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Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.

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Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to Cool People who did Cool Stuff,

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Speaker 2: your weekly podcast that you're probably listening to by audio

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Speaker 2: format and not a hand typed transcript. And if it

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Speaker 2: was a hand type transcript, I'm terribly sorry to whoever

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Speaker 2: had to type it, because I would have written more succinctly.

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Speaker 2: I'm your host, Martya Kiljoy and my guest today is

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Speaker 2: Katie Stall. How are you.

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Speaker 3: Hi, I'm good. I'm excited for part two. And I

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Speaker 3: don't think you need to apologize. If someone loves your

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Speaker 3: show and wants to type it out, they want all

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Speaker 3: of you, They want all of your words.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, fair enough. But I was thinking Katie Stole

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Speaker 2: is a nice short name. So if if I ever

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Speaker 2: have to start writing samas dot, maybe I'll name a

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Speaker 2: character after you, just because it doesn't take very long

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Speaker 2: to type, you know.

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Speaker 3: Oh gosh, I would be honored. And yeah it is.

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Speaker 3: It's pretty to the point.

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Speaker 2: Our audio nope weight producer. Our producer is Sophie. Hi, Sophie,

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Speaker 2: I'm so so.

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Speaker 1: My dog Truman is standing on the other side of

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Speaker 1: the room with me and barking at me.

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Speaker 2: Hi, Triman and eating your pillow or no, and.

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Speaker 1: Just being a menace to society today. She has not

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Speaker 1: been able to do full hurting dog activities today, and

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Speaker 1: so she is letting me know that I am unacceptable

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Speaker 1: to her, and that's fair.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, you're acceptable to us.

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Speaker 1: Thank you. Did you hear that, Truman? Did you hear that?

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Speaker 1: She's like, oh, are you petting me?

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Speaker 3: Now?

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Speaker 1: I've forgiven you for all your all your bad behavior.

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Speaker 2: My dog does a thing where he comes to the

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Speaker 2: back door as if he wants to get let in,

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Speaker 2: and as soon as you open the door, he runs

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Speaker 2: away because his trick is to try and get you

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Speaker 2: to come outside to play with him.

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Speaker 3: Oh yeah, it's a trick.

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Speaker 1: Truman does the same thing.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, so annoying. I mean sometimes I let him. This

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Speaker 2: is probably partly why he does it, but exactly.

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Speaker 1: It works like it's so annoying because I'm just like, yeah,

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Speaker 1: whatever you want, girl.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, well do what I want. Is also to finish

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Speaker 2: my introduction, which is that our audio engineers Rory hi, Rory.

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Speaker 3: Hi, or hello Hi. I don't know, I don't know

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Speaker 3: what their voice sounds like.

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Speaker 2: And our theme music was written forced by un woman.

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Speaker 2: And we are on part two talking about samas Dot

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Speaker 2: the Soviet self publishing revolution wasn't a revolution, but a

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Speaker 2: way to try to continue to make things happen despite

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Speaker 2: intense censorship. The cliffhanger for last week, I promised you

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Speaker 2: the most famous author we're going to talk about this week,

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Speaker 2: which I mean I I've actually literally read one of

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Speaker 2: his books, but I still didn't recognize his name. But

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Speaker 2: that's because I'm basically like, I'm both name blind and

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Speaker 2: face blind. It's really not good. I just like don't

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Speaker 2: recognize people.

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Speaker 3: You know, Well, I'm going to assume it's, you know,

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Speaker 3: not a name that's around a lot here. Maybe it's

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Speaker 3: hard to pronounce in some capacity.

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Speaker 2: I don't know.

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Speaker 3: Maybe not. Yeah, I shouldn't have guessed you're about to

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Speaker 3: say it.

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Speaker 2: I am about to say it. So the guy that

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Speaker 2: we're going to talk about. His name is Alexander Solzhenitsen.

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Speaker 3: Steve rolls right off the tongue. I can't know if

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Speaker 3: you forgot that name anyway, I know.

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Speaker 2: And then there's also this thing where, like everything that's transliterated,

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Speaker 2: you're gonna run across multiple spellings on the internet, you know,

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Speaker 2: because the actual spelling isn't this at all. It's you know,

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Speaker 2: in cyrillic. And the thing about Alexander, which is what

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Speaker 2: I'm gonna call him, is that he's kind of nobody's hero.

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Speaker 2: He doesn't like the West, he doesn't like the USSR,

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Speaker 2: he's not a monarchist. By the end of his life,

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Speaker 2: he maybe liked Putin, but then I've also read that

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Speaker 2: that was like entirely played up by Putin.

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Speaker 3: I don't know which is believable.

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Speaker 2: I know Jordan Peterson likes talking about him, which is

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Speaker 2: the grossest thing about him.

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Speaker 3: Red Flag, I know, I know, Yeah, but that doesn't

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Speaker 3: mean that this guy would like Jordan Peterson talking about.

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Speaker 2: Him, right, and like, And I've read so many contradictory

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Speaker 2: things about this man and his beliefs, and so I

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Speaker 2: tried to read his beliefs directly as much as possible.

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Speaker 2: But the thing is, he is caught up in Cold

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Speaker 2: War culture war, sure, and so both sides want desperately

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Speaker 2: for him to be their guy. Well, the US has

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Speaker 2: alreadyn't want him to be their guy. They kicked him out,

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Speaker 2: but that's a spoiler. But like post Soviet Russia, Yeah,

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Speaker 2: he is one of the most famous anti communist writers

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Speaker 2: of the twentieth century. So the right Wing gloms onto him,

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Speaker 2: and I know I talked a big game about how

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Speaker 2: most of the samas dot writers and people purged by

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Speaker 2: Stalin and Shit were socialists. Alexander he's kind of an

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Speaker 2: exception of that. He's one of many exceptions to that.

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Speaker 2: I mean, he's a lot of different things over the

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Speaker 2: course of his life. On the whole. Near the end

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Speaker 2: of his life, he's a grouchy Eastern Orthodox guy who

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Speaker 2: liked to write history and write about his experiences in

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Speaker 2: the gulags. Basically, he wrote about how much he fucking suffered.

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Speaker 2: That's what this man liked doing.

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Speaker 3: Okay, okay, sure.

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Speaker 2: Alexander was born on December eleventh, nineteen eighteen, during the

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Speaker 2: Russian Revolution. His father died before he was born, and

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Speaker 2: he grew up with his mother in a dilapidated hut.

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Speaker 2: His family was Eastern Orthodox, but he converted to atheism

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Speaker 2: as a teen and joined the Communist youth. He is

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Speaker 2: a brilliant scientist, especially a mathematician. He gets married to

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Speaker 2: a chemist. By the time World War II was doing

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Speaker 2: its thing, he commanded an artillery battery as a loyal

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Speaker 2: Red Army soldier off to rid the world of Nazism.

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Speaker 2: Math is a really useful skill when you're talking about

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Speaker 2: where shells land when you shoot them from artillery batteries.

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Speaker 2: But he made a mistake. He wrote one of his

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Speaker 2: friends a private letter during the war in which he

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Speaker 2: made fun of a certain man with a mustache. So

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Speaker 2: he sent to prison. Wait because he's making fun of Stalin.

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Speaker 3: Oh I thought you met the other man with a mustache.

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Speaker 2: Oh yeah, no, that would be now. This is after

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Speaker 2: when Stalin and Hitler were no longer friends, when they

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Speaker 2: were on shooting terms.

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Speaker 3: Yeh, gotcha.

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Speaker 2: They sent him off to prison. I think after the

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Speaker 2: war they're like, oh, you did bad, but we need

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Speaker 2: you to keep doing some.

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Speaker 3: Math on We need you to keep adding yeah.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. And so for a while he just went and

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Speaker 2: dug clay in a labor camp. Eventually they realized he

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Speaker 2: was a science guy and the Gulag system was just

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Speaker 2: fucking ginormous at this point in history. These days, it

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Speaker 2: seems likely that about fourteen million people were held in

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Speaker 2: the Gulag system. Wow, about ten percent of them would

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Speaker 2: die in captivity or immediately after being released. Everything about

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Speaker 2: this is argued because of the fucking Cold War. There's

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Speaker 2: like Soviet apologists who were like, well, the numbers of

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Speaker 2: people who died are really high because they let people

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Speaker 2: free right before they died. And I'm like, well, why

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Speaker 2: does that make it better?

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Speaker 1: Right?

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Speaker 3: I'm like, and your point is what?

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Speaker 2: Yeah? And his estimates, Alexander's estimates during his lifetime is

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Speaker 2: sixty million people in the gulag system instead of fourteen million.

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Speaker 2: And there's that was a believable number that he came

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Speaker 2: to through for good reason, I believe, but I'm not

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Speaker 2: certain because everyone's arguing about this shit. I believe it's

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Speaker 2: more like fourteen million people, which is, to be clear,

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Speaker 2: too many fucking people.

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Speaker 3: A ton of people. Yeah, neither of these numbers are.

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Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, one time, Okay, it's unrelated. It's like Margaret anecdote. Time.

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Speaker 2: One day I was at a farmer's market in Canada

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Speaker 2: and I met a guy whose father had been a

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Speaker 2: Polish guy who was held in a gulag in Siberia.

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Speaker 2: And this guy he kept staring at me. And my

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Speaker 2: friends were like punks and were like playing according and

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Speaker 2: stuff at the farmer's market. He's just glaring at us.

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Speaker 2: He does not like us. And finally I like, go over,

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Speaker 2: I'm gonna go off script and just tell the story.

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Speaker 2: I go over and he's tabling this book. It's called

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Speaker 2: The Shadow of Caiton and I'm like, oh, it's this book.

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Speaker 2: And he's like, what do you know about World War

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Speaker 2: II history? And I'm like, let's talk about Finland's and

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Speaker 2: World War Two. I love talking about Finland and World

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Speaker 2: War Two. And I talked to him for a while

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Speaker 2: and he goes, you and your friends you're not Bolsheviks,

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Speaker 2: are you? And I was like no. In my mind,

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Speaker 2: I'm like, who the fuck is a Bolshevik? Uh?

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Speaker 3: What?

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Speaker 2: Yeah? I'm like, no, We're anarchists. And his eyes light

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Speaker 2: up as soon as I say that we're anarchists. He

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Speaker 2: picks up a copy of his father's memoir. He flips

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Speaker 2: through it to find the chapter where his father's life

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Speaker 2: was saved by an anarchist fellow prisoner in the gulag system. Wow,

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Speaker 2: and so like that act of kindness in a nineteen

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Speaker 2: forties like, yeah, made me a friend in the twenty tens. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: and it was really nice. Wow.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I love that anecdote.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot of people are in the gulags and

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Speaker 2: it's like me and this, like the anarchist and the

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Speaker 2: Polish guy had did not the same politics, right, but

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Speaker 2: the Polish guy had literally was just thrown in there

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Speaker 2: because the USSR had invaded. Yeah, Poland anyway, whatever, whole

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Speaker 2: separate story. So the Gulag system not a nice place, Alexander.

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Speaker 2: He's digging clay and then they're like, wait a second,

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Speaker 2: you can do science. And the nice thing about having

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Speaker 2: a really big gulag system is you can have all

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Speaker 2: these like specialized work camps, like, for example, the Forced

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Speaker 2: Science Experiment work camp. They had so many people in

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Speaker 2: gulags that they had a dedicated advanced research team of

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Speaker 2: imprisoned scientists. What's wild that is?

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Speaker 3: Well, I guess with that many people, it's not that unbelievable.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, And I'm sure they're arresting the intelligencia and like

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Speaker 2: educated people and whatever. And uh So he spends three

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Speaker 2: years out of his eight years in a advanced research

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Speaker 2: science camp for imprisoned people. And he says that this

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Speaker 2: is how he survived being in the camps, is that

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Speaker 2: only five of the years were in like the horrible

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Speaker 2: clay digging parts.

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Speaker 3: You know, he's probably right, Yeah.

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Speaker 2: But he kept talking shit, and he talked shit on

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Speaker 2: the scientific research of the guy who ran the place,

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Speaker 2: basically being like, oh, that guy doesn't know how to fucking

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Speaker 2: do science, Am I right? And people are like, you know,

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Speaker 2: I'll have to like say that shit. So he gets

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Speaker 2: sent to Kazakhstan, back to a regular gulag time.

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Speaker 3: Oh man.

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Speaker 2: While he's there, he learned how to memorize his own

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Speaker 2: writing by using a rosary, and each bead represented a

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Speaker 2: line of writing. And he wasn't even religious at this point.

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Speaker 2: I think kind of shortly after this he converts to

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Speaker 2: orthodox I think he's still an atheist at this point,

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Speaker 2: but they're like, well, they'll give you a rosary if

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Speaker 2: you ask, And so he did, and he would pass

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Speaker 2: the bead and it would be like another line, Like

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Speaker 2: each bead represented a different line of what he was writing. Wow,

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Speaker 2: the kind of skills that I have not developed in

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Speaker 2: my life.

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Speaker 3: I say that sounds complicated.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. After he was released, he was totally free to

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Speaker 2: do whatever. No, I'm just kidding. He had to go

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Speaker 2: to Siberia. Oh, there's there's internal exile at this point

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Speaker 2: in history, where if you I had a friend who

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Speaker 2: was sent to internal exile. Actually, he was arrested in Georgia,

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Speaker 2: and found guilty eve though it should have been self

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Speaker 2: defense case for like a defending himself from a gay bashing,

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Speaker 2: and then they put him. Georgia has this specific law

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Speaker 2: where they can exile you into a different part of Georgia,

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Speaker 2: and so we had to go to a different county

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Speaker 2: and live in exile. And it's like small rural town.

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Speaker 3: That's so weird. Yeah, internal exile, out of county jail.

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Speaker 2: Well, no, he isn't a jail. He's just living in

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Speaker 2: a town.

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Speaker 3: Oh I see, Oh okay, huh weird.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. So it's like, so when when our guy Alexander,

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Speaker 2: we're no longer talking about my friend in Georgia. When

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Speaker 2: he sent to Siberia. He's free, but he's free to

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Speaker 2: go live in Siberia. He's not free to live in

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Speaker 2: Western Russia. Gotya, And he's having a rough go of it.

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Speaker 2: His wife divorced him while he was in prison, and

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Speaker 2: he started teaching in the school. I've read. He was

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Speaker 2: like a high school science teacher basically, and he started

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Speaker 2: secretly writing poems in plays. He was thirty five, he

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Speaker 2: was divorced and he was struggling with cancer. He recovered

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Speaker 2: from the cancer. He remarried his ex wife, and then

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Speaker 2: after the death of Stalin, the courts invalidated his original conviction.

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Speaker 2: They retroactively decided it was okay to make fun of

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Speaker 2: the man with a mustache and a private letter to

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Speaker 2: a friend, and he was allowed to move back to

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Speaker 2: Western Russia. Wow, so everything's fixed forever. At this point,

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Speaker 2: he publishes his first famous book, A Day in the

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Speaker 2: Life of Ivan Denosovich, which is the book that I

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Speaker 2: read and I wasn't like I'm reading about Russia. It

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Speaker 2: was just like a book I ran across. It's short,

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Speaker 2: and it's about life and a gulug. It was interesting

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Speaker 2: and it was actually published in the USSR. Khrushchev himself,

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Speaker 2: the new leader, he signed off on publishing this book

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Speaker 2: because while it's critical of the gulag system, it's not

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Speaker 2: a particularly radical book. It's like Khrushchev is down with

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Speaker 2: shit that criticizes Stalin, you know. Yeah. But soon after that,

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Speaker 2: after this book comes out to like great, everyone likes it,

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Speaker 2: and he starts writing some other books and some of

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Speaker 2: them get published in a West and whatever. It's complicated.

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Speaker 2: He's soon persona non grata in the literary scene of Russia.

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Speaker 2: The government decides they don't want him writing anymore, and

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Speaker 2: they steal all of his manuscripts. His repression leads to

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Speaker 2: this massive cultural boycott of the USSR, and all of

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Speaker 2: these writers get together and are like, are you kidding?

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Speaker 2: Why are we doing this to this you know, important writer.

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Speaker 2: And this includes Western leftists like Sart and Vonnegut, you

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Speaker 2: know who probably wouldn't join in a cultural boycott if

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Speaker 2: it affected their botty line.

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Speaker 3: I couldn't begin to think of an answer.

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Speaker 2: It's the sponsors of this show.

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Speaker 3: The sponsors, of course, it's the sponsors of this show.

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Speaker 2: I know they would do whatever's best morally at all times, right, Sophie,

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Speaker 2: we could say that all of our sponsors always do

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Speaker 2: it's correct morally.

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Speaker 1: I don't know.

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Speaker 3: We love sponsors.

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Speaker 2: This podcast is brought to you by Don't Gamble. Here's

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Speaker 2: to Nuts, and we're back. So Alexander in Secret starts

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Speaker 2: writing what's going to become his most famous book, or

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Speaker 2: at least his most influential book. It takes him ten

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Speaker 2: years to write this book, from nineteen fifty eight to

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Speaker 2: nineteen sixty eight. So if you're listening to this, my

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Speaker 2: editor at Feminist Press, to whom I owe book. Hey,

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Speaker 2: I'm writing faster than this guy did. Book he writes

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Speaker 2: is called Gulag Archipelago, and it is this long, damning

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Speaker 2: history of the Gulag system. It's written in novel form,

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Speaker 2: but it's like Russian novels are very often like, look,

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Speaker 2: I'm basically writing nonfiction, but every now and then I'm

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Speaker 2: gonna have some characters in it, you know, hmm. And

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Speaker 2: it's a very Russian novel. Is three hundred thousand words long,

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Speaker 2: which is baby shorter than all of the Lord of

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Speaker 2: the Rings books put together.

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Speaker 3: You know, I would struggle through it these days, I

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Speaker 3: have the attention span of a goldfish. Lately, I know

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Speaker 3: topic for another day.

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Speaker 2: I feel like I'm gonna have to like live in

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Speaker 2: the woods for a solid way. I do live in

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Speaker 2: the woods. I'm gonna have to live in the woods

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Speaker 2: without the internet. It's the internet for a year before

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Speaker 2: I can finally read more and piece by Tolstein.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a real problem. I might cut all the

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Speaker 3: chords soon, but anyway, not during this show done via internet.

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Speaker 2: Nope.

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Speaker 1: Do you ever read Tolsoy' is the Death of Ivan Iliot.

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Speaker 1: It's like a novella of his that's like about a funeral.

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Speaker 2: It's not okay, No, I've I read this one about

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Speaker 2: a soldier going off somewhere and hiding in the mountains.

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Speaker 1: No, this one's like all about grief. It's like, okay,

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Speaker 1: what's it called? The death of Ivan Illy? I could

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Speaker 1: be pronouncing the last name a.

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Speaker 3: Real theme with the titles of these writers. Yeah, a dain,

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Speaker 3: the Life of Ivan whatever his last name is.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I feel like a lot of these things were like

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Speaker 1: as generically titled as possible, somewhat on purpose, you know.

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Speaker 2: Sure. Yeah, Tolstoy was I mean, everyone like sort of

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Speaker 2: loved him, but he was also a Christian anarchist and

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Speaker 2: like sometimes hated him. You know.

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Speaker 1: That was like my first to intro to Tolstoy, and I

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Speaker 1: was like, Jesus Christ, that was depressing, give me more.

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Speaker 2: What I did is I just had I had a

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Speaker 2: really good friend who was really into reading Tolstoy, and

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Speaker 2: I would just like make her tell me what she

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Speaker 2: was reading as too, So I didn't actually read them,

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Speaker 2: but I like not the blow.

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Speaker 3: By blow, you know, yeah, like the cliff notes.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, one day I'm going to read warm Piece and

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Speaker 2: one day, which is actually gonna come up later. There

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Speaker 2: is gonna be a joke about a grandma tricking a

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Speaker 2: granddaughter into reading warm Piece later in this oh and

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Speaker 2: one day I'm going to read a Goolag Archipelago. So

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Speaker 2: he writes his long, damning history and I don't know

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Speaker 2: if this is exactly why he can't get it published,

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Speaker 2: but one of the things he does is he traces

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Speaker 2: the origins of the system to before Stalin. He traces

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Speaker 2: it back to nineteen eighteen and Lenin and like, whoops,

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Speaker 2: you're not allowed to criticize anyone but Stalin. Everyone has

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Speaker 2: to be like, the only thing that was ever wrong

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Speaker 2: with the USSR was just Stalin. Is what everyone wants

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Speaker 2: to pretend, you know. Oh God. He works with a

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Speaker 2: number of people to get this book smuggled out to

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Speaker 2: the West on microfilm. Paris wants to publish it, but

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Speaker 2: he desperately wants to try to leverage everything he can

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Speaker 2: to get it published in the USSR first one, because

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Speaker 2: he wants to have more impact to There's like, if

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Speaker 2: you get stuff published in the West while you're living

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Speaker 2: in Russia, you're like guaranteed that the USSR is never

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Speaker 2: going to touch it, Like is never going to let

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Speaker 2: you publish it at that point. And there's only three manuscripts,

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Speaker 2: three copies of the manuscript in the USSR, and I

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Speaker 2: believe all three of them were literally buried. I know

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Speaker 2: that two of them were. One was buried in Estonia

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Speaker 2: by his friend's daughter. Another copy one of his typists

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Speaker 2: knew where it was because he was working with typists.

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Speaker 2: Sometimes the isamas dot publisher. Typists are getting paid, sometimes

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Speaker 2: they're not, Sometimes they're volunteer. I don't know enough about

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Speaker 2: this particular person. I do know that because she typed

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Speaker 2: this book, the state captures her and tortures her, and

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Speaker 2: she gives up the location of the manuscript, so the

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Speaker 2: KGB go and they burn it. And then as soon

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Speaker 2: as she's released, she is found hanging in her own

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Speaker 2: apartment building stairwell. It's either murder or suicide. Yeah, But honestly,

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Speaker 2: I think claiming that she was murdered by the state,

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Speaker 2: whether or not she tied the rope herself, is perfectly fair.

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Speaker 3: I agree, I completely agree.

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Speaker 2: Meanwhile, the USSR's Writers Union has kicked him out in

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Speaker 2: nineteen sixty nine, and he's hiding on his friend's property.

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Speaker 2: He's kind of I think openly hiding on his friend's

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Speaker 2: property because the USSR is like totally equal. Everyone's equal

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Speaker 2: in the USSR. But he has a friend who's a

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Speaker 2: world famous cellist, and because he's a world famous cellist,

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Speaker 2: he gets his own villa like a dacha. Okay, he

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Speaker 2: gets his own fancy house just outside of town. And

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Speaker 2: because he's world famous and has his own datcha, the

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Speaker 2: KGBS like kind of not allowed to search his place. Okay,

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Speaker 2: you know, so that's where he's hiding in the good

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Speaker 2: and equal society of the USSR. People have probably caught

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Speaker 2: on by now that I'm not a big.

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Speaker 3: Fan and oh, okay, now I see, which means that

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Speaker 3: I love the US and capitalism.

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Speaker 2: That's the obvious logical conclusion. Only one thing can be

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Speaker 2: bad at a time, right. Anyway, he wins the nineteen

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Speaker 2: seventy Nobel Prize for Literature. Goolog Archipelago isn't even out yet,

388
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Speaker 2: but he's written these other books. He's unable to attend

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Speaker 2: the event. It's in I think Stockholm because he's convinced

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Speaker 2: that if he leaves, the USSR will never let him

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Speaker 2: back in again, right, which isn't something that my friends

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Speaker 2: are thinking about. Now at all. I don't know what

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Speaker 2: you're talking about.

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Speaker 3: No, I can't relate.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, but he wrote a banger speech that he sent

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Speaker 2: out there that included that ordinary man was obliged quote

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Speaker 2: not to participate and lies. Basically, his whole speech was like,

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Speaker 2: tell the fucking truth. That's it. That's the goal, that's

399
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Speaker 2: the whole fucking point of doing anything, is to tell

400
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Speaker 2: the fucking truth. And when he won this Nobel prize,

401
00:20:47,480 --> 00:20:50,520
Speaker 2: the people who took the biggest risk, inmates from his

402
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Speaker 2: former prison camp, risked everything to smuggle notes out to

403
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Speaker 2: congratulate him. And that's fucking cool. It is really cool.

404
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Speaker 2: Along the way, he divorces his wife, the scientist Natalia,

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Speaker 2: to marry and yeah, well this time she divorced him,

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Speaker 2: and then they get back together. And then this time

407
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Speaker 2: he's like, well, actually I'm sorry my wife, the scientist Natalia.

408
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Speaker 2: I'm in love with another woman, a scientist named Natalia.

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Speaker 3: He's got a type. Well, this is another complicated figure.

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Speaker 2: I don't I actually I don't know. I have no

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Speaker 2: particular reason to believe that this new Natalia is like

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Speaker 2: agent appropriate or anything like that. You know, it's like

413
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Speaker 2: they're actually working together and they're falling in love, I think,

414
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Speaker 2: is what's happening.

415
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Speaker 3: I'm making a joke. Life happen. It could have been good,

416
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Speaker 3: it could have been bad.

417
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Speaker 2: I spent a while trying to find out, and I

418
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Speaker 2: didn't find the answer.

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Speaker 3: It's also like she did divorce him the first time.

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Speaker 2: But yeah, I also reasonably certain there's like only ten

421
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Speaker 2: first names available in the USSR. There's also that somewhere

422
00:21:55,440 --> 00:21:56,760
Speaker 2: in here there's a joke about how they had to

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Speaker 2: share the names because of communism. And so he's getting

424
00:22:01,040 --> 00:22:03,840
Speaker 2: real paranoid because the States after him, you know, and

425
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Speaker 2: they killed his typist. Sure, and so he sleeps with

426
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Speaker 2: a pitchfork by his bed, which is classy and strange.

427
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Speaker 3: That is both of those things.

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Speaker 1: You know.

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Speaker 3: I'm not sure it gives you a fighting chance, Okay.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, like, honestly, a pitchfork by your bed

431
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Speaker 2: is really just to like take me down fighting. It's like, like,

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Speaker 2: I don't want to go alive, That's all it says.

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Speaker 2: If you have a pitchfork by your bed, yeah, totally.

434
00:22:31,200 --> 00:22:33,960
Speaker 2: But yeah, after his typist is found dead, he's like,

435
00:22:34,000 --> 00:22:36,960
Speaker 2: all right, Paris, go ahead and publish Gulag Archipelago. It's

436
00:22:37,000 --> 00:22:39,959
Speaker 2: clearly not getting published in Russia. Yeah, and so they

437
00:22:39,960 --> 00:22:44,240
Speaker 2: publish it. In nineteen seventy three, one guy Azaiah Berlin

438
00:22:44,320 --> 00:22:49,639
Speaker 2: wrote about it, quote, until the Gulag Archipelago, the Communists

439
00:22:49,640 --> 00:22:52,800
Speaker 2: and their allies had persuaded their followers that denunciations of

440
00:22:52,840 --> 00:22:57,800
Speaker 2: the regime were largely bourgeois propaganda. And so basically it's like,

441
00:22:58,760 --> 00:23:03,040
Speaker 2: this first handily detailed account of the Gulags broke the

442
00:23:03,080 --> 00:23:04,879
Speaker 2: myth because the Communist Party was like, what are you

443
00:23:04,960 --> 00:23:09,520
Speaker 2: talking about. There's not sixty million, fourteen million people in Gulags. No,

444
00:23:09,640 --> 00:23:14,440
Speaker 2: it's just like three guys named Nikolai. Yeah, that's all

445
00:23:14,480 --> 00:23:18,119
Speaker 2: we got. It's just the Nicolai camp. You know, a

446
00:23:18,160 --> 00:23:21,640
Speaker 2: lot of academics in the West hated Gulag Archipelago. Frankly,

447
00:23:21,640 --> 00:23:23,560
Speaker 2: I think because they're associated with the Communist Party in

448
00:23:23,600 --> 00:23:27,920
Speaker 2: the West that's the And people who survive the Gulag

449
00:23:28,359 --> 00:23:30,760
Speaker 2: are like, no, this is pretty dead on, whereas the

450
00:23:30,880 --> 00:23:33,480
Speaker 2: people in the West are like, nah, it can't be true,

451
00:23:33,600 --> 00:23:38,440
Speaker 2: you know. Yeah, And finally the USSR is like, get

452
00:23:38,480 --> 00:23:42,280
Speaker 2: the fuck out of our country. He is deported to

453
00:23:42,320 --> 00:23:45,399
Speaker 2: West Germany and then he moves to Vermont. This is

454
00:23:45,400 --> 00:23:49,160
Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy four in Vermont. His family soon joins

455
00:23:49,200 --> 00:23:52,119
Speaker 2: him the new wife I believe, only one of the

456
00:23:52,160 --> 00:23:55,120
Speaker 2: one of the wives. Yeah, he's not actually a big

457
00:23:55,119 --> 00:24:01,080
Speaker 2: of us anyway. Yeah, and this is where I wish

458
00:24:01,119 --> 00:24:03,760
Speaker 2: the story was he just pivoted into being a Vermont guy.

459
00:24:04,040 --> 00:24:06,920
Speaker 2: He would have been such a good Vermont guy. There's

460
00:24:07,000 --> 00:24:09,159
Speaker 2: like pictures of him, and he looks just like a

461
00:24:09,280 --> 00:24:12,520
Speaker 2: Vermont almost amish guy. He's got the big beard.

462
00:24:12,640 --> 00:24:14,639
Speaker 3: Are you telling me this is Bernie Sanders?

463
00:24:14,680 --> 00:24:19,080
Speaker 2: Oh, no beard? Yeah, imagine if Bernie Sanders was in

464
00:24:19,119 --> 00:24:20,320
Speaker 2: like eighteen seventy.

465
00:24:21,000 --> 00:24:22,119
Speaker 1: Yeah.

466
00:24:22,680 --> 00:24:25,639
Speaker 2: Instead, he goes into exile mode, which is perfectly reasonable.

467
00:24:26,760 --> 00:24:30,119
Speaker 2: All he does is write, eat and sleep. He starts

468
00:24:30,119 --> 00:24:32,760
Speaker 2: writing what he intends to be as magnum Opus, a

469
00:24:32,840 --> 00:24:35,240
Speaker 2: series of books he never finishes, although he finishes like

470
00:24:35,280 --> 00:24:37,920
Speaker 2: four of the books. I can't talk shit. It's called

471
00:24:37,960 --> 00:24:40,600
Speaker 2: The Red Wheel and it is a complete history of

472
00:24:40,640 --> 00:24:44,800
Speaker 2: the Russian Revolution. Oh and it's turned down for Soviet

473
00:24:44,840 --> 00:24:50,400
Speaker 2: publication because he refuses to uncapitalize the word God, which

474
00:24:50,440 --> 00:24:53,360
Speaker 2: is just like two petty people fighting, and I kind

475
00:24:53,400 --> 00:24:54,359
Speaker 2: of respect it, you know.

476
00:24:54,680 --> 00:24:54,960
Speaker 1: Yep.

477
00:24:57,040 --> 00:24:59,639
Speaker 2: He's famous as hell because of the US is trying

478
00:24:59,680 --> 00:25:01,679
Speaker 2: hard to just turn him into like a cold warrior,

479
00:25:01,840 --> 00:25:05,400
Speaker 2: you know. Yeah, yeah, but all of his neighbors chip

480
00:25:05,400 --> 00:25:07,679
Speaker 2: in to help him keep his privacy. They put up

481
00:25:07,680 --> 00:25:11,399
Speaker 2: a sign in town saying no directions to the souls

482
00:25:11,400 --> 00:25:13,120
Speaker 2: in it sens so they're like, no, we're not gonna

483
00:25:13,119 --> 00:25:14,919
Speaker 2: tell anyone where to find you, Like, you can just

484
00:25:14,960 --> 00:25:18,120
Speaker 2: live in your weird writing retreat in Vermont.

485
00:25:18,800 --> 00:25:22,399
Speaker 3: I love that. Also, I'd be like, low key horrified

486
00:25:22,400 --> 00:25:23,840
Speaker 3: if every time I drove by a.

487
00:25:23,800 --> 00:25:26,560
Speaker 2: Sign no directions to the stoles.

488
00:25:27,280 --> 00:25:30,720
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're like that, yeah, but also way to go.

489
00:25:31,520 --> 00:25:37,440
Speaker 2: Yeah. His wife, Natalia runs a relief fund for Soviet prisoners,

490
00:25:37,560 --> 00:25:40,399
Speaker 2: and all the proceeds from Gulag Archipelago go directly to

491
00:25:40,440 --> 00:25:43,439
Speaker 2: supporting her fund. So they're like, okay, doing a thing together,

492
00:25:44,119 --> 00:25:48,840
Speaker 2: all right, Natalia. Yeah, but instead of becoming a cool guy,

493
00:25:48,880 --> 00:25:53,520
Speaker 2: he kind of just starts increasingly alienating everyone from all political.

494
00:25:53,000 --> 00:25:55,160
Speaker 3: Sides, more and more complicated.

495
00:25:55,520 --> 00:25:57,960
Speaker 2: Uh huh. Partly this is kind of cool. It's impossible

496
00:25:58,000 --> 00:25:59,840
Speaker 2: to make him the stooge of the CIA or anyone

497
00:25:59,840 --> 00:26:02,320
Speaker 2: else because he's mad at the US. Yeah, you want

498
00:26:02,320 --> 00:26:03,280
Speaker 2: to know. One of the things he's mad at the

499
00:26:03,359 --> 00:26:06,560
Speaker 2: US about it makes sense from his position, Yeah, I

500
00:26:06,640 --> 00:26:14,720
Speaker 2: do abandoning the Vietnam War, okay. And also, to quote

501
00:26:14,720 --> 00:26:17,240
Speaker 2: the New York Times from their obituary of him, quote,

502
00:26:18,160 --> 00:26:21,920
Speaker 2: he criticized the US's music as intolerable and attacked its

503
00:26:22,040 --> 00:26:25,400
Speaker 2: unfettered press, accusing it of violations of privacy.

504
00:26:26,280 --> 00:26:29,120
Speaker 3: Wow. So he's like, you just really can't get this right,

505
00:26:29,200 --> 00:26:30,480
Speaker 3: can you, Goldilocks?

506
00:26:30,720 --> 00:26:30,880
Speaker 2: Oh?

507
00:26:31,800 --> 00:26:32,000
Speaker 1: Oh?

508
00:26:32,080 --> 00:26:33,520
Speaker 3: The unfettered press.

509
00:26:33,840 --> 00:26:35,840
Speaker 2: Yeah, he doesn't like that it's unfettered press.

510
00:26:36,000 --> 00:26:38,240
Speaker 3: The music thing. I'm like, yous just sound like a

511
00:26:38,240 --> 00:26:39,120
Speaker 3: cranky old guy.

512
00:26:39,440 --> 00:26:42,320
Speaker 2: Yeah, but he's also a cranky, old, weird Russian man

513
00:26:42,400 --> 00:26:43,000
Speaker 2: on top of it.

514
00:26:43,320 --> 00:26:44,880
Speaker 3: Yeah, complicated.

515
00:26:45,960 --> 00:26:48,760
Speaker 2: After the fall of the USSR, he goes back home.

516
00:26:49,160 --> 00:26:51,840
Speaker 2: He's accompanied by a news crew to capture his response,

517
00:26:52,440 --> 00:26:55,040
Speaker 2: and he's basically just like, fuck, it's all crime and corruption,

518
00:26:55,720 --> 00:26:58,760
Speaker 2: and also the ethnic Russians are not being protected in

519
00:26:58,800 --> 00:27:03,239
Speaker 2: the former block country. I have spent a bunch of

520
00:27:03,280 --> 00:27:06,400
Speaker 2: time reading arguments on both sides about whether or not

521
00:27:06,480 --> 00:27:09,560
Speaker 2: he was an ethnonationalist, whether or not he was an

522
00:27:09,560 --> 00:27:13,360
Speaker 2: anti Semite, and all of this stuff. And the problem

523
00:27:13,440 --> 00:27:18,200
Speaker 2: is everyone is so politically engaged around him that it's

524
00:27:18,240 --> 00:27:21,000
Speaker 2: hard to peace out like he did in two thousand

525
00:27:21,000 --> 00:27:24,240
Speaker 2: and two write a like book covering hundreds of years

526
00:27:24,240 --> 00:27:28,399
Speaker 2: of the history of Jewish people in Russia. But in

527
00:27:28,440 --> 00:27:33,160
Speaker 2: it he's critical of all of the anti Semitic policies

528
00:27:33,200 --> 00:27:36,760
Speaker 2: of the government and like talks about the problem with

529
00:27:36,800 --> 00:27:40,480
Speaker 2: the programs and like all of this stuff. But also

530
00:27:40,520 --> 00:27:44,080
Speaker 2: he I don't know, like earlier he had like he

531
00:27:44,160 --> 00:27:46,320
Speaker 2: might be an anti Semite. He certainly meets some people's

532
00:27:46,320 --> 00:27:49,040
Speaker 2: definitions of anti Semite, but he also like, yeah, isn't

533
00:27:49,119 --> 00:27:51,600
Speaker 2: the kind of anti Semite that you imagine when you

534
00:27:51,640 --> 00:27:53,000
Speaker 2: imagine a Russian anti Semite.

535
00:27:53,240 --> 00:27:55,280
Speaker 3: Kind of don't even need to try to put him

536
00:27:55,320 --> 00:27:59,200
Speaker 3: into one box or another. He's a complicated figure of

537
00:27:59,240 --> 00:28:02,600
Speaker 3: a very complicated a time, with different influences and clearly

538
00:28:02,600 --> 00:28:06,200
Speaker 3: doesn't subscribe to one thing or another. Yep, there's this influence.

539
00:28:06,240 --> 00:28:09,640
Speaker 3: There's that he might be anti Semitic, but doesn't mean

540
00:28:09,720 --> 00:28:13,119
Speaker 3: that he thinks the Polgrims were good.

541
00:28:13,400 --> 00:28:13,679
Speaker 1: You know.

542
00:28:14,080 --> 00:28:16,280
Speaker 2: Well, it's also hard because the only thing I've read,

543
00:28:16,800 --> 00:28:18,960
Speaker 2: I didn't read everything. I read several articles about it.

544
00:28:19,000 --> 00:28:22,960
Speaker 2: But he was accused of anti Semitism because he, like,

545
00:28:23,040 --> 00:28:25,240
Speaker 2: for example, he was saying that the programs.

546
00:28:24,760 --> 00:28:25,800
Speaker 3: Were anti Zionists.

547
00:28:25,880 --> 00:28:28,360
Speaker 2: Sorry, oh no, if that would have actually been interesting.

548
00:28:29,080 --> 00:28:31,959
Speaker 2: He was claiming that the programs didn't come from the

549
00:28:32,000 --> 00:28:35,159
Speaker 2: top of society, but instead like came bottom up from

550
00:28:35,200 --> 00:28:37,280
Speaker 2: the Russian peasants, but not in a way where he

551
00:28:37,359 --> 00:28:39,880
Speaker 2: was like, and therefore it's good, you know, And I'm like,

552
00:28:40,760 --> 00:28:43,880
Speaker 2: I think that's true. I think that it was a

553
00:28:43,920 --> 00:28:47,880
Speaker 2: bottom up populist revolt of horrible racist bullshit, you know,

554
00:28:48,200 --> 00:28:48,480
Speaker 2: m h.

555
00:28:48,960 --> 00:28:52,000
Speaker 3: Because he's they're tapping into something and that's coming from somewhere.

556
00:28:52,480 --> 00:28:55,840
Speaker 2: Yeah, but he is also sort of an ethnopatriot about

557
00:28:55,880 --> 00:28:59,120
Speaker 2: like Russian people, and he wants to leave I don't

558
00:28:59,120 --> 00:28:59,960
Speaker 2: know whatever he's fucking.

559
00:29:00,000 --> 00:29:02,040
Speaker 3: It's also interesting given all that he's been through.

560
00:29:02,320 --> 00:29:06,720
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, totally. In nineteen ninety four he went

561
00:29:06,800 --> 00:29:08,960
Speaker 2: before the Russian Parliament and was like, this is not

562
00:29:09,000 --> 00:29:11,880
Speaker 2: a democracy but an oligarchy, and then continuing on his

563
00:29:11,960 --> 00:29:14,080
Speaker 2: like he can't make friends on either side. In two

564
00:29:14,120 --> 00:29:17,760
Speaker 2: thousand and five, he criticized NATO. He told the Times

565
00:29:17,800 --> 00:29:20,200
Speaker 2: of London and I actually think this is sick. He

566
00:29:20,320 --> 00:29:23,040
Speaker 2: told The Times of London that democracy is quote not

567
00:29:23,200 --> 00:29:26,320
Speaker 2: worth a brass farthing if it is installed by bayonet,

568
00:29:27,680 --> 00:29:30,080
Speaker 2: and so he's like criticizing the like bomb countries into

569
00:29:30,120 --> 00:29:33,400
Speaker 2: democracy thing that's been going on, you know. Yeah, But

570
00:29:33,480 --> 00:29:36,320
Speaker 2: also I think Putin likes him, and Jordan Peterson likes

571
00:29:36,360 --> 00:29:39,920
Speaker 2: him and whatever. Fucking you know. He died at eighty

572
00:29:40,000 --> 00:29:43,640
Speaker 2: nine years old in two thousand and eight, and people

573
00:29:43,800 --> 00:29:46,000
Speaker 2: want to use him to prop up this or that position,

574
00:29:47,080 --> 00:29:49,320
Speaker 2: including people who know more about him than I do. Right,

575
00:29:49,440 --> 00:29:53,400
Speaker 2: But my takeaway was grouchy old man who had a hardish,

576
00:29:53,440 --> 00:29:57,360
Speaker 2: shit life, who grew up in a dilapidated hut, whose

577
00:29:57,400 --> 00:30:03,280
Speaker 2: writing helped break through the lives of the Soviet shame. Yeah. Yeah,

578
00:30:03,320 --> 00:30:06,760
Speaker 2: but do you know what doesn't know how to transition

579
00:30:06,840 --> 00:30:07,880
Speaker 2: to ads?

580
00:30:08,640 --> 00:30:12,680
Speaker 3: Me? That's not true, Margaret, You're so good at it.

581
00:30:12,800 --> 00:30:15,520
Speaker 2: Okay, you're right, Oh, thank you, thank you. Even this

582
00:30:15,680 --> 00:30:18,120
Speaker 2: was a clever ruse of a because I actually was

583
00:30:18,160 --> 00:30:20,440
Speaker 2: transitioning to ads, I think very.

584
00:30:20,280 --> 00:30:25,960
Speaker 3: Well, perfectly. Thank you, and anybody listening at home, that's like, ugh,

585
00:30:26,520 --> 00:30:27,400
Speaker 3: how hard could it be?

586
00:30:27,720 --> 00:30:29,280
Speaker 1: It can be hard.

587
00:30:29,920 --> 00:30:33,040
Speaker 3: It can be hard to find a graceful transition and

588
00:30:34,560 --> 00:30:36,360
Speaker 3: respect it as I do.

589
00:30:37,560 --> 00:30:48,160
Speaker 2: Here's the ads and we're back him.

590
00:30:48,160 --> 00:30:50,000
Speaker 3: So glad to be back from those ads.

591
00:30:50,400 --> 00:30:53,000
Speaker 2: I know, I know, I learned so much about so

592
00:30:53,080 --> 00:30:55,960
Speaker 2: many wonderful things. Sometimes we do get ads for good things.

593
00:30:55,960 --> 00:30:57,680
Speaker 2: I will say that every now and then. I want

594
00:30:57,680 --> 00:30:59,280
Speaker 2: the listeners to use their own discretion.

595
00:31:00,040 --> 00:31:01,360
Speaker 3: It's true.

596
00:31:02,080 --> 00:31:06,480
Speaker 2: So Alexander's work was a little bit influential as samas Dot,

597
00:31:06,640 --> 00:31:08,960
Speaker 2: but honestly, a lot of what was influential about it.

598
00:31:09,160 --> 00:31:11,200
Speaker 2: I didn't really expect to go on this like Longhold

599
00:31:11,640 --> 00:31:13,280
Speaker 2: rabbit Hole about him, but I just spent so long

600
00:31:13,320 --> 00:31:14,080
Speaker 2: reading about him.

601
00:31:14,400 --> 00:31:16,520
Speaker 3: It was fascinating. I'm glad to have learned about him.

602
00:31:17,000 --> 00:31:20,760
Speaker 2: Yeah, but a lot was influential about his work was

603
00:31:20,920 --> 00:31:24,640
Speaker 2: what broke containment and was published widely. There had been

604
00:31:24,680 --> 00:31:28,280
Speaker 2: other similar pieces before. For example, in nineteen fifty one,

605
00:31:29,080 --> 00:31:32,560
Speaker 2: a poll named Gustav Girlin had written a World Apart

606
00:31:32,920 --> 00:31:36,040
Speaker 2: about three years in a prison camp. It was spread

607
00:31:36,160 --> 00:31:39,840
Speaker 2: by carbon copies that were spread around and retyped. And

608
00:31:39,920 --> 00:31:42,520
Speaker 2: also that one stands as an exception. This is that's

609
00:31:42,560 --> 00:31:47,080
Speaker 2: before samas Dot culture Stalin's Alive in nineteen fifty one.

610
00:31:47,640 --> 00:31:51,360
Speaker 2: Gustav Girland was risking an awful fucking lot by writing

611
00:31:51,360 --> 00:31:54,760
Speaker 2: about that. Yeah, but by the end of nineteen fifties.

612
00:31:54,760 --> 00:31:56,400
Speaker 2: In the USSR, you get the culture of what we

613
00:31:56,440 --> 00:32:01,600
Speaker 2: call samas dot properly, so the word samas dot. The

614
00:32:01,680 --> 00:32:04,959
Speaker 2: various publishing houses run by the state all had names

615
00:32:05,040 --> 00:32:08,720
Speaker 2: like gosses dot, which is the state publishing house, or

616
00:32:08,760 --> 00:32:13,160
Speaker 2: polisi dot, the publishing house for politics. So this poet

617
00:32:13,240 --> 00:32:17,240
Speaker 2: named Nikolai Glaskov, when he started self publishing his poems,

618
00:32:18,080 --> 00:32:23,040
Speaker 2: he ironically put the word samsabiyazdt as the publisher on them,

619
00:32:23,200 --> 00:32:26,560
Speaker 2: which meant the self publishing house instead of the state

620
00:32:26,600 --> 00:32:30,400
Speaker 2: publishing house or of the politics publishing house. And he

621
00:32:30,480 --> 00:32:33,360
Speaker 2: shortened it to samas dot and it gets translated as

622
00:32:33,360 --> 00:32:37,200
Speaker 2: self publishing. But it's really more clever than that. Despite

623
00:32:37,200 --> 00:32:40,640
Speaker 2: the word coming into regular usage in Soviet Russia, no

624
00:32:40,760 --> 00:32:44,520
Speaker 2: Soviet dictionary ever included it. It was a non word.

625
00:32:45,200 --> 00:32:50,840
Speaker 2: It's just so petty, you know. Yeah, Nikolai Nikolai Glaskov,

626
00:32:51,720 --> 00:32:54,160
Speaker 2: his dad had been killed during the Great Purge, the

627
00:32:54,280 --> 00:32:57,480
Speaker 2: late nineteen thirties thing where Stalin killed most the original Bolsheviks,

628
00:32:58,640 --> 00:33:01,160
Speaker 2: and he was very aware of the stakes of what

629
00:33:01,200 --> 00:33:04,080
Speaker 2: he was doing, but he didn't use it to be like,

630
00:33:04,640 --> 00:33:07,760
Speaker 2: here's the self publishing to bring down the regime. He

631
00:33:08,280 --> 00:33:12,240
Speaker 2: wanted to publish poetry. Yeah, and sometimes as a kind

632
00:33:12,240 --> 00:33:15,080
Speaker 2: of kind of a joke or like a to be clever,

633
00:33:15,360 --> 00:33:18,360
Speaker 2: he would self censor the poems, like do fake censorship

634
00:33:18,400 --> 00:33:20,840
Speaker 2: on them to make a point. He was just a

635
00:33:20,880 --> 00:33:23,200
Speaker 2: clever poet trying to do his thing. He once wrote

636
00:33:23,200 --> 00:33:25,760
Speaker 2: a poem. I couldn't find it in English, but I

637
00:33:26,360 --> 00:33:28,160
Speaker 2: read the description of it and it's still clever enough

638
00:33:28,160 --> 00:33:30,920
Speaker 2: to repeat. It's a rewrite of The Raven by Edgar

639
00:33:30,960 --> 00:33:33,800
Speaker 2: Allan Poe, which I think most people know this. But

640
00:33:33,800 --> 00:33:36,640
Speaker 2: there's a depressed author and he's like sitting around and

641
00:33:36,680 --> 00:33:38,760
Speaker 2: he's like, oh, woe is me? Will I ever be happy?

642
00:33:38,800 --> 00:33:41,239
Speaker 2: And a bird comes in it's like never more, you know,

643
00:33:41,560 --> 00:33:43,520
Speaker 2: and he's like, ah, I'm extra sad. The bird told

644
00:33:43,600 --> 00:33:45,280
Speaker 2: me I'm doomed or whatever. It's been a while since

645
00:33:45,320 --> 00:33:48,400
Speaker 2: I read this, And so he did a rewrite of

646
00:33:48,440 --> 00:33:52,200
Speaker 2: it where at the end the character just looks the

647
00:33:52,320 --> 00:33:55,160
Speaker 2: raven is like, yeah, if you're so smart, name a

648
00:33:55,240 --> 00:34:00,040
Speaker 2: city in Chile. And the bird, I think just the

649
00:34:00,040 --> 00:34:02,120
Speaker 2: implication is the bird just as never more again, and

650
00:34:02,160 --> 00:34:04,640
Speaker 2: the author's like, yeah, you're just a bird doing bird shit. Whatever.

651
00:34:04,680 --> 00:34:08,960
Speaker 2: I don't care. Yeah, his poems spread word of mouth

652
00:34:09,200 --> 00:34:12,200
Speaker 2: or re typed, and like all ssamisdat, they entered a

653
00:34:12,239 --> 00:34:14,840
Speaker 2: sort of folk art tradition where they were subtly changed

654
00:34:14,840 --> 00:34:18,720
Speaker 2: from person to person. The closest comparison I can find

655
00:34:18,920 --> 00:34:22,719
Speaker 2: is poetry and translation. You know, it's slightly different every

656
00:34:22,760 --> 00:34:27,600
Speaker 2: time you read different translations of things. Soon enough, samisdad

657
00:34:27,719 --> 00:34:30,600
Speaker 2: is a culture in the nineteen sixties. It's mostly in Russia.

658
00:34:31,680 --> 00:34:34,440
Speaker 2: It picked up in particular after the brief period of

659
00:34:34,480 --> 00:34:36,520
Speaker 2: the more open Krushchev came to an end in the

660
00:34:36,560 --> 00:34:39,000
Speaker 2: early nineteen sixties because for a little while people didn't

661
00:34:39,000 --> 00:34:40,600
Speaker 2: want to do samasdot because they're like, well, I can

662
00:34:40,640 --> 00:34:44,960
Speaker 2: probably get this published officially, right. You know. By the

663
00:34:45,120 --> 00:34:49,240
Speaker 2: nineteen seventies it spreads to the satellite states and rather

664
00:34:49,320 --> 00:34:52,480
Speaker 2: than presenting it, the CIA version of samas dot is

665
00:34:52,560 --> 00:34:56,560
Speaker 2: like the heroic struggle against Stalinism and you know, Soviet oppression.

666
00:34:57,360 --> 00:35:01,400
Speaker 2: But it was more a way to have fun. Mikhail

667
00:35:01,480 --> 00:35:06,040
Speaker 2: Botten wrote an essay that samasdt was basically homebrew alcohol,

668
00:35:06,920 --> 00:35:10,560
Speaker 2: said that boredom led to quote binge drinking and its

669
00:35:10,640 --> 00:35:16,600
Speaker 2: variants binge sexual activity and binge reading. Binge reading. I

670
00:35:16,680 --> 00:35:18,560
Speaker 2: kind of love that as a cultural idea.

671
00:35:18,920 --> 00:35:21,560
Speaker 3: I do too. It's like, watch out, it's going to

672
00:35:21,680 --> 00:35:22,880
Speaker 3: lead to binge reading.

673
00:35:23,320 --> 00:35:28,200
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have read Homebrew as a description of the

674
00:35:28,239 --> 00:35:30,480
Speaker 2: stuff in a number of places, Like so, I think

675
00:35:30,520 --> 00:35:32,319
Speaker 2: it was usually called samasdot, but I think it was.

676
00:35:32,440 --> 00:35:34,319
Speaker 2: I think literally people someone are just just calling it

677
00:35:34,360 --> 00:35:38,200
Speaker 2: homebrew basically, Okay. Often it was a parody of the

678
00:35:38,200 --> 00:35:42,200
Speaker 2: official channels. The official newspaper was called Pravda or Truth,

679
00:35:42,480 --> 00:35:45,799
Speaker 2: and so they were like presenting a counter truth. But

680
00:35:46,320 --> 00:35:49,920
Speaker 2: mostly they wanted to critique the idea that there was

681
00:35:49,960 --> 00:35:53,480
Speaker 2: such thing as one truth. They wanted to present that

682
00:35:53,520 --> 00:35:56,000
Speaker 2: literature could in fact be divorced from politics and could

683
00:35:56,040 --> 00:35:59,759
Speaker 2: be autonomous and ambiguous. So while they were quote neo

684
00:35:59,800 --> 00:36:04,719
Speaker 2: rests who challenge Soviet realism by offering counter truths, which

685
00:36:04,719 --> 00:36:06,760
Speaker 2: is kind of what you would say that Alexander's writing

686
00:36:06,880 --> 00:36:09,000
Speaker 2: was doing, right, is that you're like, He's like, no,

687
00:36:09,080 --> 00:36:12,319
Speaker 2: I will present the real truth. You know, a lot

688
00:36:12,320 --> 00:36:15,719
Speaker 2: of people, especially younger writers, were like, what if we

689
00:36:16,360 --> 00:36:20,120
Speaker 2: offer hypotheses instead of goals? What if we don't have answers,

690
00:36:20,120 --> 00:36:25,240
Speaker 2: we have questions? And I think that's coolest shit. Yeah,

691
00:36:25,360 --> 00:36:29,040
Speaker 2: access to copy machines was tightly controlled. So was all

692
00:36:29,080 --> 00:36:31,760
Speaker 2: this type written stuff by and large on carbon paper

693
00:36:31,800 --> 00:36:35,560
Speaker 2: and tissue paper, like literally toilet paper I think sometimes.

694
00:36:36,400 --> 00:36:39,120
Speaker 2: And this was easier to conceal and therefore easier to

695
00:36:39,200 --> 00:36:42,359
Speaker 2: destroy because you know, you get caught with it, you're

696
00:36:42,480 --> 00:36:43,040
Speaker 2: doing time.

697
00:36:44,000 --> 00:36:46,919
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's actually smart, delicate but smart.

698
00:36:46,960 --> 00:36:49,280
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally, which I mean, you know, it's just funny

699
00:36:49,280 --> 00:36:50,799
Speaker 2: because it's getting past around hand to hand, so it's

700
00:36:50,800 --> 00:36:52,880
Speaker 2: probably gonna all fucked up and like, yeah, one of

701
00:36:52,880 --> 00:36:55,359
Speaker 2: the like esthetic qualities of it is that often you're

702
00:36:55,400 --> 00:36:59,240
Speaker 2: doing like multiple layers of like onion skin, carbon paper

703
00:36:59,719 --> 00:37:01,600
Speaker 2: and so so like the last one is like barely

704
00:37:01,640 --> 00:37:05,520
Speaker 2: readable at all, you know. Yeah. Sometimes they would distribute

705
00:37:05,560 --> 00:37:08,719
Speaker 2: things by photographing them and then like printing photos, but

706
00:37:08,840 --> 00:37:14,040
Speaker 2: photos were bulkier and harder to conceal. Yeah, the esthetics

707
00:37:14,040 --> 00:37:17,600
Speaker 2: of samas dot soon had their own value. A type

708
00:37:17,600 --> 00:37:20,360
Speaker 2: written thing on carbon paper or tissue paper or whatever

709
00:37:20,840 --> 00:37:25,040
Speaker 2: was inherently subversive and interesting. Here's where I get the

710
00:37:25,080 --> 00:37:27,719
Speaker 2: joke I promised you. There's a Soviet era joke that

711
00:37:27,760 --> 00:37:30,680
Speaker 2: a grandmother can't get her granddaughter to read War and Peace,

712
00:37:31,239 --> 00:37:34,480
Speaker 2: so she stays up late at night furiously and retypes

713
00:37:34,480 --> 00:37:37,920
Speaker 2: it all as samas dot and then it no longer

714
00:37:37,960 --> 00:37:40,200
Speaker 2: looks official, so her granddaughter reads it.

715
00:37:40,880 --> 00:37:41,760
Speaker 3: That's really funny.

716
00:37:42,040 --> 00:37:47,680
Speaker 2: I know, underground authors started writing so much that it

717
00:37:47,760 --> 00:37:51,200
Speaker 2: started being called graphomania and obsession with writing as much

718
00:37:51,239 --> 00:37:51,880
Speaker 2: as possible.

719
00:37:52,480 --> 00:37:52,880
Speaker 3: Wow.

720
00:37:53,520 --> 00:37:55,120
Speaker 2: And I think this is interesting because like when I

721
00:37:55,160 --> 00:37:58,200
Speaker 2: was first reading about how goolog Archipela goes three hundred

722
00:37:58,239 --> 00:38:00,279
Speaker 2: thousand words long, and part of it is he never

723
00:38:00,360 --> 00:38:02,360
Speaker 2: got to write the whole thing at once. He couldn't

724
00:38:02,400 --> 00:38:04,400
Speaker 2: look at the old pages while he was writing the

725
00:38:04,400 --> 00:38:06,879
Speaker 2: new pages, right, And so I'm like, yeah, of course

726
00:38:06,880 --> 00:38:10,200
Speaker 2: it's going to be longer and more repetitive and less. Yeah,

727
00:38:10,239 --> 00:38:13,799
Speaker 2: he needs an editor very desperately. And so it makes

728
00:38:13,840 --> 00:38:17,680
Speaker 2: sense to me this like graphamania thing. It also ties

729
00:38:17,719 --> 00:38:20,439
Speaker 2: into the long Russian tradition of elevating the written word

730
00:38:20,520 --> 00:38:23,720
Speaker 2: and the author, and also elevating the idea of everyone

731
00:38:23,719 --> 00:38:28,920
Speaker 2: writing unbearably long books. In fact, they started writing stories

732
00:38:29,280 --> 00:38:32,960
Speaker 2: making fun of themselves for writing some laws and writing

733
00:38:33,040 --> 00:38:38,520
Speaker 2: so much. There's a nineteen sixty story called Graphomaniacs, and

734
00:38:38,560 --> 00:38:44,320
Speaker 2: the author Sinoviski wrote, I am born for poetry insists

735
00:38:44,360 --> 00:38:46,160
Speaker 2: a young man who looks like he should have been

736
00:38:46,160 --> 00:38:50,040
Speaker 2: a boxer. Galkin laughs. We are all born for it,

737
00:38:50,440 --> 00:38:54,160
Speaker 2: a general national penchant for refined letters. And do you

738
00:38:54,200 --> 00:38:58,120
Speaker 2: know what we have to think censorship the government itself,

739
00:38:58,200 --> 00:39:01,960
Speaker 2: damn it gives you the right, the inalienable right to

740
00:39:02,040 --> 00:39:06,400
Speaker 2: consider yourself an unacknowledged genius. That's funny.

741
00:39:07,000 --> 00:39:10,000
Speaker 3: Yeah, I like some self awareness.

742
00:39:10,239 --> 00:39:13,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. It kind of reminds me of how like,

743
00:39:13,040 --> 00:39:15,839
Speaker 2: like sometimes the like punk or like genres that are

744
00:39:15,960 --> 00:39:19,080
Speaker 2: very political, you kind of put up with like things

745
00:39:19,080 --> 00:39:21,440
Speaker 2: that aren't quite as good because you agree with them,

746
00:39:21,640 --> 00:39:24,640
Speaker 2: you know. And I think that there's like a certain

747
00:39:24,640 --> 00:39:26,840
Speaker 2: amount of like, well, if it's Samisdad, it doesn't have

748
00:39:26,880 --> 00:39:29,160
Speaker 2: to be good because it's inherently edgy and radical because

749
00:39:29,160 --> 00:39:29,799
Speaker 2: you wrote it.

750
00:39:29,760 --> 00:39:32,200
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, but I'm pro it no matter what.

751
00:39:32,560 --> 00:39:37,080
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. Yeah. And some of this stuff was that

752
00:39:37,120 --> 00:39:40,400
Speaker 2: they wrote was very serious too. There were entire newspapers

753
00:39:40,400 --> 00:39:44,160
Speaker 2: and journals published this way. One was a bulletin called

754
00:39:44,360 --> 00:39:48,120
Speaker 2: Chronicle of Current Events, and it started in April nineteen

755
00:39:48,200 --> 00:39:51,440
Speaker 2: sixty eight and it appeared every two weeks, and it

756
00:39:51,480 --> 00:39:55,640
Speaker 2: collected human rights abuses within the Soviet regime. It stopped

757
00:39:55,680 --> 00:39:57,719
Speaker 2: for a year and a half due to repression, but

758
00:39:57,760 --> 00:40:01,160
Speaker 2: then it picked up again in nineteen seventy two. This

759
00:40:01,239 --> 00:40:04,560
Speaker 2: more political samas DOT was actually the second wave of SAMASDT,

760
00:40:04,960 --> 00:40:07,040
Speaker 2: and it worked through the channels that have been built

761
00:40:07,080 --> 00:40:11,600
Speaker 2: by artists. It reached a readership of somewhere between ten

762
00:40:11,680 --> 00:40:16,160
Speaker 2: thousand and one hundred thousand readers per issue, with roughly

763
00:40:16,320 --> 00:40:19,600
Speaker 2: one thousand to ten thousand copies being made of each edition.

764
00:40:20,000 --> 00:40:23,879
Speaker 2: They estimated ten people read each copy, right, Yeah, yeah,

765
00:40:23,920 --> 00:40:29,160
Speaker 2: but each of those fucking ten thousand copies is fucking typed. Wow.

766
00:40:29,480 --> 00:40:31,799
Speaker 2: That is so much fucking.

767
00:40:31,640 --> 00:40:35,080
Speaker 3: Work, an unfathom of wolameta work.

768
00:40:35,520 --> 00:40:40,440
Speaker 2: Yep. Besides a general we don't like the dictatorship we

769
00:40:40,480 --> 00:40:44,240
Speaker 2: live under journal, other political and religious positions started publishing

770
00:40:44,280 --> 00:40:47,880
Speaker 2: samasdat as well. There's one for Ukrainian Independence. There's the

771
00:40:48,040 --> 00:40:51,800
Speaker 2: Chronicle of the Lithuanian Catholic Church. There's the Zionist Herald

772
00:40:51,880 --> 00:40:55,759
Speaker 2: of Exodus, there's the Herald of the Evangelical Christian Baptists.

773
00:40:56,120 --> 00:40:59,320
Speaker 2: There's a Russian nationalist journal, and there's one called Jews

774
00:40:59,360 --> 00:41:02,560
Speaker 2: in the USSI, which I am guessing by the context

775
00:41:02,600 --> 00:41:05,120
Speaker 2: because it's not the Zionist Herald of Exodus is the

776
00:41:05,160 --> 00:41:08,239
Speaker 2: anti Zionist Jewish paper of the time.

777
00:41:08,840 --> 00:41:10,320
Speaker 3: Okay.

778
00:41:10,480 --> 00:41:13,800
Speaker 2: The typewritten thing became a style that everyone would imitate,

779
00:41:13,840 --> 00:41:16,000
Speaker 2: including in the West, and the thing that I want

780
00:41:16,000 --> 00:41:17,719
Speaker 2: to try and figure out but I don't have any

781
00:41:17,800 --> 00:41:20,040
Speaker 2: answer to yet. You know how in the nineties, like

782
00:41:20,120 --> 00:41:24,400
Speaker 2: everything that was like edgy and grunge us a typewriter font. Yeah,

783
00:41:24,719 --> 00:41:28,680
Speaker 2: I think that might come from samas dot Okay, because

784
00:41:29,520 --> 00:41:35,439
Speaker 2: typewriter became the like counter cultural iconic thing to do,

785
00:41:36,160 --> 00:41:39,400
Speaker 2: and that style got imitated in the West.

786
00:41:40,040 --> 00:41:42,520
Speaker 3: Fascinating, and you're probably right, yeah.

787
00:41:42,400 --> 00:41:44,640
Speaker 2: I mean I could be wrong. It might also come

788
00:41:44,680 --> 00:41:46,960
Speaker 2: from like Zene culture, right, it could.

789
00:41:47,040 --> 00:41:49,440
Speaker 3: Maybe it's a mixture of both. But you know, it

790
00:41:49,480 --> 00:41:53,320
Speaker 3: becomes a style that seeps over and then people started

791
00:41:53,320 --> 00:41:56,200
Speaker 3: adopting it. Which came first the chicken or the egg. Yeah,

792
00:41:56,239 --> 00:41:57,160
Speaker 3: good theory though.

793
00:41:58,280 --> 00:42:00,879
Speaker 2: And folks were ignoring design can iterations when they made

794
00:42:00,920 --> 00:42:03,040
Speaker 2: this stuff overall and tried to cram as much text

795
00:42:03,040 --> 00:42:08,320
Speaker 2: onto the page as possible. Ana Komoromi said, quote. Highly

796
00:42:08,360 --> 00:42:12,279
Speaker 2: circulated type scripts became brittle and worn from handling. The

797
00:42:12,280 --> 00:42:15,560
Speaker 2: physical page seemed as embattled and fragile as the Soviet

798
00:42:15,560 --> 00:42:19,240
Speaker 2: author himself. And so you get a copy of samas

799
00:42:19,239 --> 00:42:22,200
Speaker 2: dot and you would type up like four copies yourself sometimes.

800
00:42:22,600 --> 00:42:27,040
Speaker 2: And then it seemed like on cursory reading, my cursory reading,

801
00:42:27,440 --> 00:42:29,719
Speaker 2: it seems that the majority of the authors were men

802
00:42:29,800 --> 00:42:32,520
Speaker 2: and the majority of the typists were women, and that

803
00:42:32,560 --> 00:42:35,919
Speaker 2: women took a substantial chunk of the risk. Yeah, that's

804
00:42:35,960 --> 00:42:39,120
Speaker 2: my own interpretation based on what I read. And then

805
00:42:39,120 --> 00:42:41,040
Speaker 2: also a pattern I've seen time and time again.

806
00:42:41,560 --> 00:42:45,320
Speaker 3: Well, knowing that about that typist that was jailed and

807
00:42:45,360 --> 00:42:47,799
Speaker 3: then committed suicide, that's a perfect example of it.

808
00:42:48,000 --> 00:42:51,120
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally, And this is like absolutely still a thing

809
00:42:51,160 --> 00:42:53,720
Speaker 2: to this day in the West of the publishing industry.

810
00:42:53,960 --> 00:42:57,640
Speaker 2: Is like how you could take podcasting. A lot of

811
00:42:57,680 --> 00:43:00,880
Speaker 2: prodcast producers are women, and a lot of podcasts voices

812
00:43:00,880 --> 00:43:04,400
Speaker 2: are men. You know, yeah, absolutely, but I mean, you

813
00:43:04,440 --> 00:43:07,640
Speaker 2: know they I want to point this out and not

814
00:43:07,760 --> 00:43:09,760
Speaker 2: to be like on fuck these men who wrote stuff

815
00:43:09,800 --> 00:43:11,920
Speaker 2: like whatever, No, like, they were also risking things, and

816
00:43:13,239 --> 00:43:16,279
Speaker 2: so typists would also make editorial changes sometimes when they

817
00:43:16,280 --> 00:43:18,279
Speaker 2: are typing these things, and so there's like kind of

818
00:43:18,280 --> 00:43:22,400
Speaker 2: a fun playing around with it. A typist named Natalia

819
00:43:22,520 --> 00:43:25,000
Speaker 2: Trauberg would translate works from English. Oh yeah, also just

820
00:43:25,040 --> 00:43:26,600
Speaker 2: gets called the typist. She's a translator.

821
00:43:26,760 --> 00:43:32,520
Speaker 3: Another Natalia Natalia would translate works from English and would

822
00:43:32,560 --> 00:43:34,920
Speaker 3: cut out the redundant passages in like GK.

823
00:43:35,040 --> 00:43:39,440
Speaker 2: Chesterton. Good for her, I know, I know. Also I

824
00:43:39,440 --> 00:43:40,840
Speaker 2: saw some of the photos of there's a lot of

825
00:43:40,880 --> 00:43:44,400
Speaker 2: ssamis doant like collections and stuff like that. And sometimes

826
00:43:44,400 --> 00:43:46,520
Speaker 2: the typewrit and covers were basically like ASKI art, where

827
00:43:46,560 --> 00:43:49,640
Speaker 2: they would like do the title in big letters by

828
00:43:49,680 --> 00:43:54,279
Speaker 2: just doing x's, you know, and like organizing them. Some

829
00:43:54,320 --> 00:43:57,080
Speaker 2: folks resisted the samas dot style and tried to make

830
00:43:57,080 --> 00:44:01,680
Speaker 2: it look official, like Alexander Ginsburg's see once again another Alexander.

831
00:44:01,800 --> 00:44:04,400
Speaker 2: Every time I do a Russian thing, there's like four.

832
00:44:04,239 --> 00:44:06,320
Speaker 3: Names, Alexander and Natalia.

833
00:44:06,840 --> 00:44:10,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, Alexander Ginsberg did a book called Syntoxis, which looks

834
00:44:10,640 --> 00:44:13,520
Speaker 2: like an art book and it ran from nineteen sixty

835
00:44:13,520 --> 00:44:16,600
Speaker 2: to nineteen sixty one. Or there would be poetry editions

836
00:44:16,600 --> 00:44:20,959
Speaker 2: with hand drawn covers and hand sewn bindings. Authors would

837
00:44:20,960 --> 00:44:23,960
Speaker 2: sometimes bind their books. Often they were signed. This is

838
00:44:23,960 --> 00:44:25,960
Speaker 2: the thing that kind of surprised me. You would think

839
00:44:26,000 --> 00:44:28,359
Speaker 2: that they would all be like, I'm writing this shit

840
00:44:28,400 --> 00:44:30,680
Speaker 2: anonymously because I don't want to spend my life in prison.

841
00:44:31,200 --> 00:44:32,040
Speaker 3: Yeah.

842
00:44:32,120 --> 00:44:35,080
Speaker 2: They mostly, I think because there's this like culture. This

843
00:44:35,160 --> 00:44:38,760
Speaker 2: is my inference, because there's this culture of prestige around

844
00:44:38,760 --> 00:44:42,279
Speaker 2: being a writer in Russian society. They were writing their

845
00:44:42,320 --> 00:44:44,839
Speaker 2: name on these things and often their addresses.

846
00:44:45,520 --> 00:44:48,120
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're like, I want the credit for this. You

847
00:44:48,160 --> 00:44:50,319
Speaker 3: know it might kill me, but I want the credit.

848
00:44:50,440 --> 00:44:52,360
Speaker 2: Which I guess, like tagging culture is like a.

849
00:44:52,360 --> 00:44:55,200
Speaker 3: Little bit that you know, sure it's human nature.

850
00:44:55,480 --> 00:44:59,840
Speaker 2: Yeah, good degree. Sometimes books were unbound so that multiple

851
00:44:59,840 --> 00:45:02,719
Speaker 2: p people could read them faster, each person passing the

852
00:45:02,760 --> 00:45:05,239
Speaker 2: page they finished on to the next person. So you

853
00:45:05,280 --> 00:45:07,239
Speaker 2: get like five people sitting in a circle and you

854
00:45:07,360 --> 00:45:09,439
Speaker 2: just all people reading the same book at the same time.

855
00:45:10,200 --> 00:45:11,520
Speaker 3: See that sounds kind of fun.

856
00:45:11,920 --> 00:45:14,920
Speaker 2: It really does. Although what if you're the slower reader,

857
00:45:15,000 --> 00:45:16,920
Speaker 2: You're just like, I know, you got I guess you

858
00:45:16,960 --> 00:45:19,040
Speaker 2: got to go in the end. Yeah, you know, you

859
00:45:19,160 --> 00:45:21,440
Speaker 2: just like arrange the city. We got to implement a

860
00:45:21,480 --> 00:45:24,799
Speaker 2: speed reading test before we Yeah, I think as you go,

861
00:45:25,040 --> 00:45:27,279
Speaker 2: you can be like, okay, clearly you're reading slower than

862
00:45:27,320 --> 00:45:28,480
Speaker 2: you and then you know, like.

863
00:45:28,680 --> 00:45:30,720
Speaker 3: Switch around you're right, all are welcome here.

864
00:45:30,920 --> 00:45:35,839
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. And there were other spin offs from samas Dot.

865
00:45:36,719 --> 00:45:39,920
Speaker 2: Ratazot were books and others such that were broadcast by

866
00:45:39,960 --> 00:45:44,080
Speaker 2: foreign radio stations that Soviet dissidents would then dutifully transcribe.

867
00:45:45,239 --> 00:45:49,680
Speaker 2: Maganizot was Samazot music recorded by tape recorder. I think

868
00:45:49,719 --> 00:45:52,240
Speaker 2: the origin of the word is like magnet for like tape,

869
00:45:52,760 --> 00:45:54,839
Speaker 2: you know, they record with magnets or whatever. I could

870
00:45:54,880 --> 00:45:56,400
Speaker 2: be wrong. I don't know. I didn't actually look up

871
00:45:56,400 --> 00:45:57,000
Speaker 2: the etymology.

872
00:45:57,080 --> 00:46:01,040
Speaker 3: I'm saying as if I know, Yeah, okay, sounds good.

873
00:46:01,200 --> 00:46:04,400
Speaker 2: And this music was sometimes foreign radio broadcasts. Sometimes it

874
00:46:04,440 --> 00:46:06,640
Speaker 2: was like DIY production. People would like record songs in

875
00:46:06,640 --> 00:46:08,320
Speaker 2: their living room and put it on tape and spread

876
00:46:08,360 --> 00:46:11,520
Speaker 2: it around. And then there was Thomas Dot, which is

877
00:46:11,239 --> 00:46:15,240
Speaker 2: the more famous after samas Dot. Thomas Dot is anything

878
00:46:15,280 --> 00:46:17,880
Speaker 2: that was smuggled out of Russia to be published elsewhere.

879
00:46:19,000 --> 00:46:21,920
Speaker 2: Often Thomas Dot would then be smuggled back into Russia

880
00:46:22,120 --> 00:46:26,320
Speaker 2: as samas dot. So you, okay, you write a book,

881
00:46:26,800 --> 00:46:29,160
Speaker 2: you put it on microfiche, you get it smuggled out

882
00:46:29,200 --> 00:46:32,240
Speaker 2: Paris publishes it, and then it comes back into Russia

883
00:46:32,320 --> 00:46:36,799
Speaker 2: and then someone hand types it you know, okay, it

884
00:46:36,880 --> 00:46:40,080
Speaker 2: wasn't a perfect and happy underground and wasn't like everyone

885
00:46:40,200 --> 00:46:41,960
Speaker 2: was like noble and good. I was going to tell

886
00:46:41,960 --> 00:46:43,640
Speaker 2: an anecdote that I thought was going to go really

887
00:46:43,640 --> 00:46:47,560
Speaker 2: differently until I read more about this man. Years ago,

888
00:46:47,920 --> 00:46:49,920
Speaker 2: I was in Prague and I went to the punkash

889
00:46:49,960 --> 00:46:51,400
Speaker 2: show that I felt like I'd ever been to in

890
00:46:51,400 --> 00:46:54,360
Speaker 2: my life. It was a solo show by this round

891
00:46:54,400 --> 00:46:57,160
Speaker 2: bald accordion player named Jim Chirt, and I think that

892
00:46:57,200 --> 00:47:00,200
Speaker 2: means like Jim Devil. I was there with a friend

893
00:47:00,200 --> 00:47:02,720
Speaker 2: who had escaped across the Iron Curtain to the West

894
00:47:02,719 --> 00:47:05,600
Speaker 2: when she was four years old, and she was then

895
00:47:05,680 --> 00:47:07,879
Speaker 2: living back in Prague, so we went to go see

896
00:47:07,880 --> 00:47:10,920
Speaker 2: this accordion player who had been an illegal accordion player

897
00:47:11,040 --> 00:47:15,880
Speaker 2: performing illegal shows during the Soviet era. And Jim Cherit

898
00:47:15,960 --> 00:47:18,839
Speaker 2: was screaming over this accordion while old guys with ponytails

899
00:47:18,920 --> 00:47:21,600
Speaker 2: danced on tables, bashing into the low ceiling of a

900
00:47:21,640 --> 00:47:25,400
Speaker 2: literally underground pub. And Jim Chait wasn't singing like I

901
00:47:25,440 --> 00:47:27,600
Speaker 2: hate the government. He was singing like most of it

902
00:47:27,719 --> 00:47:29,080
Speaker 2: was in Check, but some of it was in English,

903
00:47:29,080 --> 00:47:30,440
Speaker 2: and it was like I have to go to Mexico

904
00:47:30,480 --> 00:47:32,880
Speaker 2: to smoke weed, you know, like like it's just like

905
00:47:32,920 --> 00:47:34,000
Speaker 2: a guy, you know.

906
00:47:34,800 --> 00:47:37,160
Speaker 3: Sorry, you're just making me remember about how much weed

907
00:47:37,200 --> 00:47:38,280
Speaker 3: I smoked in Prague.

908
00:47:38,560 --> 00:47:39,520
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's amazing.

909
00:47:39,880 --> 00:47:42,919
Speaker 3: It was the best time of my life, very strong weed.

910
00:47:42,960 --> 00:47:46,920
Speaker 2: Anyway, continue, I just drank an obscene amount in Frog

911
00:47:47,440 --> 00:47:50,640
Speaker 2: that too, the whole nights. I don't remember. The worst

912
00:47:50,640 --> 00:47:51,880
Speaker 2: thing I ever did while I was drunk, which I

913
00:47:51,880 --> 00:47:56,239
Speaker 2: will not say on air right now, I did in Prague.

914
00:47:56,840 --> 00:48:01,040
Speaker 2: It wasn't morally bad, it was just embarrassing. No, Yeah, anyway,

915
00:48:01,239 --> 00:48:02,680
Speaker 2: So I was like going to tell this story to

916
00:48:02,680 --> 00:48:05,120
Speaker 2: be like, and here's an example of a guy who

917
00:48:05,160 --> 00:48:07,720
Speaker 2: made music illegally. And so then I like was reading

918
00:48:08,200 --> 00:48:12,799
Speaker 2: check Wikipedia about him and like through auto translate. He uh,

919
00:48:13,040 --> 00:48:15,680
Speaker 2: he was absolutely part of the samas dot scene U

920
00:48:15,800 --> 00:48:19,920
Speaker 2: and he snitched out one of his best friends, who

921
00:48:19,960 --> 00:48:22,920
Speaker 2: then spent eighteen months in prison for publishing samas dot. Okay,

922
00:48:23,840 --> 00:48:27,799
Speaker 2: Jim Chaird apologized for it since, and that's good. You know,

923
00:48:28,160 --> 00:48:30,279
Speaker 2: we've all read nineteen eighty four. We all understand that

924
00:48:30,320 --> 00:48:33,080
Speaker 2: sometimes people have rats in cages put on the face

925
00:48:33,120 --> 00:48:33,480
Speaker 2: or whatever.

926
00:48:34,360 --> 00:48:40,319
Speaker 3: But it complicated time things. Yeah, yeah, taking accountability not

927
00:48:40,400 --> 00:48:41,439
Speaker 3: the worst person in the world.

928
00:48:41,520 --> 00:48:44,600
Speaker 2: Then, Yeah, his friend who went to prison died four

929
00:48:44,680 --> 00:48:49,160
Speaker 2: years before he apologized, before his official letter of apology

930
00:48:49,239 --> 00:48:49,760
Speaker 2: was published.

931
00:48:50,320 --> 00:48:53,480
Speaker 3: That is something that you probably don't get over.

932
00:48:54,239 --> 00:48:54,920
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally.

933
00:48:55,760 --> 00:48:58,120
Speaker 3: But to your point, you know, you said, it's not

934
00:48:58,280 --> 00:49:01,680
Speaker 3: like it was all roses this movement. It's complicated. And

935
00:49:02,120 --> 00:49:05,920
Speaker 3: do you think that that people get so easily dissuaded

936
00:49:06,200 --> 00:49:10,400
Speaker 3: from different movements because of infighting or complications or not.

937
00:49:11,000 --> 00:49:13,640
Speaker 3: You expect that, Oh, I've designated myself as a part

938
00:49:13,680 --> 00:49:16,200
Speaker 3: of this, Well we all immediately agree on something that's

939
00:49:16,239 --> 00:49:16,760
Speaker 3: not true.

940
00:49:16,880 --> 00:49:17,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally.

941
00:49:17,719 --> 00:49:20,920
Speaker 3: You know, you can't get so worked up that you're

942
00:49:20,960 --> 00:49:23,840
Speaker 3: turning your back on all of it just because there's

943
00:49:24,000 --> 00:49:27,640
Speaker 3: different factions within it. And there's no perfect movement, is

944
00:49:27,680 --> 00:49:30,440
Speaker 3: my point. We're all human beings with different opinions, and

945
00:49:30,480 --> 00:49:31,200
Speaker 3: that's a good thing.

946
00:49:31,760 --> 00:49:35,759
Speaker 2: Totally. There's this quote by a science fiction author who

947
00:49:35,760 --> 00:49:38,480
Speaker 2: I can't remember his name, and I remember not particularly

948
00:49:38,520 --> 00:49:40,920
Speaker 2: liking him as a person, but he has a quote

949
00:49:41,040 --> 00:49:42,640
Speaker 2: that I think about all the time, which is that

950
00:49:42,680 --> 00:49:45,920
Speaker 2: there's no ideology so pure that you cannot find assholes

951
00:49:45,960 --> 00:49:49,839
Speaker 2: practicing it exactly. Yeah, And then like and this guy

952
00:49:49,840 --> 00:49:52,239
Speaker 2: wasn't even a sad an asshole. He just gave in

953
00:49:52,280 --> 00:49:53,200
Speaker 2: to state pressure.

954
00:49:53,600 --> 00:49:57,080
Speaker 3: He definitely made a mistake or yeah, maybe I don't

955
00:49:57,080 --> 00:49:59,879
Speaker 3: know the calculations. At the moment in time, you gave it, right.

956
00:50:00,200 --> 00:50:03,640
Speaker 2: So, for some weird reason, the paragraph I read through

957
00:50:03,680 --> 00:50:07,040
Speaker 2: auto translated Wikipedia and from Czech didn't give me enough

958
00:50:07,040 --> 00:50:10,560
Speaker 2: context to make a moral judgment about the same, you know,

959
00:50:10,640 --> 00:50:12,640
Speaker 2: even though shouldn't have done that and you shouldn't do it.

960
00:50:13,800 --> 00:50:16,879
Speaker 2: But yeah, and then after so like the first wave

961
00:50:16,880 --> 00:50:19,120
Speaker 2: of samas dot is just like poetry and art, the

962
00:50:19,200 --> 00:50:22,080
Speaker 2: second wave is more of this political stuff from all

963
00:50:22,200 --> 00:50:25,600
Speaker 2: different corners. And then academia is sort of the third

964
00:50:25,600 --> 00:50:29,240
Speaker 2: wave of samas dot because you couldn't really do certain

965
00:50:29,280 --> 00:50:34,120
Speaker 2: types of science in Soviet times, right, which feels really

966
00:50:34,160 --> 00:50:36,920
Speaker 2: accurate to right now when suddenly all of the funding

967
00:50:37,000 --> 00:50:40,120
Speaker 2: is being cut. If it like literally has the word

968
00:50:40,239 --> 00:50:40,640
Speaker 2: gay in.

969
00:50:40,560 --> 00:50:43,560
Speaker 3: It or transition, if transitions in the word, it is

970
00:50:43,640 --> 00:50:48,080
Speaker 3: out of here. It doesn't matter what the context is diversity, Nope,

971
00:50:48,160 --> 00:50:48,720
Speaker 3: you're done.

972
00:50:49,040 --> 00:50:54,240
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so they started publishing anyway, and historical studies

973
00:50:54,280 --> 00:50:59,480
Speaker 2: were published, legal studies were published. One writer, Georgia Vladimov

974
00:50:59,640 --> 00:51:03,080
Speaker 2: put it, quote there are now two kinds of art

975
00:51:03,080 --> 00:51:06,920
Speaker 2: in the country. One is free and uninhibited, whose distribution

976
00:51:07,000 --> 00:51:10,880
Speaker 2: and influence depends only on its genuinely artistic qualities, and

977
00:51:10,920 --> 00:51:14,800
Speaker 2: the other, one, commanded and paid for, is badly mutilated,

978
00:51:14,880 --> 00:51:18,000
Speaker 2: suppressed and uppressed. It is not hard to predict which

979
00:51:18,000 --> 00:51:22,800
Speaker 2: of these two arts will be victorious and so like. Yeah,

980
00:51:23,160 --> 00:51:25,400
Speaker 2: by and large, as far as I can tell, people,

981
00:51:25,400 --> 00:51:28,480
Speaker 2: when they look at the literature of Soviet era, they're like, well,

982
00:51:28,520 --> 00:51:32,319
Speaker 2: the underground shit was kind of the real shit. Yeah,

983
00:51:32,680 --> 00:51:35,640
Speaker 2: it was different in every country. We've mostly focused on Russia.

984
00:51:36,280 --> 00:51:39,840
Speaker 2: In Poland, folks actually had access to more copy machines

985
00:51:40,040 --> 00:51:42,960
Speaker 2: and so there was xerox, samas dot there, and a

986
00:51:42,960 --> 00:51:45,120
Speaker 2: lot of it was political as hell. They had things

987
00:51:45,200 --> 00:51:47,759
Speaker 2: like the Committee for the Defense of the Workers because

988
00:51:47,800 --> 00:51:53,000
Speaker 2: once again politics against the USSR is often fucking socialist anyway. Yeah,

989
00:51:53,040 --> 00:51:57,080
Speaker 2: and they were putting out a bi monthly bulletin. There

990
00:51:57,080 --> 00:51:59,480
Speaker 2: were at least thirty of these radical newspapers running by

991
00:51:59,480 --> 00:52:03,080
Speaker 2: the late seven in Poland. In the Czech Republic, there

992
00:52:03,120 --> 00:52:06,960
Speaker 2: was this more professional vibe. It was like hand bound

993
00:52:07,040 --> 00:52:11,000
Speaker 2: and like hand typed art manuscripts and shit, and they

994
00:52:11,000 --> 00:52:13,960
Speaker 2: would literally say in the front like this is mine,

995
00:52:14,000 --> 00:52:15,520
Speaker 2: don't copy it, you.

996
00:52:15,480 --> 00:52:18,560
Speaker 3: Know, oh wild, yeah different.

997
00:52:18,760 --> 00:52:22,000
Speaker 2: And the typists were generally paid and they were like sold.

998
00:52:22,880 --> 00:52:24,920
Speaker 2: But even though they were like bougie or an artsier,

999
00:52:25,880 --> 00:52:28,960
Speaker 2: they were still going to prison over this. Like if

1000
00:52:29,000 --> 00:52:30,839
Speaker 2: you have this in a safe hidden in your house

1001
00:52:30,880 --> 00:52:33,680
Speaker 2: and they catch you, you're going to fucking jail. Right

1002
00:52:34,640 --> 00:52:36,600
Speaker 2: in China, there was this whole other culture of it

1003
00:52:36,640 --> 00:52:38,000
Speaker 2: that I won't be able to get into as much

1004
00:52:38,000 --> 00:52:40,799
Speaker 2: as I'd like. And they used posters where they would

1005
00:52:40,800 --> 00:52:43,239
Speaker 2: paint in huge letters and hang them up around the

1006
00:52:43,239 --> 00:52:46,320
Speaker 2: city because there was a specific provision in the nineteen

1007
00:52:46,360 --> 00:52:50,160
Speaker 2: seventy five constitution that said basically like, yeah, we can't.

1008
00:52:50,200 --> 00:52:51,640
Speaker 2: You can't do a lot of stuff, but you can

1009
00:52:51,880 --> 00:52:54,080
Speaker 2: you can hang up posters with giant letters in public

1010
00:52:54,080 --> 00:52:55,400
Speaker 2: places if you need to say something.

1011
00:52:55,840 --> 00:52:57,160
Speaker 3: And they're like, got it.

1012
00:52:58,040 --> 00:52:59,919
Speaker 2: And then by nineteen seventy nine they were like, wait,

1013
00:53:00,200 --> 00:53:02,759
Speaker 2: we didn't mean like that, might take it back, and

1014
00:53:02,840 --> 00:53:04,759
Speaker 2: so they started putting people in prison over it. And

1015
00:53:04,800 --> 00:53:07,440
Speaker 2: then in nineteen eighty the constitution was like not just kidding,

1016
00:53:07,480 --> 00:53:10,960
Speaker 2: you can't do that at all. Wow. And also in China,

1017
00:53:11,000 --> 00:53:13,160
Speaker 2: they would make like political journals, and they would use

1018
00:53:13,200 --> 00:53:16,319
Speaker 2: handcut stencils for mimiograph machines. And I have studied a

1019
00:53:16,320 --> 00:53:18,359
Speaker 2: lot about various methods of printing, and I could not

1020
00:53:18,400 --> 00:53:19,359
Speaker 2: tell you exactly what that.

1021
00:53:19,320 --> 00:53:22,839
Speaker 3: Means something about printing, Yeah.

1022
00:53:22,560 --> 00:53:27,279
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. Radical journals there often had print runs in

1023
00:53:27,320 --> 00:53:30,520
Speaker 2: the thousands or tens of thousands, but people were regularly

1024
00:53:30,520 --> 00:53:35,000
Speaker 2: getting like fifteen year sentences for running them. Wow. SAMASDT

1025
00:53:35,040 --> 00:53:37,280
Speaker 2: has been used as a way to describe self publishing

1026
00:53:37,320 --> 00:53:40,279
Speaker 2: against official censorship, not just in communist countries, but in

1027
00:53:40,320 --> 00:53:43,959
Speaker 2: places like Iran or Chile and various like just dictatorships

1028
00:53:44,000 --> 00:53:48,880
Speaker 2: in general, whether right wing, left wing, or theological. It

1029
00:53:48,960 --> 00:53:52,520
Speaker 2: ebbed and flowed, though by nineteen eighty two, samas dot

1030
00:53:52,560 --> 00:53:56,400
Speaker 2: was pretty successfully repressed by the USSR, But then in

1031
00:53:56,480 --> 00:54:00,160
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty seven, Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the USSR,

1032
00:54:00,719 --> 00:54:03,400
Speaker 2: started breaking down the systems of censorship in what was

1033
00:54:03,440 --> 00:54:07,399
Speaker 2: called glossknot, and samasdot became less necessary because you could

1034
00:54:07,480 --> 00:54:11,640
Speaker 2: publish again. I did read about one piece of samasdot

1035
00:54:11,719 --> 00:54:15,560
Speaker 2: after nineteen eighty seven, though, or rather I've read two sources,

1036
00:54:15,600 --> 00:54:18,000
Speaker 2: and one claims that this was SAMASDT, and one claims

1037
00:54:18,040 --> 00:54:21,080
Speaker 2: that it was officially allowed to be printed, and I

1038
00:54:21,120 --> 00:54:25,279
Speaker 2: don't know which one's true, okay, but this piece. In

1039
00:54:25,360 --> 00:54:28,720
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty two, there was this big strike in Russia.

1040
00:54:29,320 --> 00:54:33,040
Speaker 2: Fourteen thousand workers, after their pay was docked by a third,

1041
00:54:33,680 --> 00:54:38,280
Speaker 2: went on strike for days and they were massacred. Twenty

1042
00:54:38,280 --> 00:54:42,600
Speaker 2: six strikers were killed, hundreds were wounded. Seven of the

1043
00:54:42,719 --> 00:54:45,600
Speaker 2: organizers or people accused of being organizers, were later sentenced

1044
00:54:45,640 --> 00:54:47,800
Speaker 2: to death, and tons of people served years in prison.

1045
00:54:49,080 --> 00:54:52,040
Speaker 2: The bodies of the slain were buried in a secret grave,

1046
00:54:52,239 --> 00:54:54,879
Speaker 2: the location of which wasn't revealed to their families until

1047
00:54:54,880 --> 00:54:56,120
Speaker 2: fucking nineteen ninety four.

1048
00:54:57,080 --> 00:54:59,120
Speaker 3: What yeah, wow.

1049
00:54:59,280 --> 00:55:01,640
Speaker 2: And so it's like we never hear about strikes in

1050
00:55:01,680 --> 00:55:04,759
Speaker 2: the USSR, largely because they didn't happen, because you all

1051
00:55:04,800 --> 00:55:07,080
Speaker 2: got killed if you did it. I mean just kidding.

1052
00:55:07,120 --> 00:55:09,880
Speaker 2: It was a glorious workers republic and everyone was paid equally,

1053
00:55:09,920 --> 00:55:11,560
Speaker 2: so it didn't matter, and no one needed to strike,

1054
00:55:11,600 --> 00:55:13,600
Speaker 2: and if they did strike, it's their fault for being

1055
00:55:13,600 --> 00:55:18,960
Speaker 2: counter revolutionaries. They're probably capitalists. Anyway. There was no news

1056
00:55:19,000 --> 00:55:22,640
Speaker 2: about this in the official press of Russia, and one

1057
00:55:22,719 --> 00:55:26,040
Speaker 2: of the participants was an anarcho syndicalist worker named Peter Suda,

1058
00:55:26,800 --> 00:55:30,440
Speaker 2: who spent years in prison after the strike. In nineteen

1059
00:55:30,480 --> 00:55:34,280
Speaker 2: ninety eight, when samas Dot supposedly had stopped because censorship

1060
00:55:34,320 --> 00:55:39,000
Speaker 2: had lifted, the narcosyndicalist group he worked with KAS still

1061
00:55:39,000 --> 00:55:41,160
Speaker 2: had to put out their journal in an underground fashion.

1062
00:55:41,360 --> 00:55:43,040
Speaker 2: According to one thing I read, the other thing was

1063
00:55:43,080 --> 00:55:45,600
Speaker 2: that they could finally do it because of whatever klasmod

1064
00:55:46,840 --> 00:55:50,600
Speaker 2: Either way, in nineteen eighty eight, Peter was finally able

1065
00:55:50,600 --> 00:55:53,000
Speaker 2: to publish his account of what he'd experienced at the

1066
00:55:53,080 --> 00:55:57,799
Speaker 2: state twenty six years earlier in nineteen sixty two, but

1067
00:55:58,840 --> 00:56:02,480
Speaker 2: probably related to that, in nineteen ninety, a year before

1068
00:56:02,520 --> 00:56:04,640
Speaker 2: the end of the USSR, Peter was beaten to death

1069
00:56:04,680 --> 00:56:06,960
Speaker 2: by the KGB. Wow.

1070
00:56:07,960 --> 00:56:12,880
Speaker 3: So anyway, right, Like was it, yeah, finally able to

1071
00:56:13,040 --> 00:56:15,480
Speaker 3: and then he dies It's yeah.

1072
00:56:15,040 --> 00:56:16,200
Speaker 2: I know, And it's like, well, he could have been

1073
00:56:16,239 --> 00:56:18,920
Speaker 2: killed also just for being an anarchist organizer. I don't know,

1074
00:56:19,440 --> 00:56:24,160
Speaker 2: but like the implication in both things I read was, yeah,

1075
00:56:24,280 --> 00:56:26,560
Speaker 2: that like absolutely, because he's the one who like kind

1076
00:56:26,600 --> 00:56:32,440
Speaker 2: of broke the news on this thing years decades later. Anyway,

1077
00:56:33,239 --> 00:56:35,919
Speaker 2: getting around censors is cool and good and it rules

1078
00:56:35,960 --> 00:56:37,799
Speaker 2: that people were able to do so much with it.

1079
00:56:38,360 --> 00:56:42,080
Speaker 2: They tracked the abuses of the dictatorial system, despite official

1080
00:56:42,080 --> 00:56:45,279
Speaker 2: attempts to claim that no repression was ever happening. They

1081
00:56:45,400 --> 00:56:48,839
Speaker 2: kept entire legacies of literature and art alive, and they

1082
00:56:48,920 --> 00:56:53,239
Speaker 2: kept their spirits up with their homebrew reading mania, their

1083
00:56:53,280 --> 00:56:57,320
Speaker 2: binge reading, just like their binge sex. And they probably

1084
00:56:58,120 --> 00:57:00,200
Speaker 2: got really, really tired of typing all the time time.

1085
00:57:01,120 --> 00:57:04,040
Speaker 3: I'm sure they did. I'm sure they were over it,

1086
00:57:04,320 --> 00:57:06,960
Speaker 3: but it was so vital and this is a beautiful

1087
00:57:07,000 --> 00:57:10,279
Speaker 3: story and it's such an important one inspiring. I mean,

1088
00:57:11,080 --> 00:57:14,800
Speaker 3: it's the long period of time to be navigating different

1089
00:57:14,920 --> 00:57:19,280
Speaker 3: versions of censorship and imprisonment and death and the stakes

1090
00:57:19,280 --> 00:57:23,760
Speaker 3: and exile. But the spirit feels pretty unbreakable, and that's

1091
00:57:23,800 --> 00:57:26,720
Speaker 3: why they were ultimately able to make some changes. Although

1092
00:57:26,920 --> 00:57:28,520
Speaker 3: I'm not positive that rushes.

1093
00:57:28,840 --> 00:57:30,880
Speaker 2: No, it didn't didn't work out great.

1094
00:57:30,920 --> 00:57:35,920
Speaker 3: I feel super free to say whatever. I'm sure in theory,

1095
00:57:35,960 --> 00:57:38,760
Speaker 3: but you're watching your back if you're saying whatever you

1096
00:57:38,800 --> 00:57:43,440
Speaker 3: want right now. Yeah, you know, the journey continues, but

1097
00:57:43,480 --> 00:57:47,560
Speaker 3: it is super inspiring and important reminder right now how

1098
00:57:47,680 --> 00:57:52,560
Speaker 3: vital art is and sharing of information and organizing.

1099
00:57:53,240 --> 00:57:57,720
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's why librarians are fucking crucial and important.

1100
00:57:57,920 --> 00:58:01,080
Speaker 2: Keep archives of things. Archivists are fun and crucial and important.

1101
00:58:01,720 --> 00:58:06,120
Speaker 2: And encrypting your hard drive. My final plug of this

1102
00:58:06,200 --> 00:58:10,000
Speaker 2: show is learn about encrypting your hard drive and especially

1103
00:58:10,080 --> 00:58:13,600
Speaker 2: any kind of backup drive you have. Encrypt it not

1104
00:58:13,760 --> 00:58:16,040
Speaker 2: just with like the kind of password you want to

1105
00:58:16,040 --> 00:58:19,200
Speaker 2: type in every day all the time, but like six

1106
00:58:19,320 --> 00:58:21,520
Speaker 2: or seven randomly picked dictionary.

1107
00:58:21,000 --> 00:58:24,480
Speaker 3: Words, something that I will forget and never remember.

1108
00:58:24,680 --> 00:58:26,200
Speaker 2: Well, what you have to do is you create anamonic

1109
00:58:26,280 --> 00:58:28,720
Speaker 2: around it. It's like you have to actually practice to

1110
00:58:28,720 --> 00:58:30,440
Speaker 2: do it. This is actually why I say that, like,

1111
00:58:30,960 --> 00:58:32,320
Speaker 2: although in a weird way. Actually, if you do it

1112
00:58:32,320 --> 00:58:35,160
Speaker 2: as your like regular open your computer thing, then you

1113
00:58:35,200 --> 00:58:38,320
Speaker 2: can remember it because you type it every day. Right.

1114
00:58:38,880 --> 00:58:46,760
Speaker 2: But yeah, like preserve information. It's important. Much like I

1115
00:58:46,800 --> 00:58:50,240
Speaker 2: was actually thinking, I'm probably gonna download most of Coolsen

1116
00:58:50,320 --> 00:58:52,400
Speaker 2: Media and keep it on encrypted hard drive somewhere.

1117
00:58:52,640 --> 00:58:53,440
Speaker 3: Not a bad idea.

1118
00:58:54,760 --> 00:58:59,400
Speaker 2: It's got to be an archive, yeah, But in the

1119
00:58:59,440 --> 00:59:02,320
Speaker 2: meantime you don't need that. You can just use your

1120
00:59:02,360 --> 00:59:05,800
Speaker 2: regular podcast app or subscribe to Cooler Zone Media and

1121
00:59:05,840 --> 00:59:08,480
Speaker 2: get all of the same content without the ads. Because

1122
00:59:09,200 --> 00:59:11,360
Speaker 2: maybe for good we live in a society where you

1123
00:59:11,360 --> 00:59:12,920
Speaker 2: can do that. But at least right now.

1124
00:59:12,800 --> 00:59:15,640
Speaker 3: You can, yep, take advantage of it.

1125
00:59:16,280 --> 00:59:19,320
Speaker 2: Yeah, the kind of thing that I took for fucking granted.

1126
00:59:20,360 --> 00:59:22,520
Speaker 3: Yeah, while you still can.

1127
00:59:23,400 --> 00:59:25,959
Speaker 2: Yeah, you got anything you want to plug?

1128
00:59:27,000 --> 00:59:31,480
Speaker 3: Oh my goodness, Well we ourselves over at somewhere News.

1129
00:59:31,520 --> 00:59:34,840
Speaker 3: Do have a Patreon that you can subscribe to and

1130
00:59:34,880 --> 00:59:38,400
Speaker 3: get ad free versions of all of our things and

1131
00:59:39,280 --> 00:59:43,480
Speaker 3: some bonus content. Yeah, do that, but you know, some

1132
00:59:43,520 --> 00:59:47,080
Speaker 3: more news, even more news are shows, watch listen. You

1133
00:59:47,120 --> 00:59:50,400
Speaker 3: can do both through all the shows. Hell yeah, watch

1134
00:59:50,440 --> 00:59:54,240
Speaker 3: it or listen whatever you prefer while it lasts.

1135
00:59:54,560 --> 00:59:58,040
Speaker 2: Let's see if you're not listening to it could happen here,

1136
00:59:58,520 --> 01:00:02,080
Speaker 2: It could happen here. Is also it's on the cool

1137
01:00:02,120 --> 01:00:04,160
Speaker 2: Zone Media network, and there's been a bunch of good

1138
01:00:04,160 --> 01:00:08,000
Speaker 2: episodes recently about things like should you leave the country

1139
01:00:08,400 --> 01:00:10,840
Speaker 2: and the answer is like probably not unless the answer

1140
01:00:10,880 --> 01:00:12,400
Speaker 2: is yes, But you know.

1141
01:00:12,400 --> 01:00:15,040
Speaker 3: It's I will. Let's definitely listen to that episode because

1142
01:00:15,040 --> 01:00:16,640
Speaker 3: that's a conversation I keep having.

1143
01:00:16,960 --> 01:00:18,800
Speaker 2: It's a good breakdown of it. It's a good breakdown

1144
01:00:18,800 --> 01:00:21,840
Speaker 2: of like, look like for most people, that's not going

1145
01:00:21,920 --> 01:00:25,800
Speaker 2: to be the answer you know, surround yourself with things

1146
01:00:25,800 --> 01:00:29,760
Speaker 2: that don't inspire despair but also don't inspire you to

1147
01:00:29,800 --> 01:00:31,600
Speaker 2: stick your head in the sand, is what I would

1148
01:00:31,640 --> 01:00:37,920
Speaker 2: have to say. And that's my plug. Yeah, mine too, Sophie.

1149
01:00:37,920 --> 01:00:41,000
Speaker 1: You got anything, Yeah, I mean, just listen to our

1150
01:00:41,400 --> 01:00:44,160
Speaker 1: every Friday on It could happen here. We do episodes

1151
01:00:44,240 --> 01:00:47,520
Speaker 1: called Executive Disorder. Listen to that if you want to

1152
01:00:47,560 --> 01:00:50,280
Speaker 1: be the most up to date on things going on politically.

1153
01:00:51,560 --> 01:00:54,240
Speaker 2: Do you think that there's a joke that could be

1154
01:00:54,280 --> 01:00:59,040
Speaker 2: made a sort of school house age level like crude

1155
01:00:59,120 --> 01:01:01,200
Speaker 2: joke around and ed?

1156
01:01:01,880 --> 01:01:04,000
Speaker 1: Do you think I keep trying to get us sponsored

1157
01:01:04,040 --> 01:01:07,400
Speaker 1: by a thing that goes with that joke.

1158
01:01:09,560 --> 01:01:10,800
Speaker 3: That feels like a gimme.

1159
01:01:11,080 --> 01:01:14,520
Speaker 1: And I just need them to do their jobs. Well,

1160
01:01:14,720 --> 01:01:17,320
Speaker 1: it'll happen. I'm manifesting it. It's gonna happen.

1161
01:01:17,480 --> 01:01:19,560
Speaker 2: Sometimes we get the ads for like the girl version

1162
01:01:19,960 --> 01:01:21,840
Speaker 2: of Pills.

1163
01:01:21,520 --> 01:01:24,480
Speaker 1: For I just I just uh want once we're once

1164
01:01:24,520 --> 01:01:27,200
Speaker 1: we're off recording, I'll tell you a very funny thing

1165
01:01:27,240 --> 01:01:28,760
Speaker 1: about this entire situation.

1166
01:01:29,160 --> 01:01:32,080
Speaker 2: Haha. And what's gonna happen after we stop recordings. I'm

1167
01:01:32,080 --> 01:01:33,880
Speaker 2: going to say the most embarrassing thing I've ever done

1168
01:01:33,880 --> 01:01:36,160
Speaker 2: while drunk, but you don't get to listen to it.

1169
01:01:36,280 --> 01:01:44,240
Speaker 3: Oh yeah hahaha, Bye bye bye bye.

1170
01:01:45,720 --> 01:01:48,200
Speaker 1: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of

1171
01:01:48,240 --> 01:01:51,320
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,

1172
01:01:51,480 --> 01:01:55,000
Speaker 1: visit our website coolzonemedia dot com. Check us out on

1173
01:01:55,040 --> 01:01:59,080
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

1174
01:02:00,040 --> 01:02:01,160
Speaker 1: Will it You're Happen