Speaker 1: On Theme is a production of iHeartRadio and fair Weather
Speaker 1: Friends Media. You are by now, y'all know that we
Speaker 1: are a fan of folks changing their minds. Got some
Speaker 1: new information? Did somebody you love challenge something you said?
Speaker 1: Just feel differently about something for reasons that you can't
Speaker 1: explain yet, that's all good and well.
Speaker 2: I've changed my mind plenty of times, and.
Speaker 1: I have two And if we're reading, listening to other people,
Speaker 1: and thinking critically, then we're probably downloading a lot of
Speaker 1: new data. And that means that sometimes, hey, you just
Speaker 1: got to update the operating system.
Speaker 2: And that could be a small update, or that could
Speaker 2: be a complete overhaul of our political opinions in value systems.
Speaker 2: That's cool when it seems like the person sees the
Speaker 2: light and steps out of their ignorance.
Speaker 1: But some folks hit a one to eighty on us
Speaker 1: and woo, things get real sketchy. I'm Katie and I'm Eves.
Speaker 1: Today's episode switching sides. From November nineteen thirty six to
Speaker 1: April nineteen thirty eight, a writer named George Skyler published
Speaker 1: two science fiction serials in the Pittsburgh Courier. They were
Speaker 1: called The Black International and Black Empire. Black Empire continued
Speaker 1: the story of the Black International. Yes, Skyler was black,
Speaker 1: and yes, the serials tackle black issues. As you might
Speaker 1: have guessed by the titles, the serials are fantastical stories
Speaker 1: about a group of revolutionaries who overthrow white colonial rule
Speaker 1: in Africa. Skyler initially published the serials under the pen
Speaker 1: name Samuel I. Brooks.
Speaker 2: Did people like the stories of the time?
Speaker 1: Yeah, they did. The couriers Black readers read the stories
Speaker 1: week after week in the paper and loved them. So
Speaker 1: these serials were buried for a while after Skyler's death,
Speaker 1: But in the nineteen nineties, Robert A. Hill and R.
Speaker 1: Kent Rasmussen were editors at the Marcus Garvey Papers at
Speaker 1: the University of California, Los Angeles. In their research, they
Speaker 1: dug up Skyler's serials, and in nineteen ninety one, Northeastern
Speaker 1: University Press published both of the serials as a book
Speaker 1: called Black Empire. Now, the publisher, Penguin Random House is
Speaker 1: calling it a quote pioneering work of afrofuturism and anti
Speaker 1: racist fiction in its promotional copy.
Speaker 2: Okay, afrofuturism, inter racist fiction go.
Speaker 1: Off right and based on the plot that description sounds
Speaker 1: pretty on point, right, but the narrative and Black Empire
Speaker 1: and the story of its creation are more complex. Skyler
Speaker 1: wrote this to a staffer at the Pittsburgh Courier. I
Speaker 1: have been greatly amused by the public enthusiasm for the
Speaker 1: Black International, which is hokum and hackwork of the purest vein.
Speaker 1: I deliberately set out to crowd as much race chauvinism
Speaker 1: and sheer improbability into it as my fertile imagination could conjure.
Speaker 1: The result vindicates my low opinion of the human race.
Speaker 1: It's giving troll, but you know it wasn't just foolishness
Speaker 1: for its own sake. And let me tell you about Skyler.
Speaker 1: In the nineteen twenties and nineteen thirties, Skyler was a
Speaker 1: prolific and respected journalist. He wrote articles for the Pittsburgh Courier,
Speaker 1: the New York Evening Post, and the Philadelphia Ledger, just
Speaker 1: to name a few. He wrote a lot about race
Speaker 1: in black and white owned newspapers. White folks didn't always
Speaker 1: agree with its takes, and neither did black folks. In
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty six, for instance, he wrote an article for
Speaker 1: the Nation called the Negro Art Hokum. In it, he
Speaker 1: argued that black American art should not be treated as
Speaker 1: different from American art. He would have hated this podcast.
Speaker 1: You know, I think you're right. He said in that
Speaker 1: article that white artists and black artists were both influenced
Speaker 1: by Europeans anyway. Then he continued with his brutal takedown.
Speaker 1: He called out black artists and thinkers who learned from
Speaker 1: Europeans and their institutions like W. E. B. Du Boyce, sculptor,
Speaker 1: Mita Vo Warwick Fuller, painter Henry Osawa Tanner.
Speaker 2: So he was like dropping names, fire and shots directly, directly.
Speaker 1: He was not afraid to put those names on the paper. Okay.
Speaker 1: And this is during the Harlem Renaissance when black art
Speaker 1: and aesthetics are being celebrated. But that didn't matter to Skuyler.
Speaker 1: He said that it made sense that their work wasn't
Speaker 1: really black, since quote, the Afro American is merely a
Speaker 1: lamp black Anglo.
Speaker 2: Saxon Ooh just caught him koos like, and he called.
Speaker 1: Them that in the way that a petty but descriptive
Speaker 1: writer would. Langston Hughes wrote a rebuttal in the magazine,
Speaker 1: and there were people calling for sk to be fired.
Speaker 1: He wasn't anyway. He published the book Black No More
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty one. It's a satirical novel about a
Speaker 1: black American scientist who invents a way to turn black
Speaker 1: people into white people. So he's writing a lot about race,
Speaker 1: but his interest in politics and race relations shows up
Speaker 1: off the page too. He's involved with civil rights organizations
Speaker 1: like the NUBACP, even though some of his opinions are controversial.
Speaker 1: For instance, he's critical of forced integration. You know, he
Speaker 1: had some stances that weren't typical for the time, but
Speaker 1: still black folks would generally consider him on their side
Speaker 1: soon though they couldn't say the same with confidence more
Speaker 1: after the break. So far, George Schuyler was still good
Speaker 1: with black folks. He has some controversial views that they
Speaker 1: cide eyed him for, but he was fine. That is
Speaker 1: until the nineteen thirty when he became more conservative. He
Speaker 1: started writing anti communist articles and becoming involved in anti
Speaker 1: communist organizations. He said that MLK shouldn't have gotten the
Speaker 1: Nobel Peace Prize. He said black separatists should be feared
Speaker 1: more than white segregationists, and he thought the US should
Speaker 1: be hands off in South Africa during apartheid. A nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty six article called him one of America's two busiest
Speaker 1: Negro apologists for racial segregation and colonialism.
Speaker 2: That's a good drag, you know, they say. Not only
Speaker 2: are you an apologist for racial segregation and colonial you busy,
Speaker 2: you busy doing it.
Speaker 1: Takes up all of his time, a lot of time to.
Speaker 2: Be doing this foolishness. I like that. I'm gonna put
Speaker 2: that in my notebook.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And you know, for his stances, Scholar had racked
Speaker 1: up some enemies, including the government. He was anti communists,
Speaker 1: which is a plus for the FEDS. Of course, the
Speaker 1: Kammis and leftist ideologies were big bad in the government's view,
Speaker 1: and in the nineteen forties Skyler wrote at least fifty
Speaker 1: columns about what he called the Communist conspiracy in the
Speaker 1: Pittsburgh Courier. But the FBI still viewed Skyler as a threat.
Speaker 1: A nineteen forty three FBI report said the following, he
Speaker 1: is always waging a fight for the Japanese and turned
Speaker 1: out in California. He will write an article on this
Speaker 1: subject every few weeks, blaming the US for putting these
Speaker 1: Japanese Americans in camp. He spends a lot of paper
Speaker 1: in ink worrying about them. It is difficult to understand
Speaker 1: why he, a Negro, should be so much concerned about
Speaker 1: the Japs instead of taking the part of his own
Speaker 1: people and other loyal Americans.
Speaker 2: I have the same questions that FBI.
Speaker 1: Tell me about it, Katie, just like.
Speaker 2: Why are you going up for them but then talking
Speaker 2: bad about the sol rests movement?
Speaker 1: Right? I think the way that he presented that argument
Speaker 1: was just like, Okay, if they're doing this to the Japanese,
Speaker 1: then they would do this to everyone like they would
Speaker 1: treat everyone like this.
Speaker 2: They treating people like that in South Africa. That you
Speaker 2: said we should mind our business.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it doesn't. I think a lot of
Speaker 1: things that don't flow through logic for him. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it wasn't like he always denied the terror that black
Speaker 1: folks were dealing with. So he acknowledged the fact that
Speaker 1: black people have been through a lot, that they've been
Speaker 1: resourceful and resilient, and that they've had to put up
Speaker 1: with white folks bs over all these years. But the
Speaker 1: thing is he thought that liberals were horribly misguided in
Speaker 1: the way that they dealt with the race issue. In
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty six, he published an autobiography that's appropriately titled
Speaker 1: Black and Conservative. He says in the autobiography, I had opposed
Speaker 1: all of the Marches on Washington and other mob demonstrations,
Speaker 1: recognizing them as part of the Red techniques of agitation, infiltration,
Speaker 1: and subversion. This was indicated by the fact that invariably
Speaker 1: they were proposed, incited, managed handled by professional collectivist agitators
Speaker 1: whose only interest in the workers was to exploit them.
Speaker 1: He also goes on to say that the civil disobedience
Speaker 1: and teardowns of white people will just make black folks
Speaker 1: more enemies, and it won't solve any problems, and he
Speaker 1: had a problem with how the media uplifted the opinions
Speaker 1: of civil rights leaders and not their critics. In his
Speaker 1: later years, the Black Delegation pretty much disowned him, but
Speaker 1: he stayed on the conservative wave until he died in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy seven. Deep sigh, Right, it seemed like he
Speaker 1: did a lot of waffling, like back and forth, switching
Speaker 1: between things that didn't make sense, like you brought up
Speaker 1: just now. Because he often called people who were in
Speaker 1: the civil rights movements who were protesting people who he
Speaker 1: considered black militants. He would often call them agitators. But
Speaker 1: if like, just if you're looking at everything he's saying
Speaker 1: and he's like, he's very prolific. He's written a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff as a journalist, Like he is agitating too.
Speaker 1: That's literally what he's doing. He's asking for a contrarian opinion.
Speaker 1: He's presenting contrarian opinions in ways that are a pretty
Speaker 1: harsh and brutal, sometimes in the way that he phrases them.
Speaker 1: But in addition to that, he knows that his opinions
Speaker 1: are contrary to the ones that a lot of other
Speaker 1: people have at the same time, and to make it
Speaker 1: seem like agitation is something that's to be condemned or
Speaker 1: looked down upon, are disparaged. It feels pretty antithetical to
Speaker 1: everything that he's doing because he is agitating as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I wonder learning about his comments about what he
Speaker 2: wrote about in when he serialized the book, saying like,
Speaker 2: oh I just did this and it was like a joke. Basically,
Speaker 2: I wondered, like did he ever switch? Because I feel
Speaker 2: like there's a lot of like black people who will
Speaker 2: like write black stuff because they know it'll sell, but
Speaker 2: they really don't feel like in community with other black people.
Speaker 2: M I feel like that's what he was on because
Speaker 2: he's like, oh, I put like this racial chauvinism and
Speaker 2: it was, you know, a big Koko move he says.
Speaker 2: So I'm like, did you ever switch? Because I read
Speaker 2: Black note More that was my first thing I read
Speaker 2: from him, and I was like, Oh, this guy he
Speaker 2: has a lot to say about white people. He has
Speaker 2: a lot to say about like black liberals in the
Speaker 2: leadership class. Like there's a character in the book that
Speaker 2: was like Madam C. J. Walker and was like, oh,
Speaker 2: like y'all not upset, y'all got nappy hair? No more
Speaker 2: like how am I going to get rich? Or the
Speaker 2: NAACP leader who's like, oh, y'all not getting lynch? No
Speaker 2: more like how am I going to get a check?
Speaker 2: So he had, you know, those impulses, which I got
Speaker 2: those two, but it was really like about how society
Speaker 2: treats black people and how like being racist like literally
Speaker 2: doesn't make sense. That's what I got from the book.
Speaker 2: But I think he could have just been doing it
Speaker 2: for a check all along.
Speaker 1: There is a general sense in his ideology that's like
Speaker 1: even without racism, like we would always there would be
Speaker 1: some sort of oppression, Like there are other things that
Speaker 1: everybody deals with, and he's critical of the way that
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of protesters at the time, a
Speaker 1: lot of people who were involved in the civil rights movement,
Speaker 1: the way that they uplifted or I guess in his
Speaker 1: view maybe belabored the point of racism and the divisions
Speaker 1: that it created. But yes, it does seem like the
Speaker 1: switch happened for him pretty early on, or he always
Speaker 1: had these ideas because he at first seemed to be
Speaker 1: dipping and dabbling in Marxism and in communist ideals. He
Speaker 1: was reading socialist things, and from what I can tell,
Speaker 1: sources have made it seem like, oh, he was reading
Speaker 1: these things and that he was into these things at
Speaker 1: the time. But I think there was an element of
Speaker 1: he was reading them and he was into them as
Speaker 1: a measure of just information gathering and trying to get
Speaker 1: a lay on what his actual political ideologies were, and
Speaker 1: that he may not have been that aligned with them
Speaker 1: ever in the first place, is just something a direction
Speaker 1: in which he was thinking about going other people who
Speaker 1: shared some of his ideals, who did care about blackness,
Speaker 1: so that's the thing, Like overall he cared about black
Speaker 1: people's continuation, about the progress of the race seemingly, but
Speaker 1: had beef with the way that everybody else did it.
Speaker 1: And it just seemed like he tended more and more
Speaker 1: right over time, So dipping and dabbling, maybe this, maybe that,
Speaker 1: maybe left, maybe right, maybe somewhere in the middle. And
Speaker 1: then over time he just got pretty conservative and started
Speaker 1: to say things that didn't really make sense, but also
Speaker 1: forefronted a lot of the I want government to be
Speaker 1: hands off approach. Okay, a pioneer, I mean, a model
Speaker 1: for so many people today. But after the break, we'll
Speaker 1: talk about a person who Skyler might have considered a
Speaker 1: black militant. Just two years after Skyler published Black and Conservative,
Speaker 1: Eldridge Cleaver's autobiography, Sold on Ice came out. But Cleaver
Speaker 1: wasn't anything like Skyler in the nineteen sixties, Skyler was
Speaker 1: critical of militant black activist and he denounced separatism. Cleaver,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, was a prominent member of the
Speaker 1: Black Panther Party in the nineteen fifties and sixties. Cleaver
Speaker 1: served time in California prisons for cannabis charges and assault
Speaker 1: with the intent to murder. He read a lot while
Speaker 1: he was locked up. He read folks like Malcolm X,
Speaker 1: Thomas Paine, Richard Wright, and Karl Marx. He also wrote
Speaker 1: about his own personal politics while he was in prison.
Speaker 1: By the time he got out of prison in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty six, he had a bunch of essays that were
Speaker 1: published in Ramparts magazine. These essays would eventually be put
Speaker 1: into book form in Soul on Ice. In that autobiography,
Speaker 1: Clever makes some disgusting admissions about raping women. He said
Speaker 1: in hindsight that he didn't approve of his actions, but
Speaker 1: either way it went. The Black Panther Party brought him
Speaker 1: into the fold. When he got out of prison in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight, Cleaver was caught up in a shootout
Speaker 1: between Black Panther Party members and the Oakland police, so
Speaker 1: he fled the US and lived in exile in Mexico, Cuba, Algeria,
Speaker 1: and France. Cleaver's relationship with leaders of the party soon
Speaker 1: became strained, and in nineteen seventy one he left the
Speaker 1: Black Panthers.
Speaker 2: Like, not only left them, like turned on them.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, He denounced them and he went back to
Speaker 1: the US. In nineteen seventy five, his attempt at murder
Speaker 1: charges were dropped and he had to do community service.
Speaker 1: But things got really weird. He became a born again
Speaker 1: Christian after dumping his old allegiance to Marxism, and he
Speaker 1: was disgraced. He was no longer a respected revolutionary. Black
Speaker 1: folks in the revolution didn't want much to do with him,
Speaker 1: but Cleaver was deep in his new conservative bag. Anyway.
Speaker 1: He continued on his crusade against black radicalism and Satanic communism,
Speaker 1: and he did his best to lead people to Jesus
Speaker 1: in a way from black nationalism.
Speaker 2: I feel like he would do really well in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty four as like a Blacks for Trump guy.
Speaker 1: I agree with you. I mean, think about it. Look
Speaker 1: at his story of transformation. He went from a militant
Speaker 1: black rebel to a docile Bible thumper. But you know,
Speaker 1: the white Christians tossed him to the side after a
Speaker 1: while too. He became a Mormon. He got involved in
Speaker 1: other kind of Christian leaning islam leaning religious situations, just
Speaker 1: kind of of his own creation. He became addicted to
Speaker 1: crack and he became an anti communist Republican. In nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty two, he gave a speech at Yale's Afro American
Speaker 1: Student Center. He said that the US is the freest
Speaker 1: and most democratic country in the world. He also said,
Speaker 1: quote Ronald Reagan has said that no longer will the
Speaker 1: federal government house clothe and feed black people. I am
Speaker 1: glad about that because it will force blacks to unify
Speaker 1: and lobby for their needs. Cleaver tried to run for
Speaker 1: a Senate seat in California as a Republican, but that
Speaker 1: bid failed. He died in nineteen ninety eight, and by
Speaker 1: then all of the groups Cleaver had associated with had
Speaker 1: pretty much distanced themselves from him, the Evangelicals, the Conservatives,
Speaker 1: and the Panthers gone. It's interesting, as a person who
Speaker 1: was involved in the Black Panthers knowing how integral self
Speaker 1: sufficiency and arming ourselves and working together in a cooperative
Speaker 1: way was integral to the Black Panther Party's mission, that
Speaker 1: he would say that anybody else needed to do anything
Speaker 1: to get black people to unify and lobby for their needs,
Speaker 1: like obviously you know they don't because you did it.
Speaker 1: I think that makes it clear how delusional he actually was.
Speaker 1: He was saying things that were literally the opposite of
Speaker 1: the truth, and he knew that truth had a capital
Speaker 1: T because he had actually been involved in that truth.
Speaker 1: So the delusion is strong in the turn for him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I wonder if you like got paid in any way,
Speaker 2: because I know that's a more common thing. Like the
Speaker 2: lady who was the woman behind roe V Wade said that, like,
Speaker 2: you know, pro life Christians paid her to say that
Speaker 2: she regretted getting an abortion and being the face of it,
Speaker 2: and she just needed money, you know. So it's like
Speaker 2: you come at a prison, you know, the panther's not
Speaker 2: really rocking with you no more. Isn't just a financial thing?
Speaker 1: I think it very well could be.
Speaker 2: Is it a drug thing? You know that senator Fetterman
Speaker 2: I think his name is, who had a stroke and
Speaker 2: became conservative after being super liberal. Yeah, I should have laughed,
Speaker 2: But it's funny to me because this man had had
Speaker 2: a stroke, meaning there was no action going to your brain.
Speaker 2: You survived, and now you're a conservative.
Speaker 1: I mean, wilder things have happened. I mean that's pretty wild.
Speaker 1: You could go up from there. But you know how
Speaker 1: they talk about the people who learned completely new languages
Speaker 1: after they go into a cod or a stroke or something.
Speaker 2: Like that your brain was a compromised and now you
Speaker 2: think like this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I think it's a mixture of all the things.
Speaker 1: His ex wife, Kathleen Cleaver, said that after he came
Speaker 1: back to the US and he wasn't the same. So
Speaker 1: I also wonder what happened while he was in exile.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sure there he talked a little bit
Speaker 1: about being in Algeria and his book sold on fire.
Speaker 1: But I'm sure there are stories that we don't know,
Speaker 1: and maybe there are ways that causes led to consequences
Speaker 1: that maybe he doesn't even understand how one thing led
Speaker 1: to the other either or didn't. But it's clear that
Speaker 1: something went wrong.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But also you know, he had been his reasoning was
Speaker 1: illogical and problematic from the very beginning, and just all
Speaker 1: of the sexual vibe lens that he committed, the ways
Speaker 1: that he spoke about women, he went all right already
Speaker 1: and unfortunately, I mean this is I mean, his story
Speaker 1: is pretty dark to me, you know, And I think
Speaker 1: that all of those things compiled, they all compounded when
Speaker 1: you add the Christianity element of it, the evangelical element
Speaker 1: of it, and also going this far in these lames.
Speaker 1: So what if he was paid only to be completely
Speaker 1: rejected and left alone by all of these people that
Speaker 1: were supposed to be the ones who were I don't know,
Speaker 1: giving him access to whatever he was aiming for. I
Speaker 1: can't say what that thing was. But yeah, for both
Speaker 1: Skylar and for Cleaver, they both had these turns from
Speaker 1: being really upstate people in the community. Like a lot
Speaker 1: of people admired the way that they thought. They both
Speaker 1: shared things through writing. Two people who were cast to
Speaker 1: the side. You know, they weren't at the end of
Speaker 1: their lives. It didn't seem like they had as much stature,
Speaker 1: Their reputations weren't as good as they were in the
Speaker 1: beginning of their lives. But it seemed like with Skyler
Speaker 1: there were fewer like external conditions of like environmental risk
Speaker 1: factors that were imposed upon Skyler. There were fewer of
Speaker 1: those for Skylar, it seemed like than there were for
Speaker 1: Eldridge Cleaver. But for both of them, yeah, it seems
Speaker 1: like things definitely went downhill. But there are so many
Speaker 1: of their written words left over about their lives that
Speaker 1: makes it easier to get a glimpse into how they thought.
Speaker 1: But as we've talked about before on this show, when
Speaker 1: people write their own things, they're often unreliable narrators. We
Speaker 1: can't fully trust and believe that everything that they're saying
Speaker 1: is truth. But at least in the case, they both
Speaker 1: wrote autobiographies memoirs, so we know things that actually happened
Speaker 1: as they reported them, and we also get to see
Speaker 1: a little bit of their internalized thoughts about why they
Speaker 1: chose to be conservative. I mean, Skyler wrote a whole
Speaker 1: book on being black and Conservative, so he clearly that
Speaker 1: was in nineteen sixty six, so he had plenty of
Speaker 1: time to think about its views of being black and conservative.
Speaker 1: You know, at that point he had already started shifting
Speaker 1: very heavily in that direction for many decades at that point.
Speaker 1: But it's still I think helpful for us as things
Speaker 1: are still divided, very much so divided today, to look
Speaker 1: at examples of people and like how they were radicalized,
Speaker 1: and just think of all of the examples today of
Speaker 1: people and how they get their misinformation and disinformation off
Speaker 1: of the Internet, and how propaganda of the day influences
Speaker 1: us to think in certain ways, and how sometimes we
Speaker 1: don't have the people around us, or we don't have
Speaker 1: the capability or capacity to be able to process those
Speaker 1: things in ways which we can kind of come back
Speaker 1: down to the ground in reality. I think there are
Speaker 1: good examples of that because they're intelligent men, but these
Speaker 1: things like the communist propaganda that were happening during the
Speaker 1: Red Scare clearly affected them. And not only is it
Speaker 1: that we still have their writing to see their views,
Speaker 1: it's like they were sharing that with so many people.
Speaker 2: They wanted people to know about their conservatism.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's when you have a platform, like Clever
Speaker 1: did and like Scholar did. They both had big platforms,
Speaker 1: particularly when Cleaver was in the Black Panther Party in
Speaker 1: those years when he first got out of prison. In
Speaker 1: his work soul on Ice came out, a lot of
Speaker 1: people were reading it and a lot of people were
Speaker 1: looking to him as an early leader in the Black
Speaker 1: Panther Party, So he had clout. Both of these men
Speaker 1: had cloud so that you know, we can say things
Speaker 1: in our basements all day long, Yeah, but when you
Speaker 1: got thousands or if not millions of people listening to
Speaker 1: what you say and admiring you and respecting your words,
Speaker 1: that can that really does have influence for sure.
Speaker 2: And now it is time for role credits. The segment
Speaker 2: where we give credit to a person, place, or thing
Speaker 2: that we've encountered during the week eves. Who are what
Speaker 2: would you like to give credit to?
Speaker 1: I would like to give credit to animals in like
Speaker 1: urban spaces. So I just I saw deer that were
Speaker 1: hanging out around a conference center that I was at recently.
Speaker 1: You know, segull just chilling, you know, I have. There
Speaker 1: are community cats. There's a community cat that I take
Speaker 1: care of at home. There are birds, you know that
Speaker 1: I was talking to someone yesterday about the birds always
Speaker 1: moving into a nest and the fact that they didn't
Speaker 1: come back this year for both of us that always
Speaker 1: move into a nest that stays like in near my home.
Speaker 1: But you know, animals are everywhere, and it's nice to
Speaker 1: just come back to things sometimes and like where you're
Speaker 1: walking around and running into people and doing all these
Speaker 1: mundane worldly things that you know are really important to
Speaker 1: you as a human, and then just to stop for
Speaker 1: a second and think about this is nature right here
Speaker 1: in my face. It can be pretty grounding sometimes. So
Speaker 1: that's what I like to give credit to today.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I like that. I'd like to give credit to
Speaker 2: think in the spirit of this episode, accepting people where
Speaker 2: are they at right now? You ain't got to worry
Speaker 2: about what they was doing in nineteen sixty six what
Speaker 2: you're doing for me lately. And I think you just
Speaker 2: get a lot of peace when you just accept people like, Okay,
Speaker 2: this is how you are. It's just how you are,
Speaker 2: and I can respond to it accordingly. And I think
Speaker 2: that's what people did with these meta So I want
Speaker 2: to give credit to that ethic. Yeah, and we'll see
Speaker 2: y'all next week.
Speaker 1: By y'all. On Theme is a production of iHeartRadio and
Speaker 1: Fairweather Friends Media. This episode was written by Eves Jeffco
Speaker 1: and Katie Mitchell. It was edited and produced by Tari Harrison.
Speaker 1: Follow us on Instagram at on Themeshow. You can also
Speaker 1: send us an email at hello at on Theme dot show.
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