WEBVTT - Part Two: Cory Doctorow on Speculative Fiction for Social Change 0:00:01.720 --> 0:00:04.840 Colson Media. 0:00:05.040 --> 0:00:07.320 Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff, 0:00:07.360 --> 0:00:09.880 the podcast where we talk about how even when there's 0:00:09.920 --> 0:00:12.240 bad things happening, there's people who are doing good things. 0:00:12.240 --> 0:00:14.480 And that has been happening as long as there have 0:00:14.520 --> 0:00:16.479 been people. There've been people doing bad things, and then 0:00:16.520 --> 0:00:18.480 people be doing good things, and then there'll be people 0:00:18.520 --> 0:00:21.919 doing morally ambiguous things and critiquing the idea of dividing 0:00:21.920 --> 0:00:23.239 things into good and bad. 0:00:23.280 --> 0:00:24.640 But I'm willing to do it anyway. 0:00:24.760 --> 0:00:27.120 I'm your host, Margaret Kiltroy, and my guest this week 0:00:27.320 --> 0:00:28.040 is Corey Doctor. 0:00:28.080 --> 0:00:31.000 Oh, Hi, how are you Hi. Nice to be back 0:00:31.040 --> 0:00:33.280 with you, Margaret. Yeah, this totally separate day. 0:00:33.400 --> 0:00:37.720 We're definitely not just recording one minute later where we 0:00:37.720 --> 0:00:40.720 were left off. I actually want to something you were saying, 0:00:41.040 --> 0:00:43.879 the Reverse Centaur's Guide to AI and how it is 0:00:44.040 --> 0:00:46.879 number one selling nonfiction book in Canada right now. Like, 0:00:47.280 --> 0:00:49.879 I think people have this idea that writing books is 0:00:49.920 --> 0:00:54.160 sort of old fashioned or doesn't necessarily like change things 0:00:54.240 --> 0:00:56.840 as dramatically, Like if you hang out with just direct 0:00:56.880 --> 0:01:00.400 action activists in particular, they're a little bit like, yeah, 0:01:00.440 --> 0:01:03.760 writing books, whatever, all that matters is stopping this following 0:01:03.840 --> 0:01:06.600 like project that is destroying the world, and I used 0:01:06.600 --> 0:01:08.760 to a little bit buy into that, but then I 0:01:08.800 --> 0:01:11.800 talked to some of my elders and they helped correct 0:01:11.800 --> 0:01:16.240 me on this. But it's interesting because it's a slower change. 0:01:16.240 --> 0:01:18.119 And so I'm wondering if you can kind of point 0:01:18.120 --> 0:01:22.399 to some of the things that have happened throughout your career, 0:01:22.640 --> 0:01:26.760 like things the slow shifting of culture, whether through your 0:01:26.800 --> 0:01:29.720 fiction or nonfiction, Like what's the point of books? Sell 0:01:29.760 --> 0:01:31.759 me on writing books. You don't actually have to because 0:01:31.760 --> 0:01:34.160 that's what I do, but do it anyway. 0:01:34.959 --> 0:01:38.720 So I guess from my worm's eye view, right, because 0:01:38.720 --> 0:01:40.480 we all have the bird's eye view about books right 0:01:40.520 --> 0:01:43.400 where we can see sometimes a book comes out and 0:01:43.680 --> 0:01:46.399 there are things attributed to it, whether that's Uncle Tom's 0:01:46.400 --> 0:01:49.080 cabin or you know. My favorite example a book from 0:01:49.120 --> 0:01:51.880 before they invented good titles, which is called The History 0:01:51.920 --> 0:01:54.520 of the Standard Oil Company, Parts one in two, which 0:01:54.680 --> 0:01:57.560 sounds extremely boring but was in fact the book that 0:01:57.880 --> 0:02:02.160 killed Johnny Rockefeller's empires, written by Tarbell and serialized in 0:02:02.160 --> 0:02:07.600 a national magazine, became a giant bestseller. And Tarbell was incredible. 0:02:07.600 --> 0:02:11.119 She was like an order and an early suffragist and organizer, 0:02:11.160 --> 0:02:13.080 but she was also like the first woman in America 0:02:13.120 --> 0:02:15.200 to get a science degree. And her dad was a 0:02:15.200 --> 0:02:20.079 Pennsylvania oilman who'd been ruined by Rockefeller, and so she 0:02:20.280 --> 0:02:22.880 like it was her vendetta, and so she just like 0:02:22.960 --> 0:02:24.960 went and read all the footnotes and all of his 0:02:25.040 --> 0:02:27.360 financial filings and figured out how he was cheating and 0:02:27.400 --> 0:02:33.400 wrote this book. Again, amazing book, written before they invented titles. 0:02:33.440 --> 0:02:35.120 So it was the History of the Standard All Company, 0:02:35.200 --> 0:02:38.440 Volumes one and two. Just a fucking banger still today, 0:02:38.520 --> 0:02:41.760 like genuinely like a really good book. So you know, 0:02:41.800 --> 0:02:44.200 we can talk about how this stuff, like how books 0:02:44.240 --> 0:02:46.959 change things, right in that kind of macro sense where 0:02:46.960 --> 0:02:48.360 we can all take the bird's eye view, but from 0:02:48.400 --> 0:02:51.040 the worm's eye view of having written a bunch of books. 0:02:51.840 --> 0:02:54.799 I every now and again, and increasingly now that I'm 0:02:54.840 --> 0:02:56.600 old and I've written more than thirty of them, and 0:02:56.600 --> 0:02:57.880 I've been at it for more than a quarter of 0:02:57.919 --> 0:03:01.840 a century, run into people who very kindly seek me 0:03:01.880 --> 0:03:05.680 out to attribute some or all of the work that 0:03:05.720 --> 0:03:08.120 they do that makes a difference in the world to 0:03:08.200 --> 0:03:11.040 an experience that they had reading my books. Yeah, and 0:03:11.240 --> 0:03:15.720 I'm very careful to say, like the work was the 0:03:16.000 --> 0:03:18.120 important part, right, Like I might have given them a 0:03:18.120 --> 0:03:20.600 shove in the right direction. They met my work at 0:03:20.600 --> 0:03:23.040 the right moment and it made a difference for them. 0:03:23.160 --> 0:03:25.520 But you know, the credit is due to them. I'm 0:03:25.560 --> 0:03:27.600 not trying to take credit for their work here, right, 0:03:27.600 --> 0:03:32.560 but totally. I like it started going to cons like Defcon, 0:03:32.800 --> 0:03:35.680 just big Hacker Con in the desert in Vegas, and 0:03:35.720 --> 0:03:38.040 I would run into people and this was like maybe 0:03:38.080 --> 0:03:41.480 starting fifteen years ago or maybe even longer, where I 0:03:41.520 --> 0:03:44.640 would run into people who were It was quite disorienting 0:03:44.640 --> 0:03:47.280 because they were like grown ass adults and they would say, 0:03:47.400 --> 0:03:50.680 I read little Brother in middle school, and now I'm 0:03:50.720 --> 0:03:55.320 a hacker and I work on helping people bright their shits. 0:03:55.160 --> 0:03:56.880 And like now they're you're peer, and you're like, wait, 0:03:56.920 --> 0:03:58.160 hold on, how am I older than you? 0:03:58.360 --> 0:04:00.520 Yeah? Yeah, now I've made my peace with I have 0:04:00.560 --> 0:04:03.120 two artificial hips, I had cataract surgery. I'm just a 0:04:03.160 --> 0:04:08.280 fucking old guy. So you know you taught me yoga. Yeah, 0:04:08.680 --> 0:04:11.440 surely you had done yoga before that though, It's true, 0:04:11.520 --> 0:04:13.920 but yeah, yeah, a person who is like sat in 0:04:14.040 --> 0:04:16.640 trees to stop them from being cut down is surely 0:04:16.680 --> 0:04:19.240 done yoga, and I'm also hugged a tree at one point, 0:04:19.560 --> 0:04:21.680 right right right. It's like saying I taught you tie 0:04:21.760 --> 0:04:24.080 dying or something. I'm convinced I did not. I gave 0:04:24.120 --> 0:04:28.560 you your first tofu. Definitely not so like jokingly I 0:04:28.560 --> 0:04:31.760 call this my botnet, but there really is like a 0:04:31.839 --> 0:04:34.640 little army of people who some of their cues they 0:04:34.640 --> 0:04:37.240 took for me. And it was, you know, in the 0:04:37.279 --> 0:04:39.560 sense that an avalanche has a lot of little pebbles 0:04:39.560 --> 0:04:42.640 that start rolling and then eventually something big happens. I 0:04:42.680 --> 0:04:45.039 can see that there's stuff happening in the world where 0:04:45.040 --> 0:04:46.880 I was one of the pebbles. Yeah. So you know, 0:04:46.920 --> 0:04:50.480 this movement to like seize the means of computation, make 0:04:50.640 --> 0:04:53.800 computers work for people and not for their bosses. I 0:04:53.800 --> 0:04:56.920 think there are a lot of participants in that who 0:04:57.560 --> 0:05:00.280 got their start or were inspired to keep you sure 0:05:00.360 --> 0:05:02.360 by reading some of my work, and some of them 0:05:02.440 --> 0:05:06.080 are quite famous for it. The most famous example of 0:05:06.080 --> 0:05:08.560 this is if you watch Citizen four, which is the 0:05:08.839 --> 0:05:13.320 Academy Award winning documentary about Edward Snowden made by Laura Poitras. 0:05:13.520 --> 0:05:16.520 When she's in Hong Kong with him, and he's just 0:05:16.600 --> 0:05:19.719 revealed his identity, and he's about to go underground and 0:05:19.760 --> 0:05:22.440 go live with these Hong Kong activists because they know 0:05:22.520 --> 0:05:24.520 that his identity is going to become public in a 0:05:24.600 --> 0:05:26.359 day when they published that. He did this with the 0:05:26.400 --> 0:05:30.240 intention of going public, and he is grabbing the things 0:05:30.240 --> 0:05:32.680 he's going to need to go underground. He takes a 0:05:32.720 --> 0:05:35.160 copy of my novel Homeland, the sequel to a Little Brother, 0:05:35.640 --> 0:05:38.080 off the bedside table and puts it in his go 0:05:38.120 --> 0:05:41.280 Bagow and Ed and I have since become friends, and 0:05:41.320 --> 0:05:43.840 he wrote the introduction to a reissue of Little Brother 0:05:43.880 --> 0:05:48.240 and Homeland that I'm extremely proud to have. And you 0:05:48.880 --> 0:05:52.360 Ed did what he did for reasons that he wrote 0:05:52.360 --> 0:05:55.080 about in a memoir that's a very very good memoir 0:05:56.040 --> 0:05:58.719 in which my work plays an infinitesimal role, but it 0:05:58.760 --> 0:06:01.440 played a role, right right. Ed had a journey where 0:06:01.520 --> 0:06:04.720 he went from being kind of a chud right if 0:06:04.760 --> 0:06:06.440 you like. This was one of the things that when 0:06:06.440 --> 0:06:08.560 he first came out and we knew who he was, 0:06:08.640 --> 0:06:11.599 and like people found his old ars Technica phost where 0:06:11.640 --> 0:06:13.800 he's like being a bit of an edge lord because 0:06:13.800 --> 0:06:15.400 he was like a kid who aspired to join the 0:06:15.440 --> 0:06:18.640 Special Forces. Right, Yeah, that was like who he was, right, 0:06:18.640 --> 0:06:23.080 but he became someone totally different, and that journey was 0:06:23.080 --> 0:06:26.320 something that a bunch of us helped him down and 0:06:26.360 --> 0:06:29.719 then he did something hugely consequential and important. And so 0:06:30.000 --> 0:06:32.039 you know, I feel like that's you know, when I 0:06:32.080 --> 0:06:34.560 think about the role my work has played, it's not 0:06:34.720 --> 0:06:37.359 the same as the direct action. I didn't leak a 0:06:37.360 --> 0:06:40.680 bunch of documents that revealed the extent of US A spying. 0:06:40.720 --> 0:06:43.560 I didn't risk a firing squad, but I played a 0:06:43.560 --> 0:06:46.680 small role in that extremely important historic juncture. Well. 0:06:46.760 --> 0:06:49.240 I like it because I think that in a weird way, 0:06:49.279 --> 0:06:52.440 writing fiction, when you're not trying to write the book 0:06:52.480 --> 0:06:54.599 that takes down the thing. I mean, we're all trying 0:06:54.640 --> 0:06:56.520 to write the book that takes down the thing. But 0:06:56.680 --> 0:06:58.800 just like doing anything else, we don't take down the 0:06:58.880 --> 0:07:02.279 thing by ourselves. We do it all together. And I 0:07:02.320 --> 0:07:04.240 feel like, in a weird way, even though writing books 0:07:04.240 --> 0:07:06.240 like usually there's only one or two names on it, 0:07:06.640 --> 0:07:10.320 but like ideas don't come from nowhere, Like I love 0:07:10.480 --> 0:07:13.760 that we all get to be part of this great 0:07:14.160 --> 0:07:18.400 woven together like movement of movements and all trying to 0:07:18.400 --> 0:07:20.720 do this stuff together, and I also like how like 0:07:20.720 --> 0:07:23.640 like your work influences is mine, but I also like 0:07:23.920 --> 0:07:27.240 don't have the same politics as you, right sure, and 0:07:27.320 --> 0:07:31.520 like that's great. I love recommending your books. I'm never like, oh, 0:07:31.560 --> 0:07:34.640 I don't know, I don't agree with the following minutia 0:07:34.800 --> 0:07:37.760 of like you know, I'm like, no, like, we need 0:07:37.800 --> 0:07:40.560 books about how we unfuck the world and we need 0:07:40.560 --> 0:07:41.000 them now. 0:07:41.080 --> 0:07:44.840 And something else you were saying last episode was about oh, 0:07:44.880 --> 0:07:45.840 you mean a whole week ago? 0:07:46.160 --> 0:07:48.840 Yeah, yeah, exactly, huh yeah, oh no, it's two days ago. 0:07:49.000 --> 0:07:50.560 This podcast comes out twice a week. 0:07:50.680 --> 0:07:52.240 Yeah, yeah, no. 0:07:52.320 --> 0:07:54.560 I The other thing I took after you was too 0:07:54.640 --> 0:07:57.400 much of a workload. My newsletters only once a week, 0:07:57.440 --> 0:08:00.000 and that's already you know, a lot. But then I 0:08:00.160 --> 0:08:05.600 of my three podcasts a week. Something you were talking 0:08:05.640 --> 0:08:10.200 about before was this idea you brought up, utopian writing, 0:08:10.800 --> 0:08:14.320 and that's not something that people did much of, or 0:08:15.200 --> 0:08:17.880 it got around much, this idea of like what if 0:08:17.880 --> 0:08:20.440 we did things different? Like I feel like for the 0:08:20.520 --> 0:08:24.480 past couple decades until more recently, we mostly saw fiction 0:08:25.280 --> 0:08:29.240 how bad things can get right, And it seems like 0:08:29.360 --> 0:08:32.680 now that things are getting the bad that everyone predicted. 0:08:32.920 --> 0:08:35.360 I remember when reading nineteen eighty four, I was like, oh, yeah, 0:08:35.400 --> 0:08:38.800 TV that spies on you whatever or well right, and 0:08:38.840 --> 0:08:40.960 I'm like, oh no, I have a TV that spies 0:08:41.000 --> 0:08:43.600 on me, and it's just literally cheaper than buying a monitor. 0:08:43.679 --> 0:08:46.080 So I choose to have a TV that spies on 0:08:46.120 --> 0:08:48.040 me because it's cheaper than buying a monitor. 0:08:48.320 --> 0:08:50.520 I would quival with the word choice there. I would 0:08:50.559 --> 0:08:54.600 say something like, you are being bulldozed into it or whatever, right, Sure, yeah, no, 0:08:54.679 --> 0:08:55.720 I appreciate that. 0:08:55.840 --> 0:08:57.920 Yeah, it's true because I'm like, I don't actually consent 0:08:57.960 --> 0:09:00.480 to all this stuff that's happening, just because I want 0:09:00.480 --> 0:09:05.439 to participate in society instead of completely remove myself from it. Yeah, 0:09:05.520 --> 0:09:09.000 but you choose to write what if we could be better? 0:09:09.920 --> 0:09:15.080 And I find that really important because right now I 0:09:15.120 --> 0:09:18.720 think that a lot of us are struggling with imagining 0:09:20.080 --> 0:09:25.720 what we can do besides have flock cameras and endless 0:09:25.800 --> 0:09:30.120 data centers as exactly the wrong moment for data centers, 0:09:30.360 --> 0:09:33.160 exactly the wrong moment for like, let's add way more 0:09:33.240 --> 0:09:34.040 power to the grid. 0:09:34.440 --> 0:09:34.920 Yeah, I don't know. 0:09:35.080 --> 0:09:38.640 I'm curious what brings you towards writing what if we 0:09:38.679 --> 0:09:39.240 could be better. 0:09:39.920 --> 0:09:42.000 Well, I think one of the things that unlocked it 0:09:42.040 --> 0:09:46.520 for me is distinguishing between a dystopia and a story 0:09:46.520 --> 0:09:50.559 with dystopian furniture in it, because like a dystopia, that's orwell, right, 0:09:50.600 --> 0:09:53.880 that's the bootstamping on the human face forever, Yeah, totally, 0:09:54.520 --> 0:09:58.040 Like that's of course, that's dystopian. Yeah, but it is 0:09:58.080 --> 0:10:03.480 not dystopian to imagine that things will break down right, right, okay, 0:10:03.640 --> 0:10:08.200 and it is hopeful to imagine that when they break 0:10:08.240 --> 0:10:10.960 down we can fix them again. The idea that like 0:10:11.080 --> 0:10:14.880 this moment we're at where we have a civilization that, 0:10:15.480 --> 0:10:19.240 at least, if it were more equitably distributed, could meet 0:10:19.240 --> 0:10:23.240 everyone's basic needs, could provide a good quality of life, 0:10:23.280 --> 0:10:26.559 could advance the useful arts and sciences in ways that 0:10:26.720 --> 0:10:30.640 would be beneficial to people, and you know, both by 0:10:30.840 --> 0:10:35.240 delighting them but also by treating their illnesses and so on, 0:10:36.400 --> 0:10:38.600 like that this is a contingent moment we arrived at, 0:10:38.640 --> 0:10:40.520 that we threaded a bunch of needles that we will 0:10:40.520 --> 0:10:43.360 never thread again, and if this breaks down, we'll never 0:10:43.440 --> 0:10:47.160 rebuild it, right, or that we are like fallen from grace, 0:10:47.240 --> 0:10:49.199 and that the people who built this were better than 0:10:49.240 --> 0:10:53.920 us and we have like devolved generation on generation to 0:10:53.920 --> 0:10:55.839 the point where we could never like a very kind 0:10:55.880 --> 0:10:58.640 of renaissancey like, oh, you know, the Greeks could fly 0:10:58.800 --> 0:10:59.520 and you. 0:10:59.480 --> 0:11:02.040 Know whatever, right, Like right, the Victorians could go and 0:11:02.120 --> 0:11:04.040 fight polar bears with their bare hands. 0:11:04.280 --> 0:11:06.760 Sure, right, Yeah. So this idea that there's like this 0:11:06.840 --> 0:11:10.079 stuff that our ancestors did that we will never recover, 0:11:11.080 --> 0:11:14.760 that's very dystopian to me, right, Whereas the idea that 0:11:14.800 --> 0:11:19.199 this stuff that our ancestors built will break down, that's 0:11:19.240 --> 0:11:24.160 not pessimistic. That's just like acknowledging the second law of thermodynamics, right, 0:11:24.240 --> 0:11:27.120 like things fall apart, right, the second law of thermodynamics 0:11:27.400 --> 0:11:30.080 should not be up for grabs, unless maybe if you're 0:11:30.120 --> 0:11:33.240 writing fantasy, certainly not if you're writing science fiction. But 0:11:33.640 --> 0:11:36.679 the idea that we can beat back entropy, that we 0:11:36.679 --> 0:11:41.640 can like build collective projects that bring us to a 0:11:41.720 --> 0:11:45.080 place where we can meet our needs and solve our 0:11:45.120 --> 0:11:48.560 problems and take care of one another, that like that 0:11:48.640 --> 0:11:51.760 feels to me like a very optimistic thing, especially if 0:11:51.760 --> 0:11:55.360 we can do it under conditions of extremis and difficulty, 0:11:55.400 --> 0:11:58.440 Because it's easy to imagine, for example, that like in 0:11:58.440 --> 0:12:01.479 a society with rule of law where we have relatively 0:12:01.679 --> 0:12:06.760 stable political situation, where you have people who are you know, 0:12:06.840 --> 0:12:09.040 have their basic needs met and so on, that you 0:12:09.080 --> 0:12:11.240 could embark on a research program that ends up doing 0:12:11.280 --> 0:12:15.280 something to you know, help people with cancer or come 0:12:15.360 --> 0:12:18.600 up with a vaccine for some horrible disease or whatever. Right, 0:12:19.000 --> 0:12:22.400 it's harder to imagine that, like in conditions of breakdown, Right, 0:12:22.440 --> 0:12:25.360 it's hard to imagine, like, if you're in Ukraine at 0:12:25.360 --> 0:12:28.080 this moment or Russia at this moment, how you would 0:12:28.080 --> 0:12:30.360 do that because so many of your resources are being 0:12:30.760 --> 0:12:36.080 turned to pointless war, and you know you're in Russia especially, 0:12:36.160 --> 0:12:37.839 the rule of law is breaking down because the war 0:12:37.880 --> 0:12:40.800 is very unpopular. And so there's this you know, whatever 0:12:40.880 --> 0:12:43.480 rule of law persisted before is now being jettisoned in 0:12:43.520 --> 0:12:45.840 the name of you know, crushing descent so that the 0:12:45.880 --> 0:12:48.520 country can prosecute its war to a lesser extense. Happening 0:12:48.520 --> 0:12:51.320 in Ukraine where we're seeing the disruption of regular elections 0:12:51.320 --> 0:12:54.120 and so on. Yeah, So, like, for me, a very 0:12:54.120 --> 0:12:57.320 hopeful story is a story in which people in extremists, right, 0:12:57.400 --> 0:13:04.560 people surrounded by dystopian furniture find the collective will, the ingenuity, 0:13:05.840 --> 0:13:13.440 the gumption, right, sure, yeah, the stick toitiveness to actually say, well, fuck, 0:13:13.520 --> 0:13:15.600 all of society is just shut down, and we still 0:13:15.600 --> 0:13:17.880 need an MR and a vaccine. We're just gonna fucking 0:13:17.960 --> 0:13:21.160 do it, right, And like, that's a very hopeful thing, right, 0:13:21.240 --> 0:13:24.640 like to snatch victory out of the jaws to defeat 0:13:24.679 --> 0:13:27.880 that way is not utopian in the sense that utopia 0:13:27.960 --> 0:13:31.240 literally means no place right everything that can happen. I 0:13:31.280 --> 0:13:36.440 think it's a very achievable, hopeful aspiration. And when you 0:13:36.480 --> 0:13:41.559 think back to the ancestors who created the circumstance in 0:13:41.600 --> 0:13:44.280 which we had stable politics, the rule of law, and 0:13:44.360 --> 0:13:47.320 the political and fiscal breathing space to embark on ambitious 0:13:47.360 --> 0:13:50.960 research projects to address human needs, they built that stuff 0:13:51.000 --> 0:13:54.320 in a moment of adversity, right, Like they start from 0:13:54.360 --> 0:13:56.920 peace and then build it. They got the peace by 0:13:56.960 --> 0:14:00.200 building it, right, And so yeah, it's easier to do 0:14:00.240 --> 0:14:04.120 that stuff when you have peace and stability, but it can't. 0:14:04.160 --> 0:14:07.200 It's not a prerequisite. It's never been a prerequisite. And right, 0:14:07.240 --> 0:14:08.800 if they did it, we can do it well. 0:14:08.840 --> 0:14:10.760 And it's just because something's hard doesn't mean that we 0:14:10.800 --> 0:14:13.680 shouldn't try to do it and believe in ourselves to 0:14:13.720 --> 0:14:13.920 do it. 0:14:13.960 --> 0:14:14.959 No, this this makes sense. 0:14:15.000 --> 0:14:17.160 It's like something that they bring up a lot as 0:14:17.160 --> 0:14:22.000 people watch trans writes and LGBT rights disappear at a you. 0:14:21.960 --> 0:14:23.400 Know, terrifying pace. 0:14:23.560 --> 0:14:26.840 Right, But it's like, yeah, but we got those rights 0:14:27.680 --> 0:14:29.920 in the case of gay men during more or less 0:14:29.920 --> 0:14:34.960 a genocide, right, right, Like people were fighting while literally 0:14:35.040 --> 0:14:38.920 dying in mass and like, you know, everything that we've gotten, 0:14:39.560 --> 0:14:42.280 we have built, we have fought for, we have gotten 0:14:42.480 --> 0:14:45.080 and so it's like, yeah, it's gotten harder again, and 0:14:45.120 --> 0:14:48.800 it it's really annoying. It's really annoying because I want 0:14:48.800 --> 0:14:50.600 to be fighting climate change and instead I have to 0:14:50.600 --> 0:14:55.000 be fighting fascism. Like this is like really frustrating, but 0:14:55.920 --> 0:14:57.080 we've done it before. 0:14:57.560 --> 0:15:01.640 And the movement that defeats fascism, right, we'll have the solidarity, 0:15:02.200 --> 0:15:08.280 the infrastructure, the membership, the trust relationships to fight climate change. 0:15:08.440 --> 0:15:09.920 You know. One of the things that like I'm at 0:15:09.920 --> 0:15:12.360 great pains to talk to people about in this moment 0:15:12.560 --> 0:15:18.360 of changing political views and changing political climate and reality 0:15:18.920 --> 0:15:22.280 is that shopping isn't politics. You can't vote with your 0:15:22.320 --> 0:15:24.960 wallet and that, like and they're like, well, what about 0:15:25.000 --> 0:15:28.080 boycott's And I'm like, boycott is not going to the 0:15:28.080 --> 0:15:30.760 grocery store and then thinking really hard about what you're 0:15:30.760 --> 0:15:34.240 going to buy. That wasn't BDS, That wasn't the boycott 0:15:34.240 --> 0:15:38.440 against apartheid. It is an articulated political movement that it's 0:15:38.480 --> 0:15:40.120 not a thing you do on your own. A boycott 0:15:40.160 --> 0:15:41.920 is a thing where you have to go to meetings, right, 0:15:41.960 --> 0:15:45.040 you have to somewhat some boring fuck is reading Robert's 0:15:45.080 --> 0:15:47.800 rules of orders. There is a stupid argument about who's 0:15:47.800 --> 0:15:51.000 going to wash the cups afterwards? Like that's how like 0:15:51.080 --> 0:15:56.600 boycotts are not. They are ineluctively collective action. And you know, 0:15:56.760 --> 0:15:59.520 the Montgomery bus boycott was not three hundred and eighty 0:15:59.560 --> 0:16:02.520 consecutive days of people deciding to walk to work. It 0:16:02.560 --> 0:16:06.320 was an organized movement mostly run by black communists who 0:16:06.400 --> 0:16:10.560 had specific goals that they articulated on a national stage. 0:16:10.960 --> 0:16:14.480 They had just kind of material stuff like carpools, but 0:16:14.520 --> 0:16:16.720 they also had like an organization that would go and 0:16:16.840 --> 0:16:20.040 lean on bosses that disciplined workers for being late because 0:16:20.040 --> 0:16:21.840 they were taking a carpool instead of the bus. 0:16:22.040 --> 0:16:24.320 I like that phrasing lean on Yeah, that does a 0:16:24.320 --> 0:16:25.400 lot of lifting, yeah yeah. 0:16:25.440 --> 0:16:28.360 And it may seem like, well, that was a lot 0:16:28.400 --> 0:16:32.120 of overhead that they had to put in to like 0:16:32.320 --> 0:16:35.480 take in a carpool. But the overhead was a feature, 0:16:35.600 --> 0:16:37.840 not a bug. Because when after three hundred and eighty 0:16:37.920 --> 0:16:41.440 days they broke segregation on that bus line, they had 0:16:41.440 --> 0:16:44.760 a movement that became the basis of the civil rights movement. Right, 0:16:44.840 --> 0:16:47.240 those people became the backbone of the civil rights movement. 0:16:47.320 --> 0:16:49.520 And this is that brian Ne no quote about developed underground. 0:16:49.560 --> 0:16:51.120 You know, five thousand people bought the record, but they 0:16:51.160 --> 0:16:53.240 all started a band. You know, five thousand people were 0:16:53.240 --> 0:16:55.640 involved in organizing the Montgomery bus boycott, and they all 0:16:55.680 --> 0:16:58.440 started a group somewhere in America that fought, you know, 0:16:58.520 --> 0:17:02.040 for racial justice. So you know, like the fact that 0:17:02.120 --> 0:17:04.240 you have to get involved in organize politics to fight 0:17:04.240 --> 0:17:08.240 for trans rights again is very frustrating because we thought 0:17:08.240 --> 0:17:11.880 we'd want a bunch of those fights, right, and that 0:17:11.960 --> 0:17:14.479 movement will serve us well in fighting fascism, and then 0:17:14.520 --> 0:17:18.320 the anti fascist move will service well in fighting climate emergency, right, 0:17:18.400 --> 0:17:21.760 because like the infrastructure of a movement is itself a 0:17:21.920 --> 0:17:27.119 useful thing to have over and above the immediate goals 0:17:27.119 --> 0:17:28.080 that the movement pursues. 0:17:28.200 --> 0:17:30.760 Yeah, no, you're right, And like I forget this all 0:17:30.800 --> 0:17:33.199 the time, right, because it's so easy to get lost 0:17:33.359 --> 0:17:37.040 in immediate fights and like crisis and stuff like that. 0:17:37.240 --> 0:17:40.080 But like I remember, I showed up to Asheville a 0:17:40.160 --> 0:17:42.680 day or two after Helene because I have a basement 0:17:42.680 --> 0:17:45.040 full of prepper stuff and my friends needed it. So 0:17:45.080 --> 0:17:47.000 it drove down there with a van and you know, 0:17:47.119 --> 0:17:50.520 talked with people who are organizing, and it really was 0:17:50.640 --> 0:17:53.960 direct and clear. The degree to which any given town 0:17:54.640 --> 0:17:58.640 was resilient was the degree to which there were organized 0:17:58.720 --> 0:18:01.439 people there. Like basically, someone was like, look, if that 0:18:01.480 --> 0:18:03.480 town had anarchists and they were getting stuff done, that 0:18:03.600 --> 0:18:06.480 town did better. And it wasn't like they went to 0:18:06.560 --> 0:18:09.199 the anarchist meeting. There's other groups that were doing this 0:18:09.280 --> 0:18:13.400 as well. But it was like the harm reduction group, right, 0:18:13.720 --> 0:18:16.080 the people who sit around and figure out how do 0:18:16.080 --> 0:18:19.840 we distribute needles, have a system by which they distribute things, 0:18:20.119 --> 0:18:22.400 and they have people who trust them. And so then 0:18:22.960 --> 0:18:25.399 I show up into Ashville and they're like, hey, you 0:18:25.440 --> 0:18:27.880 have a van, we know you, we trust you. Go 0:18:28.000 --> 0:18:31.960 drive it up into the county to the harm reduction 0:18:32.080 --> 0:18:34.240 the rural harm reduction group that is doing this stuff. 0:18:34.400 --> 0:18:35.920 Now you're you're. 0:18:35.760 --> 0:18:38.040 Absolutely right, and I want to talk to you about 0:18:38.720 --> 0:18:40.920 one of the ways you've described on fucking the world. 0:18:41.720 --> 0:18:44.480 Before you do this, I want a little sidebar here. 0:18:44.600 --> 0:18:47.199 Have you ever read Eric Flint? No, I don't think so. 0:18:47.240 --> 0:18:49.440 The name sounds familiar, so Eric, he's dad. 0:18:49.480 --> 0:18:49.640 Now. 0:18:49.880 --> 0:18:54.000 Eric was a Marxist meat packing union organizer from Chicago 0:18:54.600 --> 0:18:58.880 who wrote left wing military science fiction for Baine Books, 0:18:59.160 --> 0:19:02.919 the home of the most reaction or military fiction in 0:19:02.960 --> 0:19:06.480 the world. So he was an incredible guy. We were 0:19:06.480 --> 0:19:09.320 on a panel together at a World con on labor 0:19:09.359 --> 0:19:13.440 politics and science fiction about how little labor organizing shows 0:19:13.520 --> 0:19:15.480 up and even during an era in which there's a 0:19:15.520 --> 0:19:18.840 lot of labor organizing. And his thesis was that the 0:19:18.880 --> 0:19:21.399 core readership of science fiction, which were people who knew 0:19:21.400 --> 0:19:25.440 something about electronics and engineering, had such high demand as 0:19:25.520 --> 0:19:28.400 workers in that moment that they just never thought about 0:19:28.440 --> 0:19:30.720 labor politics because they were getting from scarcity what you 0:19:30.720 --> 0:19:32.960 would otherwise need solidarity to get, and so they didn't 0:19:32.960 --> 0:19:34.879 really think of it. It's just the samething that happened 0:19:34.880 --> 0:19:39.320 to computer software engineers thirty years later or forty years later. 0:19:39.400 --> 0:19:42.080 So Eric wrote this long running series. The first film 0:19:42.160 --> 0:19:44.720 is called I believe sixteen thirty seven. It's a year, 0:19:45.359 --> 0:19:49.640 and it is about a strange event in which some 0:19:49.760 --> 0:19:53.400 kind of time storm hits a town in Virginia that's 0:19:53.440 --> 0:19:56.520 a union coal mining town on the evening that the 0:19:56.560 --> 0:20:00.439 head of the United mind Workers union is wring the 0:20:00.480 --> 0:20:03.800 coal boss's daughter at the union hall, and the union 0:20:03.840 --> 0:20:05.800 hall and the whole town are transported back to the 0:20:05.800 --> 0:20:09.679 middle of the Thirty Years War. Okay, yeah, no, I 0:20:09.680 --> 0:20:11.800 have to read this. So they've got a coal mine, 0:20:11.800 --> 0:20:14.479 they've got a power plant, they've got the school library 0:20:14.520 --> 0:20:17.920 which explains how to build a civilization from scratch, and 0:20:18.640 --> 0:20:22.080 all of the groups within the town become factors in 0:20:22.400 --> 0:20:24.160 this movement in the middle of the Thirty Years War 0:20:24.520 --> 0:20:28.760 to build a new egalitarian democratic project in the middle 0:20:28.760 --> 0:20:32.679 of the Thirty Years War in Central Europe. So like 0:20:32.760 --> 0:20:35.960 among other things, the girls cheerleading squad are also the 0:20:36.000 --> 0:20:39.880 ski shooting team, and they hire themselves to King Olaf 0:20:39.960 --> 0:20:44.440