Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did Cool Stuff, the
Speaker 1: podcast that does what it says and the inside all.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and every week I tell
Speaker 1: you about rebels and revolutionaries and school teachers. This week
Speaker 1: it's school teachers. Actually it's all three rebels, revolutionaries and
Speaker 1: school teachers. But anyway, our guest today is James Stout.
Speaker 1: How are you doing, James? I'm doing very well. Thank you.
Speaker 1: I'm very excited to learn about someone who is all
Speaker 1: those three things. James. Have you ever been in a school? Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: I have multiple times. Actually, how did how did that
Speaker 1: go for you? Well? Mixed experiences. To be honest, I've
Speaker 1: found it difficult both in their teaching and learning role,
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of discipline. What would you
Speaker 1: say that you're a teacher? Sometimes? Yeah? I can. I
Speaker 1: can sometimes be a teacher. That's a thing I can be. Okay, Okay,
Speaker 1: just just taking notes, okay. And our producer is Sophie.
Speaker 1: How are you doing today, Sophie? I'm doing well. Margaret,
Speaker 1: thank you for asking. How are you? I'm doing okay.
Speaker 1: I I'm completely wired on caffeine because I'm drinking a
Speaker 1: sparkling water that has a tiny amount of black tea
Speaker 1: in it, And are you drinking carbonation while podcasting? Oh fuck,
Speaker 1: you've told me that I'm not supposed to do this. Okay,
Speaker 1: but anyway, I basically don't drink caffeine, so this is
Speaker 1: gonna be extra fun. I'm personally very excited about it.
Speaker 1: Ian edits our audio and on women wrote the theme music.
Speaker 1: So okay, there's this movie that I think rules and
Speaker 1: is not the subject of what we're talking about. Is
Speaker 1: also not Night Riders. It's called The Trotsky. Have you
Speaker 1: ever seen The Trotsky? Either of you? Trotsky? Does it?
Speaker 1: Does it have any ice pick scenes? Know? What it is? Is?
Speaker 1: It's It's from two tho nine. It's Canadian. It's about
Speaker 1: a rich kid who thinks he's the reincarnation of Leon Trotsky. Amazing.
Speaker 1: He pisces off his dad by organizing his workers, so
Speaker 1: his dad sends him to public school as like punishment,
Speaker 1: and so he starts organizing the students. And the point
Speaker 1: of me telling you about this movie that I quite like,
Speaker 1: there's a part at the end where, um, some wild
Speaker 1: shifts happening and a character is forced to make a
Speaker 1: speech to rile up the students and His speech is
Speaker 1: really simple. He's like school sucks. Right. People are like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm paraphrasing, but you know whatever, He's like, should it should?
Speaker 1: Should school fucking suck? No? And okay, that's a really
Speaker 1: simple part of a movie, right. But I think about
Speaker 1: this all the time, like school shouldn't suck? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's When I was a kid, I hated school. I
Speaker 1: dreaded school. I developed an anxiety disorder in order to
Speaker 1: make myself actually sick in order to not go to
Speaker 1: school whenever possible. But kids needn't need in education, and
Speaker 1: parents need childcare, and school should exist. They just need
Speaker 1: to be really different. So there have been tons of
Speaker 1: people throughout time who have worked on that, and there
Speaker 1: have been experiments that have lasted generations, some continue to
Speaker 1: the day. But today I'm going to talk about some
Speaker 1: of my favorite I'm watching James get excitedly be talking
Speaker 1: about He's gonna be great. I'm gonna talk about some
Speaker 1: of my favorite such experiments, including the modern school, popular education,
Speaker 1: and the ideas of a Spanish anarchist whose name is
Speaker 1: Francisco Ferdair. But I'm gonna accidentally call him for our
Speaker 1: over and over again because there's a bunch of people
Speaker 1: in my family named for our and so every time
Speaker 1: I see this, I think for our, but for their Anyway,
Speaker 1: that's not the important part. Francisco over threw assumptions about
Speaker 1: popular education, and his ideas got him murdered by the
Speaker 1: Spanish state. But his ideas outlasted him, like all of
Speaker 1: the best ideas do. So. But before I talk about him,
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about nineteenth century education and some of
Speaker 1: Francisco's precursors, who I like, maybe just as much, some
Speaker 1: of them, I maybe even like more. Um, how you
Speaker 1: how how much of I'm I'm curious because maybe people
Speaker 1: know that I don't always tell the guests that they're
Speaker 1: going to be on about, and I did not tell
Speaker 1: James what we're gonna be talking about. Is this a
Speaker 1: you heard all these folks? Yeah? Yeah, First of all,
Speaker 1: this has complete surprise to me. It's a nice surprise. Um,
Speaker 1: it's like Christmas without all the problematic baggage. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: I have. I am. I wrote a decent amount about
Speaker 1: like the chapter in my dissertation about how how the
Speaker 1: Popular Front you want to call it the Popular Front right,
Speaker 1: like how anti fascist organizing tried to reimagine education in
Speaker 1: an anti fascist way, and how anarchists sports groups specifically
Speaker 1: tried to build physical education into education because they were
Speaker 1: really bummed that working class kids kept dying of tuberculosis
Speaker 1: or like engaging in child labor and then coming out
Speaker 1: like people can't see me because this is an audio medium,
Speaker 1: but they come out like stunted or otherwise physically disabled,
Speaker 1: um from working in factories from a young age or drowning,
Speaker 1: big big thing with teaching working class kids to swim,
Speaker 1: So I'm familiar with that. And then do the history
Speaker 1: of like anti fascist sports, so British nineteenth century education
Speaker 1: and ideas of like muscular Christianity and like using education
Speaker 1: to create young officers for the empire, using sport within
Speaker 1: the education to like do violence but stick to the
Speaker 1: rules and do as you're told. Like that that's why
Speaker 1: sport exists and where we took play and made it
Speaker 1: into sport. If there's a different things, right, support has rules,
Speaker 1: play doesn't. And so I'm very familiar with the discourse
Speaker 1: on like Robert Arnold and the Rugby school and muscular Christianity.
Speaker 1: But I'm excited about this. Awesome, Yeah, no, this is good.
Speaker 1: You have. I was thinking, I was excited to have
Speaker 1: you as the guest for this one. So we're gonna
Speaker 1: lay our scene. Okay, wait, no, no no not. I keep
Speaker 1: thinking about the players sport thing. Um, did you grow
Speaker 1: up in in Calvin and Habbs No, okay, don't know.
Speaker 1: It's an American thing. There's this thing called Calvin Ball
Speaker 1: that they play. Okay, and Calvin plays Calvin Ball and
Speaker 1: it Calvin Ball has rules. The rules change whenever you
Speaker 1: want them to constantly, um, and it is just the
Speaker 1: most fun game. You just go out and with the
Speaker 1: ball and your friends and you make up new rules
Speaker 1: as you go. And everyone's like, no, but that's a touchdown,
Speaker 1: Like no, it's a I don't know I know about sports,
Speaker 1: Steven fake this right now and touchdown. Yeah yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: it's just I mean one of our friend Daniel, a
Speaker 1: mutual friend, Daniel like went to Italy recently and discovered
Speaker 1: some of these folk football traditions, which it's funny like
Speaker 1: every couple of years they'll pop up on Twitter and
Speaker 1: they'll be like, look at this crazy historical ship where
Speaker 1: people like play this ancient form of a game and
Speaker 1: like football, right, like what you guys call soccer, we
Speaker 1: what we used to call soccer, right actually, because yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a contraction of association football. So a sock is
Speaker 1: a contraction of association Yeah, idea about this, yes, because
Speaker 1: it's it's it's football with rules as opposed to ship
Speaker 1: folk football where that you can find all these were
Speaker 1: like two villages would have a competition, right, and they'd
Speaker 1: have inflated pigs bladder and it's like you get the
Speaker 1: pigs bladder into the opposing village, you score a point
Speaker 1: or you win the game, and like you know, stabbing
Speaker 1: is frowned upon, Like you know, it's really not completely
Speaker 1: like gentlemanly to use like both narrows or ranged weapons.
Speaker 1: But I know that you fucking send it, like you
Speaker 1: get the balload, pick it up, you can get you
Speaker 1: do what you need to do, like and that these
Speaker 1: are the like these are the play routes which long
Speaker 1: predate sport, right, But there British imperialism takes that and
Speaker 1: it's like, no, we need to make young men to
Speaker 1: beata rules so they can go to other countries and
Speaker 1: do colonialism. And from there we get sports and we
Speaker 1: get the rules, and we get this French aristocratic called
Speaker 1: Pierre the Kubita who codifies a lot of these things
Speaker 1: in Olympics, and okay, and then we continue to use
Speaker 1: that to reinforce like fascism right like we're doing right
Speaker 1: now in Italy and we did in ninety six. And
Speaker 1: it's great. There's no problems with it. Yeah, No, everything
Speaker 1: is going great. That is what people say about the
Speaker 1: world right now. Um, nice and toasty the world right
Speaker 1: now and getting toastier where it is cozy is what
Speaker 1: everyone wants. Um. Yeah, anyone who's listening, if you listen
Speaker 1: to my Spanish Civil War episode with Jimmy Loftus, all
Speaker 1: of the stuff about the anti fascist Olympics came from
Speaker 1: James James's dissertation that they sent me before, um, while
Speaker 1: I was working on that episode. So all this stuff
Speaker 1: is going to come up a lot, and I'm really
Speaker 1: excited about But I didn't know any of that ship.
Speaker 1: But like this concept of like play and things like
Speaker 1: that is relate to education, and so we're gonna lay
Speaker 1: our scene in nineteenth century France where a lot of
Speaker 1: it's going to start, even though it's a story about
Speaker 1: twentieth century Spain. Later, but you know, whatever, in the
Speaker 1: late nineteenth century education of France was in turmoil. On
Speaker 1: one hand, you had the Catholics. They wanted to teach
Speaker 1: without state interference. On the other hand, you had the liberals.
Speaker 1: Basically they the secularists, and they wanted to teach without
Speaker 1: church interference, but they wanted very much state interference, right,
Speaker 1: And then you have the people who were like, well,
Speaker 1: what if we teach without state interference and without church interference.
Speaker 1: And you have this idea of popular education, which means
Speaker 1: education of the people, not like people like it, or
Speaker 1: pop education and popular as a million meanings, and basically
Speaker 1: popular education was like, hey, what if the working class
Speaker 1: got to be educated too? And in Nordic countries you
Speaker 1: get this thing called folk high school. It's really interesting
Speaker 1: to me that, um, what you're talking about about, like
Speaker 1: folk football and stuff like I hate The only reason
Speaker 1: I'm ad at the Nazis is that they took the
Speaker 1: term folk and made it a bad thing. Well, I
Speaker 1: guess I have these have to be mad at the
Speaker 1: Nazis for more than that. If I'm mad about them
Speaker 1: taking the word in the first place, it done to
Speaker 1: my other unfortunate stuff you have. But that's one of
Speaker 1: the bad things yeah, totally. Actually they're responsible for why
Speaker 1: airship travel is not popular, but that is a story
Speaker 1: for another time. Yeah, they've pready let it down. Um
Speaker 1: so all right, it was about okay, so you have
Speaker 1: full high schools. They start in Denmark, and except the
Speaker 1: airship chaining is true, but they started Denmark in the
Speaker 1: eighteen forties, not the airships, the full high schools, and
Speaker 1: the and full high schools were different everywhere. They actually
Speaker 1: still exist there. But the idea is basically like fuck
Speaker 1: degrees fun, only rich people learning ship, Let's just teach kids.
Speaker 1: And especially at first, this meant like teach kids about
Speaker 1: democracy and ship like that in a boarding school environment. Um.
Speaker 1: And it's kind of interesting because I feel like it's
Speaker 1: not reversed now, but it's a little bit different now.
Speaker 1: In the nineteenth century, at least in at least in
Speaker 1: the European context or the Western context or whatever, people
Speaker 1: who were obsessed with book learning and formal education were
Speaker 1: the more of the conservatives and progressive types at the
Speaker 1: time thought books were swell, but they cared about hands
Speaker 1: on instruction and they cared about integrating words. And it
Speaker 1: was this thing that we'll talk to about more called
Speaker 1: integrated education, um, where the body and the mind are
Speaker 1: not so fucking separate. Meanwhile, in Western countries you get
Speaker 1: leftists and Marxists and anarchists, um, especially the anarcho syndicalists,
Speaker 1: and they're all talking about how to teach the working class.
Speaker 1: And the Republicans again um, not the Republican Party, but
Speaker 1: people who are like, let's not have kings anymore. They
Speaker 1: were on this too. And the third Republican France, which
Speaker 1: gets touched on in the Paris Commune episode, gets called
Speaker 1: the Republic of Teachers France. In particular, one of the
Speaker 1: main goals of the popular education movement was actually to
Speaker 1: teach people to not be anti Semites anymore. I didn't
Speaker 1: realize this, but the the drey Fist affair, which we'll
Speaker 1: get to a little bit later in this basically they
Speaker 1: were like, oh, we should probably teach people about there's
Speaker 1: like other people in the world and that other people
Speaker 1: are people, and uh you know, um, so yeah, one
Speaker 1: of the goals of it. And in this environment we
Speaker 1: get our our first named hero for today. You get
Speaker 1: Paul Robin. Have you ever heard of Paul Robin? I
Speaker 1: think I have no. Well, Paul Robin is a Frenchman,
Speaker 1: despite his name not sounding French at all to me.
Speaker 1: But what do I know. He was from the middle
Speaker 1: class and he wound up being at least called by
Speaker 1: some historians or the storian that I read anyway, specifically
Speaker 1: about this quote the greatest socialist educator of the nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I don't know. I after reading this, I
Speaker 1: I have no particular doubts that he might have been
Speaker 1: the greatest socialist educator of the nineteenth century. He was
Speaker 1: born in eighteen thirty seven in Toulon, Mediterranean city in France.
Speaker 1: His family was devoutly Catholic in military and he went
Speaker 1: off to school. And once he went up to school,
Speaker 1: he was like, actually, I don't know about this stuff
Speaker 1: I was raised with. I'm gonna become a free thinker.
Speaker 1: Um specifically, he became something known as a positivist, which
Speaker 1: I never run across before. You know, this positivism thing.
Speaker 1: I might have vaguely head of it, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: ring any like, I can't have a care and concept
Speaker 1: of what that means. Yeah, totally. And you know there's
Speaker 1: always like, you know, one day someone's going to look
Speaker 1: back and be like and then they were you know,
Speaker 1: they'll look at all the weird demarcations we have about
Speaker 1: ourselves in the early twenty one century and be like, huh,
Speaker 1: they were on some weird ship. Um, yes, I think
Speaker 1: they will access to the Twitter arc I've will make
Speaker 1: it very clear that we're on some weird ship. And yeah, sorry,
Speaker 1: sometimes I think about that. They think about like if
Speaker 1: I was doing my dissertation but they had Twitter, like
Speaker 1: I would just be like fuck, like, like what to
Speaker 1: do with all this? You know, like when they look
Speaker 1: back at our history, and especially the history of the left,
Speaker 1: maybe they'll be like as I don't know, maybe as
Speaker 1: bamboo still as I am when I look at the
Speaker 1: left in seven in Spain when they keep shooting each
Speaker 1: other and I'm like why, Yeah, it'll be like and
Speaker 1: then the cat Boys got into a fight with the
Speaker 1: Primitivest and You're like, what I thought they were all
Speaker 1: on the same side. I don't get it. Bedroom discourse
Speaker 1: completely at bed time discourse divided the left and yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: what a good future we have to look for. No,
Speaker 1: it's all gonna We're gonna learn from the lessons of
Speaker 1: the past. That's why we have shows like mine and
Speaker 1: shows like yours. I didn't actually introduce that you also
Speaker 1: have a podcast. You have a podcast? What is your podcast?
Speaker 1: I do do it Could Happen Here, which is a
Speaker 1: podcast where we talk about things that could happen here
Speaker 1: or have already happened, or already increasingly things that are
Speaker 1: already happening, which is quite disturbing to listen. Drinking disturbed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so if maybe you maybe you should listen. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: the list. Yeah, but I put that on the schedule
Speaker 1: and you don't have yeah, so if he doesn't have
Speaker 1: much to do, so it's good to day with podcasts.
Speaker 1: I need more podcasts in my life immediately. I've been
Speaker 1: not listening as many podcasts because I haven't been I'm
Speaker 1: on book tour and I haven't been um working around
Speaker 1: the house like cleaning and making stuff and like painting
Speaker 1: the wall or whatever it is wanting. Anyway, whatever, you
Speaker 1: listen to podcast, dear listener, I appreciate that you listen
Speaker 1: to it. Okay, positivism and okay, so free finkers. First
Speaker 1: of all, free thinkers are basically like kind of like
Speaker 1: early atheists. I mean, obviously there's people didn't believe in
Speaker 1: God going back whenever, right, But free thinking was basically
Speaker 1: like it's a little bit less like we are atheists,
Speaker 1: and it's a little bit different than like we are
Speaker 1: agnostic and we kind of don't know. Freethinking was like,
Speaker 1: we believe that people should be able to think about
Speaker 1: the ship themselves without like just following church doctrine um.
Speaker 1: And a lot of them ended up atheistic, and a
Speaker 1: lot of them ended up essentially heretical. As far as
Speaker 1: I can tell, I don't know. UM. Positivism is a
Speaker 1: philosophy that holds basically, shit is either true or it isn't.
Speaker 1: Science is the way that you find out if something
Speaker 1: is true or not true. It's kind of just an
Speaker 1: anti superstition sort of thing if you can't prove that
Speaker 1: something is true rejected. I'm not a positivist, but in
Speaker 1: a world ruled by the church, this sort of makes
Speaker 1: to me is a decent step of rejection. So our
Speaker 1: guy Paul Robin, he's really into Darwin and he's really
Speaker 1: into not the church. He's like just not into the
Speaker 1: church at all. And he also gets into socialism. But interestingly,
Speaker 1: it was this positivism that drew him to the radical
Speaker 1: left of the left, towards the anarchists or as they
Speaker 1: saw him, solve themselves at the time, like the Prude
Speaker 1: hoist because he's in France at the time and there's
Speaker 1: this whatever anyway, Um, because Marks my, your abenitycher to
Speaker 1: do that. That could have been an hour of podcasting
Speaker 1: right there. Yeah yeah no I um yeah no I
Speaker 1: I life is short yet if you want to hear
Speaker 1: more about Prude on this of the Paris Commune episode.
Speaker 1: So Marks and all the other socialists, they were not
Speaker 1: all the other many of the other socialists, they're into
Speaker 1: political parties and political action, like action that happens to
Speaker 1: the state, is what I mean by political action is
Speaker 1: compared to direct action. Uh. But he was into direct action,
Speaker 1: and as he saw it, political action was kind of ephemeral.
Speaker 1: It was kind of superstitious because the state's not real. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so fun femeral things based yeah yeah, yeah. He
Speaker 1: scienced his way into being an at that's amazing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: these rational scientific anarchism. Yeah. Uh. And he gets really
Speaker 1: excited about teaching, so when he finishes school, he becomes
Speaker 1: a teacher. Except they don't really let him do his
Speaker 1: thing in France at the time. They can't they won't
Speaker 1: let him teach how he wants to teach, and because
Speaker 1: he wants to teach in a way that isn't academic,
Speaker 1: because academia is not very positivist by this conception, because
Speaker 1: it's this like ephemeral ivory tower. Yeah, I like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: can identify strongly here, I mean joining this. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: wants to teach it a way that is practical and
Speaker 1: useful to his students, in a way that would be
Speaker 1: useful to the worker rather than to the state. Right,
Speaker 1: And he's um, yeah, he's kind of into this idea
Speaker 1: that the a lot of these people will be talking
Speaker 1: about here, into this idea that school kind of like
Speaker 1: you're saying about how sport is training people to be soldiers.
Speaker 1: School is teaching people to be bureaucrats, is teaching people
Speaker 1: to be like, you know, I would say workers, but
Speaker 1: I mean like the working classesn't even go into school
Speaker 1: most of this time. Yeah, very explicitly so right at
Speaker 1: the end of the like a nineteenth century, certainly by
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century, like it's teaching them to be citizens
Speaker 1: in a nation like Um, I'm sure you're familiar with
Speaker 1: peasants into frenchmen, like the idea, Okay, I can get
Speaker 1: this idea though. Yeah, yeah, it's it's a book, but
Speaker 1: it's the idea that you take all these distinct regional
Speaker 1: identities and then through like one of the things education
Speaker 1: are the ones like roads, trains, military service. You take
Speaker 1: them from being like oh I I am Catlan, I
Speaker 1: am Breton, mask whatever wherever you're from, and turn them
Speaker 1: into French people by like no, like all French people
Speaker 1: shared is common education and they read and write French,
Speaker 1: not not Breton or Catlan. Or make them acceptable to capitalism,
Speaker 1: or make them useful cogs in the machine that produces
Speaker 1: stuff and people who have money. Yeah, so this is
Speaker 1: the stuff that Paul Robin is like, I'm not as
Speaker 1: excited about this um. So he quits, and I like
Speaker 1: this because I've never run this across this like fuck
Speaker 1: lofty fake things like the church, the state, in academia,
Speaker 1: you know, I only like science. And so he starts
Speaker 1: throwing down with the International Labor Movement, which is the
Speaker 1: time mostly called in in Europe, the International and he's
Speaker 1: he throws him with the anarchists, not because he's like
Speaker 1: I am an anarchist, right, but because they're more excited
Speaker 1: about education at that time than Marxist, and they're like
Speaker 1: more willing to kind of listen to him. Who I
Speaker 1: only learned this recently at the Marxists weren't getting called
Speaker 1: Marxist yet. Marxist was first used as a pejorative by
Speaker 1: the anarchists against the Marxists because they're like, oh, you're
Speaker 1: just listening to the Secretary of the International. You just
Speaker 1: keep doing whatever he says, you damn Marxist. And to
Speaker 1: be fair, apparently anarchists, I mean, obviously they got some
Speaker 1: of their name by calling themselves anarchists earlier, but they
Speaker 1: started like really getting called the anarchists as a pejorative
Speaker 1: the Marxists really like when you look at like when
Speaker 1: you look at Spain, right, it's still a phrase I'd
Speaker 1: like to use, actually a phrase I wasn't allowed to
Speaker 1: use my dissertation, which was another topic. That they call
Speaker 1: themselves the libertarian left, and that fits like and also
Speaker 1: like it avoids the like a giant clusterfuck of identities
Speaker 1: that exist within the broad sphere of anarchism, like a
Speaker 1: totally different diagonal flags yeah yeah, which is part of over,
Speaker 1: isn't them sadly lost the word libertarians and at least
Speaker 1: in the United States context, because I'm like, I like
Speaker 1: to take it back. I think it's a really good
Speaker 1: way to appeal to people. I'm diverting the fire and
Speaker 1: like I spent a lot of time in rural areas
Speaker 1: here and grew up in a rural area, and like
Speaker 1: I was been to a tenacious unicorn around specifically a
Speaker 1: couple of times when we've spoken about this. How like
Speaker 1: most people in rural areas do a whole lot of
Speaker 1: anarchists shit, but would hate the label anarchist. But like,
Speaker 1: I think like left libertarian is where we can sometimes
Speaker 1: meet their as people Like you want to have guns
Speaker 1: in of your neighbors truck falls in the ditch, you
Speaker 1: pull it out for them, Like, actually, friend, you're doing anarchism. Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: And you know who else will pull you out of
Speaker 1: a ditch? Um, will they? Sophie. Now, one thing that
Speaker 1: sponsors tend not to have its tow trucks. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, I don't think if you buy enough
Speaker 1: for their products or services, they could buy like a
Speaker 1: big truck, one of those ones with four wheels, and
Speaker 1: then yeah, then they can buy things. What if Triple
Speaker 1: A is our sponsor today. Oh snap, never, that would
Speaker 1: be that would be one of the age stands for anarchists. Yeah,
Speaker 1: totally anarchist automobilis yeah, yeah, yeah, they don't like traffic lights.
Speaker 1: Traffic lights are restriction of personal freedom. Yeah. Well here's
Speaker 1: some advertisers. Okay, we are back and we are talking
Speaker 1: about how the Marxist in the Anarchists. Man, you're like,
Speaker 1: oh god, I'm so glad I'm listening to podcast this
Speaker 1: time on the fucking International in the Marxist the Anarchists
Speaker 1: when they split. But one of the things I think
Speaker 1: it was like really interesting that came out of that
Speaker 1: for me is that, you know, Marx's idea Marx, Marx's
Speaker 1: ideas became the dominant ones because he was the guy
Speaker 1: writing everything down. So not only is history written by
Speaker 1: the victors, but would be victors might want to write
Speaker 1: the history. It's my theory. Yeah. Paul Robin, he's in
Speaker 1: the International. He's pushing for the liberation of education as
Speaker 1: a central plank in the International. And his other main
Speaker 1: thing is feminism on including women's work within the labor movement,
Speaker 1: which is really contentious at the time, and not just
Speaker 1: this isn't like an anarchist versus Marxist split. This is
Speaker 1: a decent humans versus not decent humans split. And basically
Speaker 1: it is like, along with a few other people, he's like,
Speaker 1: women need equal pay, equal voice within the union. Um,
Speaker 1: women shouldn't just be fucking servants of their husbands. And
Speaker 1: do you mean to tell me that gender is not
Speaker 1: false consciousness? Uh I, I don't know. Maybe, okay, sorry, Um,
Speaker 1: I think I think I think it's perfectly reasonable to
Speaker 1: say that the struggle for women's liberation is part of
Speaker 1: the struggle for class liberation. And Okay. One of the
Speaker 1: reasons I really like Paul Robin and the way he's
Speaker 1: talking about all this. He's really down for the labor movement.
Speaker 1: But he didn't want like a lot of other people
Speaker 1: on clean some people talk about today. He wasn't like,
Speaker 1: we want education so that the labor movement will be strong.
Speaker 1: He was like, I want a labor movement so that
Speaker 1: workers have enough free time to participate meaningfully in their
Speaker 1: own education. Oh cool, Like the three eights thing, the
Speaker 1: three eights thing. Oh yeah, so it's certainly the Spanish
Speaker 1: anarchists had this thing, the three eight or eight hours
Speaker 1: for work, eight hours for education, self improvement in leisure
Speaker 1: and eight hours for sleep. Oh yeah, totally yeah, and
Speaker 1: he's just like, I love it because he's he's education first,
Speaker 1: you know. And it's the same with women's rights. It
Speaker 1: wasn't so that women could join the labor movement. He
Speaker 1: wanted a labor movement so that there would be women's
Speaker 1: rights because women were also workers. And so he was like, well,
Speaker 1: this is what I want. The labor movement is how
Speaker 1: to get it? Um, And that is as someone who
Speaker 1: doesn't like working. Well, actually I like working for myself
Speaker 1: and I'm like working for other people. But anyway, I
Speaker 1: like this about him. And so he's doing this work
Speaker 1: mostly in Brussels. In the late eighteen sixties, he gets
Speaker 1: married and um, the male historian I read about this,
Speaker 1: so I'm not going to call out by name, but
Speaker 1: included his wife's dad's name because his wife's dad was famous,
Speaker 1: and did not include his fucking wife's name. No, incredible,
Speaker 1: incredible speaking of the left. Needs to learn some ship
Speaker 1: magnificent bro leftism. Yeah, after it was like paragraphs of
Speaker 1: being like, and he fought for women's rights, isn't that interesting? Okay?
Speaker 1: And by the late eighteen sixties, coal workers are striking
Speaker 1: across Belgium and nor learned France, and the state did
Speaker 1: what the state would do, give them might nice things
Speaker 1: help the work. No, the state fucked the workers up
Speaker 1: and like shot a bunch of people and arrested a
Speaker 1: bunch of people, intod all of its fucking usual bullshit.
Speaker 1: Really yeah, no, I know, it's um big break from
Speaker 1: the norms for them. Yeah, I'm like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I'm turning to notice a pattern with states in violence. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's almost like even pro state people define a state
Speaker 1: as the monopoly of the legitimate use of force. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I wonder if we should investigate it further. We just
Speaker 1: except no, no, no, yeah, no, except to move on.
Speaker 1: So Paul Robin, he signs a letter of protest against
Speaker 1: police brutality and um, sorry, that's great. What what year
Speaker 1: is this, because how long have we've been trying that ship? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Well what's interested is back then? Yeah, I know, right,
Speaker 1: this is the eighteen sixties, late eighteen sixties is like, hey,
Speaker 1: maybe police to tell is that? But getting op ed
Speaker 1: and it fixed it? Right? Well no, instead they arrested
Speaker 1: him and it's deported him from pell shit for writing
Speaker 1: a fucking signing a letter against police utility. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think I pointed from the great state of Belgium too.
Speaker 1: I know right, Um, there's really good fries there. Uh,
Speaker 1: get choking out, goodbye crasing and so the beer is good.
Speaker 1: I think about this whenever I think, like I get
Speaker 1: asked to sign my name to public letters, and I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll do it if I agree. But people act maybe unfairly,
Speaker 1: maybe I'm being me into public letters, but they act
Speaker 1: like this is this like great thing where everyone's coming
Speaker 1: together signed this public letter, And I'm like, it is
Speaker 1: no skin off of my back to write some public
Speaker 1: letter against police brutality right now. Like it, it will
Speaker 1: not affect my life in any negative way, whereas in
Speaker 1: the eighteen sixties you get fun before it. Yeah, amazing.
Speaker 1: He doesn't really like France, where he's from, so he
Speaker 1: fox off to Switzerland for a while, and then he
Speaker 1: goes back to France because it's eighteen seventy and France
Speaker 1: in eighteen seventies getting spicy. This is the year before
Speaker 1: the alumni of the podcast the Paris Commune and Republicans
Speaker 1: and socialists and it or like, oh, let's like overthrow
Speaker 1: the government. Doesn't that sound fun? They're like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: would overthrow the government with you. And they're like well okay,
Speaker 1: and they like, you know, get engaged over with the
Speaker 1: government together and we all have left unity ever since.
Speaker 1: Um if you want to hear more about that in
Speaker 1: this whole episode about it. The French government though they
Speaker 1: actually don't want to be overthrown. Yeah, no, and I know.
Speaker 1: And so Paul Robin and thirty seven other people get
Speaker 1: arrested for conspiracy and for writing a book full of
Speaker 1: like neat ciphers and instructions on how to make nitro glycerin. Amazing,
Speaker 1: it's the education yeah, yeah, the anarchist cookbook of the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century. Yeah. And I think Paul Robin actually didn't
Speaker 1: have anything to do with this book, but his name
Speaker 1: is in it. There's a cipher for his name written
Speaker 1: into the book. Oh that sucks. I know. He just
Speaker 1: gets railroaded. If you're going to go down for the
Speaker 1: nitroglycerin book, at least write a nitric glycerain book, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but at least people were talking about them by cool
Speaker 1: code names. I would love to get a copy of
Speaker 1: that and find out what his cool code name was okay,
Speaker 1: so and really after that though, the government realized he
Speaker 1: didn't have a choice in whether or not it was
Speaker 1: going to get overthrown because they're Napoleon guy who was
Speaker 1: also named Napoleon. He gets captured and the empire falls
Speaker 1: and the Republicans. The Republic starts and Paul Robin gets
Speaker 1: led out of prison. So, um, if you get arrested
Speaker 1: for trying to overthrow the government, you should hope that
Speaker 1: your friends are like really working on it out there. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He gets out of prison and he's like, you know what,
Speaker 1: I missed my family in Belgium, and he goes back
Speaker 1: to Belgium. Okay, Belgium is like, we actually don't want
Speaker 1: you either. So he gets arrested and deported again back
Speaker 1: to France just in time. Paris Communy doesn't even hit yet.
Speaker 1: He gets back and it's all like in one fucking year.
Speaker 1: He gets back in time to set up one of
Speaker 1: the precursor communes, the Paris Commune, where they take there's
Speaker 1: like several different cities that took over themselves and declared
Speaker 1: an independent city state that just usually last a couple
Speaker 1: of days. His was in the city Breast, which I
Speaker 1: don't know how to pronounce, and I should have looked
Speaker 1: up before I started talking. Yeah, I think that's it.
Speaker 1: It's a bike race, okay, cool? Yeah yeah, yeah, alright,
Speaker 1: So I know, Andy, this is my entire engagement with his,
Speaker 1: most of France specifically, just like living in my car,
Speaker 1: racing bikes. That's awesome. So then it falls right and
Speaker 1: he goes back into fucking exile. So this guy cannot
Speaker 1: catch a break. And this time he goes, ah, where's
Speaker 1: he going? Yeah, where's he going? Now? He gets on
Speaker 1: a boat to London. Have you ever heard of the
Speaker 1: town called London? Yeah? Interesting choice for him because he's
Speaker 1: gotten French speaking places so far, and I'm sure he'll
Speaker 1: encounter notes and a phobi yeah no, I assume not,
Speaker 1: and people. And then he gets he gets there just
Speaker 1: as the fucking Paris Commune starts, and so we has
Speaker 1: to sit there in fomo and survivor's guilt as the
Speaker 1: as his like people trying to live the same dream
Speaker 1: as him, take over the largest city in Europe and
Speaker 1: declared a free place, and like everyone sets up all
Speaker 1: these educational programs and there's all this ship um and
Speaker 1: it and it's basically like sets up all the modern
Speaker 1: Western ideas about how to have a cool revolution, unlike
Speaker 1: the sort of less cool revolutions where you just put
Speaker 1: capitalists in charge. Okay, so meanwhile, all this fucking weird
Speaker 1: in fighting is happening instead of the lovely union of
Speaker 1: all the different revolutionary parties is starting to starting to
Speaker 1: break up. They're they're no longer is enamored with each other.
Speaker 1: The International um Mars basically takes control of the International,
Speaker 1: and he commits it to a single political goal instead
Speaker 1: of a broader coalition. And so when he declares that
Speaker 1: it is now a singular political goal and everyone has
Speaker 1: to agree with all of the things, Marks personally kicked
Speaker 1: Paul Robin out even before he kicked out the anarchists.
Speaker 1: Shortly after, Yeah, shortly thereafter he kicks out the anarchists
Speaker 1: more broadly, and the International fell apart because it actually
Speaker 1: worked better as a coalition. Whoops. Anyway, Paul Robin he's
Speaker 1: an anarchist and that he doesn't like state or capitalism,
Speaker 1: but he doesn't actually really like the other anarchists, and
Speaker 1: I think he's still pretty bitter about this like book
Speaker 1: that got him fucking thrown in prison, and he doesn't
Speaker 1: like how conspiratorial and shipped all the other anarchists he knew,
Speaker 1: because he just wanted to like teach people, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so above all he's an education guy, a women's rights guy,
Speaker 1: and a positivist, a scientist and so and it was
Speaker 1: those ideas that led him to his political beliefs. Right,
Speaker 1: So he goes back to his real love teaching, teaching
Speaker 1: and organizing educational systems, because it's not just enough to
Speaker 1: be a teacher for him. He's also just thinking about
Speaker 1: pedagogy more more broadly. And France at this point has
Speaker 1: swung secular right, it is no longer as much rule
Speaker 1: by the Church and the Third Republicans doing its thing,
Speaker 1: and and so part of its thing is a free,
Speaker 1: obligatory and secular education, which is uh, a fucking step up, right,
Speaker 1: even if it's like, hey, here's how we Peasants into
Speaker 1: Frenchmen or whatever, it's still step up from what the
Speaker 1: fucking Catholics monarchs were doing. And this Protestant, pacifist and
Speaker 1: anti anti semit guy was in charge of primary education.
Speaker 1: So he hooks Paul Robin up with the job. It's like, hey,
Speaker 1: you you're like a cool lefty pedagogy guy. Here's a
Speaker 1: job eighty. He gets and put in charge of an orphanage,
Speaker 1: the provost orphanage. And at very least he's in charge
Speaker 1: of the school at the orphanage. I think he's in
Speaker 1: charge of the entire orphanage itself. And this is where
Speaker 1: he starts doing his most influential work. He's already been
Speaker 1: like part of numerous revolutions and like deported three or
Speaker 1: four times or whatever the funk, right, but taking over
Speaker 1: this orphanage and teaching kids is his influential work that
Speaker 1: changed the world. Most of the other pedagogical thinkers at
Speaker 1: the time remained thinkers, and we're just writing about these ideas,
Speaker 1: like wouldn't it be great if we did this? And
Speaker 1: he's like, well, I got a job, but now I'm
Speaker 1: doing this. And he was really fucking good at administrating
Speaker 1: a school and teaching, and he was in charge of
Speaker 1: hundreds of students. Uh. It was forty eight when he
Speaker 1: first started, and by the end the time he left
Speaker 1: fourteen years later, it is a hundred and eighties students
Speaker 1: at a time at this university. And he believed in
Speaker 1: integrated education. And this is actually I'm kind of kind
Speaker 1: of curious your thoughts about how this this works. It's
Speaker 1: an education that's both intellectual and practical for people from
Speaker 1: all classes. The upper classes need to get their hands dirty,
Speaker 1: the working classes need an opportunity to exercise their intellectual capacity. Uh.
Speaker 1: And and learning is a lifelong pursuit. He wants he
Speaker 1: gives his kids diplomas because he needs they need them
Speaker 1: in the world they're in. He's like that much of
Speaker 1: an ideological asshole, but he um, unlike some of the
Speaker 1: people get to later. But whatever, he wants a world
Speaker 1: without diplomas where because you're never done learning. Um yea,
Speaker 1: And yeah, I still gave his kids diplomas. But and
Speaker 1: everything is taught alongside practical education and also sports and
Speaker 1: like like physical education, um, which I I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm like, yeah, I'm interested to hear. What, Like did
Speaker 1: they do sports or physical culture? Like it's this whole
Speaker 1: movement around this time, like the so called movement. Um
Speaker 1: it means falcon in check in check, but like it's
Speaker 1: like a physical culture even that isn't necessarily sport. But
Speaker 1: the idea is that it's part of a complete education
Speaker 1: to shape better citizens in the democracy, to create it
Speaker 1: was it was very Um, it was big in Catalonia
Speaker 1: in the in the nineteen thirties. It sort of grew
Speaker 1: out of this check thing, but popping up all over Europe,
Speaker 1: you had these like physical culture things that weren't quite sport,
Speaker 1: and like sometimes they were very disciplined, like German turn
Speaker 1: in of course the Germans. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: the Germans have developed like an authoritarian form of gymnastics,
Speaker 1: basically fashion fast dancing, sort of fast flash dancer. H yeah, yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: it's it's fast flashdance. It's a horrible image. Yes, I'd
Speaker 1: be interested to know what kind of physical culture of
Speaker 1: sport that he kind of pursued. Do you know, I
Speaker 1: don't totally know. The stuff I'm reading, like doesn't get
Speaker 1: as much into it besides talking about how like how
Speaker 1: sport was included. Everything that you're saying about the rest
Speaker 1: of it does make me think that it might be
Speaker 1: more of this physic all culture stuff. But I couldn't.
Speaker 1: But that's a little bit maybeing like, oh, yeah, I
Speaker 1: know he did the cool thing because he's a cool
Speaker 1: person to cool stuff, you know. Um, yeah, no, thanks, yeah,
Speaker 1: So I'm not totally sure. They were definitely anarchists who
Speaker 1: did competitive sport as well. I guess certainly by the
Speaker 1: time you get to popular sport in Spain in eighteen thirties,
Speaker 1: ye of anarchists participating in competitive sport. The end is
Speaker 1: always like when we look at the popular Olympics, right,
Speaker 1: the ang goal is not to reward people who are
Speaker 1: born with particular physical excellence so much is to improve
Speaker 1: the well being of the working class. Yeah, and and
Speaker 1: that is absolutely one of his whole things is he's
Speaker 1: not really big into competition, and he's like specifically into
Speaker 1: like helping each individual kid develop their interests and their
Speaker 1: strengths and like shore up their weaknesses and ship right.
Speaker 1: Like that is like more than the integrated education. It's like, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: it's like both practical and petty or intellectual or whatever,
Speaker 1: but it's it's even more than that. It's like it's
Speaker 1: not just personalized like from the outside. It's like from well,
Speaker 1: I'll just I'll just keep talking about what he did.
Speaker 1: So everything is taught alongside practical education. There's travel memoirs
Speaker 1: and personal accounts instead of most of the history books, right,
Speaker 1: because they're like, oh, this is a way to tie
Speaker 1: the history into something which might be familiar to listeners
Speaker 1: to the show. Uh, boys and girls were educated in
Speaker 1: the same class. And this is like a big part
Speaker 1: of what all of the radical like, you know, people
Speaker 1: getting killed for their political educational beliefs, where like boys
Speaker 1: and girls should be taught in the same class, um,
Speaker 1: And it's both to ensure that they received the same education.
Speaker 1: But also and this is really interesting to me, I
Speaker 1: didn't I only ever heard the like, oh, this is so,
Speaker 1: let you know, girls get the same education as boys
Speaker 1: or whatever, right, But part of it for him was
Speaker 1: that he believed that boys, by making friends with and
Speaker 1: interacting with girls, would be would actually understand girls and
Speaker 1: like less think of them as this other that they
Speaker 1: would then mistreat right and become insul Yeah basically, and
Speaker 1: like yeah, and and that or or even like happily
Speaker 1: fucking but like only hanging out with the boys and
Speaker 1: treating women like objects. Yeah yeah, great, a separate spheres
Speaker 1: kind of gender world. And so boys would learn cooking
Speaker 1: and sewing, and they helped in the laundry, and everyone
Speaker 1: gets sex education, which I believe included a lot of
Speaker 1: birth control talk, because that's like something I'll get into
Speaker 1: about his whole thing later and Okay, the most contentious
Speaker 1: thing he did, certainly to his own kids. The most
Speaker 1: contentious thing he did he put his kids in the orphanage. Amazing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's great. Yeah, he's like committed to this,
Speaker 1: being like he's doing as he would want done kind
Speaker 1: of thing. Yeah, exactly. Um and it, at least the
Speaker 1: one report I've read made this made his kids kind
Speaker 1: of unhappy, but it um, it made all the other
Speaker 1: kids very happy that they were like, oh, this person
Speaker 1: actually cares about us. We are actually being treated like
Speaker 1: we are as kids. Fair. If I was a kid,
Speaker 1: I might be better too. But I also think it's
Speaker 1: yeah to kind of standing against the family. And one
Speaker 1: of the most interesting things about him, I think is
Speaker 1: that he's not writing his own Look how great I am, right,
Speaker 1: because all of the stuff he writes is like, here's
Speaker 1: how teaching works. And also all of this like we'll
Speaker 1: get into it, almost a creepy level of science, very
Speaker 1: explode whatever. He like he tracks everything about kids because
Speaker 1: he's a scientist and this way that I'll get into
Speaker 1: in a minute. But but we it's not him being
Speaker 1: like I am the best and this is the best
Speaker 1: way to teach. Instead, everything we have about him was
Speaker 1: his kids writing, his his orphans writing. His biographer was
Speaker 1: someone who came up and was educated under him in
Speaker 1: this school, and like a lot of the people who
Speaker 1: carried on his work were people who were educated in
Speaker 1: this system. Um. And the stuff we know about how
Speaker 1: the school itself ran, we know because the kids ran
Speaker 1: their own newspaper as part of the practical education about
Speaker 1: the going on of the school and what was working
Speaker 1: and what wasn't working about the educational system. Um, that's
Speaker 1: pretty cool. So that's this is why I don't suspect, uh,
Speaker 1: anything unforetold. So so his main pedagogical problem that he
Speaker 1: is running into, which is basically the problem that faces
Speaker 1: everyone teaching anyone anything. And I'm actually kind of curious
Speaker 1: because your experienced with this as a teacher. It's basically like,
Speaker 1: how do you teach other people to be free? Like,
Speaker 1: how do you force other people to be like, no,
Speaker 1: you're free now, whether you like it or not. You know, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a reugh one, isn't. I think you just teach
Speaker 1: people and hope that they realize that themselves. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's still a little different when you're running an orphanage,
Speaker 1: Like I have not been in that position. I've worked
Speaker 1: volunteering orphanage before. That's kind of cool. Yeah, transformative experience
Speaker 1: for a little me. Yeah. I volunteered an orphanage for
Speaker 1: children with autism in Romania when I was like a teenager.
Speaker 1: And just try to ask you. They have this thing
Speaker 1: about like increasing their productive capacity as a nation by
Speaker 1: people having more children, and they reward child bearing, okay,
Speaker 1: child having, and it's resulted in the culture in which
Speaker 1: from what this is me going off what I was
Speaker 1: told when of sixty years, I might be way off base,
Speaker 1: but they have a higher number of children who aren't
Speaker 1: living with their families for whatever reason then would normally
Speaker 1: be the case in the country of that size, and
Speaker 1: especially children with things like autisms. Yeah, we're doing a
Speaker 1: little volunteering there. When I was like a teenager was
Speaker 1: one of my first like holy shit, like you know
Speaker 1: experiences of what like life is like for people who
Speaker 1: are not as fortunate as me. Yeah, that that makes
Speaker 1: a lot of sense. But you know what else makes
Speaker 1: a lot of sense, James m is that buying things? Yeah,
Speaker 1: we live in rewards you for no go ahead? Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: advertisers do you think abandoned their children to an institution
Speaker 1: which may or may not harm those children. Well, I
Speaker 1: think I like to think that as the these there's
Speaker 1: advertisers believe in their products so much that they subject
Speaker 1: their children to them. Okay, So so like if there
Speaker 1: was a Triple A orphanage where Triple A would raise
Speaker 1: your children as anarchist automobile people, they would they would
Speaker 1: gladly let the children live and thrive there. Well, it's actually, um,
Speaker 1: it's you were right about it's it's it's anarchist automobiles.
Speaker 1: It's actually, um, it's a kind of a transformers thing. Um,
Speaker 1: we we turn children into Now, I can't do that.
Speaker 1: That's just not the direction I want to take this show.
Speaker 1: That's how we get away from the fossil fuel economy.
Speaker 1: There's only one way. Yeah, one child per wheel treadmill. Yeah. Uh, Well,
Speaker 1: if you want to participate in the economy that you're
Speaker 1: forced to participate in, you can do so by listening
Speaker 1: to these ads. We are back and we are talking
Speaker 1: about Paul Robin and not how he did not turn
Speaker 1: any of his children into automobiles. As far as I'm awares,
Speaker 1: wasn't an island of Dr mur oh uh Ford, Dr
Speaker 1: Ford Moreau Island. Thing. He did away with exams, this
Speaker 1: part I'm okay, no, I'm back tack telling the truth
Speaker 1: instead of the bad joke. That didn't work. So he
Speaker 1: did away with exams, and he didn't use discipline, and
Speaker 1: he worked to have each student direct their own education.
Speaker 1: He provided tools, and he tried to create a structure
Speaker 1: by which students could learn. And the school taught folk dancing.
Speaker 1: And they would spend like two months of the year
Speaker 1: at the seaside doing like natural observations but also just
Speaker 1: fucking hanging out at the water and ship. And this
Speaker 1: is the part that feels creepy. He he's really into science, right,
Speaker 1: So he he measured all of his pupils, their their growth,
Speaker 1: every part of their body, the angles of their faces
Speaker 1: they changed with growth, the kind the he would like,
Speaker 1: like record their stool composition, like when they pooped, um wow,
Speaker 1: living laboratory kind of ship. Again, I don't think that
Speaker 1: I like I kind of looked into it. I tried
Speaker 1: to find out a little bit because I'm like, every
Speaker 1: time you hear about something that's like seems really cool.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it was like oh, and then there was like
Speaker 1: rampant child abuse or something. I don't think that that
Speaker 1: was happening. I think that this was like nineteen century
Speaker 1: science guy being like, one day the world will need
Speaker 1: to know whether this French kid's cheekbones were at this
Speaker 1: angle at this age versus this other age where they
Speaker 1: were at this other angle or whatever. I can see,
Speaker 1: Like I don't have children, but like, I'm sure that
Speaker 1: there's an anxiety of like is my kid normal? Like
Speaker 1: every little thing about your child. Maybe if you could
Speaker 1: just look in his book and be like, yeah, that
Speaker 1: poop is within the standard deviation. That's true. Yeah, maybe
Speaker 1: he wrote a book about like is your kid poop? Okay?
Speaker 1: Kids poop okay? Yeah, wouldn't be the first, He might
Speaker 1: be the first, he wouldn't be the last, and so okay. So,
Speaker 1: and there are some rules within the thing, right, it's
Speaker 1: a that no one's allowed to play soldiers because he
Speaker 1: doesn't want to turn it into like a military is something.
Speaker 1: No one's allowed to sing the national anthem. Oh yes,
Speaker 1: And and there's no religious teachings for or against God.
Speaker 1: God is just not to be discussed in school. That
Speaker 1: is up to people's own fucking thing. That's great. Yeah, No, totally,
Speaker 1: because like I think it probably be like not the
Speaker 1: best to like have a school where you like and
Speaker 1: this is why God is fake, you know, because yeah,
Speaker 1: you're just gonna I know, so why introduce the idea
Speaker 1: if if you if you don't believe it's rational or useful,
Speaker 1: why waste time on it? Yeah, totally so long, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I really like you know some of the some of
Speaker 1: these folks are gonnak about this's kind of a spectrum
Speaker 1: and how much they were trying to kind of indoctrinate
Speaker 1: kids versus like just free minds and see what will happen,
Speaker 1: you know. And I think he's more on the just
Speaker 1: free minds and see what will happen. It seems like it.
Speaker 1: And he's such a radical outlier that this he doesn't
Speaker 1: immediately influence other folks in France. This doesn't like cause
Speaker 1: this like wave of like oh everyone be like this orphanage, right,
Speaker 1: but edguc waters from countries all over the world come
Speaker 1: and like study and like see what's up and like
Speaker 1: kind of pay attention what's happening at this school, which
Speaker 1: allows further influence a lot further down the line. Um
Speaker 1: and the church kept trying to shut him down, of course,
Speaker 1: because I mean, after all, he did let boys and
Speaker 1: girls swim together. Um, And they almost shut him down
Speaker 1: in two because while he was in London he had
Speaker 1: written a bunch of manuals about birth control and in
Speaker 1: two the church or whoever fucking busy bodies like unearthed
Speaker 1: them and they're like, a ha, we found it. He
Speaker 1: wants people to be able to control whether or not
Speaker 1: they have children, you know, terrible, terrible step. Yeah. But
Speaker 1: the government actually kind of has us back a little
Speaker 1: bit and they don't kick him out. There's this whole
Speaker 1: campaign to get him kicked out until two years later
Speaker 1: when a more centrist government comes into power. Uh, and
Speaker 1: they start passing all these anti anarchist laws. And I'll
Speaker 1: talk about the reasons why they're passing anti anarchist laws
Speaker 1: seem a little bit less weird to the fascineras laws
Speaker 1: in a little bit. This is why we have the
Speaker 1: word libertarian, by the way, I mean, yeah, yeah, people,
Speaker 1: because at the time there were specific laws that like
Speaker 1: one of the censorship things was saying anarchist in the press, right,
Speaker 1: like the word itself, it would have been centered or
Speaker 1: would have been grounds for like having a publication shut
Speaker 1: down or whatever. So they started to use the word libertarian,
Speaker 1: which then came to the United States and got fucking hijacked.
Speaker 1: And but yeah, there's like the initial use of libertarian
Speaker 1: was by French anarchists and their late nineteenth century to
Speaker 1: avoid like stay control. Okay, which are these specific laws
Speaker 1: and I'll talk about a little bit more. And one
Speaker 1: of the other stories that is going to be on
Speaker 1: this week's episode. You got this more centrist government and
Speaker 1: they want to show that they're not radical leftists, you know,
Speaker 1: So they caved to the church and his experiment and
Speaker 1: popular education comes to an end. He's forced to retire.
Speaker 1: He's given a pension. So it's like it's better than
Speaker 1: it could have been. It's better than it's going to
Speaker 1: be for some of the other people. And and actually
Speaker 1: the school continues without him. I think that it's I
Speaker 1: found I had a hard time finding out the history
Speaker 1: after he left about whether his educational methods were continued.
Speaker 1: I believe that the school was continued by two of
Speaker 1: his pupils, um, but I don't know how long. This
Speaker 1: is actually one of the thing that really bothers me
Speaker 1: and I play into it a little bit that I'm
Speaker 1: like telling you the biography about this great guy, right. Um.
Speaker 1: But the reason that we don't fucking know more about
Speaker 1: goddamn orphanage is because people only care about it because
Speaker 1: of Paul Robin, whereas like I care about it. I mean,
Speaker 1: Paul Robin's great, but like I want to know what
Speaker 1: happened to the orphanage. I want to know what happened
Speaker 1: to the kids, you know, but I don't know. It
Speaker 1: seemed to have continued at least for a little while,
Speaker 1: and he's forced to resign. Um. Someone at the time
Speaker 1: put it in a in a journal in the US.
Speaker 1: Someone put it he was fired because he refused to
Speaker 1: teach the orphans that France is bigger than the world
Speaker 1: or that God is bigger than man. So of course
Speaker 1: he retired instead. Go ahead, Yeah, this is just like
Speaker 1: a really love that nation. Yeah totally city. Yeah, especially
Speaker 1: the first part, Like that's what it hasn't been taught enough,
Speaker 1: so he just stopped being cool forevermore. Um, just kidding,
Speaker 1: he uh. He spent the rest of his life teaching
Speaker 1: birth control because he believes that a poor woman's right
Speaker 1: to family planning was the key to their emancipation. Both
Speaker 1: as women and a class because he's a fucking cool guy. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Not all of his peers were his based as him,
Speaker 1: and they would like complain that he had abandoned quote
Speaker 1: the revolution in order to pursue raising orphans to think
Speaker 1: for themselves and providing women the means by wish to
Speaker 1: control their bodies and lives. Right the funk them, that's
Speaker 1: not what the revolution is. Yeah. Yeah. And then he's
Speaker 1: seventy five years old. It's and it's a really good
Speaker 1: run for back in the days of turriculosis, and he's like,
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm on my way out. So he
Speaker 1: poisoned himself and because he was up no a positivist, scientist,
Speaker 1: weirdo at heart, he recorded all of the effects of
Speaker 1: the poison on himself as he died in case they
Speaker 1: were of any use to anyone later. Yeah, he's really
Speaker 1: in it to win it. Believes into what he's saying. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he puts his kids into the orphanage. He fucking records
Speaker 1: his own death. Um. Yeah, so he's just like noting, right,
Speaker 1: he's like like choking away and yeah, yeah, like thirty
Speaker 1: second spasm high. Yeah, you have the writing just gets Yeah,
Speaker 1: like that money yeah, yeah, uh so the guy I know.
Speaker 1: And there's there's one more for today. I'm gonna give
Speaker 1: you one more because he leaves a legacy. The French
Speaker 1: state makes him forced them to put down the torch,
Speaker 1: but others pick it up. And before I talk about
Speaker 1: who picked up the torch, I got to talk about
Speaker 1: the anarchist outrages that were fueling the repression that got
Speaker 1: Paul Robin fired, which means I've got to talk about
Speaker 1: some bombers. They're not my favorite thing about, Like I'm
Speaker 1: not super into the anarchist bomber thing. It's not my
Speaker 1: favorite part of anarchy. But what the movement was up
Speaker 1: to in eight nineties, friends, was was bombing people. And
Speaker 1: I want to talk about one of the more interesting ones, Rabbitshal,
Speaker 1: And he was this guy, Rabbitshal. He was he was
Speaker 1: born super down and out and he stayed that way
Speaker 1: the rest of his life. His dad fucked off when
Speaker 1: he was eight, so he was left to support his mother,
Speaker 1: his sister, his brother, and his nephew as this like
Speaker 1: I don't know, sucking eight year old, right, And so
Speaker 1: he did what he did for the rest of his
Speaker 1: entire life. He worked odd jobs he played accordion on
Speaker 1: the UM. I think actually at Parlors he played accordion
Speaker 1: and he and he robbed graves. Wow. Okay, yeah, so
Speaker 1: its very French to him. Yeah yeah, so I'm like,
Speaker 1: now he's just a French go yeah yeah, yeah, you
Speaker 1: see amazing, Like I'm extremely poor. He to support my fan, nail,
Speaker 1: pick up my accordion and bootstrap myself. Yeah totally. Um.
Speaker 1: And then if if that doesn't work, I'll go find
Speaker 1: someone else's who got buried with their accordion and get
Speaker 1: that one. Yeah. I do like that. Why not rub grades?
Speaker 1: They don't need that stuff? Yeah, similar crime. Yeah he
Speaker 1: heard it here first. Yeah, that's our next plug. Actually
Speaker 1: hired down, down and out needs some money, you know
Speaker 1: who doesn't need it anymore? The dead um set entire families.
Speaker 1: It might not affect anyone's religious practice. Okay, there's downside. Okay,
Speaker 1: so the queen's been buried recently, just you could just
Speaker 1: go in u Yeah. I think actually if you turn
Speaker 1: in the queen's body, um, you get all of her money. Okay,
Speaker 1: it's like a bounty bounty situation. Yeah, wanted dead or
Speaker 1: life where it's a weekend at Bernie's okay, okay, right right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I am the queen. You gotta do it in the
Speaker 1: Crass plays Hello, Hello, Hello, and then you get all
Speaker 1: of her realm as well. You get to control a
Speaker 1: large part of the world. Yeah, that's true. Sophie is
Speaker 1: really excited about this bit, and it's like really excited
Speaker 1: that Margaret has gone down the path of strange bits
Speaker 1: about No, I just appreciate it that you did an accent.
Speaker 1: You'd never do that for that joy. I can only
Speaker 1: do it when I'm imitating Crass. She was saving her
Speaker 1: queen beet for so long and now the opportunity has
Speaker 1: gone and she's mad, you know. Um okay. So Ravishal
Speaker 1: he he takes his mother's maiden name, Ravishal because his
Speaker 1: dad sucked and then he went through his life with
Speaker 1: only one name, which is objectively cool, m like Sodna,
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. He starts hanging out with the anarchists and
Speaker 1: they're fighting for the eight at our work day. Uh.
Speaker 1: And at one point, and this is the thing that's
Speaker 1: like worth noting about these like, oh, the anarchist started
Speaker 1: throwing bombs at ship and it's like, well, because they
Speaker 1: were labor organizing and then they all kept getting murdered.
Speaker 1: So they're like having an eight hour workday protest when
Speaker 1: the cops are like, well, what if we killed nine
Speaker 1: of you today, right, and so and then put three
Speaker 1: people on trial. And so while these people are on trial,
Speaker 1: rabbish All he steals dynamite from a quarry and he
Speaker 1: bombs all the government people responsible for putting these three
Speaker 1: people on trial. And I'm not I'm not telling him
Speaker 1: he's wrong. And so he tells an informant by accident, right,
Speaker 1: and he's like bragging about at a bar and he
Speaker 1: gets put on trial. Uh, the informants house gets bombed
Speaker 1: by someone else, and Rabbishal he gets the death penalty.
Speaker 1: He sings on the way to the guillotine. What does
Speaker 1: he saying? Fucking I wrote it down, but I don't
Speaker 1: remember it. It was like something, Yeah, they should have
Speaker 1: given him his accordion. He could have gone down absolutely.
Speaker 1: I know. I think he's sang one of the songs.
Speaker 1: Oh he was one of the songs of the guillotine
Speaker 1: from the French Revolution. Oh yeah, what a hero. Um yeah.
Speaker 1: And so I don't know. He has his hardest, fun
Speaker 1: shitty life and he fought against it. He died at
Speaker 1: thirty two years old. More people bomb other ship and revenge,
Speaker 1: and it creates this cycle where everyone's bombing things and
Speaker 1: then in revenge, and then they get executed, and other
Speaker 1: people are bombing more things in revenge, and all these
Speaker 1: anti anarchist laws get put into place. So once the
Speaker 1: anti anarchist laws get put into place, a poor twenty
Speaker 1: year old baker named Cesario stabs the president to death
Speaker 1: in public, and they offer him a plea deal if
Speaker 1: he snitches, and he says Cesario as a baker, never
Speaker 1: an informer, I know, And as he gets guillotined, he
Speaker 1: shouts out, courage cousins, long live anarchy, A go ahead,
Speaker 1: these people. I do love that. I know what happened.
Speaker 1: It is time beard where people just really fully inhabited
Speaker 1: the bit right to the bitter rain. But yeah, it's
Speaker 1: very inspiration. So France, this is this is the kind
Speaker 1: of stuff that's happening that gets Paul Robin kicked out right.
Speaker 1: So France is like, all right, anarchists aren't allowed to
Speaker 1: associate with each other anymore. That's done. No more free association,
Speaker 1: not for anarchists. And so yet you get something called
Speaker 1: the Trial of the thirty, which, um, can you guess
Speaker 1: what the Trial of the thirty was? Was it some
Speaker 1: kind of indurance event, maybe that they all had to
Speaker 1: compete for thirty hours or something for Margaret to deliver
Speaker 1: this please please please afform me. Yeah, yeah, no, it's
Speaker 1: it's a it's a trial of thirty people. Oh that's
Speaker 1: extremely disappointing, very literal name. Wow. Yeah, that's what a
Speaker 1: what a shame? I know. So thirty alleged anarchists are
Speaker 1: put on trial for criminal association and it was completely
Speaker 1: bullshit trial because at that point in anarchist France, the
Speaker 1: anarchists weren't actually very very well organized, which was part
Speaker 1: of why they were resorting to bombing and stabbing and stuff,
Speaker 1: because they hadn't really recovered yet from the repression that
Speaker 1: they faced during the Paris Commune, that the whole left
Speaker 1: face during the Paris Community and they were just trying
Speaker 1: to funk up the world. That's fucking everyone over. A
Speaker 1: lot of them were. There's another half to the anarchist
Speaker 1: movement in France at the time, which is that they
Speaker 1: were just hanging out and writing literature and poetry and
Speaker 1: ship because the art scene in Paris, was hella anarchist?
Speaker 1: It's like the punk scene of the nineteen nineties right
Speaker 1: where you're just like, if you're a punk, you're probably
Speaker 1: an anarchist. If you're a literary cool person in eighteen
Speaker 1: nineties Paris, you're probably an anarchist. It's just the culture
Speaker 1: at the time. And so the people on trial are
Speaker 1: like authors and art directors and ship So thirty alleged
Speaker 1: anarchists are put on trial. One of them is an
Speaker 1: art critic named Felix Phinnen or Finian, the guy who
Speaker 1: coined the term neo impressionism, and he has a really
Speaker 1: fun bit in court. They asked him, um, are you
Speaker 1: an anarchist? Mr? Fenian? I am a Burgundian born in Turin.
Speaker 1: Your police file extends to one seventy pages. It is
Speaker 1: documented that you were intimate with the German terrorist Komphmire.
Speaker 1: The intimacy cannot have been great as I do not
Speaker 1: speak German and he does not speak French. And then
Speaker 1: the whole courtroom laughs at the prosecutor. It has been
Speaker 1: established that you surrounded yourself with Kohen and Ortez. One
Speaker 1: can hardly be surrounded by two persons. You need at
Speaker 1: least three. And then they say, you are seeing conference
Speaker 1: behind with them behind a lamp post. A lamp post
Speaker 1: is round, Can your honor tell me where behind a
Speaker 1: lamp post is? And I know at the court fails
Speaker 1: to prove any link between them because there wasn't one, right,
Speaker 1: they don't even speak the same language as each other.
Speaker 1: And they all get released, Almost all of them get released.
Speaker 1: Some of them actually get put in jail for conspiracy ship,
Speaker 1: but most of them get released. And what is all
Speaker 1: this have to do with education? You ask? You should ask,
Speaker 1: what does all this have to do with education? Margaret? Well,
Speaker 1: I'm glad you asked. One of these guys. His name
Speaker 1: is Sebastian for A, And in nineteen o four he
Speaker 1: picked up Paul Robbin's torch. He'd also been raised by Catholics, uh,
Speaker 1: and he was actually going to become a priest until
Speaker 1: he was forced to support his family, which he didn't
Speaker 1: do by accordioning and grave robbing. Um. And he's soon
Speaker 1: I don't actually remember what he did, but it wasn't that.
Speaker 1: I think he was middle class. He soon wound up
Speaker 1: an anarchist and his wife was like, oh funk this.
Speaker 1: I'm not dating you anymore. I was like a conservative Catholic.
Speaker 1: So he strikes out on his own and he works
Speaker 1: as an author and a speaker. Oh that's what he did, right,
Speaker 1: And he works tirelessly on the Dreyfus support campaign defending
Speaker 1: this guy, Alfred Dreyfus, alongside all of the decent human
Speaker 1: beings in France, including most all of the left. The
Speaker 1: super cliff notes version for anyone who dress affair, I
Speaker 1: feel like the Dreyfus affair. When I first heard, I
Speaker 1: was like, isn't this some movie from the nineties. I
Speaker 1: don't remember it right, Yeah, it could be a punk band, Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: What happened was this guy named Alfred Dreyfus, and he
Speaker 1: was a French soldier. He was a captain, and he
Speaker 1: was falsely accused of treason and it he was accused
Speaker 1: for treason because he was Jewish. That's like pretty much
Speaker 1: all there was, like some treason happened and it wasn't
Speaker 1: him and there was no evidence, but he was Jewish.
Speaker 1: So he spent like twelve years trying to get exonerated.
Speaker 1: It became this huge international support campaign um, and he
Speaker 1: was like the people who were against him, they were
Speaker 1: pretty clear about their anti Semitism. They ran organizations with
Speaker 1: titles like the Anti Semitic League of France. So so
Speaker 1: I know, so for a along he's part of the
Speaker 1: Dreyfus campaign, and eventually he at leases a fifty ish
Speaker 1: acre farm outside of Paris, and he establishes a school
Speaker 1: in Commune called LaRouche or the Hive, which is a
Speaker 1: creepy name for anything. But they raised bees and sold
Speaker 1: them through a workers collective to fund the whole thing,
Speaker 1: so I will forgive them for taking away creepy name.
Speaker 1: The rest of the money came from Sebastian himself, from
Speaker 1: his income from lectures and books, and which I think
Speaker 1: is just like a cool way to be, like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, if you're like making your living as a
Speaker 1: lecturer and author used that to support support schools. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's great. Would a pivot we could have made? A
Speaker 1: priest could have lost the soul I know, I know,
Speaker 1: and then he could have been a prisoner because he
Speaker 1: was in the trial of the third Um. And so
Speaker 1: they started school. Educational materials and equipment come from Paul
Speaker 1: Robbins previous school, which makes me think that maybe it
Speaker 1: was closed eventually I'm not entirely sure or whether Paul
Speaker 1: Robin was like, oh, you can have some of the stuff, right,
Speaker 1: I don't totally know. At the Hive there's a farmhouse
Speaker 1: and orchard, woods and meadows and a farmland, and the
Speaker 1: whole thing has this like yeah it is this a
Speaker 1: narco pacifist vibe. And the government at first is like,
Speaker 1: all right, well, we're not gonna sunk with you, because
Speaker 1: thank god we have some past this anarchists. After like
Speaker 1: you know, like one of them, it just like knife
Speaker 1: their main guy. Um. They became less excited about paspists
Speaker 1: once World War One kicked off. Let me tell you, yes,
Speaker 1: the Hive lasted for thirteen years until nineteen seventeen when
Speaker 1: for As personal finances suffered and he couldn't afford it anymore. Basically,
Speaker 1: the World War One fucked it all up, and the
Speaker 1: whole thing was run as a Soviet which means commune,
Speaker 1: not part of the Soviet Union, and decisions were made
Speaker 1: at a weekly general assembly by the staff and by
Speaker 1: the older students, which I believe included anyone over the
Speaker 1: age of thirteen. Amazing, Yeah, this place, it's very cool.
Speaker 1: This is actually the most excited I've ever been about
Speaker 1: like whenever I read these things about like and then
Speaker 1: all these radicals had their like back to little land
Speaker 1: thing where they got like fifty acres in the meadow
Speaker 1: and they like sold whatever, honey, I'm like, and then
Speaker 1: it all ended horrible and some poly drama and someone
Speaker 1: probably stabbed someone, like you know, it's like, like, I
Speaker 1: think that sticking her heads in the sand is like
Speaker 1: usually a really bad thing, right, And I think that
Speaker 1: the thing that really excites me about this is that
Speaker 1: they didn't in Instead, they were like, we are a
Speaker 1: project that is part of the larger world that makes
Speaker 1: use of this idyllic landscape. Right. Um, I I haven't
Speaker 1: found anything negative about this is like the most like
Speaker 1: just pure positive. Like this place was just cool as
Speaker 1: far as I can tell, it seems really cool. And
Speaker 1: the teachers and the staff were volunteer. They were given
Speaker 1: food and lodgings and of course an equal voice in
Speaker 1: how things were run, right, and they could use money
Speaker 1: from the communal pool for anything that they needed and
Speaker 1: they didn't need to justify their expenses. Um. And by
Speaker 1: all accounts, no one took advantage of that system and
Speaker 1: abused it. There were about fifty students at any given
Speaker 1: point aged five to sixteen. It was really competitive to
Speaker 1: get in, and the only favoritism was shown was towards
Speaker 1: the kids of all these executed anarchists. So like, if
Speaker 1: you get executed by the state, at least your kids
Speaker 1: get a free education at the Hive, and tuition was
Speaker 1: pay what you can, without any emphasis in selection based
Speaker 1: on who had money. The school aggressively it did not
Speaker 1: teach anarchy. It taught autonomy. It taught students. It taught
Speaker 1: them what they wanted to learn, and really intentionally avoided
Speaker 1: indoctrination into anarchism. And it was an integrated education like
Speaker 1: Paul Robbins Orphanage, and that practical skills and the heavier
Speaker 1: subjects were both emphasized. Students started an apprenticeship at thirteen
Speaker 1: and whatever skill they wanted. UM. Basically, up until your
Speaker 1: ten you do whatever you want and no one's allowed
Speaker 1: to tell you what you have to learn. UM. From
Speaker 1: ten to thirteen or maybe ten to twelve, you like
Speaker 1: get the basics of a ton of different fields. And
Speaker 1: then at thirteen you pick an apprenticeship and you start
Speaker 1: doing labor for the farm as that apprenticeship, and you
Speaker 1: get a wage for the things that you make that
Speaker 1: gets sold by the cooperative. So I think the only
Speaker 1: people who got paid by this school were the students.
Speaker 1: UM and everyone is encouraged. Everything boys and girls taught
Speaker 1: were taught together their sex education. There's no punishments, there's
Speaker 1: no rewards, but the reward of learning. UM students travel internationally,
Speaker 1: like their field trips are like, let's go to fucking
Speaker 1: Russia or whatever. Switzerland is the only one I know
Speaker 1: off the top of my head, but UM and international
Speaker 1: visitors come to see the place, and I don't know,
Speaker 1: and it I keep reading, I'm like waiting, I'm like,
Speaker 1: and when did it go off the rails? When did
Speaker 1: it go off the rails? It's it just it ran
Speaker 1: out of money because of World War One, which like
Speaker 1: almost nothing fucking survived World War One. Lots of people
Speaker 1: did not survive World War One. Some countries didn't properly
Speaker 1: survive ward. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And this is not the
Speaker 1: most famous torch bearer of Paul Robbins's work. When we
Speaker 1: come back on Wednesday, we'll talk about Francisco Fare, the
Speaker 1: Martyr of popular education. I'm excited to learn more. It
Speaker 1: was pretty fun these people are really Yeah, it's so nice.
Speaker 1: It's so nice not to do one while you're like
Speaker 1: and then he turned into a massive piece of ship
Speaker 1: and started doing some horror. Yeah, it's like a cleanse. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's nice. James, do you have anything you'd like to
Speaker 1: plug at the end here you should listen to our
Speaker 1: other podcasts where we don't always talk about such happy
Speaker 1: and wonderful stuff, which is it could happen here. Um,
Speaker 1: if you wanna hear my opinions on stuff here about
Speaker 1: the shock. I just thought you can follow me on Twitter.
Speaker 1: It's at James Dout, which is my name. Um. I
Speaker 1: have a book about the popular Olympics. It's linked to
Speaker 1: my Twitter bio. It's very expensive. If you aren't able
Speaker 1: to access that, then let me know. My d ms
Speaker 1: are open. I think that's all awesome, Margaret. And you
Speaker 1: have a book that people can purchase, correct, I do.
Speaker 1: I have a book called we Won't Be Here Tomorrow,
Speaker 1: and it is available wherever you get your books, including
Speaker 1: such cooperative bookstores as Firestorm Books in Asheville, North Carolina,
Speaker 1: or Red Emma's in Baltimore, Maryland. Is published by the
Speaker 1: collectively run publisher A. K. Press. Um. Is that count
Speaker 1: as an accent if I just put on an affectation?
Speaker 1: I like it it. Yeah, it's authorial, it's very um. Well,
Speaker 1: I have been on book tour, so I have been
Speaker 1: talking about and you can actually catch me on book tour,
Speaker 1: which will be happening while you're listening if you're anywhere
Speaker 1: in the South and mid Atlantic and a tiny bit
Speaker 1: of the Midwest, but by that I really mean Cleveland.
Speaker 1: And then you can catch me on tour talking about
Speaker 1: none of this stuff and instead reading new stories about
Speaker 1: people who pretend to be orcs or teenage lesbians in
Speaker 1: love with satanic death cults. Yeah, it's a queen and
Speaker 1: any of them. Will you do your Will you do
Speaker 1: your queen voice? Uh? I used to have a crass
Speaker 1: cover band called Best Before four, which was like my
Speaker 1: like steampunk crass band. And I can play big, a
Speaker 1: little a on accordion, and that is how I will
Speaker 1: do a queen song a queen voice. Okay, let's go
Speaker 1: to those shows. Demand that. Yeah, probably, And we'll be
Speaker 1: back on Wednesday with the part two. He Cool People
Speaker 1: Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts on cool Zone Media, visit our website
Speaker 1: cool zone media dot com, or check us out on
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