking insulin,
Speaker 1: being able to produce insulin um. And Yeah, the open
Speaker 1: Insulin project is an amazing group of people, incredibly important.
Speaker 1: They're yeah, they're working on mm hmm, probably the largest
Speaker 1: scale public health crisis. I mean in terms of queries
Speaker 1: that we get, I think we get people asking about
Speaker 1: insulin more than anything else. And I always say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're very, very bright people already working on this. Go
Speaker 1: talk to the opening so um and and they're just amazing.
Speaker 1: I I want to move on because I want to
Speaker 1: talk about kind of the more um philosophical dimensions of
Speaker 1: some of this. But before we get into that, i'd
Speaker 1: like to so, like, you know, one of the things
Speaker 1: you and I've been talking about a little bit behind
Speaker 1: the scenes is I am not a technically savvy person,
Speaker 1: but I'm I want to try and I'd like to
Speaker 1: be able to like produce an epipensil. I want to
Speaker 1: like understand this it kind of and and potentially be
Speaker 1: able to contribute UM in a more direct sense, in
Speaker 1: part because I'm curious, like how how doable actually is this?
Speaker 1: For I consider myself a pretty normal person when it
Speaker 1: comes to like technical understanding, right, Like, I'm reasonably handy,
Speaker 1: but I'm not. I'm not a chemist, I'm not a
Speaker 1: I'm not a I haven't really I have no I
Speaker 1: have no prior experience three D printing or anything like that.
Speaker 1: What is what is required in terms of financial investment
Speaker 1: and what is kind of your general estimate in terms
Speaker 1: of time to get up to you know, a kind
Speaker 1: of the level where you can start learning how to
Speaker 1: do some of this stuff. I think the barrier to
Speaker 1: entry is pretty low, depending on how you want to start.
Speaker 1: As I said, there are different avenues to doing it.
Speaker 1: You can, of course, one of the one of the
Speaker 1: greatest hacks. If if anybody listening this doesn't pick up
Speaker 1: anything else, here's the best hack. In terms of getting
Speaker 1: access to medication. You have a medication, you don't have
Speaker 1: access to for whatever reason. Assuming it comes in a
Speaker 1: capsule form, you can nearly go to a chemical supplier,
Speaker 1: purchase the active pharmaceutical ingredient, wait out, put it into
Speaker 1: a capsule, and you've made your medication. That's a very
Speaker 1: simple thing, you know. That takes nothing more than being
Speaker 1: able to read a scale and scooping powder into a
Speaker 1: little you know, capsules. The next step up, there are
Speaker 1: things that you can do. They are a little more involved.
Speaker 1: If you want to build an epy pencil, again, this
Speaker 1: is three or four parts, depending on how you count.
Speaker 1: You take the needle from one syringe needle set on,
Speaker 1: you put it onto a different syringe needle set, and
Speaker 1: then you put it into this auto injector this design
Speaker 1: for needle phobic diabetics. You load it with the up
Speaker 1: and ring and you close it up and you're done. Then,
Speaker 1: if you want to step into this a little bit further,
Speaker 1: if something is so barriered for whatever reason that you
Speaker 1: can't get the actual ingredient, then you might start messing
Speaker 1: around with our micro lab. The micro lab, I would
Speaker 1: say probably takes around a hundred dollars US to build
Speaker 1: um it, but it's not super technical Our latest version
Speaker 1: doesn't require any soldering. Everything snaps together, which is really nice.
Speaker 1: You can plug everything in. All the ours are just
Speaker 1: screw terminals, which is really convenient. UM. And it takes
Speaker 1: some time and you do have to load some code,
Speaker 1: but we're looking to release a a new set of
Speaker 1: documentation in the summer that will be very very stripped
Speaker 1: down of here's your bill of materials. You can order
Speaker 1: all of this stuff. Here's how you can put the
Speaker 1: disk image onto the SD card that you put in,
Speaker 1: and you should start it and it will wake up
Speaker 1: and work independently. UM. We had a video of our
Speaker 1: head hardware guy actually building the micro lab from just
Speaker 1: parts that we're sitting on lay out on a table,
Speaker 1: and I think all told it took him about forty
Speaker 1: five minutes. Will be a little bit longer, but again,
Speaker 1: like granted, this guy's a hardware specialist and he you know,
Speaker 1: designed it, so for somebody who's not done before, it
Speaker 1: might take an afternoon, but it's not. It's not prohibitively
Speaker 1: long or involved project that you know, would take you
Speaker 1: weeks to put together, or any specialized understanding of you know,
Speaker 1: biomedical engineering or anything like that. Now, Um, I kind
Speaker 1: of want to move at this point because I think
Speaker 1: that gives people an idea of what's actually necessary and
Speaker 1: they can go to y'all's website or look up you
Speaker 1: have plans on a ge hub if they want to
Speaker 1: kind of look at what's what's involved and it's um.
Speaker 1: Some of it seems a little daunting to me, Like
Speaker 1: look looking at the construction of the bio lab, but
Speaker 1: I'm that that's going to be a project that I'll
Speaker 1: be engaging in over the next couple of weeks, so
Speaker 1: we'll keep people updated on how I do there. UM.
Speaker 1: I want to move on to talk Michael about what
Speaker 1: you see as kind of the I don't know, the
Speaker 1: the the potential from kind of a revolutionary perspective, from
Speaker 1: a perspe active of actually building dual power of this project.
Speaker 1: And obviously you are and I think what would would
Speaker 1: be called the early stages of this idea of kind
Speaker 1: of democratizing and decentralizing the production of life saving medications. Um.
Speaker 1: Although I guess you could argue in some ways it's
Speaker 1: kind of a return to more traditional attitudes about health
Speaker 1: care in a lot of ways. Yeah, there's a cyclic
Speaker 1: nature there and in the sort of zend mind, beginner's mind.
Speaker 1: We'd like to think that the revolution is always in
Speaker 1: its beginning stages, right. UM. That to say, over the
Speaker 1: past decade, roughly looking at trying to find ways to
Speaker 1: give people more independent access that doesn't require infrastructure, to
Speaker 1: medicines and medical technologies. The the hope really is to
Speaker 1: create a certain amount of cultural shift. I remember at
Speaker 1: one point a friend of mine, who as a business
Speaker 1: school graduate, asked me a very sort of like business
Speaker 1: school type question where he said, how would you measure
Speaker 1: success of your project? UM? And I said, well, we
Speaker 1: cease to exist as an organization, and he kind of
Speaker 1: had this moment of like, what do you mean. We
Speaker 1: shouldn't be pushing this right, The ideas that eventually the
Speaker 1: concept of managing your own health is sufficiently normalized that
Speaker 1: it's not something that has to be explained between people.
Speaker 1: But somebody says, oh, yeah, I just I just did
Speaker 1: that up in my micro lab. UM. In the same
Speaker 1: way that when you look at the shift that happened
Speaker 1: between oh, you know, the mid eighties in the mid nineties,
Speaker 1: where computers were this strange, scary thing that was, you know,
Speaker 1: we're only accessible or usable by people who were very
Speaker 1: specialized is something that you know, everybody knew about and
Speaker 1: everybody kind of had and everybody sort of used, And
Speaker 1: the same sort of thing that happened between the period
Speaker 1: of time I don't know, maybe ten twelve years ago
Speaker 1: and now with with three D printing, where like stereo
Speaker 1: lithography and rapid prototyping was again the specialized thing that
Speaker 1: a bunch of people who were essentially at the machine
Speaker 1: tool industry had started to spearhead, and now you say
Speaker 1: three printing, everybody knows what it means in the same
Speaker 1: sort of way. I'd very much like to see a
Speaker 1: cultural shift where when somebody is unwell, that when discussions
Speaker 1: between people happened, that instead of the have you had
Speaker 1: that looked at, or you might instead hear from somebody saying,
Speaker 1: well have you read up on that? You know, to
Speaker 1: see people actually engaged in their own health and not
Speaker 1: going through this very typical process of outsourcing responsibility. Now
Speaker 1: it's not to say that like experts aren't good people
Speaker 1: with whom to consult, right, Yeah, we're not talking about
Speaker 1: replacing the idea of medical professionals who can help you
Speaker 1: understand what your health and diagnose and stuff like yeah, well,
Speaker 1: there is again this drastic difference between going to a
Speaker 1: doctor and essentially just like throwing the problem on their
Speaker 1: desk and saying fixed it, call me when it's over,
Speaker 1: versus going to a doctor and saying, hey, I'd like
Speaker 1: to talk about this. I'd like to know more about
Speaker 1: what's wrong here, and I'd like to discuss what the
Speaker 1: options are and what seems best. Um that would be
Speaker 1: great on a lot of levels. And and then these
Speaker 1: questions of access to medication then become even more relevant
Speaker 1: because when you're talking with a doctor and the doctor says, okay,
Speaker 1: well we could try this therapy, but your insurance won't
Speaker 1: pay for it this three hundred thou dollars, you can say,
Speaker 1: all right, well let's just do a little thought experiment
Speaker 1: and if that fell from a truck, what would I
Speaker 1: do with it? And then maybe you can go home
Speaker 1: and say, you know, I'll call you and let you
Speaker 1: know how it goes. I that's that's really my my
Speaker 1: grant hope, And there are so many different ways that
Speaker 1: that can play out. In fact, I'll tell you a
Speaker 1: hilarious story in regards to this, which was in I
Speaker 1: guess it was when we presented it hope. UM. I
Speaker 1: called Martin Shakraley's cell phone from stage UH to try
Speaker 1: and ask him what he thought about what we were doing,
Speaker 1: given that I was handing his drug out for free
Speaker 1: UM and showing people how to make it. And he
Speaker 1: didn't answer the phone when I called him then, but
Speaker 1: he called me back a few hours later, which was
Speaker 1: really hilarious. We actually chatted for a while and the guys,
Speaker 1: I mean a little detached from reality, but he's he's
Speaker 1: no dummy um. And when I sort of described what
Speaker 1: we were trying to do with the micro lab, he
Speaker 1: had some interesting insights and he said, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: one way I can imagine that working really well is
Speaker 1: if somebody with a little more knowledge of pharmaceutical medicine
Speaker 1: were too, maybe build one of these and serve a
Speaker 1: small community. I think that could be very efficient. And
Speaker 1: I was like, that's a good thought, you Chiseling bastard. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that there's a degree which that's that's kind
Speaker 1: of how I see the most realistic potential. This is
Speaker 1: not every individual making all of their medicine, but kind
Speaker 1: of like you know we had during the fires last year,
Speaker 1: when when our local and state governments during the heatwave
Speaker 1: this year, like completely shat the bed. We had different
Speaker 1: mutual aid collectives do things like we are providing people
Speaker 1: with like oh, it's a blizzard, We're providing people with firewood.
Speaker 1: We are providing people with cooling stations because of the heat.
Speaker 1: You know, we are providing people with they've just fled
Speaker 1: their houses. We have kits that have food and basic
Speaker 1: necessities so they can get through mutual aid collectives that
Speaker 1: are like, well, we are making we specialize and we
Speaker 1: can produce this and this and this medication like these
Speaker 1: three and we have and here's the information you can
Speaker 1: find online about our process. You know that we know
Speaker 1: what we're doing. And if you need these things, you
Speaker 1: let us know and we we get them to you.
Speaker 1: And here's different ways in which people can volunteer if
Speaker 1: you want to help engage in this mutual aid process,
Speaker 1: even if you're not someone who's going to be doing
Speaker 1: a lot of the technical stuff. But we need people
Speaker 1: to go pick up parts, so we need people to
Speaker 1: do this, and you can help us here. You know,
Speaker 1: I see a lot of and I think, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think in a similar way, right, A lot
Speaker 1: of that sort of thing is already happening in other
Speaker 1: realms right where. It's the sort of thing where you
Speaker 1: might be building something, or you you see some project
Speaker 1: on GitHub or whatever, and some there are these STL
Speaker 1: files and you go, oh, gosh, well I don't know
Speaker 1: how to do that. Oh right, x y Z down
Speaker 1: the street as a three D printer. I'll go ask her.
Speaker 1: She's really good at making these things. And you say, hey, look,
Speaker 1: I have this thing. Would this be difficult to print?
Speaker 1: And with their experience they can kind of look at
Speaker 1: and be like, I know that that shouldn't be too hard. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, I have some time this weekend, maybe I
Speaker 1: can make that for you. And in the same way,
Speaker 1: you say, hey, it looks like I seem to have
Speaker 1: this rare infection from whatever whatever, or I have this
Speaker 1: odd condition. Um, I wanted to try this medication because
Speaker 1: it might be really helpful, but it's not legal in
Speaker 1: this country. Do you think you can put this together? Again?
Speaker 1: You know, you call somebody and whoever's on the other
Speaker 1: line says, oh, yeah, I have a micro lab. I
Speaker 1: can try and put a program together for that and
Speaker 1: see if I can make it for you. That sort
Speaker 1: of thing I think is a potentially really positive avenue
Speaker 1: for that sort of thing to proliferate and again eventually
Speaker 1: to have a cultural shift where the idea of medicine
Speaker 1: and medical technology not being something that is comes down
Speaker 1: from above, from some authority, but instead is something that's
Speaker 1: managed by people who are part of your community, who
Speaker 1: you already trust. I mean, that's why going to a
Speaker 1: doctor is so scary. They seem to be the arbiter
Speaker 1: of your fate. They're going to tell you whether you're
Speaker 1: well or not. And that is just the truth and
Speaker 1: much better to have it where people are making up
Speaker 1: their own mind based on learning about their own health
Speaker 1: and consulting with people who can give them perspective. Um.
Speaker 1: And if there's more of that, and if it's closer
Speaker 1: to the person who's actually suffering, that I think will
Speaker 1: be on the whole much better. Yeah. It's this the
Speaker 1: and this gets tangled up in a lot of the
Speaker 1: more toxic things we've seen this year, But it's this
Speaker 1: this understanding that with any given problem, if individuals trying
Speaker 1: to solve that problem have more autonomy, and part of
Speaker 1: autonomy is knowledge, that's nearly always better. Um. The problem,
Speaker 1: of course is that like we we get into this
Speaker 1: situation we are now where some people take I'm take
Speaker 1: some people some people use I want to take control
Speaker 1: of my health care to you know, do stuff that's nonsense.
Speaker 1: And that brings us back to the question of like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you need in for the quality of the information that
Speaker 1: you're getting is very important, right because if if you're
Speaker 1: if you if your research is some YouTube video that
Speaker 1: has convinced you that you need to you know, take
Speaker 1: this this horse paste or something, then yeah, that's not good.
Speaker 1: But that doesn't change the fact that, like with food,
Speaker 1: like with with everything that you need to survive, the
Speaker 1: more of a role you have in understanding that deciding
Speaker 1: what to do with that, understanding where it comes from
Speaker 1: and how it is produced. Um. Not just like not
Speaker 1: only is that I think more satisfying as a human,
Speaker 1: but it's it's also critical to to your well being.
Speaker 1: Um it's critical to like on two levels, right on
Speaker 1: two levels, because not only when your health is taken
Speaker 1: from you, it doesn't deprive you of life, but it
Speaker 1: deprives you participating in any of the acts that make
Speaker 1: life meaningful. And part of that key thing that makes
Speaker 1: life meaningful is having a participatory role in the things
Speaker 1: that decide the trajectory of your life. And so when
Speaker 1: you go to the lengths of managing your own health,
Speaker 1: two things happen. First off, your health improves, assuming you've
Speaker 1: made good decisions and get lucky. But second, you're also
Speaker 1: having a participatory role in your life, and that makes
Speaker 1: life more meaningful. And it beyond just kind of the
Speaker 1: self actualization benefits from from a perspective of actually enabling
Speaker 1: people to participate in the move for radical change in
Speaker 1: our society. One necessary element of to any of the
Speaker 1: kind of things that we need is a belief in
Speaker 1: your own agency and power. Um. And also and a
Speaker 1: freedom from the kind of fear that comes from feeling helpless.
Speaker 1: And there is I think probably no feeling worse in
Speaker 1: the world than feeling completely helpless about a treatable medical problem. Um.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's one thing I just went through to
Speaker 1: my mom. When you get a disease where there's just
Speaker 1: nothing that science can do right, where like, yeah, you've
Speaker 1: got this cancer and there there ain't ship anybody has
Speaker 1: for you. You know, that's one kind of horrible, but
Speaker 1: I think it's a lot less terrible than you. I
Speaker 1: have this thing that we can deal with, but I
Speaker 1: either can't afford it or I don't know that I'll
Speaker 1: be able to afford it. I had a horrible I
Speaker 1: lost my job in my healthcare in seventeen and so
Speaker 1: did a person who was on my healthcare with me
Speaker 1: that I love very much. And I got this, you know,
Speaker 1: hired here in healthcare a couple of years later. And
Speaker 1: it happened that a month before the the I started
Speaker 1: my health care at this new job, this person who
Speaker 1: was on my healthcare with me um got diagnosed with
Speaker 1: a brain tumor, and thankfully not a cancerous one, but
Speaker 1: the one that they had to take medication for that
Speaker 1: would have been would have bankrupted us, you know, without
Speaker 1: the without insurance, and thankfully it worked out fine. The
Speaker 1: timing worked out okay. But there's not a week that
Speaker 1: goes by that I don't and it it it's it's
Speaker 1: it is something that makes you less willing to take risks,
Speaker 1: less willing to participate in in things that because you
Speaker 1: have in the back of your head, well, I have
Speaker 1: to I have to keep this job, I have to
Speaker 1: keep this insurance, I have to y yeah. That and
Speaker 1: that's another thing that I find so heartbreaking. There's so
Speaker 1: many people that I've I've met totally outside of my
Speaker 1: activism who lament about working a job that they hate,
Speaker 1: and I say, gosh, for you know, I mean, you
Speaker 1: consider just bailing on it and looking for something else
Speaker 1: and trying something else. And they have this total paralysis
Speaker 1: of saying, but if I quit my job, I won't
Speaker 1: have healthcare mhm and and and mind you like, these
Speaker 1: were people who were incredibly healthy. These were not people
Speaker 1: who had any regular visits to healthcare. They're just scared
Speaker 1: that if something comes up, they want people to handle it.
Speaker 1: And it's it's a perfectly well grounded fear. But as
Speaker 1: you point out, what this does is it works as
Speaker 1: this sort of shadow oppressive mechanism to keep people from exploring,
Speaker 1: trying things, as you say, taking risks, or or just
Speaker 1: doing things that that don't involve a an optimization toward
Speaker 1: a stable state of maybe just like yeah, maybe it'll
Speaker 1: start a small business, and yeah it probably will fail,
Speaker 1: but that will be a cool adventure. And most people,
Speaker 1: you know, so many people, maybe not most, but many
Speaker 1: many people, um get just terrified into this state of
Speaker 1: inertial paralysis. Yeah, and it contributes to people being afraid
Speaker 1: to take to the street to protest the police because
Speaker 1: maybe they get arrested, and maybe they get fired, and
Speaker 1: then you know, maybe their kid can't afford their Like
Speaker 1: there's a thousand ways. I think, honestly, the fear of
Speaker 1: losing your health care is in some ways as great
Speaker 1: a greater counter revolutionary force than any law enforcement agency
Speaker 1: could hope to be, because the fear is so much
Speaker 1: more immediate to so many people. Nobody talks about that,
Speaker 1: And thank you so much for mentioning it, because it's
Speaker 1: something that like, oftentimes I try to bring up when
Speaker 1: I'm discussing things in public for and and oftentimes people
Speaker 1: kind of raise an eyebrow and me and be like,
Speaker 1: that's what's the big deal, And I'm like, I don't know. Like,
Speaker 1: if you look two layers deep, there's something that's really
Speaker 1: working against people being able to exercise protests, and it's, uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's this really silent, terrifying force that seems
Speaker 1: to underlie everything. And if you could alleviate that, if
Speaker 1: you could get to the point where people are like, yeah,
Speaker 1: the hell with it, you know, I don't need a
Speaker 1: job to take care of me, then all of a
Speaker 1: sudden so many possibilities just blossom in the mind. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you have, like it, say, if you're a parent
Speaker 1: who has a child with you know who, who's insolent dependent. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's not a lot of difference in my mind between
Speaker 1: the fact that between someone holding a gun to your
Speaker 1: head and your boss being able to fire you and
Speaker 1: take away your your kids access to that insulent there's
Speaker 1: not a tremendous moral difference to me, Um, there's not.
Speaker 1: I'd say getting a gun to your head is actually
Speaker 1: more likely to survive that it's less inevitable. You could
Speaker 1: talk your way out of that, and yeah, whatever, but
Speaker 1: there are any number of things that might go wrong there.
Speaker 1: But if somebody takes takes away your insulin, that's the
Speaker 1: end of this story. Yeah, I guess the more salient
Speaker 1: point than the comparison issues. They're both acts of violence,
Speaker 1: and in every way that's meaningful, I think they're both
Speaker 1: acts of violence. Well, and one way that when I
Speaker 1: rail against intellectual property as a concept and intellectual property law,
Speaker 1: the example that I give is they say, if somebody
Speaker 1: were dying and you knew how to save them, would
Speaker 1: you ever not tell them how and just watch them
Speaker 1: die say oh no, that idea belongs to me, and
Speaker 1: I'm not going to share unless you pay me. Like
Speaker 1: no human being that I think I've ever heard of
Speaker 1: would do that. And yet this happens day because we've
Speaker 1: sort of carried these questions of copyright into patents and
Speaker 1: despite the fact that they're hundreds of years old and
Speaker 1: not applicable anymore, assuming they were ever applicable, and people
Speaker 1: just die because people say, oh, well, we can make
Speaker 1: more money if we do it this way. There's a
Speaker 1: fascinating thing going on there when you when you really
Speaker 1: drill into that idea, because I suspect there are a
Speaker 1: lot of people who have who are are integral in
Speaker 1: propping up this system, both of kind of medical intellectual
Speaker 1: property and of just like the pharmaceutical industry, the way
Speaker 1: that it works people in politics, huge numbers of people
Speaker 1: who are integral in some facet of keeping that going,
Speaker 1: who also, were they to see an individual and immediate
Speaker 1: medical distress, would never think of like try getting their
Speaker 1: debit card number or whatever, like asking them, would would
Speaker 1: without thinking attempt because that's what people do, and it's
Speaker 1: I mean, this is where we get into kind of
Speaker 1: some of these more philosophical anarchist ideas about what hierarchy
Speaker 1: does and what these structures do, because structures enable people
Speaker 1: to participate in evil that they never would as an individual. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's this easy route that, but many easy routes that
Speaker 1: pop up that allow people or force, I should say
Speaker 1: force people to be displaced from their humanity in that
Speaker 1: sort of way where, yes, of course, you you help
Speaker 1: somebody up off of subway tracks if they've fallen. Yes,
Speaker 1: of course, if somebody were drowning, you drag them out
Speaker 1: and save them. And yet just because it's a degree
Speaker 1: removed and it's mediated by an agency, suddenly it's so
Speaker 1: easy to forget and ignore and be sort of complicit.
Speaker 1: And yeah, and I just to go back around to
Speaker 1: what four Thieves is doing and what y'all are doing.
Speaker 1: It's one of the few projects going on right now
Speaker 1: that fits what my idealistic nineteen year old brain thought
Speaker 1: the Internet would be sixteen fifteen, Like when I when
Speaker 1: it was, when things were newer and a little less.
Speaker 1: We're like, oh, this is like one of these days,
Speaker 1: well this kind of ship is going to happen. Um,
Speaker 1: And that is I think, I mean, that's that's not
Speaker 1: without value from again a revolutionary perspective, the fact that
Speaker 1: it is pretty rad you know. Well, I mean I
Speaker 1: will not deny the fact that it feels good, you
Speaker 1: know there. I think that I think that we all
Speaker 1: grew up with that sort of hope and belief that
Speaker 1: we were gonna open these new doors and there were
Speaker 1: going to be these new possibilities and things that we
Speaker 1: have been reading about in science fiction. We're going to
Speaker 1: become real and and there's there's a great satisfaction in
Speaker 1: not just witnessing your childhood dreams become realities, but actually,
Speaker 1: you know, having a hand in it. Uh, It's there's
Speaker 1: there's something quite satisfying about that. I will yeah, I
Speaker 1: will admit, well, I think that's a pretty good point
Speaker 1: to close out on today. I don't need to take
Speaker 1: up too much more of your time right now, Michael.
Speaker 1: But but as I told people, I'm gonna be I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be trying to get into some of this because
Speaker 1: I find it just both fascinating and incredibly hopeful. Um,
Speaker 1: in a world where it seems like, uh, there are
Speaker 1: constantly forces conspiring to strip people of their ability to
Speaker 1: take control of critical aspects of their lives. You and
Speaker 1: your your colleagues in this are trying to give people
Speaker 1: opportunities to take some some power back for themselves, and
Speaker 1: I just think that's it's pretty dope. Thank you so much. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and see your listeners. If there are people out there
Speaker 1: who like what we're doing, you want to support the project,
Speaker 1: please go find somebody who needs your help but doesn't
Speaker 1: deserve it, and then go help them anyway. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's always a good thing to do. Um, Michael, anything else,
Speaker 1: any like a thing else you want to kind of
Speaker 1: put this is normally this section where people plug websites
Speaker 1: or projects or anything. You've got anything in particularly you
Speaker 1: want to throw out there right now. Uh. Sure. We're
Speaker 1: hoping to do a bunch of big releases in the
Speaker 1: summer um, so look for those. In the meantime, we're
Speaker 1: always looking for help, So if you're out there and
Speaker 1: you'd like to be assisted in the project, uh, please
Speaker 1: get in touch. There's the contact us page on the website.
Speaker 1: And by the way, this do not have to be
Speaker 1: a technical person. We're looking for currently, we're looking for writers.
Speaker 1: We have a lot of documentation that we need to do.
Speaker 1: So if you're out there and you have, you know,
Speaker 1: background in in language, then that would be great. If
Speaker 1: if you're somebody who feels that you're entirely without skills,
Speaker 1: please get in touch. We have any number of endless
Speaker 1: small tasks that just need to be taken care of
Speaker 1: because we don't have enough people. So if you'd like
Speaker 1: to participate, we'd love to have you. Please get in
Speaker 1: touch and in the meantime, keep each other healthy, keep
Speaker 1: each other. Thank you so much, Michael, thanks so much
Speaker 1: for having me. Hey, we'll be back Monday with more
Speaker 1: episodes every week from now until the heat death of
Speaker 1: the universe. It Could Happen Here is a production of
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
Speaker 1: visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check
Speaker 1: us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources
Speaker 1: for It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at cool zone
Speaker 1: Media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.