Speaker 1: What's new my year ship? Yeah, new year, same ship.
Speaker 1: I'm Robert Evans. This is behind the 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 part the time for for For one of our
Speaker 1: first episodes of the New Year, we have decided to
Speaker 1: subject ourselves to your para social whims um and we
Speaker 1: are going to be doing maybe one, maybe two Q
Speaker 1: and A episodes. Um uh giving AI's to your cues.
Speaker 1: And I've been in the cue. 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 you how much at some point. Yeah. Uh, let's
Speaker 1: let's let's start with let's start with a simply a
Speaker 1: good one. Uh. What has been your favorite episode slash
Speaker 1: topic to research in this past season? So since we
Speaker 1: started season two? Oh god, Um, I enjoyed the metaverse
Speaker 1: Facebook episodes because there's a part of me that really
Speaker 1: likes shitting on bad tech industry stuff. Um. It fills
Speaker 1: a deep part of me just just really comprehensively thinking
Speaker 1: about how how terrible the vision of the future these
Speaker 1: people have it. So that was probably my favorite. I
Speaker 1: liked the Climate Leviathan stuff. Um, the Climate Leviathan, climate Behemoth,
Speaker 1: climate mal climate X, kind of four quadrants. I I
Speaker 1: liked learning about that, like, jeez, almost a year ago
Speaker 1: actually by the time I started researching for the show. Um,
Speaker 1: and I'm decently happy with the way that those topics
Speaker 1: were presented and how they keep popping back every once
Speaker 1: in a while. I think in terms of just the
Speaker 1: favorite episode I recorded, it was probably the interview with
Speaker 1: the Common Humanity Collective people, just because like listening to
Speaker 1: a bunch of people who have very sophisticated and well
Speaker 1: developed mutual aid project and then listening to you know
Speaker 1: that them talking about their political development and how they've
Speaker 1: been sort of solving their problems was really reassuring and
Speaker 1: cheerful in a lot of ways. And then research wise,
Speaker 1: was definitely the Spooky Area fifty one episode where I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, I'm gonna do a fun episode about uh,
Speaker 1: the government and aliens and it was like, oh no,
Speaker 1: here's every war crime ever and like sixteen people almost
Speaker 1: killing everyone on earth. This is This is Probably probably
Speaker 1: the most fun I had was with the Chaos, Magic
Speaker 1: and Esotericism episode just how silly it is? Um? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that one. That one also was just just a pleasure
Speaker 1: to record. I also loved having Corey doctor rowan um
Speaker 1: because that was cool. That was cool. That was that
Speaker 1: was very cool, how cool of us. I've enjoyed our
Speaker 1: our fiction episodes with Margaret and with Rebecca those those
Speaker 1: have been great. And I've loved having st Andrew. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that has been also very cool, fantastic. What were gonna say,
Speaker 1: Robert nothing, Oh great, this person says. I think I've
Speaker 1: got my head wrapped around mutual aid, community resilience and
Speaker 1: all the stuff you talk about. Any tips on how
Speaker 1: to effectively communicate it to people who might not be
Speaker 1: at least initially open to it. H Um. I mean
Speaker 1: it kind 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 each 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 as 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 like being dependent
Speaker 1: upon government programs. I think that's kind of the way
Speaker 1: in which to reach out to those people with that
Speaker 1: idea if they're coming at it from more of a liberal,
Speaker 1: top down approach, UM, I think you can get more
Speaker 1: into the weeds and may argue about kind of inefficiencies
Speaker 1: within the system, problems within the system. I think one
Speaker 1: thing to really point out that will probably still be
Speaker 1: fresh to a lot of people of that persuasion is
Speaker 1: how frightening the first couple of weeks of quarantine were
Speaker 1: and all of the supply line issues and kind of
Speaker 1: the early breakdown, and be like, look, um, that didn't
Speaker 1: go away, like right, you can see that that we're
Speaker 1: still dealing with a lot of this and we're still
Speaker 1: having supply line disruptions and the state really has not
Speaker 1: kind of even under Biden sailed and to clear the gap.
Speaker 1: And so we need these community resiliency programs, UM. And
Speaker 1: you can you know, depending on the kind of person there,
Speaker 1: you can also sort of point out, um, the degree
Speaker 1: to which there is our attempts at kind of avatage
Speaker 1: of any sort of of of of top down government
Speaker 1: programs by the right, and how UM that's part of
Speaker 1: why you need community resiliency programs because you can't guarantee
Speaker 1: who's going to be in the White House, you can't
Speaker 1: guarantee what's going to continue to get funded. Um. And
Speaker 1: outside of kind of any of the the structural issues
Speaker 1: um that make that stuff difficult. So I think, UM,
Speaker 1: that's kind of broadly speaking, the two different ways you
Speaker 1: you can broach those conversations with people, depending on the
Speaker 1: tendencies they're they're looking at it from. Uh, let's let's
Speaker 1: let's get into an unpleasant one. What's the gang's outlook
Speaker 1: on this year's election and how do you think it
Speaker 1: might position us for Do we see more violence sitting
Speaker 1: up to the next presidential election? Well, I know we'll
Speaker 1: be doing a prediction z is episode later. Um. But
Speaker 1: as for this election, I have I've not looked at
Speaker 1: anything about it. I think the Steelers are going to
Speaker 1: take it all? What what? Well? What's border are the Steelers? Um?
Speaker 1: One of them? That's great? Uh? I mean yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I feel like if Democrats want to keep the
Speaker 1: power that they currently have, they will probably need to
Speaker 1: do some type of symbolic action that makes people think
Speaker 1: they actually do things. I mean, they've managed to have
Speaker 1: control of every and done absolutely nothing that they so
Speaker 1: I'm guessing if they want to keep that, they should
Speaker 1: probably do something really soon, um or else I don't
Speaker 1: see people being super eager to vote in two for
Speaker 1: the Democrats. Yeah. Yeah, I mean one of the issues
Speaker 1: they've got is this this thing that you know, kind
Speaker 1: of the technocrats always have where you know, as we
Speaker 1: as Corey pointed out when we had them on, there
Speaker 1: have been some really positive moves by the Biden administration
Speaker 1: in terms of like appointments and how different kind of
Speaker 1: agencies are being handled. Um. But when it to the
Speaker 1: things that he actually campaigned on, like, it just hasn't
Speaker 1: it hasn't happened, should it? 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: actively 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 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 this is the most important election of
Speaker 1: our lifetime. It's like, and they will keep doing this
Speaker 1: over and over and over again until literally the seize
Speaker 1: boil and everyone, you know, everyone is being heard into
Speaker 1: concentration camps. Like they will just keep doing this and
Speaker 1: and like I think that's that's the thing that's actually
Speaker 1: important about the two cycle is that like the Democrats
Speaker 1: have you know what, you know what the rejection of
Speaker 1: Brinie Sanders sort of is is the Democrats essentially going,
Speaker 1: we are not a popular party, right, like we we
Speaker 1: are not a party that is going to like like
Speaker 1: we will not even give the pretense of like having
Speaker 1: a base that we represent and we do things for
Speaker 1: like we're just we're just in it for ourselves. We're
Speaker 1: in it's just like, you know, give all of our
Speaker 1: weird like black Rock friends positions in the government, and
Speaker 1: we don't you know, and it's you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: we we don't have a policy agenda, and we don't
Speaker 1: care if we lose because if we lose, all you
Speaker 1: people just have to go put us back into office
Speaker 1: because the alternative is just more death camps. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I think there's a broad belief like within kind
Speaker 1: of the Democratic Party that things are still business as
Speaker 1: usual 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 uh democracy in
Speaker 1: this country is is I think evidence that. However, you
Speaker 1: kind of try to rationalize in your head why it's happening.
Speaker 1: There's a real disconnect between the party leadership and understandings
Speaker 1: of the new nature of reality. Yeah, well that the
Speaker 1: other thing. I mean, they'll be fine, right, like outside
Speaker 1: of like another January six killing them all, Like, they'll
Speaker 1: be fine. It doesn't like for them, it basically doesn't
Speaker 1: matter if Republicans take power. Maybe maybe some of them
Speaker 1: will get impeached. They'll be like a show trial for
Speaker 1: like two people or something, but like they're gonna be fine,
Speaker 1: and you know, that's that's the thing that motivates all
Speaker 1: of their thinking, is that they can they can survive
Speaker 1: another public administration. Like we're you know, we're dying under
Speaker 1: both of them. And you know, like, I mean, this
Speaker 1: is this is partially you know, if you want to
Speaker 1: talk about sort of the COVID response for a second,
Speaker 1: in 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, it's like they don't care if we live die,
Speaker 1: like we care if we live or die, and we're
Speaker 1: gonna have to do stuff on our own outside of
Speaker 1: this because they're just gonna kill us. All. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: mean I think that it's hard for me to tell
Speaker 1: where the elections are going to go precisely. Uh Biden's
Speaker 1: polling certainly isn't great. It's also not like wildly out
Speaker 1: of step with how where presidents often are kind of
Speaker 1: at this point UM in in their cycle. So and
Speaker 1: also it's pretty normal for the party that just won
Speaker 1: the presidential election to lose at the midterms. That's more
Speaker 1: normal than not UM, I think. So, I think the
Speaker 1: big questions are number one, like the degree to which
Speaker 1: it's a wide sweep, which is going to depend on
Speaker 1: the actual impact a lot of these UM efforts to
Speaker 1: kind of restrict voting and jerrymander, Like what the actual
Speaker 1: on the ground impact is UM, and the degree to
Speaker 1: which we've seen an actual shift, because one of the
Speaker 1: things that the polls don't often tell us is like, yeah,
Speaker 1: Democrats are not popular. Most people seem to be aware
Speaker 1: that a lot of promises have gone unfulfilled, But it
Speaker 1: doesn't also mean that they like the Republicans UM, who
Speaker 1: as the party of Trump, are still kind of widely
Speaker 1: disliked by people. So it's kind of unclear to me
Speaker 1: what precisely is going to go down, by which I
Speaker 1: mean whether or not it's going to be a pretty
Speaker 1: normal midterm, whether the Republicans pick up some seats or
Speaker 1: like a nightmare blowout. Um And I do think that
Speaker 1: has a lot to do with whether or not Biden
Speaker 1: and like does a couple of the things that a
Speaker 1: president can do unilaterally that would be really easy for
Speaker 1: other people to campaign on. Um. Like he they have to,
Speaker 1: like if they actually do want to win, they have
Speaker 1: to they have to make a couple of big hail
Speaker 1: mary's they have to do again, Biden has to do
Speaker 1: a couple of the big things that a president can
Speaker 1: do and then say, Okay, see I did a thing,
Speaker 1: put more Democrats in, and we can do this other
Speaker 1: big thing that a president can't do on his own
Speaker 1: or something like that. Like I just don't see, um.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, anything could happen. Still, it's fucking January.
Speaker 1: I think there's a positive if you want to be
Speaker 1: in terms of things that are making me kind of optimistic,
Speaker 1: um and and in terms of things that are better
Speaker 1: about when the Democrats are in powder and then the Republicans,
Speaker 1: you can bully the Biden administration to taking broadly positive action,
Speaker 1: which is what happened with student loan repayments, right. That's
Speaker 1: why that did get kicked down. The can a couple
Speaker 1: of kick down the road a couple of months. Um.
Speaker 1: And so I do think there's potential in um harassing
Speaker 1: the Biden administration to taking actions that can make Democrats
Speaker 1: more popular. Um. That would not be the reason to
Speaker 1: do it. The reason to do it is so that
Speaker 1: people don't starve trying to pay back student loans. Um.
Speaker 1: But it does point to, I think in an avenue
Speaker 1: of hope. UM, if we're trying not to be complete
Speaker 1: doomers in January of two. Yeah, and speaking of avenues
Speaker 1: of hope, it's time for an adverb. Ah. The only
Speaker 1: thing that gives me hope is the products and services
Speaker 1: that support this podcast are the heck we are we
Speaker 1: are I've i've I have a question. I would like
Speaker 1: us to talk about uma new year book list. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that's so simple. So what's what's some I think we
Speaker 1: could answer this like? And then they also someone else
Speaker 1: followed up with saying, recommend some books that maybe not
Speaker 1: just left this theory of climate change, also some like
Speaker 1: fiction stuff as well. And I'm just gonna say the
Speaker 1: books that I'm reading or is on my reading list,
Speaker 1: not I'm not gonna recommend books I've already read. I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna say the ones I'm currently reading. UM. I'm
Speaker 1: 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 to have been kind of reclaimed by the area
Speaker 1: that they were, that they were built on. And then
Speaker 1: I also have a random few books on alchemy that
Speaker 1: I'm going through as well. That's most of my books. Horrible.
Speaker 1: UM I read. The last book I finished in was
Speaker 1: in the Garden of Beasts, which is by what is
Speaker 1: his name? I think it's Eric larson Um. He's a
Speaker 1: guy who's written He wrote like Devil in the White
Speaker 1: City and a couple of other books that people have
Speaker 1: probably read Eric larson Um, And it's about the first
Speaker 1: US ambassador to Nazi Germany or what becomes Nazi Journey.
Speaker 1: He gets sent there right before, like like months before
Speaker 1: Hitler takes power, and the book largely traces he and
Speaker 1: his family's journey in Nazi Germany from like kind of
Speaker 1: didn't really care about German politics and were often broadly
Speaker 1: sympathetic towards the Nazis. They melt met like his daughter
Speaker 1: kind of is very much like on board with the
Speaker 1: Nazi revolution for like the first half year that she's there.
Speaker 1: She's also like simultaneously dating the head of the Gestapo
Speaker 1: and the Soviet um like assistant ambassador, which is fascinating. Like,
Speaker 1: it's a very interesting book, um, And the story like
Speaker 1: the journey this kind of family goes on realizing like
Speaker 1: what the Nazis are in the perspective of that. It's
Speaker 1: it's very well written. Um, it's very detailed. I really
Speaker 1: enjoyed it. The thing that I liked the most was
Speaker 1: the detail it goes into about the kind of the
Speaker 1: fates of because it's it's a more you know, obviously
Speaker 1: as much of a nerd on the history of fascism
Speaker 1: as I am, I've read a lot about the Night
Speaker 1: of Long Knives. This did the best job of kind
Speaker 1: of going into detail about the kind of dudes who
Speaker 1: the dudes who were purged in the Night of Long Knives.
Speaker 1: So these guys who were Nazis in that they wore
Speaker 1: swastikas and they were part of the party and whatnot.
Speaker 1: But also weren't Nazis enough to not get purged And
Speaker 1: in a lot of cases were like starting to fall
Speaker 1: out of love with the party when the Night of
Speaker 1: Long Knives had And so it's these it's really interesting,
Speaker 1: UM and I recommend it to people. And the last
Speaker 1: book I started in the first book I finished in
Speaker 1: two was called Ministry of the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson,
Speaker 1: who is UM an interesting science fiction author, in part
Speaker 1: because Ministry of the Future is about climate change. UM.
Speaker 1: It is a a science fiction look at about like
Speaker 1: a thousand different potential solutions to climate change. And Kim
Speaker 1: Stanley Robinson is actually like an expert UM. He works
Speaker 1: for the Sierra Center. I think it's called UM. He's
Speaker 1: won a bunch of awards for his work on like
Speaker 1: trying to like posit different solutions to climate change. He's
Speaker 1: he he understand he's not like coming at this from
Speaker 1: the perspective of an even even a well researched author.
Speaker 1: He's he's writing from the perspective of someone who is
Speaker 1: an actual scientific expert in what happens and how the
Speaker 1: different solutions might work. And the thing that's really interesting
Speaker 1: about Ministry of the Future is it's this fascinating melange
Speaker 1: of UM. Like a number of the character the Ministry
Speaker 1: of the Future is this kind of hypothetical new U
Speaker 1: N agency that's put in place after a horrible wet
Speaker 1: bulb um heat event kills twenty million people in India UM,
Speaker 1: and they're they're kind of trying to push for very
Speaker 1: technocratic solutions to climate change. So, like one of the
Speaker 1: big things the book focuses on a lot is this
Speaker 1: idea of a climate coin, which is a kind of
Speaker 1: UM international backed by banks, cryptocurrency that that pays as
Speaker 1: a kind of long term bond for sequestering carbon, so
Speaker 1: that like countries like Saudi Arabia that have huge oil
Speaker 1: reserves actually make more money by using to pump out
Speaker 1: oil and thus get paid in these coins. So it's
Speaker 1: really technocratic solutions like that. And then also terrorist groups
Speaker 1: that may be funded by this U N agency building
Speaker 1: fleets of drones to murder people on commercial air flights
Speaker 1: UM in mass in order to cripple the entire air
Speaker 1: travel industry and stop carbon emission and carrying out mass
Speaker 1: assassinations on like CEOs of of oil companies living in
Speaker 1: their private islands. So it's this really interesting mix of
Speaker 1: like kind of liberal politicians and like bankers like working
Speaker 1: out these very wonky solutions to things, and like terrorists
Speaker 1: who have lost people in climate emergencies mass murdering um billionaires,
Speaker 1: uh and and so it's it's a very it's the
Speaker 1: whitest possible ranging look at kind of different solutions to
Speaker 1: climate change and how they might work. And it's a
Speaker 1: very optimistic book. UM. And there's there's elements of it
Speaker 1: that I kind of the optimism I kind of disagree with.
Speaker 1: I think oddly enough Kim doesn't give enough weight to
Speaker 1: the day dangers of authoritarian populism and and the threat
Speaker 1: I think they present to any of these kind of
Speaker 1: potential solutions. But it's still a very well thought out
Speaker 1: look at climate change and I think really worth reading
Speaker 1: UM if you want something that will both bring up
Speaker 1: different because he also goes into a lot of like
Speaker 1: very scientific solutions, like pumping up water from underneath glaciers
Speaker 1: in order to stop glaciers from sliding, and like slow
Speaker 1: the rate of melt and all these these other kind
Speaker 1: of like very much like technical here's a thing that
Speaker 1: we can do that will reduce the effect of this
Speaker 1: specific Um kind of climate change. It's really a very
Speaker 1: good book. Um and it's apparently was Barack Obama's favorite
Speaker 1: book of the year, which, considering the degree in which
Speaker 1: it talks about murdering politicians and business leaders, is interesting
Speaker 1: to me. I think he was maybe more paying attention
Speaker 1: to the carbon coins stuff than the shooting oil industry
Speaker 1: executives in their face while they're sleeping. Well, he was
Speaker 1: also a fan of parasite, so walty. He may just
Speaker 1: have been told this is a book you should say
Speaker 1: you like, but it is. It is a very good book.
Speaker 1: It is really worth reading. Um and it's it's it
Speaker 1: is a work of science fiction. But honestly it's like
Speaker 1: it's also it's well again, Kim really understands his stuff
Speaker 1: from a technical level, so I think it's pretty unimpeachable
Speaker 1: from that point of view. There are some kind of
Speaker 1: sociological areas where I don't think the book. I think
Speaker 1: there's some ship missing, particularly as regards the problems authoritarianism
Speaker 1: is going to cause in reaching for these solutions. But
Speaker 1: I think it's still really really valuable. And Chris, we're
Speaker 1: going to hear your responses, but first capitalism here you
Speaker 1: are reading read few things, um, and reading more Chwang,
Speaker 1: which is a theoretical journal about China that writes a
Speaker 1: lot of very very good stuff. They have probably the
Speaker 1: best account I've ever seen of just what was going
Speaker 1: on during the socialist period and then also the sort
Speaker 1: of transition to capitalism. That's those are those are those
Speaker 1: are issues one and two, and they just published an
Speaker 1: issue about it, basically, how the pandemic response happens in China.
Speaker 1: It's it's absolutely fascinating. Um. It's also about sort of
Speaker 1: is this something that Yeah, I've talked about a lot
Speaker 1: of 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 this 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: this 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: 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 the 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 the dawn of everything or do you want
Speaker 1: to save that for just like yeah, I I'm down
Speaker 1: to talk about that at any point. Yeah, ok, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's definitely on my list. That is a long one
Speaker 1: that's less of a read I think where most people
Speaker 1: are going to be less of a read in one
Speaker 1: sweep than like maybe for over the course of the year,
Speaker 1: like gradually. Yeah. Yeah, it's very very dense and very long,
Speaker 1: but very readable. Like not to say that it's like
Speaker 1: dense in the I gotta like slog through this textbook.
Speaker 1: It's extremely readable. It's just like there's a lot in
Speaker 1: there and you're gonna want to pause and think about ship. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So so not everything is this is the last book
Speaker 1: David Graeber ever wrote, and it's David Wenn Grow also.
Speaker 1: They wrote it together, and it's it's this basically an
Speaker 1: attempt to reassemble I guess, early human history. And but
Speaker 1: the thing that they're doing that that's that's really unique
Speaker 1: is that so they they're David wen Grows as archaeologist,
Speaker 1: David Graeber's an apologists, and they're they're going, you know,
Speaker 1: so they spent a whole bunch of time going through
Speaker 1: the sort of early archaeological records, and what they find,
Speaker 1: basically is that none of the things that you see
Speaker 1: make any sense at all unless you're willing to unless
Speaker 1: you're willing to accept that people you know, years ago,
Speaker 1: and then even you know, people like four hive thousand
Speaker 1: years ago, we're as smart as we are and have
Speaker 1: the have the capacity to recreate and redesign their own
Speaker 1: political arrangements selfconsciously, which is something that doesn't sound that weird,
Speaker 1: except everyone assumes that they can't, and that you know,
Speaker 1: everyone that's you know. One of the other things that
Speaker 1: they're they're really sort of heavily doing here is trying
Speaker 1: to break this idea that you know, human society sort
Speaker 1: of evolves in these this linear progression. You know, you
Speaker 1: start out with like these small hunter gatherer bands and
Speaker 1: they get more complex quote unquote, eventually they developed farming,
Speaker 1: and farming developed the state. And the answer is just
Speaker 1: you know, when you look through the actual archaeological record,
Speaker 1: none of this is true. You have, you know, they
Speaker 1: have a lot of very interesting sort of historical examples
Speaker 1: of this, looking at like what looked like incredibly democratic
Speaker 1: and egalitarian cities, and then you know, on the outskirts
Speaker 1: of those cities you have the emergence of the states
Speaker 1: among things that look like states, among barbarian groups. And
Speaker 1: they have and what I think is maybe the most
Speaker 1: interesting part of it is that they're they're very concerned
Speaker 1: with the question of human freedom, but freedom in a
Speaker 1: way that like we don't but freedom on a level
Speaker 1: fundamental enough that like we can barely imagine it. So
Speaker 1: they have these things called the Three freedoms, which is
Speaker 1: one of them is so that the first one is
Speaker 1: the freedom just move to leave and to it's it's
Speaker 1: a freedom to to you know, be in a place
Speaker 1: and then leave and know that you will be cared
Speaker 1: for when you get to wherever you're going, Yeah, these
Speaker 1: kind of networks that were set up so that people
Speaker 1: could travel that have like the descendant of those ideas
Speaker 1: is sort of the way if you ever if you've
Speaker 1: ever spent time in the Middle East, not in like
Speaker 1: hotels and ship like it's that same idea that kind
Speaker 1: of deeper than religious belief about the importance of that
Speaker 1: has gotten added to like Islam and into a number
Speaker 1: of other faiths in the area. Like, but this idea
Speaker 1: that like there's nothing more sacred than taking care of
Speaker 1: a of a guest um like and and how that
Speaker 1: that that existed to enable kind of a sort of
Speaker 1: cross cultural contract and contact and like recreational trap in
Speaker 1: a way that I think it would be deeply surprising
Speaker 1: to people who just sort of assumed everyone before a
Speaker 1: certain age died within five miles of their house or
Speaker 1: was you know, yeah, part of a band of wandering hunters. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it's it's interesting in that like, like like we
Speaker 1: we in a lot of ways travel less than early
Speaker 1: people did, because you know that people would just leave
Speaker 1: and people, you know, people just didn't like their families,
Speaker 1: and so they'd walk like five miles and they they'd
Speaker 1: come to a place and they'd be accepted. And yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, and like the second one, I think
Speaker 1: the one that I is the 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 this, this
Speaker 1: is the thing. This is a freedom that used to
Speaker 1: exist and no longer does. It was sort of destroying
Speaker 1: various ways, along with sort of the third free to
Speaker 1: talk about, which is about how people have the right
Speaker 1: to sort of just shift and recreate their their social
Speaker 1: political arrangements. And yeah, and people used to do this
Speaker 1: sort of I mean people, you know, a lot of
Speaker 1: the what their early part of the book is about
Speaker 1: is about how societies you there there's a lot of
Speaker 1: societies that would you know, flip seasonally, right, so what
Speaker 1: like one half of the year you have this just
Speaker 1: like absolutelycatorship the either half of the year. It's like, well,
Speaker 1: it looks like a hippie commune. And you know the
Speaker 1: fact that we do not like the fact that like
Speaker 1: we we we just don't like it, cannot conceive of
Speaker 1: completely shifting our political arrangements like that is It's also
Speaker 1: there's this fascinating discussion of like the fact that and
Speaker 1: this is kind of counter to what 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 you just keep going along that road. And
Speaker 1: there's actually multiple examples of people's like this, what what
Speaker 1: happened to the British Isles, 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 like,
Speaker 1: it's not inevitable that we just keep doing more of
Speaker 1: what we're doing now. All throughout history, large groups of
Speaker 1: people have been like, it's time to let's do something else,
Speaker 1: let's make a radical change, like it happens, um, And
Speaker 1: it's probably more normal to do that than it is
Speaker 1: to do what we've been doing. And when you I
Speaker 1: think one of the things that kind of one of
Speaker 1: the things that leads to the sense of inevitability of
Speaker 1: development along the lines that we have is is the
Speaker 1: fact that we only really have about ten thousand years
Speaker 1: of even vaguely reliable like data or vaguely comprehensive data
Speaker 1: on human history. But people have been around for tens
Speaker 1: of thousands of years longer than that, and for most
Speaker 1: of it we've been a lot more experimental than we
Speaker 1: are now. And it's it's always possible for people to
Speaker 1: try different things in a way that um, maybe seems
Speaker 1: impossible to us now but but necessarily won't for our kids.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah. The last thing I would tell people to
Speaker 1: listen to if they're looking for a fictional optimistic thing
Speaker 1: is Corey Doctors walk Away. UM, give it a read.
Speaker 1: And if you're and if you're looking for like a
Speaker 1: a like a beautiful like not to get your head
Speaker 1: out of the One of the things I'm really passionate
Speaker 1: about is plants. And I have this beautiful book called
Speaker 1: The Planet Media and it's really helpful for caring for
Speaker 1: your house plants. And it's just like aesthetically just so.
Speaker 1: The photographs are beautiful and it's one of my favorite
Speaker 1: things to give friends and family. To check that one
Speaker 1: out as well. Another another plant book that I just
Speaker 1: got for somebody that I really like. I think it's
Speaker 1: called Wicked Plants. It's about all the poisons plants that
Speaker 1: you can get, um and the ones all the like
Speaker 1: the poison plants you can cultivate in your own garden.
Speaker 1: And that's been a lovely read. Um, and I do
Speaker 1: hope to set up a decent poisoned garden here in
Speaker 1: the spring. So very excited. 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, real
Speaker 1: juicy fluff 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 come
Speaker 1: curl off, so then it wouldn't print them next layer
Speaker 1: on correctly. Then it messed up the print. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I was between mental health stuff and that at the time.
Speaker 1: I was stday on my printer. This is when I
Speaker 1: just gave up because it was too much. So I'll
Speaker 1: 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 yeah, and I've I've got the enclosure. One of
Speaker 1: the issues I'm having is just that I'm having a
Speaker 1: heating issue with the bed. It won't heat up. It
Speaker 1: stops before it gets to one tin, which is what
Speaker 1: it should be able to go up that high. But
Speaker 1: it's just, yeah, can you manually heat it up? Hotter? Um,
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 out.
Speaker 1: Yeah I have, I have. I've I have a similar
Speaker 1: problem with my setup right now that I've been trying
Speaker 1: to troubleshoot for like half a year. Um, I can
Speaker 1: manually control the heat bed and it does get that hot.
Speaker 1: But still I think it may just be a leveling issue.
Speaker 1: I may need to like clean the bed. I also
Speaker 1: should just talk to someone who has done more three
Speaker 1: D printing than me. Um. But yeah, yeah, but it's
Speaker 1: it's it's fun. I I enjoy it. It's very it's
Speaker 1: radically different from the stuff that I like do for
Speaker 1: a living um, which is always my favorite thing for
Speaker 1: like a a task to engage in in order to
Speaker 1: be relaxing, because it's it's not all like reading and writing.
Speaker 1: It's very different. It's very different. So so far, I'm
Speaker 1: enjoying it. And I already I printed the thing I
Speaker 1: need to do to make the the bio um, the
Speaker 1: biolab for like the four Thieves stuff. If you want
Speaker 1: to check out our episode with Michael from the four
Speaker 1: Thieves Vinegar Collective. I've three D printed that part, so
Speaker 1: I'm ready to get the other parts and put that
Speaker 1: thing together. Um, I'm just trying to figure out how
Speaker 1: to print other stuff with better plastics and whatnot. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's fun. So far. I'm I'm enjoying it a lot.
Speaker 1: Um Maybe I'll get bored, Maybe I'll wind up spending
Speaker 1: way too much money on different three D printers, like
Speaker 1: the ones that lift the goo out of the res
Speaker 1: printers are there there's so they're much like this is
Speaker 1: what this is what Corey Doctor was talking about, Like
Speaker 1: like they are much better at the filament printers in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways, but a lot of like a
Speaker 1: lot of the stuff. A lot of the really useful
Speaker 1: machines that you can make with three D prints require
Speaker 1: you to use filament right now, um, but the resin
Speaker 1: ones are like so much more elegant. They're beautiful. Um.
Speaker 1: I also am really interested in the idea of printing wood,
Speaker 1: which I did not realize until recently you could do.
Speaker 1: But it's absolutely possible with certain kinds of printers. Um,
Speaker 1: And that seems pretty dope. So I don't know, we'll
Speaker 1: see how. Maybe I'll be tired of it in a
Speaker 1: month because my mental health will take a dive, But
Speaker 1: so far I'm pretty excited. Cool Chris, what do I do? Uh? Well, Okay,
Speaker 1: So before the pandemic, I was getting into rock climbing,
Speaker 1: but unfortunately, like like I like rock climbing, I'm not like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's like the best thing you can do for you.
Speaker 1: It's a lot of fun. But unfortunately, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: not like the worst pandemic thing you could possibly do,
Speaker 1: but like it's no, Yeah, if you get up high
Speaker 1: enough on the rocks, COVID can't get up there. It's
Speaker 1: like the opposite of a bear. It's really bad. At climbing. Yes,
Speaker 1: so I guess the other what do I even do? Is? Okay?
Speaker 1: So my other thing okay, so so deep like deep
Speaker 1: Twitter lure. People probably know this about me, but I
Speaker 1: am I have been for a very very long time,
Speaker 1: like an inveterate fan of competitive StarCraft two. Okay, I
Speaker 1: am awful at it, Like I am terrible at that game.
Speaker 1: But I have watched so much StarCraft two, like I
Speaker 1: I StarCraft two has become enough of my life that like,
Speaker 1: like the game was part of my radicalization process, Like yeah,
Speaker 1: I wake up extremely early or stay up extremely late
Speaker 1: and watch Korean StarCraft two and non Korean StarCraft two
Speaker 1: and yeah, it's it's a good time. It's I My
Speaker 1: favorite thing about StarCraft in general is thinking about the
Speaker 1: fact that Blizzard was initially trying to make a Warhammer
Speaker 1: forty video game, and Games Workshop was as always to
Speaker 1: parent it off their I p to let it happen,
Speaker 1: and thus lost how many god knows how many. They
Speaker 1: would be worth more money than most countries like that
Speaker 1: been printing an impossible amount of money, like Indy Chambers
Speaker 1: would have been able to buy a mountain of cocaine
Speaker 1: to live inside, but but no, instead we got all
Speaker 1: of the infrastructure of modern esports m hm, which it
Speaker 1: seems fine, like it's whatever. I don't care, but it
Speaker 1: is very funny to me that they were like, nah,
Speaker 1: this doesn't seem like a good financial decision for games
Speaker 1: Workshop the StarCraft thing, Like I wonder like that. That's
Speaker 1: the kind of thing where it's like, if they made
Speaker 1: that much money, would they all just retire? Like well,
Speaker 1: I mean it's a publicly traded company, like the stock
Speaker 1: the 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 talked 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. I've been writing some random,
Speaker 1: kind of new weird genre 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: It 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 be proud of yourselves. Replicate and reproduce another content
Speaker 1: tomorrow that's more as to your cues. So a content
Speaker 1: every day except for the weekends, because that's the promiss
Speaker 1: that we make in some holidays. It could Happen Here
Speaker 1: is a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts
Speaker 1: from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media
Speaker 1: dot com, or check us out on the I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1: You can find sources for It could Happen here, updated
Speaker 1: monthly at cool zone Media dot com slash sources. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening.